Rollup TV: Arc, Circle, Dango Exchange and LEGION

29 Oct 2025 · 1:24:20

A Rollup TV episode from The Rollup, hosted by Andy and Robbie Klages, working through Arc, Circle, Dango Exchange, and LEGION. Running close to an hour and a half, the conversation covers these protocols and firms alongside the broader state of digital assets, DeFi, and crypto's overlap with traditional finance.

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Bang. There we go. Little bit of technical difficulties is not going to stop us on a beautiful Tuesday afternoon with so much news coming down the pipeline. We're going to get confirmed. We've got so much action to bring you guys today. I'm super super stoked and uh man, what a guest lineup. Absolutely killer week. Arc testnet circle. We're gonna bring you Rachel who is VP at ARC. We're gonna bring her to you live. We've also got uh who do we have from from Dango? I believe we've got Larry from Left Curve Capital. And then we're going to finish off with Fabriio from Legion.

Uh wow. Very very stoked. Let's uh let's get going, guys. Let's get going. I think we've gonna we're gonna share something for you guys. Real special. Uh very very excited to share it with you guys. It's uh it's our friends over at Securitize who have recently announced that they decided to go public via a spa acquisition vehicle uh in partnership with Caner Fitzgerald. If you guys are unfamiliar with Caner Fitzgerald, they are the previous firm where Howard Lutnik, the new uh commerce secretary, uh is now working with President Trump

and the administration. He came out of Caner Fitzgerald and now his son is running this firm and they have done some amazing things in crypto and in digital assets to make them more mainstream and bring digital assets to Wall Street. They have partnered with Tether. They have partnered with Securitize. They've partnered with the biggest names in both Wall Street Finance as well as digital asset finance in order to bring these two worlds together and ultimately modernize Wall Street. I think this is one of the most important things that is happening to our industry. Whether you're working in finance or you're working in tech, cancer fits is doing some great work. Uh they are obviously very tightly uh integrated with uh people at the highest level. And so we're going to get uh

securityize on the show, but we're also first we're going to review their video. Let's get it up on the show. Let's get control in the live room. >> Tokenization is a freight train. It can't be stopped. Eventually, it'll eat the whole global financial system. >> Tokenization is a $400 trillion opportunity. I do believe we're just at the beginning

of the tokenization of all assets. >> Tokenization is a freight train. It can't be stopped. Eventually, it'll eat the whole global financial system. >> Tokenization is a $400 trillion opportunity. >> Incredible video. I think uh if you really look into what this is doing uh this is almost an inevitable outcome as a result of the the Wall Street bets movement in 2020. Um you know there's there's beyond that is surging has a 14x there's secularization moments and categories of fervor in the market. This is a multiffactorial situation. We've got so many factors as

to why this is taking place. You could credit financial nihilism. You could credit running economies hot as well as uh federal governments and central banks uh not really caring that inflation is unanchored. Um and so I think if you're looking at what we've got here when it comes to the modernizing Wall Street movement, I expect this to really accelerate in the coming months and years. Tokenization and blockchain is a fundamental change to the way in which we conduct finance.

Uh and this is generally what we're calling the Wall Street modernization movement. Uh which is to modernize Wall Street and generally as Securize puts it tokenize the world. Um they've gone public as a means of getting closer to Wall Street. Obviously they have cryptonative ties and this is going to be a great opportunity to sort of build a bridge between these two worlds as they collide. I imagine that Securitize will be at the center of these two worlds. So, shout out to our guys over at Securitize. Um, huge congrats to them. We've had Carlos on the show multiple times. I believe we're going to have Carlos on the show again uh sometime very soon, maybe this week. And we're going to hear about how this deal went down and what this means for both

Wall Street as well as what it means for the tokenization movement. Uh, big big things. >> We've got a great show for you guys today. Okay, we're going to speedun through uh the first segment of it, but then we've got Rachel uh coming over from Circle and Arc. Uh we're going to get her uh up on the show very very soon. Uh they recently announced their test net. Uh they had a lot of day one partners. Uh, and I think that was really what kind of took people by surprise was the the scale and status of partners that Circle went and launched with day

one. I think was particularly exciting. And we're going to hear from Rachel about how this all went down, what it means to now have something live uh in public and what it means to be building with this suite of partners because it is a very very impressive uh docket when you look at some of the names that are again both in the Wall Street world as well as in the digital asset world and cryptonative. Uh it it is particularly exciting to bring these two worlds together. I can see Rachel backstage. I think she's itching to get up. We already pushed her back a few minutes. Let's let's bring her up on stage and we can uh we can hear all about uh circles arc test net. Rachel, welcome to the show.

>> Hey, thanks for having me, Robbie. >> Absolutely. Thanks for coming on. Uh it's your first time on the show. It's an absolute pleasure to host you and uh it's quite a special day. Circle stable chains are live. We're in testnet and uh feels like beginning of a new chapter. >> It is. Yeah, it's the beginning of the economic operating system for the internet. We're super super stoked to talk about our public test net, how it came together, the partners, the use cases, and the journey so far. >> I love it. I love it. I think you put it really well. This is the operating system for internet finance, and now we're in this digital age. Um, before you came on, I was talking about uh uh securitized, tokenize the world. It's it

generally feels like we're in this modernize Wall Street moment, this movement where we're trying to modernize Wall Street and bring it closer to the tech world to generally make these things more efficient. I'd love to hear from you, you know, your your story when it comes to Circle, how you were able to to play an instrumental role in bringing Arc to life. Maybe you could just start from the beginning, right? like what what is it what is it like when you guys first had this idea of building a stable chain and then walk us through what the early steps were to ultimately stand this thing up? >> Yeah, for sure. Um, so hey everyone, my name is Rachel. I'm a fintech and crypto builder. I've been in the space a long time. I like to call myself sometimes the crypto abuela. Uh, I'm originally from Venezuela, which is what brought me

to crypto in the first place and macro and e economics. you know, I lived through these experiences that, uh, you all see in the papers, right? Economic collapse, uh, stable coins and bitcoin. So, that's where I started my career. Um, I started in Wall Street trading EFX. Uh, then I went to start a startup, uh, was called Trigger and let you trade with, uh, rules and finance and we did, you know, crypto triggers. Um, and my co-founder Adrian is actually our, uh, engineering lead for ARC. So I'll get to that in in a moment, but you know that started led me to Circle. Um, so I met Jeremy, you know, early on in 2017. So it's been eight years. Um, and so you

know, Trigger was acquired by Circle and I've been at Circle building USDC for eight years. And, you know, saw firsthand how we, you know, went from Bitcoin to stable coins, scaling stable coins. We're now, you know, over 300 billion in circulation. And in that journey of scaling USDC to dozens and dozens of blockchains, you know, we kept on encountering the same problems over and over again with partners and institutions. Um, and we kept a list, you know, I'm on the product team, so we kept a list of all right, how do we solve these problems to being these partners and these builders on chain?

Um, and so, you know, it's been many years in the making where we knew that we always wanted to launch our own blockchain. Um, and you know, now for the last few years, we're we're building ARC. And it's really a continuation of Circle's vision and mission of enabling the frictionless exchange of value, but this time it's it's purpose-built. It's purpose-built for the internet financial system. It's purpose-built for stable coins, tokenization. You just talked about tokenization and commerce. Um, and so, you know, ARC is here. ARC is here now. Um and it's a layer one blockchain uh EVM compatible. Uh it's you know aimed to unite the real world economic

activity to really bring that onchain innovation with the existing like real world econom uh economic activity. Um and it's really designed to meet like the needs of developers of businesses really building onchain. Uh so we're focused on building net new valley onchain. >> Love it. I mean, you guys have had such an integral part of the the onchain world, the digital asset world rely on Circle and USDC for such a long time that you you've become entrenched and instrumental in the space. Uh for for a while there there was a kind of a running joke that Ethereum was a layer 2 on Circle uh which I found pretty funny.

