POPULARITY
Aujourd'hui, pour cette nouvelle room Solana, Rem retrouve Kougamet, membre actif de la Solana Foundation et responsable du développement européen pour Jito, le principal protocole DeFi infra de Solana.Kouga nous offre une plongée complète dans les coulisses de l'écosystème Solana, qui connaît une forte accélération en 2025, à la fois sur le plan technique, communautaire, et événementiel.Structuration de SolanaKouga rappelle la structuration en deux grands pôles :* Solana Labs, dédié à l'innovation produit (Solana Pay, Solana Devs, Solana Mobile)* Solana Foundation, concentrée sur l'adoption, la gouvernance et le soutien aux buildersIl revient aussi sur le fonctionnement des grants (subventions) pour projets open source à impact. Il insiste sur la clarté, la préparation, et l'alignement avec la vision de la Fondation.Lancement du Solana Phone 2 – "Seeker"Le Seeker, second téléphone de Solana Mobile, marque un nouveau pas dans l'adoption mobile du Web3. Conçu pour les développeurs et les utilisateurs crypto, il intègre un wallet sécurisé, des fonctionnalités natives blockchain, et se positionne comme un outil grand public.Une série d'événements mondiaux à fort impactL'écosystème Solana continue d'avancer à travers une série d'initiatives portées par Colosseum (hackathons) et les Superteams, communautés locales ultra dynamiques. Parmi les moments forts évoqués dans l'épisode :* Accelerate en ce moment à New York* Crossroads, événement majeur rassemblant plusieurs milliers de personnes* The Builder's Mansion, par Superteam France, un bootcamp intensif pour 12 projets sélectionnésL'approche Solana : construire avant de convaincreContrairement à d'autres écosystèmes, Solana ne cherche pas à "convertir" à tout prix. L'approche est claire : donner les outils, les infos, l'accès – et laisser les gens venir d'eux-mêmes.
In this episode, Austin speaks with Brennan Watt, VP of Core Engineering at Anza, about the evolution of Solana's validator clients. The conversation centers on Agave, originally developed at Solana Labs and now, by Anza. Brennan offers perspective on the critical role validator clients play in overall network performance, recounting challenges encountered in 2022 and 2023 and the improvements that have shaped the current landscape. They dive deep on topics such as memory allocation optimizations, the development of the Agave scheduler, and the broader movement toward a multi-client ecosystem. 00:00 - Anza's Origin and Early Challenges with Solana 07:47 - Technical Debt and Development Philosophy 12:58 - Scheduler Innovations and Performance Enhancements 18:19 - Modular Codebase and Future Improvements 22:36 - Governance and Protocol Changes 24:50 - CU Limits and Performance 32:08 - Validator Client Collaboration 35:54 - Future Performance Goals 41:25 - Final Thoughts DISCLAIMER The content herein is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities, options, futures, or other derivatives related to securities in any jurisdiction, nor should not be relied upon as advice to buy, sell or hold any of the foregoing. This content is intended to be general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional advisor. Solana Foundation Foundation and its agents, advisors, council members, officers and employees (the “Foundation Parties”) make no representation or warranties, expressed or implied, as to the accuracy of the information herein and expressly disclaims any and all liability that may be based on such information or any errors or omissions therein. The Foundation Parties shall have no liability whatsoever, under contract, tort, trust or otherwise, to any person arising from or related to the content or any use of the information contained herein by you or any of your representatives. All opinions expressed herein are the speakers' own personal opinions and do not reflect the opinions of any entities.
Blue Alpine Cast - Kryptowährung, News und Analysen (Bitcoin, Ethereum und co)
Raj Gokal is the co-founder of Solana and president of Solana Labs. He also serves on the board of the Solana Foundation. He was previously focused on startups in behavioral health. He was Director of Product at Omada Health; EIR at Rock Health; Co-Founder of Sano, building consumer glucose sensors; and an investor at General Catalyst Partners. He started his career in hedge funds at companies like Meridian Capital Partners. Raj studied Finance at the Wharton School of UPenn.
Gm! This week, we're joined by Anatoly Yakovenko Co-Founder of Solana Labs. We deep dive into Solana transaction fee's, how to remain competitive within crypto, SOL inflation, competing with Apple & Google, does Solana have a moat & so much more. Enjoy! – Follow Mert: https://x.com/0xMert_ Follow Anatoly: https://x.com/aeyakovenko Follow Lightspeed: https://twitter.com/Lightspeedpodhq Subscribe to the Lightspeed Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed Utilize the Solana Dashboard by Blockworks Research: http://solana.blockworksresearch.com/ -- Ledger, the global leader in digital asset security, proudly sponsors the Lightspeed podcast. As Ledger celebrates 10 years of securing 20% of global crypto, it remains the top choice for securing your Solana assets. Buy a LEDGER™ device now and build confidently, knowing your SOL are safe. Buy now on Ledger.com. -- Get top market insights and the latest in crypto news. Subscribe to Blockworks Daily Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter/ -- (00:00) Introduction (01:51) Solana's Transaction Front Running (06:37) Solana Fee Markets (10:18) Composability At Scale (12:50) Competing With L2s (19:43) Ledger Ad (20:20) Synchronous Composability (21:59) Validators (27:06) Solana Inflation (29:16) How Does Solana Compete? (32:31) Execution Is A Moat (35:36) Firedancer (40:47) Solana Mobile (45:25) Competing With Apple & Google (47:04) L1 Business Models (49:49) Solana Bandwidth -- Disclaimers: Lightspeed was kickstarted by a grant from the Solana Foundation. Nothing said on Lightspeed is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Mert, Jack, and our guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.
*SPONSORED CONTENT* Did you miss out on Breakpoint 2024? In partnership with Solana, Real Vision is releasing the best talks from Breakpoint 2024. In this chat, Balaji Srinivasan, author of The Network State, and Raj Gokal, co-founder of Solana and COO of Solana Labs, discuss decentralization, network states, and the Solana ecosystem. Breakpoint is the annual gathering of the worldwide Solana community, hosted by the Solana Foundation. Breakpoint 2024 was held Sept. 20-21 in Singapore. For more information, go to solana.com/breakpoint. DISCLAIMER The content herein is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities, options, futures, or other derivatives related to securities in any jurisdiction, nor should not be relied upon as advice to buy, sell or hold any of the foregoing. This content is intended to be general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional advisor. Solana Foundation Foundation and its agents, advisors, council members, officers and employees (the “Foundation Parties”) make no representation or warranties, expressed or implied, as to the accuracy of the information herein and expressly disclaims any and all liability that may be based on such information or any errors or omissions therein. The Foundation Parties shall have no liability whatsoever, under contract, tort, trust or otherwise, to any person arising from or related to the content or any use of the information contained herein by you or any of your representatives. All opinions expressed herein are the speakers' own personal opinions and do not reflect the opinions of any entities.
What's the future of Web3 gaming? Join us for a special episode of the Solana Startup Series on The Index. Today, we're talking with Guido Pardini, CEO of Shaga, a revolutionary cloud gaming platform born from Solana Labs. Guido takes us on an inspiring journey from his teenage years in Italy, where he immersed himself in 3D printing and the maker movement, to his academic studies in computer science and electrical engineering in Milan. Discover how the 2009 financial crisis ignited his passion for decentralized technologies like Bitcoin, and how those early interests now fuel Shaga's mission to revolutionize gaming by drastically reducing latency through decentralization.We explore the key differences between centralized and decentralized gaming infrastructures and the innovative ways Shaga is solving the latency problem. Shaga's DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network) transforms individual gaming PCs into nodes, distributed near gamers. These nodes share their computing power to enhance the gaming experience, slashing latency and providing seamless, real-time gameplay. Guido also shares the ambitious plan to pilot a decentralized Xbox cloud gaming platform, offering lag-free experiences while giving small game studios access to free cloud infrastructure. Learn why Solana's unique state-on-flight technology was the perfect foundation for this game-changing platform.Don't miss this deep dive into the future of gaming and the transformative potential of decentralized networks.Website: https://www.shaga.xyz/X Channel: https://x.com/playonshagaShow LinksThe Index X ChannelYouTube
In today's episode, we cover Caroline Ellison's two-year prison sentence for her role in the FTX collapse and Sweden's FIU labeling several crypto exchanges as professional money launderers. We also discuss the DOJ's lawsuit against Visa alleging a payments monopoly, Solana Labs' partnership with Google Cloud on a Web3 API, and Telegram's controversial privacy policy shift. Plus, Bitcoin's potential price surge driven by China's recent economic stimulus. Tune in for these stories and more from the world of crypto!Further reading:Breaking: Caroline Ellison sentenced to 2 years in prisonSweden sees crypto exchanges as professional money launderersDOJ sues Visa over alleged payments monopolySolana Labs partners with Google Cloud to launch Web3 APITelegram's policy shift raises privacy concernsBitcoin price target rises to $78K after Chinese stimulus packageThis episode of Rise'n'Crypto is brought to you by Cointelegraph and was hosted by Savannah Fortis. You can follow Savannah on X.Rise'n'Crypto is brought to you by Cointelegraph and is hosted and produced by Robert Baggs. You can follow Robert on Twitter and LinkedIn. Cointelegraph's Twitter: @CointelegraphCointelegraph's website: cointelegraph.comThe views, thoughts and opinions expressed in this podcast are its participants' alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph. This podcast (and any related content) is for entertainment purposes only and does not constitute financial advice, nor should it be taken as such. Everyone must do their own research and make their own decisions. The podcast's participants may or may not own any of the assets mentioned.
Gm! In this episode, we're joined by Emon Motamedi, the Head of Solana Incubator! We discussed Solana Incubator's selection process, the first cohort of projects, and synergies with Solana Mobile. We also dove into the stories behind Sanctum and Meme Royale! Finally, Emon gave his thoughts on evaluating startups on Solana. Enjoy! Grow your company alongside Solana Labs: https://incubator.solanalabs.com/ -- Follow Emon: https://x.com/EmonMotamedi Follow Mert: https://x.com/0xMert_ Follow Jack: https://x.com/whosknave Follow Lightspeed: https://twitter.com/Lightspeedpodhq Subscribe to the Lightspeed Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter/lightspeed -- Access is the new way to support and consume content from your favorite creators. Over 140 subscriptions to select from, spanning from large crypto media to a long tail of talented independent researchers and artists. No paying for subscriptions. Simply stake, consume, and get rewarded. Claim your free subscription through this link. But be quick there is a limited number available! https://tiplink.io/f/2195-aOAlZYc4ARht#Lhr8-0rBdVrxL94ZjOHwVtwxI2OSal2xw6Sz51lYuzU – Step into MyPrize—the online multiplayer crypto casino that lets you battle your friends and play alongside creators. On MyPrize, you're invited to get rowdy and share every victory and defeat with your pals. Because we know the only thing more fun than beating the house is beating your friends. Get started now with a 150% deposit or purchase bonus: https://myprize.com/invite/Lightspeed -- Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/43o3Syk Subscribe on Apple: https://apple.co/3OhiXgV Subscribe on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3OkF7PD Get top market insights and the latest in crypto news. Subscribe to Blockworks Daily Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter/ -- (00:00) Introduction (01:48) Are Incubators Worth It? (10:27) Solana Incubator's Selection Process (14:58) The First Cohort (22:18) Access Protocol Ad (22:59) MyPrize Ad (23:30) Sanctum's Time In The Incubator (31:59) Which Teams From Cohort One Are Underrated? (36:31) Meme Royale's Story (40:42) Synergies With Solana Mobile (44:12) Emon's Shifting Roles (47:15) Evaluating Startups On Solana -- Disclaimers: Lightspeed was kickstarted by a grant from the Solana Foundation. Nothing said on Lightspeed is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Mert, Jack, and our guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.
In this episode, Austin chats with Davis Hard (Solana Labs) to talk about GameShift, a new API designed to streamline blockchain integration for game developers on Solana. GameShift aims to simplify the process of incorporating blockchain elements into games by providing a Rust-based API that intermediates between the game and the blockchain, reducing the need for developers to manage keys and do blockchain development themselves. Davis explains but the technicalities and practicalities of Gameshift, using current and future game projects as case studies. The conversation also touches on the broader context of Solana's gaming ecosystem, the potential of meme coins in web3 gaming, and the hurdles remaining in the adoption of blockchain technology by traditional gaming studios. DISCLAIMERThe content herein is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, and does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities, options, futures, or other derivatives related to securities in any jurisdiction, nor should not be relied upon as advice to buy, sell or hold any of the foregoing. This content is intended to be general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional advisor. Solana Foundation Foundation and its agents, advisors, council members, officers and employees (the “Foundation Parties”) make no representation or warranties, expressed or implied, as to the accuracy of the information herein and expressly disclaims any and all liability that may be based on such information or any errors or omissions therein. The Foundation Parties shall have no liability whatsoever, under contract, tort, trust or otherwise, to any person arising from or related to the content or any use of the information contained herein by you or any of your representatives. All opinions expressed herein are the speakers' own personal opinions and do not reflect the opinions of any entities.
Title: Crypto's Resilient Rhythm - Bitcoin Holds Steady as Titans Clash Summary Paragraph: In a dynamic crypto landscape, Bitcoin demonstrated its resilience by maintaining stability around $69,000, underpinned by the Fed's steadying hand on interest rates and positive inflation data. However, the market witnessed a multifaceted tapestry of events, from legendary trader John Bollinger's insights on Bitcoin's volatility to Solana Labs' innovative blockchain-based loyalty platform, Bond. Amidst this backdrop, Ethereum faced a significant correction, while altcoin predictions hinted at potential gains for meme coins like Dogecoin. Concurrently, the reduction in Bitcoin supply on centralized exchanges fueled optimism, and the Shiba Inu community anticipated an upcoming bull run. The Web3 realm continued to push boundaries with the Epic Games Store launch of the Ethereum-based NFT card battler, "Parallel," and Gamee's Wat Project's remarkable growth on Telegram. HOW CAN SUPPORT? SUBSCRIBE: RARE BITS PODCAST WATCH: RAREBITS LIVE YOUTUBE READ: RARE BITS SUBSTACK Follow on X: BEATBROKER RARE BITS LIVE GET SOME MERCH RARE BITS GEAR:RARE BITS MERCH
Solfate Podcast - Interviews with blockchain founders/builders on Solana
A conversation with Matty, the co-founder of Colosseum and former Head of Growth at the Solana Foundation.❤️
Solana has seen remarkable growth and market capitalization, with its token soaring by 791% over the past year. Despite this surge, the factors driving the popularity and success of meme coins on the Solana network remain uncertain.This episode is sponsored by the Stellar Community FundFollow the show here for more.In this installment of "The Protocol," hosts Brad Keoun, the founding editor of The Protocol Newsletter, and tech journalists Sam Kessler and Margaux Nijkerk, discuss the rise of Solana and the recent craze around meme coins on its platform with guest Anatoly Yakovenko, CEO of Solana Labs.Anatoly delves into his journey into crypto and evaluates the sustainability of meme coin growth, probing its impact on Solana's network. He also tackles the challenge of failed transactions on Solana and outlines upcoming upgrades aimed at addressing priority fees and expanding block size. Throughout the discussion, Anatoly Yakovenko provides insights into Solana's comparison with Ethereum, its competitive landscape and ecosystem, scalability initiatives, roadmap, outage management, security measures, and the business model behind the Solana Phone.Sign Up for THE PROTOCOL NEWSLETTER Takeaways | Solana has experienced significant growth and market cap, with its token up 791% over one year.Meme coins have gained popularity on Solana, but the reasons for their success are unclear.The meme coin craze has stressed Solana's network, leading to a high number of failed transactions.Solana is working on upgrades to address priority fees and improve transaction flow and scheduling. Solana is focused on execution and transmitting information quickly, while Ethereum is focused on settlement.The visions of Solana and Ethereum are different, but they compete because of overlapping use cases and features.Security in blockchain networks does not depend on the majority of the network, but rather on the cryptographic signatures and trust of entities like Circle.The Solana Phone aims to disrupt app stores by offering an app store with no fees, allowing developers to save revenue and provide a better user experience.EPISODE LINKS | Solana Anatoly Yakovenko and Solana Bounce BackSolana Meme Coin Slerf Clocks Higher Trading Volume Than All of EthereumSOL Crosses $200 as Meme Coin Frenzy Bumps Demand for Solana NetworkSolana-Based Crypto Exchange Drift Plans Pre-Launch Market for New Tokens-From Our Sponsor: The Stellar Community Fund (SCF) is an open-application awards program that draws on community input to support developers and startups building on Stellar and Soroban. Accelerate your web3 project today.Apply for Funding at communityfund.stellar.org-The Protocol has been produced and edited by senior producer Michele Musso and our executive producer is Jared Schwartz. Our theme song is “Take Me Back” by Strength To Last.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Solfate Podcast - Interviews with blockchain founders/builders on Solana
A conversation with Toly, the co-founder of Solana Labs and the Solana blockchain.❤️
We catch up with Austin, Head of Strategy at Solana Foundation and former Head of Communications at Solana Labs. In particular, we focus on how Solana continues to differentiate itself from a fast-growing array of challenger blockchain ecosystems with token extensions. We also chat about Solana's emphasis on grassroots growth over top-down business development approaches and how Solana positions itself across a variety of strategic sub sectors within the emergent crypto economy. A great overview from the perspective of one of Solana's most prominent voices. - - Time Stamps 0:00 - Business Development strategy 5:18 - Token Extensions program 7:55 - Why build app chains anymore? 10:06 - Native L1 private transactions 14:03 - Unlocking on-chain payments 17:05 - Why Coinbase ignores Solana 19:05 - DePIN achieving PMF 24:53 - The rise of Solana-based games 30:50 - Unlocking the abundance of NFTs through compression 33:01 - Mobile strategy 38:06 - L1 governance 40:42 - Maintaining fast updates alongside decentralization 44:12 - Surviving state-level attacks 49:57 - Human coordination is the final boss? 55:59 - What is Austin excited about? - - Podcast Resources Follow Sal: https://twitter.com/salxyz Follow Dave: https://twitter.com/SolBeachBum Follow Unlayered: https://twitter.com/UnlayeredPod Subscribe on Spotify, Apple, or Google: https://unlayered.io/ Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@UnlayeredPod - - Episode Resources Follow Austin : https://Twitter.com/AustinFedera Follow Validated : https://Twitter.com/ValidatedPod
Solana Labs announced the launch of GameShift, its Web3 service for game developers. Now available for developers to begin building a Web3-powered gaming experience with a single, easy-to-use API built on Solana, without the need for blockchain coding or knowledge.Guest: Davis Hart, Head of GameShift (Solana Labs) GameShift website ➜ https://bit.ly/4bHNZrYPRE-ORDER Saga 2 NOW! ➜ https://solanamobile.com/refer/paulbarron00:00 intro00:35 GameShift x Solana Labs01:49 Solana Games in 202404:18 Web3 Solutions for Game Studios07:54 Asset Import09:54 Player Wallets & Self-Custody Features12:38 Mobile Game Tools14:57 Solana Saga16:33 Cross-Chain Functionality18:57 DePIN Games Coming?21:08 Meta Quest & Apple Vision Pro23:00 Xbox & PS5 Games26:43 outro#Solana #Crypto #NFT~Bringing Games To Solana!
Solana Mobile's highly-anticipated and soon-to-drop Saga smartphone has sold 100,000 pre-orders in the last 30 days, according to Solana Labs. The phone's current special pre-order price will close in two days.PRE-ORDER Saga 2 NOW! ➜ https://solanamobile.com/refer/paulbarron~This episode is sponsored by Tangem~Tangem ➜ https://bit.ly/TangemPBNUse Code: "PBN" for Additional Discounts!00:00 intro00:18 Sponsor: Tangem00:49 Saga Hits 100,000 Pre-Orders01:13 48hrs Left!01:54 Marques vs Saga02:59 Value is Good03:43 Saga Crypto Experience05:36 Apple Vision Pro Hypocracy07:02 Apple Terrorizes Developers!09:30 Devs Will Leave Apple10:54 Merchants Pay for Rewards13:10 Helium Mobile Subscriber Payments13:47 Hivemapper Announcement Soon?14:20 Uber Strike Incoming!16:59 Saga Rewards Tracker17:38 Rewards Linked To Phone18:09 Paul on Leaderboard18:38 Saga NFT Airdrop19:22 outro#Solana #Crypto #Ethereum~Solana Saga 2 Reaches 100,000 Pre-Orders!
For this week's episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana Labs, the technology company that aims to help grow the ecosystem for the layer-1 blockchain Solana.The conversation focused on Solana Mobile and its flagship web3 Android smartphone, Saga, which sold out in mid-December, as well as its new phone, Chapter 2 – which was announced last week. Within its first 30 hours Chapter 2 had over 30,000 preorders – signaling a lot of demand for the next generation Android-based phone. At the time of recording, Anatoly shared there were over 40,000 preorders.Anatoly and Jacquelyn discussed the long road to selling out Saga, how important rewards and developers are and the nitty gritty details for Chapter 2. They also dove into the company's strategy and long-term mission of going up against Google and Apple app stores and how long it may take for Solana Mobile to breakeven.If you need a refresher on Solana Mobile's Saga phone, we've got you covered:Buying frenzy for Solana Mobile's second phone drives preorders sky-highRing ring, Solana's web3-focused Saga phone is callingSolana's web3 phone is an ‘opportunity' against Google and Apple, co-founder says(0:00) Solana mobile background information(1:51) Launching Solana Mobile(6:17) Benefits of building on the DApp sotre(8:14) Saga phone and developer revenue(12:46) Reward models for adoption(15:07) Launching Chapter 2(23:28) Solana's Mobile Strategy(24:35) Crypto and digital self custody25:52) What's next for Solana Mobile Chain Reaction comes out every Thursday at 12:00 p.m. ET, so be sure to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite pod platform to keep up with the action.
In today's episode Jason and Santi are joined by Solana Labs founder and CEO Anatoly Yakovenko and Ben Sparango, the Head of Strategic Business Development. The duo has returned to discuss Solana's progress beyond the FTX fallout. They dive into Solana's priorities around scaling, fees, and alignment incentives between builders and validators. Anatoly elaborates on the network effects of open-sourcing core technology like the SVM, while Ben highlights mobile adoption and NFTs as driving new crypto demand. They debate the trajectory for permissionless finance to run mainstream markets on Solana, and whether the Saga phone can make a dent in Apple and Google's distribution monopolies. We hope you enjoy! - - Follow Anatoly: https://twitter.com/aeyakovenko Follow Jason: https://twitter.com/JasonYanowitz Follow Santiago: https://twitter.com/santiagoroel Follow Empire: https://twitter.com/theempirepod Subscribe on YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/4fdhhb2j Subscribe on Apple: https://tinyurl.com/mv4frfv7 Subscribe on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/wbaypprw Get top market insights and the latest in crypto news. Subscribe to Blockworks Daily Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter/ - - Arbitrum is a game-changer for daily Ethereum's users and developers, offering top applications and lower fees. As the leading scaling solution with 600+ apps, explore Arbitrum's Portal to find your perfect fit. Interact with the home of DeFi, a flourishing NFT and creator ecosystem, and a rapidly growing Web3 gaming hub – Arbitrum has it all. Get started at: portal.arbitrum.io - - Harpie is the most advanced on-chain security solution for monitoring and protecting your crypto wallet from theft in real time. Harpie detects, blocks, and recovers compromised assets from malicious transactions before they execute, and is the only security tool to also protect users from off-chain signature attacks like the recent Ledger Connect Kit exploit. Secure your wallet for free at harpie.io. - - Join us at DAS (Digital Asset Summit) in London this March! DAS is the #1 institutional conference in crypto, hosted by Blockworks. Use the link below to learn more, and use EMPIRE10 to get 10% off your ticket! Sign up now because the price goes up every month. See you there! Learn more + get your ticket here: https://blockworks.co/event/digital-asset-summit-2024-london/home - - Timestamps (02:00) The Solana Recovery Post SBF (10:30) Priorities for Solana Development (22:14) The Next Gen L1 Case for Builders (24:56) Economics of the SVM (34:17) State of Solana Fee Market (48:18) Inflation & Staking Dynamics (51:17) DAS 2024 (52:32) Arbitrum Ad (53:18) Harpie Ad (54:32) Open Source & Security Approach (01:02:02) Governance & Alignment (01:12:25) The Value of Permisionless Systems (01:19:04) Saga Mobile Strategy & Potential (01:25:14) Remaining Moonshot Ideas - - Disclaimer: Nothing said on Empire is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Santiago, Jason, and our guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.
Chris Burniske and two proponents of each approach discuss their different characteristics and relative benefits, and what will drive the next crypto bull cycle.Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Pandora, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform.In this episode of Unchained, Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana Labs, Nick White, COO at Celestia, and Chris Burniske, partner at VC firm Placeholder discuss the differences between modular and monolithic, or integrated, blockchains, with Solana epitomizing the monolithic approach and Celestia the modular one. They all agree that both approaches have their merits and will likely coexist, but argue each lends itself to specific use cases and developer preferences. They also discuss what will drive the next crypto bull cycle, and each gives their best predictions for a specific development in the crypto industry in the next few years.Show highlights | Chris's explanation of the modular vs. monolithic approach in blockchainsWhat drove Anatoly to prioritize speed in Solana's architecture and its impact on the networkWhat Celestia is and how it represents the first modular blockchain networkWhether developers and users will gravitate more towards modular or monolithic blockchainsHow Solana, as one of the fastest blockchains, is gearing up to handle massive usage and scalabilityWhy Chris views Celestia as a frontrunner in the data availability sectorHow Nick perceives the philosophical similarities and executional differences between Celestia and SolanaWhether there's potential for Solana to transition into a modular blockchain in the futureWhy Chris believes that the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) might surpass the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) in user adoptionWhat challenges Bitcoin faces in developing actual Layer 2 solutions, especially considering its "doomers storage" issueWhat could drive the next crypto bull marketTop predictions for 2024 and beyond Anatoly's perspective on how a significant hack could pose a serious setback for the entire industryThank you to our sponsors! Arbitrum Foundation | Popcorn Network | iTrustCapitalGuests | Anatoly Yakovenko, cofounder of Solana LabsChris Burniske, partner at PlaceholderNick White, COO at Celestia LabsLinks | Modular vs. monolithicAlchemy: Modular vs. Monolithic BlockchainsVisa: Monolithic vs. modular blockchainChris Burniske's tweet on modular vs monolithic“The horrific inefficiencies of monolithic blockchains” by polynyaBlockworks: A spicy salvo launched in the monolithic vs modular debateUnchained: What Is the Blockchain Trilemma?CelestiaCelestia's explanation of modular blockchainsData availabilityData availability samplingAn introduction to sovereign rollupsSpot Bitcoin ETF:Unchained: Why The Spot Bitcoin ETF Is a Big DealDeciding on Bitcoin: Should New Investors Jump In Now or Wait for an ETF?Ledger ConnectKit incidentUnchained: Ledger Library Compromised, Causing Confusion and Panic in Crypto CommunityUnchained Podcast is Produced by Laura Shin Media, LLC. Distributed by CoinDesk. Senior Producer is Michele Musso and Executive Producer is Jared Schwartz.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
In this episode of Unchained, Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana Labs, Nick White, COO at Celestia, and Chris Burniske, partner at VC firm Placeholder discuss the differences between modular and monolithic, or integrated, blockchains, with Solana epitomizing the monolithic approach and Celestia the modular one. They all agree that both approaches have their merits and will likely coexist, but argue each lends itself to specific use cases and developer preferences.They also discuss what will drive the next crypto bull cycle, and each gives their best predictions for a specific development in the crypto industry in the next few years. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Pandora, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights: Chris's explanation of the modular vs. monolithic approach in blockchains What drove Anatoly to prioritize speed in Solana's architecture and its impact on the network What Celestia is and how it represents the first modular blockchain network Whether developers and users will gravitate more towards modular or monolithic blockchains How Solana, as one of the fastest blockchains, is gearing up to handle massive usage and scalability Why Chris views Celestia as a frontrunner in the data availability sector How Nick perceives the philosophical similarities and executional differences between Celestia and Solana Whether there's potential for Solana to transition into a modular blockchain in the future Why Chris believes that the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) might surpass the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) in user adoption What challenges Bitcoin faces in developing actual Layer 2 solutions, especially considering its "doomers storage" issue What could drive the next crypto bull market Top predictions for 2024 and beyond Anatoly's perspective on how a significant hack could pose a serious setback for the entire industry Thank you to our sponsors! Arbitrum Foundation Popcorn Network iTrustCapital Guests: Anatoly Yakovenko, cofounder of Solana Labs Previous appearances on Unchained: Anatoly Yakovenko on Solana's Astounding Recovery and Its Future Plans Will Solana Be the Execution Layer and Ethereum the Settlement Layer? Can Solana Seize Marketshare From Ethereum With Serum? Anatoly Yakovenko on Why Solana Is Building the SAGA Chris Burniske, partner at Placeholder Previous appearances on Unchained: Two VCs on Why This Is the Perfect Time to Invest in Crypto 2022 in Review + How Cobie and Chris Burniske Are Playing the New Year Cobie and Chris Burniske on How to Navigate a Crypto Bear Market How To Value A Crypto Asset Nick White, COO at Celestia Labs Links Modular vs. monolithic Alchemy: Modular vs. Monolithic Blockchains Visa: Monolithic vs. modular blockchain Chris Burniske's tweet on modular vs monolithic “The horrific inefficiencies of monolithic blockchains” by polynya Blockworks: A spicy salvo launched in the monolithic vs modular debate Unchained: What Is the Blockchain Trilemma? Celestia Celestia's explanation of modular blockchains Data availability Data availability sampling An introduction to sovereign rollups Spot Bitcoin ETF: Unchained: Why The Spot Bitcoin ETF Is a Big Deal Deciding on Bitcoin: Should New Investors Jump In Now or Wait for an ETF? Ledger ConnectKit incident Unchained: Ledger Library Compromised, Causing Confusion and Panic in Crypto Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In this episode of Unchained, Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder of Solana Labs, Nick White, COO at Celestia, and Chris Burniske, partner at VC firm Placeholder discuss the differences between modular and monolithic, or integrated, blockchains, with Solana epitomizing the monolithic approach and Celestia the modular one. They all agree that both approaches have their merits and will likely coexist, but argue each lends itself to specific use cases and developer preferences.They also discuss what will drive the next crypto bull cycle, and each gives their best predictions for a specific development in the crypto industry in the next few years. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Pandora, Castbox, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Show highlights: Chris's explanation of the modular vs. monolithic approach in blockchains What drove Anatoly to prioritize speed in Solana's architecture and its impact on the network What Celestia is and how it represents the first modular blockchain network Whether developers and users will gravitate more towards modular or monolithic blockchains How Solana, as one of the fastest blockchains, is gearing up to handle massive usage and scalability Why Chris views Celestia as a frontrunner in the data availability sector How Nick perceives the philosophical similarities and executional differences between Celestia and Solana Whether there's potential for Solana to transition into a modular blockchain in the future Why Chris believes that the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) might surpass the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) in user adoption What challenges Bitcoin faces in developing actual Layer 2 solutions, especially considering its "doomers storage" issue What could drive the next crypto bull market Top predictions for 2024 and beyond Anatoly's perspective on how a significant hack could pose a serious setback for the entire industry Thank you to our sponsors! Arbitrum Foundation Popcorn Network iTrustCapital Guests: Anatoly Yakovenko, cofounder of Solana Labs Previous appearances on Unchained: Anatoly Yakovenko on Solana's Astounding Recovery and Its Future Plans Will Solana Be the Execution Layer and Ethereum the Settlement Layer? Can Solana Seize Marketshare From Ethereum With Serum? Anatoly Yakovenko on Why Solana Is Building the SAGA Chris Burniske, partner at Placeholder Previous appearances on Unchained: Two VCs on Why This Is the Perfect Time to Invest in Crypto 2022 in Review + How Cobie and Chris Burniske Are Playing the New Year Cobie and Chris Burniske on How to Navigate a Crypto Bear Market How To Value A Crypto Asset Nick White, COO at Celestia Labs Links Modular vs. monolithic Alchemy: Modular vs. Monolithic Blockchains Visa: Monolithic vs. modular blockchain Chris Burniske's tweet on modular vs monolithic “The horrific inefficiencies of monolithic blockchains” by polynya Blockworks: A spicy salvo launched in the monolithic vs modular debate Unchained: What Is the Blockchain Trilemma? Celestia Celestia's explanation of modular blockchains Data availability Data availability sampling An introduction to sovereign rollups Spot Bitcoin ETF: Unchained: Why The Spot Bitcoin ETF Is a Big Deal Deciding on Bitcoin: Should New Investors Jump In Now or Wait for an ETF? Ledger ConnectKit incident Unchained: Ledger Library Compromised, Causing Confusion and Panic in Crypto Community Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In today's episode, we have the creator of Solana and the Co-founder of Solana Labs, Anatoly Yakovenko. We brought on Anatoly to reflect on Solana in 2023 and its future in the New Year and beyond. -----
Bartosz Lipiński joins us to discuss how Cube is building the first crypto-native centralized exchange. Cube leverages MPC wallets, Solana's client (creating a Solana appchain) and native integrations to offer the best trading experience in crypto. In this episode, we cover Bartosz's journey with Solana Labs, how he helped launch Solana's NFT ecosystem and Hacker House program, Cube's crypto-native functionality, what it takes to build a crypto company and more! - - Join us at DAS (Digital Asset Summit) in London this March! DAS is the #1 institutional conference in crypto, hosted by Blockworks. Use the link below to learn more, and use LIGHTSPEED20 to get 20% off your ticket! Sign up now because the price goes up every month. See you there! Learn more + get your ticket here: https://blockworks.co/event/digital-asset-summit-2024-london/home - - (00:00) Introduction (00:54) Joining Solana Labs (02:03) Solana NFTs and The Creation of Metaplex (11:53) Starting Solana's Hacker House (15:46) DAS London Plug (16:44) Solana's Secret to Winning Over New Developers (19:14) Cube: The Solana-Aligned CEX (28:44) Go-to-Market Strategy (40:49) Integrating New Blockchains (44:39) What it Takes to Build a Company (52:56) Rapid Fire - - Follow Bartosz: https://twitter.com/baalazamon Follow Mert: https://twitter.com/0xMert_ Follow Garrett: https://twitter.com/GarrettHarper_ Follow Lightspeed: https://twitter.com/Lightspeedpodhq Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/43o3Syk Subscribe on Apple: https://apple.co/3OhiXgV Subscribe on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3OkF7PD Get top market insights and the latest in crypto news. Subscribe to Blockworks Daily Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter/ - - Resources Cube https://twitter.com/cubexch https://www.cube.exchange/ - - Disclaimers: Lightspeed was kickstarted by a grant from the Solana Foundation. Nothing said on Lightspeed is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Mert, Garrett and our guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.
Emon Motamedi joins us to discuss how Solana Labs hopes to find the next killer app. Emon leads product at Solana Labs and is the founder of Reddit's Digital Currency team. In this episode, we discuss Solana Labs' new incubator, finding the next killer app, multichain strategies, what crypto teams get wrong and more! - - Join us at DAS (Digital Asset Summit) in London this March! DAS is the #1 institutional conference in crypto, hosted by Blockworks. Use the link below to learn more, and use BLACKROCKLIGHTSPEED to get 20% off your ticket! Sign up now because the price goes up every month and the discount code expires November 27th! Learn more + get your ticket here: https://blockworks.co/event/digital-asset-summit-2024-london/home - - Timestamps (00:00) Introduction (00:41) What is Solana Labs? (02:16) Solana Labs Product Incubator (23:25) What Teams Often Get Wrong - - Follow Emon: https://twitter.com/EmonMotamedi Follow Mert: https://twitter.com/0xMert_ Follow Garrett: https://twitter.com/GarrettHarper_ Follow Lightspeed: https://twitter.com/Lightspeedpodhq Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/43o3Syk Subscribe on Apple: https://apple.co/3OhiXgV Subscribe on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3OkF7PD Get top market insights and the latest in crypto news. Subscribe to Blockworks Daily Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter/ - - Resources Application for Solana Labs Incubator https://incubator.solanalabs.com/ Solana Labs https://twitter.com/solanalabs https://solanalabs.com/ - - Disclaimers: Lightspeed was kickstarted by a grant from the Solana Foundation. Nothing said on Lightspeed is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Mert, Garrett and our guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.
Solfate Podcast - Interviews with blockchain founders/builders on Solana
A conversation with Brian Long, co-founder of Triton One.Full show notes: solfate.com/podcast/37Watch this episode on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=oVhif85sv_IFollow the @SolfatePod show on Twitter for updates. Thanks for listening frens :)Notes from the showBrian has been in the Solana ecosystem since very early days. Pre-mainnet days. He and his company, Triton One, helped Solana Labs bring up mainnet in March 2020. Even to this day, Brian and Triton continue to be active contributors to the Solana ecosystem. Not only does Triton operate the public mainnet and devnet RPCs nodes for the public, Linus Kendall from Triton is one of the few active contributors of the DAS API and infrastructure that is vital to compressed NFTs on Solana.Triton has also been hard at work on improving the Solana RPC Geyser interfacewith Project Yellowstone. In this umbrella project, the Triton team is focused on several aspects of the Geyser interface to make many improvements. One of those includes Old Faithful, the effort to put the entire Solana history (200TB+ of data) on the IPFS network. This is especially interesting, not only because Solana produces so much data that grows rapidly every day, but also because it this is being not only theorized by engineers at Triton and Firedancer, but is also a collaboration with Protocol Labs (the creators of IPFS and Filecoin). Multiple Layer 1 blockchains working directly together. Find Brian and and Triton onlineFollow Brian Long on twitter - @BrianLongFollow Triton on twitter - @triton_oneVisit the Triton website - https://triton.oneFollow us aroundNickfollow on twitter: @nickfrostyfollow on github: github.com/nickfrostywebsite: https://nick.afJamesfollow on twitter: @jamesrp13follow on github: github.com/jamesrp13
YouTube cracking down on ad-blockers, Microsoft releases Windows 11 23H2 update, SEC sues SolarWinds over cyberattack, Serve Robotics collaborates with Uber Eats for robot delivery, QI Tech raises $200M in funding, Solana Labs launches GameShift for blockchain game development, Dell partners with Meta for AI solutions, GreenLite secures $8M in seed funding for construction permitting, TikTok and DistroKid partner for music promotion.
Solfate Podcast - Interviews with blockchain founders/builders on Solana
Follow the @SolfatePod show on Twitter for updates. Thanks for listening frens :)Notes from the showA conversation with Nicholas Chen, co-founder of SolanaFM.Alpha alert: Nicholas Chen shares a screencast of the new version of SolanaFM. One of the first around! Find the video on our YouTube channel here.SolanaFM is one of the most popular block explorers in the Solana ecosystem. They are well known for their “visual explorer” that allows even the least technical people clearly see how tokens and funds flow through a transaction on the Solana blockchain. Not to mention they have been around in the ecosystem for longer than most!Nicholas Chen and the team at SolanaFM have been cooking up some big changes for the site. After taking in so much feedback from the community, they have have rebuilt and rewritten most of their website to give an even better user experience, including more clear “what happened in this transaction” and “why did this transaction fail” type of information. They have big plans on how to us machine learning and social interactions within the explorer to take it to the next level.In this episode we also talk about:how a block explorer makes moneythe future of block explorers, including adding a social element to them?Alpha alert: Nicholas Chen shares a screencast of the new version of SolanaFM. One of the first around!Note: Even though SolanaFM owns a domain TLD for “solana”, they are not a part of the Solana Foundation or Solana Labs.Find Nicholas Chen and and SolanaFM onlineFollow Nicholas Chen on twitter - @nixxholasFollow SolanaFM on twitter - @SolanaFMVisit the SolanaFM website - solana.fmFollow us aroundNickfollow on twitter: @nickfrostyfollow on github: github.com/nickfrostywebsite: https://nick.afJamesfollow on twitter: @jamesrp13follow on github: github.com/jamesrp13
We have seen a firework of announcements, new launches, and substantial moves in the crypto payment space in the last couple of weeks. Paypal, Visa, Mastercard, Shopify, SAP, Circle, and Solana Labs are just a few giants that flexed their muscles. Our UIE co-founder Dr. Karl-Michael Henneking invited Dr. Jonas Groß to look behind the scenes of the rapid evolution of crypto payments. Jonas is the COO of etonec, a company specializing in payments and digital assets. He is a well-known speaker, lecturer, podcast host, and the Chairman of the Digital Euro Association. The Untitled Investment Talk addresses the following questions:
Ben is the co-founder and CEO of Meso, a platform that makes bank-wallet transfers easy across crypto apps. He's spent over ten years building payments products as part of the early team at Braintree, leading product at Venmo, and working on Solana Pay for Solana Labs.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Solfate Podcast - Interviews with blockchain founders/builders on Solana
Follow the @SolfatePod show on Twitter for updates. Thanks for listening frens :)Notes from the showThe creator and lead developer of Solang, Sean Young, a compiler that allow developers to write Solana programs (aka smart contracts) in the Solidity programming language. This has been a multi year effort to allow existing Solidity developers, like all those existing in the Ethereum ecosystem, to use their existing language knowledge to write Solidity smart contracts on the Solana blockchain.Sean describes how he started his developer journey in the blockchain space, starting as writing his own compiler for the Solidity programming language for a EVM compatible blockchain for the purpose of processing traditional documents.Sean began hitting roadblocks when he was trying to add new features into the Solidity language, which is effectively only used for Ethereum and EVM compatible blockchains and maintained by the Ethereum community.As a general overview, Sean describes how a compiler actually works. Including how compilers like Solang and even native Solana uses LLVM toolkit (Low Level Virtual Machine) to maximize compatibility for multiple programming languages.Words and acronyms used throughout the episodesolidity - A statically-typed curly-braces programming language designed for developing smart contracts that run on Ethereum and most EVM compatible blockchains.EVM - the Ethereum Virtual Machine - essentially the portion of any Ethereum based blockchain that actually runs/executes smart contracts written in the Solidity programming languageEIP - Ethereum Improvement Proposals - standards specifying potential new features or processes for EthereumWASM - Web Assembly - is a binary instruction format for a stack-based virtual machineLLVM - Low Level Virtual Machine - a set of compiler and toolchain technologies that can be used to develop a frontend for any programming language and a backend for any instruction set architecture.Solana specific terms (or at least common in the Solana ecosystem): BPF - Berkeley Packet Filter - a technology used in certain computer operating systems for programs that need to, among other things, analyze network traffic.SBF (aka SBPF) - Solana Berkeley Packet Filter - this is a custom implementation of BPF with tweaks for the Solana runtime and SVMSVM - Solana Virtual Machine - the portion of the Solana runtime that actually runs/executes code on the Solana blockchainIDL - Interface Definition Language - generic term for a language that lets a program or object written in one language communicate with another program written in an unknown languageFind Sean and Solang onlineFollow Sean on twitterSolang's documentationSolang getting started guideFollow us aroundNicktwitter: @nickfrostygithub: github.com/nickfrostywebsite: https://nick.afJamestwitter: @jamesrp13github: github.com/jamesrp13Solfate Podcasttwitter: @SolfatePodmore podcast episodes: solfate.com/podcast
Anatoly joins us to discuss why Solana is uniquely designed to utilize ever-increasing bandwidth and compute. We cover Solana's core thesis, how blockchains benefit from hardware improvements, the fundamental flaws of L2s, Anatoly's favorite applications, decentralization and more! Anatoly is a legend, you don't want to miss this one! - - Follow Anatoly: https://twitter.com/aeyakovenko Follow Mert: https://twitter.com/0xMert_ Follow Garrett: https://twitter.com/GarrettHarper_ Follow Lightspeed: https://twitter.com/Lightspeedpodhq Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/43o3Syk Subscribe on Apple: https://apple.co/3OhiXgV Subscribe on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3OkF7PD Get top market insights and the latest in crypto news. Subscribe to Blockworks Daily Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter/ - - Use code EMPIRE30 to get 30% off Permissionless 2023 in Austin: https://blockworks.co/event/permissionless-2023 - - Timestamps: (00:00) Solana's Core Thesis (10:40) The Scaling Bottleneck (13:58) Do All Blockchains Equally Benefit From Hardware Improvements? (17:57) Pros and Cons of Parallel Execution (21:12) The Realities of Decentralization (24:43) Solana's Design Moat (28:10) Permissionless ad (29:37) The Fundamental Tradeoffs of L2s (44:12) How Should Solana Approach Business Development? (48:12) The Role of Solana Labs and the Solana Foundation (49:47) The Compressed NFT Opportunity (53:31) We Need to Fix DAO Governance (55:14) Anatoly's Metric of Success for Solana (57:58) Why Anatoly Hasn't Left Crypto (01:00:03) Why an Average Joe Would Use Solana (01:01:39) Rapid Fire - - Resources Endgame: Proof of Governance by Jon Charbonneau https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toPd1vgHjVE&t=0s - - Disclaimer: Nothing said on Empire is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Santiago, Jason, and our guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.
