Tempo Testnet Goes Live, Burnout In Crypto, and Farcaster’s Pivot | Weekly Roundup

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saying that it's not anything more than call it financial infrastructure. It's hard to see how you make that argument today, right? Like that is where most of the interest go highs. That is where most of the investment dollars go. But that's inclusive of dollar access to people who might not otherwise have it, right? That's inclusive of, you know, micro finance. It's inclusive of self-custody, right? And so all of those things are part of the core ethos. But yes, at the end of the day, crypto today is in the call it financial infrastructure money movement phase and that means that it is unlikely to fill, you know, the hole that some of these, you know, call it early libertarians were really focused on.

>> This episode is brought to you by Zashi wallet. You'll hear more about them later in today's episode. Nothing said on Empire is a recommendation to buy or sell any investments or products. This podcast is forformational purposes only and the views expressed by anyone on the show are solely their opinions, not financial advice or necessarily the views of Blockworks. Our hosts, guests, and the Blockworks team may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed. >> All right, everyone. Welcome back to Empire. We got the gang together finally. Santi Rob, what's happening, guys? How you doing?

>> Doing well. Excited to uh to see you back, you know. Are are you excited that we let you back? >> It feels good. Feels good. I didn't know. I mean, seems like you guys have been thriving over here without me. >> I mean, engagement engagement doesn't lie. So, we we just got to see that chart of the engagement just continue to trend up. >> Speaking of engagement, Santi, you are farming the engagement on Twitter these days, my friend. What is uh I >> I just want to know, guys, did you make it past the first round at an investment bank? Because if not, I think you're going to have to drop Yano cuz Rob Rob I know for sure joined. I don't know if it was a major investment bank, but it was an investment bank.

>> The amount of people >> I don't know if it's a small investment bank. I don't know if you ever heard of it. [laughter] Uh Santi, [clears throat] >> is it Goldman? I I forget which one. >> Now I feel like an Like I know already like you know this podcast. >> Rob, you're about to get me too. You know the memes I the amount of memes I saw Santi did you know I worked at JP Morgan? Like [laughter] >> we we we had a the classic like Patagonia vest. >> We had a Patagonia vest like you know ETH is overvalued price to sales ratio. And anyways it was fun. You know I I I can't say I sort of knew that when I hit that tweet and at five minutes in I'm like yeah this is going to be copy pasta for sure. And lo and behold,

>> so people wanted to know was this just a whole was this a marketing thing that you and Hib lined up because you and Hib were, you know, back and forth and bantering, but you know, people were quickly realized that Hib you know, and Rob and Dragonfly led your guys' last round. So, [laughter] we had a we had a an LP, potential LP kind of says, "Hey, like are you guys okay? Like, is your lead investor?" I'm like, "Did you listen to the debate?" Um, no. No, I mean this is what I love about zooming out a little bit. Like Rob and I talked about in last pod like there's very few people that I think you the best relationships are one where you feel like you can attack an idea without feeling like you're going to attack a person. And I felt that level of comfort

with dragonfly since the very beginning. I was just like I don't I you never want to have someone that you feel like you're walking on egg shows uh that they're going to cut it to you straight. And you know he and I have different opinions about valuations in crypto, but that's totally fine. Um I I know his still out there, you know, he he now is still he went on Milk Road and do a podcast and still engaging with the crowd >> where you can't debate him. >> I I just I just I just dropped the bomb and I walked away. I'm like, guys, you know, I know where I stand. I'm not going to like >> You know what this reminded me of, Santi? The whole time is there's a tweet from this guy Julian Shapiro that I think perfectly summarized what was happening. He said, "This is how Twitter

works. You get free distribution and the ability to start a movement or attain self-promotion despite being, you know, you could be a nobody and you can still start a movement. The cost, guaranteed uncharitable criticism and bad faith attacks. The power of X belongs to those willing to stomach the cost. Embrace it or others will. And I was thinking about you when I read that. >> Thank you, sir. Yeah. No, it's uh I this is probably the first time that I've been um got attacked from all kinds of sides, but it was great. The best one, the best one shout out goes to G this guy Gabriel Hines.

>> He puts out heaters time like every day he's posting out a video. I mean [laughter] I'm like I'm I'm close to hiring as a social media manager because he's just on fire. He he had a great one about Farcaster, had a great one about Poly Market, fake volume, all the stuff we're going to talk about. Wait, I listen. Gabrielle actually like he had this thing before he was doing like uh he had like he was doing this with like swords and katanas and like and he's shirtless in every video. Is that right? Is always shirtless. >> Well, he lo he lost a lot of weight. It was like a it started I think as like a weight loss thing and a motivation for himself to lose the weight. And actually I think he's great. He's I think he's great. I'm into it.

>> Um >> it's sort of like Get-Rich Nick which is like maybe like the best brand on Twitter right now. Yeah. >> Yeah. Best is an interesting word there. The loudest brand on Twitter. >> I mean, people hate him and they go into his but his stickick, he keeps like rerunning it over and over again and he gets like millions and millions of views. >> This this is sort of what I came to conclusion is like if if you think you're going to show up on X to have an intellectual discussion, you're you're very very wrong. I mean the content just gets rage bait and and uh you know polar the more extreme your view is the more it's going to get picked up and I sort of there's there's no point of having an intellectual discussion. I mean it's

just like it's not what gets highest engagement and it's just a big problem that we have I think like enter prediction markets assuming you believe that their volume is real which we'll talk about in this episode too. [laughter] >> You're really trying to bait here and >> I mean let's talk about it's a small thing. Let's talk about the poly market data for a second. I care less about the I mean basically for um I don't know Rob if you want to give a quick overview of what happened but what one of the things I'm curious about is like it seemed kind of like the dragonfly verse paradigm uh debacle on Twitter less of the poly market cal but yeah maybe if you want to give a quick summary from your end of what was going down.