And now you've decided to to kind of go in this direction where like you said it's an L1. It is EVM compatible. So you've got, you know, some uh some compatibility and composability with the rest of the ecosystem, but it is an L1. Could you describe what went into the decision and the product choice of choosing to build an L1 versus something like an L2? >> For sure. And we debated it a lot on the team. Um so you know let me let me we just thought that the requirements of the traditional financial systems and the partners and the services weren't really being met with the existing you know blockchain systems and in particular with L2s. Um so here are the problems that we wanted to solve.

Unpredictable gas fees uh cryptovatile tokens unclear accounting rules every time when you talk to a partner these things come up. These are clear pain points where you know ETH and soul like they have to hold it on the balance sheet. they don't know how to transact with it. Um and you know it causes paper points just to get it like in their treasury operations let alone to then expose it to their customers like they have to start doing all these abstraction SDKs uh settlement times was unclear and this is you know the point about L1 or L2 where it's for every blockchain it's very difficult to tell you know to crisply say like when a block is finalized when a transaction is clear defined and reversible and so we really wanted to zero in on this clear

definition of settlement finality. Um, and it with layer twos, it's really challenging to do that, right? You have like the provers, the sequencers, the things. And we tried to explaining that to like bank CFOs and you could see like their brain is just like whoa. So, you know, a clear crisp definition of uh settlement finality was important. And then number three is you know proof of concepts are fine and public blockchains are great for many things but once you start to scale like B2B flows, corporate treasury, sensitive trading applications, payroll um they need private systems like today's financial worlds are not interoperable but they're private and

the existing privacy solutions today are usually add-on. Mhm. >> Uh they're either like, you know, a protocol or like a private ERC20. And for L2s, like there's no escaping that like the state is still public on Ethereum. So for those, you know, for those three like pay points and reasons, we decided to build ARC as a layer 1, purpose-built for stable coins, purpose-built for the economic operating system, and it has these three amazing properties. stable coins as native gas uh starts with USDC. We're going to expand to many more stable coins, dollar and non-dollar supported. Stable coins are money and so companies can now pay with like digital money uh without holding anything else on the balance

sheet. It has instant settlement finality. So all blocks and you can see it on the block explorer. It's pretty cool. They like finalize in less than one second. So it's really snappy, clear, irreversible. And then you know not live on test set but on the road map will be often compliant privacy. Um and so that is you know built from the ground up uh to be you know shielded balances and transactions of you know configurable privacy. So private smart contracts and these builders at these companies and these institutions can say okay well I need to be compliant with my auditors or my regulators. um and you know they'll need tools and systems and a programmable layer that's built for

that. So that's you know that's those are the core features that really we think are going to unlock adoption more broadly uh for more stable coins and tokenized assets to come on chain. I I love the focusing around privacy and I'm not sure if you've seen Zcash recently, but there's a broader wave of people that are really becoming interested in privacy and I think it's important as stable coins become more and more uh popular and entrenched and just widely adopted.

>> Uh we're going to see a fuzzy line between stable coins and CBDC's. And I know Europe is is already kind of going in the CBDC direction and people are going to want to take privacy into their own hands. And like you said, it's opt-in. You're not going to force people into it, but you're going to give people the option uh if they choose to enact that that privacy. >> Um I I also want to just double double click on some of the conversations that you're having with banks, Wall Street companies, these sorts of things. Like you said, there you can see the fear in their eyes when you know you're talking to them about single sequencers and rotating decentraliz. you're talking them all of this lingo that you know make is making their head spin. Were they at a certain did they try to

understand did they put a head of digital assets or head of tokenization kind of nominate someone to really like just fully immerse themselves in this or were they like when you start talking that language they go no that's not us that's not our world we'll let you focus on that trust you to make those decisions but we're not going to go into that world where we aren't as familiar >> it's it's really evolved and so like I've had these conversations for many years at circle you know, I would say maybe three years ago, it's like the digital asset innovation team, the the think hub, and you start there and they're really trying to bring the proof of concept to life and educating, but since the start of the year, like the demand is there, and the the buyer

persona who is like really advocating for stable coins and public blockchains has changed. So now we are speaking to you know the head of payments, the head of corporate treasury, >> um the head of policy, many of the new fintexs have now head of stable coins. And so the conversation's like immediately shifted because we have the buyin of the decision makers and the business owners at the table and they really want to understand because you know their customers are asking for it. their boards are demanding a stablecoin strategy, an AI strategy and you know they come to circle to to have these conversations to offer the platform and now we have ARC that we can you know

better explain how it all work at the programmable blockchain layer. >> Was was there an inflection point where you were talking to these people and like you said you know the they maybe weren't the head of payments or head of policy or these department heads at these major institutions. Was there an inflection point where they that changed now you started to find yourselves in the rooms with the department heads able to really move and shake and talk to the decision makers? >> Yeah, I think this summer with genius definitely was the inflection inflection point. You know that when they know that it's law a lot of it's d-risked >> um and they see you know big big day brands and AI companies and fintech companies and public companies. Um, you know, I think our our public IPO this

summer also helped. Um, so it's just, you know, a wave of of major change in public markets legislation, but also the technology like the tech technologies solid, >> you know, like you have advancements in privacy, you have advancements at the wallet infrastructure, you have advancements just in liquidity and stable coins. So, it's those three things this year are the puzzle pieces for us to really, you know, take advantage of the moment and our test couldn't really couldn't really come at a more perfect time.

>> Yeah, I I completely agree. What I think it's a really relevant comment that we actually just got here in the chat. Uh who's this? They say Ryan Boland says, "What is happening is not once in a lifetime. It only happens one time. Hope everyone is paying attention. Appreciate you guys for launching ARC." Um I I I think it's great. I think this is continuing the evolution and the proliferation of blockchain technology ultimately becoming deeper and deeper into the financial system until it subsumes the financial system altogether and and this is what we know and expect when we when we operate with money in the modern digital age. Um I'm curious how you're thinking about the go to market for ARC. Um I think as as you know a lot of the USDC is currently on

Ethereum as well as Ethereum L2s. Some of it's on Salana but there's billions and billions on uh these other L1s. Will you see is there going to be a push to try to bring the USDC over to ARC? If so, what does that look like? If not, why not? >> Yeah. So this goes to the use cases that we're really interested like what what is day one of Bayet? what is the arc no pun intended of of of arc in itself and we're really interested in this concept of a global liquidity hub right and so like USDC and other stables are highly liquid you know the proliferated across buddy blockchains and leveraging arc as a stable coin liquidity hub >> where it you know leverages the fast

finality so all transactions finalized in less than one second it has the deep liquidity of USDC of the on and off ramps first and foremost like we you know have a breath of on and off ramps across third party distributors but also our first party gibs and Brazil and Mexico uh Asia US Europe and the interop that we have which is with CCTP and gateway that already powers around 90% of you know the multi-chain transfers we want to leverage ARC as the liquidity hub for any developer any business any user in any institution to go to and from ARC seamlessly, right? Like we acknowledge like not all applications are going to live on ARC. Um not all assets are going

