PumpFun, Multi-Product DeFi, MegaETH’s Token Sale, and More | Livestream

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A quick shout out to today's sponsor, Katana. We'll hear more from Katana later in today's episode. Nothing said on Xerox Research is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is forformational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Pocachio, Ryan, and our guests may hold positions in the company's funds or projects discussed. >> Welcome, welcome. Good morning. Welcome back to another live Xerox research. >> I've already thought we're not going to do what?

>> The bot. We just waited out there for like five minutes. It's the longest I've ever had to wait. >> No, I always I always like to wait for the music to fade. You know, I like to get my full value out of the feeding the ducks soundtrack. >> I don't know if you should share that because I feel like that's proprietary, right? No, it's free. [laughter] >> It's free. It's free. We're joined by uh Ryan Caswell's Connor and Carlos from the research team today. We got a full research lineup. Um had a friend of the show cancelled last minute and we've got these guys to fill in and have a lovely conversation today. How you guys doing?

>> All good. How about you? >> Ryan's telling me Sultan of Salana. Carlos should be your name. >> I thought he was referring to himself. >> It might have to be like Metadau Maestro or something like that. >> Blockworks. >> Good this morning. The NASDAQ is up a buck 44. Markets are risk on Trump and China nearing a deal. >> You know, I was doing the um the newsletter and I noticed that the two outperforming indices are um DeFi and Revenue. So, hyperlquid, pump, and juke, like tokens that have that make money and then use it to buy it back. And then the second highest performing indices is

like our no revenue index. So, it's like XRP and a stuff that have just gone up a lot. So, it's like a really weird I was writing about it. It felt quite weird to write about that because it's like the market doesn't know what the [ __ ] it wants. It's just like I want to go up and it's like the buybacks go up and then XRP [ __ ] goes up 40%. That's it. >> Yeah, risk on comes in many forms. I feel like maybe to Ryan's market comment like last week we saw like quantum stocks take an absolute nose dive.

Meanwhile, you know, like you said, generally markets are still just ripping up. Um, and that includes like fan favorites like you know your palunteers and all the AI trades etc. So there's always rotations even I mean in crypto I think we're definitely used to the rotations too. So it's not crazy to see XRP get a big run here and there. >> XRP is cool because it's like both a memecoin and like a real business that's acquiring a bunch of stuff. You know, you can you might you might be you might put the XRP in the revenue index one day.

>> So, what are they buying? What are they acquiring? >> They bought a prime brokerage. They bought a stable coin issuer. >> Oh, yeah. >> Yeah. They're not They're not [ __ ] around. They're not messing around. >> They have a lot of money. >> Yeah. >> Have a lot of money. >> D, what's on the agenda today? I assume we're going to start off with equity burps. Or do we want to do Salana hatred first? Which one do we want? >> I want to take a public I want to take our soul hatred a little public.

>> What What's the Salana? We're just covering thoughts on soul. Is that >> Yeah, >> I wasn't I wasn't prepped on Salana hatred. So lead it in for me. Um, I I got a we got a response on Friday and it was that like apparently I hate Solana was like a YouTube comment that we received was that Pocachio constantly hates on soul. Um, which made me think I guess I have been hating on Soul for some time now which made me kind of reassess. I don't hold any soul anymore. Well, I hold very little soul just like in case. Um, so I can show it on my what? So I can show it on my disclosures if someone's like, "Oh,

>> within the same sentence, I don't hold any soul. I have a little just in case." >> I have a little just in case, but it's not meaningful enough that I can be like [snorts] I've I've put all my soul exposure into Pump, realizing that I don't really care about Soul. I care more about the memecoin stuff. And pump is pump makes I think pump will continue to be the winner or at least a dominant player within memecoins and within that I think it's more um reflexive probably because it has a massive buyback. Do you guys see they are incorporating padre revenues into buybacks as well. Um curious if you guys share how much was

making >> I think what they last I checked they the tweet was about like how it's been two days and they've done $200,000 in buybacks that I think that assumes it's like $100,000 but you also have to realize that this was post announcement and I imagine in the first two days a lot of people use the Padre app to buy Padre. So I would say it's probably like maybe 50 60k. But like this is also I assume Pump bought it so that they can flesh it out and then make it a good product.

>> Yeah. I mean look at how much Axiom makes, right? Like I assume they want to do something similar with Patrick. maybe not the same amount of traction, but like if they can get like some users from Axiom, um they could like realistically generate 100K plus per day, which is not insignificant. I mean, they've been making like $1 million in revenue like for the past few weeks. Like that would be like a 10% increase in in revenue in the near term.

Yeah, I would say the the reason for vert verticalizing is pretty obvious. If you look at the yearon-year percentage change in total like memecoin supply chain revenues as of the end of September, it was up 4x. I think pump revenues year-over-year September through September were up like 1 or 2x. So, a bunch of folks entered the meme coin supply chain and got fees. And the big obvious ones are the Telegram trading bots. there. So, there's just like a lot of value leaking. [snorts] >> Um, you know, the Telegram trading bots think that the value is leaking leaking to Pump. Pump thinks that the value is leaking to the Telegram trading bots.