Anatoly joins us to discuss why Solana is uniquely designed to utilize ever-increasing bandwidth and compute. We cover Solana's core thesis, how blockchains benefit from hardware improvements, the fundamental flaws of L2s, Anatoly's favorite applications, decentralization and more! Anatoly is a legend, you don't want to miss this one! - - Timestamps (00:00) Introduction (01:47) Solana's Core Thesis (10:29) The Scaling Bottleneck (13:43) Do All Blockchains Equally Benefit From Hardware Improvements? (17:47) Pros and Cons of Parallel Execution (20:56) The Realities of Decentralization (24:32) Solana's Design Moat (27:57) Jito Mid Roll (29:01) Permissionless Plug (30:01) The Fundamental Tradeoffs of L2s (44:43) How Should Solana Approach Business Development? (48:33) The Role of Solana Labs and the Solana Foundation (50:18) The Compressed NFT Opportunity (53:54) We Need to Fix DAO Governance (55:40) Anatoly's Metric of Success for Solana (58:21) Why Anatoly Hasn't Left Crypto (01:00:12) Why an Average Joe Would Use Solana (01:01:58) Rapid Fire - - This episode is brought to you by Jito. Jito is the easiest way to earn MEV rewards on Solana with liquid staking. Stake your SOL with Jito to start earning high yield powered by MEV and access instant liquidity through Jito's liquid staking token JitoSOL so that you can use your staked assets across Solana DeFi. Visit jito.network to get started today! - - Follow Anatoly: https://twitter.com/aeyakovenko Follow Mert: https://twitter.com/0xMert_ Follow Garrett: https://twitter.com/GarrettHarper_ Follow Lightspeed: https://twitter.com/Lightspeedpodhq Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/43o3Syk Subscribe on Apple: https://apple.co/3OhiXgV Subscribe on Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3OkF7PD Get top market insights and the latest in crypto news. Subscribe to Blockworks Daily Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter/ - - Use code LIGHTSPEED30 to get 30% off Permissionless 2023 in Austin: https://blockworks.co/event/permissionless-2023 - - Resources Jito jito.network Endgame: Proof of Governance - Jon Charbonneau https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toPd1vgHjVE - - Disclaimers: Lightspeed was kickstarted by a grant from the Solana Foundation. Nothing said on Lightspeed is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Mert, Garrett and our guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.
Solfate Podcast - Interviews with blockchain founders/builders on Solana
Follow the @SolfatePod show on Twitter for updates. Thanks for listening frens :)Notes from the showNick and James talks about the recent Solana Bootcamp/workshop that the Solana Foundation's DevRel team hosted in the NYC office. Plus the Solana NYC hackerhouse has just come to a close and it was amazing!Huge thanks to all the show listeners that met Nick at the NYC hackerhouse and said they were a fan or listener of the show! It's things like this that motivate us to keep doing this show!In light of the recent SEC lawsuits alleging that many top cryptocurrencies and tokens are securities, we talk at a high level what some of the allegations are and what it could me.James expresses his opinion about this market reaction to this news to be an overcorrection and that “we will weather it, and we will be fine”.Disclaimer: Nothing said in this episode (or any of our episodes) is financial or legal advise. The opinions and statements expressed are the personal opinions/statements of those who said it.Links from the showBreakpoint tickets are still available! Devs AND creators are eligible for heavily discounted tickets!Want to learn Solana Development? Checkout the new Solana developer home page!People/Projects Nick mentioned meeting at the NYC hackerhouse: Jordan (from Solana Labs) https://twitter.com/jordaaashBrian Long (@brianlong) - founder of TritonCheckout the “experimental” version of solana/web3.js. It is very cool and will be very small!Follow us aroundNickfollow on twitter: @nickfrostyfollow on github: github.com/nickfrostywebsite: https://nick.afJamesfollow on twitter: @jamesrp13follow on github: github.com/jamesrp13
Anatoly Yakovenko 's Twitter: @aeyakovenko Solana's Twitter: @Solana Solana's Website: https://solana.com/ Logan Jastremski's Twitter: @LoganJastremski Frictionless's Twitter: @_Frictionless_ Frictionless's Website: https://frictionless.fund/
Sal and Dave tackle the hot-button issue of the Ledger recovery feature, providing their insight into the controversy. They shift gears and sit down with Steven Laver, lead software engineer at Solana Labs, for an enlightening chat into the future of crypto mobile experiences. Specifically, they delve into the world of the Saga smartphone and Solana Mobile Stack, highlighting the utility of the secure element and Solana dapp store. From exploring its potential to support other chains like ETH at the hardware level, to discussing why the phone is much more than a marketing gimmick, Steven underscores the significance of mobile experiences in driving global adoption of digital assets. (0:14) - Sal & Dave Opening Thoughts (13:56) - Why the Saga is more than a gimmick (18:42) - Solana Dapp Store, Crypto's App Store moment? (34:50) - How Seed Vault Secures Your Keys (44:50) - Wallet Adaptor & Support for ETH (55:05) - What Does Success Look Like?
Our guest this week is Austin Federa. Austin is head of strategy and communications at Solana Foundation, responsible for setting the direction of the Solana Foundation and working with projects and developers building in the Solana ecosystem. Austin discusses Solana's pragmatic engineering culture and the need for developers to focus on building things that are truly only possible on Solana. He also highlights the Foundation's role in supporting infrastructure-level initiatives and turning R&D into stable, standardized solutions. Finally, he stresses the importance for founders to focus on revenue and business models during the bear market and to build outside of the United States. Show Notes:0:55 - Starting with Solana6:42 - Pragmatism at Solana11:15 - Labs vs. Foundation17:36 - Exciting new things at Solana21:52 - Things Austin is personally excited about 26:19 - Contributing to Solana31:47 - Who is a builder you admire in the Solana ecosystem? Full Transcript:Brian Friel (00:00):Hey everyone, and welcome to the Zeitgeist, the show. We highlight the founders, developers, and designers who are pushing the Web3 space forward. I'm Brian Friel, developer relations at Phantom, and I'm super excited to introduce our guest, Austin Federa, the head of strategy and communications at the Solana Foundation. Austin, welcome to the show. Austin Federa (00:25):Hey, thanks for having me. Brian Friel (00:26):I'm super excited to talk to you today. As I was saying just before recording, I think this is the first time I'm recording someone who's actually a podcast pro, so I have a lot to learn from you. Thank you for making time. Austin, before we get into everything about Solana today, I'd love to just learn a little bit about you, how you got started at Solana. And I remember when I first joined Solana, you were the head of communications, and I think at the time there wasn't a clear split between labs and foundation. Since then, a lot has changed and maybe you could go in a little bit of that of how your role has evolved as well. Austin Federa (00:56):Yeah, definitely. So I originally joined in January of '21 out of Bison Trails. So Bison Trails was getting acquired by Coinbase to become Coinbase Cloud. I'd worked there for a little over a year running a bunch of the product marketing there and those sorts of things. And just with the transition over to Coinbase, it was like, oh, you don't want to go work for Coinbase, do you? And I was like, no, probably not. And so it was one of those things where it was somewhere in between one of the people who didn't make the cut and one of the people who they were like, you're just not going to be successful here. And I was like, that's a fairly accurate read. I got tons of great friends who are still working at Coinbase, but for me it just wasn't really the right spot. So I was talking to a bunch of L1s and L2s about coming over. (01:41):And so, one of the big things we'd done at Bison Trails is we had built out almost all of the world's Eth2 staking infrastructure. And I mean almost all the world's Bison Trails infrastructure ran solidly over 50% of the Eth2 network when the Beacon Chain launched, and still at that point in January of '21. Now this didn't matter from a decentralization standpoint because the Beacon Chain wasn't actually a thing. It was just a place you could stake. There wasn't actually user transactions or anything of value on it besides some Eth. But I was pretty heavily in the EVM world at that point. And so I was going around and talking to a bunch of different protocols. I was talking to a bunch of L2s and scaling solutions and these sorts of things, and I was talking to Polkadot as well and some of those type of other L1s. (02:25):And a friend of mine who I worked with back at Republic years ago, Ben Sparango was like, "Hey, what are you up to?" And I was like, "Ah, I'm kind of between stuff right now. I'm interviewing a bunch of places. I don't really feel super passionate about it. I was like, maybe I should leave crypto. I kind of like this industry a lot, but I don't know. We'll see." And he is like, "You should talk to Raj and Toly." I was like, "Of Solana?" He goes, "Yeah, yeah, I joined Solana a few months ago. It's great. You should come talk to us." And I was like, "I don't know, man. I worked with 20 different protocols when I was at Bison Trails and none of them were Solana. Solana was the weird thing that was hard to run and no one understood how to build software for it, but we supported it at Bison Trails because there was people who were trying to run infrastructure for it. (03:04):And he is like, "No, just come and talk to them." And we just finished up this big project with Masari, which was the state of Eth2 was basically the report that we just helped them write and put out. And I had a lot of questions and I thought the questions were just things that I was getting wrong. I thought it was me who was not understanding the model under which Eth2 was going to work. This is back at the time when you're going to have Parallax, execution shards on the network and all this sorts of thing. And I was like, I don't understand how DeFi is going to work here. The minute you break what now we call the global state, but the minute you start moving data into segregated places, that means the data has to be moved before it can interact. (03:45):And if there's one thing we all know about computer science, it's that copying is expensive and takes a lot of time. And so I got on the call with Anatoly, and I was just talking about Eth2 stuff and asking him some questions about what he thought about this stuff. And he's like, "Oh yeah, there's no composability in charting." And I was like, "You're the first person who's told me this. Tell me more." 'Cause I've been talking to a bunch of people who were talking about like, oh, well, it's just harder and it's like... He runs me through the whole thing about like Solana's, a single global state machine, really fast blockchain, what all these advantages were here. And all this stuff, for me, I was like, oh, this makes perfect sense. All of the things that I have been thinking and feeling about the undefined world of what the new state... Now I would sort of call it the cosmofication of Ethereum, what that process was like. (04:32):I wasn't an idiot and I wasn't just not smart enough to understand what folks were talking about. Folks just were talking ahead of the problems they'd solved. And this is not to say that we're never going to have composability uncharted ecosystems, but it took video game designers almost a decade to figure out how to program for multi-core processors. And that took a long time to figure. Out for me, this sort of decision to come and join the Solana Labs at that point was really practical. It was like, I don't know if this weird wacky idea is going to work, but I know I'm going to learn a hell of a lot here from these folks who are doing something very different than the rest of the industry. And the very different than the rest of the industry is usually where the cool stuff's happening. Brian Friel (05:15):I think that is the most perfect intro for this because it hits on so many themes. I want to dive in with you. Austin Federa (05:21):Great. Brian Friel (05:21):One theme that you kind of hit on right there, and this is before we even get into what you currently do as your role and everything, which we should definitely hit on, but I think that resonates pretty well with what Phantom saw originally. Because Phantom also coming from EVM background and the founders were all Zero X folks, seeing that, hey, there is this thing, it's maybe the redheaded stepchild of crypto right now, but these people who are marching into their own beat. This is like 2021, very early 2020 at this point. But basically what I would say it was a very non-consensus bet to do things differently and built out its own genuine kernel of developer ecosystem, which has just evolved into all this craziness today we can talk about. (06:00):But I think one of the key principles of that that I've noticed in my time in Solana is just the level of pragmatism and the reality of, Hey, these are problems today. We have users today, and how do we ship and iterate on these things and not talk about a problem that might be 10 years from now, which may or may not be solved, but actually addresses the problem today. And I think there's a lot that is going on in Solana about this across just all sorts of stuff. We should dive into all of that. Austin Federa (06:27):Oh yeah. Brian Friel (06:28):But I love that framing, and I'm curious, is that level of pragmatism... Who do you think that's set by? I feel like that's almost something an Anatoly thing, but is that an explicit choice that Solana Foundation or Solana Labs is choosing to bring into the ecosystem? Austin Federa (06:42):So one of the things I think is really important when you're looking at any software system is to look at philosophies that the people building it have. And a lot of the places you see that philosophy is in their background. And so if you look at Anatoly and Stephen Akridge and a bunch of the other early founders of the Solana project, their expertise was all in embedded systems. A bunch of these folks came from Qualcomm or very similar companies to Qualcomm, and they were trying to figure out how you could cram the best user experience possible on a flip phone or a proto smartphone onto a chip. And they had to do all these crazy low level optimizations to get this stuff to work. And Solana's not super, super low level, but one of the major things there was saying, we're going to combine the consensus layer with the virtual machine. (07:38):And that's not for some elegant principle of software architecture. That's because it's faster and yes, it's harder. And yes, there's a lot of other problems that come with that, but at the end of the day, the pragmatism comes from the background of folks who actually had to ship chips that companies were going to build software on that would interact in the real world and be the basis of all of this mobile revolution. And so there's other approaches that are very sort of come from the academic computing world where it's as long as we can define the perfect software system, in theory, the problem is just finding the execution place to do it on. And there are some chains that have been more successful than others with that. But I think at the end of the day, the thing Solana has going for it is this sort of ruthless pragmatism. It's a desire to build software in a way that doesn't let perfect [inaudible 00:08:33] of the good, but also keeps its values front and center. (08:36):And one of those major values is if you know you have to do the hard thing, do the hard thing first. And that is the thing I will routinely tell people internally is the only way you eat an elephant is one bite at a time. And that is kind of the way we go through all of this stuff. It's so easy to talk yourself into waterfall releases. It's so easy to talk yourself into, well, when this thing comes out, then this and this and this, and this can all come out and then we'll have this end state of this. And it's like you're making assumptions about what the blockchain industry's going to look like 18 months from now. I don't think any human is ever successfully predicted what the blockchain industry would look like six months from now, let alone three times that. So there's all this stuff about not working with entrenched assumptions, picking software architecture systems that feel like they're persistent. I would say that the software philosophy that Solana core engineering builds on is closer to brand philosophy than it is like technical philosophy. It's very interesting. Brian Friel (09:36):Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I mean, being [inaudible 00:09:39], I think we have a front seat to that too, as the ecosystem changes as the leadership basically, like you said, just takes the hard challenge first and says, this is something that we have to face. Let's tackle it now. Here's an open proposal, here's how we can do it. I'm looking back at what Solana was even just a year ago, one of the dev advocates on our team on it put out this tweet that said, "Things we didn't have a year ago on Solana Wallet's standard." Austin Federa (10:02):Oh, I love it. Brian Friel (10:03):Which is like looking at the state of other blockchains trying to be an ejected wallet there, it's a mess. Solana takes that hand on, makes a chain agnostic wallet standard for that version transactions, which like high level, massively refactoring how transactions can be done such that you can just access way more accounts on Solana DeFi doing multi hops exchange. Jupiter, the perfect example of that. Priority fees on the network, I mean elegant state level hotspot fee markets that don't impact the rest. Anyone else on Solana. Programmable NFTs, state compression, quick, stake weighted QoS. (10:37):I mean, not to mention Saga, new token programs. There's just so much going on right now. From where you sit, and maybe this can get into a little bit of the labs versus foundation discussion that we want to get into too, is how do all these ideas come to life mean? Some of these are community driven, like Metaplex having their own programmable NFTs. But a lot of these also are Solana engineers who are just on the front lines with their own proposals. Jordan Sexton has an idea he's doing it. How much of that is top down driven? How much of that is bottom up? And how much of this is a labs versus foundation? How do you see all this kind of how it plays out? Austin Federa (11:16):So before we even get to that, one of, I think the most interesting examples of pragmatism is how little work wallets have to do on Solana. This is super different. On Ethereum, the wallet has to build the transaction, that is a part of the thing. And on Solana, the DAPs have to build the transactions. Because the DAPs know more about what they're building than the wallet does. So why would the wallet build a transaction? The wallet's role is to verify that the transaction is what the DAP says it is, right? But it's those little tiny things where it's like how do we make it easier for people to build something like Phantom in six months as opposed to nine months? (11:55):And that's kind of one component that falls into that. But you were saying these sort of ideas about where do these things come from. A lot of it comes from best practices in other ecosystems about things people are talking about. I think one of the things that Ethereum is far ahead of Solana on is formal verification. And formal verification is not something that we came up with or claimed to have come up with. (12:20):It's like, oh, this is a really strong thing in another ecosystem that we should take and bring into this. Proof of history is just time division multiple access. It's TDMA, it's literally what 2G cell phone technology run on. But you've applied that to a blockchain with a leader schedule now and suddenly you have an incredibly fast blockchain. I think one of the best things to think about is Solana is full of out-of-the-box solutions to very conventional problems. And those out-of-the-box solutions will often come from engineers who are working on this stuff. They'll often come from engineers who are not working on this stuff. The number of suggestions that have come from someone's like, oh, I'm trying to build this thing, and someone like over lunch or over a Zoom on something else is like, what if you just do it this way instead? And they're like, okay. (13:08):And then they go down that... It's sort of this idea that there's not an intellectual purity test. You don't have to subscribe to a philosophy of how something should be built in order to have an idea here. P NFTs came entirely from community demand for them. That was a direct response to sort of a problem. The wallet standard is again, it's like it's really annoying that developers have to integrate calls for every wallet into their DAP. Wouldn't it be so much easier if there could just be one thing they could call and all the wallets in your Chrome Exchange could be like, hello, here I am. And that was an incredible easy turnkey thing that didn't require creating a whole separate product, a whole separate company to just connect wallets or adapt wallets if we should say it that way. And that's where these kind of things come from. (13:58):Now sometimes this leads to suboptimal user experiences too. I would say that we have three excellent explorers on Solana for what you want to do with that explorer. And you don't go to Solscan for the same things you go to Solana FM for and you don't go to the explorer.solana.com for the same things you go to those other ones for. And so there is sometimes this sort of fracturing that occurs because everyone has great ideas and they feel very comfortable building them before we've had a committee meeting or faculty meeting or something to decide what the right path forward is. As much as possible, the goal is to move fast and see what's adopted and the stuff that's adopted then gets tons of resources thrown behind it from the community. Brian Friel (14:48):Yeah, I do think that's incredibly refreshing though for crypto. I mean, especially an industry that's still... I think as a whole macro level iterating a lot. The meta is constantly changing. Some pattern that I've noticed is with P NFTs is a lot of times Solana will hit a new meta or figure out a new problem well before other ecosystems because of this rapid iteration and experimentation. And it's almost like, hey, Solana's figured it out. Let's take the learnings from there and tell everyone else and get up to speed on that. Austin Federa (15:16):Oh yeah. And tell everyone else we thought of it ourselves. That's also the other thing. And we see this all the time, not in a way that people are like, but all of the tricks that Monad is doing to try and speed up EVM, they're all the things that Solana did. Except they're trying to do it with an underlying architecture that it's a lot harder on because transactions on Solana have to specify their accounts, their instructions, their memory, their compute, before they get accepted and executed. So the work of transaction simulation on Solana is a lot more about just reading what the data says and being like, yes, these things say what they actually say they say, and then you can simulate balance changes and all that sort of stuff. But that is a very different problem than trying to stochastically model what an EVM transaction is going to do. (16:05):And if you're trying to do out of order processing of EVM transactions, I'm not going to say it can't work because a lot of people thought Token Ring was the only protocol that could possibly make the internet work. And the idea of just throwing packets randomly at a router and being good luck, well, that sounded insane, and that is exactly how the internet works. You just randomly throw packets at routers and most of them get there somehow. It's pretty astonishing. Like packet collision's super rare nowadays, even though everyone's just screaming at the top of their lungs constantly for bandwidth, and that's wild. (16:37):So who knows if the stuff will actually work on that side. But the cool thing I think that's going on in Solana is this lack of ideological purity around how something has to be done, and it's more of a purity around what the outcome has to be. There's so many analogies here, but the United States, we talk about equality of opportunity all the time, and that is actually a much harder thing to do than equality of outcome. And so I think with Solana, it's like if you focus on the outcome that you want and not the process by which you get there, you will find a better way to get there. Brian Friel (17:12):I love that. So from where you sit on the foundation side now head of strategy at Foundation, you mentioned that there's all these engineers, some at Solana, some not at Solana, who basically have these problems. They come up with pragmatic solutions. What's the role of the Solana Foundation on all of this? And is there any big bets in particular that you're excited about or you guys are making for this year on Solana? Austin Federa (17:36):Yeah, So the Foundation is a Swiss nonprofit foundation that exists to further the adoption and advancement of the Solana blockchain. And so this is the entity that gives grants. This is the entity that if you've ever sort of interacted with a granting apparatus, breakpoint, hacker houses, developer boot camps, those are all run out of the Solana Foundation. That's its role for being in the world. And so the initiatives that we are working on are really infrastructure level. They always have been, and I think they will continue to be throughout this year. So a great example of this are fee markets, like you mentioned, right? Local fee markets. That was technically shipped in September, but I would argue it practically wasn't shipped until December. And that was because there wasn't a method at that point for an RPC, for a wallet, a DAP, anything to hit up an RPC and say, how much do you think I should prioritize a fee if I really want to make sure this transaction gets through? (18:34):And without the ability to guesstimate, you don't have anything, right? That is not a functional, usable, shipped thing without developers actually being able to implement it. And that's kind of the difference I would describe between the work that gets done through let's just say Solana Labs and core engineering there and the work the Foundation's supporting. A lot of the work that core engineering does and a bunch of, obviously not all, there's core engineers all over the place, but a number of the core engineers are on Solana Labs' payroll. And those individuals, they're focused on the core engineering, right? (19:09):They're like, we shipped fee markets. We're good. At the Foundation, we're like, wait a minute, wait a minute. There's so much work to actually be done to turn this into a standard that every DAP and wallet can use without spending days writing custom code. And so I would say that's kind of the place that the Foundation comes in is it's not directing what work gets done, but it's sort of the process of taking stuff that feels like it's either R&D or it's super hot production engineering. And turning it into something that's more stable, that's more standardized, that's more universally understood, and doing that in a way that there's feedback collected from many people in the ecosystem, in addition to the whole granting apparatus. Brian Friel (19:47):So the developer relations team sits at the foundation level no longer at the labs level? Austin Federa (19:52):Yes, very much. You were saying earlier like, oh, these things maybe weren't as separate before they actually were just as separate. They were just very few people worked for Foundation. So because most of the work at that point was just sort of kick out as much as you can get out the door. There were folks at Foundation giving grants and stuff like that, but a lot of that sort of work that we do today, it wasn't necessary to do it yet because the thing didn't exist yet, at that stage. When I joined, there were 36 programs on the network that had daily transactions through them. Brian Friel (20:25):Wow. Austin Federa (20:26):Absolutely nothing. And now we're over like 1200 easily. And I just think that's such an interesting change to see over such a quick period of time. Brian Friel (20:35):Oh, for sure. It stood out to me too, that... I think I mentioned the earlier conversation too. It's like this kernel of genuine developer interest that basically no other blockchain ecosystem I think has outside of Ethereum where it's people who are very much specialized, Solana centric as Chase loves to say too in Glass, but really just thinking about what's only possible in Solana? How can I iterate on this and expand on this? That's super invigorating to be a part of, and that's my favorite part of the ecosystem, essentially. Yeah, Austin Federa (21:04):We love it. Brian Friel (21:05):On that note, there is this meme now, is recording this in April 2023 of only possible on Solana and these things that everything we talked about, this pragmatic engineering culture of basically what's the outcome, what's the end user experience that we really want, and finding ways to ship that. There's a lot going on right now. I mean, I think Saga is an awesome example of this. It's like, how could we take a phone that just is the most kick ass crypto experience you could possibly have on mobile, but there's all sorts of stuff. There's compressed NFTs and state compression, what that means, DPIN is this new thing. There's all existing, DeFi, just normal FTs payments infrastructure. What are you personally most excited about and are any key themes in the year ahead that you think people should look into now that really highlights the strengths of Solana? Austin Federa (21:52):So the decentralized physical infrastructure layer is a really interesting story for me personally. And I think there's so much that goes on with that that goes into that, whatever kind of language you want to use to describe that. I am just super excited about what that looks like. And for me personally, the stuff I'm most excited about on Solana is you really don't have a choice to build it anywhere else that you need a fast composable ecosystem that has the capacity to go up to tens of thousands of transactions per second for a base fee of $.000025 and that's rare. You really can't find that in a lot of other places or a lot of other applications. And so for me, that's like some of the coolest stuff on Solana. Now, in terms of what's coming this year, I think we're going to see Fire Dancer rolling out on testnet probably in Q4. (22:40):That's going to be really interesting to see how that performs when it's intermingled with the other clients on the network. So that's going to be very interesting. There's a ton of work being done to make custom contracts easier to deploy on Solana. This is a project called Interfaces. This is out of necessity. The Token 22, which is code name, it definitely won't be called that once it's released. Token 22 is this new token program coming to the network. And it brings all sorts of things like interest baresing tokens. You can charge fees to use contracts directly in the contract. (23:11):There's a lot of really interesting stuff that comes to it, but it adds a second token program to the network. And that second token program means you need to suddenly have a way that a wallet can instantly say, Hey, which program should I look at for this arbitrary piece of data on chain? And because of that, it means if you've built support for two, you can build support for 20,000. So there's little pieces like that that are coming, but I really think this is going to be another infrastructure year, but instead of it being base level infrastructure, it's going to be something closer to developer tooling. I'm not sure I would call Interface is developer tooling, but it's definitely usability tooling. That means it's easier to develop novel things for the Solana ecosystem. Brian Friel (23:55):Yeah, I see that as well. The conversation shift towards interfaces is really exciting too, because Solana's account model and program model has some implicit instruction in that where, okay, this is the canonical token program. Austin Federa (24:08):It's perfect. What are you talking about? Brian Friel (24:09):Yeah, it's perfect. What are you talking about? And I think that just leans even more into those pragmatic values kind of shipping. And that's like, Hey, if we do have these interfaces where all of a sudden any wallet can take any of these token programs, any NFT exchange you can list on, you can list your NFTs through them. Opening up that design space, a deeper infrastructure level, I think would be really exciting. Austin Federa (24:31):Yeah. This will support everything from if you are a... No offense, but if you're a super corporate NFT project and you want to make sure that you have certain protections or certain things or whatever, you might want to deploy your own version of an NFT contract. And right now it's really hard to do that. It's not hard to deploy the contract, it's hard to get the ecosystem on board with the contract you've deployed. Brian Friel (24:55):You have to knock on every door to get a custom integration. Austin Federa (24:59):And we're seeing this with compression, right? Compression is awesome. It's been picked up by a ton of wallets. There's not an NFT marketplace that supports it yet. Brian Friel (25:08):Not yet, but I have heard soon. So maybe, and by the time that this podcast is released. Austin Federa (25:13):Who's adding it? Brian Friel (25:14):I have heard Tensor. Austin Federa (25:15):Interesting. Brian Friel (25:16):As an alpha drop. Austin Federa (25:17):They've been making moves. Brian Friel (25:18):They're making moves, but I would not be surprised if Magic Eden and others would be following suit at some point. But if we can open up an interface, some sort of interface standard where we can get buy-in, do the hard work up front to get all these different companies to buy into some sort of interface together, it's going to unlock a lot of really cool potential on Solana. Austin Federa (25:38):Absolutely. Brian Friel (25:39):One other thing I want to ask too is, you mentioned a few things kind of implicitly there. One of my questions was going to be like there's all these exciting things happening where we should we be investing now to unlock all this. But I guess there's also... I've noticed on Solana, and particularly Solana Twitter, there's this part of what this pragmatic culture has attracted is a culture of doers and people who show up and they want to contribute and they want to lend their time. And a lot of developers who maybe not even be working in the Solana ecosystem who are just excited and passionate about it. If you could speak to those people, where do you think they should be focusing their time and energy? What is Solana most in need from external contributors at this time? Austin Federa (26:19):It's a really good question. I mean, the problem there is I don't think the advice that I would give external contributors is good advice for their project at this point. It's great advice for Solana. The advice for Solana, I'd say is keep building strong open source tooling and foundations so we can make it easier for new developers to get involved. Anything you build that fits into the Lego thesis super strong, please keep doing it. What I would actually give as advice for founders in this space right now is that we're probably in a bear for at least another 12 months, and it's going to be a climb out of this thing. And you should be spending time thinking about revenue. You should be spending time thinking about business models. Not a lot, not enough to go raise a massive series beyond, but enough that you're extending your runway by a few months that if you have to raise a bridge round, you can show, hey, actually we do have revenue. (27:23):Here's our revenue numbers. Give us a little bit of money. Because I think this is a really hard time in the capital markets. It's really easy to be like the bear is a great time for building. That's true. The bear is a great time for building. It's a terrible time for payroll though. And that's kind of something they just remember as you kind of go through the process. Now, what does Solana need? I mean, I'm going to tell you my vision of how Solana could not win. And the way Solana doesn't win is if these incremental small scaling solutions for EVM, that 400 transactions per second, you can do an EVM right now if you really try. Maybe we just don't come up with transaction heavy use cases that anyone truly wants for a while. And that's a situation where all this horsepower that's been brought to bear on something like Solana isn't actually needed for what things people want to build on blockchains. (28:20):Now, I don't think that's true, but that's the thing to think about. What Solana needs is for people to embrace only possible on Solana and to build more things that are truly only possible to be built on Solana. Because as much as I love NFT projects, very few of them are only possible on Solana. This is the great thing about XNFTs. Those are truly only possible in Solana right now. But let's see teams going out there and saying, okay, a 10,000 drop is cool. What if we do a million, 10 million, a hundred million? Yeah, they're going to be cheaper. Yeah, the dynamics are going to change. Something's going to change, right? But this is the thing that I think is so interesting about this space is everyone has internalized this financialization, Bitcoinification view of all crypto. Like, Bitcoin's value is scarcity, period, end of day. (29:20):That's great. Props to Bitcoin, nothing since Bitcoin is Bitcoin. Like Magic The Gathering is not worth less money every time they print a new trading card pack. The Pokemon company is not worth less money every time they sell a new Pikachu plush. There are models here that people just seem emotionally afraid to try. I think Clano is getting pretty close to this and they're doing some very cool stuff with how they're doing some collection expanding. On the NFT side though, I think people need to get away from the idea that their value proposition is scarcity and figure out ways to do like LVMH and Louis Vuitton have done where they have something that is still high end, that is still hard to get but is not fixed cap. And sort of see where that maybe heads from there. On the DeFi side, start building outside of the United States, translate your projects, websites into Vietnamese and Turkish. (30:18):Don't think your growth is going to come from the United States in the next year or two because the regulations here are really uncertain right now. And it's a bit of a tricky time for folks to be in the United States. But I went to Turkey and I went to Vietnam, and folks are using crypto, and they're using crypto because in Turkey it's significantly more stable than their actual native currency. And that's a crazy thing to be thinking about, but that's true. So let's embrace that. Let's actually think of this stuff and make sure that the work that's being done truly actually supports this kind of stuff. And I think that's kind of one of the most important things to think about from the perspective of a founder at this point. Brian Friel (30:57):Yeah, I think there's been a key theme here throughout this whole conversation of basically going back to first principles and thinking, what's the outcomes that we want? Originally, I think Solana's tagline, even blockchain at Nasdaq speed, we were promised flying cars. We got Twitter, we got the greatest JPEG trading engine in the world on Solana, but how can we continue to iterate on this and what are things we can only do on Solana? All those examples you brought up I think are awesome examples. I really appreciate that you guys are continuing to challenge the ecosystem and to push and to not be afraid to try new things, and that's where the unlocks happen. Austin Federa (31:30):Yeah, of course. I think that's incredibly important and powerful here. Brian Friel (31:34):Well, Austin, this has been an awesome conversation. Thank you so much. One closing question we ask all our guests. Keeping line with the last question of the things you're excited about is who is a builder that you admire in the Solana ecosystem? Austin Federa (31:48):I mean, there's so many, it's hard to pick one. There's the easy answers of Armani and those folks and Mango Max. And I think the truth is that the folks who are doing some of the most interesting work are the ones who are bug fixing, who are going in and saying, ah, I ran into this problem with this tool set that I've seen someone else build. Let me go spend a little time trying to fix this thing up. And I don't have anyone particular to name in that, but it's very easy to be like, holy shit, Armani and X NFTs. Wow. And it's like, that is incredibly important. You know what else is really important? The dude that went in and made RPCs 20% more efficient for certain types of calls. And I think those are equally important things, and I wish we did a little bit more celebrating of the maintenance work in addition to all of our celebrating of the true innovations only possible on Solana. Brian Friel (32:40):Mert is going to love that, that you said their call that out, so. Austin Federa (32:44):There we go. Brian Friel (32:44):Maybe we can put Mert, Triton, all those folks, everyone, all the infrastructure that does the unsexy blocking and tackling that maybe really is the true glass eating on Solana, all of those guys. Austin Federa (32:56):Totally. I mean, there's a bunch of devs that work in Mango that are actually part of core engineering now, and they just fix a bunch of stuff because they're just like, we were trying to build our next version of Mango and we kept running into these problems, so we just started fixing stuff. Brian Friel (33:10):No one knows it better than them. Yeah. Austin Federa (33:12):Exactly. So it's good. Brian Friel (33:13):That's amazing. Well, Austin, I'm really excited for the next year Solana, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Austin Federa (33:20):Definitely. Thank you. This is fun.
Web3 Academy: Exploring Utility In NFTs, DAOs, Crypto & The Metaverse
Coinbase Sues the SEC, Yuga Labs Claims 'Landmark Legal Victory' Over Copycat NFTs, VeeFriends x SnoopDogg, DJs Steve Aoki - 3LAU Reveal First Single as ‘Punx' NFT Duo, Solana Labs x ChatGPT, Adidas NFT connected to Adidas Confirmed, MNTGE Debuts Token-Enabled Vintage Jeans With ‘Fruits & Veggies' Drop, Romania's NFT Marketplace, Lexus Launches Hoverboard NFT Collection as part of Crack the Case competition, Animated series “Space Junk” let's NFT holders vote on narrative & more!
Solfate Podcast - Interviews with blockchain founders/builders on Solana
Announcement: We are looking for an editor/producerGM! The Solfate Podcast is looking for an editor/producer for the show. We would love to find someone from the Solana community. If you, or anyone you know is interested, please reach out to us on Twitter.Sharing our this tweet with your frens would also help: https://twitter.com/SolfatePod/status/1650249460637741057Follow the @SolfatePod show on Twitter for updates. Thanks for listening frens :)Notes from the showMadLads mint was hit by a DDOS that delayed mint a full day, and people got rug picture. Saga phones just started to be shipped. And news alert: people who did early developer units of the Saga phones get to keep their DVT and a free case for the production phone!Nick explains a bit of how the many organizations/companies surrounding Solana Labs and Solana Foundation are structured.The Helium migration has also completed successfully. So huge congratulations to the amazing people involved, including former guest @redacted_noah.The gents also talk about the new rust based Solana framework, named Nautilus. It's been making its rounds through twitter and was made by Joe.Links from the showThe Saga phone by SolanaMobile had their launch event and started shipping production phones!!!Helium Network successfully migrated to the Solana blockchainNautilus framework, the new rust framework made by Joe (@realbuffalojoe)Follow us aroundNickfollow on twitter: @nickfrostyfollow on github: github.com/nickfrostywebsite: https://nick.afJamesfollow on twitter: @jamesrp13follow on github: github.com/jamesrp13
Solfate Podcast - Interviews with blockchain founders/builders on Solana
Follow the @SolfatePod show on Twitter for updates. Thanks for listening frens :)Notes from the showFor this special episode, we are joined by Noah Prince (aka @redacted_noah on Twitter). One of the Solana devs behind the massive effort of migrating the Helium Network to Solana. Noah shares some of his background and how his brother, founder of Metaplex, convinced him to start developing on Solana.He also shares a high level, but still technical overview of how the Helium network works. From the oracles to physical hotspots as compressed NFTs.Noah also explains the process of how the Helium L1 blockchain will be “lazily” migrated to its new home on Solana using compression. Allowing Helium to migrate to Solana in an incredibly efficient and secure way without causing a massive amount of congestion on Solana mainnet.PS: Huge shoutout to all the Grizzlython hackathon winners, especially our previous guests: Scammo and Qudo, creators of the xray explorer.Show Noah some love in the internet:follow Noah on twitter: @redacted_noahLinks from the showSubmit a PR to Noah's Strata code base to get it back running“Jarry” was mentioned several times: this is Jarry Xiao (aka “the Professor” and former Solana Labs employee)Discover the Helium Network in their docsLearn about State Compression on SolanaNick has been diving deep into creating content for State Compression and compressed NFTs. It is all live! Check out these resources to get up to speed on compression:Current Solana docs on State CompressionSolana Spotlight video on State Compression, with Noah Gundotra from Solana Labs, (one of the primary devs behind the compression program)Quick intro videos on minting compressed NFTsQuick intro video on reading and transferring compressed NFTsWritten developer guide for compressed NFTs (also in the Solana docs)Follow us aroundNickfollow on twitter: @nickfrostyfollow on github: github.com/nickfrostywebsite: https://nick.afJamesfollow on twitter: @jamesrp13follow on github: github.com/jamesrp13
✨ DEBRIEF | Unpacking the episode: https://shows.banklesshq.com/p/debrief-anatoly-solana ------ ✨ COLLECTIBLES | Collect this episode: https://collectibles.bankless.com/mint ------ In today's episode, we have the creator of Solana and the Co-founder of Solana Labs, Anatoly Yakovenko. We brought on Anatoly to ask: is Solana going to make it? Price is down. A major public backer…SBF is down for the count…will Solana make it? Will it survive the bear market? Anatoly shares his thoughts. In addition, he also shares the full Solana story, back to its earliest inflection points all the way to the current state of Solana today. ------
This week on The Defiant Podcast, we speak with Tal Tchwella, Product Manager of Products Engineering at Solana Labs. In our conversation, we dive deep into Tal's work on crypto inside Facebook (Meta), his transition to Solana, the resurgence of NFTs on the network, and all the hype with the $BONK meme coin. We also discuss what it's like working full-time in Web3, the Solana Phone, as well as the future of Solana after the collapse of FTX. Thanking our podcast sponsors: This episode is brought to you by the Glo dollar, a new stablecoin that reduces extreme poverty as its market cap goes up. With Glo, you can lift people out of poverty just by holding a stablecoin. To join the waitlist, visit https://www.glodollar.org/defiant Store your tokens safely. Go self-custodial with 1inch Wallet.
