What it takes to bring crypto to a billion users

Transcript

so would you rather have started your new industry and the next generation of financial infrastructure with porn or with you know actually just enabling International payments to you know dissidents in other countries it's like I got to tell you where I fall there right GM good morning welcome to the milroad show The Daily crypto show that says smooth as a well AED whiskey minus the hangover I'm your host Jay Hamilton and today we're talking about the levers that are impacting Innovation and adoption necessary for blockchain to be used by billions we all talk about it all the time but when is it going to happen and why is it not happening faster here to guide us through exactly that today is Dean Tribble CEO at agoric

Dean welcome to the show thank you much so much for having me super excited to have you because you bring a veteran perspective to an industry that we do not have enough silver hair in you're a silver haired Fox and that's what we love to see and when we zoom out for a minute where we're at right now is we've got about 550 million people that own crypto worldwide now that's just crypto ownership only about 50 million of those are monthly active users on chain 50 million that's it that's less than 1% of the global population crypto is going nowhere if we stick at 50 million and we can't go beyond that so we need more

adoption you've built tech companies before you've participated in a lot of trafi first usage of tech when they used web 2 is crypto's adoption slow or fast when you compare it to other Tech adoption in the past it is odd but I would say it's actually you know on par you know when internet to my mind kind of really went live in like 92 when you could finally do commercial stuff on it instead of just sharing you know academic documents you know even now if you go and ask so what's the value prop of the internet you know people are not are a little bit confused right and so it took a while for that to to to take off I remember in 97 which is now five

years later from the internet starting to take off being in there with banks explaining no here's why the internet's a good thing here's why it's an important thing here's how we maybe Finance should move on there you know and going in you know 98 building brokerage information systems and we just started getting brokerages kind of going you know internet let's dip our toe in and by the time you know we started a project like with Schwab and by the time we left it was over half their revenue it ramped very fast but it's one of those things where you know like these elbow curves it's really seem slow until it it ramps really fast what is in our way right now what are the issues that are causing friction when we talk about adoption or is it is it not that and we just don't have the apps

because we don't have the Innovation so to me I mean those are in some sense connected they're almost the same thing what's in our way is I won't say usability it's it's sort of user Focus if you will you know the the the model that oh you're going to come in to do eth or you're going to come in to do salana and all our users have to buy into our Credo and all it's like no no you can you can get a few thousand people to buy into your vision but if you want to get Mass adoption you have to solve their problem and chain abstraction is now this growing narrative where people are both articulating that and realizing that oh yeah we gotta solve the users's problem and as people now realize that that gives me strong optimism for the the runup you know the next runup the next

Bull Run I want to just chat a little bit about the paint the picture of the developer situation right now on chain and maybe you could compare it to web two you know how many Web Two developers versus how many because that's when we talk about this need for more innovation in order to solve users problems well can't really have you innovation unless you have all starts with the developers and the builders right yeah yeah and and indeed the more developers the more diversity of experience you get so you get actual ux experts to improve the user experience right so you know if you think of here's you know the 2000 developers in Cosmos ecosystem 2,000 developers in the pokadot ecosystem and

maybe you know it's not actually a lot more developers now it's sort of grown a lot this year of salana developers and then you know the big dog of of of 6,000 was Electric Capital estimate of developers that could build a credible application in solidity in ethereum 6,000 is this really small number now take you know that bubble and shrink it down to this tiny little Dot and then you've got web two there are 17 million JavaScript developers so I can't wiggle my hands enough to have it appear on screen how big that is compared that's three orders of magnitude large than 6,000 develop or 18,000 developers all told in the crypto ecosystem we're just

a really long way from engaging most developers at being able to build anything now those 17 million developers some of them are you know they're low-level web developers they can hook up buttons they can do various various things but you know five million of them can build credible apps that means you know there's there's like you know more developers within 20 miles from here than there are well I'm in Silicon Valley so maybe that doesn't count but there are more developers in Denver that can build a web web 2 application than there are crypto developers and probably crypto customers in the world what happens if we have millions of developers in crypto let me turn that question around what does crypto have to

