Looking Back on 2024

Transcript

I think uh which really important too and I wouldn't say a mistake of mine but I think something I quickly realized was uh I think it's the name of the game for this all Cycles but where you are in the information totem pole it's not just whether or not you're early or late it's like you can be late early and still make a bunch of money in this industry this episode is sponsored by scale scale has differentiated itself from other layer ones by offering users a network of gas-free interoperable evml ons where the user experience comes first explore the gas fre ecosystem at scale. and follow their Journey on X at scale Network to learn more about the gas free architecture and growth of the scale ecosystem visit the scale research Hub at scale. space

resarch nothing said on zerox Research is a recommendation to buy or sell Securities or tokens this podcast is for informational purposes only and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions not Financial advice pachio Ryan and our guest May hold positions in the company's funds or projects discussed uh what's up guys welcome back to another episode of zerox research today I'm joined by Ryan uh from the blockworks research team and effort capital and zerox Mims Ox Mims Ox Mims um from blockworks advisory the new advisory arm for blockworks research welcome to the show guys how you doing thanks pretty good delegate to us happy New Year uh Happy New Year happy New Year um so so we already did a

CU I was off for the past few weeks we already did a 2025 feus so I want to do a look back episode where we do our top five mistakes um for 2024 but I don't want to start so whoever has their list ready um let's get started I'll go first um this was really hard not find five mistakes because I didn't know which of those should be the top five I had like a laundry list of mistakes in 2024 um the first one that comes to mind immediately and I'm sure Bak to love this is not trading hyper liquid uh not farming that at all my timeline was

blowing up about hyper liquid back in like October of last year um I think it actually Dr drove like a lot of Mind share from like ex Cosmos people uh accounts I don't know why but a lot of my X Cosmos people were on my timeline Shilling it back then talking about how great it was and I didn't do anything with it I think the first time I actually traded on it was a PVP trade because of the invite like you sent which was fun and I had a good time doing that hopefully that becomes a good air drop but not trying hyper liquid not not doing anything with it definitely big mistake for me uh just didn't even buy a coat bag at $4 when it first launched even though I knew I should have that's definely number one on the list for what it's worth of hyper liquid

I think a lot of people just missed it anyway um hence why you see a lot of people posting on the timeline and I think the people who didn't miss it just didn't sell so they're just very happy um but I don't know we talked about this earlier this morning as well and I kind of got upset with Ryan and Dan um we had on our analyst called them saying we think it's overvalued and I said I don't think it's overvalued um one thing I think that was I don't know if this is a mistake by hyper liquid and I got you I actually would love your taken on this is this isn't like a hyper liquid podcast episode but whatever we're talking about it do you think it was smart to choose the

evm um or do you think that doesn't matter honestly like I I don't know enough about evm versus svm versus mve VM Etc I I find it like semi not interesting if you can get um svm performance on the evm then it doesn't matter that much if you can get svm if you can get that kind of performance on EV then it absolutely doesn't matter if anything so that's what they're going for which is which is why I think it should be fine um yeah that's fair I think if you're a new L1 and you're not trying to hyper optimize the evm going for the evm might not be the best but I mean that

also wouldn't make any sense I can only think of one chain that's doing that which is bar chain which they're doing their whole own thing in regards to the evbm which is like connecting it to the cosmos um but like every other evm based chain now is like we've realized that the evm is good but you can only get off like you can only do so well uh by circle jerking how much tvl and developer resources there are in the evm like you need to you need to crank it up a little bit um I think all of the successful l2s are realizing that I think Mega E is going to do really well this is like I'll say it on the Pod it is January 3D 2025 I think Mega E does well um I don't care about like I care about decentralization

but and I found it a bit funny where um they had like an argument with Keon on the Pod um on Bank list where it was like oh like this is a node this isn't a node nomenclature aside like all that stuff aside the decentralization aside I think Mega E and base both realize that you need to Crank It Up the evm you need to make it performant um I don't know why I started with this conversation I've once turn against turned into Alto but you get the gist I think unless you're like trying to make the evm performant that doesn't then you should not build on the evm or you should not do anything with the evm I think um yeah it's interesting so like does the EV like was the evm a mistake for them like I probably not

like you see enough teams saying that we can crank this thing up to a big number um I think shortterm probably not um but I think a 10,000 TPS number is certainly capped with it caps your valuation to an extent um you know I think it's a good place to be over the coming years but like I don't know I'm really interested interested to see what fire dancer does within the next let's say 12 to 18 months and how that how that makes the juiced evm people like how it makes them want to move um because of all the engineering resources out there there's some people saying yeah we can crank this thing to 10,000 and then there's other people saying yeah but we have this thing over here we

can crank it to a million um and we know trading volume is like the big determinant of these valuations so yeah like near term it's probably fine longterm in a fire dancer world like you probably get smoked so what does that say about like all these new l1s that are like super fast performant like EVMS right like you have moned you have like um you have uh like what Phantom's coming out with with Sonic I think like are you saying that these are like more or less doomed against something like fire dancer or fire dancer juice salana or no if they can execute on the numbers that they say it is like I what I do is