Rea Dulcetta and Anton Restuta - Co-Founders of Sharky.fi join Brian Friel on the latest episode of The Zeitgeist. Sharky.fi is the first escrow-less, decentralized NFT lending protocol on Solana that brings DeFi liquidity to NFTs. Are you NFT-rich but SOL-poor? Sharky.fi allows you to instantly borrow SOL by using the NFTs in your wallet as collateral. For lenders who want to earn yield on their SOL, Sharky.fi allows users to offer loans for specific NFTs in a collection and earn yield in return.In this episode, Rea and Anton share their journey into web3, how Sharky.fi works, their views on NFT royalties, and their vision for the future of NFT-backed lending.Show Notes:01:10 - Background / Origin Story 02:57 - Why Solana and NFTs? 06:54 - What is Sharky? How does it work?09:55 - Transition from web 2.0 to Web 3.0? 15:18 - NFT collection 20:03 - State of royalties on Solana26:24 - Sharky's roadmap and vision for the future31:44 - A builder they admire in the Web3 ecosystem34:10 - Learn more about Sharky Full Transcript:Brian (00:06):Hey everyone and welcome to the zeitgeist, the show where we highlight founders, developers, and designers who are pushing the Web 3.0 Space forward. I'm Brian Friel, developer relations at Phantom and I'm super excited to have on today the founders of SharkyFi, Rea and Anton Sharky is the leading NFT lending protocol on Solana. Rea and Anton, welcome to the show.Rea (00:29):Hi, so excited to be here.Anton (00:31):Hey everyone. Thank you for having us.Brian (00:33):I'm super excited to have you guys on, I think we actually first met way back last summer. We were all working out at the Solana Labs office in San Francisco. For those who have never been there, it's a really cool environment where a bunch of ecosystem teams are huddled together, iterating on ideas. You guys were very early to this concept of NFT lending and since then you guys have just exploded in success. Before we dive into all things Sharky, I'd love to know a little bit about you guys in particular. Who are you guys, and how did you come to start working on this idea of Sharky in the Solana Labs office in San Francisco?Rea (01:10):Oh, yeah. Well, that's a pretty long journey, but yeah, I've always been a fan of startups. I think I started engaging in startups even when I was in college. I started hacking using my college student manual labor to really hack for free back then. And I really fell in love with the idea of being able to have so much impact. And I think that you can have impact anywhere if you're passionate about what you're doing. But there's something that's really intrinsically beautiful about being able to touch something so closely, be able to talk to someone about the problems they're having and then actually solve that. Do all parts of that. Being more than just a full-stack developer, being a full-desk founder where you do the design, you have to walk through the customer stories. So I found that entire thing really exciting.(01:59):So I've been bouncing around startups since and Anton and I actually co-founded a startup before this for engineers because we really like the idea of giving back. And Sharky is another way that we're giving back to another community. We're really, really proud to be part of the NFT Degen crowd and this is some way that we can actually give NFTs lasting power. We can give NFTs this sort of financial backbone that it needs to really be this asset that people don't have to take so lightly and think of as just JPEGs. So I'm really excited to be contributing to that cause.Brian (02:33):That's awesome. So Rea, you graduated from CalTech, I see you were the former founder of Slack community and then as you mentioned, you co-founded a startup with Anton. Both of you guys do have an engineering background. Anton, I'd love to know from you what brought you guys over from working in Web 2.0 Together? What was it about Solana and NFTs that made you guys think this is a problem we're solving?Anton (02:56):Yeah, so I had also pretty long journey before I came to Solana. I'm originally from Ukraine. I started way back when as just an engineer working there. I remember pretty well how board startup was pretty scary for me. It felt like, "Oh, it's a whole different world. I don't know if I'll ever be ready to help my own startup and things like that." Then I moved to the United States, moved to Bay Area and Silicon Valley and all of this became way easier and way more tangible. And I started working at a lot of early-stage startups, kind of preparing myself for the journey. Then co-founded my first company and then I met Rea after work we were working on again one of the startups and we met just engineers and we faced some problems in that company as engineers that we were unsolved and we thought, well how about we just hacked something over weekend and also had another common friend, mutual friend and was like, "Well, let's hack it together. It seems fun. Maybe we can solve this problem."(03:59):Most of the stories like that, it grew slowly, we got our first customer, we sold our own problem, and somebody wanted to pay us for it. Then we started thinking, "Well, maybe it's going to be a business." And we grew it to a pretty substantial profitable company. Our goal was to try building a company, try running a startup, try working together, but keep it small, keep the company small in all the separations. And I think we succeeded on that. And since then, I kind of worked a little bit on other Web 2.0 companies, worked on education, passionate about education, and we've been in crypto as an investor for quite some time. And I think last year in August, I think that's where I first heard about Solana, maybe in July.(04:48):But August when I seriously read about it, I listened to podcast with Anatoly (Yakovenko), was impressed with just general intelligence and thinking behind how conceptualization of ideas and the grand vision I get similar wipes, how that I got from Steve Jobs when I first listened to his presentations, and I wanted to build here and try how it feels. And I think I pitched Solana in kind of this whole space to be at, and we came to Miami for Solana's second hacker house, kind of met a bunch of people in the ecosystem, fell in love with all the people we met and the energy around. And that's where a decision was made to, well, how about we found the company here. And by that time, we already were passionate about NFTs and saw them as the future, if anything would bring crypto to the real world. I think the first theme of concept that is likely to do it is NFTs.(05:47):And it felt good to be early in that journey. It felt good to kind of try and build something fundamental. And I think financial products are very fundamental for NFTs and that's kind of how we got to it. And we were not sure at first, we were all very confused kind of how things work in general and not how technology works I guess how dynamics of building Web 3.0 companies works. That was definitely a new and very, very interesting journey. But yeah, that's how we met and that's how we started.Brian (06:18):Yeah, I love that. And so you guys had this key early insight that Solana was unique. You mentioned listening to Natoli, getting those Steve Job vibes, but then also that NFTs were really what was bringing it into the mainstream a little bit more. At the time that I met you guys, pursuing this financialization of NFTs was basically unheard of in Solana. I'd definitely say that was a contrarian bet and then now that's worked out pretty well. Could you walk through for the uninitiated, what is Sharky? What is it that you guys are doing for people? How does all of this work under the hood?Rea (06:54):So what we do is allow you to take all these JPEGs in your wallet and basically use it as a credit card. If you're willing to put the JPEG on the line, then you get access to a lot more of that liquidity. So anytime people say, "I'm rich in JPEGs, but illiquid AF." This is what Sharky comes into play, you can take those NFTs that you have and actually put them as collateral in a loan and then you can take out that money and do whatever you want with it and then you pay back that loan and then you get an NFT back.(07:32):Now, traditionally this requires you to actually put your whatever, if you're using a physical object, your grandmother's heirloom ring, you would have to put it in a safe box somewhere and not have access to that during the time that you have access to the money. But what we actually have done is allowed you to be able to do this in wallet. So you keep your NFTs in your wallet, you don't actually have to send them away somewhere and never see them again. You hold onto the NFT during the loan, and you just can't move it around, so it's locked in your wallet. So the escrow is effectively staying in your wallet and then when you pay back the loan, then the NFT gets unfrozen and you can do whatever you want with it.Anton (08:11):Yeah, and I guess the second side of what Sharky is about is we also allow you to be a lender. We'll allow you to lend money versus borrowing them. So in the traditional world, it's either you go to a bank and bank lends your money or maybe you go to some pawn shop and that small pawn shop lends your money. There is not really a lot of opportunity to be a lender just as an individual. And that's what Sharky also allows and that's one of the most talked about features I would say. You hear lots of stories on Twitter, Twitter threads, basically how to make money in the bear market, and usually Sharky comes up. So as a lender you can lend money. I would say you need to be somewhat knowledgeable about the space. You don't have to be an expert, but at least be aware of what's going on. And you can make a pretty substantial yield with Sharky in the current volatile market. But yeah, so that's that we're kind of creating this two-sided market in a sense. Rea (09:09):Brian, aren't you a lender?Brian (09:11):I have tried it out. It is a pretty interesting novel phenomenon. We have a few folks at Phantom who I would say are, I don't know if the term whale is right because it's Sharky, but giant sharks, I guess. But...Rea (09:23):Whale sharks.Brian (09:25):I am curious because to build all this, you mentioned that building a Web 3.0 company is pretty different from your previous Web 2.0 ventures. It's not just a consumer app that you guys are building, which is already hard enough trying to build a two-sided marketplace, get these consumers. You guys also had to build the plumbing and the protocol for all this to happen as well. Talk a little bit about that, the difference between your guys' success and Web 2.0 and what lessons you guys had to learn to bring that knowledge into Web 3.0.Rea (09:56):I think one of the biggest shockers when we came to Web 3.0 is seeing the amount of traction that people were having with no product or even the semblance of one people were raising from community and raising from VCs with, “I have a plan”, and sometimes that plan isn't even very well thought out, but I mean I attribute that to the infancy of the space at the time. I think at the beginning of any bubble that's still inflating, there's just sort of dumping money in and it's exciting. Everyone's euphoric on that whole experience. And now I would say this ecosystem, it's been only a few years, but for most people in this space, it's only been one year. And it's already mature to the point where I see lots of founders that were famous, no longer around, or lots of products that were literally the epitome of – that was your role model when you grew up on Solana.(10:55):And that's also not no longer around. And I think what you see is some of the lasting teams who are continuously building and that's something that I have to hats off to everyone who sort of stuck through the storms on this. But even beyond that, something that I'm noticing is all of that hype and that big rush of raising before pre-product and all of that. That is no longer the extreme meta that we're seeing. We're seeing people having to prove yourself a little bit more, but what I think is also I guess coming to some of the pros I see in Web 3.0 is it's so much more of a community atmosphere to build in. I think previously there was a lot more in Web 2.0 we see more under isolation or you kind of go heads down until you either make it or break it.(11:38):Whereas in Web 3.0 there's a lot more of this open communication. I would say it's almost more similar to if you ever participated in a kickstarter campaign for everyone out there who's Web 2.0 and doesn't understand Web 3.0 yet, you see this continuous discourse while they're sort of raising from the community and having this conversation back and forth. And there's a little log of how the founders are going about this. "Oh, today we had production issues, so sorry about that." But we really nailed a prototype on this other thing. We finally got some of our supply line issues figured out. And that open communication, that transparency is so important, and I dare say a lot of times we kind of idolize some of these tech founders whether Web 2.0 or Web 3.0, but they're human, and their teams are also human and they're really worth learning from.(12:27):So a lot of times you have these stories and you hear and the more transparent a team is, the more you actually get to be a part of that process and it builds so much compassion within the ecosystem because a lot of times I think it can become you're building this thing you promised this time and you said you're going to do the deliver this exact thing, what's up with that? And I think this discourse. One, makes it much more fun to build it. And two, allows the community to be much more excited because a lot of times if you only get the finished product every quarter or whatever, you're not able to really stay continually engaged. So I think a lot of these things makes this much more of a more welcoming atmosphere to build in both for the people we're building it for and for the builders.Anton (13:10):Yeah, I would say it's hard to separate Web 3.0 building from just building and crypto space and I think this space is just very volatile. So I think another side of the story of what Web 3.0 is describing. There's a lot of apps, but there's also lots of downs. There's like market downturns or just space volatility. There's always things that are hard to predict. You wake up every morning and you kind of read the news, Twitter and all kinds of things can happen positive and negative.(13:44):And unlike Web 2.0 companies that move much slower, everything moves faster and if everyone moves faster, it doesn't mean everything is just better. It just means in the condensed time you'll experience these ups and downs. And to me, it's definitely a more challenging aspect I guess as a founder I feel like I needed to step up in terms of mental health and mental stability even more than usual and don't let myself to be too high or too down and try to be more even here that less reactive and more strategic and it's sounds generic but it's real. This pain is real, and the hardship is real.Brian (14:27):Yeah, one year in the crypto ecosystem is living 10 or 20-years in traditional markets, just compressing those ups and downs not only in the market but also as a founder, journey, and all of that as well. I definitely resonate with that. One other thing just on this topic of differences between Web 2.0, Web 3.0 is that you mentioned the community buy-in aspect, you have this community that's rabid. If you haven't seen Sharky's Discord, you go in there at any time you guys have a product update, it's like there's a stadium in there that's going crazy. But in addition to all that, you guys made a pretty interesting decision. You guys, not only are you this protocol for lending NFTs, you also created your own NFT collection. Talk a little bit about that. What is this NFT collection? Why did you guys decide to launch this?Rea (15:18):We are an NFT centric company, so it only made more sense to completely Degen-ify ourselves. I mean there are also business aspects to which I'll let Anton dive into the more boring parts, but I think that has just been just so fun. I mean our entire team is really creative and for me, I've been a part of many NFT projects, whether as a consultant on the team or just help with some of the strategy there, but never taken something that's really fully our own. And we considered hiring other artists, but since we had people that actually are artistic and on our own team, like myself included or championing that effort, it was just really fun to actually take something, give back to the community in a wholly different way than we have in the past with our tech without products. But now actually being able to take our art to the next level and to put it out there with the Sharky standard, that was really, really fun.Anton (16:14):So there are several aspects of why. One, we planned this from the beginning when we started the company. We thought we would do an NFT sale sometime around August and we did this in October. So we were not even that far in our estimation in obviously this aspect of fundraising, kind of public fundraising and you get extra funds for company runway operations, all of that. But it is also what we thought would be useful, but we didn't realize how useful. It's one of the best growth mechanisms for the company because you build in so many incentives for people to promote your company without you doing this. It's kind of like this network snowball effect and that's very powerful. I think all of our metrics pretty much doubled within just two weeks of intense... I wouldn't say promotions because we didn't do promotions of us announcing that we're going to have an NFT collection and how it's all going to work and just trying to sell that vision, pretty much within two weeks we got more customers than we ever had gotten.(17:20):So that's just a very powerful growth strategy. And a lot of companies run NFT projects as a fundraiser before they have a product. I think it's also super useful and nice, but it accelerates growth basically if you do have a product. And third aspect, we want to embrace building in Web 3.0, and I think building in Web 3.0, the major difference from Web 2.0 is building together with your users, users/ investors and that social building is impossible without aligning incentives and alignment of incentives. It basically allows everybody to be part of the journey, allowing everybody to invest, to be holder, to get benefits from platform growth. And that's what we ultimately wanted to do, and experience how it feels to truly build Web 3.0 company, truly build community and succeed with community together.(18:09):So yeah, I guess NFT is not the only way to do it. Realizing and talking through the ideal process would feel somewhat similar but not exactly. I think the NFT community is unique in that it is formed by more, I guess, demanding investors, some smaller, less experienced, but also much more focused on being involved, versus just basically observing the company. So those are the reasons why I would say.Rea (18:37):I would just add that beyond all of the very reasonable or good reasons that we've already said, the community every single day was like when NFT. So I think that was also a pretty big driver for us.Brian (18:49):Fair, definitely fair. It's pretty wild when you go on Twitter, and you just see someone that you've never interacted with before wearing your NFT as a profile picture. In your guys' case you have these cute little baby sharks that are going to power up as the protocol evolves. They're definitely pretty cool. But yeah, I agree it's a pretty wild and unexplored lever for growth when you have users who just are continually showing their allegiance and buying in with displaying these NFTs month, after month, after month. It's pretty wild to see.(19:21):Now that you guys have your own NFT collection, I have to ask you guys, the hard-hitting question that the Solana ecosystem is pondering right now is, what is your take on the state of royalties on Solana? So for those who don't know, every NFT sale traditionally has paid out a percent royalty to the creator, it's baked into the tokens metadata, but this was not enforced programmatically. It required some sort of social buy-in by the marketplace or whoever was selling it. And now months into this NFT journey that's coming under fire, what have you guys seen in Sharky that informs your opinion on what's the state of royalties on Solana?Anton (20:03):Yeah, I think we're in this state where we're trying to figure out how to make it work. So clearly, how it was working before is not sustainable. So right now, it's kind of like everything is broken and with really building and rebuilding, I think incentive systems and also technology, how to make it all possible. I think Sharky's stance is that there needs to be a choice at the time of creating a collection allowing holders to decide whether they want to invest into something where they have to pay royalties or not. I think it's not great to do it retroactively, kind of remove royalties from project creators or introduce royalties to holders when they didn't agree to them, and the choice wasn't possible before. And right now, we have quite a few approaches that make it possible. None of the technical solutions are perfect. So unfortunately, we will have to choose some trade-offs.(21:00):Whatever we choose, we have to support two things. One, we should allow existing collections to migrate all at once without making it to be a holder's decision. So basically, the choice that I described before, allowing holders to decide what projects they want to invest in. Unfortunately, we'll have to kind of reinstate this and make everybody re-decide that if... Let's say as Sharky, we want royalties because it's part of our benefits for holders, part of benefits for the team as well. But maybe some holders don't want royalties, so they would have to exit the project at that point in time and that would be a decision. But what I don't want to happen, what I think would be really bad for the space, if all holders would have to decide one by one whether they want to upgrade their NFT to be royalties enforced or not. I think that should be a choice for creators, for collection owners.(21:52):So that's one aspect of it. Otherwise, it'll be a fractured ecosystem. It'll be kind of like, oh, within the same collection, some sharks from our collection support royalties, some don't. And there'll be confusion all over the place. And second, there is this debate right now. So basically, for context, all of the solutions involve some kind of whitelisting and blacklisting protocols that NFTs allow you to interact with in some sense. In my worldview, the approach with blacklisting is much more forgiving. Imagine if we go with a whitelisting approach, I think there will be a negative consequence for the ecosystem. Let's say Solana Hackathons. I want to experiment and build a new protocol and deploy it to main net and demonstrate how it works. If that protocol is not whitelisted, I cannot demonstrate this using any popular NFTs that use this royalty enforcement because I need to go through approval, I need to get some DAO or some authority or somebody to get my protocol approved.(22:48):And I think that extra hoop, that extra step, just would stagnate innovation and would create a lot of roadblocks, but it'll be in the sense, some kind of perfect solution excluding that because then we can only trade on these whitelisted marketplaces or at least the protocols and everything is great. But I think the trade-off is very significant. Versus if we go with a blacklisting approach, then we can just say, "Hey, you're not allowed to trade with these protocols that are not respecting royalties and the trade-off there will be like, there would be a lot of attempts and protocols (created) to work around royalties short-term and as a space we would have to play the catch up game. We'll have to keep blacklisting them, and keep kind of finding solutions for that. But I think it's better, I think it's better than the alternative because we're still open for innovation. We are kind of permissionless by default, if that makes sense, and require less authority, less authority on decisions. So not a lot of solutions allow for those two. And I don't know where we land in this space, but that's our viewpoint, I guess, on this year.Rea (23:50):I was also going to add that with royalties, you also kind of have this free rider problem if you allow everyone to pick and choose what they want to pay. Because whether it's a team that's not really doing anything and then they're just collecting royalties and you kind of feel bad, they're like, "Oh man, we're all paying and they're just sitting on their asses, that's so messed up." Versus a team that's really actively putting out content or new ways for you to earn or whatever it is that the team is doing. And then you have a bunch of people that don't pay for that and then a bunch of people who think it's worthwhile. So they pay for that. The creators aren't really getting paid for their work and the people that aren't paying for that anyway are also receiving the benefits. So what is the incentive to be a good actor in this case?(24:37):So I think that there are some ways that we've thought about within Sharky about how we incentivize, and people who are not caring about these benefits don't need to have these benefits and they don't want to pay for these benefits. But the people who do care about these benefits can actually be a part of the contributing community. So I think this is a problem that really requires a tailored approach according to what your company or project is doing. And I think I would just like to see more people put more intent towards this, whether you're just a part of the ecosystem, someone who's buying and selling flipping NFTs or a team.Brian (25:08):I think that's a great-nuanced take, which we don't always hear on the crypto Twitter side of things, but I agree it's definitely in this state right now whereas you said, Anton, we kind of have a way to just wipe a clean slate and rebuild this. And there are a lot of benefits to this Web 3.0 ecosystem where it is permission lists by default and people like you guys can come in and build a protocol idea without having to ask anybody's permission and keeping that spirit alive, I think is pretty important.(25:37):So I want to look ahead a little bit, what do you guys see as the future for Sharky? So today, Rea, we started this podcast, you said if you have JPEGs and you're JPEG rich but cash poor, you can lend these things out, you risk losing the NFT, but you can get immediate liquidity on the flip side of that. There's some speculators who think that they'll be able to make a pretty good ROI, assuming that the market holds up. Obviously not financial advice, very, very risky, but that's the current state of things today. As you guys look out about the long-term potential for what NFTs could be, what financialization of NFTs could be lending of these things, what excites you guys? What's on the roadmap and on the vision for Sharky?Anton (26:24):Yeah, it's a good question. So I think we'll be releasing a series of new products next year. So that's one exciting thing. Basically, applying our learnings to make the product better. One of the big ones is mortgages, or Buy Now, Pay Later. We've already been seeing experiments in this space with that. And yeah, basically the overall goal is to allow you to finance JPEGs on the entire spectrum of that. Whether you hold this JPEG or maybe you don't yet hold this JPEG, maybe you just want to get it, but you don't have enough funds to get it or maybe you want to just buy with leverage and buy several. So we want to release that product to the market, allowing you to basically pay a down payment and get an effect. You pay the full price of the NFT later, but still start being a holder immediately. Imagine you can join MonkeDAO and only pay 20% of the price and kind of see what's it about.(27:24):And maybe if you don't like it, you can sell it back but you only invested a fraction, or for any other benefits, you can look at the community or you can just trade. There's two different aspects. Deciding whether you want to be a holder or just trade in with leverage, which we believe will be a pretty popular use case as well. Obviously, there's a lot of nuance with our existing product and we are adding more features to that, but I think one of the things that I'm excited about is not directly a Sharky product feature, but it's more experimenting with user experience in this space. And we've been trying to pioneer at least some approaches and try to see how we can establish new norms. Right now, every interaction with a DeFi protocol on Solana on other chains, I call it click approve UX.(28:12):Basically, you do some meaningful action and then you need to approve a transaction in your wallet. What we want to experiment with is to build a different kind of experience that allows you to interact with protocol and look ahead, do actions, several of them, and then approve it all at once. Basically, making this experience more smooth and fluent. And that's kind of a UX pattern that we are developing. I'm personally very excited about releasing it and seeing how users will accept it, and see whether other protocols and other products will also try to do something similar. And on the NFT side of things, we are releasing our gamified revenue share program. It's not a passive revenue share, it's kind of requires users to actively contribute to the platform, engage with our product and with our NFTs and with that we will share some portion of upside with them. So that's coming pretty soon. And for the next year there's a lot of secret strategies and secret features for our holders that we will release over time. Did I miss anything, Rea, do you think? Like anything major?Brian (29:20):Anything for the clamoring Discord channel that is asking when, when, when any hidden nugget you can drop in here.Rea (29:28):I was like, "Are we going to drop some alpha?" Yeah, I mean I think that there's probably some other further development. I should probably check with the marketing team before I say anything crazy. But there's further development on the NFT that I think the community already knows about and that involves more goodies for the people who are really excited about sharks and love the art style. So there's a lot there. And yeah, I think that's it.Anton (29:54):Yeah. And like you mentioned something about the future of NFTs, how we see that. I think it's very interesting to see the first attempts to bring NFTs to real world assets and tie them together in some ways. And we're already talking to teams who are trying to do that. So our vision is to stay in the space of JPEGs, but also branch into the space of where NFTs start representing assets that could be your car or any collectibles and stuff like that, and provide financial infrastructure there. It'll be a pretty different product because the market is different, volatility is different, but fundamentally it's kind of the same type of incentive systems.(30:36):Fundamentally it's like lenders. Some people could be lenders, people could be borrowers, with just a different structure and maybe different terms of loans. So we definitely want to be in that space as well. And that also requires us to not just build a protocol, but requires us to gain expertise in those specific domains. Because lending is not created equal. What works for NFTs, and JPEGs may not work for collectibles, may not work for houses or cars. It requires different risk models and probably slightly different products. So yeah, that's kind of the vision for the next three to five years is expanding to those areas as well.Brian (31:13):Yeah, that's exciting. I think we can all kind of picture a world where one day those assets are represented on-chain. Obviously, the frictionless nature of transferring those makes a lot of sense. But as you noted, it's important to stay in-the-now and be realistic that right now there's a lot of JPEGs, and I'd say that you guys are handling that use case pretty well. This has been an awesome discussion. One closing question we always love to ask our users, and I want to hear this take from both of you is who is a builder that you admire in the Web 3.0 ecosystem?Anton (31:45):Yeah, it's really hard to pick one. I would say top of mind is the Tensor team, Tensor founders. So I think both of them are pretty amazing builders. It's impressive to me how just two of them, how much they built and how quickly in this space. And not just with Tensor. I was following their journey before, and they built lots of cool things for the ecosystem and they also just have a good intent. Things they built, they try to align those incentives with just like what's good for the space. Not just like, "Oh, let's build a cool product." There's plenty of really good builders in Solana that just like to build things, but the reason I'm highlighting that team, I think they have a combination of both. They're really good builders but also built things that are very, very important and useful for the space and make the space better. So that's my take. It's Richard and Ilmoi from Tensor Trade.Brian (32:42):Yeah, Tensor Trade, the real-time NFT trading platform. Rea, your take.Rea (32:48):Yeah, like Anton said, it's pretty hard to pick one. I think if I had to hat tip to my origins, I learned a lot of my early technical knowledge on Solana from Brett, who's now at Star Atlas. And he's done a lot of, I think, open-source work that is just a lot of the necessary work that goes into making the ecosystem something, who builds for the builders, is kind of how I think about him.(33:16):And so he is also been really fun to talk to about the different, if you want to look sort of long and far at what's going to happen to the technology down the line and what are some of the upcoming scalability issues, roadblocks that Solana faces, if you want to just get a pulse on that to be able to build with that in mind so you're not constantly building to catch up. You always have really good conversations with Brett, and I just really like that he's also someone who you can tell is genuinely passionate about the space. He's working on his own time to learn more and also to contribute more. And a lot of times when something happens in the ecosystem, if no one knows what's going on, you can still go talk to him about it. And he always, we can always theory craft and it's always a good time.Brian (34:02):Oh, that's great. Well, Rea and Anton, this has been an awesome conversation. Thank you so much for your time. Where can people go to learn more about Sharky?Rea (34:12):Well, the Sharky.fi is a really good place to start. You can look at the beautiful order books. We've recently rolled out some performance improvements, so that's going to be really fun. And I think nothing creates a better impression than making money. So go and make some money. Not financial advice.Anton (34:31):You can read over white paper on the homepage. Kind of gives you a high-level overview. Otherwise, if you just type “Sharky lend Twitter” in Google, you'll see threats that are written by the community. At this point we've seen more than 10 just not even sponsored by us in any way. Just some lender supporters describe how to use Sharky. And I think those are the best to learn because it's through the eyes of real users and there are even YouTube walkthroughs of how to open Sharky. Yeah, it's a pretty rich ecosystem already.Brian (35:05):Awesome, thank you so much. Anton and Rea, founders of SharkyFi.Anton (35:09):Yeah, thank you for having us. It was a pleasure.
Helium is the first people-powered decentralized wireless network.In episode 14 of The Zeitgeist, Boris Renski, GM of Wireless at Nova Labs sits down with Brian Friel to discuss how crypto is enabling new ways to deploy wireless infrastructure. Show Notes:00:52 - Who is Boris Renski / Background 03:23 - What is Helium? 06:44 - Catalyst behind creating a network11:20 - People's network built by the people14:50 - Is Web3 essential to this network? 17:08 - Partnerships 20:20 - How do Saga users benefit from Helium?24:41 - Building in a bear market / Roadmap29:05 - Things Boris is excited about 33:30 - A Solana builder Boris admires Full Transcript:Brian (00:05):Hey everyone and welcome to the Zeitgeist, the show where we highlight the founders, developers, and designers who are pushing the web through the space forward. I'm Brian Friel, Developer Relations at Phantom, and I'm super excited to have with me today, Boris Renski.(00:20):Boris is the General Manager of Cellular Wireless at Nova Labs. At Nova, Boris is responsible for leading the charge of all things related to Helium Mobile, the world's first people's carrier. Boris, welcome to the show.Boris (00:33):Thank you. Great to be here.Brian (00:35):Great to have you here as well. I'm really excited about what you guys are building. For those who were at BreakPoint, you might have seen a little bit about how you guys are going to be powering some of the upcoming Saga phones. But before we get into all that, I'd love to learn a little bit more about you. Who are you, and how did you come to start working at Nova Labs?Boris (00:52):Yeah so, this happened fairly recently. I, what the people in the cryptosphere refer to as the normie, not a Degen, so to speak. Most of my career, I spent in open source cloud infrastructure. Prior to my [inaudible 00:01:11] to Web3, I've helped build and co-found a company called Mirantis, which to this day remains one of the bigger players packaging this cloud, open source cloud operating system, so to speak.(01:29):My journey towards crypto was the extension of the work that I did in the open source cloud infrastructure, in that when I was still working for Mirantis, one of the open source projects at that time my team was focusing on, was this project called Magma that is can think of it as the open source software that allows anybody to build a cellular network.(01:58):And I, about three years ago, left Mirantis with the idea of taking this open source Magma project and creating a very simple way for people to basically take advantage of it such that anybody can just click a few buttons, get a small hardware appliance and have a small cellular network that they can operate.(02:25):And the original focus was very much towards the private LT and private 5G space. There was no even thinking of crypto at the origination of this company, FreedomFi that I've started, but then midway for our journey with come across Helium and some of the folks of the Helium team and they've pitched to us to look into this other use case which is a distributed wireless.(02:52):And we did a couple of pilots and basically the rest is history, and the whole thing culminated, and Nova acquiring FreedomFi, and my joining the team and now working on Helium Mobile.Brian (03:05):That's awesome. Yeah, I definitely think you have a unique path towards coming towards crypto building, very practical open source everyday solutions, and then finding your way into this industry.(03:17):For those who maybe aren't familiar with Helium, how would you describe what is Helium and what do they do?Boris (03:22):So Helium is a people-powered decentralized wireless network. In a nutshell, it's from the standpoint of a builder. It's a new way to build a wireless network where anybody, be it an individual or a company, can buy a piece of hardware, click a few buttons to enable it, and then this piece of hardware effectively becomes a node on a wireless network. And then the Helium blockchain aggregates all of its individual nodes into a single macro network that is usable effectively by anybody.(04:04):And I think that Helium started this with the idea to build a global worldwide network for sensors using this IOT protocol called Laura, but it ultimately has become so successful and was built out so quickly, there's over a million nodes on the network now, that it's almost like it's become a beacon for a new way to deploy wireless infrastructure. Not so much just specifically for Laura, but for almost any use case.(04:40):So that drove the community to explore, okay, well we've built out this global worldwide network for sensors, but the model, this bottoms up model of building the wireless coverage is so powerful where else can we apply that model? And that led to this concept of introducing the network of networks of which I think the cellular network for not the sensors, but the phones which Helium Mobile is all about, is the first instantiation.Brian (05:16):Yeah, and when you say sensors specifically, what type of sensors are you talking about?Boris (05:20):So any sensors that use this protocol called Laura, which is a particular protocol with a couple of aspects to it that make it useful for situations where you would have very low bandwidth and very low power usage. So if you have for example, a sensor to see if there's termites in the ground, you will have that sensor of a battery buried in the ground that'll just live there forever, and it needs access to some global network to transmit something once a day, whether or not there's termites eating something.(05:57):So there's basically a huge ecosystem of these types of Laura sensors, and any Laura sensor can work with the Helium network. So I come from a cellular side, so I'm a little bit less in the weeds with the types of lower sensors specifically, but at a high level that's what it is.Brian (06:19):That's great. Well then let's jump into the cellular side of things. So, you described this network of networks essentially that Helium now is, and one of the initiatives though as you've pointed out is this Helium Mobile.(06:31):You talked a little bit about how "Hey, we have this network that's growing very fast and is very popular and worldwide," but what specifically was the catalyst for starting a mobile network and then what does this mobile network look like today?Boris (06:44):Yeah, so let me see if I can give you a little bit of history and that will also share, provide the bigger context. So at FreedomFi prior to my joining Nova, like I said, what we have built is a very straightforward way for anybody to deploy a mini cell tower. You can think of it like a cellular wireless node, which was our technical know-how and the core differentiation for FreedomFi as a company.(07:17):And at that time, Helium was already fairly far down their path of creating global coverage for Laura. And when they saw what we did with respect to simplifying the cellular deployments, I got that pinned literally by a buy who was chief product officer at Helium, and he said, "Hey, look at the stuff that we have built with Laura and what you guys have done with the simplification of deploying cellular infrastructure at FreedomFi is amazing. How about we marry these two concepts? We enable people to deploy mini cellular towers or small cells and basically compensate them in crypto depending on whether or not the placement of the small cell is useful or not."(08:10):So it was like, "okay, that's very interesting." And we did some pilots, and we did then a bunch of work to actually productize that and we launched that to the general public just some months ago. And obviously the community just took that up and started building all of a sudden. So in the matter of, I think, now three or four months, we have close to 7,000 small cells around the US that people have deployed and that are operational.(08:43):And in parallel with doing this work to marry a Helium way of building networks with our know-how, making it very simple to deploy, we started talking to a whole bunch of operators, the mobile network operators as they call them in the US, about saying, "Hey, look at this network that we are building. How about you guys partner with us and integrate this network that we're building with your macro network?"(09:17):And we got to some degree of success there. We've announced a couple of partners, but at the same time it's also become clear that the carriers in general are very conservative and very importantly slow moving entities. So in our thinking of how we can further accelerate this? We've decided that an important pillar to doing this would be us actually eating our own dog food and launching our own people's carrier as we call it, which is Helium Mobile.(09:54):So this was the catalyst to the partnership with T-Mobile and the people's carrier announcement that we did recently.Brian (10:01):That's awesome. And so this people's carrier, this is essentially what people would expect from their normal iPhone or Android phone carrier 5G connectivity being able to make calls throughout the US. Is that right?Boris (10:15):Yes, that is absolutely correct. So it's basically a US nationwide network for cell phones that provides connectivity for data and voice globally. And what makes it unique is that unlike almost any other carrier, we are not exclusively using one macro network, but we're using the macro network of our partner, T-Mobile, which we've talked about, and we compliment that with the people built network that is basically being built by the Helium community using this very model that I have described.(10:55):So the back end to the service that the people yet to take advantage of is actually very much also built by the community.Brian (11:06):I see. So The Peoples Network quite literally means the network built by people who go in and they take the effort themselves to put up these infrastructure and then they're compensated in crypto for the effectiveness of that?Boris (11:20):Yes. That is correct. And that's the whole notion behind this concept of the people's carrier. And I think that the unique and interesting thing about it is that if you look at the mobile wireless industry at large, if you look, peek under the hood of how a mobile operator functions, there are always dozens of different entities that are collaborating under the hood to make a carrier. So if a consumer, you go to AT&T, you buy a cell phone, you buy a subscription, and then you just start using it.(11:57):But if you peek under the hood, it's not really almost one company. Any carrier is an entity that has assets in the form of wireless spectrum and there are subscribers. And then under the hood there is dozens of different organizations that actually do work to comprise a carrier.(12:22):So most carriers, they don't build their own radios, they don't build their own wireless software, they don't install or operate their own towers. Most of the time, don't even own and operate their own stores. So many different companies aggregated under one umbrella.(12:40):And I think that this notion of a people's carrier that we're trying to pioneer with Helium Mobile is all about using blockchain and crypto economics to dramatically improve the efficiencies of the value chain that is basically the modern day carrier. So instead of having dozens of different independent entities all shuffle paperwork between each other, but ultimately roll into this one umbrella of whatever, like AT&T, or Verizon, or whatever it is, you actually simplify a lot of this overhead by actually having the blockchain take care of it.(13:25):And probably the most capital intensive part of any carrier and the most complicated is actually building the network. So finding a location for deploying a radio, contracting with somebody who either builds a tower there or who maintains a building, then actually deploying it, maintaining, et cetera. So this is all very capital intensive, complicated process that usually involves a lot of entities that we are making significantly more efficient.Brian (13:56):Let's talk a little bit about that crypto element. I mean you yourself said that you consider yourself a normie and that you found yourself into this crypto environment. I think this is pretty unique because we, as a wallet, we see a lot of different players in the crypto space so much or just inherently digital. It's either DeFi or NFTs is the vast mass 95% of the use cases we see. This is very different. This is taking something that's very much real world cellular infrastructure and trying to incentivize a network around that.(14:29):I think also everything you described too, it seems other carriers may be more potentially top down, whereas this is almost a bottoms up movement of getting individuals to go out and create this network. To you, what is the importance of this Web3 element? Do you actually think this could be made without Web3? Or is Web3 really a vital ingredient to all of this?Boris (14:54):I mean, I think that this is next to maybe solving some of the problems in the financial space, probably the second biggest opportunity for the Web3, because from my standpoint, Web3 is really the key enabler, is the new way to coordinate economic activity. That's when various parties, I would argue. This is what the crux of where Web3 can unlock the most value.(15:18):And if you look at various industries, the mobile network industry is one where you have a tremendous number of different parties that are collaborating with each other with a tremendous amount of inefficiencies in between. So if you could, instead of having a company that is building and operating cellular towers, and a company that is building the radios, and a separate company that is operating the stores, and a separate company that is doing the RF planning, combine all of that using blockchain and coordinate the economic activity between these parties using blockchain and radically distribute the value that is created by this collaboration using crypto economics, you will cut out a tremendous amount of inefficiency from the value chain, and then consequently you can transfer this value to the end user, meaning the subscriber of the user of the cellular network.(16:28):So there's a few industries I think that they're like that, and I would argue that the cellular wireless space is up there and to the extent that you can apply this concept that Web3 allows more efficient collaboration and then better and more creativity around the economic activity between the different parties, can apply that to that space. There's an enormous amount of opportunity to unlock value.Brian (16:54):Yeah, I love that. I couldn't agree more. Let's switch gears a little bit and talk about some of the partnerships that you've been mentioning, so.(17:00):The first one that you brought up is T-Mobile. What specifically does that partnership entail and what made them get involved with Helium Mobile?Boris (17:08):The network that we're building uses a particular type of wireless spectrum called CBRS. And this is a shared spectrum, which is a new innovative model that allows basically anybody in the US with just a little bit of money to get access to clean wireless spectrum that is usable for the cellular use case. That spectrum and the radios that are built to operate in that spectrum, the physical properties of it are such that the reach of the wireless radio is limited to a couple of city blocks. And because of that, using that technology, it's very challenging to build a network that would be contiguous and will provide contiguous coverage around the entirety of the US.(18:00):And obviously if you're building a wireless network and if we as Helium Mobile want to provide a service to our end users, nobody's going to be using a service where you only have it working around your house and then you leave and all of a sudden there is no service, and then maybe you traveled half a mile and then your friend has a cell, and then you have a service again, and then there's no service.(18:23):So you need to have contiguous coverage.Brian (18:26):Right.Boris (18:26):So no matter where you go, you always have access to your voice and data. And to make that happen, it's important for us to partner with a macro network operator with somebody who has the service throughout the US. So T-Mobile is that macro network operator that we partnered with. And the way that, as I mentioned, Helium Mobile works is that whenever there is Helium CBRS cell in range, the subscriber would use that cell, but whenever there is no cell it would use the T-Mobile service, so that's going to be the technical underpinning behind the partnership.(19:07):The business logic here is that for T-Mo, I think we are effectively another MV&O customer. So it's not uncommon for an operator carrier to resell their network to other wholesale customers. So the relationship between us and T-Mo is that we basically procure macro network capacity from them. We augmented with the Helium 5G coverage to create this hybrid network with The Peoples Network component in it, and we sell service to the end users as Helium Mobile.Brian (19:48):That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I could definitely see that being an important and necessary piece for when you're launching this network to have a reliable fallback in the cracks there for continuous coverage.(19:59):One additional partnership you guys mentioned more recently was actually a breakpoint that you guys are going to be powering the Saga phone when it launches. So, Solana Labs initiative to showcase what they call SMS, the Solana Mobile Stack, where they're trying to push Web3 mobile. Why is this a big deal and how might Saga phone users benefit from something like Helium Mobile?Boris (20:20):So first of all, we are quite excited about the Saga partnership. The specific thing that I think is going to be the direct benefits to any Saga users is that all the Saga phones that are sold in the US will come with the 30 days of free Helium Mobile service. So people will get to actually experience the people's carrier on their Saga phones. But I think that there's also a tremendous benefit from the technical side.(20:54):So Saga phones, unlike any devices in a cellular space, have been designed top down to support everything required from a security standpoint for people to basically use them for performing different crypto-related operations, starting with the basic ones such as having a wallet on the phone that is also secure.(21:21):Now the concept of the people's carrier, like I said, around multiple parties collaborating to build this new type of carrier does not exclusively involve folks deploying small cells contributing to the network.(21:37):It also, equally importantly, involves the users of the network as the important building pillars. So I've explained how we have this concept of the macro network that is T-Mobile and The People's Network that is providing this non-contiguous supplemental coverage to the macro network.(21:59):Now, for this network to continue growing, it's extremely important for the builders to understand where it's important to deploy additional coverage. Because in some locations you might already have three people, like maybe your neighbor and your neighbor's neighbor already has a Helium 5G cell deployed, so there isn't additional value from you deploying yet another cell. But that information needs to be continuously fed into the blockchain and everybody needs to be aware of that information. So to that effect, the users of the people's carrier, they are not just exclusively the users, they're also contributors of that information of where is it that the coverage is needed.(22:47):And our approach to making it happen is basically the users are able, on an opt-in basis, to effectively share the information, share information about the experience on the network, share information about where they're using, what type of coverage, and then we use that information to ultimately feed into the community and have them build the network around it.(23:12):Now for sharing this information as a user of Helium Mobile, I get rewarded via mobile tokens, but this makes your cellular phone effectively into a cryptocurrency miner. And with that, it creates all of the same challenges around securing, making sure that people don't game it, et cetera, that you would see with any typical mining situation. So being able to securely store your keys to be able to perform these operations with the blockchain using a phone, so that we can know exactly based on your specific phone, how many tokens you should receive based on what information, et cetera. All of the security around that requires a different type of device.(24:06):And Saga and the work that has been done on the Saga phones is actually unique in that it's basically one of the few, if not the only device on the market that enables one to do it today.Brian (24:18):That's awesome. Well I pre-ordered Saga phones, so I look forward to playing around with the network on day one when it launches.(24:24):You hit on how essentially the phone becomes a bit of a cryptocurrency miner. Right now at the time of this recording, it's quite obvious the cryptocurrency market isn't a bit of a bear market. How has it been for Helium to be building during a bear, and what is on your guys' roadmap upcoming?Boris (24:41):Well, I mean this bear cycle is fairly recent, but I think that all of the Helium community historically was born out of a bear market. So the Laura based IOT network, that the Helium community has successfully built, originally was launched immediately after the recent downturn. And all of the building happened during the bear market.(25:10):At the time when the original Helium miner was launched, nobody wanted to touch crypto at all. That was a completely toxic concept. But then ultimately the team has focused on building through the bear market and then on another upswing, this is where Helium became the popular Helium that everybody knows it today.(25:30):Now, today we're just going for this other cycle again and we're just following the company culture mantra of just continuing to build through it and not focusing on the macro environment. And that's really the only way to do it.(25:48):So this is not like anything magically new, but it's actually oftentimes harder to do than to say. I think that in our case it's a little bit easier in that just the whole community culture and the culture of the folks at Nova is such that it's nothing new and people are just basically used to building through the bear cycles.(26:13):As far as the roadmap, I think I touched a little bit on it, but when it comes to Helium Mobile, what's extremely important to us is building the tooling to enable the community to actually create useful coverage. And it's particularly relevant to the cellular network versus a little bit less so for the lower network because of the properties of how the cellular network works, because the signal doesn't propagate very far, it's very hard to build a network that'll just blanket Earth using cellular small cells.(26:54):You can only sort of augment the existing network such as that of T-Mobile. And for that, you need to have intelligence in the system and tooling for the community to be able to understand where to place the radios, and you need to have the proper tuning within the reward mechanisms such that only useful coverage is rewarded. And I think that there's a whole bunch of work that needs to be done beyond what has already been created for the lower network to make that work for the cellular space. And I think that a lot of this is what we're focusing on.(27:37):Another pillar is about making wireless coverage hotspots more affordable for the community. So the CBRS space, the CBRS spectrum is relatively new. The CBRS small cells are relatively new. I would argue that the Helium CBRS network today is probably one of the biggest in the US, so we are leading the way, but because it's new, it's still fairly complicated and clunky and expensive to deploy a CBRS cell. So it's a lot easier than it was two years ago where it was near impossible.(28:15):But it's still a long way away from the simplicity of what you'd experience with, for instance, a wifi access point. And truly making a very large people-powered network requires that there's a lot more simplification for deploying the cellular hotspot, so that's another vector of engineering investment I think that we are spending our cycles on.Brian (28:42):Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. I guess as this network continues to improve, and you guys get feedback coming back, and you're fine tuning the crypto economic rewards, how do you see this whole space playing out? I guess both the crypto side of things, but also just how does this as The Peoples Network play out and challenge existing carriers, and what are you personally most excited about seeing?Boris (29:05):I am excited about the work that we are doing with other carriers that we have announced actually culminating in them formally joining via mobile DAO and becoming another operator on the network. So I think it's an interesting trend in that if you look at mobile space at large, there's been this push towards disaggregation and decentralization in the mobile carrier space in general. So when cellular communication became first possible, everything revolved around basically a carrier that sells you a phone that only works on that carrier and you have a cell number that only works on that phone on that carrier. And that was V1 of cellular communication, the complete lock end around a single entity. And over time, I think during the last, what, 25 years, 30 years of the industry existing, there's been this continuous push towards disaggregation.(30:15):So V2 was that you could have different phones and then you have different phones working on different networks and then people said, "Hey, my phone number is my property, and I want to be able to switch my phone number and carry it with me if I switch carriers." And the new thing now is, that's particularly becoming pronounced is carriers using multiple networks under the hood. So instead of just having one set of radios that work on the spectrum assets that you as a carrier have purchased, you also have relationships maybe with some of the other operators or some of the people that have built infill coverage certain locations, or maybe you operate with the wifi networks, Boingo that people have probably have seen. So this concept of carrier becoming less of the monolithic one macro network, but carrier becoming more of an aggregator of many networks.(31:15):And this is this next wave that we're seeing, and this is not related to specific layer crypto, blockchain, or Helium Mobile. This is just a thing that's happening by itself. And the reason why it's happening is because as more and more data finds its way onto your phone, you need to build networks that have bigger and bigger capacity. And the physics of it is such that the only way to do that is that you need to build networks that operate on higher frequency bands. And the higher the frequency band, the worst this band goes for walls and trees, so be short of the range. And because of that you need to have a lot of density. So if 20 years ago you could put one tower and cover a whole city of it, today you need to have many towers. And the more and more data is on the cellular network, the more and more of the cells you need.(32:09):And because of that, it's no longer economically viable to have a network where just one entity is basically building it. And because of that you need to have multiple networks working together. So I think that what we're doing with people's carrier and applying the blockchain to coordinating economic activity between many network creators and aggregating that into one network is a natural extension of where the entire cellular industry is headed.(32:41):So obviously we are super excited about eating our own dog food and launching the first people's carrier in the form of Helium Mobile, but I feel that we are just leading the way, and we're hopeful that additional carriers in the context of this trend that's already happening will start joining in the freight.Brian (33:03):That's great. Yeah, I mean there's a lot of tailwinds there that you described it. It's a really exciting time to be where you guys are in bailing this network to the world. Well Boris, this has been a really awesome discussion. I really look forward to using The Peoples Network on my Saga phone when it arrives.(33:18):One closing question that we asked to all our guests here on this podcast, and I'd love to hear it from you as well. Having been a normie entering the Web3 space is, who is a builder that you admire in the Solana ecosystem?Boris (33:31):Yeah, it's a good question. As a normie. So as a normie, I really liked the StepIn app to be honest, that I still continue to play with. And I don't even care so much about the rewards or making tokens with it, but just the fact that it's really well built and it allows me to, it just almost forces me to get off the chair and walk around. Doesn't matter if I make money for it or not, but the user experience is quite amazing.(34:03):And this is just an everyday example of it, but at large what really makes me excited about the Solana ecosystem is the really quality of talent and the dedication of the different groups building on Solana at large. And one important thing that we haven't really discussed much about today is that all of Helium community is moving to Solana.(34:35):And I think that's part of the reason why that move's happening is because we are seeing tremendous amount of support from the Solana builder ecosystem and have gotten to interact with a lot of folks that are building for Solana. Even trying to do POCs, figuring out what it is like, what would the incarnation of Helium look like on the Solana L1 gave us a peek into what the quality of the talent and the passion of the community of top Solano looks like.(35:08):So I think that it's exciting to see. It's exciting to see so many smart people building and whenever you have a congregation of smart, passionate people building, there's always good things that come out on the other end. So maybe, I'll conclude on that note.Brian (35:26):Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more from where I sit, develop a relationship. It's invigorating energy here. Anyone who is at Break Point, you probably didn't even sleep, because there's just so many people who are just in the builder mentality who love this space. And it's really awesome to see you guys leading the charge on the mobile front in this space as well.(35:45):Well Boris, this is really great. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Where can people go to learn more about The Peoples Network?Boris (35:52):HelloHelium.comBrian (35:53):HelloHelium.com. All right. Well thanks again for coming on. Boris Renski, the GM of Cellular Wireless at Nova Labs.Boris (36:00):Thanks Brian.