be such that we will have millions of developers right because it's not like they wouldn't show up if there was something for them it's just really hard and really cumbersome and not obvious to these people how they would capture value from this or how where we're at in web 3 helps solve the problems that they're trying to solve for their customers so that you know the guy down the street who's building a web app or the gal down the street who's building a you know a service for the local college or a local business is going to use web 3 to make that application more powerful more interesting serve their customers better and that's not just about oh we need more apps it's we need better

ability to produce those apps in a way that can reach those applications and users speculation is a great use case for crypto no there's no debate right it is not the use case that is going to lead a bunch of developers to say oh I'm going to go work over here in this industry right what's going to lead a bunch of developers developers to do that or lead anybody to do that is just everyday apps that are fun enjoyable that matter in their life that solve their problems not their speculation problems speculation isn't enough of a problem for most and to be clear crypto really delivers also on payments and crossb international payments and a few

other important use cases right so speculation is most of the value and it's a lot of what you hear about but there's real value there as well where is there opportunities when you know you were in those meetings talking to Schwab and the big Banks back in the late 90s telling them about the internet is so hilarious that's not that long ago right yeah yeah well and then you know five years later or 10 years later it's telling them no no cloud is okay let me tell you why the cloud services providers are maybe doing a better job than you you know at at protecting customers information right so you you keep having the same conversation with the same customer you're just telling them what the next tech to jump to is when you're in those meetings or when

you're looking like where are the IND indries where there is Big opportunity for innovation in from crypto and from onchain that that you see that maybe aren't having it yet or that it's early an important way it's early I mean an interesting thing about crypto is it started with payments and it started with interesting Defi and sort of online onchain Financial applications because frankly that was easy right that's also valuable and important and that and there's a lot of money there but if I could just do something that's entirely on chain that means I just need software developers and the ability to deploy and you know and and Twitter or other services to you know to reach some end users to start doing this that's really

valuable you know and some people deride crypto because it's all about financialization my counter to that right is you know video discs CDs DVDs you know all of these things and the internet itself they really grew quickly and exponentially because of porn right so would you rather rather have started your new industry and the next generation of financial infrastructure with porn or with you know actually just enabling International payments to you know dissidents in other countries it's like I gotta tell you where I fall there so what industries could benefit from we're so early that it's just about all of them right you know when when we look at it you know okay you know crypto

is now well I don't know what the number most recently is there was the last number I saw was $1.2 trillion do in liquidity currently scattered across a gazillion different chains in ways that might not be very accessible but that's still a lot of liquidity by comparison the US Freight industry just Freight you know stuff on trucks and stuff on ships is $1.1 trillion dollar in market cap right and that's just in the US right International is more than that you know and and so it's one of those things where there's clearly huge value in getting blockchain with chain of custody with the ability to insurance with ability to high integrity the world economic Forum estimated that it getting chain of custody in blockchain for

Freight would raise world GDP by 5 per. right we're talking tens of trillions of dollars are you serious I am serious 15% increase in world trade and 5% increase in GDP is a really big number a really for something that crypto has not yet even touched right and or just barely touched I mean there have been various efforts but that's one where that that's hard right Freight is hard there's a lot of built-in infra there's a lot of you know I mean you're talking about about something that's actually quite decentralized right in the United States 90% of the packages Transit on a truck from a company that has less than 10 trucks right you know because diesel engine maintenance does not have

economies of scale right and so it's incredibly decentralized and Incredibly economically inefficient and would really benefit from crypto and it's going to take you know another 10 years to get that in there simp simp because you know you're talking to people who maintain you know trucks and they've got you know clear deliverables and stuff they need to do and you've got to have a good solution in order to drop on them and really improve their life I really never thought I would have a conversation about Freight as a narrative in crypto but sorry keep keep going keep going let's talk about something nearer to home ticketing right you know people you know we work with omn in the in the cosmos ecosystem they've got you know deals with they're in they're an India based uh blockchain but they do you know awesome stuff across the several EOS systems you know