I when I when I think about these just like simplify it down to TPS pretend it's the only metric that matters um in an ecosystem that can that can get devs um discount whatever they say they can juice TPS to by 75% um so yeah you have like whatever 25 100 TPS in a juic evm world and then 250,000 in a fire dancer world it's just like apples and oranges um it's great for the evm I think there's a lot of people who want to build on a Juiced evm I think they're going to do well short term but I think you cap yourself long term at those numbers Dave Big Dave this is actually a question for you we'll do we'll continue

on the um mistakes afterwards but where does the C cuz I realized why do why would chain build on the on Cosmos as opposed to as an L2 yeah I mean I can't speak to I think they I mean if memory serves me correctly they did that raise what in 2022 you probably know better than ebach but my thought is the op stack was not as mature or the arbitrum morbit stack wasn't maybe as mature I think it's the same reason why d ex decided to build L Cosmos instead of building on op stack or another rup framework I Tech was

mature enough and I also think they probably wanted that L1 premium that I think the market has historically given them and you just do more things uh you can you know it gives you more Custom Design space around like what your validators can offer your your users I guess from an oracle perspective and sure you could have them try different like type of services um you do fancy things with like an offchain order book and you know settling on chain I don't know if you can do any of that with OP stack today like I'm sure you can but um to be honest like I haven't really done much digging into that in a while at this point that's right I think I need to look into it a bit more I was just

wondering I think that's a much better explanation than anything that I have thought of though so I really appreciate it um you think there's like some I guess some ecosystem building premium you get from having from being an L1 as well because if you look get all the like the op stack chains apart from like you know base and I guess like optimism main net and if you look at like all the arbiture morbit chains uh it seems like they have a harder time building an ecosystem relative to like an L1 and I think that's partially because like when you're building an L1 there's like this thought that developers might have where it's like uh we can be the first like a on this L1 right we can be the first of whatever right I don't think that same

idea is there for like like chains that launch within a stack I'm not sure if that makes sense I don't know to be honest I I think what one of the things that was just really uh unique for specifically for the cosmos and this is obviously going to become less and less true over time but I think having an interoperability framework is like really key and I think that like you're kind of on your own Island as a chain but if you are connected to other chains that have some type type of liquidity then it'll be easier for your users to bridge over there and it's easier to just like jump start your ecosystem um and like op doesn't have that arbitrum doesn't have that like I couldn't even tell you

how to bridge the side today I'm sure it's super easy I haven't done it I have no plans on doing it but I'm sure it's just harder to do than like getting to dydx for example could be wrong though um so yeah number one was hyper liquid number two should we comment on everyone's after they say them or comment on bch comment comment and then next one comment um it's tough to comment on hyper liquid for me just because I feel like it's a simple it's a simple comment right like you missed out better look next time try again yeah yeah if one thing I will say like a lot of people are like it won't happen again I don't think like airdrop wise I think it'll happen again every like five

months we do this thing where they're like oh this was the last good air drop next time there won't be a good one and then last time they said this was for J jeta was the big one grass was okay for me but I think that's because I was like an early refling Shiller um I think there'll definitely be other opportunities so there will be another one in terms of the 2 to 20 um 2 to 35 it launched that two Bill 35 17 and a half X I don't know about that one that one's a tough one to I think it's fine you you don't have to catch every winner um you don't have to catch everyone but hyper liquid is pretty interesting and

that it was number one in perss for so long yeah like and we we kind of saw this thing in perss where every like new pers thing went to number one and then floundered or like got a lot of hype behind it then people got tokens then it just like dropped down the list and dydx remained number one um HP certainly bucked that Trend so I think it caught a lot of people off sides that's exactly it I just figured that after the points program after the air drop uh it would go down but um that didn't happen and kudos to to everyone that caught that early um I think another and maybe more like General mistake of of mine in 2024 uh I got complacent in Q2 like

early Q2 maybe late q1 early Q2 I was you know personally up a decent amount in my port and I stopped trying new things and I don't think I was having is I didn't have fun on chain from Q2 to like end of Q4 um that made me like Miss whiff I didn't decide to buy fart coin I didn't really I wasn't even in like the pump fun trenches um like as early as I should have been just by knowing like what was going on so I think lesson learned and forward looking for 2025 going to continue to look for having fun on chain and even if it doesn't generate me money like it could I just stopped trying things um and you know shame on me yeah that's number two yeah I say that's

number two just like generally not trying new things and getting complacent in 2024 after like a decent runup in q1 what sorry sorry sorry you said from 2q in 2024 onward yeah Didn't I mean I tried I started trying things in late like mid Q4 again honestly like I really wasn't doing that much different things um until like mid Q4 like I literally Miss like all of Q2 all of Q3 and like half of Q4 of like doing anything even like didn't even do anything on pump fun until I don't know November or something yeah I feel like it's easy to get lost in crypto as well where you're like