Jonas Hahn, an established game developer who won the Phantom Track in the Solana Summer Camp Hackathon joins Brian Friel to talk about web3 gaming and his work Combining Unity and Solana with his project SolPlay.Show Notes:00:48 What is Solplay? 02:16 What are Deep Links? 03:41 What was what attracted you first to Solana?05:13 What is the state of gaming in Solana? 06:17 Exciting things in crypto 07:56 Tooling or developing infrastructure to make a breakthrough game10:04 WebGL for building 11:08 Future projects in the space 12:12 Is Mobile the future of Crypto Gamin?13:08 Advice to devs new to Web 3 14:25 A builder he admires Links:Unity-Solana SDK that provides a single interface for interacting with Phantom deeplinks and extension from a Unity environment.Example game built with Phantom, Unity, and WebGLVideo tutorials for building Unity games with Phantom: Full Transcript:Brian (00:05):Hey everyone and welcome to the Zeitgeist, the show where we highlight the founders, developers and designers who are pushing the Web3 space forward. I'm Brian Friel, developer relations at Phantom, and I'm super excited to introduce our guests today. Jonas Hahn. Jonas is an established game developer who has won the most recent Phantom Track in the Solana Summer Camp Hackathon for his work with Combining Unity and Solana with his project SolPlay. Jonas, welcome to the show.Jonas (00:33):Hello. Super nice. Thank you for having me.Brian (00:35):We're super excited to chat with you today. We love the work that you've been doing, pioneering game development between Unity and Solana. I'd love to start off, what is SolPlay? What have you been working on these past few months?Jonas (00:48):Yeah, SolPlay is just a name I came up with when I started working on Solana games. Because everything needs a name and I heard everything in the ecosystem should be called something with Sol, so I called it SolPlay. And yeah, what's behind it is I started working on games with Solana. I started when I joined the Hacker House in Prague. And I already had a little app on my phone and I had a wallet, and first I wanted to make a Solana Pay where you can send Solana to other people. So I used the Solan Art Wallet and implemented that but then Solana Pay came out and I kind of stopped this and went back to games.(01:26):And then in Prague, I met a few other people and we started building a game, it's called World of Qro, and for that we built connection where we communicate with JavaScript directly from Unity. So we sent messages to the React app and then at some point I wanted to have it on mobile as well and that didn't work, that workflow. And then I was investigating how it could be done and then I wanted to build a deep link connection to a wallet and was trying to build my own wallet. And then Phantom came finally out, was there Deeplinks and I was super excited about it and immediately went on it and then I even noticed that there was a prize for it, so it was even more exciting.Brian (02:03):Yeah, yeah it's good timing, right? Then for those who don't know, can you walk people through maybe high level, what are Deeplinks and how has this enabled you to build a connection. Really one of the first Unity games that's on Solana.Jonas (02:16):The good thing about Deeplinks is like usually you have a browser extension or something, but of course on mobile you don't have that. But a mobile, different apps can communicate between each other using application links. And what the Deeplink does, it creates a secure connection using the 25-1-9 thing.Brian (02:36):Yeah, yeah. X25519 key pair. Yeah, that's not as important. But yeah.Jonas (02:41):So it has a secure connection and then if you want to do a transaction in the game, for example, send Solana somewhere or MinTON NFT, you just create the transaction in the app and then you send it over to Phantom. Phantom signs it for you, and then you get the signature back and it says, of course a big benefit that people who play the game don't need to write down the key phrase or something, but they can immediately use the wallet that they already have. So I think no one can be bothered writing down these words, and I think it's very accessible, a good feature.Brian (03:11):I couldn't agree more. We're super excited about its potential to break crypto out of this pure browser environment. We know with extensions now you can be doing this in mobile applications, you can be doing these gaming applications. You mentioned that you got started with this originally at Hacker houses, you visit Prague, you kind of got into the Solana ecosystem. What was it that first attracted you to Solana? You're a game developer yourself, you spent a lot of time in Unity. What is it that first caught your eye about Solana in particular?Jonas (03:42):So the thing is, I tried making crypto games for 10 years ago already. But it just wasn't possible, I had a game where people could play against each other in a tower defense game. And then I tried something with PayPal and something with a Bitcoin, but nothing worked. And then two years ago I had started trying a game called Township from Gala Games, and they were using Ethereum and I got a little fountain, like an NFT. That was my first interaction with these NFTs. And then I tried to sell it later. It was because it was worth 0.5 Eth. But then I noticed I had to mint it from this side chain, and then it was only Ethereum and I paid $60 to get it off there. And then I had to pay another $60 to list it on OpenSea, and all that stuff was very tedious.(04:24):And then I was looking off their other blockchains and at some point I noticed that there's Solana where transactions don't cost anything and the transaction doesn't take minutes or seconds, but it's almost immediately, at least if you just wait for it to be confirmed. And then for a game, it just is necessary that transactions go fast, otherwise it just doesn't make sense. You can't wait a minute for a transaction and that's why Solana is the obvious choice. It doesn't cost anything and is super fast. Short answer.Brian (04:54):Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think there's a really natural pairing there. If you could summarize for developers who maybe are familiar with building Unity games but maybe aren't as familiar with Solana, what is kind of the state of gaming in your opinion on Solana? Both maybe from the games that are out there, but also as a developer, you know what tools you have at your disposal right now to start building?Jonas (05:14):It's super interesting because everything is still super early. There are a few games which raised a lot of money like last year or two years ago. And they are building their own things, but there's a lot of games coming up from indie developers and small teams and everyone is trying to build their own things. And that's why I also want to try to make it easier for people. I started making some YouTube videos where I explain Solana stuff and I started now working on the Unity SDK and also the Phantom Deeplinks. They are also now in the Unity SDK from the people from Garbles who build it and lots of stuff is coming, many little games and I am in contact with some and trying to support them.Brian (05:57):That's awesome. What would you say is the big selling point for game developers who are interested in Web3 in general. SolPlay maybe we can take that as an example. You're able to use your NFTs in the game, you're able to save your high scores to a blockchain, but what is it that excites you the most about combining both the gaming world and the crypto world?Jonas (06:17):Yeah, I've been in the gaming world for a long time already. It's a very competitive market and I'm super excited about the whole blockchain thing because now finally you can build a game again, which isn't reliable on some service that is online. You have your own backend, you don't need the backend anymore. I mean, you still use Solana as a backend. You don't need a payment provider anymore because all you need to do is you just make a transaction which sent you some SOL or the token or whatever you want.(06:45):And what's also super exciting is, also for games companies I think, is that they can save the 30% fees in the stores. On web, it's one hand, but of course everyone wants to be on mobile because everyone uses mobile phones and these 30% fees are very important in the very competitive mobile games market, which we currently have. And what I'm also excited about is that it will probably spawn whole new kinds of games. I think the big game hasn't been spawned yet, the big crypto game, but it will probably be there somewhere and will probably be something new that we haven't seen before.Brian (07:17):Yeah, I agree. It's such an interesting paradigm, having this open backend that other people can plug into and you have tokens that potentially could be mutable and your interactions on the chain also maybe impact what your experience in the game is. I couldn't agree more that I think we don't quite know what the end state of the is, but I'd like those two examples you gave, especially the one around the 30% payment tax that most developers in crypto know all too well, especially if you're building mobile games. You mentioned that the space is early. We're still waiting for that kind of real breakthrough game. In your opinion, is there any tooling or developer infrastructure that needs to happen before we can have that breakthrough game?Jonas (07:57):It would be good if most stuff is open source. Solana is very good at that already. Many things are open source, but what's missing is targeting the traditional game developers. For example, go to the A MAZE conference in Berlin, which has crazy indie games, or go to the Unite Conference from Unity and try to get the people there. Because many developers I talk to, they still think it's a scam. It doesn't really make sense. It's super expensive, it's low and there are no standards yet where I'm not sure if it's good or bad. It kind of is this open stage still where you can do whatever you want. And also it's nice that there's not this big monopoly of a company who organizes everything. Maybe you have to use Google and now for Solana you can use Phantom software, all wallets you can use Fractal, has a nice API and very many opportunities and a Saga phone of course, if this happens, that will be also amazing if you have a crypto phone that you can use.Brian (08:57):Yeah, I don't think it's a matter of if, I think it's a matter of when. And we'll be releasing this episode shortly before Break Point. I know that Phantom and then also Solana have some great news to share around the progress around Saga phone. I couldn't agree more that that will just continue to break down the barriers and make this a lot easier.Jonas (09:14):One more thing about that topic is that there needs to be some clarity about regulation about somehow. For example, if I mint an NFT, I still have no idea how I pay taxes on that.Brian (09:24):Right?Jonas (09:25):Or if someone sends me a USDC token, what is it? It's an income. What is staking? What do I do with the tokens I get? And if that is all cleared out at some point, which will eventually happen in the next one or two years, then more big companies will also start.Brian (09:40):Yeah, the fact that this is a global phenomenon doesn't make this any easier too. You and I'm in the United States as a recording, you're in Germany. Interactions between the two of us definitely don't make it any easier and I would not want to be a crypto accountant having to think through all of these things right now. So all this is really awesome. If you haven't checked out SolPlay, I would definitely recommend checking it out. It's a great game. If I'm not mistaken, you've also used WebGL in some aspects of this as well, is that right?Jonas (10:05):Yeah, it's cross platform. So I'm building an example game. Open source example game, which also has these Deeplinks in it and now it also has a token swap using the Orca tools and Metaplex for minting NFTs. And yeah, it's mostly an example game, but it also has this slipping mechanic where you can jump around and collect points and at some point I want to put in that you can give out token and rewards, so make it play to earn and then have some staking in it as well. So I basically want to make a suite where everything is in that you need to build a game.Brian (10:37):And then as part of this too, you know, mentioned your work. You've done great open source work around the Unity SDK, integrating Phantom Deeplinks that in particular you also have a great YouTube channel where you go in depth since really long tutorials on actually bringing up your IDE and showing this is how I built the game. Walking through all the steps of that. Taking all that into consideration, you've built these games, you have these SDK tooling, and then you've also gone on the developer education front. What are you most excited looking forward in spending your next couple months in the Solana gaming space?Jonas (11:09):I want to build the perfect example game, basically. Where everything is in and which is actually also fun to play. Put it on all platforms. It's so difficult to get into the iOS store. You wouldn't believe I get like six, seven points every time I submit. And they definitely leave minting NFTs within their purchases I think. So that's one of the things I want to build next. And then just to get this game on all platforms, it's biggest challenge and goal for the next months. It's already in the Play Store, but on iOS it's definitely harder.Brian (11:43):Even us at Phantom building a crypto wallet, we've run into kind of unexplainable headaches with the App Store review process sometime. It's definitely a very opaque process. Definitely resonate with that. You've spoken a lot about cross platform and your game being a platform as well. Is there any one platform in particular you're most excited about for Web3 gaming looking ahead? You mentioned everyone has a mobile phone that in particular seems pretty compelling, but do you think mobile will be the first explosive growth phase of crypto gaming or what are your opinions on that?Jonas (12:13):Yeah, I think it will probably be mobile and I think you can't ignore iOS, just too many people have iOS. That's why I'm so amazed that everything works for Phantom on all platforms the same. But there could be... Unity can theoretically export to all platforms. So theoretically we could make a switch game, which facilitates Solana somehow. I don't think there's a phantom bullet for Switch yet, but theoretically it could be on all platforms. That would be really nice.Brian (12:38):I would love that. Yeah, Phantom on One Switch I think is going to be the next catchphrase that catches fire on Twitter here. I love that.Jonas (12:45):Exactly.Brian (12:46):This is awesome. Jonas, if you were having to talk to a Web3 developer today who's listen to this, they're interested in this, they have some game experience, but they're maybe not sure how to best to get involved with the Solana gaming space. What would you recommend is the first step for a new dev coming into this? To learn the ropes of Solana game development and to get involved with potentially a project or some direction and connecting with other devs in the space?Jonas (13:11):There are quite a few good YouTube channels to learn the basics of Solana, which you probably should learn first. The channel of Solandy and Josh's DevBox and my YouTube channel of course as well. Although I recently heard that tutorials are still a bit too detailed and complicated, but I'm trying to get better on that definitely. And then yeah, I would check out some of the games that are already there. There are a bunch of games on Fractal, for example, that you can try out and then you can already experience a little bit with wallets. And then I would check out the Solana Unity SDK or my example game and then just try it out, see how it feels, deploy it on Android, try to mint an NFT, do some transactions from it in Unity. And I think then people will already get hooked and want to do more of it, I hopeBrian (13:57):Yeah, I love it. We'll drop some links to all those that you just referenced in the show notes for folks as well. Jonas, this has been awesome. We loved hearing your story of how, you know, got involved with Solana and then we couldn't agree more that the future of gaming's really exciting on Solana. Phantom wants to be a big part of that, enabling developers to build cross-platform and make it just easy for folks. One closing question we always ask all of our guests, and I'd love to hear your take on this as well, is who is a builder that you admire in the Solana ecosystem?Jonas (14:27):Oh, there are actually quite a few. I ran into a few of them at the Stockholm Hacker House and especially Jonathan Singh, Steven Laver, Steven Luscher, and they're just all amazing. Everyone actually who really built on Solana, the team, they're super amazing. I mean, not everyone in the NFT communities is always super amazing, but the people who really work on it are super nice. And then of course Anatoly, which I met in Miami and he's just such a nice, humble, genius person. It's really nice meeting him.Brian (14:59):Yeah, I agree. I think he really set the tone for kind of the culture of the developer community here on Solana. You mentioned some other Solana Labs employees as well, Steven Luscher, Steven Laver, and those guys, if you're not familiar with them, they're basically savants across all the open source initiatives. They're leading it all. They're doing the commits, they're doing the code reviews, the PR's, they're saying the strategic direction, they're speaking on stage. I don't know where Solana finds all these guys, but it's a really cool community to be part of.Jonas (15:26):It's crazy. It's so good what they're building with a mobile wallet now, it's so nice.Brian (15:32):I agree. Awesome. Well, Jonas, thank you so much. Congratulations again on winning the Phantom Deeplinks Track for the Solana Summer Camp Hackathon. We're really excited to see where you go from here and for the future of free gaming on Solana.Jonas (15:44):Thank you so much.
Today we are coming to you from sunny Lisbon during Breakpoint and we are talking Solana Mobile with Andrew from Solana Labs. Solana Mobile is a huge initiative from Solana Labs to make a bold push into mobile - encompassing the Saga phone and the Solana Mobile Stack known as SMS. In this conversation we unpack all things SMS and consider the thesis behind Solana's mobile push. This conversation is made possible thanks to Streamflow. ------ THE COVE SPONSOR TOOLS:
Welcome to Chain Reaction, where we unpack and explain the latest in crypto news, drama and trends, breaking things down block by block for the crypto curious.For our Tuesday episode where we interview an expert in the web3 space, we sat down with Fable founder Edward Saatchi, who also previously co-founded Oculus Story Story. We talked about how emerging technologies can enable new forms of storytelling and how sectors like crypto and AI are changing what the metaverse might look like. We also discussed:The challenges facing DAOs, which are being forced to streamline operations and missions amid the bear market. How the intertwining of metaverse and crypto boosterism is leading to a very narrow popular view on the future of online social interaction.ICYMI, you can use the promo code REACT for 15% off tickets to TechCrunch Disrupt this October (excluding online and expo) where we'll be chatting with industry experts such as a16z's Chris Dixon and Solana Labs' Anatoly Yakovenko.We'll also be hosting our first dedicated crypto event in Miami for just one day on November 17th — you can use the same promo code, REACT, for 15% off a General Admission ticket.And even if you can't join us in person, you can use the promo code REACT to get 25% off an annual subscription to TechCrunch+.Chain Reaction comes out every Tuesday and Thursday at 12:00 p.m. PT, so be sure to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite pod platform to keep up with the action.
Today we are exploring the DeFi ecosystem on Solana with Ben Sparango (Head of BD and DeFi at Solana Labs). We compare Solana DeFi today vs 1 year ago, see what QUIC, program specific fee markets and Saga as well as the Solana Mobile Stack can unlock for DeFi and adoption, understand why Solana has outperformed other L1 competitors and much more. This conversation is made possible thanks to Streamflow. ------ THE COVE SPONSOR TOOLS:
Degenerate Ape Academy made history as the first major project to kickoff the Solana NFT phenomenon. Co-founder and head of product, CrassKitty joins Brian Friel to talk eggs, The Hatchening, and what to expect next in The Degeniverse. Show Notes:01:01 - Origin Story 04:45 - Why she changed her mind of crypto06:27 - What is special about DAA? 08:12 - The early days at DAA 10:51 - Future of NFTs 11:52 - Projects DAA been working on 15:31 - Bridging the digital and physical world19:53 - Advice to new projects / Challenges in the space21:52 - The vision for the future of DAA 22:46 - A builder that she admires 24:09 - Info / Contact Full Transcript: Brian: (00:05)Hey, everyone, and welcome to the Zeitgeist, the show where we highlight the founders, developers, and designers who are pushing the web 3.0 Space forward. I'm Brian Friel, developer of relations at Phantom, and I'm super excited to introduce our guest today, Crass Kitty. Crass Kitty is the co-founder and head of product at Degenerate Ape Academy, one of the earliest and most well-known NFT collections on Solana. Crass Kitty, welcome to the show.Crass Kitty: (00:28)Hello, Brian. Nice to see you again. I hope you're doing well.Brian: (00:32)Likewise. Great to see you too. For those who don't know, Crass Kitty graced us with her presence at our Solana Summer Camp Hackathon in San Francisco. We'll be posting some of the workshops that she did to YouTube, but it's great to see you again. I'm really excited about this episode. For those of you who were around Solana last year in August 2021, Degen Ape Academy I think really kicked off the whole Solana NFT boom that we all know and love today. You guys have a ton of interesting projects in the works today as well, but before we dive into all that, it would be really great to learn a little bit about you. Who are you and how did you get started with Degenerate Ape Academy?Crass Kitty: (01:07)Man, who am I? I'm a product nerd who loves the color pink. You guys can't see me, but Brian can, and my office is mostly pink, including my headphones. Other than that, I jived a little bit into product after that with a company called Bebo, which was later acquired by Twitch to become Twitch rivals, using their machine learning to detect if you make kills on-screen. And from there, I worked at FetLife and later at NEAR Protocol, which is where I got my first venture into crypto.Crass Kitty: (01:35)I actually thought crypto was totally a scam. When I first was joining NEAR, I was like, "This is a scam. There's no way. This has to be a scam." And I was one of the first 10 team members at NEAR and towards two weeks into my contract, there was this pivotal moment and I realized that like, "Oh, shit. It's not a scam." Sorry. Am I allowed to curse on this podcast?Brian: (01:55)You are. Don't hold back. You're good.Crass Kitty: (01:57)Okay, cool. Good. Thank goodness. I am Crass Kitty after all. For those that don't know, crass means inappropriate, uncouth, likely to curse. Anyways, yeah. I worked at NEAR, launched an NFT marketplace called Pluminite, which was the first open-source NFT marketplace on NEAR. And when I left NEAR, I took a little hiatus, then started looking for my next role. And I knew I wanted to be in crypto. I had found a really deep passion here for product work in crypto and so I reached out to Solana. Got an interview with Stephen Hess who was head of product at Solana at the time and things were going great. Great interviews. And then I took a vacation and he took a vacation and three months rolled by and I was like, "All right. This has been a while."Crass Kitty: (02:43)So, I hit him up and I was like, "Yo, Stephen, what's up here?" And he was like, "We're taking a while because it looks like I'm going to be starting this thing called Metaplex." And I was like, "Oh, cool. Sick." And he's like, "Yeah, but there's these guys who need you." And I was like, "Oh." And he's like, "Yeah, they're called Degenerate Ape Academy." And I was like, "All right. Sounds fun. Can you tell me more? Is there a salary? Is there insurance?" He's like, "Nah, there's none of that." And I'm like, "Risky. I'm into it. Let's go." And so I get on a call with Monoliff. Monoliff and I have one call before I joined as a co-founder and a team member and head of product.Crass Kitty: (03:13)On this call, he's talking to me about all this. And I'm just like, "This sounds like the riskiest thing I've ever heard of." He's like, "Yeah, we basically just minted out on our second mint because we messed up our first mint" and I'm thinking to myself, "Okay, that's scary." And then he's like, "And I promised him this 3D academy" and I'm like, "That sounds cool." And he is like, "But also we made duplicates in the NFT collection." I'm like, "That does not sound as cool." And he's like, "So, we have to create lore and tell them that they get to earn extra perks for having these duplicates." And I'm like, "Okay, I like the story spinning." Anyways, this call is very enlightening for me.Crass Kitty: (03:45)I think a more sane person probably would've walked away at that point but, like I said, I'm not risk-averse and maybe a little bit less sane than other people. And I was like, "Yeah, sure. This sounds fun. Why not?" And so I joined and I don't think fun is the right word to describe my job. I think it is organized chaos in the best possible way and as somebody who has always described themselves as somebody who sits in the eye of a hurricane and coordinates it, it works really well for me. Product managers typically herd cats. I herd apes. It goes well-ish or as well as I can expect. So, that is me. That's how I got here, and yeah. That's my story.Brian: (04:20)I love that line, herding apes instead of cats. There's a lot of really cool stuff we can dive into with DAA but maybe before we get into all that, you have a really interesting journey. You hit on starting as a Twitch partner, getting into everything at Twitch and the gaming side of things, and then being really early to building NFT marketplaces, but you did mention at one point you thought crypto was a scam. What changed your mind on all that? And it seems like you pretty early gravitated to NFTs, maybe before a lot of the mainstream did. Was that related to you changing your mind on why crypto's a scam?Crass Kitty: (04:51)I've talked about this in other interviews. So, before I was a Twitch partner, I was actually a stripper and a cam girl. This is full disclosure here. And one of the biggest struggles that I've seen in that industry is that Visa and MasterCard limit who can get paid. They just say, "You can't get paid if you're a sex worker." Basically, if you get paid in PayPal and somebody charges back and says it was for camgirling, PayPal will freeze all your accounts and freeze your whole assets. So, I know that's 18-plus, but my moment for knowing it wasn't a scam was when I was talking to engineers at NEAR about what censorship-resistant payments meant and realizing that it meant that creators like adult content creators but also Twitch partners, anybody who is a creator in the creator ecosystem, would be able to get paid safely, ethically, and also without limitation.Crass Kitty: (05:37)And that blew my mind. It was just like, "Wait a minute. There's a solution to this problem that I've known about for literally a decade? What?" And so, that was really phenomenal to me. That's like ... I don't know, very near and dear to my heart. It's like the reason I joined crypto. It also feels like it ties the beginning of my origin story to the end or to the point where I'm reaching the hero arc, and that feels cool.Brian: (05:58)That's awesome. Yeah. That's a really unique perspective on the space. Diving now into NFTs, you started your own marketplace, I presume on NEAR. Then, you get involved with DAA at a time when they're trying to carve their own path. They're one of the first major NFT collections on Solana. Everyone's figuring this out. I think at this time Metaplex maybe was just getting started.Crass Kitty: (06:19)Oh yeah, barely.Brian: (06:20)You mentioned Steven Hess who's now the CEO of Metaplex, but at the time he was at Solana. So, in your own words, what is Degenerate Ape Academy? What makes you guys unique in the NFT space?Crass Kitty: (06:33)If you go to our website, it says our mission is simple and that is to fuck shit up. Put 10,000 degenerates on this planet and let them fuck shit up. And I wish I could say as a product nerd, that was not the case internally as well, but it's totally the case internally. Constantly as a product nerd, as a product person, it's my job to organize all the chaos. Probably some of the hardest organizational work I've ever worked on in terms of making sure that we've literally scoped out, probably, I don't know, eight different theories since we released the eggs in January of what we were going to do next. And we'll be in the middle of building it or in the middle of scoping it, and then a wrecking ball comes through that is in the form of a team member, and it'll be like, "Okay, this is cool. But what if we did like this?"Crass Kitty: (07:17)So, lots of fucking shit up basically. Degenerate apes though, as a culture, as a brand, as a project, as a company, I think ultimately, we're a place for those that maybe have always been a little bit on the edge of life. Maybe you are a cool person who gets along with everybody but have a more degenerate side. I think we're a home for everybody who identifies with that. And I think that's something that is a testament to our success is the fact that we not only are a home to that, but we lean into it.Crass Kitty: (07:45)I worked at FetLife. For those that know what that is, you don't have to dox yourself, but it's kinky Facebook basically. It's BDSM Facebook. I am a degenerate at heart and being able to work on a project that leans into, owns, and accepts their own degeneracies has just been an absolute delight.Brian: (08:00)So, what was it like in those early days when you guys were just getting started? There was basically no tools out there for NFT creators like yourselves. Like I said earlier, you guys were pioneers in this space. For those who weren't there in August 2021, walk us through those early days, what you guys had to get through.Crass Kitty: (08:18)So, we had just minted our second mint successfully-ish, but the first mint was kind of a mess up. Some apes snuck through, as we say, and those became the exiled apes. So, we basically in those early days were trying to figure it out internally while also trying to make sure externally that a story was always told. So, Monoliff was really good at spinning lore and spinning our mistakes into lore. So, in those early days, I would say our work from the product perspective was very reactive. So, it was like, "Okay, we have exiles. Now we have to create a dow so that they can vote on what to do with these exiles. Do we let them in the collection? Do we not? Let's put that into a decentralized autonomous organization organization." Which is the DAOO if you don't know. Organization organization twice is a personal enjoyment of mine that we wrote in a product requirement document.Crass Kitty: (09:04)Anyways, that was a thing. And then figuring out what to do with twins, because we had duplicated some of these apes in this 10002nd collection. And so how do we make those twins more valuable while also making sure that people don't feel like they got gypped because they got the same ape as somebody else? We pulled that off, but like I said, a lot of it was very reactionary work. I would say, as a company, as a product team, we are now very proactive, which has been an interesting shift.Crass Kitty: (09:31)If you've ever worked at a startup and gone from being reactionary to proactive, there's usually a rough patch there where you're trying to figure out, "Well, what do I not react to and what do I be proactive for?" We did have that rough patch. It's like we're in a horse race and the horse that was in the middle front was slowing down a little bit and then found a new burst of energy and rushed to the front. That's literally where I feel like right now as a product cycle. We're at this point where we're literally shipping things every couple of days right now internally for testing, things are coming along really quickly.Crass Kitty: (10:01)We've figured out our marketing strategy. There's something called love bombing that I don't even know if I'm supposed to talk about, but we're doing this where we give these teasers, give these moments, give these loving attention moments to our community, and then leave them with a little bit of chaos and wondering, "Why don't they love me now?" And so, we've identified this as our strategy and that's working for us. Moving forward with this proactive approach, it means that as we build products, I now actually get to share screenshots or progress pieces, and instead of delivering this perfect thing as a reaction to something that we fucked up before. Does that make sense?Brian: (10:35)Yeah. No. I'd love to dive into a lot of that now, too. I think we covered the early days, the wild west of the NFT space, but let's bring it forward to today. How do you see the current state of NFTs broadly? What's in the future for NFTs? And then, what are you excited about both maybe across the ecosystem and specifically with DAA and some of these upcoming product releases that you guys are working on?Crass Kitty: (10:57)Well, we are in a bear market. I think we can all acknowledge we're in probably one of the worst bear markets to be in because previous bear markets have existed, but there weren't a ton of builders at that time and so there weren't a ton of consumers of products that were being built. So, the disappointment for a bear market before, while big, was also not I think as widely spread on Twitter and social media and people you talk to in real life if you're lucky enough to know people in real life who know about crypto. So, now I think the reason I say it's one of the worst bear markets is not just the financial implication, but also the social implication.Crass Kitty: (11:29)We're in this really interesting period where people are aware of what's going on and they're aware of crypto and they're aware of NFTs and there's so many builders in the space and a lot of people are feeling scared and worried about the state of the world and also the state of the crypto market. And I think that's fair. Yeah. I think that's the current state of the market.Brian: (11:49)And then, I guess diving a little bit into DAA and some of the guys you were building throughout this bear, can you shed a little bit of light on some of those projects, what you guys have been up to?Crass Kitty: (11:58)Yeah. So, I mean, like I said, because it is a bear, pay attention to the builders in this space, pay attention to the people who are still here in five months, six months, a year. Those are the people who are building sustainable products and that's what we've really focused on. I think previously our methodology for income was based on royalties and secondary sales. That is not a sustainable method of income for a business at any point, including a bear market, and so we've recently done these crate auctions, which had been really fun to work on. Full disclosure, I think we had three, maybe two and a half weeks lead-up to the first auction on product and development life cycle including design. That was fun. But we pulled it off and we actually pulled it off with no bugs so I'm pretty stoked about that. Go Veritas and Dev Lock. My developer is really proud of them there.Crass Kitty: (12:43)But that being said, we've done these crate auctions, which are these one-of-one auctions for these crates that hold our eggs. And I mentioned the eggs previously as these things that the twins got to get when they bred in the bathroom. Long story. Anyways, eggs have been a thing that people have been waiting for us to hatch so we're releasing these eggs inside of crates that are more elite eggs is the way I would describe them. They're even better eggs than the other eggs, and the other eggs have tiers anyways. There's regular eggs and inbred eggs, which inbred eggs are for twins if you didn't catch that. But anyways, my point being, all of this is leading up, these auctions, these eggs, these crates. By the time this podcast is released, we'll be really close to the Hatchening, which is very exciting. It's so exciting. I'm so excited.Crass Kitty: (13:30)I mean, we've basically just been building, finding other revenue streams, and also working really hard on, like I said, being proactive in the bear versus reactive to the state of the market or our own mistakes in the past.Brian: (13:41)That's really cool. I love the creativity there of trying to spin things and keep users engaged. For an end user who maybe owns a Degen Ape, maybe they were lucky or unlucky enough to get one of these duplicates, maybe they have an egg, what can they expect from this? Will they be having to interact with these kind of things? How should they be thinking about some of these hints that you're dropping so far?Crass Kitty: (14:03)So, twins have a higher floor price than our non-twins, which is kind of wild. Because like I said, they're duplicate NFTs, which is really funny from a product perspective, but I own a twin and I bred my twin and I got an inbred egg from that twin. And so twins got free eggs. They didn't have to pay anything to get an egg and they got a guaranteed egg. If you entered your twin into the bathroom stall, you got an egg. Congratulations. And you got a guaranteed inbred egg, which inbred eggs I believe ... I need to double check the price, but I believe inbred eggs are actually much higher than regular eggs. I want to say the floor for them is around 200 SOL and a regular egg is like 69 last I checked. Going to double-check that in my numbers really fast.Crass Kitty: (14:42)So, these eggs are going to hatch and on the Hatchening, as I said, which is a much more dark and sinister way of saying what's happening. Basically, inbred eggs have 175 floor and regular eggs have a 66 floor, but inbred eggs are going to have very different attributes than regular eggs when they hatch. Also, this is still in discussion, but I'm hoping it's going to lean towards what I say. We are actively discussing and I'm currently pushing for the idea that you can choose if you hatch your egg or not. So, it doesn't mean it's mandatory. I'm working towards this. No promises. If this gets uploaded and I'm wrong later on, don't quote me on it. You never heard this.Brian: (15:22)Love that. And so, are all of these experiences going to be things that live within the Degen Ape website? I see you guys have also been doing a lot of I guess in-real-life marketing pushes as well. How do you see blending maybe the physical world with what's digital so far? Where have you guys been focusing your efforts there?Crass Kitty: (15:40)Yeah. So, we have something coming out called homeroom and it'll be coming out a couple of days after this podcast does if everything goes according to plan. Nothing ever goes according to plan, so again, don't quote me on that, but homeroom is going to be your hub or your central place for your degenerate NFTs. That includes the eggs, what they hatch into, the apes, and the trash pandas. So, you'll be able to go into this homeroom experience and you're going to be able to do a lot of things that are coming soon. Namely, gold stars are going to be our new economy. They're not related to any real-life value. There's no US dollar that is equated to them. They're an inflationary asset. We don't believe in tying them to US dollars at all. But these gold stars are basically these really cool things that we're going to use to gamify our universe.Crass Kitty: (16:27)They're SFTS. They stack in your wallet. You get them in three different ways basically. Number one is roll call, which is where we check if your NFTs are listed. If they're not listed at random points in the year, we don't give you any warning, we don't tell you it's coming, it's just like, "Boom. We did a snapshot." If you're not listed at that point, randomly, we will award you gold stars that you can claim. If you don't want to claim them and you sell your NFT later, they go with the NFT as you sell them. Think Ape coin or Trash panda's rain token. It's kind of like that.Crass Kitty: (16:59)The second way you can earn gold stars is through homework. Homework is the idea of you pay attention and you get to earn things. So, if you see our Twitter and we maybe hinted the fact that homework is active somewhere in one of our comic book strips on our website that are coming and we tweet out the pizza emoji and a comic book gif, you may go look for a piece of pizza in the comic book on our website, click that pizza and then magically there's gold stars that are awarded to you for you finding that Easter egg.Crass Kitty: (17:30)These are active Easter egg hunts that we're putting all over our site and we're tweeting out, discording, and sharing information about stealthily. These are for people who pay attention and do their homework. And the last one answers your question of how we see physical and digital world interacting. It won't be coming for a while until after homeroom launches, but it will be hinted at in homeroom. Field trips. What's a field trip? I just saw your face light up there.Brian: (17:52)Yeah. I love the leaning into the mic for the name drops there.Crass Kitty: (17:55)Yeah. So, field trips are, if you've heard of Cupcake Protocol, it is the idea of NFTs being attached to NFC technology, which means you can tap your phone to it. Not scanning it with your camera, but literally tap the physical phone to a sticker or a card, and you can claim gold stars by tapping your phone to these digital scavenger hunts. Think Pokemon Go mixed with geocaching.Brian: (18:19)Yeah.Crass Kitty: (18:20)But for the Degenaverse.Brian: (18:21)That's super cool. I've always wondered who's going to make the first Pokemon Go experience in NFT Land. That totally took over San Francisco where I am for a couple of weeks. Super, super fun experience, so I'm really glad that you guys are thinking along those lines.Crass Kitty: (18:34)The really cool part about field trips is, if you have a friend who doesn't have a Degenaverse NFT, but you want to take them on a field trip, they are also able to claim gold stars. So, you do not have to have one of our NFTs to claim them on these field trip encounters. I'm really excited to be working on this and building this and able to show this to you guys soon. It's going to be probably a little bit after homeroom releases. I want to say between two to three months after the initial rollout of homeroom, we'll have field trips ready. This is the biggest alpha that I think I've released ever, and a preliminary call or anything, so I think I might get killed over this, so don't quote me on anything that changes.Brian: (19:09)I love it. The alpha here on the Zeitgeist Podcast.Crass Kitty: (19:12)It's like alpha of alpha, because a lot of it hasn't been fully finished if you know what I mean or committed to. So, like I said, if things change in the meantime, know that the vision is leading towards these things, but the implementation may be different.Brian: (19:24)Totally. Yeah. Now you covered a lot there. I think it's really cool that you guys are thinking about bridging those two worlds, the physical and the digital. You guys have been around the Solana space now for over a year or about a year now. I'd say there's a lot of NFT projects that are maybe just starting up. They're trying to build a community, emulating something like you guys have. Sitting in your position now where you have this large community, you've been through the ups and downs, now you're thinking about all these really cool projects, what would you say to maybe newer projects that are trying to find their feet in the ecosystem and what are some of the unique challenges that you guys face as a more established project in the space?Crass Kitty: (20:01)If you're new to the space, find yourself a damn good tax accountant because it's hard. It's a nightmare doing taxes in an NFT project and incorporate or form an LLC as soon as you can. We did not immediately do that and we did our taxes as a joint partnership. You don't want to do your taxes as a joint partnership if you're an NFT project. Just pro tip there. So, I know that's kind of a boring answer, but logistics matter, and I think we're so caught up in crypto sometimes that we feel like, "Oh, it's all decentralized. It's all cutting-edge tech. It's all gray areas. We can avoid being logistical."Crass Kitty: (20:38)Don't avoid being logistical. Set your early foundations to be structurally sound so that you can grow in a structurally sound way. It's like if you're building a house or any product, even digital, but you have a minimum viable product, which is the bare bones of what you're going to build on top of. If you look at your company that you're forming in crypto or the NFT space at this point, think about what your bones look like as a company. So, imagine your company is a product or is a house or is whatever it is that you're used to building, and if you're an engineer, maybe that's the structure of the code and your libraries and how you're setting them up.Crass Kitty: (21:12)You got to look at your company the same way, and I think this is where I see the most projects make the mistake is that they don't look at it like a company. They look at it like a project and they don't realize that they're going to get taxed like it's a company, they're going to get affected like it's a company, and they're going to get legal implication like it's a company. So, give yourself that foundation. And that's really important. I can't stress how important that is. I know it's a boring answer, but it's the realest answer I can give.Brian: (21:36)Yeah. No. I mean, that's sage advice having been through it. From where you guys sit today, we touched on it a little bit with your guys' plans for all these great projects, but how do you envision maybe years from now? What is the essence of DAA? Is multi-chain something in your future? Do you guys envision continuing to cross the physical and the digital worlds? Basically, what is your grand vision for Degenerate Ape Academy?Crass Kitty: (22:02)We're going to keep fucking shit up. And that can be a good thing and a bad thing. Fucking shit up could also mean fucking up the status quo or fucking up the way that things are traditionally done, and I think that's exactly what we're aiming to do. We're trying to be on the cutting edge, to change things as they're changing, and to push the boundaries of what's possible.Crass Kitty: (22:17)That being said, years from now, it's impossible for me to predict what we're going to be building because the market and the conditions and the state of the ecosystem changes so rapidly. Six months ago, I would not have told you that we were doing something like field trips because Cupcake didn't exist. So, as new technology comes out, we will adapt, we will build, we will innovate on top of it, and we will always aim to be one of the first builders that you're going to see in that space doing those things.Brian: (22:41)That's super cool. I got to say that Solana space is really appreciative of you guys being trailblazers here. I know there's a lot of NFT builders who look up to you guys. Maybe from where you sit, we ask this question to all of our guests, but who is a builder that you admire in the Solana ecosystem?Crass Kitty: (22:56)So, I mentioned him earlier in this interview. I interviewed with him. Now we're really good friends. I've invited him to my wedding. Stephen Hess, CEO of Metaplex, is one of my favorite builders in this space. Having a conversation with Stephen when there's a mutual NDA in place and we can both be very transparent is incredibly invigorating. It's just talking to a fellow product nerd and being able to talk to somebody who thinks so expansively about what we're building, what we're all building, and someone who believes in open source technology the way that he does and providing solutions to builders the way that he does.Crass Kitty: (23:30)Every conversation I have with Stephen has me walking away with a giant smile on my face and an energy that usually keeps me up until about 4:00 AM writing product documents. So, if you ever get a chance to talk to Stephen at an event or anything, he's a very friendly dude. He's like seven feet tall or something. He's a giant. Looks scarier than he is in the sense that he's very tall. If you're short, it's kind of intimidating, but he is the gentle most wonderful, also very intelligent person I've ever encountered in this space, and just a delight.Brian: (23:58)That's really cool to hear. That's Stephen Hess, former head of product at Solana Labs, now CEO of Metaplex, which is basically the metadata company for all tokens on Solana. Crass kitty, this has been awesome. Really appreciate you taking the time sharing with us your vision, where things are going for DAA. Where can people go to learn more about all these crazy projects that you guys are up to?Crass Kitty: (24:19)Yeah. You can go to DegenApe.academy is our website. That's where homeroom will be deploying. You can go to our Twitter, which is twitter.com/i think it's Degen Ape Academy as well. Or discord, you can join that from our website. I mean, not to plug, but you can totally follow Crass Kitty on Twitter, Crass Kitty everywhere really. I've claimed stake to that name. My DMs are always open for a reason, and that is that if anybody ever has any questions about anything that I'm building or things that they're building and need help, if I have time, if I have bandwidth, I will absolutely give it, and if you just want to be onboarded in any general sense of the word to anything Solana or crypto, I do that passionately and also, as often as I can.Brian: (24:57)I love to hear it. Yeah. That's definitely been the spirit that I've seen from everyone thus far on Solana. Really appreciate you continuing to carry the torch there. Well, Crass Kitty, this has been really great. Thank you so much for coming on the show. We'll have to have you back out in San Francisco again for another branding workshop soon.Crass Kitty: (25:12)Looking forward to it. Thank you so much, Brian. Thank you for this.Brian: (25:14)Take care.