to live on ARC, but what we can do is to leverage it as a liquidity hub. So, you know, you can have like your stables sitting on ARC and we'll be able to go from one second, one cent, one click to and from any USDC supported uh blockchain. uh do stable swaps do FX which I want to talk about the partners that we have bringing on board with the asset issuers and that's sort of like a go to market value prop that we think is really missing in the space is you know L1's tend to be silos and ARC is not that arc is truly meant to like enable the money to flow across blockchains >> I I remember Jeremy came on our show and he spoke to my co-host Andy I was

unfortunately not on that one but I remember a really uh strong takeaway way that they both had from the conversation which was they want USDC to be everywhere. They want it to be like like Netflix you can watch on your phone, you can watch on your laptop, you can watch on your TV, you can watch all these places and USDC should be the same. It should be ubiquitous and it makes sense as because you've already gotten distribution through all of these L1s. You're going to have ARC be the hub, but you're going to have your tentacles into into all these places. That that makes a lot of sense. I also want to talk about the partners because all of these other all these partners will help in some way shape or form with distribution or go to market or operations all these sorts of things and you guys have amazing

partners day one partners that are starting to roll out on test net and eventually mainet. Um, just to set the scene a little bit more before we get into the partners, I had a uh Tony from uh Ubiquiti uh come on the show uh last week and he described stable coins as these little bundles of joy that you pass around because and banks love them because they're able to do FX when they're able when they go in and out of of these different stable coins. We were kind of discussing the stable coin fragmentation that you know can happen as as everyone seems to you know now have a stable coin. And so when you're bringing banks on, it makes a ton of sense now to to kind of think about these as they're clearing in and out of USDC as well as other stable coins. So

I'd love to get into the into the banking relationships and the partners that you have coming on day one. Maybe you can just rattle off some of the highlights. Uh we don't want to leave anyone out, but I I'd love to to hear from you as a product person. what is your perspective on on the real fundamental partners that you think are going to reshape the way that we're thinking about finance onchain and off? >> Yeah, so super excited like we're seeing such an incredibly diverse group of of partners come together over the last few months and from global GET banks to payment companies to your DeFi marquee builders, stable coin issuers and capital markets participants. You know these companies when I look at them just

face value they manage trillions of assets they have huge money flows power billions of transactions and you know it's to I think you said like it's the uniqueness of circle that can bring this new emerging ecosystem together to start exploring testn net um and you know power the the ecosystem economy. So we have we're announcing over a 100 plus partners who are exploring testn net with us and you know they range from you know capital markets. So Apollo is a great example. They want to bring private credit funds that have access to, you know, potentially better liquidity because we talked about the liquidity hub and we have these like

private credit assets and TMMFs that can be composable assets for trading and then you bring them with D5 protocols. You have more access expanded to a different investor set. Uh you have Bank of New York, Melon, uh New York Stock Exchange, State Street, uh Black Rockck, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sach, Standard Charter, uh and that's you know like in the banks and assets category. When you talk about the global fintexs and the big enterprises and like the web twos, you know, Brex, Ramp, Cloudare, Mastercard and Visa, right? we th those hard networks are going to start settling between their merchant banks

and stable coins, you know, exploring doing it on ARC. Um, we talked about the asset issuers. So, you know, none of this works if you have no assets. And so, the first assets that we're we're focused on are stable coins. And this is dollar stable coins. So, other dollar stable coins, but also non-dollar stable coins. So there's really been a lack of you know uh other you know USDC like highquality fiat stable coins in different jurisdictions and we're announcing you know seven or eight today Australian dollar Brazilian rayi Japanese yen uh Mexican peso Philippine peso Canada and so once you have those you know high quality asset issuers then

you know the ecosystem starts to emerge so they can be embedded into the developer ecosystem, they can start doing, you know, swaps with curve or new new per exchanges and then those are the hedging primitives that then the payment companies can use. So, you know, we're just super excited to be marrying the best of DeFi, the best of crypto, the edges of onchain innovation with these Fortune 500 big enterprises that are there at the door ready to experiment. >> It's incredible. you I you guys have been such a pillar of the industry for so long. It it must feel really good to see it come to fruition.

>> Yeah. I mean as a product builder like there's nothing like a launch day, right? Like uh you know this is a test net. It's it's exciting. You know it's there'll be many versions of test nets, different features. Uh but I'm just really excited to get builders on this. Um quick plug, you know, go to arc.network, network, check out the docs, start deploying your contracts. It's available for testing. Give us feedback on X, on Discord, wherever, wherever your crypto finds you. >> I love it. As as a builder, there's nothing more that you want to to see the thing that you built get adopted and and see it get used and start to get that feedback and build that feedback loop.

That's as a builder, that's that's exactly what you want. Um, I quick question on the on the geographical stable coin launches. um you know the and I I saw I think it was your head of legal head of policy out in DC uh I believe it was DC with the Fed payments conference that happened recently the stable coin super cycle as as we're calling it is really integral to this administration and and uh maintaining and and encouraging and and increasing dollar homogyny around the world. So when you kind of balance these two things, how do you think about the the right balance to strike between US dollar denominated stable coins and and

some of these more regional stable coins that aren't in the US dollar? How do you how do you kind of square how do you how do you balance these two worlds? >> Yeah, I mean global like stable coins are now what is it 300 billion and dollars is 95 96%. Um, if I was a betting woman, like I don't think that's the ratio that's going to be the same over the next 10 years. Like the dollar, you know, it still dominates in major parts of the world, but there's billions of people that use other currencies day in and day out. And, you know, we're we're going to start seeing a shift of like global, you know, market cap for stable coins um go

away from dollar denominated to also local dollar denominated, right? And that's you know for payments for liquidity for FX like that's going to happen over some curve. Um and you know but we believe al obviously dollars will still dominate because that's what what businesses and people want and you know we we've exported dollars really well um to the to the rest of the world. Um but you know FX in and of itself is a huge market. I mentioned >> I was a trader at JP Morgan for five years. you know, we traded$8 trillion dollars a day of FX every day, right?

And that's that's the like off-chain demand with the liquidity and the systems that we have today. Um, it's all quoted against the dollar, but also against euros and Aussie dollar and it's because these businesses have needs like they have cash. It's sitting everywhere in the world. Sometimes they want to speculate. Um, and moving that onchain is going to present a real value prop to those users. um a real value prop to the you know global policy makers um in these in these institutions as well. So uh I'm super excited about FX onchain. I think also when you marry things like perpetuals and um prediction markets like those are new instruments that FX traders don't have. Um, and so, you

know, you'll we'll bring the assets, we'll bring the partners, obviously bring our policy makers along the way to really make programmable FX thrive on ARC. >> I think you said programmable FX and FX in general is an 8 trillion industry per day. >> Yeah. Traded every day. >> That's in that is incredible scale. And I think it for the for capital efficiency reasons it it is inevitable that this will come onchain and it it sounds like you're building ARC in such a way that it could become the home of FX.