because it feels like if you miss something if you just miss a week then you're like oh I'm too late and then you don't participate for three more weeks and then you're like well friend's actually not dead yet but now I've missed a month I'm too late and then it just keep going on so you're like oh [ __ ] like I've actually missed this out for free and a half months um I definitely could have participated at some point um but you never do and I think it's it's just kind of the name of the game you what like there's 15 things going on at once I'm genuine prop like proponent of this a lot of people are like oh like if you missed x what are you doing um there's like five narratives

happening at the same time like the dominant one is AI but if you were like focused on gaming stuff um like onchain Heroes was a 17x as well from mint price um like the Genesis mint the Rings um a lot of stuff has like 10 xon hyper liquid um 1020 xon like that chain so it's like that's I guess long-winded way of saying um just got to stay keep staying on top of stuff and like just missing one narrative doesn't mean you miss out on all of them like there's like five of them going on at the same time at all times all right who wants to go next or David do you have one more no I was just

say just like kind of follow up with that I think uh what's really important too and I wouldn't say a mistake of mine but I think something I quickly realized was uh I think it's the name of the game for this all Cycles but where you are in the information totem pole it's not just whether or not you're early or late it's like you can be late early and still make a bunch of money in this industry and I think I early on was like either I'm early or I'm late and it's like that's not that's not the name of the game in this industry um there are nine innings in a baseball game like it's very okay to be in inning five and you actually might catch you know the the most of the the runup uh for the back half of the of the whatever that game is

or whatever that token is perfect that makes s any comments on that one right I don't know the thing yeah I I get it yeah you can um it depends on on your kind of investing style right um there's a there's a million ways to make money um the juiciest returns in crypto are are um you um the returns that you miss out on scale super linearly with the inning I don't know how how to frame it but like the juicy you want to be in inning one because you just like you lose you just lose X's very very quickly things move so fast and go it goes back to the other mistake of just like participating all the time like you actually can't take time off um you have to you have to

be playing these new games because that's where the very very big games come in yeah Darren you want to go next what are your my biggest mistake is um I mean I I think I share a lot in common with David here but uh kind of just not coping like uh I I missed out on hyper liquid missed out on plenty of other things that like blew up almost every single meme coin uh especially all the major ones um I think that's largely because I discounted them saying that they were like you know Silly just like a a fad like an immature fad that would go away something like that right and like I I almost feel as though like you

know the Market's recognizing them it's not about like well it's not about necessarily if you think that they're like silly it's just to to a certain extent it's like you just got to go with it um and yeah that's I guess that's my biggest problem um like for hyper liquid I saw it keep going up and I was like there's no way this is going to go up forever it's go it's gonna crash it's it's gonna go to zero at some point and uh I have been wrong so far um but yeah that was my first biggest mistake second biggest mistake is I guess just not being consistent in

trying new things so again similar to David here um but more so in the sense of like I start airdrop farming things and I fall off of like airdrop farming like I've been farming like uh like infrared on bar chain for some time but I have these periods where I go in and out and uh just completely forget about it and that's how you like lose like track of the ball um and yeah so the the one the one thing that I want to kind to kind of double cck click on is um I see it all the time in crypto it's like the thing went up x% therefore it can't go up more um and sometimes that's like a good rule of thumb and I think it's

actually like a really good rule of thumb in trafi where markets are generally like pretty efficient um so like if something did rate you're like oh it's up 50% it's up 50% for a reason like I can't keep following it right like it's it's going to it's either going to stay where it is or like come back to earth um it's not the case in crypto and I think like again the classic example was hyper liquid where if you like when did the token come out on Thanksgiving like I was like in my car like texting and driving I saw the price I was like this seems wildly mispriced right I think it launched at a $2 billion valuation and like if you knew the L1 story if you knew the earnings potential of this thing if you saw the volume if you could

just like make some very basic assumptions like it should have been A1 billion dollar coin and it got there very very quickly so if you were saying like oh this thing already went up you know 2x 3x you still out a ways to go um so yeah as a as an investor in crypto stuff like I kind of leave the percentage change return analysis stuff at the door I don't I find that it it's really hard to make that stuff work when when markets can reprice in such wild ways Darren what's your third mistake well I guess my like third mistake is really just like ignoring i' I've ignored Ai and dze sectors and they seem to have gained the most in terms of M share like going back

to uh the kaido M share like spreadsheet that's been circulating um and I don't know why I've been ignoring them or I think it's the same issue as before where I look at like what the AI agents have come to be and what they were over these past few months and I say there's nothing actually here this is all just a bunch of like garbage right but like you know other people disagree um and I just I'm having a hard time trying to picture why they disagree like what like at what point at what point did it become something very bullish to them because from my perspective a lot of the AI stuff the AI agents just can't like do they can't do basic a actions on chain

or they're just like or the AI agents that are like around that we see doing stuff I get this feeling that there's like some guy in the background that's just like pulling a bunch of levers and stuff it's not actually like it's not actually like some all knowing AI doing anything but uh I don't know that's just my take yeah there there are two um two two thoughts come to mind when you say that the first is the Chris Dixon essay the next big the next big thing will start as a toy um how a lot of big Technologies they start as um seemingly like very silly things like um like I don't know there's like this really cool anecdote