producing videos and providing nft ticketing for events and you know they're they're they're growing that retail NF ticketing World in India internationally ticketing is $85 billion in Revenue not Market Gap in Revenue a year that's a really big number and web 3 has barely scratched the surface now five years ago you still had paper tickets right so five years ago it's it was just like Freight there was this you know insurmountable obstacle that it doesn't matter what I've got digitally I go to the thing and there's a person that's collecting a ticket and stuffing it in a box and that was just a problem ironically covid came along everyone

moved touchless QR codes became the thing of the day so now almost every event you go to you know from high school football games on up to NFL from you know the local choir concert to Taylor Swift you got you know you can hold up your ticket on a QR code on your phone or if you have to you can print it out but you know if you've got a mobile phone you can show your ticket and they'll scan it and get you right in and that has really removed a significant barrier to being able to do tickets that use web 3 where I can have it so that there's resale of these nft tickets in a way that the original artist gets a portion of the proceeds and I can have M you know hierarchical nfts that have the

ticket and then the drink tickets and the VIP parking and I can separate this out and give it to my friend because I'm walking or whatever it is right and so we're just at the cusp where some some of those obstacles have fallen away but we haven't been able to step in and take that over and you know and and and and leverage the payoff but 85 billion a year in revenue is sitting there you know waiting for you to someone to tackle Ticket Master right I'll take a piece of that I'll take a piece I think the doj is already going after them I think so we got all the the potential here but when you you use Uber it's so easy it's so simple you open it up on your phone I don't have to sign a transaction I don't have to do any of

the things that you have to do in order you use multiple apps most of the time when you're using onchain and crypto right I gotta have my wallet I gotta have whatever my app is I'm connecting a blind all these things what do we need to do in order to solve that so the important thing for this next growth round is people have realized that that's an issue that's the chain abstraction challenge users want to use crypto asset and services independent of the underlying infrastructure right and you know there you've got the when I sign into Uber andyt a it's easy but B I have no idea whether it's running on Amazon or Google or Azure or whatever right I just push button and I get a ride or you know if I if I'm using a a food app I push button a hamburger get

delivered and I never deal with the maps and I never deal with the payments and you know but even the simple thing I can go to Europe and swipe a credit card and some random place and I get hamburger right and the fact that behind the scenes was vast interesting complex Financial Shenanigans with hedging and foreign exchange and multiple transor I don't care I swipe you know swipe a credit card and get a Hamburg right now in crypto and in finance right you know so a year ago or May right a year ago may you know before that you maybe didn't care which banks were involved in processing your money but suddenly signature and silicon on Valley Bank and and and silvergate and apparently any Bank beginning with an S right was

starting to look shaky right and and suddenly people cared about those particular counterparties right and then Swift got hacked and people cared about that particular transport so it's not that people don't care about those intermediaries it's when they care they care but when they don't you know get the heck out of my way right don't let me have to deal with it right so when I swipe a credit card and get a hamburger I don't think about which bank it went through you know you know except on that one weekend right and so the same with with crypto right if I've got usdc in eath and I want to buy you know a a bad kid on stargaze I want to push button and get it I don't want to have to do six signatures over five chains in order to convert all this stuff and go through

well do I use this marker to that Mark you know I've got to have that and the thing that is missing in crypto right that so first off now a thing that was missing was this chain abstraction Vision the fact that users actually wanted this right because the tribalism got in the way of that and people now realize that that's bad and their users do not care right you know or their potential you customers do not care but the other thing that's missing is we've now lay the tracks we've now connected all these blockchains and we've got modular to create an explosion of yet more blockchains that we will connect but you have to hand carry your assets across them right we've got roads we have no cars we have no trains right you know you've got a hand Carri across it

in the case where I want to push button and have my you know my usdc over here buy me an nft over there and then take it and go put it in that market on yet a third place that process that programming across all these different chains is what we call orchestration and that's really hard and that's the thing you know that that that that you know in web 2 that's largely been solved that's why you get Uber and lift and you can push a button and get a car or you can get a hamburger or you can get a flight it's because they're softw in for can reach across and and orchestrate all the asynchronous activities happening on all these different services but to a first approximation agoric uniquely is bringing that to web 3 and you just can't do it elsewhere it turns out to be