>> I hope so. [clears throat] We believe it. You know I mean FX markets already trade 247. So the value prop of onchain is the settlement value, right? Because you still have to wait two days to settle between the banks and then that's you know risk introduced into the system. If you have stables settling against each other 247 on the internet, you know, you're taking away credit risk from the system. You're taking away risk from the system. Money should flow more freely. And what was missing was a a blockchain that has privacy, stable gas, fast finality, but also the issuers who are ready at the table to deploy and the ecosystem that we talked about, the banks, the asset, the the trading firms, the fintexs to all make it come

together. So that's, you know, you'll see a lot of us talking about that over the next few months and the use case so it can really come alive on ARC. >> Love it. Um, is this a one-way street? Like once these [snorts] firms, a lot of the day one partners that you mentioned, once they start operating onchain and facilitating onchain finance, they'll never go off. >> That's the hope. I don't think they'll go off. I mean, they'll they'll probably like go off until, you know, until you and I can start paying in stables and actually using it. Um, you know, they'll it's a slow migration. Uh, I think, you know, they'll they'll definitely come on. They'll stay. It's more safe. It's a

better system. Uh, but it's going to take a long time uh for it to like completely exit the system. >> Yeah, makes sense. Um, a lot of the the biggest things, you know, they're they're they move at a glacial pace because glaciers are big. This is a big a big movement. So, uh, it takes time to steer the ship. >> Uh, Rachel, I know I know we're we're coming short on time. Last question I have for you. Um, Circle is predominantly known for USDC. Now, you guys are rolling out ARC and you're rolling out some of these more regional back stable coins. Um, what's the future of USDC look like? Uh, how will it change? How will the the demographic of it change, the dynamic of how it's used?

Um what what what can you say about what comes next for USDC given the the excitement and the uh the hype around ARC? >> Yeah, I mean I think you'll you'll see us continue to do the things that have worked for USDC very well, right? So we met we talked about it early on the show. My mental model is USDC is like Coca-Cola, right? Like our goal, our job is to make it so that anywhere in the world you can reach. Oh, and you have USDC there just like Coca-Cola. I personally like Diet Coke. Um, but same same thing. Um, so you know, more more settlement banks, more on and off ramps all over the world in the places where,

you know, it's hardest to reach, more blockchains. So, USDC, you know, will always be there. um interoperable, more distributors. Um so working with these great companies to integrate USDC so that they can then expose it on behalf of their customers. Um I'm excited to see how USDC as a native gas in a blockchain really comes to like right and so you know I call it the silent unlock right when with stable coins or gas you sort of just dismiss it and say like oh so what? But >> it's to me it's kind of like a chat GPT moment where it just fades in the background and then users are like ah everything just works and it fades in the background. Um and so you know

you'll start to see like a lot of use cases with USDC with privacy with credit you know expanding credit on onchain um and just you know doing what we do best which is making you know dollars liquid on the internet. >> Yeah. Incredible. Rachel, thanks so much for joining. Really really appreciate it. We've already seen the power of USDC. We know what it can do as a collateral mechanism for PERBs, for other elements of onchain finance. Uh it really feels like this is this is kind of the beginning of a new era uh as USDC continues to proliferate and ARC comes online. Congrats again on the test net.

>> Thank you so much. Thanks for having us. Go check out ARC arc.network. >> Absolutely. We'll see you next time. Thanks Rachel. >> Bye. Love it. All right. Uh Rachel is good to go. Uh we are going to keep things moving along. Uh I mean it was it was just tremendous. I think uh we've had a couple of uh uh people from ARC and Circle on the show, but I really appreciate having Rachel on as a product person to talk through um you know some of the things that are happening on ARC as they're run rolling out the go to market. talk about some of the story was like as they were setting up the idea and uh as they really started to um as

they really started to to bring this idea to life. I think I think it was really really cool to hear that story. All right, next up we've got Larry. We're going to switch gears here. Larry super cryptonative. Uh he is not uh working at uh Circle or another regulated agency. He is uh at Left Curve Capital. He's at Dango. We're going to be talking about Dango. Uh we're going to keep this one pretty loose, off the cuff, just keep it pretty chill, pretty conversational. Our fund uh is an adviser to Dango. We might just might just keep this as a uh as a brainstorming session and and kind of get some updates on what's going on over at Dango and uh and trying to think about what what's going to come next as

they gear up for mainet. So, I believe Larry is in the back stage at the moment. Let's bring him up on stage now. Can get going. Larry, welcome. >> Hey, Robbie. Nice to be here. >> Absolutely. Appreciate you coming on uh and uh getting set up. Man, it's been it's been quite a ride. Um I mean, you guys have started building. You've been building for a few months now. Mainet is sort of on the horizon. It's not quite on the around the corner yet, but it's on the horizon. And uh it's tumultuous uh market cycles. I mean, trials and tribulations. There's there's twists and turns all all around. Um, man, maybe you could just just I I think

it's your first time on the show. Let's let's introduce Larry to the people. Who is Larry? >> Yeah. So, I'm a founder at this project called Larry. [laughter] >> I'm the founder of this project called Dango. >> You're the founder of Larry? >> Yeah. Well, to to be honest, uh I was pulled onto this live like 10 minutes ago. We we didn't plan to to do this. So So it was like a I don't know. I'm just going off script improvising everything. Yeah. So yeah, so Dango is a upcoming layer one blockchain with a D5 focus. So our team is building the first few applications on the chain that's going to be a spot

exchange, a per exchange, and a prediction markets. And yeah, so our goal is uh well the the go the goal is to we want to bring back bring back the old vibes of the 2020 DeFi summer. >> Uh if you're new here in the crypto space that was in my opinion the best uh the best six months to to one year period in the in the entire crypto history. Uh the amount of innovation was insane and it was fun and uh everybody made a lot of money.

>> I think you're absolutely correct. >> Hopefully. >> I I I think uh thinking back to that time frame, look, they might have lost it six months later, but during that during that window, the DeFi summer window, there was nothing better. Larry, before we get into Dango, we get into why you guys are building a integrated per uh and prediction market. Um you know, you speak about DeFi summer. I was there. A lot of our listeners and our audience was there. How did you get into crypto? When did you get into crypto and how did you get into it and then ultimately where did you find yourself in DeFi summer? >> Yeah. So I well going goes back to the very very beginning. I was a gold duck.

So that that's someone who collects a lot of physical gold. I was a big fan of Peter Schiff and uh apparently he I got a lot of exposure to Bitcoin news. Well hateful news from from Mr. Schiff, but I'm pretty open openminded. start looking into that and and that's how I initially got into crypto. Um yeah, so that's around 2020. Uh I was studying natural science, pharmaceutical sciences to be to be uh to be precise in college and I decided to teach teach myself coding. Uh I did a few open source projects and uh through that I I got in touch with uh what eventually became my first employer that would be deli

digital. So Deli is a is a VC. It's a research firm, but it also has a division called labs. So labs basically instead of investing in in other people's projects, we build stuff our own. So we had initially focused on Terra and we were tremendously successful on Terara. We built the biggest AMM there. We built the biggest lending protocol. We got like more than $2 billion of TVL at the very peak. Uh but obviously uh that got destroyed in that fateful event of uh May the 8th, 2022. I still remember that date. Uh yeah, so we moved on to other chains. Uh

and but unfortunately our app didn't um catch as much traction as we did, right? Uh so yeah so about exactly two years ago in the October of 2023 I decided to quit quit the job and uh became become a founder and do the things I always wanted to do and that is to to build what is now known as Dango. >> Welcome to the club brother. Congrats on beginning and embarking on your entrepreneurial journey. That was in 2023. We're going to get caught up on that. before before g getting deeper into Dango, I I'd love to to hear what what were you doing during DeFi summer, right? Because those were like you said

the good old days. What what were some of the things? What were you farming? What what were you getting into? >> Yeah. So So if you Okay, so the in my memory uh the first yield farm the first like the first time when the term yield farm was invented was synthetics. Yeah. Yeah, >> I think it began in like May of 20 2020, but my first farm was compound. >> So, uh that was in June. >> Uh that was fun. I I basically just deposited my entire net worth and uh and on their UI you can see your your like comp token reward going up in real time.