Interview with Andrew Watson, Senior Android Developer, Solana Labs. Topics include how Blockchain benefits the smartphone, challenges for developers, APIs for the smartphone. Paradise at the Crypto Arcade: Inside the Web3 Revolution. Android 13 arrives for Pixel phones starting today. 50 features in Android 13 you should know about. Pixel 6 owners who upgrade to Android 13 can never go back. Android 12 is running on 13.3% of all devices ahead of Android 13 launch. How Google is backporting Android 13's Photo Picker. Review of the Pixel Buds Pro. Everything Samsung Announced at Galaxy Unpacked. Samsung's first foldable tablet might be coming in just six months. JR's tip of the week: Magic Eraser for all! Magic Eraser - The Web App! RCS perspective from the Philippines. Apple has no incentive to support RCS. RCS doesn't work all the time. Read our show notes here: https://bit.ly/3dy1ukw Hosts: Jason Howell, Ron Richards, and Huyen Tue Dao Co-Host: JR Raphael Guest: Andrew Watson Subscribe to All About Android at https://twit.tv/shows/all-about-android. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: Secureworks.com/twit wealthfront.com/twit newrelic.com/aaa
Interview with Andrew Watson, Senior Android Developer, Solana Labs. Topics include how Blockchain benefits the smartphone, challenges for developers, APIs for the smartphone. Paradise at the Crypto Arcade: Inside the Web3 Revolution. Android 13 arrives for Pixel phones starting today. 50 features in Android 13 you should know about. Pixel 6 owners who upgrade to Android 13 can never go back. Android 12 is running on 13.3% of all devices ahead of Android 13 launch. How Google is backporting Android 13's Photo Picker. Review of the Pixel Buds Pro. Everything Samsung Announced at Galaxy Unpacked. Samsung's first foldable tablet might be coming in just six months. JR's tip of the week: Magic Eraser for all! Magic Eraser - The Web App! RCS perspective from the Philippines. Apple has no incentive to support RCS. RCS doesn't work all the time. Read our show notes here: https://bit.ly/3dy1ukw Hosts: Jason Howell, Ron Richards, and Huyen Tue Dao Co-Host: JR Raphael Guest: Andrew Watson Subscribe to All About Android at https://twit.tv/shows/all-about-android. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: Secureworks.com/twit wealthfront.com/twit newrelic.com/aaa
Interview with Andrew Watson, Senior Android Developer, Solana Labs. Topics include how Blockchain benefits the smartphone, challenges for developers, APIs for the smartphone. Paradise at the Crypto Arcade: Inside the Web3 Revolution. Android 13 arrives for Pixel phones starting today. 50 features in Android 13 you should know about. Pixel 6 owners who upgrade to Android 13 can never go back. Android 12 is running on 13.3% of all devices ahead of Android 13 launch. How Google is backporting Android 13's Photo Picker. Review of the Pixel Buds Pro. Everything Samsung Announced at Galaxy Unpacked. Samsung's first foldable tablet might be coming in just six months. JR's tip of the week: Magic Eraser for all! Magic Eraser - The Web App! RCS perspective from the Philippines. Apple has no incentive to support RCS. RCS doesn't work all the time. Read our show notes here: https://bit.ly/3dy1ukw Hosts: Jason Howell, Ron Richards, and Huyen Tue Dao Co-Host: JR Raphael Guest: Andrew Watson Subscribe to All About Android at https://twit.tv/shows/all-about-android. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: Secureworks.com/twit wealthfront.com/twit newrelic.com/aaa
Interview with Andrew Watson, Senior Android Developer, Solana Labs. Topics include how Blockchain benefits the smartphone, challenges for developers, APIs for the smartphone. Paradise at the Crypto Arcade: Inside the Web3 Revolution. Android 13 arrives for Pixel phones starting today. 50 features in Android 13 you should know about. Pixel 6 owners who upgrade to Android 13 can never go back. Android 12 is running on 13.3% of all devices ahead of Android 13 launch. How Google is backporting Android 13's Photo Picker. Review of the Pixel Buds Pro. Everything Samsung Announced at Galaxy Unpacked. Samsung's first foldable tablet might be coming in just six months. JR's tip of the week: Magic Eraser for all! Magic Eraser - The Web App! RCS perspective from the Philippines. Apple has no incentive to support RCS. RCS doesn't work all the time. Read our show notes here: https://bit.ly/3dy1ukw Hosts: Jason Howell, Ron Richards, and Huyen Tue Dao Co-Host: JR Raphael Guest: Andrew Watson Subscribe to All About Android at https://twit.tv/shows/all-about-android. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: Secureworks.com/twit wealthfront.com/twit newrelic.com/aaa
Interview with Andrew Watson, Senior Android Developer, Solana Labs. Topics include how Blockchain benefits the smartphone, challenges for developers, APIs for the smartphone. Paradise at the Crypto Arcade: Inside the Web3 Revolution. Android 13 arrives for Pixel phones starting today. 50 features in Android 13 you should know about. Pixel 6 owners who upgrade to Android 13 can never go back. Android 12 is running on 13.3% of all devices ahead of Android 13 launch. How Google is backporting Android 13's Photo Picker. Review of the Pixel Buds Pro. Everything Samsung Announced at Galaxy Unpacked. Samsung's first foldable tablet might be coming in just six months. JR's tip of the week: Magic Eraser for all! Magic Eraser - The Web App! RCS perspective from the Philippines. Apple has no incentive to support RCS. RCS doesn't work all the time. Read our show notes here: https://bit.ly/3dy1ukw Hosts: Jason Howell, Ron Richards, and Huyen Tue Dao Co-Host: JR Raphael Guest: Andrew Watson Subscribe to All About Android at https://twit.tv/shows/all-about-android. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: Secureworks.com/twit wealthfront.com/twit newrelic.com/aaa
Interview with Andrew Watson, Senior Android Developer, Solana Labs. Topics include how Blockchain benefits the smartphone, challenges for developers, APIs for the smartphone. Paradise at the Crypto Arcade: Inside the Web3 Revolution. Android 13 arrives for Pixel phones starting today. 50 features in Android 13 you should know about. Pixel 6 owners who upgrade to Android 13 can never go back. Android 12 is running on 13.3% of all devices ahead of Android 13 launch. How Google is backporting Android 13's Photo Picker. Review of the Pixel Buds Pro. Everything Samsung Announced at Galaxy Unpacked. Samsung's first foldable tablet might be coming in just six months. JR's tip of the week: Magic Eraser for all! Magic Eraser - The Web App! RCS perspective from the Philippines. Apple has no incentive to support RCS. RCS doesn't work all the time. Read our show notes here: https://bit.ly/3dy1ukw Hosts: Jason Howell, Ron Richards, and Huyen Tue Dao Co-Host: JR Raphael Guest: Andrew Watson Subscribe to All About Android at https://twit.tv/shows/all-about-android. Get episodes ad-free with Club TWiT at https://twit.tv/clubtwit Sponsors: Secureworks.com/twit wealthfront.com/twit newrelic.com/aaa
In this episode of The Scoop, Solana Labs co-founder and COO Raj Gokal discusses his early impression of Solana Spaces, as well as the innovation and experimentation that is occurring across the Solana ecosystem at a "breakneck pace." As Gokal explains, some people who visit Solana Spaces' first location in Manhattan are discovering that web3 might not be as daunting as it seems: "There's hundreds of people coming through — just starting their first Phantom wallet, sending their first USDC, and learning, 'okay, using crypto is like not that complicated.'"In addition to the inroads Solana is making in the physical world, Solana is currently hosting a virtual hackathon called 'Summer Camp' — the largest Solana hackathon to date, according to Gokal: "The hackathon that's going right now has almost 14,000 developers. This is the most participation from a hackathon that we've ever seen… and it's now — in the depths of the bear market."Although the price of SOL has fallen approximately 85% since last November's highs, the Solana Network has seen accelerated adoption over the same period, as data from The Block shows. Episode 72 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block's Frank Chaparro and Solana Labs Co-Founder and COO, Raj Gokal. Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com. This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Chainalysis & IWC Schaffhausen About Chainalysis Chainalysis is the leading blockchain data platform. We provide data, software, services, and research to government agencies, exchanges, financial institutions, and insurance and cybersecurity companies in over 60 countries. Backed by Accel, Addition, Benchmark, Coatue, Paradigm, Ribbit, and other leading firms in venture capital, Chainalysis builds trust in blockchains to promote more financial freedom with less risk. For more information, visit www.chainalysis.com. About IWC Schaffhausen IWC Schaffhausen is a Swiss luxury watch manufacturer based in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Known for its unique engineering approach to watchmaking, IWC combines the best of human craftsmanship and creativity with cutting-edge technology and processes. With collections like the Portugieser and the Pilot's Watches, the brand covers the whole spectrum from elegant timepieces to sports watches. For more information, visit IWC.com
Matty Taylor, Head of Growth at Solana Labs, joins Joe and Justin to discuss all things Solana! What problem Solana was created to solve, why he joined the team, the Solana phone, and the future of Solana. We dig into his role of nurturing the next wave of Solana devs and apps, hackathons, his favorite current apps, and where Solana's future efforts are focussed. You can find Solana at https://solana.com/ And you can also follow Solana on Twitter @solana Subscribe to Robert Ventures: https://robertventures.com/ *DISCLAIMER: The information provided is not legal, accounting, tax, or investment advice
#SmartContract #CyberSecurity #Tokenization Tune in to this episode of the Security Token Show where this weekend Kyle & Herwig talk about Smart Contract security flaws! Kyle's Company Of The Week: Nomura: https://www.ledgerinsights.com/nomura-sbi-web3-crypto-asset-tokens-venture-capital/ Herwig's Company Of The Week: Britain Investment Association: https://www.reuters.com/technology/britains-asset-managers-call-blockchain-funds-regime-2022-07-07/ = Stay in touch via our Social Media = Kyle: https://twitter.com/kylesonlin Herwig: https://www.linkedin.com/in/herwigkonings/ Opinion articles, interviews, and more: https://medium.com/security-token-group Find the video edition of this episode on our Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTKdeN3ElyPeqtROWUp0CmQ All articles that were discussed were sourced from https://STOmarket.com/news Check out our medium blog for more news! #STSTOP5 Articles of the Week STM: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/security-token-market-begins-5-130000914.html BlockFi: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ftx-agrees-deal-blockfi-option-075136401.html Solana Labs: https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/07/06/solana-labs-multicoin-accused-of-violating-securities-law-by-sol-investor/ Japan: https://www.ledgerinsights.com/nomura-sbi-web3-crypto-asset-tokens-venture-capital/ Vertalo: https://www.crowdfundinsider.com/2022/06/192836-vertalo-and-alts-co-partner-on-secondary-liquidity/ Industry Updates Britain Asset Manager: https://www.reuters.com/technology/britains-asset-managers-call-blockchain-funds-regime-2022-07-07/ Ghana: https://techcabal.com/2022/07/07/ghana-is-set-to-test-its-central-bank-backed-digital-currency/ Denmark Central Bank: https://coingeek.com/denmark-central-bank-downplays-need-for-new-forms-of-digital-money-including-cbdc/ US CBDC: https://decrypt.co/104471/us-continues-to-stall-with-digital-dollar-fed-reserve-conference-sees-no-urgency STO Updates & New STOs: Tokenizing Ownership in Oil: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2022/07/06/2475495/0/en/Tokenizing-Ownership-in-Oil-with-a-Game-changing-New-Miner.html Market Update: https://stomarket.com/ Inside The Metaverse: Honda HR-V: https://www.newspressusa.com/publicReleaseView/73354 Pringles: https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/whats-on/whats-on-news/you-could-paid-work-character-24272135 Karel Janeck: https://cryptonews.net/news/metaverse/8909747/ South Korea JJAANN: https://www.yahoo.com/video/south-korean-convenience-store-cu-031146951.html = Check out our Companies = Security Token Group: http://securitytokengroup.com/ Security Token Advisors: http://www.securitytokenadvisors.com/ Security Token Market: https://stomarket.com InvestReady: https://www.investready.com ⏰ TABLE OF CONTENTS ⏰ 0:00 Introduction: Smart Contract Security Flaws 2:30 STM, BlockFi, Solana Labs, Japan, Vertalo | STSTOP5 6:54 Britain Asset Manager, Ghana, Denmark Central Bank, US CBDC | STS Industry Updates 9:35 Tokenizing Ownership in Oil | STO Updates & New STOs 11:47 $19.1B Market Cap | STS Market Updates 13:40 Honda HR-V, Pringles, Karel Janeck, South Korea JJAANN | STS Inside The Metaverse 15:10 Companies of The Week: Nomura, Britain Investment Association 18:24 Main Topic: Smart Contract Security Flaws
It's time for Sovryn Shorts! Quick takes on the quick breaks in the news cycle, and sometimes even reviews! If you can't get enough of Dr. Brian Sovryn, these hot shots are for you! In this episode, the Man of Tomorrow discusses two of the latest announced smartphones, including a new entry from HTC, and another from...Solana Labs?! And Dr. Sovryn has thoughts on these crypto/NFT devices! But is it good? You'll have to listen to find out! Sovryn Shorts is on! SHOW NOTES: --"HTC Desire 22 Pro" Link: https://bit.ly/3IcOrjB --"Solana's Saga" Link: https://bit.ly/3yh1ZpF APPENDIX & SPONSORS: --"Sovryn Technica Newsletter" Link: http://sovryn.news --"Support Sovryn Tech on Patreon" Link: https://www.patreon.com/sovryntech --”The Sovryn Tech Amazon Wishlist” Link: http://wishlist.sovryntech.com --”Listen to Free Talk Live” Link: https://www.freetalklive.com --”Use Fastmail!” Link: https://fastmail.sovryntech.com --”Use Booking.com and Earn $25!” Link: https://booking.sovryntech.com --"Buy the Insurgo PrivacyBeast X230!” Link: http://bit.ly/2GoFjdj --"Surveillance Self-Defense" Link: https://ssd.eff.org/ --"RetroShare" Link: http://retroshare.net/ --“Books of Liberty” Link: http://booksofliberty.com/ --"Dark Android: 2017 Edition" Link: http://darkandroid.info --”Sovryn Universe, Vol. 1” Link: https://amzn.to/2MrvfEy ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Donate with BTC: 3GYKVWkVE6iAYEnExfiNfCHJkSDFYWEs43 Donate with CashApp: $sovryntech Donate with Venmo: @bsovryn ------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://sovryntech.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/sovryn/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/sovryn/support
Many Web3 platforms require users to connect their crypto wallets before engaging with the platform in any meaningful way. Consequently, the Web3 experience on mobile devices is tedious at best, given current devices are not designed with such functionalities in mind. Solana Mobile — a subsidiary of the development team behind Solana — hopes to address the difficulties that surround the Web3 mobile user experience with its new Android phone called ‘Saga,' which is slated for release in early 2023. Last week, Solana Labs co-founder and CEO Anatoly Yakovenko announced the new mobile device, which will run a ‘Solana Mobile Stack' (SMS) operating system and will feature a marketplace for decentralized Web3 applications. In this episode of The Scoop, Anatoly Yakovenko said he believes Saga's early success will be linked to its ability to significantly enhance the mobile crypto user experience: “The theory is that crypto users might be crazy enough to switch from iOS to Android because of crypto. It might be so important to have that experience, that they're willing to change their habits.” If Solana Mobile is successfully able to prove there is consumer demand for crypto-forward mobile products, Yakovenko believes it will inspire major tech companies to integrate crypto infrastructure into their own mobile devices moving forward: “You need Google and Apple to do it, but they're not going to do it until there is proven demand that people need it — and so somebody has to kind of make that leap…” Episode 60 of Season 4 of The Scoop was recorded live at The Block headquarters in New York with The Block's Frank Chaparro and Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder and CEO of Solana Labs. Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com. This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Chainalysis & IWC Schauffhausen About Chainalysis Chainalysis is the leading blockchain data platform. We provide data, software, services, and research to government agencies, exchanges, financial institutions, and insurance and cybersecurity companies in over 60 countries. Backed by Accel, Addition, Benchmark, Coatue, Paradigm, Ribbit, and other leading firms in venture capital, Chainalysis builds trust in blockchains to promote more financial freedom with less risk. For more information, visit www.chainalysis.com. About IWC Schaffhausen IWC Schaffhausen is a Swiss luxury watch manufacturer based in Schaffhausen, Switzerland. Known for its unique engineering approach to watchmaking, IWC combines the best of human craftsmanship and creativity with cutting-edge technology and processes. With collections like the Portugieser and the Pilot's Watches, the brand covers the whole spectrum from elegant timepieces to sports watches. For more information, visit IWC.com
Our guest this week is Shum Singh, Managing Director & Founder at Agnitio Capital. Agnitio Capital is a fully authorized and regulated investment bank. They have been passionate about and investing in games since their founding in 2003. In this week's podcast we take a dive into M&A and investing in the gaming industry. Shum tells us more about Agnitio Capital and the recent history of M&A and investing in the games space, we discuss the impact of the downturn of the global economy, and get predictions on how the next few years will play out for investments in the gaming space. Plus, we discuss the news that Solana Labs is building a Web3 phone, Sky Mavis is reopening their Ronin Bridge, and Playtika is selling their controlling stake in their own company to Joffre, and more. Guest: Shum Singh Industry Insights Solana Labs Is Building a Web3 Mobile Phone The Ronin Bridge Is Open Playtika sells controlling stake: is mobile gaming undervalued? Another Anticipated NFT Game Makes Its Way To The Epic Games Store App of the Week Disney Mirrorverse Sidepocket Grindstone
Ahlan wa sahlan, and welcome to the 29th edition of CoinMENA's weekly newsletter, Kalam Crypto. Every week we will bring you the latest news and developments from the exciting world of cryptocurrencies. This week, liquidity issues lead to crypto bailouts, Tencent launch metaverse division, Solana Labs to launch a web3 phone, and more chances to double your ETH and XRP trades on CoinMENA. All that and more, so let's dive into this week's letter, and talk crypto: The simplest and safest way to invest in crypto, sign up and start trading today with CoinMENASee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Today's blockchain and cryptocurrency news Brought to you by web3 with a16z (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/web3-with-a16z/id1622312549) Bitcoin is up .5% at $21,129 Ethereum is up 2% at $1195 and Binance Coin is up slightly at $236 Polygon up 16% Frax up 22% Solana Labs is launching a mobile phone. Cristiano Ronaldo signs multi-year NFT deal with Binance Bitcoin miner Aspen Creek Digital opens facility in Colorado Harmony's cross-chain bridge exploited for $100M Funds from AnubisDAO exploit on the move for the first time in 8 months.
Chewing glass is what Solana developers do. Introducing the fifth episode in a new series on the Solana Podcast, Chewing Glass. Chase Barker (Developer Relations Lead at Solana Labs) talks shop with the most interesting builders in the Solana ecosystem. It's for devs, by devs.Today's guest is Cronos, an on-chain task scheduler that allows users to schedule instructions and winner of the recent Riptide Hackathon. 00:38 - Introductions01:25 - How they started 02:48 - How they met 04:26 - Who else is in Austin 05:09 - Cronos backstory 07:34 - How they started building tasks 09:11 - TLDR: what is Cronos? 13:33 - Winning the Riptide Hackathon 15:40 - How cronos came to life 18:12 - Building on solana and familiarity with other languages20:16 - Learning curve with rust 22:50 - Nick's learning curve 25:04 - Advice on learning curve 27:08 - What's missing in Solana 29:20 - Advice to new developers on Solana DISCLAIMERThe information on this podcast is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose.The information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice.The information on this podcast is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional broker or financial advisor. Chase (00:38):Hey everybody. And welcome to Chewing Glass, the show where we talk to developers building in the Solana ecosystem. Today, we have Nick and Elias from Cronos, the recent winners of the Riptide Hackathon. Welcome guys. How's it going?Elias (00:50):It's going well.Nick (00:51):Yeah, great to be here.Chase (00:52):So let's start with you, Nick. What's your history? How'd you get into this whole thing?Nick (00:56):My background is basically, I worked on the payments team at Uber for about four years or so, helping build out the payroll system there. And so, was working on a lot of international banking integrations and just became very aware how broken the current legacy payment system is. Can't really even tell you the number of times I got woken up at 4:00 AM because some system failed somewhere and had to email a CSV file to some banker to push money through the system, it happens all the time.Nick (01:28):And so I heard about Solana and I had a light bulb moment really, where I realized that this thing is cheaper and faster and easier to use than any existing payment rails that I know about and so, I got quite excited about the potential for disruption there and this was all pre Solana Pay stuff. So, yeah, we dove in during the Ignition Hackathon.Chase (01:52):Oh, you did? Cool.Nick (01:53):Yeah.Chase (01:53):Yeah, I didn't realize that. I was actually, when you were talking, I was thinking in my head, I was like payments? I was like, wow, didn't even build anything on Solana Pay. So you guys were already rolling a little bit before that, so that's cool. Yeah. So Elias, how about you?Elias (02:06):I'm pretty fresh as far as experience in industry. I did have an internship in college as a data scientist in Argentina for a bit. I then transitioned into front-end development that following year and had been a front-end developer up until when I got into Solana development. But that's pretty much it.Chase (02:23):Cool. So, with all that said, you guys' backgrounds, how did you guys end up meeting each other? What's the story? Are you in the same place? You guys are in the same city? How did that work?Nick (02:34):We're both in Austin. Elias is a few minutes north of Austin. I'm kind of downtown and we meet up down here a few days a week. We basically met on Twitter last summer.Elias (02:45):Yeah. I was at Samsung before I met Nick. I was basically a site reliability engineer for this semiconductor facility here in Austin. I didn't love it. I absolutely hated it. So I was creating toy projects on GitHub just for front-end development purposes, just to better my skills, because I wasn't really progressing that well at Samsung. I was then tweeting about it and my philosophy was, well, what's the worst that could happen? Someone's going to see this and maybe look at my repo, who knows?Elias (03:13):Randomly I get a DM from this guy named Nick. He was like, "Hey, I like what you're doing. I looked at your GitHub. We're looking for front-end developers at this product studio that we have in Austin. I would love to grab a beer." And that's really where it started.Chase (03:25):Oh wow. That's awesome. I thought that stuff only happened in Web 3, but I guess it's happening outside of that too. So how did you find that tweet, Nick, in the first place?Nick (03:36):I don't remember, honestly. It's like scrolling the timeline, don't really remember what you saw 10 minutes ago. But, I think I saw Elias tweeting, maybe a GitHub link or something, saw he was a dev and I was just looking through his projects on GitHub. And, I found his resume actually and everything there was kind of focused around like Next.js and React, which we were doing a lot with at the time. And so, I figured sending a DM couldn't hurt and just kind of realized that he was based in Austin. I had just moved here, I think a week or so prior and we met up and grabbed a beer and just hit it off from there and have been working together since.Chase (04:18):Very cool. I think there's a couple other people in Austin. I believe Castle Finance is there. There's actually a pretty decent Solana builder presence at University of Texas at Austin.Nick (04:30):The [inaudible 00:04:30] team is here as well.Chase (04:31):Oh nice.Elias (04:32):I think BuffaLou is also here.Chase (04:34):BuffaLou? The famous BuffaLou is in Austin. Are we doxxing him over here?Elias (04:37):No, he's tweeted about it.Chase (04:39):I'm just kidding. So, that's pretty cool to hear the story about how you guys met. Now, let's dive into a little bit, go a little bit further. Where did this idea get birthed or what were you building? And start at Ignition and lead up to how the idea of Cronos came about.Nick (04:55):As we were saying before, we were looking at Solana initially from that perspective of payments and coming from the payments industry. And so we started in the Ignition Hackathon building an on-chain Venmo where users could send and receive invoices and pay those back on-chain. And then that kind of rolled into a token streaming service. And-Chase (05:16):Was that called Cronos or did it have a name at the point in time?Nick (05:20):Yeah, that was called Factor at the time. What we were specializing on was the use cases of subscription payments and payroll. And specifically we were trying to figure out how to schedule token transfers because it's kind of these inefficiencies in the vesting contract model where the sender has to lock up future payments up front into investing contract. So there's some inefficiency there. And the receiver has to go out of the way to claim from the vesting contract. So we thought if we could schedule token transfers, maybe that would be a better user experience.Nick (05:52):And we were working on that for a few months, got the whole system up and running. And then around February 1st, 2022, when mtnDAO was taking off, we realized that we could generalize that protocol from only supporting token transfers to being able to automate any arbitrary instruction. And from there it just took on a life of its own.Chase (06:14):So you guys were at mtnDAO?Nick (06:16):Yeah, I was at mtnDAO before it was mtnDAO. There was a version of it in 2021 called Mountain Compound. It was way smaller, but it was 14 of us, or so, just locked down in a house, trying to escape COVID, in Salt Lake City. And that was where I first met Edgar and Barrett. Barrett, at the time, was already working on Solana and Edgar and I were working on separate startups, but I think we both got the Solana pill during that time.Chase (06:47):Man. Wasn't expecting that one. That's a really cool story, actually. Those guys are involved in red-pilling a lot of people on to Solana, so I'm always happy to hear these stories. They just keep coming up randomly wherever I go.Nick (06:58):Yeah.Chase (07:00):Yeah, so that's awesome. So when you were building this payment stuff, the idea came around at mtnDAO, and that was, or right at the beginning-ish, I think, of Riptide. TJ was just on the show. That's when he started to talk about building out mtnPay. So you guys were like, "okay, we were doing payments, we just came up with this thing. We think we have solved a really big problem and we're going to build this out." Tell me a little bit more about that.Nick (07:25):Yeah, it started with just a proof of concept. So we just had this basic question of, can you even schedule arbitrary instructions on-chain? And how do you do that? So we started by building a basic Anchor program where users could create tasks and each task is a different account. And inside those accounts we would store serialized instruction data with a schedule.Nick (07:50):We basically had set up a separate off-chain bot process, also written in Rust, but using the RPC client. Which basically watched for task accounts and then would trigger transactions whenever the tasks came due. And we found that we could invoke those inner instructions as CPIs and that then unlocked this whole like, okay, we can schedule any arbitrary instruction.Elias (08:15):Yeah. I remember whenever he called me on our sync, I think it was on Monday because he built the proof of concept during the weekend. He told me, "you know, we have Factor and it's really cool, but imagine if we just generalized it to allow for any arbitrary instruction." And I was like, "Oh. Yeah, let's do that. That's a good idea."Chase (08:33):Yeah, I was really stoked. I remember seeing it the first time and I saw what it was and I was like, "Wow, people are really going to like this." By the way you guys are both technical founders. You both built out Cronos, correct?Nick (08:45):Yeah, correct.Nick (08:46):Mostly Nick, let me just... Mostly Nick.Chase (08:49):Actually, this is probably a good point to talk about what Cronos actually is officially. Like a TLDR for everybody watching. What you guys built and how it actually works at a high level?Nick (09:01):The basic concept is, it's just a keeper network for Solana. Every blockchain, at least that we're aware of right now, has this fundamental limitation and that's, you can't schedule transactions with a validator network and there's a few different reasons why that's the case. But it creates challenges for teams that have background jobs or tasks that they need to run just to make their programs work. And so, what Cronos is, is a keeper network to be able to facilitate that and service that. But the main difference is that we're kind of turning the Solana validators into the keepers for the system rather than relying on some external, off-chain, opaque bot network. And so that's required a lot of deep integration with the validator codebase in order to enable that.Chase (09:48):That is actually very, very cool. I wasn't officially, 100% certain how it worked. So you're using the validators as the keeper network to run these jobs on the network?Nick (09:58):Yeah, exactly. Our v1, proof of concept version was not integrated into the validator network. Hadn't even had that idea at the time, really.Elias (10:08):I didn't even know we could do that, knowing that we can just build a plugin for validators. Pretty cool.Nick (10:13):Yeah, it was around the same time we were building that initial bot that we started seeing some tweets about the account's DB plugin framework. And that has since been renamed to Geyser plugin framework and we just realized that there was all these scaling problems when you rely on these off-chain bots and that they have to submit transactions through the RPC network. And that can take up a whole bunch of bandwidth and you have to compete with other traffic to get those transactions through. And we realized there was this interface that Solana was providing, and the Geyser plugin framework, that we could actually spawn transactions from there. And it was much more efficient and made the system a lot more reliable. And so we basically copy pasted our bot code into the Geyser plugin framework and it mostly just worked out of the box.Chase (11:01):Oh wow. And that's quite unusual. For things that just work. So did you guys actually have to work with the validator community or did you guys have ever set up or run a validator? What's your knowledge there?Nick (11:12):Yeah, we have a few nodes that we got through the Solana server program, which that is a very useful program, if there's anyone that's looking to set up a node on Solana. And we have some servers running on DevNet and Testnet right now, that we're using to stress test the system. But yeah, we've been reaching out to all the node operators we can to talk with them and we're looking to get this thing rolled out on DevNet and Testnet quite soon. And actually, by the time this is published, it should be out on DevNet and Testnet, and we'll have quite a few integrations going on those networks.Chase (11:49):Yeah. I'm not going to lie. So like just leading in the sense, congratulations, you guys won the Riptide Hackathon. This was super incredible. And for me personally, I was so insanely excited to see some tooling win because this is just... developers need this tooling and to see that people watching a hackathon and a lot of these other, in the past, DeFi protocols, which are amazing out there, winning, but to see developer tooling take the grand prize, says a lot about what you guys had built and what the judges thought of it. So, that's quite amazing. So congratulations. But tell me, what was that like? Were you guys, have any idea, any expectations? Like what was your thoughts going through all that?Nick (12:33):Man. Yeah, there was a lot going on at the time, even, even outside the Riptide Hackathon. It was quite a journey, I think, to get here. Cronos was what we wish we had when we were building Factor. We came upon the idea for Cronos because we were trying to build Factor, this scheduled token transfer service. And we're like, "how do you schedule a timer on-chain?" And then we found out you couldn't schedule a timer on-chain, there just isn't a way. So we were talking to some other teams and I think it was, he goes by DoctorBlocks, at Switchboard. He described for us what a Crank function was and how they were running their automations. And from there we just started pulling on that thread and realized that here was all this dev tooling that was missing that we could build out and just started running with it.Chase (13:22):Were you expecting to win the grand prize of the hackathon? How did you react whenever you actually found out that you guys had won that thing? Was there-Nick (13:30):I didn't know we were going to win. We had been getting tips from a few people that we were on these ever shorter shortlists, but we didn't know until the moment of, that the blog post went out, someone sent it to me and then a moment later, Twitter started blowing up. And from there it was just a flood of inbound messages coming in from all directions. And last few weeks have been a lot of dealing with that.Elias (13:57):Yeah. A lot of dealing about knowing what is spam and what isn't from people it's pretty difficult to do.Chase (14:03):So did you guys celebrate, did you guys go out for beers? Like you did the first time you met? Did you do anything?Elias (14:08):Sure did.Nick (14:09):Yeah.Chase (14:11):That's awesome, man. Like I said, it's really great to see some developer tooling win and that value in that. Whenever I started at Solana Labs, like a year ago, there was no developer tooling out there. This was like... Then comes Armani and then here's Anchor. And then now we have all these indexers and then now we have Cronos and they just keep piling on. And eventually we're going to reach a place where every little narrow gap is covered and developers are going to be able to just jump in and do all the things that they could do in Web 2, in Web 3 and it's going to be a huge game changer for everybody. Not quite there, or we're pretty far off from there, I would say. Every tool like this really, really matters.Elias (14:51):To piggyback off that, the most exciting part about this job is not only building it and dealing with really interesting engineering problems, but knowing the impact that it will have to developers and how empowering it is to allow them to automate things on-chain. That's a pretty wild idea. So I'm really excited for that.Chase (15:09):Yeah and I think that's why a lot of engineers get into building out developer tooling instead of products because they're engineers themselves. And they're like, "man, if I was like on the other end of this and somebody built this tool, I'd be so stoked." And how many people that outwardly impacts is probably just a really incredible feeling. And it's just really awesome. So sorry, Factor, but I'm glad that Cronos ended up winning. By the way, is Factor just kind of sitting on a shelf somewhere right now, never to be reopened again?Nick (15:38):Yeah. We, we kind of just rolled Factor into Cronos. Actually the Twitter account is the same Twitter. We just changed the name now.Chase (15:46):Nice. Okay. So it's dead.Nick (15:48):Yeah.Elias (15:49):Dead, but very much alive.Nick (15:51):Yeah.Chase (15:52):Yeah. If Cronos would've never came alive, you would've been sitting at the mtnDAO with TJ, directly competing against each other. So, that's awesome. So basically two of these projects were the winning of the payments track and then the grand champion of Riptide. They both came out of mtnDAO. Every time I hear about mtnDAO and we talk about this, it's one more reason why understanding how incredible it was out there and how many builders were out there building really cool stuff.Elias (16:20):Yeah, the community in Salt Lake was amazing just knowing that you were in the same boat with all these developers. Either just getting into Solana or being in it just recently. Learning Rust and learning the runtime environment and what is possible on Solana is really crazy. And everyone was trying to help each other and answered questions. And if you didn't know the answer, they would direct you to somebody else. And everyone's just like, "yeah, let me help you with this," which is my favorite part about that.Nick (16:48):Yeah, it's been really cool to see communities pop up. Also happening right now is like AthensDAO in Greece. And unfortunately we weren't able to make it there, but I think we'll see, over the coming months, a few more of these communities start to pop up that are a bit more like longer running than just the kind of week long hacker house format.Chase (17:06):Yeah. I'm a big fan of the community run hacker houses and all these sorts of things like mtnDAO, just because whenever it's built out with the community like that, it just forms this other type of bond with everybody and it's just really exciting to see all that happen.Chase (17:23):This is the point in the show where we shift gears a little bit. We talked about that excitement, how Cronos came alive, you guys winning Riptide and now I want to talk about what that experience was like for you guys. Because this is the very important part of this show where we talk about what sucked and what was good and what could be better. So, I want to start with Elias this time. You came from a front-end engineering background? What's actually the languages that you had touched before you came to start building on Solana?Elias (17:58):Even before I was a front-end developer, I was dabbling in data science for a bit. It was a lot of fun, but a bit too meticulous for my taste. So I was dealing with a lot of Python. Fast forward to when I graduate, I was really interested in front-end development, got pretty good at helping with some friends and building toy applications and TypeScript React, some toy web apps with Next.js. And then that's whenever, like I said, met Nick, joined the team and I was building front-end applications for a while at, like, six months. And then I found, like a lot of people who started their Web 3 journey, Nader Dabit's Ethereum article on how to... It was like a super simple... I forget exactly the context of what the project was, but it was on dev.to. And read through it and tried to understand what is this environment? What is this dev environment? What's going on? Not too long after I found Solana and Nick also brought it up, was like, "Hey, we should maybe look into this." And then-Chase (18:53):Did you do Dabit's tutorial on Solana too?Elias (18:55):I did. Yeah, I did. Yeah.Chase (18:56):Yeah.Elias (18:57):It was a lot simpler. I don't know. But also more difficult in some ways. When we were working on Factor, Nick gave me the talk like, "Hey, we may not need front-end developers. So there's a chance that I need you to flex over to becoming a Rust engineer, which is, you know-Chase (19:13):So he didn't fire you?Elias (19:15):No, no he did not. Luckily. Yeah. So fast forward to like mtnDAO when we know finally realize Cronos has a lot of potential. I buy the book that a lot of people seem to have and I have it on my desk right here, the programming Rust book. And it's been my north star, I would say, as far as growing my skills as a Rust engineer, as well as living in the Solana repo and Anchor repos.Chase (19:39):So you guys are building this in straight Rust? Are you guys also using Anchor?Elias (19:44):Yeah. So in the core of Cronos, it's a lot of Anchor. A lot of what I deal with, I'm building and optimizing the Geyser plugin that we have to listen to Cronos accounts and execute tasks when needed. That's just built in Rust and other like asynchronous libraries and things like that, but not Anchor specifically.Chase (20:03):This is the part, the glass chewing, what was your learning curve during that process of learning Rust coming from front-end? Was it as painful as everybody says? Everybody's different on this front, so what was that like to learn Rust?Elias (20:16):A big mistake that I would advise people attempting to get into the space would be first of all, just learn Rust by itself first. At least start there and understand that it is different from Anchor. And it's just a framework that lives with Rust. And then try to understand the Solana runtime just a little bit. And those are three separate entities, but they all coexist and you need the three in order to make a simple to do app in Rust on-chain. So differentiating between those three different entities is really important. And if you just jump straight into a Solana Anchor project, not knowing Rush, you're going to get really confused and pretty frustrated.Chase (20:52):So for you, was it hard or was it just time consuming? You just had to grind it out and you learned along the way?Elias (20:58):Yeah. Yeah. It's one of those things that you just have to do every day. You have to, you know, for me every morning before we would go to the mtnDAO-Chase (21:06):Glass for breakfast.Elias (21:07):Yeah, I would literally just sit on the couch and wait for Nick to finish showering before we drove to the office. And I would just read a chapter of the programming Rush book and it would just go over super simple things like structs and basic functions. And if you're a software engineer, it's not too difficult to transition into Rust, it's just another programming language just in the different context. And it looks a little weird with two semicolons next to each other or whatever, syntax. But it's not too bad. One of those things you just got to do every day. And then before you know it, you'll just hit the road running. It's pretty nice.Chase (21:39):I think a lot of people talk about chewing glass, like it's actually Solana, that's the real glass chewing, about learning the native concepts, like using PDAs and these things. And there are people out there who just don't ever end up learning Rust and they never actually tried it. They never just sat down and did it. You could get a little bit resistant to it just because it looks so foreign.Chase (22:00):And then the other part is, I've done a couple of Twitter Spaces around this exact same thing about you saying start with Rust. That's my recommendation always start with the base layer before you're using any sort of framework or anything that's intertwined in it, but there are people out there on the other side of the camp that say, just start with Anchor. I obviously disagree, because I think learning that first base language is always going to be the best. And it's going to save you down the road when you're running into issues.Chase (22:27):I'm going to go ahead and ask you Nick, kind of the same question, what your experience was like? What did you do to learn it? Was it similar to Elias? Was it hard? Was it easy? Was it just time consuming? What would that look like?Nick (22:39):I had some background working in back-end systems. Yeah, for my time out in California, I had worked mostly with Go prior and actually first tried picking up Rust in 2020, because I'd seen it was the most popular language on GitHub and it was just like, what is this? And I actually hated it the first time I looked at it because I was coming from that Go world. And Go is designed to be super ergonomic and easy to read and talk about and communicate and Rust is more optimized for performance,Chase (23:13):Performance and pain.Nick (23:16):Yeah. And so I hated Rust when I first looked at it, and I pushed it off to the side and didn't actually look at it again until we dove into Solana. I've since come to love it. It is a little bit steeper of a learning curve and there are some extra pieces to the mental model that you need, in terms of understanding memory and ownership of variables and how all that stuff works, lifetimes, for example, that other languages don't have. So that makes it a little more complicated or harder to learn. But it's not anything that can't be overcome, I think. It's just another programming language.Nick (23:50):But yeah, definitely breaking apart, as Elias said, the difference between Rust problems, Anchor problems and Solana problems and understanding that these are all like three different systems is probably the hardest thing when you're first diving into Solana because it all looks the same and all the error messages are cryptic and if you don't have a whole lot of debugging experience, it can be hard to pull that thread because all this stuff is quite new and a lot of devs, I think have the pattern of, you get an error message you don't understand, copy it in a Google and see what Stack Overflow results come up. Usually we're running into problems that no other devs have run into yet. And it's just like-Chase (24:28):It's actually pretty cool though. Like to be one of the first group of people on the planet. You guys are going to be the ones who answer these Stack Overflow questions in the future because that always starts somewhere. The first guy had to just figure it out.Elias (24:40):It's cool, but you're like, "I don't know what to do now." I guess we're just going to have to figure it out. So that's where I would just go to the Solana codebase and Nick has recommended multiple times. Just go live in there, you'll understand the runtime environment better, your errors will be easier to debug. It's a lot. The Solana codebase is a lot, but there are parts of it that really help you understand what is going on underneath.Chase (25:03):A lot of people come from Web 2, and again, I'm one of those people. We're used to having our hands held. We're used to being able to find the answers we want. We're used to all these pretty, amazing tutorials and all these different things. And when that's not the case, it makes it a lot harder. Sadly enough, not everybody's this reverse engineering code diver that's going to go do that sort of thing. And it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort and sometimes, at the end of the day, there might not be considered the greatest payoff for all that work. But the true engineers, the ones who just like to figure shit out, are going to go do that and then they're going to figure it out and then they're going to build Cronos. So it's awesome.Nick (25:43):It's definitely how you know you're on the bleeding edge, is when Google doesn't come up with any results for your error message.Chase (25:49):Zero results.Nick (25:51):Yeah.Elias (25:52):The beautiful, no search results for that Google search and like, well, okay cool. Like whatever.Nick (25:57):Yeah. I Would say to any devs that find themselves in this situation, the Anchor discord in particular is my new Google for trying to find solutions to these problems. And usually, 70% of the time, someone has asked about some of the error problems like we're running into in the Anchor discord somewhere. And there's been someone that is able to chime in and help and Armani and the team that's there is extremely helpful in terms of answering questions and generous with their time.Chase (26:27):And Alan and everybody that's out there and Jacob who's on our DevRel team and Donny. There's so many people and these are guys that are actually working on like Serum and Anchor and Solana Labs and all that stuff. But outside of that, the community of people just helping each other solve these problems, it's amazing to watch it happen in real life.Chase (26:48):We've been going on for a while now and I want both of you, if you can, to tell me what is missing from Solana right now, like in tooling? You guys just created one that was missing, where you were seeing a lot of tooling come out.Elias (26:59):I have one.Chase (27:00):Okay. All right, we'll start with you Elias. What are we missing right now?Elias (27:04):I'm probably stealing this from Matt because he's probably thinking about it, but one thing we've ran into recently is DevOps pipelining. It's pretty difficult to handle versioning from so many different projects. And when we're developing, we're having to stay ahead of Mainnet and work on Testnet and it's a very complicated, and different projects do it differently, but right now in our repo, we have a forked version of Anchor just so that we have up-to-date versions of Anchor, but using some different-Nick (27:32):The latest Solana dependency versions.Elias (27:34):Yes. So that right now is something that we have to build, but if there's a way to do that at scale for a lot of other teams, that'd be great.Chase (27:41):Yeah, that's not the first time I've heard that one, but that's a good one. I hear it just because I'm always paying attention to a lot of different places, but I don't know if everybody, except the ones who are coming into this problem actually know that this is something that's kind of necessary. It's not one of the ones that people are most vocal about. It's usually error codes and indexers and all these things. So Nick, did Elias steal yours or do you got something else for us?Nick (28:05):No, I think that's a great one. There's, at least for what we're doing, where we have both on-chain programs and a plugin, that we're trying to ship DevOps challenges around keeping the versions in sync between those two pieces can be challenging. And then, I guess something that's been on my mind a little bit is how there was a DeGit project in the Riptide Hackathon, decentralized Git, which I think, stuff in that space like decentralized DevOps processes and how does a decentralized global team of engineers contribute to a protocol and how do you keep the community open, but also secure, is, I think, an unsolved problem at this point.Chase (28:50):Well, I look forward to the Cronos team actually building out this suite of tools, all of it.Nick (28:56):A few pieces, but yeah.Chase (28:58):Yeah. So I usually wrap these shows up just asking what advice would you give to somebody who's thinking, on the other side, "Hmm, maybe I'm about to jump into Solana. I'm not sure if I want to put in the effort to build something." What general advice would you give somebody who was going to build or is building on Solana right now?Elias (29:17):If you're frustrated with learning Rust, but you're really wanting to build on Solana, then you're doing it right. You're not doing it right if you're not frustrated, that's the chewing glass part.Chase (29:27):Yeah.Elias (29:27):Just keep going. Because at some point you'll be able to look at other projects and their smart contracts and go, "oh, I see what they're doing." Like right now I'm looking at the Holaplex, that's called RabbitMQ plugin or Geyser plugin, shout out to the Holaplex team, and trying to understand why they made certain engineering designs with their plugin and see what we can take from. And that's just the beauty of open source of course. But yeah, if I wasn't chewing glass consistently and I wasn't looking at code and other repos, then I wouldn't be able to do that.Chase (29:58):Yeah. That's awesome. And like it is, I wish everybody would start open sourcing their code out there, but we'll get there eventually. How about you Nick, what kind of advice do you have? And again, we've kind of talked about a few good ideas for the community, so what do you think?Nick (30:13):Yeah, I think probably two things, as Elias mentioned, spending time in the Solana repo, it's helped a lot. There's a lot of patterns in there that, if you're trying to get familiar with Rust, it's a great resource to learn from. And the second thing is to actually read the error messages that you get back, because when you actually pull on that thread, they are very cryptic error messages a lot of times, but they do have information that leads you to the bug and the problem or points you in the right direction, maybe is the best way to put it. I find that skill, that debugging skill is like a muscle that needs to be trained and learned and doesn't always come supernaturally, because it's just hard. But yeah, reading error messages and trying to decipher what they're telling you is a fundamental exercise to dealing with large complex systems.Chase (31:10):Yeah, and it's also just a really cool skillset to have, to be able to just do these manual debugging stuff. Yeah. Like you said it becomes like a natural kind of mental muscle that all of a sudden, now it just happens quite naturally, once you get to a certain point.Elias (31:23):Yeah. One thing for those interested in just in general, distributed systems, trying to understand Solana a little bit better from a higher level, there's a great YouTube course from MIT. If you just search "distributed systems MIT", it's an OpenCourseWare, like 12 lecture series, just to understand like RPCs, multi-threading, concurrency, consensus and things like that. It's really beneficial to understanding distributed systems, blockchains, well, not necessarily blockchains, but at least for Solana distributed systems.Chase (31:55):Awesome. Yeah. There's a lot of people that come into blockchain and they don't even really know what a distributed system is. And then a lot of the times it's like, hey, go actually read about like what this thing is before diving into this.Chase (32:07):All right guys. Well really, really, thanks for coming on the show. I'm glad that we got to catch up. Congratulations winning Riptide. I'll talk to you later.Nick (32:16):Yeah. Well see you in Austin.Elias (32:17):Sounds good. Yeah, see you in Austin.Chase (32:19):All right. Cheers.