really hard what ends up happening is you see a bunch of chain abstraction vendors people talking about it you know near particle you know one balance Etc right and what they're really doing is they're doing some subset where they can reach across multiple of these and maybe they can move your funds but it's not it's not it's running offchain to do that stuff onchain right you know and you know Skip right you know they run a thing to figure out offchain what the route is and then they can present you transactions that you will sign to go through the route and that's great but the process is not being run in a web three way it's not being run in a smart contract running on a chain and that's you know that's where we all want to get to that's what you need to get to to get

to the next level of an economy where you've got where well we can talk about what the next level of economy is like but that's what you need to get to in order to get that next level of economy um and and so that's that's where we're that's where we're at and where we're going the Milkman big fan of orchestration really believes in it because you're solving a big problem whether I don't know if this either teas up your next level economy question or uh how can how can builders get involved in orchestration how can people use orchestration what does that look like and then maybe lead into next level economy a gor.com orchestration come and and and join our program we just rolled out the core of it last week and the apis will be rolling out steadily over

the course of this year we had more and more functionality and more and more reach to get from not just you know our chain to the cosmos ecosystem but across multiple connectivity mechanisms and so forth to evm and Beyond um and so yeah they should absolutely come in join the Early Access program to be in a cohort of applications building on orchestration okay amazing what's the next level economy actually I'll I'll answer another part of that orchestration question first orchestration is not just for new application so that's clearly critical right you know someone who the application of get my usdc from one chain to buy something another turns out to be new no one can do that or rather it's you know people are just starting to come out with solutions to that but it also adds value to existing applications where if you're like I

don't know if if you're familiar with liquid staking applications where I take atom I lock it up I now get yield from the Stak atom but I also have a token that I can use to represent the value of that staked atom so I can participate in defi while still getting yield and double down and you know and get more value out of my asset that is providing security for adom or build for a goric or what have you and the thing is those liquid staking sites the first thing they you do with this new this new token that is you know your liquid staked atom is you take it to another site in order to use it in some other defi thing when they tell you that here's how you can C here here's how you can make use of this they give away the customer right

they've lost customer attention by using orchestration they can have a smart contract running on a gorg that can reach out make the account on that customer's behalf automate the sending of that money get the you know deployed in a pool bring back the you know the steps of that pool keep going on to do richer and richer activity automated on behalf of the user right that ability to have not just a connected world you can move stuff manually across but to have a world in which Rich programs can do things right you know can can do things across These Chains so now that next level of application is not just payments which is where we started with Bitcoin or you know now we've got some amount of cross chain payments which is great and really valuable but it's just

the baby step it's long lived multiblock you know human time relationships with an economic activity right a mortgage is not a one-time swap right a loan a collateral position a lending position borrowing against my assets a ticket all of these things are outside the box of do your transaction inside of a 5-sec block right you know the blockchain nature of all these smart contracts where everything has to start and end within the same block is limiting what people do and it's one of the main obstacles to reaching the use cases that that the mainstream developers sorry the mainstream users are going to care about

right they care about a ticket and it better not be that I bought the ticket but when I show up at the show it no longer knows who I am or no longer knows that I have this right it's the I have an ongoing relationship that you know that that is done when I published the pictures of of getting dragged off stage for for dancing you know so that's the good I got him to break character this good oh I mean you you had me with the the the porn analogy 10 10 minutes ago so it's important that people know where we came from right yeah it is it is it is I'm I'm now going to put on my bumper sticker that I work in the first tech that didn't start with porn so feels feels like a win for me Dean a really

great episode I really appreciate your time thank you so much for having me Jay this was fun you've got great humor and great wit combined with h that Silver Fox hair I want to know those of you listening in today of the industries we talked about are you interested in any of those are there any we didn't talk about that you'd like to hear hear us talk about more in the show I'm just I got to know is there anybody that's in Freight that's listening to our show I don't think so but if you are give me a shout cuz that's amazing and remember none of this is financial advice investing in crypto is risky and you should only invest what you can afford to lose if you want to support the show smash the like button give us a review wherever you are listening subscribe

comment and we'll see you next time thanks for listening in everybody have a wicked awesome day