>> Yeah. Um I don't I don't know if I have anything good to say. Uh the listen the reality was is like you know the You know you're you know you're thinking it >> uh right. So the the paradigm data guy came out and he said hey listen like uh some of the dashboards like uh like block works are you know maybe overstating poly market data because they're um you know it's kind of complicated the way that uh the polyarket data infrastructure works and way the way you read the smart contracts and it might be some of these people might actually be double counting any single transaction because they might be counting both the taker and the maker right um And like, okay, totally uh

makes sense. The reality is is and and Jason, as I'm sure you can talk about this a little bit on the block works data side, like that's a a common uh refrain and conversation around a lot of different types of trading that happens on chain, right? is how you think through uh for for especially for derivatives, how you think through notional volume, which is like you know what if you trade a dollar at 10x leverage is that you know $10 of leverage of of volume versus a dollar of volume and then how you think about like both the maker and the taker side. Um and what is the right way to report that? There's people who do different things. Um the like that's like a fair conversation to have. I know you one of your data guys Jason was asking questions about it to the poly market

team. and they had kind of told him yeah >> how to think through the different data infrastructure. Um and then the entire paradigm team, I think literally almost everybody uh came out and uh retweeted it uh with various degrees of like poly market uh one like oh there's a bunch of wash trading which he the data guy put in his uh in his his tweet as well and then um various degrees of like oh like a couple people I think actually I saw I think uh one of the the GPS there tweeted that Poly Market himself was like purposely double counting uh their data, which is obviously not what the original uh findings said. It said that some of the dashboards were maybe doing it. Um and that Poly Market was was actively telling people the how

to read the data uh if they wanted to. Um and it basically seemed like a coordinated hit against a you know competitor uh that of a you know a large round that they just led in Dawi. Um, and frankly like you know that whatever I'll just say like they just have to do better. Like it was just like it was >> I mean this is kind of the thing I wanted to I cared less about the poly market data problem because then like I think we we fixed that alium fixed that defy like a lot of people that was a quick thing there's a bunch of different ways >> when all the dune dashboards already had it right like a lot of the other dashboards already had it correct the people who were >> there's different interpretations of what poly of what polymarket volume should be

notional taker or maker basically and so I think what we're doing is just showing showing all three versions my question for you two >> um is how in this brought up a more meta point of like how involved should VCs be and uh for their portfolio companies basically. So you've got the kind of I think people were upset with paradigm because they're like it felt like a little o over involvement basically. Um >> and I'm just I'd love to get your guys' take on that. Listen, I I think and maybe I'll just start because I also want to make the point, right? Koshi uh we can't actually verify their data on chain because they're not really onchain and and poly market is but they report >> well on that point Rob is what about Khi is cryptonative. I'm curious.

>> Well, you know, they're taking they're trying to move more on crypto now. So, they hired John Wang and they there is a lot of uh work today to to get more crypto native and so I I don't want to discount that. Uh but basically all their order book today is entirely offchain. they they do some settlement occasionally um for different types of transactions, but they basically just report notional volume, right? And so like to your to the example I gave earlier, which is like I bet a dollar at 10x leverage or I at least the way it works for Kel, I bet a a dollar on something that is only 10% likely I'm buying, you know, 10 shares, so it's $10, right? And so uh it I think you know to your second question Jason how

involved should VCs be? Uh I have been and I think people know that I am this way and see this way maybe maybe Tom less so like we're big proponents of our portfolio companies. I invest in people that I believe in. I invest in people where I like their ideas. I invest in people that I I want to see them succeed. And so I'm actively out there all the time talking about my portfolio company founders. Uh and you know I'm very clear that yeah I'm invested in poly market. I talk about them a lot. I'm very clear that I'm invested in, you know, Inversion, Wasanti, or I'm invested in like Rain or Agora or like all these other guys, right? And so I think that's really important to do. And I think, you know, anyone expecting the VCs not to talk well about their

portfolio companies is just it's crazy and it doesn't make any sense, right? And I think um Sahir from uh from Split Capital had this tweet a couple days ago like, you know, why do people expect the VCs like not to be talking about their portfolio companies? >> That's a whole point. But if I if I flip that around and I say, okay, well, a coordinated attack against a competitor of a portfolio company in which I basically misrepresent what is happening, which I I think is a an inarguable and fair statement to what happened there. Uh that seems like a step too far and not something that, you know, I'd be willing to do and I think people need to need to do better. Um I think there's a really an interesting conversation here about what Keith Ra

boy is doing around airwalls as well. Uh but um I don't that that's my perspective uh and probably all I'll say on the mander. So >> look I mean I I definitely agree with Rob's point like VCs should be supporters publicly about their portfolio companies and there's ways of doing that. Uh you could argue that uh going in uh trying to discredit a competitor is probably not the best. like out of all the things that you can highlight out of a portfolio company, maybe going out and criticizing a competitor is not the best look. And and I just think like you invite more criticism where you could be talking about the positive stuff that you know Koshi's done, you know, made some key hires, it raised around like um it's more of an interesting dynamic like this

poly market like this prediction market war. It reminds me a lot of like Uber andyft and where does it end? I do think that there's a broader conversation around monetization uh of like we Jan in the prior episode we were talking about Robin Hood potentially displacing Koshi and Robin Hood contributing a ton of volume to Koshi and I think Rob made a comment around hey we're we got into talking hey if if you're a lead investor how much of that was disclosed ahead of the round and I think does it begs the question did paradigm feel an egg on its face and so it went out and like it just like people can now make a storyline it's easy to like now construct that narrative which which is may or may not be true, right?

Maybe they did know about it and maybe they were like, "Hey, what probably would have been a better thing if you're if you're Paradigm, which by the way, I think Paradigm is one of the most actively involved VCs in crypto. Dan Robinson single-handedly like just probably built a large part of unis swap v2 and v3. Like they just have a andio like they have probably one of the most >> I mean tempo tempo which we should talk about later. Yeah, >> tempo. So I I just think this is like off off brandand in many ways and and it just I don't know I can't explain why this I I know like Koshi and Poly like there's a lot of rivalry there and heated kind of I think you know >> we I don't need necessarily think we need to talk about it here but uh it

never ends well in my opinion. Yeah, I think it is important to note like listen they've done tremendous amount for the space and for Ethereum specifically and especially on the technical side, the research side uh they you know Dan and team and Georgios like they're they're they're they've been I think just huge contributors for a long time. you know, really important to note that and and not trying to kind of beat up on them, but I I just the whole thing I think left a bad taste in in my mouth and uh I think some of the others around the the um the situation and so I think as anybody knows uh I'm not one to uh to to hold my tongue.