of like Mark andrees like he created the first browser and he was watching like all he like literally people would just send him like Hey I made a website there' be like two new ones a day so he would know all the websites in 1994 and the big moment for him when it stopped being a toy um to just like post you know someone posted a video of their fish uh you know people like into like you know I don't know medieval arts and crafts were just like essentially blogging about it at the time it was like a place for super nich Niche interest it was a toy and then a restaurant posted their menu and he was like oh wow like okay this is more than just a toy right now um so yeah these AI chat Bots are are certainly toys today

um they probably don't deserve the valuations that they should have but um you know these these Technologies do start out looking um like very silly things just objectively and and what's great just to add to that is like yeah even if these are toys today the speculation and the amount of money that these toys are the evaluation these toys are getting is going to draw eyeballs that are like draw eyeballs from AI ml talent that is currently building in like web 2 and be like wait a second like I have the talent to actually make something legitimate I have a really good idea like why shouldn't I come and build in like the crypto ecosystem in this industry and I think like that is uh the specul is drives attention bad attention

and it drives good attention um and we're just like really early days I think for like what the Futures get to unfold for crypto and AI yeah I don't mean to disagree here but I will I I kind of think that like like uh crypto tends to think of itself in this weird way like you know we think we're going to attract all this Talent from like the AI space right uh because what we're doing with AI agents but I think the I almost want to say that like the Mind share that we have to the AI space is like extremely small like we are it that space or that like industry of people is probably a lot harder to penetrate um than we think um that's just my like small disagreement

there a world coin was launched by Sam Altman what do you mean you gota be a techno Optimist dream Digger M come on yeah I mean or dream realistically right like dream the the other thing I wanted to point out really quick was um the um the the like the observation that these AI things are not actual Ai and there's like someone in the background um the concept I want to draw attention to is flun stoning where like if you know if a tech startup says they have some like automation like this crazy automation that they can build to and you upload a

CSV to it like it might actually do the crazy automation that you say it will like someone will be doing something on the background to actually make that thing happen it's not as seamless as you think um I think the famous example is um Reddit they literally just use Bots to start up Reddit um there was not enough content being posted people weren't saying enough interesting things so like the team and their Bots went to work and like made the content happen it was interesting enough to get the Flywheel spinning I think it's totally fine that these AI Bots are not or chat Bots really aren't fully like autonomous um it's about delivering a product at the end of the day um like I do have some issues with the space like I think the valuations

have certainly run ahead of what's realistic um I I think that there's a there's like this interesting Dynamic with the AI coins where I think they're trading like mem coins and I think I'd be more okay with it if they were just saying that like hey these are meme coins but they're like people on the timeline being like this deserves a platform valuation like these things are going to solve problems X Y and Z and they're not doing they're not anywhere near that and I don't think that that the teams who have already gotten rich I don't they think that they aspire to do that um if you look at some of these Frameworks that have been deployed they they leave them a lot to be desired and when you try to instantiate some of these actions with um with these applications like they

don't work they they they are very very error prone and the the problem with with AI and the Enterprise is that you know you need accuracy in the Enterprise right um and you need accuracy on chain it's very very similar you can't say I want to send 20 soul to this address and you send 100 soul to the other address right um so yeah I think it's I think it's ahead of its skis um but I'm not I think I said in the last episode I'm I'm bullish on what or sorry EMB bearish on what exists but I'm I'm pretty bullish on what can be hey everyone we'd like to give a special shout out to the sponsors of today's episode scale scale is built different

unlike other layer ones scale is offering users a network of gas-free interoperable evml ones where user experience comes first scale operates like the AWS infrastructure model where developers pay for space in the network in skl tokens to validators essentially scale has chain fees and not gas fees this allows for free transactions on scale and has saved 46 million users over 9 billion in gas fees explore the gas free ecosystem at scale. Spacey and follow their Journey on X at scale Network visit the scale research Hub to learn more about the gas-free architecture and growth of the ecosystem that's scale dospace resarch Ryan your have three mistakes three mistakes

um I have two broad ones um the first is underappreciated how important DJ and capital is to crypto Capital markets um coming from a trafi perspective this probably took me longer to appreciate than you know someone that's fully crypto native um but DJ DJ Capital makes these things happen it's still the vast majority of capital flows are people looking to do silly things on chain and take major risks and play Risk games with one another um it is how eth got started like if you want to look at crypto kitties or food Farms um or liquidity

mining like that was DJ Capital that got the eth ecosystem and it's all it's l2's bootstrapped it's like although the thesis for salana is very it can be like very Trad fight oriented where it looks a lot like you know it's NASDAQ speed it's High throughput um it's more product oriented teams uh it was bootstrap by mcoin trading um it was bootstrapped by DJ Capital um I think I fully appreciate that now you can probably find some pods where I said like I don't have to try products or like know what DG are doing to like understand like the products and the capital markets here and that that's