Makes sense to verticalize. There's just a lot that's being left on the table if you're not vertical. Yeah, I think this acquisition was a pretty obvious move from Pomp. um you're not going to go out and buy Axiom and arguably you wouldn't go and buy one of the prior incumbent teams that used to be dominant, you know, like a Photon or Blex because I think they would just ask for and probably command still too much of a premium even though their heyday is gone. Um and you can observe that and like Padre is a like relatively newer. It's kind of like their newer product is in more in line with this Axiom camp um of trying to

roll out this like full terminal style trading app for memes. Um and their volumes have been growing since beginning of the year. Meanwhile, if you look at Bullex, um Photon, some of the other prior like you know last year 2024 peak meme cycle trading bots, they've just been declining since then. Um, this is something we see over and over again, like these these teams kind of continuously recycle as like a new kind of top-of-the-line trading app, you know, comes into the fray and then everyone copies them and, you know, there's like creative destruction. So, I think it makes sense that they that they picked up a small player, pretty unrecognized the token. I guess there's some controversy on the token a little bit as well. Um, it personally, I had an

idea maybe to be long Padre a couple months ago and decided against it for a few reasons. um that looks like that was the correct choice because uh you didn't you didn't really get rewarded via this acquisition. They are apparently going to snapshot and pay out Padre holders with pump tokens sort of like a whatever the value of those were um prior to the announcement of the acquisition. But there wasn't really a good trade in there if you wanted to be long Padre. It just is, you know, going into the pump value stack. But Pump gets this acquisition like for cheap, right? You're not having to pay a premium to token holders. So it's kind of a win for them. What would have been the Padre thesis? Like what what were you going for there?

>> Axiom beta, lack of an Axium token, building out a similar product, um potential acquisition by a pump or similar player. Um I think all those things turned out to be true. But I the risks and I think the downsides were they weren't actually executing on the value acral mechanism at the time. like there was not there was not buybacks or like referral fees actually kicking into addresses at the time. Um, and the speed of ship shipping progress by the team left me a little questionable as to whether they would ever be in contention with something like Axiom for real. So, uh, ultimately decided against taking that trade, but those are some of the

the core kind of catalyst ideas. >> Yeah. I mean, a bunch of people bought like just on the back of Danny's thesis he just fledged out. And imagine just being right on everything and then the token goes to zero. Like this is like a bunch of people were saying that this is an advertisement for Metadow like ownership coins, right? Um, I think like it does point out to the fact that some coins do deserve a discount or trade at a discount just because like you do have that uncertainty of what if they just rock my token holder rights, right?

>> The this also makes like pump the only relevant um trading platform token now, right? Like there's none other. I mean, I guess we used to have Uni bot, but Pump's the only one that actually has now a liquid token for a trading bot application. Um, I don't know how much money they'll spend. I Ryan, maybe you can illuminate me a little bit on this. I don't really understand how like if if if as a as a company you acquire a smaller product and you want to flesh it out, how much resource do you do you put into it? I mean, we know that trading applications can do really, really well, but is it just like should they just be giving off kickbacks and pump tokens or

something like that? Cuz like in my mind, there's a million things you can do. You can pump clearly knows how to incentivize people. So, they can do some like fee stream alla creator fees, etc. Or they can do kickbacks the way that a team has historically done. Um, but I just don't know how much time you want to spend spend on that. Um, what do you think? [sighs] >> I think I mean do you do you how important do you think the kickbacks are to Axiom?

>> See, that's the thing. I don't think it's that important. I think most of the Axiom volume came from farming a potential token. I always think >> you think it's very important there. I mean, well, you think that's some incentive for using it. I feel like Axiom is just a joy to use. I think it just has the most advanced features. Like when I click the button, the order goes through and you make it and then you get the token. It's something that I think is challenged by a lot of these bots. It has like very cool advanced analytics. Um I'm sure it matter. I don't know. It's um if I were to guess, it's one of the few crypto projects that I don't think is solely driven by some

promise of a token or some points program. Like look at the market share that it took in that time. Just took the whole thing uh over a few month period. Um but I don't know, you tell me. I don't know because I felt the same way about um all of the other Telegram bots and then like there'll be a better axiom, right? This is not really saying anything. Yeah, I guess it is much much future to use. So >> maybe there'll be a better Axiom. I guess I'm torn on pump and I'll give you guys my layown here, but but I agree with Ryan on this point around Axiom.