Brett Harrison is the President of FTX US, a US-regulated cryptocurrency exchange. Prior to joining FTX US, Brett was Head of Semi-Systematic Technology at Citadel Securities, where he managed technology for the firm's Options, ETF, OTC, and ADR trading globally. He began and spent the majority of his career at Jane Street, where he led the firm's algorithmic trading system development. 00:34 - The role of FTX.US' president01:24 - About FTX02:55 - Nontraditional brand marketing08:05 - Educating people about Crypto10:46 - Being at the forefront of regulation14:52 - Collaborating with other players in crypto19:03 - FTX's policy in exchange and crypto23:19 - FTX and NFTs26:44 - CeFi / DeFi exchange and Cross-chains31:36 - Building interconnectivity between centralized crypto exchanges34:59 - Market hours in crypto?36:33 - Process of evaluating a token38:44 - Things he is hopeful for DISCLAIMERThe information on this podcast is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose.The information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice.The information on this podcast is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional broker or financial advisor. Austin (00:10):I'm Austin Federa. Welcome to the Solana podcast. Today, we have Brett Harrison joining us, who's the president of FTX.US. We got a bunch to talk about today, including the role of FTX in the markets, his sort of path there, and a bunch of what's been going on recently in crypto. So, Brett, thanks for joining us.Brett (00:27):Yeah. Thanks for having me on, Austin.Austin (00:29):I wanted to kick it off. What does the president of FTX.US actually do on a daily basis?Brett (00:34):Yeah, for sure. A good question. So yeah, I joined FTX.US exactly one year ago. Little bit of background first. So FTX is obviously the global cryptocurrency derivatives exchange. It's the second or third largest in the world. Around a year and a half ago, FTX.US, a separate company affiliated with FTX, was started for the purpose of creating a US regulated set of businesses to be able to do things like offer a spot cryptocurrency in the US, but also to satisfy some of our broader ambitions to enable other kinds of investment products for US customers such as US crypto derivatives, stocks, and things like that. My role is to sort of help run the ship over here, hire the team, and put people in the right offices, but also like do everything from think about regulatory strategy and policy to some actual software development in architecture and on some of our products. So it's sort of a little bit of everything.Austin (01:25):Yeah. It's kind of an interesting role. How big is the FTX.US operations at this point?Brett (01:30):We're around 80 people right now.Austin (01:33):That's pretty sizable for one year.Brett (01:35):Yeah, for us at least.Austin (01:36):Yes.Brett (01:37):For sure.Austin (01:38):You're at the top of a pretty interesting organization nowadays. When you joined, the pace of excitement and interest in crypto from a mainstream audience was far lower. The presence of FTX was far lower than it is now. There's many people who are familiar with crypto, who have been for both FTX for a very long time, as both the FTX international and FTX.US as two different entities that play an important role in pushing the concept of a centralized exchange further. Before you guys came on the scene, the role of a centralized exchange was maybe not quite as professionalized as it is now. There's sort of more of a lot of respect in the market for the speed that FTX is able to execute on and both sort of the pace of innovation that's come out of that.Austin (02:23):But at the same time, in the United States specifically, which is where we're talking about today, you guys have done a huge amount of what I would call very traditional marketing usually reserved for banks, and telecommunication companies, and these sort of like old Titans of industry in the United States. But this is a very new operation. Walk me through a little bit about that process of saying not only do we see a target opportunity here, but we're not going to take the path of most other companies, and run a ton of digital ads, and put up select billboards. But we're going to put our name on AAA, IP, and media.Brett (02:55):It's incredible to see where we are now compared to a year ago, two years ago, and FTX.US were fairly obscure in the United States. Not so much overseas where FTX had already really gained a name for itself as this leading cryptocurrency derivatives exchange. And it was really competing with the other top exchanges around the world that have been trading these derivatives products traditionally. But in the US, we had just started. We're up against 10 year incumbents in the space and very few people ever heard of FTX. And now we're on Super Bowl commercials. We are the subject of congressional hearings. It's like quite amazing to sort of see the way that we've sort of infiltrated the crypto ecosystem in the United States, in a way that's really established our presence as a brand that people trust, as one that feels innovative and fast moving.Brett (03:47):So I think just taking it back a bit. So we wanted to be able to get into the US market, and the US has one of the largest retail user bases in the world, maybe the largest retail user base in the world. So the number of people who are traditionally using their phone to trade stocks, for example, for themselves, is just much higher percentage in the United States than almost anywhere else. And so you have this broad class of people now getting interested in crypto, who want to be able to have access to that as a means of investment. But if you think about where crypto has been for the last decade, there's been a lot of ups and downs and noise. You have exchanges that lose customer funds, or they go down, or they get hacked, or they like suddenly become slow.Brett (04:31):And if people are going to invest in this still fairly risky, volatile, asset class, where there's a lot to learn for people, it's a very high learning curve. They're going to want some brand that they feel they're comfortable taking that leap, and putting their money in, and investing with. And so in the beginning, it was very difficult to acquire customers for us. And then Sam had this idea of, what's the largest thing that we could do, as fast as possible, and reach tens of millions of people. And it's not go out and buy Facebook ads. And the conventional wisdom here for us was, "Okay, when's the last time you saw an ad on Facebook for like Citibank or JP Morgan, and you are like a Bank of America customer? And then you said, you know what, I love this Facebook ad. It's time to move all my money from my checking account to this other one." I think it doesn't usually happen. I think it's a pretty high activation cost for doing something like that. It's not like giving some new website a try.Brett (05:28):Just plain and simply this is like a serious investment decision. And so we really needed to build that trust for people, and do it quickly, and in a way that really established ourselves as a unique player. And so the biggest thing someone could think of was, well, what if we put our name on a stadium. And it seemed crazy at the time, but then we did it and we put our name on the Miami Heat stadium, the FTX Arena. It was an amazing deal, the right place at the right time, because we got to also work with Miami Dade County on many of their anti-gun violence initiatives. So it was a really good fit. And short time after that, we did two other big deals. One was with Tom Brady and the other one was with the Major League Baseball.Brett (06:04):And for those, first of all, Tom Brady being this universally loved and respected individual for just his incredible talent and drive. And then for Major League Baseball for being this time modern institution. I think it, the signal to people was imagine what it took, what kind of due diligence was required for an institution like Major League Baseball to come trust FTX, crypto exchange no one's ever heard of. And let alone do anything in crypto. That's how I think we were able to sort of catapult ourselves into the US market very quickly was through this somewhat non-traditional way of doing this brand marketing. And since then, it's been amazing. I mean, we went from 10,000 customers at the beginning of 2021 to like 1.2 million customers at the end of 2021. So a huge growth in a very short period of time, on the eve of some of our new product offerings that we're launching. So pretty excited about the growth so far.Austin (06:56):What's very interesting for me on this, apart from just the growth of FTX.US in general, is this is against the grain for, I would say, the last 20 years of marketing. Which is that you really want to focus on identifying your core demographic, activating that core demographic, using them as voices and ambassadors. And this is the way that most crypto exchanges, and honestly, most cryptocurrencies have gone about growth as well. They've said let's put a bunch of resources into the very narrow domain things that are working, and then it will be an organic growth kind of coming out of that.Austin (07:32):And you normally see something like branding rights for an arena or a major partnership with MLB or some, or any sports team, something along those lines as being something that a company that isn't trying to educate customers, but is just looking for general awareness, goes through. Right? Staples Center, UBS, all the big banks have their names on these places. Not because they're trying to differentiate Bank of America's products versus Chase's products, but because they want general awareness. What was that process like to say, "Okay, we've got a stadium, but no one knows what crypto is still." What's that part two of that strategy?Brett (08:09):Yeah. I think we had to rewrite the playbook there. Because we don't yet know what the right demographic is for crypto, but also we don't want to pre-select a demographic. I mean, the whole spirit of crypto is to enable people to have access to investment opportunities, wealth creation, control over your personal finances in ways that have typically been difficult for many parts of the country. And if we just sort of start by saying, okay, well, who is the most obvious demographic to target for this? And let's just run Facebook ads that target them. I think it sort of misses the point. We're here to educate people, as you said, about not just the investment class, but also the promises of the technology itself. The fact that this will represent a new way of building internet based applications, in ways that allow people to share in the upside of those applications. It's going to enable for greater robustness and stability by using decentralized technology.Brett (09:11):I think these are all things that it's going to be difficult to teach people over time, but we have to start somewhere. And that starts with a general awareness. And it starts with trust, right? People have to understand that we are a very legitimate company. We are highly regulated, contrary to popular belief. We have, between FTX and FTX.US, we have something like a hundred different regulators. We have 50 different licenses. We need to be able to break through the noise and convey that to people. And that's why we started more on this general awareness. And now we're doing some of the other stuff. Like we're starting now to run some Google ads. We're starting to go for iOS App Store placements and traditional SEO. And we're doing that now that we have the product that we like and we're happy with where it is, although we're always trying to improve it. And we've built that general awareness and trust.Austin (09:58):Yeah. So, so you mentioned that you are both in a highly regulated industry and yourselves, highly regulated, by various regulators who look at the industry. FTX has, over the last year, put itself at the forefront of regulation in crypto in the US. You and Chainalysis are right up there together, testifying in front of Congress, and also putting out this FTX policy proposal that came out, was that six months ago or so, as well. What was the decision making process like internally to say, this is something that not only do we want to engage with, but to actually make a decision to be a face of. There are many exchanges that operate in the US. None of them have necessarily taken that as the mantle, as proactively, we are going to put ourself in this position. I'm sure that was both risky, and you saw a lot of opportunity in that process.Brett (10:50):Yeah, absolutely. So there's the part that's specific to FTX and the part that's general. Starting with the part that's specific, we would like to be able to offer an array of different products and services in the US. Some of those has to do with spot cryptocurrencies. Regulation in the US for spot cryptocurrencies are not well defined. And that is because of the two market regulators that exist in the US, and the US is one of the few countries in the world that actually has two separate market regulators not one, the SEC and the CFTC, the lines of jurisdiction over digital spot assets are not very well drawn. That's not true for traditional securities like Apple and Tesla and US government bonds, which is regulated by the SEC. And it's not true for the CFTC, which regulates commodity futures, and other sort of broad based index futures, and sometimes security futures as well in conjunction with the SEC. But for actual things like Bitcoin to USD spot markets, it's not clear.Brett (11:47):And what we want to do is help shape that regulation, such that we can safely innovate and offer products that also protect consumers. And in terms of how we influence regulation, do so in a way that doesn't push all of the intellectual property and all that innovation overseas. I mean, you guys know this too, that so much of the intellectual property, the founders, the CEOs, the developers come from the United States. And then ultimately move themselves to somewhere outside the United States because they don't feel like they have a safe place to be able to build their business and to be an entrepreneur. We really want to help that. So I think that kind of actually combines both sort of specific and general of what I wanted to say.Brett (12:26):Which is that on the specific front, we want to be able to offer all the spot tokens that we think are appropriate. We want to be able to list CFTC regulated margin derivative products in the US for US customers. We want to maybe eventually do more innovative, ambitious things like create tokenized stocks or tokenized treasuries. But then, at the same time, we want to make sure the playing field is great for all crypto participants in the US. And they really want to stay here and work here and build here, because we just think that's going to be good for the country. Now what's been interesting for us in this journey of being this sort of public face of regulation and policy, is that what we found is the most effective thing that we can do as a company is just showing up in person. You'd be surprised how many companies, and this is not just crypto, send these large teams of lobbyists and lawyers to Washington hoping to sort of engage in policy discussions.Brett (13:17):And I'm not in the room for those, but I imagine some of those come off as disingenuous. Or there are cases where you can't really get in the weeds of a conversation because the right stakeholders aren't in the room. The fact that Sam and Zach and Ryan and Mark and I just sort of like go to Washington, and email the Fed or the Treasury or members of the House or the Senate or the executive branch, and just show up and talk to them. And say like, "We don't have an agenda. We're just here to answer questions. We know we're in the education phase." Same thing with regulators. We talk with the CFTC, SEC, FINRA. It is just great to show up in person and show that we are open honest people who really want to engage in dialogue. It's been so useful for everyone involved. And I think that's really helped shift the narrative of crypto being like anti-regulatory or anti-government in some way. And that's been really helpful.Austin (14:09):Do you see this as something that you're primarily, obviously there's a lot of upside for FTX in getting greater clarity around regulations and having a legal framework that it can operate in with more definition around it. At the same time you look across at other industries, the credit card industry, the banking industry, agriculture, et cetera. They have very well defined and powerful industry groups at this point. And you often see like a lot of the big banks in the US moving in lockstep with one another. How closely does FTX work with other large exchanges in the United States or other people in the crypto space? And if that's not really as mature as it is in other industries, why do you think that is right now?Brett (14:54):Yeah. Great question. We do to some extent. We do more now than we did before. It's almost certainly not enough. And partly it's because this industry is very new, and it's not super well defined exactly what we need, and there's differing opinions of how we get there. I also think that crypto has done itself a bit of a disservice in the past by being somewhat hostile to regulatory involvement. And you see this a lot on Twitter. And I think it's not super productive. We want to be able to create a market environment that allows for all participants to participate in a way that it safeguards them. And to just completely throw away a hundred years of regulatory development to think that we can just sort of do the whole thing better from scratch, with no protections, is almost certainly not right.Brett (15:44):At the same time, I'm very sympathetic to the idea that you could, through the act of regulatory requirements, end up excluding individuals for not good reasons. For example, there's a lot of people who criticize KYC by saying there might be disenfranchised people who don't have good drivers licenses. And so therefore they can't KYC with an exchange. And so you're actually excluding a certain segment of the population by doing so. And I think we are receptive to those arguments. And so we would like to be able to push the envelope forward with crypto and allow the greatest number of people to participate without prejudice. But we have to engage collaboratively and cooperatively with regulators to do so.Brett (16:27):And so we are now starting to talk a lot more with the other competitors in the space about what are our shared goals for regulation? What do we think about who should be regulating us? What do we think policies would look like in the areas of spot tokens, of stable coins, of listing procedures, of licensing for exchanges. And I think that we're making progress there. Because the thing we've heard all the time in Washington is, okay this proposal of yours sounds great, but it can't be just the FTX proposal. Washington's not in the business of picking winners and losers in industry. We want to see you guys come together as an industry. And so that's, it's going to be critical for us going forward. And it's not just the exchanges. I mean, it's the protocol tokens, it's the stable coin providers, the infrastructure providers, miners. Sort of all across the board, I think we just need to come together more as an industry.Austin (17:19):Yeah. It's one of those things where you look at the Web 2.0 industry, and I think it's probably pretty obvious that they say at this point that their unwillingness to come together around issues of establishing common frameworks for content moderation, common frameworks for when a user should be banned from a platform, those sorts of things have really opened them up to a lot of attacks from Washington about... You see these hearings in the Senate all the time when they're talking one company, why your policy different from another company? And then there's a void there, where the regulators and Congress aren't really sure how to write a law, but they have a lot of ideas about what could be changed. Given the decentralized nature of crypto, there's one level where it's like, there are these centralized companies like FTX, like Coinbase, like Kraken, like Chainalysis that are on one side of things.Austin (18:10):But then there's organizations like Solana Labs or the Solana Foundation, which have a very different role and place in the market. And don't always necessarily have the same incentive alignment in those sort of areas. One of the beautiful things about FTX is, or any exchange, is that it's a entity which makes money on the aggregate state of cryptocurrency. And so the specific whims of one network is not necessarily of huge concern to it. For example, the shutting out of a certain type of user, based on a KYC requirement, is much less of a burden in the United States or for something like an exchange, then it might be for... Like if you have to KYC every user, that's not a problem. If Audius has to KYC every user, that actually puts them at a significant disadvantage compared to a competitor like a Spotify. How do you think about both the role of the policy work FTX does within the exchange industry and the wider crypto industry in general?Brett (19:07):It's interesting to think about where we need to head as an industry together. I think a lot about the role of CeFi and DeFi and how they interplay. I think there's a lot of people online who sort of draw this very bright line between them. And it's like, if you're on the left side, you're a centralized player and you are completely antithetical to the whole point of crypto. And if you're on the right side, you're part of the golden club and true decentralization means there can never be anyone who touches anything involving like regulation or identification or safeguards and things like this. And I think, again, these are the kinds of counterproductive discussions I was talking about earlier. I think that we need each other to grow.Brett (19:47):The more DeFi grows, the more equitable access to financial markets will continue to grow around the world. And the more the need for centralized regulated players, like FTX, who kind of bridge the gap between the traditional financial system and DeFi, will play that role as well. As far as regulation goes, you're right. It's not clear where you go with a project like Audius. And you like it to be such that it's the same as Spotify, but then you get into these tricky issues of like, well, what is the Audius token? And how does that interplay with who can actually buy and sell that token and interact with the system in some way? You have more ambitious projects, on the topic of music, like can we create tokens for songs where people can receive token distributions for the number of plays that occur? And does that make it sort of like a dividend and a securities offering? Well, I don't know. And this sort of is very difficult to understand.Brett (20:39):But there are two strategies when it comes to regulation for a company like Audius. And so one strategy is to sort of move as fast as possible and try to always stay like a step ahead of regulation. And eventually, maybe the feeling and the ecosystem around DeFi regulation catches up to an Audius and everything is okay. It allows us to do what it does, and it was worth the risk because they got to innovate very quickly and become a profitable business. But that comes with its risks, that maybe regulation catches up to it in a bad way, and says, "You shouldn't have been doing this all along. And please give me all your profits back from the last couple years."Brett (21:16):There's another way, which is sort to walk in the front door, and be sort of transparent and obvious about what you're trying to do, and to try to operate within the regulatory envelope of some jurisdiction, and try to get this properly vetted and allowed to occur. And that has the benefit of sort of establishing clear rules and allowing for other companies to tread similar paths. On the other hand that could slow you down. And if you have one of these competitors, that's going to run as fast as possible, you might lose to them, even though you're doing the right thing.Brett (21:46):So there's not really a right answer here. And this is sort of a tricky space for DeFi. I will say in either case, I do think it's worth it for these DeFi projects for Solana Labs, for the founders and companies involved, and this kind of entrepreneurship, people in the United States should really start going to Washington more and just explaining what this stuff is. I mean, people kind of get what Bitcoin is, but people do not understand what Solana is and why it's different. And that should change. People should understand what Solana is, what all these other layer 1s are, these layer 2s are. What these different token projects are. Why they're interesting. Why they're useful. Why they represent a departure from Web 2.0. Why that's important. Why that needs to be fostered and why that needs to be grown. I think that would be something that we could continue to work together on, as industry participants, is the education piece.Austin (22:33):So changing topics a little, we've seen FTX.US try and enter a few different, I would say different markets than are necessarily like the original core. So one of those was the NFT marketplace. I think there's been it probably mixed success in that. One of the things that I found fascinating is how different NFT culture is from crypto culture. Obviously it's a subset, but a lot of the applications and the platforms that have been very strong from a crypto trading perspective, in terms of fungible digital assets have not had much success in the non fungible space. And the non fungible marketplaces have either had no interest or no success in moving into the fungible asset space. Talk a little bit about some of the learnings that you guys had in that process and how that's informing the decisions of where FTX expands into in the future.Brett (23:25):Yeah, it's fascinating. So I personally worked on the NFT marketplace a lot for us. And when we entered this space, we thought there's not enough competition for Solana NFT marketplaces. There was really only one at the time. And we thought, this is definitely an area that's ripe for disruption. We were not wrong. But at the same time we did it, six other players did it. And they were able to move a lot faster for a number of reasons. First of all, they were able to really focus all of their energy on the user experience, which was super important. The second is that they were just sort of deeply in that culture and they were able to create, continue creating that NFT culture, in a way that like you have to spend 150% of your time on that to be able to actually really keep up with it and get what's going on.Brett (24:11):And the third was the decentralized nature of it. Whereas most of the trading in fungible assets is occurring on centralized exchanges in a custodial fashion. Just about all the NFTs are trading in a non-custodial fashion. Hook up MetaMask to OpenSea, you list your asset, you're done. And so I think we were disadvantaged by trying to, although I don't regret it at all, walk the sort of regulatory path of requiring people to custodian their NFTs with FTX in order to list them. And then we do proper KYC, and we make sure you're not like transferring an NFT from North Korea or something. So this is what we chose to do. And I think we ultimately lost out a little bit on that, but we're still very happy to have done it for a number of reasons.Brett (24:59):So first is that NFTs have been an important part of our various partnerships, like getting to do this really cool NFT drop with Coachella or for Formula 1. And having that as a platform has been very beneficial to us, even if we're not competing on Bored Ape Yacht Club. The second is that we have this longer term vision that majority of NFTs will not be in these like art or PFP collections. It will be in things like games. And to do that, you have to really build a platform and your average Tier One AAA game studio is not going to partner with a non-custodial solution. If they think it's going to hurt their regulatory standing at all. And so we're kind of building things out from the B2B platform side. With a hope that's actually going to be where this technology actually takes us. And so it's been definitely a learning experience for us and humbling in a lot of ways.Austin (25:53):So let's kind of talk about that a little bit. In a future where US regulations relax, and that there's a framework that allows for a little bit more flexibility and a little more certainty throughout it. We've seen over the last few months a rise in cross-chain DEX swaps. Whether that's enabled through something like Wormhole or whether it's these organizations that are sort of rolling a bit of their own solution. How do you see the competitive world, between what a centralized exchange offers and what a decentralized exchange, can offer evolving over time? I think in the early days of decentralized exchanges, a lot of people were like, oh, these are totally going to kill centralized exchanges. And we obviously have not seen that to be the case. But for a long time, the moat was described as being like, well, I can't swap my SOL into Eth on anything other than a centralized exchange, but we're seeing that change. So I'm sure this is a strategy that you've mapped out internally. What does that look like for you guys?Brett (26:50):I think you probably give us a little bit too much credit. I'm not sure we've like completely mapped out the strategy. I mean, between FTX, FTX.US, FTX Ventures, I think we have various either monetary or intellectual capital investments in a bunch of these spaces. Like FTX Ventures invests in a lot of DeFi and different bridging solutions. FTX itself is benefits and more people trading on our centralized exchange. And so we want to kind of to be able to benefit from the growth of both. I mean, again, we sort of see that, no matter what, FTX is going to be one of the major places to link up with traditional financial system. Like if you want to get Mexican Peso onto a blockchain, you're going to have to do this going through someone who can actually hook up to a Mexican bank.Brett (27:37):It's just going to be required.Austin (27:39):Yeah.Brett (27:39):But in terms of like you want to swap Eth for SOL then, yeah, I think there's going to be a couple different ways to do that. And I can sort of see the benefits and drawbacks of each one. One thing I think is sort of obvious, and I think people understand it but they don't talk about it enough, is the fact that DeFi still has a long way to go. Primarily because the entirety of the code is sort of laid bare for all to see at all times. Usually if you have a financial application and it has a bug, you're sort of protected by the network. And by network, I don't mean network of people who use it, I mean like the actual switches and routers that prevent certain kinds of traffic from getting in. And you have your moat around your application. And if there's a bug, you patch it and you're done.Brett (28:23):With DeFi, if there's the slightest bug, your whole smart contract gets exploited, and the funds are drained, and you're sort of back at square one. And again, I think that the discourse around Defi or CeFi as being kind of incompatible, has probably done DeFi a disservice in terms of its growth. Where probably some slight hybrid approach of building out smart contracts, iterating on them for like a long time, but doing so in a way that's sort of safe and secure, and doesn't mean that the first side of a bug means you are going to be drained, until it gets to the point where it's highly stable. And then you start to relax some of the centralized aspects. You follow the goal of making it completely decentralized, completely open, no intermediaries, and kind of get there over time. But I think the people who do that now would be criticized as being like too centralized. Everyone thinks everyone else is too centralized.Brett (29:17):So I think we have a lot that we can do together is what I'm trying to say. Whether it's us helping with KYC, or it's providing sort of the regulated entry points into DeFi. Whether it's helping create sort of these hybrid solutions between DeFi and CeFi, that will, I think, help DeFi grow over time. So we're trying to foster that innovation in a bunch of different ways.Austin (29:38):I would also say that if we are in a place where CeFi versus DeFi is a zero sum game, we've all astronomically succeeded as an industry.Brett (29:47):Right.Austin (29:48):That's still probably a five to 10 year away, before there are no new users left to onboard and instead a battle for who actually has those users' attention.Brett (29:57):Even CeFi versus CeFi is not a zero sum game.Austin (30:00):Yes.Brett (30:00):At all.Austin (30:01):That's true.Brett (30:02):There's a story that when ICE listed certain versions of energy contracts, that were being traded on the CME, the day they did that, CME volume went through the roof and the largest trading volume times per day were the times where the two overlapped with each other. And this is obviously because arbitrageurs came into the space and were interested and started trading the two off of each other. I think we cannot just have one centralized exchange. We need a bunch. And we will grow the pie together. And so, yeah, we're very, very far away from a zero sum nature of crypto, which is why I like crypto so much.Austin (30:39):So actually to that extent, I think there's a built in assumption there, which is that we need multiple centralized exchanges. And that is a, I think, a very valid assumption, but in some ways that comes from a world that predates computerized global interoperable connectivity. And that the idea that arbitrage opportunities should exist between comparable, centralized financial exchanges feels a little outdated, honestly. That the thesis of Solana as one global state machine to settle all of the world's trades and information, that's a very compelling, decentralized narrative story, but you can also see the exact same thing where you would have interoperable order books between something like FTX and Coinbase. Is that anything that, are there conversations anywhere about building some of those interconnectivities that you see in the traditional equities world still, within like centralized crypto exchanges? Because there is no NYSE for centralized crypto exchanges yet.Brett (31:42):I have actually the complete opposite take to what you're describing here, which is US equity markets have to abide by this rule called reg, or regulation, NMS, or National Market System, where you have to fill a customer quote at the best price seen on any exchange, any one of the lit exchanges, of which they're like 15 now. So that means like, let's say you want to go send an order to NASDAQ and NASDAQ thinks that they are one penny behind the price on BATS. Well then NYSE either has to reject your order or route your order to bats and get filled. There's a big problem with this. Actually, there are multiple big problems with this, in my opinion.Brett (32:24):One is that light is not infinitely fast. And so what is the kind of prevailing quote is going to depend on where you are. Because of those 15 exchanges, some of them are in Secaucus, New Jersey. Some of them are in Carteret, New Jersey. Some of them are in Mahwah, New Jersey. Some of them are in Chicago, Illinois. And so there's no one place where you can have the absolute truth of what the best quote is. And even above that, the second big problem here is you have to pay a lot of money just to get the market data required to make that determination. And then third, if you're going to do that, some HFT with slightly faster hardware and market data is going to detect that routing and probably beat you there. And they're going to profit off that opportunity.Brett (33:10):While I think that NMS was well intentioned at the time that it was created, which was somewhat before the real advent of electronic markets, now that we have electronic markets, I actually think that NMS has added a lot of complication, and fixed cost, and deadweight loss to the system of equities, and made things like very difficult to sort of spin up as a new exchange. Compared to, in crypto where there was never like an NMS routing between exchanges, but there doesn't really need to be because there's someone whose job it is to arbitrage between the exchanges and keep them in line. And they're paid naturally for the job of doing that. And so the market forces keep the exchanges in line and that works extremely well, and makes crypto very low cost and low barrier to entry for new participants.Brett (33:56):You don't have to hook up to every single exchange. You don't need to send your market data to some central thing, which has to display the quotes everywhere. And you can't accept orders, if it doesn't look like it's on the top of the book of that far away aggregator. It means that exchanges can exist sort of more globally instead of all being centralized mostly in New Jersey or something like that.Austin (34:14):Yeah.Brett (34:14):So there's been so many benefits to that. And then the other thing I want to say about this is, look, there's never going to be just one of anything. The only real way to kind of get rid of an arbitrage opportunity is to only have literally one order book. And even on Solana, you have different order books for SOL, USDC. And some of them might be kind of built off of similar primitives, but there's still going to end up being kind of arbitrage things between this swapping tool and this DEX order book and this centralized exchange, it's always going to exist.And so I think we should just thank the arbitrageurs for their service and just be happy with the fact that we can have multiple marketplaces. I think that's the ultimately right thing for competition.Austin (35:00):Do you think crypto needs market hours?Brett (35:02):No.Austin (35:03):We'll never get them, but I'm curious if you think it would help or hurt the industry?Brett (35:06):No, I don't. One thing I've kicked around in my head at some points is, something like whether one time per day, there should be an auction. Basically like a five second freeze or something, where people can submit bids and offers. And there's like a single kind of auction type clearing event that establishes an official mark for the day in that crypto. And there's a lot of different market structure theory between whether an auction type mechanism or a continuous trading mechanism is ultimately better and fair for our participants. And there's just lots of research in both directions. But that could be interesting to me to have some sort of discontinuous event, maybe once per day. It would help for things like ETFs that want to sort of mark their basket to sort of a day over day performance and they need sort of an official closing mark, and it would be nice to have sort of a single auction event for that. But I don't feel strongly about that at all. And in general, I think that 24/7 markets are the way that every other market has to go.Austin (36:05):Yeah. I agree with you on that. So I put out a call on Twitter that was like, oh, what are people most interested in learning about from FTX, apart from a rundown of all of your cats, which we don't have time for today. One of the ones is what is the process of evaluating the listing of a token looks like. Obviously replies are full of people shilling their specific coin. But there are also some real genuine questions in there about like, you see Coinbase having taken a very, very sharp turn in what the criteria they use for listing a token is over the course of the last 12 months. How do you and FTX.US think about that?Brett (36:40):So we have taken the position, as a company, that we would like to be very conservative on token listings in the US. And that is because a lot of the issues we talked about earlier in the podcast about the regulatory uncertainty around what US based crypto companies are allowed and not allowed to list. And I think there might become a point at which listing criteria becomes clearly well defined by regulators, at which point we will basically take as much risk as it allowed to us. But for now we think about what is our comparative advantage as a company? Is it to list the long tail of 500 tokens? Or is it some of these other things that we're doing that maybe some of our competitors are not going to be able to do in the short term? So the biggest one for us is listing Bitcoin and Ether futures for US customers.Brett (37:32):And we think that has such a greater potential to improve the health of the market. Give people opportunities for hedging risk, and being able to get capital efficient exposure, and to be able to trade the spot versus the future and capture the basis. This is much more important to us than listing that 200th asset on CoinMarketCap. And we're concerned that some of our actions in the latter might jeopardize our success in the former.Austin (38:00):Interesting.Brett (38:00):So we're just sort of, we have different risk profiles in the different aspects of what we want to do. And that's part of the decision there as well. We're also moving very much into some non crypto things. Like we're a student launching a stocks trading platform that's going to be vanilla US stocks through a broker dealer, all trading through like an exchange that's not ours. So we have just sort of different ways of thinking about diversifying our product set. And for now, I think as long as the regulatory environment remains this unclear, we're going to stay on the conservative side of that.Austin (38:33):One kind of last question before we wrap up here. With the amount of market volatility we have seen in the last few weeks here, the sort of precipitous drop in the first half of May, what are you excited for and hopeful for about the future of this industry in the United States?Brett (38:52):Yeah, it's natural for these times of great volatility and certain assets dropping a lot in value, for people to sort of turn inward and maybe lose sight of the broader mission. And we have to remember that we are building a generational opportunity for technology and for wealth creation. And many have already benefited from this, but we have much more to go on all the promises that we have. I mean, just think about how one of the main things people have talked about for crypto is creating this kind of global payments network for people to sort of cheaply or freely send money for remittances and things like this. I think we have yet to really fulfill that promise. So regardless of where asset prices go, we have to, as everyone says, keep building.Brett (39:39):And we're just excited for people to continue to push forward and continue to sort of responsibly innovate, and hopefully show people in the United States, especially policy makers, that even though assets can be volatile... I mean, equities have lost more money in value in the last month than crypto has, and people sort of forget that sometimes. But in spite of downward cycles in markets, there's a real intrinsic value to what we're all doing here. It's not just pure speculation. And we need to do everything we can to keep that going, and keep building, and keep investing.Austin (40:13):Well, Brett, thank you so much for joining us today on the Solana podcast.Brett (40:17):Yeah. Thanks for having me on.