completely wrong I think that and although and although the marginal like dollar of capital coming into the space will be tra Five Capital um it's still going to pale in comparison to G Dent capital for a long time I think so understanding you know understanding what next you have to you have to be you you have to have a good understanding of the crypto natives which is why someone might miss um a DSi Trend or an AI Trend right like degens are making that happen it's not it's not like Vanek that's making those coins move it's it's the degens this is relevant to something I spoke about on the before Darren cut me

off last time just something relevant we spoke on the research telegram this morning and like when people say oh tokens don't um like we don't need tokens I think you're wrong we need tokens because you need um people to come in and use your app you need people to come in and fund dog [ __ ] um di products and random isolated uh money markets which are like never going to get any usage unless you're giving out token incentives um so that's why you need tokens and you also need tokens to bring in devs because why would they're paying 600 Grand plus Equity at I don't know about that they're giving they're doing

like 800 grand um 800 bands of total comp at Big um software companies um unless you offer the generational chance the chance to make generational wealth through a windfall to devs they're not going to come to crypto so um Ryan this is very tangential to your point but I think um like we need tokens and we need the like I don't like the word d I think it's been co-opted by vanck and stuff now but like we need people on on chain doing silly stuff um or else like for the rec we like vanck for the record yeah yeah it's not

[ __ ] on vanneck I actually think they're they're the good guys man um the JP Morgan let's say JP Morgan yeah um okay fantastic what's number two number two is um I guess this is a corollary but just ass assuming markets are too efficient or at all efficient um everything that I've missed um including large airdrops have been the result of me thinking that the opportunity is gone because it has been arbed Away by Capital that is too smart or smarter than me the opportunity the

opportunities I I think are going to increasingly exist just because again of that kind of like DJ mentality um I thought that I I participated in the goto airdrop it was um I was shocked that it happened and I was convinced that because it happened crypto people would wise up and arall those opportunities away and that's like clearly hasn't been true um and like thinking about this new Administration like I don't know it's probably more likely that airdrops um are going to be used as a um like customer acquisition and retention

method because you kind of have the all clear to issue arbitrary not the all clear but close to um or the implied um like all clear on issu arbitrary units of value so the air drops are probably here to stay the market seems to be nowhere near efficient yeah it gets arbed though it gets arbed every time like every time there's a goo it's I don't know if it gets arbed you still get six months yeah yeah for for three months four months it gets arbed and then people are like and and then what happens is ZK syn happens layer zero happens scroll happens and people like air drops are dog [ __ ] again this isn't worth our

time and then you get one more um and they keep trying to fix it as well people like protocols keep going very and interesting ways like tapioca um now they've had some security issues so this isn't me like Shilling tapioca but uh they had like a options based airdrop program um we've seen sanctum I think is the most controversial one where they did um some goofy reputation I hated that one that was probably my least favorite one um it's so easily gameable but I did appreciate that they were trying so like every three to four months like as airdrops go to [ __ ] people also like

protocols try out new stuff it's kind of like a game we like to play but it's fun I want you to expand on it more like how should an airdrop be done I don't know how an airdrop should I think probably linear is the because you don't want you don't want Capital misallocation right like you don't want to spend your tokens unwisely you wanted fee based um linear that's it I think that's the best way to do it like like for a protocol I think the only issue is like people protocols take it as like like when people complain about an airdrop they take it as like oh like we need to like really change like we need to come up with a new Innovative me mechanism to do it no no matter what you give people

are going to complain dude hyper liquid gave people what is the price right now of hype let me see like market cap $25 oh um what dude hype gave people it's number 28 it's eight Bill eight Bill market cap hype gave people what whatever like at launch I don't know what it was at launch but dude that's not right wasn't it like two billion ail Mark no it wouldn't be um because it was 12 xico whatever it was at launch um now if you had held it like it gave people a very very decent chunk of money and people were still like oh but I forgot to sign the terms and conditions that's not [ __ ] Fair they were trying to sue the team so like

no matter how you do an aird drop people are going to get really really upset um I think you want to go like I think in crypto in general like we do a lot of silly stuff um I think the best ones are the ones that aren't too to convoluted like the best systems in all like even tokens simple token you know governance maybe Fe cruel stake for staking that's it fantastic though you don't need to do goofy [ __ ] like oh lock it up over here and then lock it up in this other one and then maybe we'll give you 0.01% AP who [ __ ] cares um same with airdrops options were relatively interesting like from tapioca you don't need to get fancy with it just do it based on linear based

on money spent or active everyone knows people can sible it people will sible stuff either way um also most of the sibles end up being protocol side anyway so it doesn't really matter like they're going to be able to siil it out anyway it's not yeah the uh the bells and whistles the bells and whistles seem to be like um correlated with um like the the more bells and whistles you have for the token like the less the token like the less product you have the most basic take here is that like people who can't figure out the demand side try and fudge with the supply side right it's like okay we can't like make people want to buy our token because of whatever regulatory issues because it's not