like they're just shipping the best product for like these trench traders and historical meme trading bots like have never shipped like this. You know, they were kind of more classically, hey, hey, we're doing points. Hey, the token's coming at some point and then they release no updates, no details on token. The product doesn't change for six months. They're just printing, you know, >> they make a bunch of money and it's theirs. >> They're printing 100 million a month. They don't have to drop a token. they just cash out and when it, you know, inevitably when that leads to them getting displaced, it's like it doesn't matter. They made nine figures um operating this product. Axiom is the only one to date where we've seen them like I mean this team consistently drops

like you know seven, eight, nine feature updates per week into this product, which maybe they're small things here and there, but um I just think in this category haven't really seen that level of just like consistent speed of development. And so here's where I'm torn on Pump is I see this acquisition of Padre as a good thing for their platform. I'm disappointed one that it took so long to do. I think they should have bought a trading app acquired, you know, acquired whatever 6 months ago, 10 months ago. I mean, we've been talking about as soon as they did the raise, we were talking about a trading bot trading app was like a clear acquisition target for Pump. I'm I'm surprised it took this long. I'm just disappointed by how slow they're being on this. I think they

should be devoting more resources um to your question, Boach. I think they're kind of under underfocused on this um because like Ryan said, there's a ton of value on the table for them um to have a a meaningful and substantial product here that like Axiom and others are just getting to um kind of print on in the meantime. So, the the concern I would have is that if they're not going to ship fast enough, I think Axiom is just going to continue to dominate in this corner of the market. Because I guess the other thing I'll say is having used and looked up both Padre and Axium like they're not it's not it's not the same at the same level of Axium.

So they do need to put resources into this thing to get them up to speed uh to where Axium is at today. Not to mention I mean I think Axiom has >> it's got hyperl per integrated. They just added BNB because BNB memes have been going crazy. So um they need to catch up in a few respects. Well, I mean to be fair, they did have other priorities like when they were conducting their ICO sale, bomb.com was taking a lot of market share. I guess it was more of a priority to regain market share than to have a trading bot. Like if no one was trading pom fun coins at the time and then they also like had a big effort on the live streaming front.

Uh so I guess it's just a matter of prioritizing. I don't think they're they're going slow. Like I would take the under on that. >> Seems the clear like I hate to think about the end state but it seems like the the trend is toward owning a lot of the features on the front end. Seems like there's no other way to do it. Like actually the ideal scenario for pump is that the revenue moves up to stack so that the launchpad like is is not as relevant. [snorts] So like it doesn't matter where the flow goes from the token creators go from Salana or to BNB or to Tron. Like you

just kind of have it all. >> Yeah, I think I would agree with that take. Like I guess you'd have you'd have to question like let's say this this BSC meme dominance because they they've continued to take meaningful flow away from Salana memes. I wish I had a chart up but you can see like a decline in pump token launches to four meme launches in the past month or two. And there I mean it's similar as to when we saw Bon Fun. Um you're seeing like a replacement of creations from one platform to the other. Basically, people are chasing. Um, if that continues, like at what point does pump actually have to consider going multi-chain potentially?

I I think people talked about like pump chain. There's probably more value in them just being on other venues. >> Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree there. >> Yeah. I mean, they've been diversifying the revenues. like previously 90 plus% of the revenues came just from the bonding curve after they introduced dynamic fees uh that shifted towards like 80% bonding curve 20% bump swap AMM I think with Padra they are now diversifying further like creating new revenue streams so like I assume like I don't know like 10% will come from like their trading bot and then the other distributed like between the AMM and the

bonding curve. And so I agree with Brian, they just like verticalizing like and creating more revenue streams and capturing a greater part of the part of the stack. I mean, it really is the this is one thing I think they do better on the Solana side as opposed to anywhere else is like buying up competitors, bringing it all under like one product. Um I saw Jupiter's also like this isn't buying up but like Jupiter's launching um prediction markets on their front end right and that's I mean it feels like that's all that Jupiter has been focused on is

bringing every single tradable market within um their front end and they own some of the back end like Meteor is them technically I don't know how the token equity split is going to work um they have their per product not a great Herbs product, but they own it. Um, it's in their front end, they run the back end. Um, and they I mean they made so much money off this propm stuff, right? Because you can't interact directly with prop amm unless you're really good at smart contracts or really good at Salana. Carlos, correct me if I'm wrong, but like typically it's just like it's a contract that needs to be hosted. Um, and it works best on aggregators. So, they've made a lot lot of money, a lot

of good decisions. And this isn't something that I feel like on the Ethereum side, they've done particularly well this cycle. Um, not a lot of like I'm going to make Ryan very happy. Ryan, do you know that thing where it's like tech is just bundling? Bundling products. Have you heard of this before? >> Bundling's important. Yeah. >> Yeah. So, on Salana, we're doing a lot of bundling now. And then we'll see. Maybe we'll do some bundling next. But like I feel like on Salana they're doing a lot of this bundling at this point. Um hoping to see more and more of that on the EVM side as well going forward. I feel like on base we'll have some of that. Um Aerum's starting to do it a bit. They don't have an aggregator but they have a launchpad now um as well as a trading product obviously.