>> This episode is brought to you by Zashi Wallet, your gateway to buying, storing, and spending encrypted Bitcoin. Zcash is decentralized digital cash encrypted to preserve agency and safety with a fixed supply of 21 million and a proofof work consensus. Zcash is encrypted Bitcoin. With Zashi wallet, you can swap Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency into Zcash and stay shielded by default. Thanks to Zashi wallet for making today's episode possible. As always, investments in blockchain technology involve risk terms and conditions apply.

Let's shift gears. Let's talk about the other thing that Paradigm did this week, which is uh Tempo Testnet went live. Um >> so for people who missed it. So Temp uh the the list of partners was probably the most impressive like launch list of partners I've ever seen for a crypto company, it was Anthropic, Deutsch Bank, Door Dash, Mercury, New Bank, OpenAI, Revolute, Shopify, uh you know, Brex, Gusto, Koshi, Figure, uh Ramp, Mastercard, UBS. Um, and I think a lot of people were there's a actually summary from this guy Phil, uh, who kind of highlighted some of the things with with Tempo, right? 500 millisecond block times, fully EVM compatible, no native gas token, um, an enshrined DEX, uh, a new transaction type that has native

transaction batching, native gas sponsorship, native support, um, for web keys, uh, and Face ID keys. Um, and yeah, I think actually the the the I would say the industry re reception to this was I would argue very positive. Uh, and I think people were very impressed and maybe a little taken back by how quickly Tempo has been able to get to market and get to market really impressively. Um, that that was my under that was my take reading a lot of the I mean kind of talking to people you know developers who are looking at this and other founders who are thinking about building on tempos. I would say uh very the reaction was very impressed. Um but I' I'd love to hear your guys' take on this.

>> Well, also uh CLA who I think announced one or two days ago about their full plan like their stable coin CLA was it CLAUSD is going to be launched on Tempo. >> I'm paying a lot of attention to that. But but yeah, I mean it goes back to >> Sante. Did you see that Clar is launching a wallet? They just announced this with um >> Yeah, with Privy. >> With Privy, that's right. Yeah. So the acquisitions that Stripe made are starting to make a whole lot of sense. >> Yeah, >> I think it um you going back to what does this mean for like like people talk about monetary premium. What's interesting here is of course no native token. So gas is paid in stables. That's something that you know makes a lot of sense candidly. Um and like we've talked about like reasons why

like tempo probably doesn't grow. like it's handicapped in terms of growth because like stripe is there and that's like you know there's reasons why you wouldn't want to deploy but um yeah I mean you you it begs again it begs the question like what is the moat of these systems if someone like tempo can very quickly have this type of um traction and convince a probably do better BD muscle than you know other networks and uh what are the true modes of these systems where you can have someone like that launch your own and you know of course they has a weight of paradigm and and strike type. Uh, but it's very interesting what's happening in real time to be honest.

>> Yeah, I don't have a lot to add. I mean, listen, I think the the initial documentation that they set out like does look super impressive. Uh, clearly they've done a great job here. I I think the the speed has everybody really excited and imp it's it's very impressive. It's probably true that a lot of the core infrastructure here was stuff that Paradigm was already working on through Wrath. Uh and so that's probably part of the speed. So, and maybe somewhat unclear how the timeline worked there. Uh but you know, there's nothing bad to say about what's happened here um and what they put out so far. I think Sant's point around like you know the just what does this mean for the mousetrap that

Stripe has and you know the broad set of companies that they've acquired and like the use cases that they want to enable on blockchain rails. It it's I my guess is they're able to put force a lot of people onto Tempo and this is going to be very successful for them in a lot of ways. I think it's probably going to be one of those situations where it's kind of a call it a a commoditized compliment i.e. Right? Like they will essentially give away, you know, Tempo for free, right? When all of the things that come with Tempo, but they will do it if you're, you know, paying for something else within the Stripe ecosystem. I think there was a little bit of back and forth uh earlier this week around how

Stripe was charging people like a $150 or something for a stable coin transfer. And you know clearly I think there was some misunderstanding around you know what that means because people are saying oh well like you know if I move a dollar you know stable coin on Salana it's like a fraction of a penny and you so how are they going to compete this way but clearly like that's not how pricing works and payments and there's a broad set of things that go into that around authorization and um and settlement and interchange fees you know etc. And clearly my guess and and I I think I gave this example on a prior uh podcast but you know one of the things we had heard before was that you know bridge

and stripe won a deal against another provider called BVNK because they had showed up and they said hey we will give you Stripe authorization for free right and so what we're seeing here is like a clear >> you know just strategy around building the entire stack and you giving certain parts of away for free to be able to and building the best possible product to be able to win the whole deal, right? >> Let me let me pose this question. All right, go go go. >> I was going to say this is a classic bundling we're seeing by the way, which is like the multiple stripe. Now, I I I'm going to have to drop in a minute here. Um because Rob was late to the podcast because he was at Colombia evangelizing and converting unpaid interns. Nonetheless, nonetheless, Stripe 100 Stripe 100 billion secondary

market equity. Good luck trying to get your hands on it because it's hard to get. Tempo raised at a $5 billion valuation, I believe, and raised like 500 million bucks. If you go down the list of L1's now, I'm not even sure they're going to have a token, right? It's like Bass, Coinbase, similar dynamic. Probably >> I would guess both base and tempo have tokens at some point. >> Let's just assume they will. But like that's what I'm saying. Uh would you rather own Stripe equity at 100 billion or Salana that's 80 billion or Ethereum at 380 billion or B&B at 120 billion? Um or even Monad and some of these emerging kind of u L1s uh that you know both you and I Rob have

exposure to. What's it trading at now? And I I'm I'm going to keep playing this game on podcast until people like just kick me out. Um, but Monad's trading at 2.6 billion. Would you rather own Monad at 2.6 or hypothetically tempo at five? >> I mean, it's a tough question. I think to your point, we actually just talked about this at the Colombia class I was guest lecturing at. So we had the I got the exact question around like how do you think about tempo and how do you think about tempo relative to public blockchains and you know will there be a a lot of payments that come on to tempo and will that take over stable coins and I'll give the same answer here which I

essentially gave in this class which was that like I expect that stripe is going to pull a bunch of volume through tempo and I like I think there's no doubt about that like you know it's probably the best most innovative payments company of the last decade right and they've you John and Patrick Collins have done an incredible job and this they're clearly doing a great job with this, right? But I do not believe that if you think that stable coins are going to come on chain in a real way and payments are going to come on chain in a real way that over time Visa will want to send transactions to Tempo that Aden will want to send transactions to Tempo that Checkout.com will want to send transactions to Tempo right and so what does that mean? It means it's a bundled