Ben Sparango is the Head of Business Development at Solana Labs, a leading Layer-1 blockchain protocol, where he focuses on DeFi payments, gaming, NFTs and DAOs. Prior to Solana, Sparango was an investment analyst at Multicoin Capital, a multi-strategy crypto fund. Sparango tells his journey to crypto and Solana that includes an impactful panel at our 2016 SALT event in Las Vegas. He discusses Solana's rapid growth and the efforts involved in building such a new technology. He walks through the Solana verticals on which he's focused: DeFi, payments, gaming, NFTs and DAOs. Finally, he offers his thoughts on the current crypto cycle, institutional participation and global crypto infrastructure. —————————————————————— Watch this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/SALTTube/videos For podcast transcripts and show notes, visit https://www.salt.org/talks/about Moderated by Anthony Scaramucci. Developed, created and produced by SALT Venture Group, LLC. #SALT #SALTCrypto
Anatoly Yakovenko (Solana Labs Co-Founder) joins The Zeitgeist to discuss the current state of Solana and the ways in which the team is working to improve protocol performance. SHOW NOTES00:39 - Origin Story01:59 - How his role evolved at Solana03:42 - New initiatives at Solana04:59 - NFTs06:37 - How to improve performance12:31 - What is Solana's North Star?15:48 - Growth and Nakamoto coefficient19:47 - Developer ecosystem23:31 - Craziest idea built on Solana24:35 - Builders he admiresREFERENCESSaberMango MarketsOrcaAnchorFULL TRANSCRIPTBrian Friel (00:00):Hey everyone, and welcome to Zeitgeist, the show where we interview the founders, developers and designers who are pushing the Web 3.0 Space forward. I'm Brian Friel, Developer Relations at Phantom, and I'm super excited to have on the show today, none other than the man, the myth, the legend himself, Anatoly Yakovenko. Anatoly, how's it going?Anatoly Yakovenko (00:22):Hey, it's going well, thank you for having me.Brian Friel (00:25):Thanks for being on the show. You know, I think most folks know your story if they're very familiar with the Solana space. You are the founder of Solana. We do have some people who are listening to this show who are more familiar with the Ethereum world. Would you mind giving a quick moment to walk us through your background and how you got started with Solana?Anatoly Yakovenko (00:40):Yeah. So I'm an engineer by trade. I spent most of my career at Qualcomm, and I was there from super early days working on these like flip phones, if anybody remembers those. I was a Core Kernel engineer on Brew, which was, I think one, one of the first mobile operating systems with an App Store. Really the first, I think mobile platform where developers build anything, and this was pre-iOS, pre-Android.Anatoly Yakovenko (01:05):I was there for like almost 14 years. My last project was like building optimizations for augmented reality. And then around 2017, this big boom and crypto happened. I think the first really big Bitcoin price movements happened during that year. And it was obvious that Bitcoin was too slow for the kind of stuff that the narratives that people were talking about at the time, such as like global payments and things like that. That's what really got me interested in the space because I saw an opportunity to apply all the things that I learned at Qualcomm, from optimizations and wireless protocols and everything else to crypto.Brian Friel (01:46):So in the early days, if you take a look at the Git commit history on Solana, the protocol, you were a pretty heavy code contributor. How has your role evolved since starting the project? And what would you say is like your main focus today?Anatoly Yakovenko (02:00):Yeah, those early days were hard because I had to raise money and kind of be the CEO, which is effectively sales, but also I'm a really strong IC and losing one IC, it sucks, right for like a small startup? So I was coding and sometimes like 2:00, 3:00 in the morning, I would just be awake, still building stuff and burning the candle on both ends.Anatoly Yakovenko (02:27):As the network got stood up around like 2020, once we started growing the team, when we got a bit of traction in 2020, it's just my initial contributions were not as impactful as ... I'm now like one out of 20 contributors instead of like one out of 10. And that amount of like effort that I can put in ended up being not as important as me doing everything else that I can do as like the CEO of Labs.Brian Friel (02:53):So you guys obviously had a very explosive summer, 2021. NFT trading on Solana, I'm not sure if you would've predicted that your global state machine would be the perfect mechanism for trading JPEGs on the internet.Anatoly Yakovenko (03:06):No. Yeah, that's been wild.Brian Friel (03:10):I would say it's funny because a lot of people initially wrote off Solana because it wasn't EDM compatible. There was a myriad of reasons why it wouldn't take off. It seems like today you guys have the opposite problem where there's so much demand, everyone wants to use it.Brian Friel (03:25):I know you have a couple initiatives in the works now, some of that being quick, some stake weight, and then there's a fee prioritization mechanism coming in. How are those initiatives going generally? And do you foresee this as being a big step for the network or is this a really an iterative phase where you guys are going to continue to scale in various projects?Anatoly Yakovenko (03:43):Yeah, we designed this network. I mean, initially the slide deck literally said blockchain and NASDAQ speed and there was this big vision of something like serum running on it and being the price discovery for all of the world's stuff that needs trading. And that was like the first use case that we actually had any success with.Anatoly Yakovenko (04:01):The folks from FTX, that incubated serum, they looked at the network and they were like, "Okay, this is designed for the kind of exchange that we know how to build and trade. So why don't we see what happens?" And when NFT started taking off, it didn't make sense to me. But I could tell that a lot of people, like humans were interested in them instead of trading. A large number of people were interested in them. And that's a really important thing, like product market fit can be measured in many different ways. If you're speaking trading it could be volumes or TVL, but it's really, really important to really connect it to a person.Anatoly Yakovenko (04:39):And the more people you have in any of these effectively web based networks, people want to call it Web 3.0 or Web 2.0, or whatever, it's still the web. The more people you have using it, I think the more value you're actually creating for the world and that's really, really important. So Metaplex was incubated in Solana and it just allowed people to launch NFT projects.Anatoly Yakovenko (04:59):And we saw that at that time and now Ethereum gas fees were really so expensive that it was effectively impossible for any small artist to pony up like hundreds of thousands of dollars to go deploy like 10,000 NFT project and mint them and like have their users pay these ridiculous gas fees.Anatoly Yakovenko (05:20):So a lot of people just started messing around on Solana and they started getting traction and like making more money than normal artists creators make in a year in a single NFT mint. And that really changed like everything, for them and for us. So that's been just awesome to watch. Because NFTs have value, that has led to a different kind of traffic than we anticipated where there's now bots that spend a lot of money on egress, like a hundred gigabit worth of egress to try to snag a NFT mint.Anatoly Yakovenko (05:55):And the network can handle that most of the time. But sometimes it can't. So now we've been working on – if you've been following Solana, I'm sure you've heard like there's outages or congestion. Basically what happens is you have a known event, financial event, like an NFT mint or an IDO, but most of the time it's an NFT mint. And bots start sending so much traffic before this event to try to basically maximize their probability of them getting all the NFTs or most of them by stuffing all the leaders with packets and that prevents other packets from landing.Anatoly Yakovenko (06:31):And sometimes like the last one, it may uncover some unknown memory issue, where the memory and the validator starts growing and they start shutting down. And therefore, when more than a third of them run out of memory, you end up losing a quorum and therefore consensus halts. So it's effectively the greatest bug bounty free, like DDOS testing, not the best kind of DDOS testing that money can buy.Anatoly Yakovenko (06:58):It's really, really hard to even get a hundred gigabit worth of traffic like at Google. Your typical network that you deploy at Google for your private network inside their servers does not go to a hundred gigabit, it goes to one gigabit. So the kind of things that you see in the wild is really, really, even hard to simulate.Brian Friel (07:15):Yeah. You're testing and prod essentially.Anatoly Yakovenko (07:17):Right. And that's always the case. We have like a big testing effort and team and like a massive test net that's even bigger than the main net to try to simulate all these corner cases. Everything that you do in the lab gets really tested for real when you ship to prod.Anatoly Yakovenko (07:37):So the major change that we need to do is actually prevent them from sending that many packets. And there's a bunch of ways to do that. TCP has been the classic solution, but it has a lot of problems with latency and managing connections.Brian Friel (07:50):Right. And you guys use UDP Today.Anatoly Yakovenko (07:52):We use UDP Today, which is what traders prefer. So all the exchanges, like when you get high connectivity from CME or an ISE, you get UDP. And you can manage it for most of the time, but at some points like at a hundred gigabit, you basically have to like decide, "Okay, we're going to spend 10,000 bucks, a validator and put these appliances in there that can drop maybe close to like a terabit worth of traffic really, really quickly and filter packets. Or we build a software solution."Anatoly Yakovenko (08:24):In theory, QUIC can be as fast as UDP. In practice, that implementation and testing it, rolling it out, takes time. So over the last release, the 1.10 release, our engineers, plus the folks from like Blockdaemon [inaudible 00:08:40] one have been working on rolling out the quick implementation. And it looks like finally, like 1.10 is going to roll out to main net.Anatoly Yakovenko (08:47):I think the slow release is going to, roll out is going to start this week, but you need like, you really need three pieces. So this is kind of a complicated problem. So if you have QUIC, you can limit how many packets any IP address can send, but bots can, then we were going to get a million IPs and they'll all send a couple transactions per second each because they really want those NFTs.Brian Friel (09:08):Yeah. And then you're playing Whack Em' All with the IP addresses.Anatoly Yakovenko (09:11):Right. So the second fix, that's also 1.10, but I would say it's not as perfect as I would like it, but mostly there, is being able to limit the amount of traffic; people send an aggregate by stake weight. So if you're not staked, you get the least amount of bandwidth. But if you are staked, then you have let's say 0.5% of the stake, you're guaranteed that all the other stake are on stake notes, can't star view. So you can at least send half of a percent of bandwidth at any time. So that's the second part.Anatoly Yakovenko (09:45):And then the third part is that as information moves from, let's say, RPC nodes or other nodes, and like propagates to the leader, including like these intermediate hops, we need to make sure that it's prioritized not by first and first out, because then again, that will also lead to bots just trying to be the first packet in any given event, but by fee.Anatoly Yakovenko (10:10):Right? So this is where we need to add fee markets, which is something that will force bots to spend money instead of packets. And it's a bit more complicated to add fee markets in Solana. If you've ever programmed in Solana, you'll quickly realize that it's really different from Ethereum. And the main difference is that – you have one giant state machine like you do in Ethereum, so there's no charting on state, but each transaction has to specify what state it's going to read and what state it's going to write. Which means that you don't have this global fee for a block. You technically kind of end up having fees for state.Anatoly Yakovenko (10:45):So you have a single NFT mint with a single account, like a state account that represents that NFT market. And everybody wants to trade on it. So the fees accessing that particular state need to go up because you can only schedule so many transactions to access that thing. But that doesn't mean that the block is full. You can actually start adding more events into the block that don't touch that part of the state.Brian Friel (11:11):And you can touch other parts of the state in parallel and at a lower fee.Anatoly Yakovenko (11:15):Exactly. So it's kind of like, think of it as a bunch of buckets, and you want to fill the highest contented bucket with the highest paying transactions, but then you also want to fill the other buckets. So it's this multi-headed queue problem. There's no perfect solution for it. So it's, every solution is a heuristic. Which makes it both kind of complicated and easy, that you're never going to be perfect. So you can ship stuff. You can't ship things, but because it's heuristic, there's always like corner cases and you got to be careful about if any of them can be exploited between all of these hops.Anatoly Yakovenko (11:52):Partial solution to that is also rolling out. But I think given how complex all these three pieces are, we need like, we'll probably need the 1.11 release to stabilize everything.Brian Friel (12:02):That makes sense.Anatoly Yakovenko (12:03):I'm glad that at least like these 0.XX versions of this stuff is out and like finally is actually rolling out.Brian Friel (12:09):This kind of highlights what I always found Solana to be refreshing, especially compared to older blockchains. You know, you mentioned Bitcoin when you were first in back in the day is that, you guys have taken this very practical approach to “how do we scale?”, and have these iterative solutions. Do you have like a defining lighthouse that kind of guides this development cycle? Is it about being like the fastest and the cheapest chain or what is your priorities here?Anatoly Yakovenko (12:32):So there's this fundamental idea like that goes back to the roots, blockchain and NASDAQ speed. Imagine like all of these computers around the world, they all hold state. And that state is synchronized within a certain amount of time. And that time in theory can be as low as halfway around the world, like about 120 milliseconds.Anatoly Yakovenko (12:52):So this is the one giant piece of state that represents every price in the world. And it's a point of reference for price discovery. And in theory, even if you have something like NASDAQ or CME that trade at like sub one microsecond, because news still has to travel around the world. You have some event that happens in Singapore. It's got to go through the same fiber cables as everything else. That news wire is going to travel at the same speed as a state, as a transaction in Solana.Anatoly Yakovenko (13:21):So by the time you see it on your Bloomberg terminal and CME, you'll actually see the price reflected in both markets. And that means that like this set of nodes run by volunteers with open source software can be competitive at the most important core part of finance with like NASDAQ with CME.Anatoly Yakovenko (13:41):So that's really the goal. Can we get it to that level where it's propagating information around the world, synchronizing it at the speed of light? So that's the north star. So ...Brian Friel (13:51):And I love that. That's great.Anatoly Yakovenko (13:53):It's hard. It's a hard problem, but it's, I think there's clear reason that this thing is really useful to the world if it exists and even in the state, it exists now, it's extremely useful because I think this idea of open cheap price discovery is really important for DeFi and Web 3.0. You look at something like NFTs. I think under the hood NFTs are DeFi, you have a smart contract that decides who gets what based on royalty, secondary trading and all these other things.Anatoly Yakovenko (14:24):And it's a different business model for making money on the web. It's one that doesn't involve the Ad Exchange, a centralized Ad Exchange that Google runs. It doesn't have any intermediaries. It's between the creators and the community that they're serving. So I think it's, as early as it is, and I'm looking at these things and thinking these are like early bulletin boards, I can see that I think in 10, 15 years, the way that people make money on the web is going to be 99%, no intermediaries like through these kinds of networks and applications and almost none on through like the advertisement channels.Brian Friel (15:02):Yeah. That makes sense.Anatoly Yakovenko (15:03):That to me, I think is like huge. If this like transforms the web, that's awesome.Brian Friel (15:09):Yeah, totally. Changes human behavior, fundamentally. So you spoke a lot about the human side of these people who are using the network, but there is a human side also to the people who are running the nodes that secure this network here. And there's a common misconception out there that Solana is this big and fast chain, but there's a few nodes that's powering this network.Brian Friel (15:30):You've spoken a lot about this term, the Nakamoto Coefficient, which is essentially the number of nodes that would have to collude to make the blockchain stop working in some capacity. How has this Nakamoto Coefficient been evolving since Solana's launch? And is there anything that you guys are doing at labs that are catalyzing this kind of growth in this Nakamoto Coefficient?Anatoly Yakovenko (15:49):Yeah. We started with like the Nakamoto Coefficient around like six or seven in those early days. And now it's 24 and that may sound like a small number, but when you look at Bitcoin, it takes about six mining pools to get to 51%, an Ethereum, I think three or maybe four, something like that mining pools, ETH2 stake distribution is even worse. It's like Lido, might be Lido plus one exchange, Kraken or Binance might cross it.Anatoly Yakovenko (16:17):And it's both important and not as important as people think. So the core part of where security comes from these networks is actually in the sheer number of nodes, because fundamentally like when high level catastrophic event happens, a bunch of machines get corrupted. As long as one of them can recover the data, that data contains cryptographic signatures from everyone else in the network. They can validate that that data's correct, and the network can recover.Anatoly Yakovenko (16:47):So you only need one out of many. And this is true about every BFD system, even Bitcoin, if all the Bitcoin ledgers are destroyed, doesn't matter how much cash power was securing it, Bitcoin is gone. So what's important is the number of copies of the Bitcoin ledger, and the same thing with ETH2 – it's a bit more complicated with ETH2 because they do the sub sampling thing, but effectively you need enough of the ETH2 validators to survive. So you can recover a full copy of the state.Anatoly Yakovenko (17:17):So that number is really, really what matters. And when you talk about the state concentration, Nakamoto Coefficient, that has impact on real time censorship. So if, for example, like Kraken and Lido decided to start dropping transactions, they could right now, you know, given the state distribution on ETH2, but the community can basically fork them all out. They can effectively tell them, because you're misbehaving.Brian Friel (17:45):You're breaking the social contract.Anatoly Yakovenko (17:47):Yeah, you're breaking the social contract. You can actually be kicked out. And that's, I think, kind of that action of last resort, it's what really protects these networks. But given that you still want the Nakamoto Coefficient as large as possible, because I think, in the long term, especially for trading systems, you might not see this direct censorship. If the purpose of blockchain is to be these open marketplaces and the top three crypto exchanges can decide the order of events in the global open marketplace, there's probably perverse incentives there for them to not make this network the best marketplace in the world, because it's eating their lunch.Brian Friel (18:28):Yeah. We've reinvented payment for order flow here.Anatoly Yakovenko (18:31):Right. And that's really hard to enforce and may not even be intentional. Right? You may have somebody, some product manager at Coinbase that doesn't know what they're doing, that simply says, "Hey, I made these performance improvements to how we run nodes, and now our customers are earning more money." It may even not be like totally malicious. This is where I think that Nakamoto Coefficient actually matters in the long term.Anatoly Yakovenko (18:59):So Solana and Avalanche probably have the two highest, I forget what Avalanche is at, but basically it's much, much better than eight or three or four, whatever we see on Bitcoin and Ethereum these days.Brian Friel (19:10):So switching gears just real quick, we talked a lot about the network, but from an end user and from a validate perspective, one final piece of this is the developers who are actually building the applications. So the programs that run on this. You know, I mentioned earlier that Solana was kind of written off by a lot of people, especially in the ETH community, that there was no EDM-compatible, like native bridge over there, Chase Barker, lovingly calls, everyone who develops on Solana “Glass Eaters”. Has this kind of developer ecosystem that I view as very genuine to Solana, has this surprised you guys, do you foresee this continuing to grow separate from Ethereum? Are they going to merge, at some point remain specialized?Anatoly Yakovenko (19:48):It surprised me how quickly it happened. So me as an engineer, I don't like Solidity because it's not a well designed language. And the EVM is not a well designed virtual machine. And I have spent like a career working on virtual machines. So I get like an allergic reaction looking at its insides, and like, this is worse than like the first versions of Java, of the JVM.Brian Friel (20:14):Yeah. Hard to be inspired.Anatoly Yakovenko (20:16):So I kind of knew like when we made a bet on Rust, that was intentional and we didn't have enough funds to pursue like supporting VM, which I think we would've, if we did, and that probably saved us, because we had to pick like, what is actually core and important to Solana, and like, if we had to pick the one thing that we were building, it had to be differentiated from like, it had to actually showcase the most important thing about the network and that's performance. And you really, really can't write high performance code in Solidity or EVM.Anatoly Yakovenko (20:49):And Rust was just a, kind of a natural fit because it is a modern systems language with a lot of tools to build high performance software. So that was a bet that we made. And I knew that there's enough engineers out there that are like me that are naturally curious. They want to build a new stack. Oftentimes, like in my career, I would switch stacks every two years simply because I just got bored of the tools I was using.Anatoly Yakovenko (21:15):But I didn't realize, I didn't expect how quickly that would happen. And like how passionate people like became about it. Even though our initial version of the SDK was really, really bare bones. This is where this idea of eating glass came out of is that like, in those days you had to write everything by hand, all this deserialization calls by hand. There was like, the binary format was like unsafeCast. So you would do a cast of the data structure directly. There was no ideal and-Brian Friel (21:46):Wow. How far we've come with Armani and Anchor.Anatoly Yakovenko (21:49):Armani basically was like, "This is terrible. I'm either going to, like, I'm either going to quit or like, I need to fix it."Brian Friel (21:58):Or I'm going to put the whole ecosystem on my back, which he essentially did.Anatoly Yakovenko (22:01):Yeah. Yep. So he took on that role and I knew there was going to be one of those engineers eventually. This ... because I would've been that person, like, five years back in my career, I would've like, "F this. This is like terrible. I know how to fix it. So I'm just going to spend a week building the tools," but it was really, it would've been really, really hard for us to do it internally because it's easier to build those tools when you're building the product that's using them and not when you're like trying to supply them. I don't know if that makes sense.Brian Friel (22:33):You might be too close to it being, working on the protocol and not-Anatoly Yakovenko (22:35):Exactly.Brian Friel (22:36):... not like a consumer.Anatoly Yakovenko (22:37):So when you're like building the product, like an application, you know exactly what your needs are and you know what to prioritize and when I'm building the operating system, I'm just trying to be hypothetical. Well, the hypothetical application where the hypothetical engineer needs this and the requirements are just never right. Like it they're always wrong, basically.Anatoly Yakovenko (22:57):So, this is why I think it was really – the reason Anchor is successful is because Armani was building a product and he like, kind of knew exactly what he needed. And I think when looking at Anchor, I would've made totally different choices if I was building it. And I don't think it would've been as good in the end.Brian Friel (23:14):Oh, okay. I was going to say, has Armani heard that? But that's a nice compliment to throw in there at the end. Well, so wrapping up here a little bit, two last questions for you. One that we want to know here at Phantom is, what is the craziest idea or project that you've heard about that could be built on Solana?Anatoly Yakovenko (23:32):Serum, I mean is still definitely crazy to me, it's like a central limit order book that Jump is market making on, on a decentralized blockchain. That's pretty wild. I think there's a ton of games and payments and all this other stuff that's coming out.Anatoly Yakovenko (23:46):I think one of the wilder ones – there was the SolDate thing at one of the hackathons, which was a dating app. It didn't go anywhere. But people were like thinking outside of the box, which I thought was ...Brian Friel (24:00):Oh man.Anatoly Yakovenko (24:03):The games, I think like Aurory is like finally shipping, like workable parts of the game. I think that is really cool. And obviously like Star Atlas is such a huge ambitious project, that like, it's pretty wild to think that somebody's going to build from the ground up purely funded by NFT sales, like a AAA game, like at the level of EVE Online. So that, those are really, really ambitious.Brian Friel (24:30):And then our closing question here, who is a builder that you admire in the Solana ecosystem?Anatoly Yakovenko (24:35):So Armani obviously, but I want to like give a shout out to somebody else. I think, the Saber and the Mango guys. So Ian and Max and Daffy, I think have been just as important in like building a lot of tooling and onboarding devs, and you know, they're just awesome folks that are like constantly building things. So it's really cool to see them continuously shipping products. Even like when DeFi's up or DeFi's down, like when you look at the broader market, they're still building things and shipping things and that's kind of the most important thing.Brian Friel (25:10):Yeah. And that's Ian and Dylan from Saber, which is an automated market maker for stable pairs, and Mango Markets is a perps trading platform, a central limit order book in Solana.Anatoly Yakovenko (25:20):There's so many like the Orca team. When we first talked to them, they're like, "We want to build a really usable DEX for humans." And that was their whole vision. And you look at their daily active user numbers, it like shot up, I think more than Uniswap now.Brian Friel (25:38):Yeah. Oh, it's insane. Yeah. They're on a crazy growth trajectory now. I think that speaks to their UX. I will say just that one last note on the Saber brothers, there was a fable story of how they were sleeping in the Solana office at one point just shipping code. And I came in there and I saw for myself the mattresses in the meeting rooms there. I think we've all grown up since then.Anatoly Yakovenko (26:01):Yeah. A little bit.Brian Friel (26:01):That might be a thing of the past, but a little bit of lore for Solana development history there.Anatoly Yakovenko (26:05):Yeah.Brian Friel (26:06):That's great.Anatoly Yakovenko (26:08):When you're in that part of the office, you can still smell their spirit.Brian Friel (26:14):I love it. And it's totally, this is a really great discussion. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast. Everyone, very appreciative of what you built here at Solana.Anatoly Yakovenko (26:23):For sure.Brian Friel (26:23):So thank you for what you do.Anatoly Yakovenko (26:25):For sure. Thank you so much. Take care.
Chewing glass is what Solana developers do. Introducing the fifth episode in a new series on the Solana Podcast, Chewing Glass. Chase Barker (Developer Relations Lead at Solana Labs) talks shop with the most interesting builders in the Solana ecosystem. It's for devs, by devs.Today's guest is T.J. Littlejohn, the founder of MtnPay, which won 1st Prize in the Payments Track of the recent Riptide Hackathon. 01:30 - Origin Story and Background05:12 - MntDAO08:42 - Building with Solana12:04 - MntPay13:25 - The APIs15:43 - Winning at Riptide17:37 - From starting in Solana to winning 20:41 - Starting to build in Solana23:38 - Improving onboarding on Solana25:26 - The Developer ecosystem27:07 - Missing Tooling29:30 - Advice for newcomers DISCLAIMERThe information on this podcast is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose.The information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice.The information on this podcast is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional broker or financial advisor. Chase (00:29):Hey everybody and welcome to Chewing Glass, the show where we talk to developers building in the Solana Ecosystem. Today we have with us, TJ LittleJohn. He is the founder of mtnPay, winner of the most recent Solana Hackathon Payments Track for Riptide. TJ, how's it going, man?TJ (00:55):Dude, it's going good. We're stoked to be here. Thanks for having me on.Chase (01:00):Yeah, man. You and I basically met, I feel like a few months ago when you were building some stuff for iOS. Basically some IDL stuff with Anchor and we were talking about potentially getting you some work going on and then next thing you know, a couple of things happen and here we are. But before we dive too much into that, let's hear a little introduction. I know a lot of people probably don't know a ton about you. Where'd you start your journey and how'd you end up here, building in the Solana Ecosystem?TJ (01:31):Yeah. Wow. For sure. Abridged version. So, I'm from Florida originally born and raised. Grew up in South Florida, went to school in Tallahassee, Florida State Granoles. Originally I was a big Math guy. Always wanted to do pure Math and trying to see how I could make a career out of that. Finance was an option. And so I was exploring that and someone told me I should learn to code. So, I started learning to code, from that found Hackathons, from that found iOS development. And just down the rabbit hole there. At a hackathon, I ended up securing an internship at Apple, which turned into a job. And then I spent four years there doing research and development and experience prototyping. And then about a year ago I decided I was done with that and I wanted to be in startups. And so I left, joined a startup. Five months after that I found Solana through some friends and I just noticed the point in time we were at. And I was just stoked. And so I quit and I just immediately started building.Chase (02:36):Wow. So you don't have a CS degree, you're self-taught programmer and landed an internship at Apple dealing on the development side of things?TJ (02:44):No, I do have a CS degree.Chase (02:46):Oh, you do?TJ (02:46):So, I did both. I did Math and CS, but the CS portion to me was the less interesting one. I loved pure Math. I thought it was so cool. CS was more of the necessity one. And then I thought it was cool when I started doing it. But I think I learned a lot more through just the apps I built outside of class. So, partially self-taught. Because that was the more important part, but my education was super important too.Chase (03:13):You have a CS degree, you ended up interning for Apple. You did that for how long was it again?TJ (03:20):It was four years.Chase (03:22):Four years. And you said research, were you actually doing development while you were there?TJ (03:26):Yeah, so we did data collection for new products. So think how face ID was trained on millions of images. We built the software to facilitate those user studies that captured the data to train the models, to enable face ID. So we were brought in super early product.Chase (03:44):Oh, so I mean, I guess that's a little more interesting, like somebody who's into Math, you're dealing with lots of data and information, or opposed to just writing a high level code or something like that.TJ (03:55):Not exactly. The Math thing, it's like pure Math. I don't do with data and numbers and processing. I just think pure Math is fucking cool. And when I have an itch about something, I just want to dive. And so, that was the Math thing for me. That was just pure. I love it and I think it taught me how to understand stuff, which I think I still, every now and then, I'll see, I have the power to do that, which is really cool. The thing with Apple was that it let me just hack on shit. I had month long projects and software efforts that, because I get bored really quick, which is a blessing and a curse. Historically. Apple just let me work on a project and then a month later I was working on something else.Chase (04:41):Yeah, we've had some conversations, like you said, you get bored really quick, it comes through a little bit in your personality. You get super excited about things and bounce around and that's why I like your energy, it's super crazy and incredible. So it's nice to have people so excited about these things and especially considering the fact of some of the more recent, great things that have happened. I want to really start this whole conversation outside of your past on where it all truly, truly began, which from what I understand was really mtnDAO. That's like, lit this whole fire off. I don't know if everybody knows about it and if they do, maybe not how great of a thing that it turned out to be. Maybe about Barrett and Edgar and what they set up and how it was and then how that whole month went for you, that led to this moment.TJ (05:31):So yeah, mtnDAO, for people that don't know was a month long hacker house in Salt Lake City, Utah, where people from all over just congregated and we spent a month working on whatever it is you want to work on, in this co-working space called The Shop. And like you said, Edgar and Barrett, they're actually the ones that got me into Solana. They were the first people to introduce me and they just threw this hack house to grow the ecosystem out of the kindness of their own hearts and love for co-working and developing and hacking. And so yeah, a bunch of us came through and we just were chilling in Utah. We'd go snowboarding on the weekends. We'd throw parties on Fridays and bring in people from around the City and just strips, just get after it.And that was the best part. We'd be working from like 10:00, 11:00 AM was when I would roll in till like 1:00, 2:00 in the morning, most days. And a good crew of people were always there doing that too. Maybe if you wanted to go grab dinner, you could and people would come back. But yeah, it was just a lot of incredibly focused work and a nice little crew formed out of that. And so I've seen a lot of the same mtnDAO folks at the next hacker houses and stuff, and that's always fun. And you just become friends with these people.Chase (06:51):Yeah, it seems like there was a lot of building going on. I'm not going to lie, I saw that notion that Edgar and Barrett, or I think it might have been Edgar, correct me if I'm wrong, put together this notion. And I was like, a Dev did this? Just because it was so organized and well put together. And then, those guys pretty much put this thing, from start to finish, got this thing going.TJ (07:09):Yeah. There was a lot of people that participated in the setup of it. I know Sam had a big part, Edgar and Barrett had a big part. A lot of those core Salt Lake City people were doing this stuff. But yeah. I mean, they took out the trash. There was, under the tables the first day, taping extension cords. So they, I mean, yeah, they did the stuff.Chase (07:28):Yeah. I talked to him in Miami and he was like, yeah, I have a room and an office that's filled with about a hundred monitors. I can't remember what it is at some point, but it looked like there was tons of building going on there. Whenever I see the community, they didn't really ask for permission. And a lot of people would say, why don't you bring a hacker house to our city or this or that? And the reality is, you don't need that. You have an idea, you execute, you make it known. And people are going to come there and you're probably going to likely get some sponsors to help you put it on because this is like an incubator. And obviously mtnPay came out of this, which is incredible. Let's talk a little bit about that. I'm pretty sure, maybe I'm wrong, is that Solana Pay, was it announced before you got to mtnDAO? Or was it announced while you were there?TJ (08:13):It was actually the same day. February 1st is when I rolled through.Chase (08:19):I was on a phone call with you actually, whenever you showed up, you remember that?TJ (08:22):Really?Chase (08:23):Yeah, you were like, I just got to mtnDAO. Yeah. We were...TJ (08:27):I probably called you from the airport. Yeah. I've been like--Chase (08:29):You did.TJ (08:30):Probably over-committing myself. And I remember we were talking about doing a possible grant or something for that IDL stuff. And I was like, just trying to not lose that. Not doing my end of it. You were like, TJ, if you just write a notion page on your idea, I can move it through. And I was like, ah, I don't know. I'm building. And yeah. So we never got through there, but yeah.Chase (08:55):Well, I think it worked out pretty well. So, you got there, Solana Pay's announced, and you were just like, okay, well I'm just going to build something with this.TJ (09:04):No, not at all.Chase (09:06):Okay.TJ (09:07):There was two funny touch points with Solana Pay that got me rolling. The first one was, I hopped out of mtnDAO to go to the LA hacker house for a two day stint, because I was working with these people. And then as I was about to leave, I remember my friend Greg from Solana News was like, I missed the news cycle on Solana Pay. They must have had insider information, that was a couple of days after it was announced. And I was like, what do you mean, dude? It's been going on. He's like, what? I'm like, yeah. Are you not on Twitter? Do you not see this stuff? So, that was funny.And so, that had top of mind a little bit, but the idea for mtnPay, it was Friday night, it was the night of the first party we were having, we had parties every Friday or Saturday. And I was grabbing a Red Bull from, they had this self-service checkout kiosk, as I do. I just consume just stupid amounts of Red Bull. And I was buying another one and you pay through square, tap your phone. I don't know. I just had a random idea that it was like, yo, wouldn't it be hilarious if we rebuilt this self checkout experience and then just added the Solana Pay stuff, because we're all Solana people here for a month, this the first week and that would just be funny.And I told him, I was like, I'm just going to do it. And they're like, that's hilarious. Do it. And then so on Sunday, my boy Scott was in town and we were at the hacker house just trying to think of things to work on for Riptide. And we were skating through all these different ideas on creator tokens or I don't remember all the different things. And it was like, what if we do that Point of Sale thing? That'd be cool. And whatever, we could probably build this in a two day stint. Not a big deal and yeah, that's why we built it.Chase (11:00):Yeah, I remember starting to see a couple of days after Solana Pay launched, I started to see all these videos of people filming themselves and you guys paying with Solana Pay. I was like, this is crazy. This just came out. I can't believe, well, I could believe that you had put that together already. And then from there, Solana Pay's really gained a ton of traction, but you were really the first person to come out and be like, look, hey guys, I did it. And it's actually live in this place right now. And it's still there to this day? They keep that?TJ (11:32):Yeah. As far as I know. Our customer success could use some work. And so I haven't followed up with them in a couple weeks. But we got them set up on our new version, which was a more self-service thing. So as far as I know, it's still running there. There's even a week where it wasn't working and Barrett was texting me nonstop. Like, bro, you need to get this working again because I need this. And so, that's that classic, build something, people would be upset if it goes away. And so we did that.Chase (12:01):Yeah. So you did this in a short amount of time and since then, there was a lot left in the hackathon to go. So, since that first day or that you got that live, I guess you've been doing a ton of work up until the point where you made your final submission, tell us a little bit about mtnPay and what work was involved and what are the features and maybe what's the future of mtnPay.TJ (12:30):Yeah, for sure. So the first half the gate was just, it's an iOS Point of Sale app that enables users to use Solana Pay to pay. And then the second thing is a square integration. So, we use the square APIs to tie it into your current Point of Sale System. So the transactions show up in line. Chase bought a Red Bull here for $3 with his MasterCard and then he bought a cookie for a dollar using Solana Pay. And so that was the core thing. And we had built it specifically for The Shop. We got a bunch of inbound of like, how can I set this up? How can I do it? So we had to take a step back and use a couple weeks to make it more robust and actually usable in self-service. Which was our base for what we wanted to submit to the hackathon, was just like a usable Point of Sale by everyone, it's still in test flight.And then Solana Pay evolved to a new spec while we were there. And then immediately became gas on that. And ever since the wheels have been turning there and then that initial spec change is what led us to where we are today, which is honestly, and not a lot of people know this, but we're more of an API company now. We're more like SaaS APIs and stuff like that.Chase (13:43):I guess, doing the API side makes it a little more versatile so that anybody can use it and they don't have to use a specific device or framework or anything like that.TJ (13:55):Yeah. I think the APIs, to be honest, they came more out of this idea of defensibility, because with a lot of the attention we got, it was like, what's the opportunity here? Is there something worth building out? And in that, there's a lot of things that could make you super existential, like just square adding Solana pay themselves. And so how do we actually build a moat in this industry or something. And so we were like, this transaction request thing came up, which enables you to use APIs in Solana Pay, what if we open that up to people and then let that be our defensibility and our moat. And so we spent a lot of time thinking about what that API suite would look like and then realize that, that's the bigger opportunity from our point of view, but probably more importantly, it's what we want to build in this space.I think there's a lot of opportunities for a lot of people to participate and building out the client that people would use. There's also a lot of stuff that we weren't interested in building. Like inventory management and tax reporting and accounting. Like, nah. I want to do the Solana stuff. And the APIs is the Solana stuff. And so that's where we're at now.Chase (15:08):Now. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense. Here's the thing, you build a project and you don't want to start taking on things that you don't enjoy because then you probably stop enjoying your job. So you do what excites you and then you offload or allow connection points for other people to build that stuff who see that opportunity. But it makes a lot of sense. I've talked to people who have created businesses and then they pull in, maybe not this specifically, but like the tax stuff and all these different sort of inventory management. And then it becomes like, I don't really like this anymore. This is not what I signed up for.TJ (15:42):That's what was happening. And so it was like, really I had to focus on something specifically in there and that's, we picked the APIs and it's been cool. We've been working with different protocols to add their functionality to our APIs. And yeah, it's been fun since we started focusing there.Chase (16:04):So obviously it was the right move because you, just to circle back to this is, you won the Payments Track of the Riptide Hackathon. There was a lot of competition. There was a lot of good stuff in there. So I'm just curious, how did that feel when you saw that?TJ (16:18):I'm dumb competitive. And so it was so funny because it was like, it started off as people are, oh, you going to submit this to Riptide? And it was like, yeah, probably, but we're not really focused on that. And the closer we got to Riptide, we're like, we want to win. And then so we had been paying a lot of attention to other people that were building in this space, seeing where people's attention was. The whole time we were like, I don't know, fairly confident we would do well to some extent, but then I think it was up to, what did the judges value? You don't know. But we were super proud of what we built and we're hoping other people saw what we saw and seeing that we won the Payments Track, it was just like a pat on the back. It was like, we agree.Chase (17:07):We agree.TJ (17:09):Yeah. That's what it was. And there was some chest pounding, there was something like, yes. But I also think the part I was more stoked on was just the attention that would follow and knowing that we could leverage that to build something. Because I think the attention is just like, it's fuel. And you can't do it with only attention you have to follow it up. But we knew it would empower a lot of the things that we wanted to do.Chase (17:37):Yeah, for sure. And I think these aren't necessarily your classic typical hackathon, where you hack on some little thing for a week or a month. These sorts of events are actually catalysts to build real businesses. And this is meant to be inspirational to developers that are watching this, that may or may not have dipped their toes into Solana. Maybe they have, but they haven't gotten anywhere. These stories are super inspirational. So I want to put it in context. What is the timeframe from the day that TJ wrote his first piece or read his first Solana doc to winning Riptide Payments Track? What's that timeframe?TJ (18:13):September, August. I was reading, I was staying up late. I was still working at the startup and I was staying up till like 3:00, 4:00 in the morning, reading that classic, Paul article on doing an escrow. It was partly that it was partly that Packy podcast.Chase (18:30):Oh yeah.TJ (18:30):On Solana Summer. That was super dope. I remember I was at the gym and I was listening to him talk about the DJ Apes Mint and two weeks prior I was at Miami hack week, it was like, I remember I was chilling with Barrett, I met him for the first time, we had met through our friend Eve, shoutout Eve. And it was just me, Barrett, Edgar and Eve in this apartment and they were just talking about crypto and I knew nothing. So I wanted to fit in and I was like, oh, I bought some Ethereum lately.I thought I would impress him. And he is like, nah, and he's looking at me, he's like, fuck Ethereum. And I was like, what? And just turns around and he goes, Solana. And I was like, what is Solana? I thought it was like some shit coin. And that was just when it got on my map. And then I saw the Packy thing. I did that. And then all these NFT things were popping up and I'm like, all right, what's going on? And then Candy Machine pops up. So I'm like reading that contract and I'm reading the Levi's thing and trying to set one up for myself and it feels like explosions all around me. And I'm like, what is this world? And people are just shipping and I can't keep up. And it was like overwhelming. And then I quit.Chase (19:41):So it's been about, from zero to hero in seven months, basically. Is what I'm hearing right here. Seven or eight months.TJ (19:49):Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. I feel like I got onboarded fairly quick. I feel like I was doing stuff to me that felt like mattered, immediately. All that iOS stuff that I was doing, to me felt groundbreaking.Chase (20:04):Yeah.TJ (20:05):And I felt like a hero then, honestly. That stuff made me feel more of a hero than what I felt like with Riptide.Chase (20:11):Really?TJ (20:12):To be totally honest.Chase (20:12):So it was more so just that you win Riptide, like, wow, I got this thing, but the more part for you was the personal win of actually just starting on this new journey and figuring out how to build on Solana.TJ (20:26):Like I said, I'm dummy competitive. So winning Riptide was great. It was a good job power, but with mtnPay, I don't feel like I've done anything yet. I think there's opportunities too. And we're on a path to actually really contribute to the Solana Ecosystem. But I don't feel like I've had a major accomplishment there yet. But with the iOS stuff, I totally did. I, from native iOS code, minted an NFT through Candy Machine. I figured out how to talk to Anchor programs from native iOS code. And that to me was like, that gave me so much energy.Chase (21:05):So tell me about that. You started building on Solana, did you start messing around with Rust? Did you start messing around with Anchor? Or did you go straight to those SWIFT SDKs that existed? What was your process for getting rolling on Solana?TJ (21:18):Totally. Yeah. That's a great thing to preface here is, I've done barely any Rust. I haven't shipped a smart contract to Mainnet. Mostly client work. So there's massive opportunities in this space to really participate and have impact just doing client work. That being said, the way I really learned it was just wanting to write an iOS app that would work with Solana. And so I found a couple of open source SWIFT packages that was doing iOS transaction stuff. And so, that's how I learned what a transaction object looked like and where you serialize it and how you add accounts to that. And what's an account. And what's [inaudible 00:22:02] coding. All of that stuff I just learned because I had to, to make an iOS app that talked to Anchor. And so me and my friend, Michael, we went to college together, and so we were up till like 4:00 in the morning for weeks just printing out transaction objects in JavaScript, on the Anchor thing and figuring out how do we bridge that to iOS? And that was the coolest.Chase (22:30):And then this is exactly the point we've talked about a couple times on this show. And I say it on my Twitter all the time. You just won Riptide Payments Track and you'd never shipped a smart contract. How? Well it's because not everybody needs to be this guy who writes the smart contracts. You just need to know how to talk to them, using these different APIs, SWIFT, JavaScript. There's a C# SDK, there's a Unity One built on top of that. There's a [inaudible 00:22:57] one, they're all out there and you can learn Solana, and in a way you're comfortable, which is in your native language. And you're talking about just doing print lines and printing out and just reading, what is this object? And now I get it.TJ (23:10):Yeah. That was the process. And it was great. And I think we have a long way to go before developers can step in and build incredibly easily and efficiently, but the process is still fun. And there's a lot of toys you get to use when building this up, a lot of exposure, you feel super low level. And yet, they encourage everyone to just dig in and start building shit.Chase (23:38):In your opinion, what are some of those things that need to improve to make this easier for the new guys or the old guys? It doesn't really matter. What needs to happen? And what do we need?TJ (23:47):Error messages.Chase (23:49):Error messages.TJ (23:52):It is like, you will get like, Error A4, and there's nowhere to go. And you're digging around. I'm like, dude, you literally got to clone the repo and go line by line and figure out what's that error? What are we doing? It's fun. And from when I got into it to like what Armani's done with Anchor now and the Anchor books, that's there, the Solana Cookbook, that's all there now. So it's easier to do it now. And even when I try to do more on-chain stuff or build out stuff that I'm not comfortable with, I'm able to go reference those materials, but they weren't there in September.Chase (24:30):Yeah.TJ (24:31):And that was kind of fun though. It was like a point in time. And I was always envious of people that got to code in machine code, because they had to and what a point in time that must have been to get to be a part of that. And that's why I started building in Solana, I saw that point in time again, I thought Solana was going to pop and I was like, I'm not missing it.Chase (24:53):You were basically like, I see Solana, I see that not everything's been created and there's massive opportunities and I'm going to carve myself out a slice of that and just do it. So it's pretty crazy to be talking about this now.TJ (25:05):Yeah, it's been a journey.Chase (25:07):Yeah. And a lot of this was all Discord Support. It was a huge pain in the ass. You answer the same questions 5,000 times a day. Shoutout to the [inaudible 00:25:16] team at Solana labs that really just spent way too much time in Discord and the core engineers that shouldn't be there all.TJ (25:22):Shoutout Alan.Chase (25:23):Yeah. Alan has actually been obviously incredible.TJ (25:26):Fun story, in that with Alan, we were working on that iOS stuff till dumb hours at night, I think it might have been 2:00 in the morning. And we were having these errors we could not figure out. And so we posted in Discord and Alan answered and we're going back and forth with this guy. Didn't know him at all. This is our first thing. He's like, I'm happy to hop on a call with you to help you sort it out. And we were on that call for three hours. But that to me is such a story of people in Solana. There is so many people that just are cool with just helping you. And they're in the weeds with you and it's that developer ecosystem that attracted me and I think is going to attract so many people after me.):Which to your credit, I think you've set up a lot of it. Being the dev relations at Solana, just creating the environment for those developers to thrive and giving them the resources. I think that's where this has come from, but yeah, that was just a monster classic Solana moment for me that I wanted to highlight.Chase (26:31):Yeah, for sure. And there's a lot of people. It started with Toly and Raj and then that attitude and welcomeness humor came down to me and Armani and so many different people that feels like you can approach anybody in the ecosystem. And I agree, I think this side of tone and vibe is what will attract a lot of younger developers.TJ (26:56):Yeah.Chase (26:57):There's lots of different complaints out there. One of the biggest ones we've been hearing a lot is about tooling. If you agree with that, what web tooling or blockchain tooling are we missing right now at Solana? Do you have anything personally that you would like to see?TJ (27:12):No, I don't have the most robust engineering background. When I was at Apple, we used Apple internal tools. So that was all I really knew. And so, even now, I'll be coding on something with someone at a hackathon and they're like, wait, you're not using this plugin. You're not using the Anchor plugin for VS code. I'm like, no, what is that?Chase (27:34):Here's the old-school.TJ (27:36):Yeah. They're like, baby come here. They would set me up with some stuff. So, that's so cool. I think examples are going to be great. I think just like getting examples out there for people so that they could learn that they can do it too is going to be really cool.Chase (27:48):And self-onboard.TJ (27:48):Yeah. Self-onboarding's massive. And that's one of the ways we want to go with mtnPay, because we're just like a set of APIs. I think we can open up these APIs to iOS native developers to be able to build apps, they don't need to do the exact transaction building. We can have just a normal API that lets them build the transaction themselves. So that's one of the directions we definitely want to go into and we feel like can bring native developers to Solana, hopefully.Chase (28:16):Yeah. It's about giving the tools, the education to onboard people like mtnPay and the rest of the ecosystem who then drives in the users and then that it just spreads outwardly from there. So it's pretty incredible to watch right now, I'm not going to say, like I started last May about, next month will be my one year. And the difference in one year has made, like you said, even in September, you didn't have half the things that are available now. It's happening at the speed of light and it's, who knows? In one year from now it's going to be, again, unrecognizable. So I mean, it'll be unrecognizable in like six months, most likely or less. We'll see.TJ (28:57):Yeah. Just being along for the journey, I feel grateful.Chase (29:00):Yeah.TJ (29:01):Just what a point in time that we're in. I was talking with Edgar the other day, I was like, we got to remember, we're in the good old days right now.Chase (29:08):I guess, to round this off and you kind of already touched on this and I always do this at the end of every single episode of the show is, to just give some advice to whoever you want to give to advice to, maybe it's the new devs looking to come into blockchain that might be scared or intimidated by just the name, blockchain, scares some people.TJ (29:30):I mean, just start. Just start and just build. There's so many opportunities within yourself to push things off and it's so easy to complain or give yourself reasons to not build stuff. Even within myself every day I'd catch myself either complaining or giving excuses or whatever. But reality is, just build because when you just start building, you'll figure it out. You can ask the questions, you'll get there. And then that building really gives you momentum to keep going.Chase (30:09):Yeah man.TJ (30:10):Yeah. And it attracts people to you and then those people are going to give you energy and it just, it all cycles. But you have to be the one to start.Chase (30:21):Yeah. I mean, I don't think anybody's really given that advice and it is, like, we're all engineers, we've all just put things off. We all have 200 projects that we started one night and then never got back to. So it's really just getting started and just following through.TJ (30:35):Yeah. And don't be afraid to chase the energy. There's so many things I've tried doing in Solana that I would work on for a week and then stop. But even now I go back to them and they're just tools in the belt. And you'll be able to leverage learnings later on.Chase (30:51):Yeah. For sure. Well, TJ, congratulations for winning the Riptide Payments Track with mtnPay. Glad to get you on the show. Glad to have a conversation. Love the energy. Just keep it up, man. And thanks again for doing what you do. And thanks for being here.TJ (31:09):Yeah, no, I appreciate the opportunity. I feel there's definitely the longest we've been able to chat for how long we've known each other. It's funny. I feel like we kept missing each other in Miami. So, I'm glad we got this opportunity and hopefully I'll see you in The Bahamas.Chase (31:23):Thanks for coming on.