>> Yeah, that was one of our 2025 thesis [clears throat] was um multi-product DeFi and just it makes sense to bundle financial services. They really shouldn't. It's It's uh painful for the user when it's not all in one place with financial services. It's probably the place where the bundle works best cuz money is so funible. It can move so quickly. So, you kind of have to to survive. And yeah, no, it started on Salana. You can kind of see it creeping into ETH land, but not at you know, you know, they obviously have different things that they're optimizing for. So, I don't think you've had it seen it spread as fast.

>> Yeah. Yeah, I I would imagine that 26 for ETH looks very different than it did uh for 25 with respect to the bundle. >> Well, and it's not just multi-product DeFi, it's also multi-product chains now. that's like becoming a core idea where >> yeah, >> fees fees from the chain, you know, everyone's gotten this idea into their head that like there's they're just not going to be worth what they're worth today long term um on fees if we're going to continue to drive those down even if you know user transactions or demand drives up. So, you know, whether it's stable coin, in-housing, the stable coin, in-housing, the trading itself, hyperlquid in-housing lending or other DeFi products, that seems to be like the direction

more broadly like, and maybe at some point here you kind of blur the line between like a chain and an app or a just a chain and a product. >> Oh, totally. And like maybe, you know, maybe the framing Yeah. the the framing of DeFi is perhaps too narrow, but perhaps the actual definition of DeFi is too too narrow. Sorry. Yes. Too narrow in and of itself. Like all these things are actually like financial services. So you you should like it makes sense to trade your meme coins where you trade your hyperlquid perks, >> right?

Maybe, but I don't know. That's Bach. >> [clears throat] >> I don't know. I [sighs and gasps] I don't think you need to The one thing here is that I don't think you need Okay. With the bundling, unbundling, putting everything under the same front end, I think it makes sense to do as like what you mentioned where it's like everything is funible. I think one part of crypto that's also great is that everything is very composable. So, you can like get really silly with stuff um and like instantly get really silly with stuff. I don't know what the process would look like for me to, for example, if I have um IB and I'm trying to borrow on a position and then put that somewhere else where I can earn yield. I don't even know if that would be possible. And if it is possible, I

imagine it's like a multi-week thing, right, for me to be able to do that. Whereas in crypto, it's like it's like a 10-minute thing and nine of those minutes is you clicking through approvals. So like that's one thing. Um, on the other hand, with bringing everything inhouse, I've been thinking about it. I think like the next crypto thing is probably just apps like that don't actually do a lot of things. I think Hyperlid was kind of early to this with the builder codes thing. Um, and with like HIP Well, it's true. Don't smile. You know, like it's true. I think it that's like whatever. I think whatever >> I think the next big thing in crypto is apps that don't do a lot of things.

Yeah, but it's like but do you understand what I'm trying to say? It's like it's just like a very pretty front end. We've had one app that's been relatively good at this, which is in Silicon Terminal. Um, but it's just it allows you to trade across like eight sees and that's its whole use. But I would like to see something a bit more um compatible across DeFi and able to do a bunch of things all in one. I think that's like the next big app. I think like we have defi.app as well. It's not very popular, but that's a thing you can use.

>> Yeah. I mean, you're just describing a wallet. No, like I mean I imagine Phantom or something. >> This is what I wanted. This this >> problem the problem is the embedded browser. >> Okay. >> Like with wallets like it's such a painful experience to use any wallet because it's just like embedded browser, >> right? Like even like WeChat doesn't do the embedded browser. They have just like app icons and it feels a lot better. >> Danny, can you pull up the Rabby tweet? This is what I wanted to Do you know what I'm talking about? I can pull it up. I don't I'm asking you.

[snorts] >> So, oh, there we go. So, Rabbi's integrating a right or at least it seems like they want to integrate a and they've already integrated Hyperlid. And my like long-term thesis was that essentially wallet is the best way to do this because everybody already has it downloaded. Um, and it's just like it seems like a logical step. I don't think that ever I'm not very convinced that the current wallets will be able to pull this off. Even Phantom, which is a good product objectively, has not been able to pull off a good HIP builder code, hyperlquid builder code integration. It's laggy. It doesn't give

you the fills that you want, and it just feels awkward. Um, so I I agree with you, I guess, Ryan, is that like the inapp browser doesn't make it feel great, especially on the mobile app. Um, and it's also just not optimized to be that way. like everybody in crypto still uses desktop for most most of the time. I think I think I only know one person who only uses mobile and it's effort capital which says a lot for multiple aspects. So [snorts] I I think we just haven't gotten there yet where like we need mobile apps. Um I think whoever is manages to solve it and slaps a token on it makes a lot of money. Um so if you are doing that

please let me do your seed round. >> I I think this is a solvable problem though like using Phantom as the example. I mean they have a lot of the pieces of the inapp like mobile browser pretty well figured out like you know whitelisted links for popular apps. I think just then they just needed to go like two three more steps to where you know you have like portfolio trackers that that do and understand that like your address has positions in DeFi and XYZ other thing like they you know they need one more tab in the wallet that's like your DeFi stuff and then it's like oh you've got loans in a just like tap that and you're in you know you're looking at the the markets for a like