product to the point that you said earlier Santi but it is unlikely to be call it a you know a permissionless all-weather use case for anybody type of chain which means that one of two things have to happen they either have to meet somebody else they have to have some sort of interoperability or there will just be a lot of silos right and that might be part of what happens here and so I expect that like for instance like monad is is leaning really heavily into payments as well. You know, in a world where, you know, people care about meeting somewhere that is, you know, coordinating trust and that isn't an interested party, maybe somebody like a a monad would make sense or a Salana for

that in for for that fact because they are, you know, very focused on this as well. That said, like you know, the easiest mass trap right now is to take an existing distribution, pull them through your funnel, pull them onto your your blockchain, and we're, you know, in the near term, we're going to probably more pay actual real payments volume on Tempo than we will have seen anywhere else in crypto at this point. >> I'll get tired of saying this, but we're going to go back to the most valuable companies in crypto are Tether and Binance, right? and they don't share much of that revenue on chain like they they have spillover effects.

But I think this might be one of an example where we keep going back to this token equity and where value acres in the stack and I think you're now seeing in real time like Stripe and even Coinbase like they're using public infrastructure to monetize their real business equity business and I I you know I think it's something that begs the question around yeah all this payment volume is likely going to come on chain. Yeah, stable cocoons are great. Boom temperature semiconductors, but you you're seeing a very very savvy founder-led organization appreciate that and then and then reap the benefits for their core business and and you know, I don't know what kind of it would be actually pretty interesting to see what kind of deal they struck with green oaks

and those guys that put in 500 million into into Tempo. Surely there was some discussion around the token. Surely it was some discussion around refshare and whatnot. Uh but they're also investors in stripe as I understand it, right? >> I I feel pretty confident. I mean, Tempo will have a token. >> Yeah, >> I think there's actually a poly market um on this now for when they'll have a token. >> I'll leave you this with this question, Jensen, because I got to draw up um there's a great there's a there's an interesting post with Ryan Ryan Watkins who's coming out and saying, you know, changes tune on Ethereum. My question to you, Jens, I submit is Tempo World War III resistant infrastructure. [laughter] it why because that's Ryan's point about

Ethereum for why he's bullish. Is that why you're >> I think you should pull up his thread because it was a a lot of a lot of interesting stuff in there. But that was just >> I'll say this and maybe maybe I'll get a bunch of you know like Ethereum bulls uh in my you know tweets after this too. But uh I'm I am certain that no blockchain is uh World War II uh resistant at the moment. So [snorts] Santi all right thank you. Take care, guys. >> Rob, last last question on this note. There's uh does it feel like the me so you don't think the mega All right, here here's the two camps I think people are in. One one camp was tempo tech quality and architecture is like this both the simplicity and the buildout speed is the

most one of the most impressive things in crypto this year. The other side of it is ah crap. It feels like actually the mega conglomerates are just going to win here whether it's Stripe or yeah sure maybe a Audience is not going to send their you know payment flow to you know Stripe's tempo chain but maybe they're going to launch their own chain and ah crap what are we doing here as crypton natives. Yeah, I mean I've been a proponent I've been writing about this for a while that I thought you know call it full general purpose chains were probably unlikely to win the like you know payments use case right because that is not like you know call it full decentralization and you know complete trustlessness is not actually what the end customer cares about in this case and so I think for a

lot of use cases that are serving corporates it is probably likely to continue to be true that a lot of that flow. A lot of the interaction with blockchains happens on either corporate run chains or happens on maybe not corporate run chains but you know purpose-built chains that are you know maybe sometimes it could also be an L2 right Robin Hood is trying to do that but I I do believe that a lot of blockchain activity is going to exist on you know non-public Ethereum non-public Salana non-public uh monad whatever else and is going to you know be abstracted away by corporates who have some stake, right? And are able to control the

experience that they're providing. And so I I've been talking about that for years. I've had Salana Bowls in my my uh DMs and in my mentions for a long time about how wrong I was about that. And I think we're started to see how I was probably right about that. Uh but all that said, I am a general believer that more and more things happening on blockchain rails is good for all of us. And as the rising tides lift all boats, this will be good for Ethereum over time. And you know, I'm just happy to see that the smartest people in the world are innovating around using this technology, which I think is, you know, kind of strictly better than the current infrastructure that we have today.

>> This episode is brought to you by Zashi wallet, your gateway to buying, storing, and spending encrypted Bitcoin. Zcash is decentralized digital cash encrypted to preserve agency and safety with a fixed supply of 21 million and a proofof work consensus. Zcash is encrypted Bitcoin. With Zashi wallet, you can swap Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency into Zcash and stay shielded by default. Thanks to Zashi wallet for making today's episode possible. As always, investments in blockchain technology involve risk terms and conditions apply.

We should spend a bunch of time on uh based on the point I just said to around on Nick Carter and Ken Chang's uh post this week as well. >> Yeah, let's go there. So, um yeah, let me let me pull up the post for people who didn't see it. So, basically this guy um uh what did what did Ken build? He built a AO, I think it was. >> Yeah, he was an early engineer at Ribbon, which ended up becoming AO, right? >> At Ribbon. Yeah, that's right. Here, let me pull up this tweet. And for people who don't know, Ribbon was a essentially a a vault that you could put money into that would give you yield based on continuing to uh write options essentially. So it was one of the first option vault products in crypto early DeFi summer type product and then they kind of turned into AO

which was a a perpetuals product. >> Yeah. So, okay. So, Ken wrote this this piece uh I think last week said, "I wasted eight years of my life in crypto and and and roughly the summary is that VCs have just obliterated a ton of money backing stupid projects and all all we've really done well, it's not even about the VCs. It's about uh I try I wanted to build this decentralized financial system and all I really got was this like hyper financialized massive global casino and did we didn't really change the world at all. who just built this huge I think his world's biggest online multiplayer 24/7 casino our generation has ever concocted. Um it's just a speculation and gambling hypers system that's really just a mirror of what the economy is now. And

uh I think a lot of people took this as like uh this was there's always I feel like every like once a year there's like a post like this where it's someone kind of I'm I'm not going to use the word crashing out but it's someone who says like you know what are we doing here? Like I'm I'm kind of throwing my hands up and giving up. And I feel like this was kind of that post of the year. Um, and I think Nick Carter, there were a lot of responses. Joe Joel Carlson uh or Joel Hunter had a great response to it and um Mason, I think Panta had a great response. Um, and I think Nick probably had the best response, but would love to hear your yeah, your thoughts on this.