Yeah, >> that that was an experience you you you never have in in traditional finance like like immediate feedback like immediate positive feedback like that you're making gains. So that that was addicting. Um yeah, I I was uh I was early on um Finance. I was early on Sushi Swap. >> Uh I I remember Sushi Swap doing the vampire attack on uni. Yeah. That uh >> Yeah. And uh there was yen finance. And so during that period there were a lot of projects naming after food and one of them is yam. So yam is like a sweet potato.

>> Yam was the best man. I love y. [laughter] >> Yeah. Like uh they had a they had an issue and they need everybody to vote in in a governance proposal to to solve it to save the protocol in in 24 hours. And there was like the entire like movement on on Twitter to to make this happen. So, >> it was pretty fun. >> Um, >> yeah. >> Yeah, those were those were bangers back then, man. I I think you're right. I mean, generally that time frame, you also had uh I there was also like yield farming chickens on Avac.

>> I remember the chickens, they would lay eggs and then you could harvest your eggs and you could get feed. All of this was yield farming. All of this was new primitives. You could do it with NFTTS, you could do it with compound, you could do it with yams, you could do it with all these things. You're right. It was extremely fun and it felt like everyone was making money because we were doing these yield farms with new emissions. And if you remember that's when we kind of came to their understanding of tokconomics. We were like, "Oh, wait. We can't just emit new tokens because this is inflation, right?" And you get back to you being a gold bug. You were hoarding all this gold like Peter Schiff told you to. But that was an inflation hedge. And then we came on chain and we

started inflating the tokens and and yield farming. uh but now we find ourselves in 2025 almost 2026 and a lot of these same primitives with smart contracts and yield farming when it's done with LPS and it's done with real revenue it's done with fees there's actual there's business models here that are very sustainable not just pool two emission tokens so that brings us to modern day 2025 October 28th today you guys are building Dango and this is >> this is a very competitive space.

Perpetuals or several purpose exchanges, poly uh excuse me, prediction markets or several prediction markets. So you guys are building in a competitive space, but you're doing it in a very unique way. So could you describe why you decided to build Dango, how you're building it, how how are you building it, and why did you decide to build it this way? >> Yeah, so let let me get back to the motivation. I briefly touched on this which is we want to bring back the the old vibe of DeFi summer, >> right?

>> Um so so we said there uh there was once a very good time the D5 summer but it ended in 2022. It started from with the terror crash and and then the FTX crash and the result of those was uh a lot of the innovative project communities got killed and uh regulations started cracking down and people are legally not able to make financial innovations anymore. Uh so you see like there were not a lot of new application things in the application space being created but rather most of the things were happening in the infrastructure space and in the infrastructure space

projects cannot let let their tokens be value approving. So they they basically just use make useless governance tokens >> right. Um yeah so so what we see during the period following those two crashes was I think the fun factor was gone the innovations were gone and uh it basically became a like short-term pump pom and dump game with sponsor of useless governance tokens.

Um so so that was the situation I I had uh when I quit the job in the end of 2023. >> Mhm. >> And fast forward to today I feel the situation is not better. Regulations are relaxing and people are actually able to create financial applications and value acroving tokens. And the pinnacle of that is of course uh about one year ago the the launch of hype token. >> Um yeah so well that that was the background and the motivation is I I want to bring back the same feeling the same the same fun factor the same innovation

we had in 2020. uh and uh if you look at today's perexis you just open any of the applications interfaces I mean they all look the same right like like a dark background you have chart you have 20 buttons all the numbers they all look like the same um so at Dango we are doing we are doing everything completely opposite of that I mean our test net is running right now you can just give it a try at dangle exchange. And on the first side, you can see we take a very different approach to user experience. We want a very light-hearted, a very playful

experience. Um, we we want our incentive program to be very gified and fun. Um, yeah. I mean, putting everything together, I would say the the core of what we do is we want to to bring back fun and uh Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Uh, and that is embodied in uh in the brand over at Dango. Um, it's very cool. Left curve as well. You know, we go back and forth, right curve, left curve. Try not to find ourselves in the middle too much. Um, you mentioned hype is sort of an inspiration for some of this new this new era of coins. Was there any other any other projects that you felt, you

know, okay, these guys, they're doing it the right way? Hype was a good example, but any other ones that were part of the uh part of the inspiration to to do things a little bit differently? >> Uh, well, to be honest, I don't feel anybody comes close to to Hype at this point. I mean hype has set a very high bar. I mean nowadays if if you like you drop 10% of air air drop to users and people everybody's going to say oh oh 10% hype drops 30%.

>> Um yeah so so we are we are taking so I [laughter] I highly admire everything Hyperl does. They're basically doing everything right until this point. They have pretty much not not making any mistake. So we're going going going to model ourself after their success story. >> Um we are going to allocate a very significant portion to to community by that I mean 50 to 60% and by community >> yeah well hyperlid has I think they they air drop 30% and and they have a similar quantity for season 2 season 3. Yeah. So so we are we are going to do something similar. And when I say community, I'm

not saying like ecosystem fund, >> right? Uh like like a lot of these other projects, token allocation, you have to look into it, right? When when it says community, you look into it. Oh, well, it's actually still the foundation holding it. Supposedly, they will use it for community's cost, but I mean, in many cases, they they give that to market makers. >> Market makers will do whatever shady things they do. So, yeah. Um yeah, we're not doing that. Uh a principle I I live by is transparency and and when I say community, I mean tokens actually in the hand of people who use our application.

Uh and that's it. As as simple as that. >> Yep. I I think you know generally teams will realize this this this is a full circle moment right because back in the in the era that you're talking about DeFi summer right >> you remember year >> oh yeah yeah so speaking of year um in the very initial post I I announced Dango in November last year I I I there's something I said I said our token supply is going to be 30k 30 30,000 tokens. So that's very different from uh every other project which goes for like high high supply low low price per token strategy.

I I I I thought about going the complete opposite we we go a total supply of 30k people didn't get it. I think there are a lot of new new people in this space that don't know the reference. Uh where does the 30k come from? Well that's that's year finance. uh year finance was a was the very first fair launch project. The solo founder Andre Cron literally didn't give himself a single token. Every token went to the community and the total amount of that was 30k. So it was a tribute to to Y. So So yeah, I'm a big fan of Y.

Man, we've had Andre on the on the show and it was just so mind-boggling to think this guy was he was behind year. He was behind really the 33 uh solidly fork all of this the VE tokconomics now he's got flying tulip. This guy is such a such an intense thinker and and has such a way of putting these things into code that It was incredible just to hear the way in which he he thinks about tokconomics and he thinks about, you know, going into uh the game theory and the math behind some of these financial primitives. And you're right, 30,000

tokens. It was the first fair launch coin. What we saw was that we saw this this change right from the original ICOs and then every once in a while back then you would get kind of this high flow FTV, but it wasn't it wasn't really that full that era quite yet. We had fair launch coins which took off. Year started it and then we had the whole high FDV low float which is basically the same thing as you know having 10 billion dollar token supply because you try to make your token as cheap as possible and then run it up to a dollar and it's predatory on retail. And now you're coming it back. You're coming back and you're saying low token supply.