immediately rather than you having to go through the browser like like you're suggesting Ryan. I I think there's fixes for it. They just, you know, they need to do a little more UX UI wizardry to to like totally get there. But I think that's I think that's solvable. I find myself personally like going more and more to the to mobile than desktop just because things have gotten easy enough like good enough to where I don't need to be stuck at the computer all the time, which I think is is a good thing. Now, you still have to like, you know, I'm not going to like natively swap in Phantom and pay them 085% on every trade I take. I'll go I'll go pull up an app and do it, but um still the experience

like actually enables me to do this versus I think before mobile wallets were like way way way off like a couple years ago. >> I think >> No, sorry. I was just going to say like I think beyond wallets the other player that's positioned really well to do this are centralized exchanges because they already have like users trading on them. So imagine like with modular architectures like I don't know like morpho oiler Camino they can just embed bolts into their centralized exchange where you can like deposit and earn yield on your USDC directly from the centralized exchange. I think they had a thing with plasma and Plasma Bets and BMP.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. So I I think like Beyond Wallet centralized exchanges can do really well especially because you don't have to worry like for new users you don't have to worry also about like self costly. >> Bass is actually doing a pretty good job at this. I I didn't want to have to say it but it feels like no one else is going to say it. Bass is doing a great job at this. I mean they integrated a drum. They integrated morpho. Who else? Clanker, Zora, the everything app, the based app. They're doing a pretty good job. Um, what I wanted to say was, well, actually, Danny, let's just ignore me. Do your

thing. >> Good. Okay, we can uh we can jump on the next topic. Before we do, let me do a quick shout out to today's sponsor, Katana. This episode is sponsored by Katana. Katana is an L2 built for DeFi and is pioneering the ecosystem category of productive TVL believing that chains should be graded on how efficiently assets are put to work in DeFi rather than just total value locked. From now until the end of November, users at Bridge Katana can earn boosted yield from CAT incentive campaigns, added vault bridge yield, and other chain revenue. Follow the link at today's show notes to get started. All right. Um, yeah, I guess we can we can call it on the multi-product conversation. Um, do we want to talk mega? I guess that's that's kind of big news

today. Their sale went live this morning. Instantly oversubscribed. Um I could pull up the tweet. It was oversubscribed like within 5 minutes supposedly. Um I looked at the contract maybe an hour ago and there was already 160 million or so allocated. So quite a bit of demand um to get into this thing. >> 300 million right now. >> It's 300 mil now. Okay. Yeah. >> Jesus Christ. >> So it's what 6x overs subscribed. That's like a 50 mil max allocation at a1 billion. Well $999 million. They don't want to be a unicorn. $999 million FTV.

>> I want to ask Ryan Connor. Are you going to do this? >> How much time do I have? >> You have 48 hours. >> You have two more days. >> Oh yeah, why not? Yeah. This I'll give my my I'll give my takeway here. >> I'll just give a quick takeaway. I feel like this feels pretty similar to the past few sales. Like reminds me of Plasma, reminds me of Pump. Um feels like they're giving away an opportunity [clears throat] where if you have access and you have the funds and you can allocate to this thing, um pretty seemingly a almost certain positive immediate term upside on this sale. Uh longer term, who knows? Will it trade up

or down, you know, in the midterm? Probably. But it's seems pretty much set up like the other past big sales we've seen where uh ICO to public is probably almost guaranteed short-term upside. >> Yeah. >> Go ahead. >> Who's going to go first? Ryan, you go. >> [snorts] >> I think it's um it's obviously like the valuation's a little higher than I would personally like. Um that's like I think pretty obvious.

However, you know, if when you look at all the new chains that are coming or that have come to market, you know, they I think they've lacked differentiation. Uh Meg Eith is, you know, one of the few exceptions. They're getting more interesting than the new ones that you're starting to hear about like Fogo. Um that's like the very obvious thing is like okay see what you can do with chain architectures that haven't been done before um that may be attractive to a new type of trader or a new type of way to provision liquidity. I think proximity markets are pretty interesting. I think push like juicing the EVM to the max is pretty interesting and um the community building thing I think you know I don't

put too much stake in it but given how early stage it is they've done a really good job in getting people enthusiastic and like best branding in crypto hands down without question I need some mega eth merch if anyone's listening on the team >> we can ask them they were on the pot on Why didn't you tell me more? [snorts] >> I agree with you. I um what I wanted to say was that there's this like in 21 it was very much about trying to get into uh Discords and trying to get in with the right people and figure out a way to like get allocation into these things that seemed like it would be maybe free money. Um, and now they're kind of

allowing you to buy in at like, but back then it was very like DGEN, even though I don't like that word. Um, not very serious stuff. But now they're like allowing you to buy in at this middle stage where it's like you're not getting into the private rounds or like the super low valuation seed. Um, but you also don't have to pay. Um, you also don't have to deal with a lockup or like a free year lockup for vesting. Um, but you're also not getting like super expensive. You have to buy in the public market, which is what I think we did a lot in 2022, 2023. Stark launched at 30 bill, I think. Please, if anybody wants me like 20 up to 30 or so. Yeah, >> that's ridiculous. It's like

and that was the only like if you are not an venture capitalist the only way for you to get stark exposure during that first month was you have to buy it at 20 to30 billion valuation versus now this is like Danny very thoughtfully noted it's like the fourth time you can buy something at a relatively decent multiple I wouldn't say it's like a you can't put a multiple on mega right now. But even pump, I don't know what the multiple was. I'm sure Ryan got her know somehow, but like it wasn't super cheap.