>> Yeah, to your point, you know, this happens a lot, right? And you know one of the things that I think is worth pointing out here is uh this also h used to happen to me all the time uh when I worked on Wall Street right is you would hear people you know they would leave the bank or they would leave the hedge fund and they would say same thing right like we're moving you know numbers around a screen it has no positive impact on the world it's all a big casino uh you know I regret spending my time here and so this is a I think a general plight of people who work in what I would call um finance, right? And like financial infrastructure and people who job seems to be or often seems to be around, you know, building products to

make money, right? And so I think it's important to probably pull that out a little bit and realize that this isn't a crypto specific point. Now that said, in crypto we obviously we're we're a bit at an intersection of the technologists and the finance years and it seems like we've had depending on the year uh you know more of a Silicon Valley ethos or you know call it maybe a cipher punk ethos and some years we've had more of a Wall Street ethos. Today definitely like the Wall Street you know finance side of of crypto I think has taken hold more than uh more than the you know Silicon Valley cyber punk side. And that does mean we've had the corporates and we've had Stripe and we've had Robin Hood and

we've had you know the DTCC and all of these guys trying to use blockchains and so that and and because of that we've also had more focus on the financial products so the perpetuals and you know the things that people call you know the casino right you know even you know poly market and koshi there's all this conversation right now around prediction markets on whether or not it's gambling right which is I think gambling is clearly not correct unless you mean that all financial markets are are gambling, but it is a financial product. It is an exchange, right? And so, all I would I would really say is that, and Nick did a good job of laying this out, is that crypto is a weird intersection of a lot of people and a lot of ethos. And if you came into this around you were an anti-state

libertarian and that you wanted to have, you know, call it hard money again and you were really worried about inflation, you know, it's hard to say that, you know, crypto hasn't let you down, right? And I totally agree with that. But if you came into this world and you said, I like to build at the bleeding edge of new financial infrastructure, then you're probably happy on where we're going right now. at calling it a casino is something that you know I think is pretty flippant when you look around like everything that's happening in the space right now they literally just talked about tempo and stripe but saying that it's not anything more than call it financial infrastructure

it's hard to see how you make that argument today right like that is where most of the interest goes that is where much of most of the um the investment dollars go but that's inclusive of dollar access to people who might otherwise have it, right? That's inclusive of, you know, micro finance. It's inclusive of self-custody, right? And so all of those things are part of the core ethos, but yes, at the end of the day, crypto today is in the call it financial infrastructure money movement phase. And that means that it is unlikely to fill, you know, the hole that some of these, you know, call it early libertarians were really focused on.

>> Yeah. Yeah. I think that's really well said. I I mean I think crypto really is just u gives you a tool to build a new financial system and some people are going to build uh gambling platforms and some people are going to build like you know 100x levered casinos and some people are going to build uh payments rails and some people are going to build uh onchain credit and some people are going to build per it's whatever you do with the technology and I think there there are he is hitting on a point though which is I think there's strong founder burnout in the industry right now and I what I've noticed not cuz I'm in all these, you know, founder group chats and all this kind of stuff. There's two very different groups of founders in crypto right now. They're the people who are

building for where I think that they think that their end customer is kind of the anon trader on Twitter, right? It's the people who are going after the target audience of probably who trades on Hyperlid. Um, that's a really, really, really good area to build for if you want to make money quickly. There's a there's a reason people build for that. It's a really hard customer base to build for if you want to build a business that compounds over, you know, 5, 10, 20 years. Uh, it's just a really tough core customer base. Um, even Hyperlid, I think Hyperlid's amazing.

Jury's out on if, you know, these like if we then go find a new purse platform. Um, and so yeah, I think and then you if you contrast that with other founders like you know who's not burnt out right now like Michael Shaolov at Fireblocks, Jeremy Aair at Circle, Paulo at Tether, um even like you know in in in the companies that are less big than than you know Fireblocks and Circle and Tether it's uh there's all these up and cominging founders who are building in the space that you guys are funding right like whether it's RWAS or payments or credit it's just a different core customer. And I think for founders who are feeling a little burned out, I would really spend time thinking about like if we did enter a long phase of

consolidation, let's say we did enter, you know, hopefully numbers go up next year, but if we did enter a long period of consolidation in crypto, have you found the problem that you're genuinely excited about solving for the next decade? Um, and if you haven't, you you will you will end up like Ken Chang here. You will you will get burnt out. And if you have, it doesn't really matter what's happening with the numbers or with your, you know, finances or if you can raise money because you're working on a problem that you actually genuinely care about solving. >> Are you burned out? Like, what do you feel right now? Because you seem energized to me.

>> I'm I'm energized. I'm I'm actually really energized. Yeah, I would say it's funny. M um uh someone who knows Mike and I really well. So, this is actually December. In two weeks, we'll have hit eight years of Block Works. We've we there's es and flows, right? like we've been really burned out at periods of time. Usually we're not burned out together. Usually one point Mike is burned out and I'm energized or I'm burnt out and Mike is energized. Uh someone who knows Mike and I really well and has um has seen us build block works said, "I've never seen the two of you so energized at the same time." Um or I haven't seen you guys so energized at the same time in in a while. And I think it's because we found a pro. I mean, it's not public. The thing that we're launching is not public

yet, but we'll we'll share it soon. um the problem that we are trying to solve now is the problem that I would love to spend at least the next 10 years of my life on and that's why that's why it's energizing and when you when you're able to have I think when you're able to think like that it it just unlocks a lot of clarity so >> yeah I think to your I think that was perfectly well said around you know are you solving for a problem that and solving for a customer base that you want to serve over a long period of time, right? The the incentives in crypto and I think Ken kind of makes this point and Nick makes this point a little bit. The incentives have all been a little bit misaligned, right? Because it has often been and they talk a little

bit about this with the VCs. It was like, okay, well, you know, what are the things that have a lot of users and a lot of volume really quickly because that usually correlates to, you know, the token price doing well, which usually correlates to the VCs making money and correlates to the founders making money and all of that can happen relatively quickly because we launched these tokens. why these companies are still early stage startups, right? And so that misaligned incentive I think has caused a lot of people to build to make money and venture capitalists to, you know, back things to make money because, you know, that's what my LPs asked me to do and that's my business, but aren't necessarily things that people believe are or they want to spend their time on or they believe in, right? And so to your point, the more you can spend time

on the things that excite you over a long period of time and the more freedom you have to do that like that you are going to be better off. And I I one of the things that I would say is you know if you look at the early days of of fintech right or this you know most recent fintech wave you look at like Robin Hood which started you know call it 12 years ago now or 13 years ago now and for years there was all this talk about how Robin Hood was just gifying trading. They were making it a gambling platform. It was a net bad for everybody involved. There's just absolutely no reason this thing should exist. Why are we doing this type of stuff in fintech?