High FTV is great. Everyone wants high FTV but you want it to be a runner. And so you could end up with a token that's five, 10, $100,000, you know, in in price as a result of doing this. >> What what other what other tokconomics lessons have you learned? Like you said, you're taking from hype, you're taking from year. How else do you think you're going to evolve the tokconomics of of Dango? And and generally, how do you think you're going to utilize this token within the protocol so that it's not just a useless governance token like you talked about earlier? Yeah. So, I I want to keep it simple. Uh well, I can I can talk a lot about what I do not want the token to to be. And a lot of those

negative examples are are from an ecosystem that I spent the last few years in that that was the Cosmos ecosystem. >> Yeah. >> Uh so, Cosmos made a few very big mistakes on how they do their tokens. there is the perpetual inflation uh that was proposed back in the Cosmos white paper. So the the tokens are going to be inflating forever depending on like how many people stake their their tokens and and other factors. Um tokens are used for governance and governance are very very commonly like a [ __ ] show. Um um and another thing that that that is uh criticized by a lot of people is that the

tokens that are being vested or being unlocking during that process they can be staked and they earn staking reward and the staking reward can be sold and and uh of course a lot of the VCs and team took took advantage of that and dumped on the community. Uh so I I was in in that ecosystem for a very very long time and I I I hate all these things I I saw. So what I decided to do is well we we don't want any of this. We don't want staking.

We don't want governance. We want to keep everything super simple simple and that is we're just going to use a big portion of our protocol revenue to buy back the token. So there's no staking token will always be liquid in your wallet and will always be acroving value from the success of the protocol. Um this said hyperlquid use 97% of all their revenue to buy back. we're probably going to be a more uh realistic uh because I feel pumping up token price on the one hand is important but on the other hand we also need to build a uh build a treasury because we're building a margin protocol that has financial risk. So there which it's in our best

interest to have a treasury to prepare for all the crazy situations that happen in the in the crypto market. So I have not decided on the specific numbers but let's say half half half to buy back half for for uh like a onchain insurance fund. Uh but yeah the idea is uh we want to keep it very simple. There's no distraction such as staking or governance. Um yeah basically yeah just a token that is always liquid and always acrewing value. That's the idea.

Sorry Robbie, I think you're muted. >> This is this is the benefit of building in the modern day that you can kind of leapfrog uh a lot of the existing uh infrastructure that has been in play. Uh and you have the benefit of hindsight. You can see, oh, this went wrong or this went right. This is what we should incorporate into our new product when we go live. And so you can you you have the benefit of looking at all these others projects and picking out the best parts. Um now I I want to talk about what makes Dango a little bit more unique. Uh and you mentioned at the top of the show you said Dango is a combined perpetuals and prediction market.

>> What? >> Uh so so there's spot, there's per there's prediction markets, that's going to be our first party applications. We're also going to be growing a ecosystem of developers doing thirdparty applications. >> Beautiful. Okay. Okay. Now, spot per prediction markets. Is there like these are these are three things that capture a lot of the trading activity that occurs on chain? Um is there going to be interplay between these categories? >> Yeah. So, that that's actually something we are doing uniquely. Uh now now if you are on hyperlquid you know you have a spot account and you have a uh per account and those two accounts do like are completely segregated. There is no

coingle between your spot position and your per position. Um and that can be a very negative thing. Uh for example, if you do delta neutral trading, that means you you you long on your spot and you short on your per you have net zero exposure to the volatility of the asset price and you will be farming the funding rate during the process. So delta neutral trading is very inefficient on hyperlquid because your spot holding and your per holding do not collateralize each other. So what might happen is the price of the asset go up you supposedly will have net net

zero exposure but because your spot and per do not share the same margin your per may be liquidated when the price go up if you don't always watch closely. Um so something we're doing uniquely is we are going to have a unified trading account that takes all your positions under a single margin system. So that's a single account for for spot for pers for margin loans and uh well probably not prediction markets uh depending on how how our risk framework works. I think unlikely prediction markets will go into that. But if uh if you lping in a vault in a market making vault or in

any third party uh yield farms that we decide to support all those positions will collateralize each other. So these will unlock capital efficiency enable new trading strategies. Um so this is something that we only see in the centralized exchange space. The exchange exchanges that that I know having this are by bits and backpack and the former FTX, but you don't see this in the decentralized space. So, yeah, they're going to be that that is just one thing they're doing uniquely.

>> Yeah, I love it. Um, as we wrap up here, just a couple minutes left, but I'm curious just to get your take on prediction markets because this has been all the rage as of recently. Um you mentioned risk framework maybe you include collateral what do you think is going to separate prediction markets from the ones that survive the ones that do well from the ones that fail you know we've got kshi and poly market right the two big winners right now when it comes to prediction markets and then we've got a long tale of several more you know prediction markets how do you think one of the prediction markets on the long tail is able to uh innovate and grow fast enough to reach distribution

channels and have enough to survive with the likes of Poly Market. If you think this and I imagine that you do, how do you think that is is done? What do you think you have to do in order to survive and grow to the to the likes of of those two? >> I think you need to find your niche. Like uh Kawoshi, if if you look at Kawhi, basically all they do is sports betting. They they are very strong on sport but they are pretty weak on all the other topics. Uh like like if if you're if you want to bet like better Trump will say a specific word in their in his speech. Well, you don't do that on Koshi. But uh Koshi was able to find their niche that is sports. Uh and they're doing pretty well. So I think

that's something every other prediction market need to do. You need to find your niche. And uh ju just for one example uh a complaint that I see very often about poly market is there is they're very US and west focus there's no like for example the the Asian Asians are completely missed out like uh like nobody cares about NFL nobody cares about like the random American celebrity do nobody cares about those in Asia uh but things that Asians do care. You don't find those things on on poly market. So I see >> uh one possible niche is uh is a geographical focus focus like this.

>> Um >> yeah, but uh but ultimately it's a question for for the for the founders. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> There's uh I think there are some people in the chat. Naru says they have a question, but I don't see a question there. So if they ask a question, we'll ask you. Um are you guys taking a geographical approach? Are you guys targeting you know a particular region uh and looking to to generate a lot of activity and maybe it's Asia, Western Europe?

>> Yeah, we definitely want to have a focus on East Asia. >> Um you know I'm from China. Uh Dango is a Japanese word. If you don't know Dango is a Japanese snack. I mentioned back in the Defi summer there are a lot of projects named after food. Yeah. Uh that's why we we picked Dango. Dango is also a food. Uh yeah. So we are we we are uh going going to have initial focus on East Asia. We have we are growing uh partnerships and KS in Korea, in Japan. Uh yeah, >> love it. Absolutely love it. I think you guys are fitting the vibe very well.

You've chosen a brand. It's very playful from what I know about East Asia, which is not very much. Uh everyone loves toys. They love games. Um I was just in Korea. Uh I was also in Singapore doing some of the Asia conference uh things out there. And uh there's such a there's such a fervor, such a such an excitement around um a lot of these things that are happening in crypto and digital assets. I think you guys are in a really great spot. Uh okay, Naru, first question. Man, you're never going to believe it. You're never going to believe it.

They're asking about TGE. >> Naru can't Go ahead. If you have anything to say about TGE, please go ahead. >> Yeah, TG realistically is going to be in mid mid of next year. So that mean around June, I suppose. >> Okay, there you go. That's more alpha than most people give on this show. So AB, Larry, it's your first time on the show. You're already off to a very hot start. Thank you so much for coming on. It was an absolute pleasure. We'll see you come on again in mainet, maybe a few months down the line. And uh it's been a pleasure working with you so far, man.