Four bill isn't like, holy [ __ ] I need to put my whole >> like 20x. >> Yeah, but it was like it was a good deal. And you could tell it was a good deal because you were like, this is it. Everyone was like, yeah, this you probably want to do this. And we're getting a lot of this like you probably want to do this. And not a lot of like, holy [ __ ] this is free money the way that we had in 21. um markets changed a >> I'm just going to say the point to like not a lot of like this is free money. I I think with this sale design which has become like more and more common is that it's impossible without artificially just selecting a lower valuation and then being more restrictive in in how much capital's out like it's just like

the IPO game but you know rewrapped up for crypto markets. you know, the lower you set the valuation and like how much capital you let in, you could make it more and more free money, but it's like locked up to fewer participants and they get, you know, you get the silly pop on day one and then it then it bleeds out. Yeah, I guess this kind of sucks for I mean it's great that they let you invest like they let anyone invest, but it kind of sucks for smaller players because if it's like 30x over subscribe like you're like realistically speaking it's going to be insignificant even if the token does well. Um so like well capitalized players just have the upper hand here. I would love it if they if like for a race

like this like just to punish uh some people they actually take the entire like the entire race like if they commit 300 mil expecting them to just take five mil like they take the 300 million [laughter] >> they they did that in plasma. Um >> but I think this time around they have a they have a max cap which is max which is 186k the speed of light. It doesn't apply here, but like for some of the, for instance, for some of the Metadau races, like people know they're not going to take the full amount. So, they just commit like, I don't know, $20 million expecting to just have like a $1 million location. Imagine if the team just says, "You know what? We'll we'll

take the money. Thank you." Uh, like that would be super funny. I think that will like just kind of discourage this kind of behavior. >> Yeah, there's like a size war problem. Uh >> well, I don't know if it's it's the smartest thing to do if you have a lot of money. It's to max fill and because you know you're going to get diluted anyway. >> Yeah. But it's a it's a failure for the platforms, right? If that dissuades investors from from allocating because they know they're going to get one dollar or one penny on their dollar, >> um maybe you need to redesign the mechanism somehow.

>> I don't know. I've seen Carlos I saw that there's been some suggestions around like you know maybe a small fee >> uh relative to how much you allocate into a sale for example so that you know it's not lucrative to just like shove 100 million into a ICO that's looking for 300k. >> I like the legion model of how um you can use onchain history to vet participants. >> Like I don't I don't think that the open ICO model is useful. like you don't want a bunch of add-ons who want to sell your coin immediately. Like you don't just want randoms on your cap table. Uh you want some curation mechanism. And I think the way Legion does it is pretty cool. Like there are people with really

high DeFi scores that have like 70 followers on X, but they're like moving money in like onchain on ETH. And you know, perhaps you want to filter for that type of sophistication. I I don't think just like blindly letting folks contribute as much money as possible is like the way to go. >> Yeah, to be fair, they're doing this in >> Yeah, they're doing this here. You can connect like your wallets and they can look at your onchain history. You can also connect like Discord, Twitter, GitHub.

>> Yeah. >> What platform is it on? >> It's on Sonar by Echo by Coinbase. Now >> by Coinbase. The issue here is I rotate my wallets. So, I never have great onchain history. And you're supposed to like you should be rotating your wallets. It's good. >> So, I guess like >> And also, do you want to like do you really want to expose like all your wallets? >> I don't know. >> Well, you just expose the team, right? >> Yeah. I also have a fluff in one wallet.

So, no, you just expose it to the team. Um, I have a fluff, so I put that one down. I really like Twitter when they are like, "Oh, this guy has a nice Twitter." Because somehow I've been on like these Yapper leaderboards for quite some times, even though I stopped tweeting. So, I really like it when they do that because it means I get extra allocation. Makes me very happy. I'm hoping they do it for this one as well. Maybe another slightly related um stable recently did a raise like stable coin chain kind of similar idea in concept to like a plasma um but there's some details going

to kick him off. Hey guys, just slightly related to this as you know there was the recent Danny I screen that's crazy. >> Uh yeah, I'm back. Basically big mass massive wallets linked together shoving a bunch of funds into this stable uh vault before it was actually publicly announced. So, um, kind of like a layer on top of the idea of, you know, just shoving a bunch of capital in to ensure an allocation, but shoving a bunch of capital in before anyone else even knows about it, um, is kind of going a layer deeper there.