Right? And Vlad and and his and his co-founder spent, you know, call it the last 13 years building what is now probably the newest generation of a bank for people of our age, right? And, you know, building like now broad broader financial access, broader financial products, and really trying to create the next generation finan financial institution, right? And I think in many ways there are a lot of crypto companies that are going to follow that same trajectory. And so just you know finding a wedge product that maybe has you know call it more speculation in it and allows access for humans to do the things they want to do right we are not forcing humans to do anything else uh but to build for you know call it a broader mission. That's something that

if you can get excited about it makes complete sense and I think you know people enter a long period of time. >> Yeah. And the last thing on this note is um and I do want to talk about forecaster. I want to get your take on it is I I I forget who said it. Someone said crypto is the ultimate roarch test, right? It's like it's um people project their own belief and fears and hopes and biases into whatever they're building. And if you see uh crypto is just one big casino and it just like I actually think that's more indicative of how you kind of view the world and it's a bit of a pessimistic view on the world. Yeah.

Things are be becoming super financialized like hyperfinancialization. Yes, tough to put that genie back in the bottle. If you see if you're just if you get really pessimistic about the future um when you think about that, I feel like that's more indicative of just your underlying views about how you view the world and yeah, like are you an optimistic person or a pessimistic person? Are you a hopeful person or um or or or not? Like are you fearful or excited? Um, and I think that one easy way to hack that if you are not naturally an optimistic person is to actually try to maybe think about who your again who your customer is actually. And if you go talk to a lot of the traders, like I feel like there's a

if you go if you go talk to a lot of the kind of anon traders on Twitter, they genuinely are pretty skeptical, pessimistic people. They're great. They've made a lot of money. They've done extremely well for themselves. They're pretty pessimistic, skeptical people. So if those are your core customers that you're talking to every single day and that's making you miserable, it's going to make your company miserable. You're not going to do well. It kind of all feeds on itself. So that's just a thing I would think about. >> Yeah. And I I'll make one broader point which is I don't really think this has anything to do with crypto, right? Like hyper financialization is not a crypto specific point, right? There's I think there was um an article >> pull up any pull up any sports game and you will see gambling on every you know

in in the words of every announcer, right? So >> everything I I think there was I saw a tweet yesterday that was for the first time ever that's now ticking up that like young men are seeing sports gambling as a bad thing, but they it wasn't or they're more likely than ever to see it as a bad thing. That wasn't true until recently, right? and the uh and then you you know obviously we just talked about Robin Hood and how you know significant amount of its volume is in call it the zero day options right we've talked a lot about okay well prediction markets are you know way for people they're very social people like want to have conversations around and they want to use poly market as a sort of a a way to engage with their friends around you know certain you know call it you know

current events but you know it has added f you know finance to that and now the way people engage with social media is now all around financialization as well, right? When we think about the payments that you get on Twitter or you know there's a lot of what we've seen uh on on Tik Tok and others. And so I think the reality is is that we've broken up the aperture, but I think that does had pe that does wear on people a little bit when everything is about finance. Crypto is an easier way to create a permissionless, you know, financial product, but it is just part of the cultural zeitgeist that is happening right now. And everything in life is a pendulum, right? Hyperfinancialization

is a pendulum that will probably swing back the other way. some of the the people that were most bullish, you know, hyper financialization, uh, you know, a few years ago. I'm actually hear seeing some, you know, things that were written on Twitter over the last couple of weeks that are saying, "Okay, well, like now I'm betting that like we start to go the pendulum starts to come back the other way." And, you know, there's we're seeing, you know, uptakes in religion and uptakes on people trying to turn off their phones and uptakes in people trying to, you know, uh, do other things that, you know, had kind of, you know, gotten, I guess, much further, uh, into, you know, the the culture that, you know, people don't always think are good for you. And so, I don't know. I think crypto is in many ways just a reflection

of you know the the users to your point and its users are you know 25 to 45 year olds who are you know educated and you know often in the tech or finance industry. >> Yeah >> that's it. >> Yeah. Yeah. That but that's changing. That's changing. Actually this is a maybe a good segue. I don't want to spend too much time plugging our own thing but we launched um we launched this thing called light speeded IR today which is an investor relations platform. And kind of the core reason behind it is what we're talking about which is there have been these phases of crypto right first phase was like the bootstrap era super retail driven Bitcoin talk threads discords telegrams um like really fun er era like very important era um but from an institutional perspective entirely

uninvestable I would say. Uh then came kind of the second phase which is maybe like 2017 to 2023. This is kind of like the scale up era and this is like exchanges professionalized, custody got solved, DeFi protocols found product market fit and really like onchain businesses started to look less like toys and more like companies I would say and I think we just entered phase three which is the institutional era right we've we're talking about stripes chain Robin Hood has a chain CLA has a wallet and a stable coin banks are issuing stable coins prediction markets are integrating with real news outlets or major news outlets. Uh there are real real revenue and cash flows are acrewing on chain. Um and actually what comes

along with this is the marginal buyer is changing. So the marginal buyer basically the flows from the last decade came from two places retail and crypto venture. That was like all the flows in crypto retail and crypto venture. Now the next dollar is coming from uh liquid token funds, multi-asset hedge funds, asset managers, uh macro shops, family offices, eventually I would argue even pensions and endowments. We saw Harvard just increase their Bitcoin exposure 3x. That'll eventually crypto uh trickle down to crypto tokens. Um and so anyways, long story short, we launched this investor relations platform. We think it's way too hard to diligence tokens today. Way too hard to look at tokens. Everything's really fragmented.