attractive like they don't think there's a speculative like they don't think there's a speculative s or because it's being farmed and dumped to death so what they end up doing is oh you need to lock your token in like three different token lockers um and like you said it's just unnecessary convoluted stuff that's like because they can't they can't figure out another way the biggest example for this is probably curve right David maybe have a different take I think it's probably curve is like the most convoluted token even though it's not that bad now um no I think bar Chain's gonna be convoluted bar can as well um we'll see how that one works out I don't like being bearish before a token launches but it'll also be a convoluted one I guess like in your

opinion kind of curious like what is this is like a really open ending question like what is the fair value for an airdrop like how do you see oh how much could it be air dropped or not necessarily how much should be aird dropped but like in my head the goal of an airdrop um or part part of the goal for the air of an airdrop at least for the protocol is to like um pay users accurately to like the metrics they got but pay them exactly like like pay exactly what the value of that is kind of if that makes any sense but like so you just want to make it such that it's like they never spent money what do

you mean by that I'm I'm talking about well if you're trying to match it one by one no you're not trying to match dollar amount right you're just trying to say like let's say they're giving out x% it's just like proor distributed based on like linearly fee spent that's what you're saying yes yeah that's perfect um I think ideally 10 to 15% of your token Supply I dropped a lot of money to be giving away but like the like I think you need to give it to the community anyway so either do a farming program or air drop it um why why angry face Ryan I was just moving a chair behind me um um what about like inducing

fomo the um I could argue I mean I make the argument I know how true it is but I can make the argument that jeto and hype induced enough fomo to bootstrap ecosystems yeah right the airdrop was big enough that it caused people to want to go there because they felt like they were missing out now like there's like this weird tradeoff you have right where it's like you can induce fomo but you also like expense a huge chunk of your Capital that you may not get back so I don't know is inducing fomo worth it so I'm going to say to this I definitely agree with GTO with Sol I wrote about this back in the

day if you were subscribed to blockworks research um but yeah like Geo did so much to to um start activity on Solana that like the thing is the moment you give people money like in my mind crypto like we say how important onchain users are and then so like this I feel like is a logical way to follow it okay onchain users are very important um so we should give onchain users money and opportunity to make money so that they keep coming back to our chain so that we get more activity and so that like people keep using our chain this like logically makes sense people work based on feedback loops and if you can make people money on there then they're going to keep coming back to you know so I

think this is what like happened with why are you shaking your head no you don't think so no I think that's right so and also if you give people money then alts pump on your on your chain as well and that's when the foam was induced you know like when something goes 15x in a well to be fair like hype also went whatever amount in a few days but like when something goes 15 to 20x in like two days that's when people are like okay I need to get the [ __ ] over to Hype or salon and to make some money um I think that's what like e that's part reason why e lost it's I don't I really don't think that like surely the gas like okay it's slower and like gas

is more expensive but it's also like you keep there was so much money to be made on salana there was a whole new generation of applications that could be farmed constantly new launching tokens and then when users are there devs are there as devs come there's more stuff to do I mean I don't need to explain this we've lived this for 2024 202 there's people who've made this particularly fought like the soul versus eing their whole personality so we all know it now but I mean that almost makes it seem like a chain like a chain dies once all the air drops are exhausted right like why but there's like a form where it sticks like something can become Lindy eventually e

will e die ever I don't think so maybe in like 10 years 15 years if it doesn't do anything well I still don't think so like I'm an e bull at hard I like e um but I don't think e will die there's just so much capital on it now that like people are used to it people know how to use it really the whole point of an airdrop should be like getting people to use the chain getting people to download whatever wallet Bridge getting people to download the wallet learn how to use the bridge and the swap like basic swapping stuff as well as like few different protocols and that's it and then like if you can keep some of the users and become Lindy that's the whole goal no like if you think about it what chains will become

Lindy this cycle like Soul definitely didn't die out no no what is he gonna say I wasn't gonna say anything I was in uh I mean it sounds like David was gonna say something actually so I think I think it does imply that um that you need to keep air drop I mean it's DJ Capital right it's looking for like high like asymmetric returns um often in the form of air drops it I it kind of does imply that new teams need to keep launching and pumping out new tokens to attract this this this speed generative Capital when is that going to change I don't know I don't think that eth is

going is like dead that's not like what my point here is um that's what he's saying no but it's more so like typical maybe that's like the natural conclusion no that's not the natural conclusion like it's it's almost like a game of chairs right like you know we keep doing air drops like we have an air drop on like some liquid staking protocol and it's huge and then like people go to like they go to some other like uh some other chain they start farming that liquid staking like token air drop whatever right and then like what happens then either another airdrop for some other protocol in that same ecosystem or people move to the next ecosystem and farm that airdrop