Um, not not ideal, but I guess, you know, maybe to Ryan's point, if if the team knows that they want, you know, a few individuals on the cap table, but they're doing a public sale, this is kind of the way to go about it uh, to achieve both ends. Uh I don't even know why. What's the purpose of doing a public sale in this manner though? If um if you're going to privately kind of have individuals uh you know shove in all the allocation before anyone else knows about it, it's kind of defeating the purpose. No. >> Yeah, this is a tough one for me because I like I did plasma and then I like the plasma team. So take everything I say with a grain of salt because I am biased. But this to me is like

I mean this is clearly the team just trying to make more and more money which is fine. It's just like don't position it as a way. The thing that was like really funny about this was that you can do this and a lot of teams do do this where they give themselves free money but typically it's done through an airdrop because you can't really track airdrop wallets that well like and you can you always have like some form of um you can disregard what people say right oh like this wallet got $10 million in airdrops I don't know it's probably some whale in like whatever China you can say that but like here it's very clear these are all connected and you're depositing them all one and you don't have to do this like stable. You're designing your own tokconomics such that you can

decide, hey, like let's not deposit into the vault, but we'll do like an oversized airdrop campaign to like our own wallets. That's a very easy way to get out of this entire situation. But instead, these guys decided, hey, we're just going to deposit $500 million 15 minutes before. The total raise is 750. So, you're taking 66% 67%. 15 minutes before. Makes no sense. It's a stupid way to approach this entire thing. Like if you're going to cheat, cheat properly. Don't don't like halfass cheat. What's funny is half an hour later, they tweeted about it. They quote tweeted this in not this tweet, but like their own tweet where it filled up and they were like, "This was the most successful stable coin chain deposit program that's been run." I was like,

"Yeah, of course, buddy. [snorts and laughter] You know, it closed in one minute because you finished it 15 minutes before there was nothing left." I don't know. this like this thing was super funny to me and I think this is one of the teams that um I don't know what the price action will be. I I have no idea. I haven't looked at their tokconomics. I haven't looked at their plans. Um I just I almost feel a bit bad for some of the teams that have aligned with them. Like a aligned with plasma and then morpho is aligning with stable. But I don't think morpho is making that decision on purpose. They're just like we need a stable coin chain.

like it's going to bring them a lot of deposits. So, they have to align with Stable. But, I don't know if the morph team wants to even be associated with Stable at this point. It's like it's like a weird brand to be associated with. >> It's a very long ramp calling people stupid. So, if you guys disagree, please tell me. >> No, I agree. I I just thought it was silly entirely. Like, what what's the purpose in allocating to your own sale? You could just, you know, you're designing the tokconomics. you can give yourself more tokens if you want to. You don't have to move 500 mil on chain to like do this, you know, in a fake manner. Um, you could downsize the sale and then it raises much. It just it just doesn't make sense on a lot of levels, I

think. So, maybe they're trying to give it the air of like demand and legitimacy, but like when you do it that obviously it's a bit >> 500's a lot. 500's a lot. I would imagine that there's some syndication. um it's not the actual team but perhaps a lot of wealthy people that they know all in a bucket. >> Yeah. The CCP. >> And then even in that vein, it's like, you know, if you've selected wealthy individuals to invest again, my question would be why like why even do the sale?

Just >> Yeah. >> Just sell it all out to them and then go, you know, TG later. It there's no need. It doesn't make any sense. >> What project is this? So this is stable >> stable. That's the plasma competitor, right? [snorts] >> Another stable coin chain. >> Everyone just every I mean the the sentiment here seems to seems to be very very negative even before this. >> Yeah, >> everyone. >> What do we um what do we think of tempo? Yeah, plasma. I think they're going to fix. I'm hoping I'm messaging River daily and I'm asking him for updates. So I'm on the case at this point. I'll make [laughter] sure it gets sorted out.

Guys, what do you guys think of tempo? like the Matt Huang paradigm thing that went live with like 800 traditional financial corporations like McKenzie is gonna be on chain. Is this like Hideera 2.0 or are we getting like an actually really good chain that you're never going to be able to buy in public markets while they like bloat the private market valuation from 0 to 500 bill in front of your eyes and make you watch. I think there are a lot of people who say that credible neutrality really matters and it matters more than anything else. And um I think within the next 12 months we're going to find out how much it actually matters. Like you know no one's happy that they're

beholden to Visa and Mastercard. Um so why would they want to be beholden to Stripe and some consortium of private entities? Um I think that that's I think that that's an interesting case to make. I also think at the same time that you know for performance purposes and just like to go where the TAM is you like for performance purposes you want something centralized which I think crypto repeatedly like the centralized players repeatedly win in crypto. So I think you know for the first time we're actually going to see whether or not that matters to institutions. I don't I don't know how to bet on it. I think you want to place bets on both the centralized guys and the uh

decentralized guys, but I think over the next 12 months, we're going to find out if it actually matters. >> Now, when you mean centralized guys, do you mean the decentralized guys? Do you mean actual decentralization the way that Ethereum is, or do you mean like Salana? >> Well, yeah. So, I think the Salana messaging, I don't know if the messaging has pivoted, but they certainly are pounding the table on like we are the credibly neutral blockchain for institutions now that um they're starting to see some market share being lost to Hyperlid and potentially other competitors. Um well, like I don't know.