You don't trust the numbers. Um and so we launched a so that's on the investor seat. For companies with for protocols with tokens, it's really hard to keep track of your investors, right? You don't know who holds your token. You don't know if they're located in Singapore or Abu Dhabi or New York. You don't know if they work in crypto if they don't. There's no way to communicate with your basically with your shareholders. Um, and so we launched this platform. So, we're excited about it. You guys should, it's you guys should check it out. I don't want to shell it too hard on this, but yeah, light speeded.VIP. If you go to light speeded.vip, you can get we're launching it in Q1, but we're giving a couple people early access. So, yeah.

Light speeded.VIP. There's a button. It should say get access. Click it. Apply. It's cool. >> All right. When I when I do it after this, you're Are you going to give me access? I'll give you access. >> I got you. Okay. I got you. >> Perks. >> Perks, baby. Perks. Yeah, it's cool. It's um it's like if you run a fund, our hope is that Lightseed IR kind of becomes your your hub for Salana information. And if you're Yeah. building on Salana, it kind of becomes your hub to connect with investors. Um and so yeah, we're excited about it. We think in we think broad zooming out from our platform uh because people can go check it out if they want. Broadly speaking, I think investor relations is not something that's done in crypto today very well. There are a few teams that do it. Maple hosts quarterly calls

like you know I've seen some people do quarterly calls and quarterly reports and things like that. I think we'll wake up a you know I think 2026 is the year that uh investor relations becomes a core function of teams. I think it becomes a team a team inside these companies just like it exists in normal capital markets right you have an IR team you have a columns team a marketing team product team you also have an IR team. I think that'll end up happening in crypto. I mean, it has to, right? And to your point around the people that you talked about, a lot of them are, you know, people that have real revenue, right, and real cash flow. Yeah.

>> And that are trying to build for the long run. >> They should do it because it's a way to stand out if they're actually building something real. Like I was I was I saw Brian Pellegrino um of from Layer Zero on a podcast. He's like, you know, our target is getting to 100 million AR in the relatively near future. That's that's a real business. >> You got to talk about that. You got to talk about that and communicate that message to investors. So this episode of Empire is brought to you by VanX onchain economy ETF Node. If you feel like you are constantly missing alpha, never have time to scroll through crypto Twitter, Node is for you. Node is actively managed by an experienced team with years in both trady and crypto. That team at Node looks to capture the most powerful trends across all of crypto

while actively managing volatility as markets evolve. Super important in today's environment. Check out Node's track record. so far at van.com/mpire/node. That's van.com/mpire/node. You can also little easier just click the link in the show notes. Thanks to Van and Vanex onchain economy ETF node for making today's episode of Empire possible. The unis swap trading API solves the problem of adding crypto to your products without the hassle of needing deep crypto expertise, ongoing maintenance or liquidity aggregation.

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Thanks to Uniswap for making today's episode possible. As always, investments in blockchain technology involve risk terms and conditions apply. Let's talk Farcaster. So Dan, so um Dan Romero, the founder of Farcaster, um posted on Farcaster and said uh yes, basically state of Farcaster. Let me pull up this post says state of Farcaster December 2025. We've been working on Farcaster for 5 years. The goal has always been to build an atscale decentralized social networking protocol with a billion people using it. Hard problem. And while we've made progress, we're still orders of magnitude away from achieving the goal. Since the early days, we've

believed two things matter most. Sufficient decentralization and productled protocol development. Uh we spent the last four and a half years with a social first strategy. We shipped a working version of the protocol that was sufficiently decentralized. We allowed multiple independent teams to permissionlessly build on it and integrate it. However, despite many different attempts, we haven't been able to find a sustainable growth uh mechanism for the Twitter-like social network, i.e. we have not found product market fit. And so they're actually they're they're pivoting. Um they are he said we're we're focused on building a great wallet and we'll get more people to use it. Every new retain wallet user is a new user for the protocol. We tried social for four and a half years. It didn't work for us.

Wallet has been growing. So we're doubling down on that direction. Um so TLDDR forecaster raised like I think it was 150 200 million to go build a kind of decentralized social >> 180 in total across two rounds. Yeah. >> 180. Okay. Um raised at 180 to go build this new social platform. Hasn't really got track too much traction. And I think probably around 25 30,000 maybe monthly active users or weekly active, you know, kind of they've got tens of thousands of users, not hundreds of thousands, not millions. Um, and yeah, they're and they're they're pivoting. So they've got this wallet that's it's a great wallet experience. I've used it a few times.

Um, but they're pivoting to build a wallet. What do you think about what Yeah, I guess when you see I don't are first off, are you guys investors? And second, what what do you think about this pivot? >> So we're not investors. Uh I think listen the pip makes complete sense to me right and so you know they last raised I think it was 150 million bucks around early 2024 right so we're talking it's been you know call it a year and a half to two years they've since they did that the there's been a conversation for a long time this goes all the way back to 2021 around let's call it you know and honestly actually way before that around you know what I would say the Chris Dixon view of the world, the read,

write, own view of the world, right? Where it was, hey, listen, if I can have ownership of underlying protocols and networks, um I can have ownership of assets that aren't just monetary, but allow me to participate and other types of networks and then they are I'm more likely to incentivize to do them, right? And so that means that blockchains will not just be good for monetary assets, but they'll be good for all types of assets, right? And forecaster was kind of built on this idea that you could build a better network of socially like-minded people uh and a better social graph through decentralization and through the use of tokens and um

etc. And you know, a lot of really really smart people uh believed in that future. And it could be by the way that they're just too early, right? And so you know that round that they raised $150 million at there. I think Paradigm led it, Benz was in it, Han Uni Square Ventures, Variant, you know, Coinbase and Ribbit and Multicoin are also investors, right? Like there's a lot of really incredible investors in there. But what we've seen so far is that, you know, there just hasn't really been um a uptake for that reason on any of the social products.

the products. And the way people define how they're where they spend their time when it comes to social is are they uh addicted to in some way this product because are they meeting their interests and their friends and serving the you know that dopamine hit uh where you know in a way that is you know new and novel right and so if I think about the history of social you know what we essentially had was that you know Facebook allowed us to build a uh a social graph with our friends, right?