right like no why do you disagree or because you need like so when was the last time sa had an airdrop like a year ago when was jto whatever whatever was no like Jupe whatever they had a bunch of them but like they haven't had a big one for a while and the reason that people stay on it is because you can make money on it I like I don't this is one thing that I disagree with Daniel and he talked [ __ ] about me last time so I'm gonna do it like we can argue about activity however much we want and like oh this is so much faster man fees are so much lower I don't think anybody cares like realist ically people care about making money on a chain and that's why Solana did well and like that's what they have done well and

that's why like they haven't died out after the airdrop so if let's take chain a for an example chain a does 50 Grand air drop per user crazy they make everybody Super Rich that's already a good start because people have money to spend on the Chain but if they if they don't onboard developers if they don't like if they like one thing that toally and stuff did so well is they would retweet every single new token that launched in every single nft that launched which I think is so great because it like like you're giving people attention on your chain you know you're giving developers attention on your chain and that's why it did one so I think long story short um aird drops are just one piece of the puzzle as long as people can like long

stuff on your chain and potentially make money without getting ruined I think that's that's all that matters and obviously low cost yeah low cost matter yeah obviously like I'm just exaggerating it does matter but I think like the comparison between e and soul is significant but if there was an L2 that charge $0.1 per fee versus 10 cents per fees versus like Solana which charges sub 1 cent and you could make more money on base on that chain on that L2 versus soul I don't think it matters do you think it matters it's true for a subset of the market but like consumer and like traditional

Finance scale applications they need that low cost I don't think there's any way around that yeah I guess I think I'm just more like what makes most of the fees on I I do think that you're speaking specifically from like the D gen Capital perspective which like I I do admit is you know on this PO is the majority have the capital in the space but um as far as positioning your ecosystem like you really want to get those costs down no for sure and also like the more you get your cost down the more like people can feel profitable on your chain um which like it's not that big of a difference on base versus on

soul but like E versus Soul like sometimes you'll buy something on E and you bought it when gas was 100 bucks 150 bucks like that's just you can't buy random [ __ ] the way you can on soul on base um so there clearly is a difference and I was just exaggerating to potentially get on Dan smth there like obviously it matters um I just think like making money on a chain and is more important um but obviously that also like comes with activity which comes with low costs and higher fruit but etc etc Picacho over your stes um I was going to say these actually yeah let me find them I tweeted them out the other day well not the other day I guess the other

day um the one is that I I love holding on to backs man I have this idea this general idea that I always say 200k 10K 1K and now 100 um I always say I always I always say no but in my mind in my mind I always say like I'm not gonna sell anything until it's 20K BTC which is horrible to do because I've essentially missed out on rotations just by either holding down like a bag by saying I should keep 40% of this position or 50% of this position um because when BTC all goes to alltime

high I can sell it for much higher and it's just like that you always it's just like I was gonna say that's opportunity cost it's not I'm also like down on some of them at this point because it's like the market moves by so quickly it's sometimes just changes and it hasn't do you guys know Swanson Benson yes but he has a very nice saying he says the whole Space is gonna thousand deck it hasn't happened like we haven't hit that asset selection matters um and narratives matter and like rotations very very clearly matter and that's my biggest mistake is like I hold stuff down a bit that that was pretty much my point

on what me gang plays in Q2 my my I I pretty much went 100% into a position in December or sorry like early Q4 20123 it went up a good amount uh in you know leading into q1 2024 and then I literally like held it I was like well Bitcoin is g go 200k because I have a very similar price Target to you at least for Bitcoin I like my thing this thing is a 10x I did some math I like I don't need to rotate and like worry about and look at charts like I'll be fine and then for the next three quarters I think proceeded to retrace 50 to 60% and I've held almost all of it uh and I didn't I I had some fun Capital to

play with like in Q4 uh but like I literally didn't rotate at all and I agree bag holders that's the big one or I was just G ask am I inane for like personally I've always just looked at the asset kind of and isolation like I try not to view it relative to like yeah like Bitcoin or something like that um maybe that's maybe that works out the majority of the time but in my head it's just like uh there's a decent chance that this will move uh without Bitcoin moving in some in some Direction that's either favorable or not so I just like view everything in isolation with each other most of the time yeah that's the that's the better

way of looking at it one thing I've I've been told is the sell on the way up I can't do that um another thing is I just can't like I know myself I love the coins too much some people don't love the coins as much as me I love them too much I can't do that another thing is another issue is that coins always look the best when they talk and it's just like they always look the worst when they bought them like if you open up a chart and you look at God if you look at the hype chart at 35 you're like wow this can only go up for from here man look at this CH it looks ridiculous and then you know local top so that's another thing is I think I but Darren what you said is right I

think you got to treat it isolated positions and as a single trade as opposed to a cycle long investment um my second mistake is unless Ryan do you have anything to say to that one it depends on it depends on the investor that you want to be there I think there are are a handful um there are many I would say there are many things that you can hold for a long time um and you can be confident as long as you're paying attention to the story that the fundamentals will compound um and produce kind of gains over the long term but if you want to be a Trader in this asset class you have to

