Will Cosmos Reach its Full Potential?

Transcript

[Music] I'm here with kryptoo on the crypto casting couch at the hayatt hey man bro how you doing yeah I'm good I'm good how's how you feeling day three I think day three is always like you know everyone has their routine like the speakers kind of know where to be where to go the MC's I think they is always like the most chill out of the three even though it's obviously still a lot that's going on but I'm very proud I don't know and I

never ra today three I only had two day conferences so feeling like for everything to be fine I mean like day three is always like the the day where you're like is anyone showing up to this like day one is always like the first day you you you can be quite confident a lot of people show up but it's always like are people actually staying like is the program interest enough interesting enough right I think so far it's been good like everyone is uh networking talking yeah listening to the talk so yeah know the V venue this year is really good I mean you've had like great venues I think um for the for the four years um and venue is good um food's been really good I got to say it's like

pretty pretty phenomenal yeah and and also there's a good group of people here I mean considering we've been talked about this throughout the week but you know there's a there I think I think there is a sense in Cosmos that this is the bottom yeah yeah and uh and can it get any worse yeah I saw that that t-shirt yesterday how much worse can it get yeah and uh I think the people here are really the True Believers the ogs the the the people who have like really you know drank the Kool-Aid and uh I had a panel yesterday where out of context this might sound a little bit weird but basically Cosmos is the Isis of crypto I seen

that never you know we never give up it's like to thick and thin and uh and we go in and we conquer and and the people we conquer they they stay forever um or something like that yeah I mean I feel like and and there's still a lot of them right like it's not like okay there's like 50 people we actually like over over a thousand people like actually check in right like way over a thousand like cumulatively over over the days obviously and like we's different breakout rooms it dilutes a lot but I think every room was packed the exhibition area was packed um the feedback I'm getting from projects and exhibitors and sponsors is amazing which is a lot of thing like one you want to make sure a lot of people are there two you want to make sure sponsors are happy

right those are the two main things for running a conference yeah and then three obviously no major fuckups on like any anything can always happen but yeah I think like I say like Cosmos whenever when I got into Cosmos which I think was much later than you got in like for me it was like early 2022 late 2020 or something like that but I think I always had this feeling like it's a very serious Builder driven ecosystem and I think this year customers because we don't have like you know the itum 2.0 hype up leading to the conference which everyone was really excited about it was a big flop we had always you know attempted to um kind of make customers also platform

where these big announcements can be communicated but I think this year we just let it let it go you know like just go with a float you know let the gig your brains I wanted to make sure also like let's not call any presentation like special announcement or something like I scrunch it from it from the agenda and I think the fact that like this year no one is really like pushing or forcing it almost to like make something big yeah actually is the real value because now you have you know a lot of productive even fire sites on stage right we had yesterday we had a a panel that was scheduled for 25 minutes ended up talking for 48 minutes so like there's just a lot of like actual productive conversations on stage even

and I think this is a True Value right on the workshops and the developer stage and like getting everyone together from all over the world right which is another thing right like the logistics behind all this 50 plus Nations I think are here right now and getting them to see each other for just one week I think this is like the most valuable thing yeah I think there was some there was some Dubai fud before the conference people were like why isn't Dubai and but actually it works out quite well because it's really sort of central between east and west and there are a lot of people been in Cosmos India yeah exactly southeast Asia and um this is kind of a perfect spot for all the Europeans and Americans to and also you know people one of the reasons why I moved here yeah

like a year and a half ago but I think we always have fought I mean lisban obviously was like super last minute we pulled us off within a month it was the first time after covid yeah Med in huge FS oh my God BR like we're gonna get like the whole narrative about and all this stuff right turkey plus by way we also had elections in Colombia and I remember even like locals right and it's very political but they said if Petro wins the elections we're not going to do customers and like imagine always having this in your mind like if he's going to win and the elections were in like August or even or like a month or two before the event right and he won he's still the president now but nothing

happened um then we had um turkey also elections and also plus the earthquake in Turkey like a few months before that yeah plus the whole like kind of Middle East yeah stuff that was the kind yeah like the beginnings of even now right like I received messages like two weeks ago from someone like like I got a notification from my alline like that there might be delays or cancellations of my flight because obviously Iran is like just you know across the the sea from Dubai so it's like yeah it's but this is also like the state of the world right now I think yeah a lot of geopolitical uncertainties all over the world right even in Europe I mean I think there was also a lot of fud in Europe so doing conferences is really really hard if anybody thinks about

doing an event don't do it don't do it I do it is a financial nightmare you're taking on huge risk a lot of unknowns remember the the floods we had in April yeah this was the day of Cosmos Dubai we had a huge end up with all these guys we had to cancel it because of floods in the middle of the desert like wild stuff so don't touch your man don't do it so I mean like why are you doing this why why uh why are you think I know I mean the I've been doing events like three years before I got into C right like I've I I love events because that's how I got into crypto like I was an exchange student in in China in 2018 and that's where I really got into crypto and it helped me