>> Yeah. Thank you, Robbie. >> Talk to you soon. See you, Larry. >> Bye. >> Bye. >> Bye. Dango, TGE. Watch out. Next year, get ready. Hop on. They've got a test net live prediction markets spot per all kinds of fun stuff. Hop over to Dango. Uh let's see. I believe Larry is Larry Ox on Twitter and Dango I'm sure you can find on Twitter as well. Next up to wrap up the show today, we've got Fabriio. Uh Fabrizio is the founder of Legion. Uh Legion has had some very very cool deals come on as of recently. So we're going to bring Fabriio up. Uh he I believe is

uh behind scenes now. We're going to get him bring him up on stage. Uh so let's let's bring him up. I think there's tons of things happening on Legion uh as well as in the ICO space as a whole. Um we saw last week uh Jupiter came on, they said they're launching an ICO platform. Echo is acquired by Coinbase. Just all across the docket, uh very very exciting times for these for these ICO platforms. Fabricio, man, welcome to the show. >> Thank you very much for having me. And my lord, what an exciting time it is for ICOs.

>> Dude, it's huge. It's absolutely incredible, man. You guys called it. You guys skated to where the puck was going. You saw this months ago. You guys started building. You built out a platform and now you're you're at at the top of the category and you just see more and more people join. >> Yeah, absolutely. And I think um the year's not out yet. I guess being in the position I am, I'm privileged to a lot of information that has yet to become public. And I think especially this uh the rest of the year will also be very big for for ICOs for for crypto in general. And I think what it goes to show is you know the space is legitimizing. A lot of players are very interested in watching this this space closely outside just our own uh kind of crypto pond as well.

>> Yeah man that's that's very very cool. Um it's a crazy thing dude. You come on you say you have alpha you're not going to share you're not going to share uh this privilege and information with us. Unfortunately, bits and pieces I'm I'm heavily under non-disclosure agreement for and I'm sure I'd get into a lot of trouble for doing so. Um, but I'd say that uh, yeah, there's a lot of things moving, especially in the in the United States. You'll see uh, will come to fruition. Um, not just from us, from from many players as well. And I think yeah, there's uh, crypto is definitely back and and coming on shore. Uh, and ICOs are very much back as well.

>> Oh, wow. The rumor mill is just cranking away, brother. It's cranking away. If I had to guess, I imagine World Liberty Finance is going to be launching an ICO platform, but uh we're not we're not going to be going in that direction. Uh what what I want to ask you about, Fabricio, is uh is deals. Like without thinking too much about the future and like what's coming up next, if you can't share, uh I want to talk about what what are some of the recent deals that you have had on Legion since the last time we spoke, it was just a few months ago. Um you know, what what's been going on? give us kind of an update as far as uh what deals you guys have seen come through Legion.

>> Yeah, definitely. I think maybe just before we double click on that, it's probably good to start off kind of our thesis on sort of capital capital formation in general. So, when we first started, I think when we were initially talking, the whole core idea of Legion is how do we take the same two-way optitan capital check, but they'll also bring other value like brand recognition, introductions, network, whatever it is. We want to take that same thing and then bring it to public markets which means um basically enabling founders to kind of select their public cap table i.e.

retail investors and angel investors. Um earlier this year we sort of pivoted and realized we've always been focused on regulation. One of the first movers to make a make a run under Mika merry assets regulation in Europe and we that that would actually unlock traditional channels and we very much expected the future to play it as it is. Um, so we fig figured it's much better that Legion actually plays more akin to an underwriting role much like in IPOs. You know, you have like a Goldman Sachs and they'll underwrite a deal. They're not called a stock launchpad, right? Their investment [snorts] bank and underwriter. Um, where we would horizontalize, not sure if that's a word, um, the service where we can connect a bunch of different more traditional distribution channels. So, I'd say for Legion, we've kind of um, revamped this. The first distribution channel we announced was

with Kraken, which has been quite huge. The first project we did was yield basis. [snorts] Super bullish project. It was grossly overs subscribed. I think um originally there was only 2.5 million allocation on Legion. First 24 hours 197 million plus was deposited. Uh a lot of unhappy people not getting allocation but we'll take you as the learnings moving forward. Um and then yeah we're going to announce this next week a few of the the other sales to come uh in that domain. So we'll we'll have some consumer apps which I think are super super interesting and then some more traditional real world uh type plays as well.

>> Dude, I love it. I love it. Yield basis is the one the one the one that I wanted to ask you about. Um and you you spoke to capital formation and the way that these these projects are now able to more carefully select who's on their cap table um in in still this broad consensus community oriented view. You kind of get the best of both worlds in that way. Um, and I also like that we're updating our lingo now that Wall Street is converging with digital assets. Uh, we're calling it a uh underwriting uh service, uh, not a a launchpad, which makes makes a lot more sense. Crypto is growing up, uh, right before our eyes.

Um, but man, let's talk about yield basis. Uh, we were able to get an allocation. We we we did go in. Uh, we were one of the lucky ones. Um, but you know, people weren't so lucky, but that's okay. I think there was plenty of people that that did see themselves get accepted into the deal. Um, generally could just kind of walk us through why you think yield basis was so successful on Legion and then you know as a result what were some of the things that you guys learned some of the things that you realized and you know you'll implement going forward. Yeah, definitely. I think uh one I mean it has to be a very good project, right?

I think the yield basis essentially generate yield based on volatility and earn your BTC. It's kind of a it's a golden unlock, right? Uh generate actual yield uh on BTC. So I think the product itself and the team is super crack. Obviously Michael uh co-founder of curve uh this is a new project. It's a very experienced um team also outside outside of Michael. So that's a pretty critical element. Um but I think that if you look at this from a nent level, you sort of look at this as like a pure financial capital raising exercise. But if you do it many times, you sort of realize that this is more or less a human formation um challenge, right? A a human coordination challenge. So how can you distribute incentives to the right

people and as many as the right people as possible? So one the most critical thing for for projects. So if you're a founder, you're listening to this, you want distribution and you want to get distribution to the best people possible. That's pretty much one of the most important things you can do for for not only token price but for momentum and generating of momentum. This is why you see something like, you know, a peanut, you know, reaching multi-billion dollars valuation that does absolutely nothing, right? Comparative to to some people building sort of utility products and and seeing traction, etc. Um so I think a function of very high quality project and then getting absolute killer distribution. So as mentioned before Kraken one of the one of the distribution partners we have coming to the table. Uh we've got a another uh

Asia tier one sex distribution partner also coming to the table sometime soon and a few more bits bits and pieces to come. Um so that's kind of more or less a strategy for ensuring that killer project gets killer distribution. Um and then the second bits and pieces sort of a lot of the learnings we took from that sale. I think it was only originally like 2.4% of people got allocation and then we ended up um doubling the allocation up to just under 5 million for Legion. So 7% of people end up getting allocation. Uh which is still not many but I think there was 67,000 plus users applied for allocation.