And to see what our friends were saying. Instagram allowed us to see a social graph with our friends, but to do so with a picture format. Tik Tok came along, Twitter came along, and Tik Tok came along and they allowed us to see a little bit of different types of graphs, right? Because now it was more of an interest graph, right? Like it's not just okay, what are my friends doing, but if my friends are interested in something, then maybe that is interesting to me as well. And is there a way to you know build my build me the excitement around using this platform because of that. Right? Farcaster always seemed to take the point of view that they were in some many ways recreating what already existed but doing so with a different ethos and in my experience

that is just not how product works right and that is not how people get decide to use something new. So you have to build something new and novel. So it hasn't worked and that's fine, right? Like you know that's the history of startups. And so this pivot, what it really looks like to me is they're embracing what is working what which is people want to engage in financial activities on blockchain rails and that actually frankly could be a good top of funnel for them to make the social work, right? And so actually like in some ways people see it as or I've heard some conversation around oh well they're you know kind of going away their original ethos but if the ethos is to get people to use their social product well it

might be true that you know this is more social than ever because finance is part of being social. So I I think it's a great uh pivot for them. I listen you know I have um nothing but you know well wishes for them. I'm not really a forecaster user but I've got an account and you know I hope it goes well for them. >> Yeah. Yeah. I have similar thoughts. I mean, one is just social is really, really, really freaking hard. Um, you have massive incumbents with crazy network effects like Tik Tok and Instagram and stuff like that. And it's like, yeah, you just have to you have to have a differentiated product or find a niche or or you're not going to win. And you said that people repeated that at Nauseium, so I won't say anything else on that. The other big bucket though is

I think we have been overweight on people wanting to own their own data. Remember if when forecaster started it was hey you can port your social graph you can port your imagine if you could leave Instagram and go join t I forget what the like what what that pitch even looks like now because it doesn't even make fully make sense in my make sense in my head but it's like uh the portability and monetization of your data um was I think one of the core premises of of caster and it turns out either people don't care about that or people don't care about that yet and I I it does feel like to me the world's actually going in the opposite direction. I was just spending a bunch of time with um on Have you heard of W H O P.

>> I've got a I know somebody that works there. >> Yeah. So, they're if you haven't heard of them, they're incredibly hot startup. A lot of people like you know, a lot of people are talking about them. They just hired this very good machine learning person from Facebook. Got a lot of attention. Anyways, they let people one of one of the uh hottest ways to make money on is actually just like sending your own data to these AI companies. Um, and people get paid to do that. And I actually think that's the way the world is trending is people care way less than c crypto people like to think about like their privacy and their data. And actually, if you can get paid for it, we'll or or gain publicity or reputation or power or money or whatever

it is, you'll give all your data away. Um, and I mean, we're giving data right now to we're going to publish this on Twitter. We're giving that to Twitter for free. Why? Engagement and distribution and things like that. And so, yeah, I think this idea of data portability and monetization just maybe isn't as strong as crypto people thought it would have been originally. Time and again we have seen for mass appeal products that you know having privacy does not matter right so if it is a product that requires you to go to uh get a large amount of people to use it that then kind of creates this like flywheel or this moat there's it's just privacy is not a wedge right privacy

matters for subset of people mattered for a lot of you know really crypton natives but it just hasn't matter mattered for mass appeal and I don't think, you know, maybe we'll get to a point where we'll be under such mass surveillance, which is kind of already happening, but people don't seem to care. But maybe we'll get to a point where in the future, you know, call it, you know, a mass, you know, conglomerate of people care about that, but it just hasn't been true yet. And so, it could just be early, but it's not um it's not a wedge. And if people try to pitch me on that wedge today, it's it's really hard for us to get excited about that event outcome. The last thing I'd say is whenever we build bad products at Block Works, it's because we sit on our high horse and think that the market could

want this potentially. And whenever we build really good products and end up making a lot of money, it's because we just go talk to our customers and ask them what they want and then we try to build the best product in the market for that. Um, actually someone who's kind of taught me this is u the uh like guy at Athena. I think I think Athena has not tried to reinvent the wheel too much. They've just they just make marginally better products than all the time than everyone. And what I'm thinking about right the reason I'm kind of bringing Athena up here is I was just looking at uh their hyena product before this podcast is like um if you're tra it's not some revolutionary product but now if you're trading per um and use USDC as collateral you can earn interest. It's

very small thing. Um >> USD mean >> USD? Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. um you can get paid s USD rates to trade the same per as if you were trading with USDC as the collateral and getting no interest and it's a very small thing but the market wants it. So anyways I don't mean to shill Athena there but it was just like it's a it's an example of like just go talk to your customers and I think build what they want and try to solve their their their here and now pain points. >> Yeah, I 100% agree. Like and and that's you know obviously what Farcaster is doing here, right? They're they're going and finding the customers where they're at instead of trying to build a product for where they want the customers to be.

So, you know, congrats on on them trying to, you know, making this move. >> Yeah. Content of the week. Rob, what do we got? >> Content of the week. All right. Um, I I last week I showed uh A Very Jonas Christmas and I don't know if you if you heard that and I got a little bit of hate for, you know, my my Christmas movies. >> So, this week uh I would just say I'm in a rewatch of Succession right now. I feel like I've got a little bit of time around the holidays here and I I forgot just how funny Succession is. like it is just so funny. And so, um, that's my my

content of the week, re-watching Succession. >> I have a I have a movie for you which I think you will like. Um, it's kind of thriller horrory. It's called The Menu. Have you ever heard of this? It's uh >> I have. I've seen it. Yeah. >> You've seen it. Do Do you like it? >> Yeah, The Menu is cool. It's like a cool movie. Yeah. Well, cuz I I I will also say, and I'm going to get now hate for this as well. Um, I also consider myself a little bit of a foodie and so I've eaten at a lot of like, you know, uh, a lot of restaurants that I think that that movie is is trying to make fun of. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. So, anyways, that was the movie. It's it's a decent movie. It's called The Menu. Rob, good to be back with you. Booted Santi

this week. Maybe next week we'll get three of us. >> You know, I am excited. We should go do a in person around the holidays. >> Let's do it. I think let's do uh I think next week we will do our predictions podcast. >> All right. All right, let's do predictions in person next Thursday. >> Done. Lock it in. All right, folks. Have a good weekend. See you Monday. Thanks.