I don't know. Does that matter? It's I think it's an empirical thing. I don't think you could take a first principal stand on it. So, I could see the argument for credible neutrality. Like, you want to move money. Like, one of the cool things about crypto is you can move money around and no one can stop you. At the same time, you also want to go where the TAM is and go where their where the performance is, where you can move money easily. So, perhaps that's a tempo. Perhaps it's a hyperl. I don't know. >> Yeah. Let me share with you guys one of my more poignant tweets.

No, I need to quality is really not great. Can you see it? >> Yeah. >> Oh, I got to zoom in. [snorts] I'm really There we go. >> Is this a meme template or is this >> I created it. Do you like it? I made it. I made it on my own. I remembered the chart. I remembered the image from somewhere. This is very good. But >> yeah, I mean I agree with you. That's >> bring liquid launch. >> All right, I'll do it.

>> What were you saying, Doc? >> I mean, this is I I find it funny that Salana is all going through this as well, Ryan. It's like for three years they fought against being called centralized scams. Um and then as soon as something that has less validators launched um they're like wow we are actually decentralized. And I mean it makes sense from like a like a marketing and narrative point of view right like if you want to argue that I would still say so is probably the most performant L1 in terms of like decentralization as well. Like it's not realistic for we'll see what Monad does. We'll see what ETH

does in a in a few years with all the sharding in place and going live. Um, but right now in terms of live L1s and I don't I don't think that's necessarily a good thing um from my point of view or a bad thing. I just I can see why you would want to position one way or the other. Like I mean if you want pure performance and trading hyperlquid if you want credible neutrality Solana I I'll we'll see which one works out better in the long run but >> it's a way >> I agree with you like it feels like people were discussing this exa exact same thing like but with Sena and Ethereum like the the meme is actually there's there's a lot of truth to it

right like Ethereum we're calling Sena centralized And Solana was saying like all that matters is performance. Um I I feel the same thing applies here like with Hyperlid, right? Like all that matters is who has the best product at the end of the day. People are willing to use it. It really doesn't matter if you're more decentralized or not. >> I agree. I I do wonder and I don't know maybe this is a hot take but I I feel like at least within this industry today it's like kind of this [clears throat] SCOP maxi idea that like I don't know people play into the meme you know Bitcoin digital gold um and all that gets people convinced to just buy and

hold it forever. um if for ETH it's like the most credibly neutral decentralized blockchain in the world and that they should just like hold the ETH token for you know into eternity and it'll go up into an infinite valuation. Um I feel like some of that's kind of at play. It's just like how much do you sigh up the market into believing that that's true versus like what are the revenues? What's the product? How much are they iterating? But I think we'll see this play out over and over again just because of the like cultiness maxess.

>> I mean the centralization doesn't even like happen only at the infrastructure layer, right? Like there's other layers of this of centralization that you cannot just bypass like think about stable coins for instance. Like even if you're using like Ethereum as a credibly neutral settlement layer like USDC and USDT are centralized, right? like there's no other way around it. So like there's always a spectrum and you cannot just like go full decentralization like you will always have to have some layers of trust in the in the supply chain I guess >> I agree people are willing to make trade-offs on different things. Um,

before we close things out here, I want to do a quick shout out one more time to our sponsor for today's show, Katana. Katana is an L2 built for DeFi and is pioneering the ecosystem category of productive TVL. In just two months, Katana surpassed 500 million at TVL with over 90% of that TVL being productive and ecosystem apps like Sushi and Morpho. From now until the end of November, users that bridge the Katana can earn boosted yield from cat incentive campaigns, added vault, bridge yield, and other chain revenue. Follow the link in today's show notes to get started. Thanks so much for tuning in today, guys. We appreciate y'all and we will see you this Friday. Uh Carlos, Ryan, Picacio. Thanks.

>> I don't think we'll see Carlos and Ryan this Friday. >> No, I was saying thank you for joining today. >> They may or may not be on the show alongside us. >> My pleasure. Great to be here. >> Wait, let me put this on before we leave. >> Always glad to have you, Cash Flows, Connor. >> [laughter] >> They saw it too. About Big Stock in the audience saw it. >> Okay. Very good. >> Super fan. >> Top two panels, bottom two panels. >> Get big commemorative NFT. >> Yeah, we will.

>> Yeah. When are you doing the NFT collection box? >> Uh, let's not talk about this live stream, right? Like people are going to expect stuff. >> Come on. Everything has a content coin now. >> All right, we'll call it there. All right. >> Thanks so much, guys. >> Peace. >> We'll see you next time. Peace.