196 million plus deposited in under an hour which again super bullish for the idea of onchain capital formation and and what the space can do. You know, we think that being on chain is 10x tech improvement, global by nature. It's programmable. It's on 247, right? Uh super cheap settlement fees. Anyone can participate. Um so that's very bullish signs. I think a lot of the the things that came out of that is um you know, we'll probably introduce this idea of of a green shoe option where if there's sufficient demand, we can kind of even increase allocation significantly more. Uh and also just being probably a little bit more transparent up front on exactly how to unlock particular allocation. Um there's originally a concern is you know we didn't want to open up how we kind of like filter out sibles and and do all

those bits and pieces but yeah moving forward a lot of lot of lessons learned. We're here for the people and and we'll be improving to move it forward. >> Yeah man. And what what do you think about uh some of these other deals that have just you know not not even just on Legion but just the idea that ICOs are coming back? Uh is it just friendly regulation? This was always the best way of of of getting capital formation. um or or is there another kind of piece at play that you think is leading this charge and the reason that ICOs are coming back? >> Yeah, I think to be honest with you from a first principles perspective, the superpower of tokenization is is coordinating real world behavior at scale. As I as I alluded to before, this is more or less a human coordination

challenge. I think if you look back at the history of crypto, right, um originally started sort of mining was the best way of of distributing incentive alignment. Uh and then not many people know 2013 was actually the first ever ICO Mastercoin. Um and then when you know Ethereum and their ICO become more popular and then you sort of had the ICO meta kickoff that was a next level mechanism of incentive alignment right um regulation came in you know there was the Dow hack um report SEC actually came in said okay these things are actually securities we need to regulate them and that's kind of how you saw this divergence to mostly private markets um all all the early stage capital formation um and then the public stuff kind of shut down so then we sort of moved to different metas some funds

some short-lived you know Ponzomics in DeFi summer a different distribution meta you had the airdrop meta kicked off by by unis swap then you had the points meta and I think people realize that the most effective distribution mechanism out there is in fact token sales right because you front your own capital you have a different psychological relationship with it you bring in different psychological biases loss aversion a diamond effect etc and I think that because regulation has come back and said okay there's now clear guidance to do this and soon there's clear guidance in the US, the biggest capital market in the world, right? Um I think you see a lot of appetite for kind of returning to the roots, which again is the most effective mechanism for incentive alignment being these token sales.

>> Yeah. And so you guys are just continuing to grow distribution. You're continuing to get new projects and win a lot of these deals. Um I'm curious, you know, another meta that's kind of going on right now is M&A. I saw uh a couple posts about this, mergers and acquisitions. And generally when we think about capital formation, this is kind of like another level to it. it's just businesses investing in other businesses rather than retail and and community investors investing in one another. Uh have you thought much about M&A? Do you do you think that this could be an addition to the Legion platform as you continue to expand the product stack?

>> Uh yeah, funny obviously uh you know 400 mil acquisition for Equa kind of goes to prove and puts a price tag a lot of this. Uh a lot quite a lot of people came out the woodwork. Uh I mean we were kind of across this for a while now but uh when it did become public a lot of uh a lot of players came out of the woodwork and I think like I said before it really legitimizes the space it goes to show that this is something that you know is here to play and um yeah even like you'd be surprised like more traditional players you thinking I'm not even sure you know too much about crypto are are asking questions. Um so I'd said for us kind of like you [snorts] know you've got one thesis is you verticalize you kind of want to own the entire

stack. You see kind of Coinbase doing this from like liquify to capital formation to the listing team like if they can own the entire stack. That's kind of their approach. Our thesis is that it's actually much more beneficial for both the industry and products to get a kind of horizontal distribution where you can get global distribution from different partners from all around the world. You can work with um the best partners in different domains. So that's kind of been our thesis. So less on the pushing for acquisition, more on um acquiring the biggest distribution channel in the world and becoming sufficiently um I'd say valuable within that horizontal um side of things. So potentially it could be on the table, but I don't know. Our ambitions are are

wild. I've I haven't seen yet uh an acquisition play that that would uh be able to cater for that. >> All right, man. what is uh what are some of the more ambitious ideas that you have uh when it comes to not not just you know legion just in general for crypto in our industry. I'm curious like you're you're you're you think very big uh from I can tell by the times you come on the show and even even today uh how are you thinking about this industry as we're expanding we're seeing partnerships come on Wall Street is converging with digital native finance how are how are you like what is what is some of your wildest ambitions for how the space might evolve over the coming months and and years?

Oh, I think this is like as a founder, as a participant, it's like this is kind of what a lot of people dreamed about for a really long time, right? This is the most credible chance we have now and going, you know, what people say bring it to the masses, going mainstream. I'd say that um kind of we've traditionally kind of been conditioned to think a lot in like what's happening in CT, where's the mind share, what's most important there. I think um taking having the ability especially as a founder or or a team like taking a step back and saying okay um there's actually a massive world out there that is 100x plus bigger than everything we've been doing so far is how do we start to tap into these traditional players and I think that this adoption should be driven within

crypto as opposed to you know external teams kind of incubating and come coming up and developing their own their own process right we've been in the space for a while we've seen what works we've seen what doesn't work. You know, we've seen Ponzomics go by. Um, and I think this really is a credible chance that we have to kind of show, you know, this is where crypto is. This is what we want to do. Um, this is how we actually engage on a on a real level with with the real world. I think stable coins, for example, are a prime example of um, you know, this global adoption beginning to take off. >> Yeah, man. I I I mean, people are calling it this uh the stable coin super cycle, right? And I think traditionally people haven't been able to get exposure to stable coins, but now with some of

these more community oriented investing tools, ICOs coming back, you're able to have some retail scale investors get exposure to things that would normally just be private markets uh and they can actually invest in something like a stable coin uh and and get some exposure to that that category uh which wouldn't be possible if it wasn't for platforms like Legion. That's why we built every day, right? I think I came from very humble beginnings. I didn't have a lot of the same opportunity a lot of people did. And I think of uh like to think of myself as an underdog maxi. I want to see see the people win. And um yeah, if you're if you're here, you know, you should have access to to equal equal access to opportunity. I mean, the outcomes are never going to be the same,

but ideally we uh we kind of help support and democratize that rather than um you know, just I guess investment banks hooking up their friends and and whoever is the the richest already. >> I love it. meritocracy at at its finest. Um, fab congrats, man, on on Kraken, on yield basis. These are incredible deals that you guys are pushing forward and and it's all with the right ethos. Uh, as I see it, you guys are pushing forward the democratization of investing and, uh, opening up greater access to capital. Uh, this is a win-win for investors, retail, as well as projects and founders. So, uh, man, keep up the great work. Uh, any closing thoughts uh, as uh, as we close out here? It's going to be a hell of a next six months. ICOs

are definitely back. Um, and yeah, I think in a few weeks time people will kind of see uh the level of scale that these might might be happening and realize that this is a credible chance we have of uh of actually going global. >> Wow. I uh I feel the alpha beneath the surface, man. I would I I'd love to have you back on uh when this is ultimately public. >> Sounds like a plan. Bloody good to be here and uh you guys keep crushing it. You're doing good things for the uh for the space. I appreciate your time, man. We'll see you next time. Cheers. >> Ciao. >> All right. All right. All right. Man, Fab is always a legend. Uh I know him and Andy have good time surfing. Uh it's always a pleasure to have him on the show. Legion is doing great things.

Yield Basis, we we were part of Yield Basis, uh which was a very exciting sale that happened on Legion. Um, anytime you have something that's so in demand that people get left out, well, it's a it's a nature supply and deam demand dynamics at the at uh at the works. Guys, incredible show. We had uh Rachel from Circle. Uh they announced ARC test net today. Uh congrats to them. We had Fabriio from Legion come on, talk to us about yield basis as well as talk to us about capital formation in general.

These guys have such a a finger on the pulse of the industry. Um, I would not be surprised if they build out more successful product features as a means of verticalizing their stack and incorporating a lot of the alpha that they are exposed to on a daily basis. And of course, we heard from Larry at Left Curve building Dango and he dropped a bomb TGE next year, middle of next year, Maynet coming up. He also said 50 to 60% airdrop. So guys, stay tuned. We're going to keep the alpha flowing and it's going to continue. on Rollup TV. It's never going to stop. We're going to be alpha alpha dropping so that you guys can stay up todate on the most important things happening uh in crypto on digital assets

and uh and everything that you guys need to capitalize on the opportunities at your fingertips. I'm Robbie. It's been an absolute pleasure and we'll see you next time on Rollup TV. [music]