so I started doing events for others and it was just like we had zero funding it was all like you know just like just for fun like getting people together so much value to like learn from each other connect and all these kind of things so I did this for two years in in China and in Asia actually I did a conference in col colia and Argentina in 2019 as well and then Co hit and then cosw war was kind of the first event after this year of covid was like I've done events before I know how much value it is but obviously now three years later like Cosmo turned into this giant organization right it's like multiple things involved like on a financial side

of things organization even internally right like how do we structure this organization company where where's the legal kind of frame around this yeah there's so much now that's like it became this huge thing where like okay I kind of need to figure out how how to continue doing this under these circumstances that we are now right because we are not anymore this like oh let's get a few custom guys together and like have a we can maybe go back to this I don't know but I think customers deserves something like this it urgently needs it you saw probably the pictures of breakpoint and how they just took over Singapore with 5,000 people and this huge event was which was probably an eight figure event or at least a high seven figure events to put together for two days we have a full week here so

there's a lot of cost involved a lot of resources not just Financial Resources but also like HR and like strategic planning so yeah and like it definitely evolved over the years but I think it's definitely something Cosmos needs as like almost like a public goods in the end of the day right yeah I think I think cosmoverse feels very much like a public good and S this week or so echoed that sentiment yeah you know events events are I think anybody who does events will will this will resonate with them like events are hard to do and I was just at Salt Lake at permission list and we did a podcast with Jason uh from block works and his his vision on events is that like you're either you know like

an an event is a single Market a single-sided marketplace where you just like bring people in and they're all in it for networking yes and you you you booster up that Marketplace by getting speakers on stage yes which is sort of like an obvious thing right but but to sort of articulate that way then also that um events sort of fall into two categories according to him one are the sort of really big events right the token 249s the web 3 Summits Etc and those are the ones that make money but yeah but also those are the ones that dute the quality of the content so much and of the of the networking just because of so many people and then you have this other category of events that are super Niche yeah and take um allow kind of two sides of the marketplace

like the service providers yeah the takers and the right and the service providers and those who want to meet them uh so like in the event like Das for example where you have institutions and you have like people War me institutions yeah then you have all this category in the middle and those are the ones that are are hardest and I think that like events like cos are sort of Fallen that never sum too right we fall into kind of this Middle where um it's you know you don't want to become I think like a token 2049 right I mean like the way is where do you go from here I mean the way I think about cosmus is like also in the co kind of Cosmos terminology right um I consider cosmus to be like an F specific conference and they are general purpose conferences

right so token is a general purpose conference I think it's much needed right 10,000 people huge like hundreds of side events everyone goes to party you don't really come come for a token right you come for for the experience the idea the exper exactly the experience right you get a nice trip to Singapore or Dubai one like actually twice a year because they're doing it twice now which is insane to like pull together but they have like almost a monopoly in this and I think conferences like you're saying right you have this two or three conferences that are probably making insane profits and that's fair enough right like I think they're probably took on huge risk in the early days they have done this for many many years so welld deserved amazing job but I think cosm is a much more productive

conference right we have a lot more developers leading up to this you talked about it earlier right India is super close Dubai is not known for being a developer hards spot so I'm like okay how do we Source Developers for hcmos because there are no huge developer communities here in Dubai right so we have to go to India right India is a 2hour flight away for pretty much all the you know Bangalore Hyderabad da Mumbai is 2 hours away it's 100 bucks 150 round trip right yeah easy so we did this whole campaign in India like getting people to to get excited about what we're doing and cost doing hackathons and like smaller yeah meetups and stuff so the way like customers is basically four events in one week right we have our speakers and sponsors dinner which is

the first opening yeah then we have three days of the main conference cross hor and then we have the after party which is always something that you know I think is is a nice way to kind of end it yeah and then those that are staying for our hacker on hecas right this is like purely for developers so yeah for for hecas specifically you have to think about it like its own events basically right entirely own event so for that we went to India with a bunch of events there sourcing developers with zero funding like we had zero funding we we had some sponsors but zero funding as in like okay you need a treasury actually because if there's something that goes wrong let's say a flood let's say something right and we had this like

it's not it's not just the oh worst case is actually what happened who's going to bail us out like who do I call like the ICF maybe I mean I wouldn't call them first and I hope they bail us out but um that's the kind of risk here but and you do events you know you're in the same position right um so yeah that's kind of we're like a sovereign organization running a specific conference and but I mean we do have a lot of strong support from like you know on Mantra ICF is one of the major sponsors this year actually the largest sponsor for custom that's great um The custos Hub also right Osmos is those are our five headline sponsors

um but I also want to realign Celestia I want to realign barain Saga fet AI right all these teams and projects need to fully rally behind cosm otherwise it's like just half of the cosmos right and I think a lot of people that came here also they might have come with the impression like oh atom is Cosmos but it's actually just an idea of like sovereignty and interruptibility right and once you see all these projects you're like this is amazing and like the feedback we got was great um so people enjoy it and yeah it's it's a very diverse audience that we want to attract I want to come back to this idea of like branding because this is a topic that been kind going around the ecosystem for a while now and