be glued to your screen and you know cut your losses quickly so it all it all depends on who you want to be and that and that will determine the different set of assets the different set of assets that you're playing in or portfolio composition yeah um portfolio composition is one that like I realized I kind of messed up I think I made a lot of narrative based plays um core positions when I really shouldn't have um so that's I think that's probably a better solution than being either glued to your screen like taking profit on those into core positions um or just treating them isolated um is also a good way of doing it something I

don't do something I should do in 2025 my second thing is chasing betas betas betas huge huge huge you can never like you always want to do it but you should never do it is like just buy if you're like I missed it dude I think i' I did this with a coin that was like at 80 mil and I was like oh already pumped too much like I can't get it I'm going to buy the 600k derivative instead and then that coin is like a bill um maybe higher so it's like that's like you should never that's my like big thing I always tell myself don't chase betas and then it's like cracked you're like oh but like I gotta do it this one

time this one time could change everything P got you I mean I'm sure everyone on the chat rememb like literally me in December or November like going through periods of you like pretty much just down only I literally lost like 20% of my portfolio just gambling on beta [ __ ] on pump fun I had to delete Phantom I did I did literally I withdrew my I had a decent size my portfolio on Phantom I had to sell it into usdc the I was 99% down on it and just withdraw and moveed to coinbase and then I deleted the Phantom app and I deleted Dex screener and I proceed to do this every other week for the period of like multiple weeks

because I just it was like hitting it was a crack in the 80s like legit I was coping because I was late to $50 million 800 million hundred million doll coins it's like this late right late right and like I proceeded to go into $2 million sub two literally my deck screener filter was like sub2 million filter greater than this trade volume and I would ape size I would literally go for like one of portfolio of like of the entire Supply every single time and I just write it% the quickest way to lose money is to chase those and then the thing with

[ __ ] is also like one thing I will say about fana that they did so so so well by um this like psychological operations like nation state level by saying like oh you need to ape [ __ ] on pump. fun when reality is you could have just just bought whatever it was that 8 like you didn't not need to be in the trenches or whatever you could have just bought something at 50 mil and just rode it up there so many who said that who who who from salana said you need to ape [ __ ] at the one M valuation the military level psychological operations is not the Solana team but it is there are we all know that it's a few professional

operations running and launching these pump. fun [ __ ] like we know this everybody knows this we don't need to fake it and say oh it's all natural um wesy once tried to argue with me that popcat was natural it might have been at launch but like there's an industrial team behind that and the streams are natural yeah that's true some of them um is fcoin natural naturally occurring fart coin we we I I can't talk about that one too much but Z why have a gun head um man no but like there are these Twitter accounts that will

just like post pnl screenshots of like Phantom wallets like these things are all designed to make people go online and ape [ __ ] like to go on pumped off on and then they pray on the young um naive people like effort Capital to like by posting p&l screenshots so they lose 20% of their Phantom wallet you know like that no but I'm being serious this is like nation state level scops running this propaganda machine is insane and it's like it's not toally and stuff but it is like like people launching the tokens are on the Solana side so it's not like the crime chain is a bit still the crime chain and they're doing this

and we're not supposed to talk about it I think but like I think 99% of the reason why Solana did so well it's probably because of that and I think that's fine also like devs realize they can make money on your chain so they are using every tool they can to make money on the chain it's decentralized like no trustless no censorship Finance I think that's what we got to do like Ryan said the biggest most important metric for successive chains are TPS and salana to Crime salana can yeah crime per second CPS CPS um that's crazy you know David the CPS

you should worry about I've told them about you losing 20% of your daughter's grad University fund on F they will be reaching out to you um I think that's it I I did all of my mistakes um which are basically just holding for too long and chasing betas uh anything else we want to say or shall we end it I'll say one more mistake because I I think I only got two technically even though IAL I yapped way too much on this podcast my my biggest like dollar amount mistake was selling a lot of uh you know 25 30% of my coin position the day before Trump won biggest mistake of my trading career probably lost massive amounts of money

by not holding that because that coin literally decided to proceed to like go up like I don't know hundred and 20% or something like that within a week after and like the writing was on the wall I didn't believe the poly Market result that he was like that big of a lead um and silly me that was a really big mistake on my part and I think the market was surprisingly like how misos or unposed it was for a trump win you you said 25% of the position yeah which it was right right it was the right thing from a risk award perspective but from a dollar figure perspective I I you know missed out yeah imagine if you held crazy keep thinking about that one

maybe there's a beta that we can chase Robin Hood put it all on Robin Hood 5x leverage don't do this to you um okay I think we're good to go guys thank you for coming on I appreciate you coming on and bearing your soul thank you thank you picachio and to our listeners if you manag to stay for this whole thing I will say um write down the mistakes that you made or tweet them out or just write them out write them out is probably better keep it personal and keep thinking about him and like really really get stressed out over it um think about all the mistakes you've made how

much money you haven't made how much money you could have made 10 exit and then I'll focus on that for 2025 all right fantastic thanks for coming thanks again to scale for sponsoring today's episode if you weren't already planning to make sure to go check out scales ecosystem explore the gas free ecosystem at scale.png [Music]