and I think is uh it's like a t it's a tough nut to crack you know even for us as a fun um I've noticed how people H how the how the narratives uh how that narrative sort of impacts investors how the proed fund like when you say you're Cosmos fund like some some some some get excited about it but some are like H you know and you realize that actually those are the people who think that Cosmos is the Hub um and and there's a lot of I think there's a lot of teams also you know like SL Babylon you maybe like say injective that use Cosmos Tech but don't really align line with the brand um even though they're using the tech and they're bitting from the tech and I

think like that's great so like what do you what do you think is the the main issue here that people have identifying with Cosmos branding and you how do we get out how do we get over that basically we had a lot of trauma obviously and I think also this this probably just a natural side effect of like true open governance which is probably the end game for decentralization but it also always gets super poit I we obviously also have these like old histories which I'm not even like fully aware of and don't even care about it to be honest like between individuals or individual organizations right like you did this you did that obviously we have this kind of background and I think it's important to

understand also the origin story the founder story and all this stuff just to be aware but I think the second thing is also like this new idea of app chains the internet of blockchains which kind of only customers truly like has built right I think there was a time when Po and Cosmos were at the same like on the same line but then P buildt out a shared security environment around dot which was great for the dot price and everything and Cosmos basically sacrificed atom for building out IBC and getting IBC adopted left and right right so I think the cosmos approach is probably the more sustainable one and we're seeing it with more and more teams choosing the cosos already interchange

stack so I think that's that's another thing that will just naturally like you know the market will adjust or I mean the question is also like does it even have to like be okay I'm bullish on CMOS now or is it just like okay you you can be bullish on fetch you can be bullish on bar chain on million on Babylon you don't have to be bullish on Cosmos but all these chains are Cosmos chains like it doesn't matter right or do we say okay we Gratch the term Cosmos from our minds no more Cosmos we just talk about interchain which is a more neutral and if you think about interchain it's just like a neutral term that where you don't immediately associate a coin or chain to it because I think a lot of people still associate atom to the term Cosmos right

and I think that's one of the things what we're doing this year with the introduction of tracks where we're not making it about Cosmos anymore but we make it about Bitcoin AI gaming in nfts Enterprise like different tracks right so it's about the actual vertical and not about a cosmos shill Fest right so that's one of the ideas but yeah it's it's it needs to be like continuously put out there and yeah we'll see if that's has any major impacts but yeah I don't know I've been I I agree I've been saying this for years like um that I think we need to um the cosmos has a branding problem and and we need to like clearly clearly

differentiate what is the Hub and what represents kind of the technology stack and and maybe the chains that are building on that technology stack but you know in the long run you I like to I like this analogy of the the Linux ecosystem and you know we all use we all use Linux every time you use a Mac or or or an iPhone or an Android you're using like a a version of Linux that was you know highly optimized and built for ux but nobody nobody cares right and like it doesn't matter but like all the fighting that went around in like the 19 90s uh with all these nerds fighting about like which Dr was best uh ended up producing this really great foundations for building operating systems I think like Cosmos kind of

resembles that in my mind a little bit yeah um what's what what are you most excited about like what what have you seen this week that really excited right now I'm was excited sleeping for a week but honestly like you said in the intro like there's a lot of quality people the feedback I'm also getting from like local uad based people that have been to a lot of conferences in BLS here in Dubai is like this is one of the highest standards I I bet and I think this is yeah and the thing is like I think this is also what Dubai needs as a location right because Dubai you know still has like I said earlier also like people still have kind of their you know thoughts or Prejudice I think is a word about like how to buy is and

like there's some things that are true in terms of like you know the quality of events here there's a lot of like projects or events that you never even heard about but they attract like 2,000 people like what who are these people like I don't know and I think customer you know those people many of them being for the first time in Dubai like they're actually True Builders and like true ogs in the space right like yourself I mean and you have a lot of them right hundreds of them maybe like a thousand of them almost so I think this also great for Dubai to see like oh okay like Cosmos actually has a lot of like quality people and teams and Builders so this is like I think always the thing

that I'm like I want to make sure that we have a quality attendance yeah because that's only about I think also this what um Jason or or yon from from block Works was was saying like I read he did a whole recap on on Main right where per sorry I was mix this up but yeah he made a whole recap about it and like I think a lot of the things also resonate a lot with how I see it and um one of the things also like sure like on on pictures and videos it looks amazing if you have 5,000 people right and we want that right kasos needs it we all need influx of retail all these kind of things but having a a smaller crowd but high standard high quality is actually much better you actually want that over

let's just fill it up just for the sake of having nice pictures yeah you actually want the opposite which is like probably less people but focus more on quality people so and the feedback we're getting so this is what I'm mostly excited about that like Cosmos is still this ecosystem that's like highly respected mer was there yesterday from the Solana ecosystem right that was great and he had a good time I don't think he would show up to like just any conference right I think this also like represents kind of the cosmos the the kind of value that cosos has or or the standing it has in in all crypto yeah absolutely well thanks for doing the hard work yeah thanks for the support over the years you've been uh there since the beginning I mean you've

been there since lisan right I have been at every cosmoverse since yeah you're four four yeah four four ni year we might just do a big Zoom call what a big Zoom call a big Zoom call all thank you all right bro thank you so much dude great [Music] [Music]