Kanav Kariya (President, Jump Crypto) joins the Solana Podcast to discuss his optimism for the future and the many areas in which Jump Crypto is innovating in the crypto and blockchain space. Austin Federa (Head of Communications, Solana Labs) guest hosts. 00:49 - What is Jump?03:07 - The path to operationalizing crypto06:00 - Optimism for Crypto10:49 - Discovering and Building in Crypto with Jump14:24 - Personal Journey at Jump16:43 - What's being built at Jump?17:55 - Reasons to want to build19:39 - What does Pyth offer?22:22 - Criticism about conflict of interest26:30 - How Web 3.0 facilitates resource coordination28:46 - Data contributors benefiting from onchain data31:01 - Token Plans for Pyth31:46 - Message bridging34:48 - Wormhole, stable coins and asset tokens37:36 - Time synchronization for cross-chain dApps39:14 - State storage on wormhole for dApps40:21 - Is Wormhole layer 0?41:14 - Wrapped NFTs44:13 - Jump's position towards NFTs48:36 - Exciting things in the ecosystem49:43 - Custom silicon / FPGAs53:22 - A parallel execution model? DISCLAIMERThe content herein is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose. Those who appear in the content may have a financial interest in any projects referenced, and any content herein is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice. This content is intended to be general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional advisor. Austin (00:10):Welcome to another episode of The Solana Podcast. I am Austin Federa, sitting in for Anatoly again this week. Today we've got a pretty special episode I think. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. I think it's been a long time coming with a few false starts. Today we have Kanav Kariya president of Jump Crypto, or do we just say Jump at this point?Kanav (00:32):Yeah, Jump Crypto is good.Austin (00:34):President of Jump Crypto, which maybe this time last year very few people knew existed, very few people knew what you guys were doing, what you were building, what your role in the ecosystem has been. So yeah, I guess let's just go ahead and Jump right into it. What is Jump Crypto and how did it come about?Kanav (00:51):Yeah, thanks for having me on Austin. So for context for the audience that aren't very familiar with us, Jump is historically a prop trading firm founded over 20 years ago in the pits at the CME. Today one of the largest quantitative trading firms in the world. And we started a crypto division over seven years ago. It started as an intern project at the University of Illinois, where we were running a miner in a closet and building some trading infrastructure.And today we've got over 150 people on the crypto team doing a lot of different things. So the way I like to describe our business is spitting it into three primary pillars. One is prop trading, which is exactly what we do on the other side of the house, we build trading intelligence and we scale it. The second piece is building and that's the piece that I hope we'll get to talk a lot more about on this call and it's closest to my heart and closest to the heart of the team.And that's in building pieces of infrastructure, really streets and sanitation for the space and a couple of the marquee projects that we've really focused a lot of our efforts on have been Wormhole and Pyth. And of course, along the journey, we've aligned ourselves with a lot of the major ecosystems in the place, including Solana, Terra and a whole number of others in building a lot of different things across those platforms.The third bucket is venture, I like to call ourselves accidental VCs in that we found opportunities to add value, or we had requests come in to work with partners over the last six years in various different capacities. And we found that we could be meaningful in those contexts and work with people that were solving problems for us. And that has now grown into the venture division that's deploying across the space.Austin (02:31):I want to get into a lot of the work that Jump is doing as core code contributors and supporters of projects in the ecosystem. But I kind of want to start a little bit with that journey. I would say that the transition from prop trading equities and commodities to prop trading crypto, that feels pretty organic. And there's a number of firms in the space that have also made that transition. Albeit you guys seem to have made it sooner than a lot of other firms in the industry. What was that process like of going from deciding that you wanted to add crypto to actually operationalizing that? And then we'll get into some of the journey to actually becoming builders.Kanav (03:07):The project started as an intern project at this thing called Jump Labs. There was a research lab at the University of Illinois and was meant to work on cool stuff with the university on working on fun problems. So alongside the crypto stuff we were doing when I was an intern, there was a VR project working with professors at the university to abstract away trading screens. And there was work on some interesting machine learning and networking problems.And the group has grown out of that. And of course matured out of these things, but we've definitely strongly retained that ethos. Now I want to caveat this by saying we definitely didn't have oppressions in being infrastructure builders. When we started the project in the lab that many years ago. It's been a very organic and natural process for us. And it's hard to make the instant leap from prop trading to what we're doing today, but it's easy to reason through the steps along the way.As one of the earliest large trading firms in the space, we had a lot of requests from institutional liquidity exchanges, OTC platforms, and importantly projects that were looking to solve trading and liquidity related problems. And those conversations gave way to us exploring a lot of DeFi projects and a lot of L1 platform projects that shared a lot of the problems they were thinking through on complex financial system design or programming in resource consumer environments, which are very natural and germane to a quantitative trading firm. And those conversations led to jamming about foreign ideas to implementing governance proposals, to maybe starting to write a little bit of code in them. And then all the way into committing over 50, 70 engineers that we have today in building through the space. And that process involves a few different steps. One, it involves the willingness for the institution at large to be mentally long the space. It requires a recognition and frankly a little bit of a taste of the upside.It requires flexibility, which of course, prop trading firms just generally naturally just have to have. And then everything else you can just learn along the way, right? We've done a lot of things wrong. We've stumbled over ourselves a hundred times, but you've got to keep digging shots on asymmetric upside and with all the resources that we've had at the firm I think we've been able to make some good ones.Austin (05:20):Going back to you last year, Jump Crypto had sort of a moment where it decided it wanted to make itself public. You wrote a blog post that was laying out. I wouldn't quite call it a thesis, but laying out an idea of how you view the space and the role that something like Jump could play within it. One of the things I was struck by going back and rereading this is your level of optimism in this post, right? Which is something that you don't see from many financial trading firms. You see them seeing opportunities to make lots of money. You see them making lots of money. They're very profitable endeavors, but you usually don't see optimism contained within it. Where'd that come from?Kanav (06:01):That's a pretty good question. So quant firms today are basically research and development firms, right? So the people that build trading systems, that build the intelligence behind trading systems are generally of quantitative background. They generally have PhDs in either statistics, machine learning, physics, those kinds of endeavors. And the people building the platforms are low latency high performance systems engineers that there are different optimizations across every level of the stack to build robust, scalable, fast infrastructure.The environment down to the lab five years ago was about exploring this space. It was like, what does this space mean? Right. And it wasn't about, okay, how are we going to make X billion dollars kind of getting into this endeavor? It was about exploring it. And I think it attracted that kind of people and it occurred that kind of environment.And the leadership that stays since then has kind of embodied that. And just personally I'm a raging optimist, I believe in technology, I believe in the future, I believe in building towards something bigger. And thankfully I think the firm has shared those ideas and I hope I've been able to shape a lot of the culture and behaving that passion.Austin (07:10):Where do you think that optimism in yourself comes from? There's a lot of things you could have gone into coming out of school. What about both, something, an organization like Jump, which is undoubtedly a great place to go work. But you stay there for a while now, you've worked your way up, you're now in charge of the crypto division. Where does that sense of optimism in you come from and what makes Jump the right place for that?Kanav (07:33):I feel something for Jump because they had a cool internship program and they had a lab on site and they were working on really fun problems in a well resourced environment, that just made it fun and attractive. And after I had the opportunity to intern there for eight to 10 months, I kind of got a sense for the possibilities that existed. And this is the flexibility that the whole space had. And it was like, you come in, you get to make a lot of bets, you get a lot of resources. And if you make good bets, you get more resources and then you get more resources. This is the only place I've ever worked. I think it would be rather unique to have that kind setup. And again, no, I wouldn't say it was a passion moment to come in to Jump and know that I would be able to build suites and sanitation for crypto. But I knew I would get to do a lot of really cool stuff, work on fun problems with smart people. And where does optimism come from?Austin (08:25):Yeah. I mean, you look at a space like this. It's been through boom and bust. There's tons of amazing projects being built in the space that end up going nowhere. And especially from the vantage point of a trading firm, right? One of the secret sauce of a trading firm is it can make money in an up marketing, it can make money in a down market, right. And that is the advantage of a professional trading operation versus a more passive trading operation. But again, like those are not usually characteristics that breed optimism. Those are usually characteristics that bleed margins, where you're optimizing 1%, 2%, 3% here. So you can compound that over a year and it will make a marginal difference. But again, that's not usually an optimistic space, that's a very functional space to work in.Kanav (09:10):Yeah, it is. And traditionally I don't think it lends itself to naturally just exactly this. Jump culture has kind of always been a little bit unique. So Jump also has a number of other kind of divisions that work on non-high frequency trading stuff. Historically, since about 2011 or 2012, had a VBC arm called Jump Capital that invests in growing technologies in this space. They've had some cool endeavors in the biospace working on automation there in healthcare.And so the founders have generally been optimist. They definitely believe in the future. They've been able to take shots at things that are going on. And even if it's not naturally germane to the trading business in and of itself, the culture itself lends itself to being able to do something like this, which is a really awesome combination of knowing how to monetize, but then also knowing how to build. Yeah, it's been an absolute pleasure to be able to soak in from that environment.Austin (10:04):Let's look at the building for a bit. I think it's pretty open secret at this point that Jump are core contributors to Wormhole and Pyth, you've been very heavily involved in that process. Take me back to some of the early days there where you are internal to Jump, and you're saying like, "Hey, we need to do more than just trade and invest in this space. I think we can actually build." And especially you're talking about this from the perspective of sanitation and roads and the very base level infrastructure. Crypto's been around for a long time. I think most people coming into the space in that time horizon wouldn't have necessarily looked at and said like, "Oh, there's very base level features that are missing from this ecosystem." What was that both discovery process like, and then the process of convincing everyone internally that this was worth dedicating resources to?Kanav (10:50):Yeah, the discovery process was very organic. We had a lot of inbound from people looking to solve trading and liquidity problems because a lot of people in the space, even though we were quite kind of new of our trading presence, and as one of the early trading firms that really was trying to make bigger pushes in the space. When you get to talk to awesome founders every day about all the problems that they have and get to build relationships with them, you start to uncover a lot more of the problem space that exists, start to internalize a lot of it.And once you've got the opportunity to sit in that for a little bit, and I'm sure you see this today. We are much later on than we were when we made a lot of those big switches, but there's still a lot of opportunity, right? When we were kind of ideating on the origins of Pyth, the conversation we had was, look, our whole thesis at Jump Crypto is to be as long aligned with the space as possible, right? We're trying to get the maximum exposure we can on the space that we think is going to be explosive. And we're trying to ideate this ways which we put that quote unquote trade on, right? The best way to put a long trade on in a growing space, and the best mode to value capture is value creation. There's definitely a lot of inefficiencies created by hyper growth, right? And there's room to capture those inefficiencies. But those are small in magnitude relative to the absolute value creation at play.And then there's a value creation capture correlation that you think about there. So if you think about it in that lens and you know that you want to be big contributors to the space and just aim to create a lot of value to both, then you start thinking about what the opportunities are within your realm to be able to engage in that capacity.Austin (12:27):But at some point there's a meeting, or you have a boss who you report to, and you have to go down and sit down in front of him or her and say, "Hey, I want to spend a lot of money to hire a lot of engineers to do something that's going to be totally public and totally open source at a firm that historically likes to stay out of the news."Kanav (12:46):It was a few meetings.Austin (12:46):Yeah, I'm sure.Kanav (12:46):And it's kind of baby steps along the way, or big steps along the way that compound into a complete shift and a big switch of that nature. We had this summit, we called the August summit a few years ago. And we went down to an offsite location and we talked about what being in this space means for us and how we differentiate. And I remember we showed up with these sheets that we went around and distributed to people. We were like, this is the toolkit that we have. This is the opportunity set in the space.And everyone kind of had their own, things went on, but that was one of the approaches that I've taken. And if we believe this is where the space is going, this is the opportunity set that we can tackle. And these are the levels that we have to pull, right? And then you socialize that and you try to convince them people that there is opportunity to be had here and you get buy-in to take a first little step. And once you get the buy-in to take a first little step, and you kind of really show the big medics of differentiation in a native space, you get the buying for the next step.And then suddenly it's the entire [inaudible 00:13:47]. You get the whole kitchen sink thrown behind you, and then you are kind of propelling to this part that you want to be at. And that's the whole thesis of Jump everywhere. You take bets with asymmetric upside and we throw the kitchen sink at things that are working. And a lot of the stuff that we were doing started working.Austin (14:02):How is that journey for you personally, going from an intern involved in a few projects now to the Jump Crypto teams over a hundred at this point?Kanav (14:11):Yeah. We've got over 150 now, hard to keep track.Austin (14:14):Wow. Yeah. From a leadership role, and from your own perspective, how has that transition been? What parts of it were easier for you? What parts were harder than you were anticipating? Scaling yourself is often much harder than scaling a company.Kanav (14:28):Without a doubt, yeah. I started in the team as an intern like you pointed out, working on software problems. I came back to the team a year later in a formal full-time capacity, working on quant problems, which was to do with predicting crypto markets, building alpha and kind of scaling that piece. And the early conversations with projects where we were trying to solve liquidity problems was an area that I got really, really interested in. And I just kind of went about trying to build that a little bit further.Over time that led to a transition from engineering and quantitative work to more conversational business development work, just having spent years across all those functions and natively knowing how to live them has been the biggest tool that I've been able to build in the toolbox. Now that doesn't teach you how to manage a hundred people, that doesn't teach you how to propagate culture. It doesn't teach you how to scale hiring strategy. Doesn't teach you how to value the troops when things are low.I definitely want to make a claim that there are many who are close to a finished product, rather than trying to be good at everything, good at every one thing, we always try to be excellent at a few things. And then by force just propel everything forward. I'd say some of the biggest lessons I've learned, the biggest mistakes we've made, definitely been in the shape of trying to shove square bags in a round hole. Where in a trading environment it's like the only people you have on your team are engineers and quants. They're just smart people that can solve any shape of technical problem you throw them at. When you move that towards sales and marketing and product and everything else, that all kind of falls apart.Kanav (16:05):And you need people that are able to natively live within specific sub domains across those functions. And that's something that we've been trying to scale in. I spend basically all my time hiring and trying to focus on making sure our zero to one projects have a lot of momentum. But yeah, it's been an awesome journey. And of course I have support from a company that's grown to a 1500 people as the largest quant trading firm in the world and so lots of guidance and help along the way.Austin (16:33):Let's talk a little bit about that work you guys are doing and actually building. So if I understand correctly, the two projects that you are mostly core contributors to is Pyth and Wormhole. Is there anything else that you'd put into that category of engagement?Kanav (16:46):That's the highest level of engagement for sure. We do a lot of things across the big ecosystems of course. We can talk all of what we're doing with Solana. We're always trying to get deeper. We built an NFD project on the Metaplex landscape after their investment as an intern project. That was a real fun one. We've been core contributors to some of the projects that are coming out on the data landscape today. We've worked on a lot of the mechanism design that goes on, on the other one. And there's a few other projects, but the highest levels of engagement have definitely been with Wormhole and Pyth.Austin (17:18):Looking at over that landscape, Pyth high frequency Oracle. But again, Oracles, they've existed for a long time. There's a number of name brand ones that got their start on the ecosystem in the 2017 range. Lots of people have had ideas about Oracles over the years, some of them have worked, some of them haven't. Similar to Wormhole, bridges have existed for a long time. Bridges are actually the basis of how any L2 works, right? Both of these are hardly new ideas I would say. What about looking at the landscape gave you guys the confidence to say, not only there's a need for something different, but we can help build something different and better.Kanav (17:57):Again, just like 100% organic. In that August summit, we were looking at some of the biggest things we could do. And a big problem that everyone kind of kept voicing to us is that they don't have access to equities data. They don't have access to fast data so that they don't have to have things like clawback mechanisms and all these different things that LPs don't get direct on every turn, right?The fundamental thing with financial oracles is that they're used to settle risk transfer. They're used to set a price at which two parties exchange value. And if that price is latent or slow or not accurate, one side gets left folding the bag. Now, DeFi, the way protocols are constructed, the side that gets left holding the bag is either the LP that's contributing to the protocol or the protocol stakers or a key stakeholder in building the ecosystem.And the takers are able to take all that value. If you are going to build something that's going to house all of OTC, if we're building something like synthetics for example, and your protocol stakers are taking the other side of every trade that happens on S-Oil or SSNP, you need to make sure that's the right price. Otherwise you're just going to get up the way down to zero. When we were ideating on what the biggest ways we could contribute is let's contribute our data. And the first idea was in let's start, let's go and figure out how we bring together a network of people to build an Oracle.It was how do we contribute our data, right? And we browsed through the category of solutions. We had all the conversations. We spoke to dozens of investors and builders in the space. And there wasn't an easy way to slot in high fidelity financial data, into existing Oracle solutions. And so we spoke with some of the founding partners of the Pyth program and came to consensus that there was an opportunity here. And that led to the first step and we just kept building sets.Austin (19:39):In your mind, what is it that Pyth offers that other Oracle solutions don't offer?Kanav (19:46):Pyth is a very hyper specialized tool for high fidelity financial data, specifically financial data for settlement of risk transfer, right? If you think about the way the market data landscape looks today, it's different across asset classes, but there is a class of people that have access to high fidelity, streaming price data that they can legally distribute and make available to a protocol, create like an Oracle program.One you need access to very fast financial data, which is hard to get and even harder to have a legal right to distribute. You want to make sure that the people who are publishing the prices are the real owners of the data so that you can set incentives for the data to be accurate, right? If you are staking the value of a third party aggregator, their third party aggregator has no skin in the game. That's one of the other kind of fundamental things that you have to think about.And third, you need to acknowledge the fact that a price is not absolute. A price for Bitcoin has about 20 liquid trading venues that are distributed across the globe that can often be fractured, that can often have all kinds of different idiosyncrasies. And that being able to accurately determine the price on most relevant venues and build a dispersion is really important. If you think about kind of all those things together, you want very fast access. You want a broad range of access of independent sources, not reporting from the same source.You want very high liveness and uptime of course, and you want kind of good legal clarity that that price can continue to be distributed because you don't want the application to suddenly get turned off when the regulator says, "What's going on?" And those are the kind of key things that Pyth has really focused on very heavily to build that piece of infrastructure and Solana was the perfect opportunity. Before Solana there wasn't a way to create a high fidelity fast Oracle. There just wasn't a need for it and there wasn't a platform for it, right. And so all those things just came together.Austin (21:49):One of the criticisms that you'll hear about Pyth is that because of its structured model here, where the people providing data are permissioned at this point and are also like firms that are professionalized trading operations themselves, that there is an inherent kind of conflict of interest in that system. With any system in blockchain, you have to assume everyone is trying to cheat, everyone is trying to extract the most value possible. How have you gone about setting up incentives to make sure that the users of Pyth and the contributors to Pyth are not at odds with one another?Kanav (22:27):Yeah. I think you made a totally fine point there in that we are building for byzantine systems, right? And so that's the kind of incentive design you've got to keep in place. I'll frankly say I think that claim is a little bit ludicrous for a few different reasons. Once you peel back the onion just a little bit, and I'll talk through some of the reasons why.Austin (22:43):Let's peel back the onion.Kanav (22:44):One, you've got to first understand that the amount of value that can be created in actually pulling something like Pyth off successfully is dramatic. And the forms that are building this are now incentive aligned to make that happen. But two, this is an open sourced protocol, it is decentralized, and you can look at exactly what the inputs are, how they're being aggregated and what their resort in price output is.Three most importantly, there are about 50 financial firms that are submitting independent price data to this article to construct final outputs. And these financial trading firms aren't friendly with each other. This is the very first time that a group of highly adversarial trading firms, banks, exchanges, and ODC players across the entire space have come together and said, "Let's go build a piece of infrastructure." And one, I think that needs to be celebrated a lot, it's a huge win.But two, the trading firm, there are 50 global financial trading firms contributing their proprietary prices directly to Solana on the Pyth program today. We have realized that these 50 comprise of between 60% to 80% of global asset class volumes at this point, given the network of participants that have aggregated around this protocol. When you are that big of market share that you're covering that kind of breadth, the participants in the protocol themselves are on the other side of each other's trades almost by definition. And so who's manipulating the price against who? Let's kind of just start there.The system of incentives that set up in this taking protocol, you can read through this on the Pyth white paper has some really intelligent aggregation algorithms that put all this data together, that identify the quality of each of these independent data publishers that then sets out a mechanism to aggressively punish providers that don't have good prices. And good prices can mean I published a malicious bad price. It can mean I have slow prices. It can mean I published, I had a bug, it can mean anything.The incentive design mechanism is meant to reward data providers that are not honest, but that have great data. And that's a fundamental difference in how system designs, we're not kind of rewarding agreement, we're rewarding prediction. And so you are rewarded for correctly predicting the price that would come up rather than for rewarding agreement between parties, and which can both have different kind of models and can both work in different ways.But there is almost no possibility for one collusion across these landscapes, given the composition of the people in the network. And the incentive structure again is obviously explicitly set up to discourage that. Third, all these forms are heavily, heavily regulated. I spoke about 20 years of its reputation and a giant, giant business behind kind of making a lot of this happen. And we're definitely incentive aligned to make this thing as successful as it can possibly be.Austin (25:39):The Web 2.0 world and the rise of FinTech apps has largely taught people that organizations that claim to be on their side often aren't. There's very legitimate reasons from a market making perspective that during the game stock run up and squeeze, users of Robinhood and other FinTech applications, their trading was turned off. Now, there's a bunch of really good backroom reasons for why that might have happened. But the effect is what matters to the retail trader, which is that they were using a platform that they thought gave them equal access to a market, that platform did not provide them equal and neutral access to a market.I think when people look at something like Pyth, it wouldn't be crazy to say that, well, the same incentives that made us think that Robinhood was on our side, could also be applied to Pyth. What is different about the Web 3.0 space and the construction of something like Pyth in your view that makes that not something someone should worry about.Kanav (26:37):Web 3.0 is fundamentally any means of resource coordination, and it facilitates that by, one, facilitating the export of trust. And the export of trust is actually one of the big reasons why the whole Robinhood debacle went on, right. They basically ran out of margin requirements in order to continue to clear trades on one side, since it was so directional.And there is this massive web of intermediaries that set up all throughout traditional finance for the express purpose of establishing trust as the FCM, the DCM, the clearinghouse, all the other three letter acronyms. And all of them exist to make sure that when a match occurs on any platform that actually settles into a financial trade.In crypto the match is the execution. And that's facilitated by the fact that you can export all the trust of executing a piece of code onto Solana, onto Ethereum, onto the blockchain itself. And that's unlocked this completely new means of resource coordination, which makes things like Pyth possible. It means that you can explicitly lay out a system of incentives in a closed loop fashion. And regardless of who's uploading the code, or who's proposing designs or architecting any of this, everybody is independently participating according to the incentives laid out very plainly by the program itself.And that means DRW and Jane Street don't have to trust Jump when they decide to publish prices to pay. That means they look at the program that's running on Solana that they can read. They look at Solana's trust model and decided they can or don't trust Solana as a platform. And then contribute to the platform that then self executes and lives on its own terms. And the fact that we can allow different kinds of state to compose in a trustless fashion is the entire revolution Web 3.0, that's basically what the whole space has been building for the last 10 years. And that's what makes Pyth possible, it simply was not possible before.Austin (28:32):What does something like Jump or Jane Street or anyone who's a data contributor to Pyth, what do they get out of it? What is their incentive apart from any rewards that might be generated from contributing data. How are they then going back and using this on chain data in their own operations?Kanav (28:51):There's a few elements. And so one, it is fundamentally a two sided marketplace, right? It has data publishers and it has data consumers. And the other interesting thing like Uber did for taxi cabs, where it created a marketplace where cars could now come online, created this marketplace where data that was once latent came online.Jump is publishing its own trades to the Pyth network. That is IP that it has the legal rights over, has only just been a cost center so far, and now has the opportunity to get monetized. And that's the same for all of the trading firms that sit in the network. It's a lot of people to turn cost centers into potential elements in the marketplace and that bootstraps the supply. The consumers of the data obviously are paying for this extremely created highly robust set of data inputs that then get aggregated. And that creates kind of flows in one direction. And then like your regular two sided marketplace, it accrues value, right?All the data publishers today in Pyth have some sort of stake of asset interest in the thing succeeding. And there is a set of incentives that then rewards them for the correct participation going on with fees, rewards, all those kinds of things. And all that is in gross detail laid out in the white paper and we can go over some of that. But the off chain applications and some of this stuff is also quite interesting, right?So if you look at kind of back office systems around the world at forms like Jump, you don't need microsecond level access to financial data, but you need that for your trading engines because otherwise you're playing at a disadvantage related to the field. But in order to make sure that your clearing prices have happened correctly in order to make charts in order to do something like a trading view, in order to get on the Bloomberg terminal or to be on a ticker somewhere, all these applications are now easily facilitated by subscribing to something like Pyth, that's living on an open kind of blockchain area. And so a lot of the off-chain use cases are getting more and more interesting I think over time. The fundamental value is in creating the pricing source for on chain data. And this is kind of like an awesome thing that just falls out of it.Austin (30:56):That's a really interesting way of thinking about both the incentive alignments and the rule that the data providers versus the data consumers play in the market. Are there any token plans for Pyth?Kanav (31:07):Yes, there is a token plan for Pyth. You can read all about it on the white paper, no comments on timing or anything of that at this point. And that's going to be a networking governance decision, but I'm sure in the near future.Austin (31:16):Transitioning over to Wormhole, which is the other project that Jump is heavily involved in as a core contributor of the code. When people look at wormhole, I think it's very easy to look at it and say, asset bridge, multi chain, cool, fundamentally utility. The first thing I noticed when we were talking about this and looking through it is this whole component of allowing different smart contracts on different blockchains to communicate with each other. I think most people understand how asset bridging works. Can you talk a little bit about this whole concept of message bridging?Kanav (31:51):Yeah. And this also kind of goes back to your question on, how do you decide that there's an opportunity here when bridging is something that people have talked about for a while? When we were kind of ideating with everybody else on kind the Pyth's team and the network on how Pyth goes across chain. Hendrick and team were building Wormhole as Solana Eths token bridge on the hackathon project at [inaudible 00:32:17].And I called Hendrick and I asked him, "Look, is there a way to generalize this thing so that we can get Pyth messages across?" We're building this Oracle thing on the best, fast, scalable censorship resistant message bus we can, but we want to get it to all the other ones that operate on a slightly different resolution. And through the course of that conversation, we came to a conclusion that enabling generic message bosses to allow this cross chain composability in a much more high dimensional fashion than just the token bridge word was a massive opportunity set that had to be filled.And so when we launched last August as a completely generic message bus. And what that means is that any piece of state that is created or lives on a blockchain can be included as a message that then gets communicated to any other blockchain environment. And so if you think about Oracles, you think about a governance board, right? Uniswap passes a governance board on Ethereum, produces workloads on a lot of different chains. The outcome of that governance board has to, in a secure, reliable fashion, be communicated to all the other geographies that Uniswap lives on. That needs to be encoded as a message.And so Wormhole has outpost contracts on every chain that is deployed, it is deployed over eight chains today. The outpost contract just listens for a message that is sent to that contract and the Wormhole network of guardians attests to that arbitrary binary block. That block can then be picked up, relayed to any other blockchain environment, verified that is coming attested from the homeowner network and then decode to do anything arbitrary and interesting. And so generic message process have really exploded over the last year. We've seen so many awesome applications being built on it. And I think we're just kind of scratching the surface, right? There's a lot to do here.Austin (34:04):When I think about messaging, I think about how a lot of the models right now for cross chain communication of assets are a little tedious and maybe have more risk inherent to them than are necessarily required. A very centralized example, USDC, right? You can go to FTX and you can withdraw USDC as an ERC-20, as an SPL token or across several different networks. And what's happening there largely is because the mint authority to that is centrally controlled. They're able to issue new, quote unquote new USDC natively on each layer that USDC is supported on. Do you see the capability of developers using something like Wormhole to make that possible for fully decentralized, both stable coins and just asset tokens?Not only possible, but already widely adopted in the Wormhole X asset framework, right? There's over four and a half billion of assets in the token bridge today. And the word token bridge kind of has meant a lot of different things to people at different points in time, right? The old token bridges were bidirectional, state sponsored bridges that sovereign ecosystems would run to communicate to Ethereum, to get liquidity in as soon as possible.And then if you send that across a different bridge, then you would have like a double wrapped and triple wrapped implementation and just an absolute UX nightmare. When you use something like Wormhole's X asset framework, you retain complete path independence as you move assets across the ecosystem. Once you're registered as an X asset, let's take USD as an example, there's a couple billion dollars of USD on the bridge today. It flows throughout the ecosystem using Wormhole on the back end, Terra bridge money, uses one more on the back end to expose one of many front ends to users.When USD flows from Terra over to Ethereum or to Solana to Polygon and then to Avalanche, it retains the same representation on Avalanche that USD flowing from Terra to Avalanche directly or through any other part in the ecosystem would retain. It's a truly cross chain native asset. It doesn't fracture liquidity, it fungus seamlessly, and it allows a lot of cool composition.If you look at something, now like the result in second order effects of this, it's this theme that we've been calling X Dapps, right? So cross chained apps. And we've seen kind of the first marquee deployment of one of these apps in the form of X anchor, which is deployed on the Avalanche chain now, right?And X anchor is just a light set of endpoints that's deployed on Avalanche. And all that does is it lets you kind of hit some functions that then really assets and/or messages bundled or separately or back to the Terra blockchain and then trigger state transitions on the Terra site. Anchor contracts don't need to be deployed to every chain. You don't need to replicate state everywhere, you don't need to stay synchronized continuously. But you allow for outposts and communications and different chains to then communicate back to the home chain using messages and assets. And now the USD that's in the X asset standard can be deployed to X anchors everywhere. And it's a much faster, much more robust getting strategy that has far less communication over.Austin (37:07):Let's dig into just a little bit on like a technical level too. When you're talking about X Dapps or cross chain Dapps that are communicating via Wormhole, you're inherently talking about fractured state across multiple L1s or L2, it's unavoidable when you're ... anything cross chain is inherently working under a fractured state model. How fast does that time synchronization need to be for developers to actually deploy something like an AMM or a club across chain and actually maintain price parody and appropriate liquidity between them.Kanav (37:42):Yeah, I'm glad you brought this up. There's a few different programming models for how cross chain Dapps works, right? One is you try to state synchronize as aggressively as possible. You keep sending messages back and forth. You have allowances, risk limits, tolerances that allow your apps to communicate. And the other is this X Dapps framework where state only lives on one chain and you allow people from other chains to then interact with it.Now, of course that also comes with its own downsides, right? If you look at something like a club and you're trying to trigger a cross chain swap using the club from another chain, you are inherently incurring the latency of the two blockchain transactions and the finality assumptions that you want to kind of work with that. The more stateful your application becomes, obviously the more latency and risk constraints everything through. With something like a lending protocol or like a cross chain anchor, things like that. They are less stateful than something like an order book, but order book is probably the most stateful you can get right in the spectrum of applications.And so any cross chain swap design inherently has to have some additional liquidity back then, that's like fundamental, right? You can ask people to take risk on your behalf. You can have the protocol take risk on your behalf, but that risk exists. There's a lot of ways to program around it and create better user experiences, but fundamentally that's a real problem and somebody has to be compensated with that risk.Austin (38:56):For the X Dapp framework, are you looking to actually be able to offload compute to the wormhole level there? Or is it really just ... The natural extension of this seems to be that eventually there's some sort of state storage on Wormhole that Dapps are able to actually access and leverage with some functionally side chain compute resourcing. Are you guys thinking about that as well?Kanav (39:19):Yeah. The fundamental cross chain thesis is that there are going to be independent, specialized compute environments that attack their own communities, their own audiences and their own apps. And Wormhole is away for folks to leverage state that results from these autogenous environments and compute the solutions on these environments to compose.And you can cut that in a million different ways. You can leverage Solana as a state execution machine. You can leverage Terra as your stable coin asset layer and you can represent this third thing as a NFT thing, or you can bundle them all in. But the Wormhole vision itself right now with all the genetic message capabilities that are out there, in the near term roadmap doesn't need to build an execution layer of its own. It can naturally extend to it. I think you're definitely kind of pointing to something that's relevant.But I don't know if that's the lowest hanging fruit given the capacities that exist in current blockchain compute environment. The vision of course is to make people, Web 3.0 users rather than blockchain users or L1 users. You basically want to deploy resources to the most relevant execution environment with the right community, that's creating the right apps and then expose that to at a higher order to consumers.Austin (40:24):Would you describe Wormhole as layer zero?Kanav (40:28):I'm rather old school, I think of layer zeros as networking protocols and internet backbones and things like that. I think it is maybe a useful analogy for kind of blockchain audiences given how we've very economically can't use the word L1, so I don't have an allergic reaction to it, but it's not my first word of choice.Austin (40:46):What would your first word of choice be?Kanav (40:49):Interoperability protocol. I'm not that creative.Austin (40:51):Yeah. Wormhole is also supporting wrapped NFTs, which is kind of an interesting concept. I think most people don't think of NFTs as something that's been bridged and quite frankly, the numbers on Wormhole on bridge NFTs are quite low compared to the success as an asset bridge or a messaging bridge. What was the original idea of using wrapped NFTs? And why do you think it hasn't caught on as much yet?Kanav (41:20):I think cross chain NFTs as a story are just beginning to play out. So there's about 16, 1700 on the NFT bridge itself. And again, NFTs are also cross chain fungible and composable across environments. They are also part of the X asset framework. And so X assets can mean anything. It can be in rebasing assets like STE, it can be in NFTs. It can be in fungible assets. It can mean anything else, right?The NFT story started to play out as a result of new other ones trying to access marketplaces that supported one or the other chain, right? And so you get to access as new audiences, you get to create experiences with different communities. You get to access different user bases, but we're seeing the experiences get a lot richer. So you see something like [inaudible 00:42:00] come out recently, they got featured on Bloomberg for new cross chain staking program where they have in game elements that kind of change based on cross chain NFT staking that are different experiences with different communities. And much like the asset bridge has that kind of globalization and cross pollination of commercial kind of elements. Cross chain NFTs are globalization kind of culture. And incorporating a lot of those elements across games that live on Solana, that live on Terra, that live on other environments and just creating those kind of richer experiences.And so we're seeing people make NFTs on one chain, come to Solana, fractionalize them, trade them, put them back in, move them over to OpenSea on Ethereum. There's all kind of interesting use case patterns. And so it's definitely been less aggressively adopted than the explosive token bridge or the other generic message applications. But there are still 16, 7,000 NFTs, there are a lot of teams using it for cool and innovative stuff that we just kind of keep up out of the wood works every some time.Austin (43:02):Do you think that's social? Do you think that's technological? Do you think that's just like the ecosystem hasn't matured enough? I think I'm surprised how much ... well, I guess surprises maybe the wrong term. People have a lot of emotional attachment to an NFT, in the same way they don't have an emotional attachment to a Bitcoin. They may have emotional attachment to the concept of a Bitcoin, but I would be upset if I lost my particular Degen ape, even if I got a different one for the exact same value. Do you think that factors in at all to how people view the concept of wrapping an NFT, that it somehow weakens the authenticity?Kanav (43:39):I think for a lot of purists, it does. I think it was just so worthy, right. For the most part, people aren't even going to realize, the large end of this consumers like buying these things, an NBA top shot or air, or any of these other platforms, it's something on the app for them. And eventually it's going to be extracted away as we draw to Eth, we draw to Solana, we draw to wallet, connect wallet, and it's going to be kind of as simple as that. And so we're always going to have purist stakes, but I think that's going to remain within our little chamber here.Austin (44:05):For Jump Crypto in general, how do you view NFTs? There are obviously firms now that are dabbling and market making and NFTs. Is that something that you've looked at and if not, what was the decision not to enter that space yet?Kanav (44:19):It just doesn't take a lot. We are looking at trading opportunities. You are looking about margins, you're looking about what predictive offer you can have, like what the edge you can have on a traders and then how many times you can apply that edge, right? It's just as simple as that. And even if you can get a 30% margin on something that trades a hundred million like week one, I mean, [inaudible 00:44:40] now.But if you have a low volume asset class, even if it has slightly higher edge, and it is harder to predict and more dimensional, this is on a good researching decision. So as that volume changes, we will continue to stay on top of it. And I don't know if these are trading tens of billions of dollars every day, and have really interesting datasets, I'm sure we'll be trading them.Austin (45:00):If the market hundred X in size, you wouldn't be opposed to it, it's just the sizing opportunity issue right now.Kanav (45:08):[inaudible 00:45:08] you can't be the richest man. It's about identifying if there's opportunity and executing all native there is.Austin (45:14):Looking at wormhole, one of the things I do want to touch on is the wormhole hack and exploit that happened a little while ago. It was one of the larger bridge hacks at the time. It was eclipsed a few weeks later by an even larger hack of another bridge, also targeting stolen Eth in this process. I'm sure that activities and projects that Jump has been involved in have had larger losses of money or similar volumes of money just based on the area you operate in. But this is one that inherently to the nature of Web 3.0 is very public. How is that like internally knowing that your core contributors to a project that suffered this kind of exploit, and also that failure is now a public failure, as opposed to maybe where it would've been a private failure beforeKanav (45:56):Building is hard, building in the open is even harder. And building in a decentralized open space where there's a large network of participants, consumers, affected people, the stakes we're playing in, right? That's the stakes that every DeFi application, that every L1 at every bridge and that everything in Web 3.0 that aims to do something meaningful inherently adopts and has to learn to deal with.The hack was big punch in the gut, obviously a big financial loss as well. The fundamental nature of smart contracts is that the code and code can have bugs. And this exploit was kind of deep, deep, deep down in the stack, in kind of like Solana instruction verification account check that was missing. The auditors listed our team that has independently been one of the biggest bug bounty finders in the space missed, and code based at the opportunity to be out in the wide for seven months, kind of had unchecked.The day of the hack, of course really, really rough. Jump is not used to being a public institution. So this was like you said, a very public kind of fallout in nature. I can't possibly have been prouder of the way the team reacted to this incident. We kind identified it within short course of it happening. We pulled the meeting room together, identified the bug, fixed up a batch, managed to coordinate the guardian network to bring it up, bring it down, announce our intent to refill the gaping 320 million hole within an hour of the incident being reported on, and brought the bridge back up within 18 hours to end to end.Building bridges and building cross chain is very, very hard. And that's where the reward for it, building it right, is even harder. You don't even make 320 million decisions very lightly, and this should hopefully signify you how much conviction and faith we have in the code base in bringing it back up in 18 hours. It should tell you about where we think this whole space is going and where Wormhole is going and where interoperability is going and what a core piece of infrastructure in that realm would mean.Security continues to be extremely, extremely top of mind. We have a 10 million bug bounty. We have an internal red team that's basically thinking about breaking Wormhole and our key projects every day. We have multiple audit from [inaudible 00:48:12] with lots of audits going on, pretty intense security review practices, all of which can be found publicly online. And I'm incredibly confident that Wormhole has come out more stronger from this incident. The team has come out kicking and that we're building one of the best and most trusted inter op solutions out there.Austin (48:32):Looking across the ecosystem, let's say over the next 12 to 18 months, what are you personally most excited for and what keeps you up at night? What do you still have worry around?Kanav (48:44):I'm looking forward to a whole bunch of things. So definitely very excited about all the advancements that we are seeing in the succinct proof and zero knowledge space. That stuff is just awesome, it's magic. And I'm just so excited to see all the things that's going to unlock for us. There's a lot of interesting problems in the hardware acceleration space that need to be made to make that possible. There's a lot of problems algorithmically that are kind of being uncovered there. And I think hopefully this conversation has lent on that we have a big infrastructure mindset. When I say streets and sanitation, that's kind of what we think about every day. That's what we're looking forward to. And on what we can build to and contribute to that.Austin (49:19):You said something I got to get a little more info. You said specific hardware to accelerate certain kinds of applications. The only place we've really seen this so far across the entire crypto landscape is ASICs for Bitcoin mining. You see GPU mining optimization, but again, nowadays I wouldn't necessarily even call GPU specialized hardware. It's really commodity hardware at this point that's just deployed for a specific application. When you're looking at the space, where are you seeing actually custom silicon or FPGAs becoming something that it makes sense to deploy?Kanav (49:50):Yeah, I mean, definitely for zero knowledge provers, right? So like two verification times have compressed a lot to the point where it's pretty feasible on most blockchain environments today. But proving itself is still super, super resource intensive. That's where there's a lot of simple math operations that can be encoded into Silicon and into FPGAs or ASICs to speed up the process significantly. And that's where we are seeing a lot of adopt. There's already a lot of people working on this on hardware acceleration using FPGAs, maybe even ASICs on zero knowledge provers.It's a little bit of like it's tough to say when the right time is because there's new changes like algorithmically coming out all the time with the new advances in new papers. And so when you spend a whole bunch of time just optimizing Fast Fourier transforms. And then the next paper makes Fast Fourier transforms not relevant. It's tough to make a decision on when the right time is, but I know there's a lot of work already going on into it. And it's a space that we are very familiar with and that we are also excited about. And mostly, mostly positive stuff on the regulatory side.Kanav (50:56):As of recently I think there's a lot of good faith engagement from regulators around the world on setting frameworks and policies for how kind of all this stuff gets put into place. Outside of maybe China we haven't seen anything very aggressively or handed on cutting off innovation. We even saw India now finally starting to open up. And so I feel more optimistic about the regulatory landscape than I did 12 months ago. We need a new influx of builders to keep coming and building cool experience and leveraging this technology where we're seeing that happen. We need capital being continued to commit to this space where we're seeing that happen.Austin (51:35):The inverse of that question, what are you most concerned about on a macro level for the space still?Kanav (51:39):Asset pricing is of course highly dependent on macro environment and that is unrelated to crypto, right? And there's just like, it's its own thing. And so we'll see price movements on a different time scale. And if you see a very sustained global macro depressed environment, then we're going to see less capital, less builders and less momentum in the space. And I think that's probably the biggest overhang we have today.Austin (52:03):In the long run we're all dead.Kanav (52:05):In the wrong run we're all dead. That's right, so let's keep building.Austin (52:09):Yes. One kind of last question here, I think if you rerun the clock maybe three or four years, the prevailing wisdom in this space was not that traditional financial institutions were going to expand their vision and embrace blockchain and we'd call it Web 3.0 at the end of the day. And you'd have Twitter profile pictures of NFTs, you'd have Jump Trading building software that's open source for a decentralized environment. And we really have seen that that is what was originally pitched as a forked parallel path of economic development.Austin (52:42):It's a little bit more twisty curvy than we thought it was going to be. And there's a lot more integration with traditional companies. As crypto has a thesis about it, that it's moving more consumer, right? Across the spectrum you see more normies getting into crypto in one way or another. Does the existing market of specifically the United States and Europe where you see very few competitors within an ecosystem.Austin (53:07):There's basically only two phone companies. There's basically only three cell phone companies. There's basically only four internet provider companies. Across the spectrum you see very non-competitive markets. When you look at the consumer landscape in the United States, do you imagine that we're going to see similar patterns rolling out there as we saw in the financial industry, or we really are going to go back to that idea of a parallel execution model?Kanav (53:30):Yeah. I'll strongly state that I don't hold a heretical view of this kind of being a completely forked off parallel path that has no relevance to anything that we do today. I think it's an amazing technological invasion that gives us tools to coordinate resources in an untrusted environment. And that's unlocking a lot of magic.Kanav (53:49):But that again bleeds in with the rest of the real world, which is also big and has its own dramatic pieces of innovation and with a whole bunch of other stuff going on. I think one of the most exciting things has been kind of the global equalizer that crypto can serve to be. Yesterday we saw Polygon come out with an integration with Stripe. And these are three kids from India that had no early supporting or backing that kind of boosted the network on their own and are now competing on a very, very competitive landscape with people from every single part of the world that are very well resourced, competent teams.Kanav (54:23):We see [Inaudible] coming from Korea. We see teams from Australia and New Zealand over the [inaudible 00:54:28] guys. We see people from Berlin and the US and everybody competing on the same, not only the similar consumer markets, but also on the same capital markets. And there are network effects that accrue, but not cannibalistic network effects that accrue. That makes me very excited about where the space is going overall. When we talk about integration points itself, it's going to largely depend on [inaudible 00:54:52], right? And that's like an unsatisfactory answer.Kanav (54:55):But if you're talking about financial markets, crypto is already integrated heavily into the financial markets with 15 excellent international venues that are competing, so we already have a fractured environment. That is before the [inaudible 00:55:08], the NASDAQ, the CME groups have made their moves in the space. And they're clearly not going to be monopolies in crypto, obviously, right?Kanav (55:16):If you look at something like a telco and interactions with like cell networks still remains to be seen, whether like decentralized constructions of those kinds of things can be competitive. I mean, building telcos and stuff has such strong network effects and so many economies of scale. And it's unclear whether a Web 3.0 means of accruing that value to a decentralized organization has the ability to accrue the similar kind of network effects and so remains to be seen. But I'm excited to see it play out.Austin (55:43):I always enjoy getting to pick your brain about where these technologies are going and the intersection of a very traditional financial world with this new global system that we've all been building. But thank you so much for joining us for spending some time digging into this stuff.Kanav (56:00):Thanks a lot for having me on Austin. This was super fun and as always, love chatting, so yeah, we'll see you again soon.Austin (56:04):Thanks.
In this episode, we talk to Chase Barker, Austin Federa, and Matty Taylor of Solana Labs.From Gamified incentives, to the Solana cookbook -- we talk about what's scalable, what's next in Solana, and catalysts in the crypto space.Episode timeline:[01:41] - Introduction of Chase[02:51] - Introduction of Austin[04:10] - Introduction of Matty[10:55] - Gamified incentives[25:41] - Solana cookbook[30:33] - EVM[43:43] - “Solana becomes easier”[52:17] - OutroFollow Matt, Chase and Austin on Twitter:1) Austin FederaAustin_Federa2) Matty Taylor mattytay3) Chase Barker therealchaseebFor more information on Jupiter please visit:Website : jup.ag/Podcast: podcast.jup.agTwitter : twitter.com/JupiterExchangeDiscord : discord.gg/jupDocs : docs.jup.ag/
Chewing glass is what Solana developers do. Introducing the third episode in a new series on the Solana Podcast, Chewing Glass. Chase Barker (Developer Relations Lead at Solana Labs) talks shop with the most interesting builders in the Solana ecosystem. It's for devs, by devs.Today's guest is Italo Casas, the creator of SolDev and full time anchor contributor. 01:40 - Origin Story / How he got into Solana06:03 - What he is working on now08:33 - Engineering background10:09 - How did he learn Solana to build Sol Dev?12:04 - His Experience learning Solana13:04 - Joining Solana to build Anchor / Anchor Tooling18:39 - Native Solana Programs20:11 - Thoughts on open-source21:37 - Advice to other engineers23:15 - Improving Solana DISCLAIMERThe information on this podcast is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose.The information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice.The information on this podcast is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional broker or financial advisor.
If Web2 is a freight train, Web3 is the hyperloop in terms of the pace and speed of development. Is this the future of work we should all be prepared for? As Sacca begins investing in Solana NFT's, we take you behind the scenes at Solana Labs with their Head of Design, Joshua Taylor. He describes what it's like to work on an L1 blockchain inside their Web3 incubation lab. *** This episode is brought to you by: Sendinblue: Visit https://www.sendinblue.com/rocketship/ and use promo code ROCKETSHIP for 50% off your first three months on a premium account Hawke Media: Get a free consultation on your business when you visit hawkemedia.com/podcast and use the promo code ROCKET. Vidyard: The Top Video Tool for SaaS Marketing and Sales http://vidyard.com/rocketship Canva: Go to canva.me/rocketship to get your free 45-day extended trial Carnegie Mellon MIIPS Program: Learn more about how your ideas could change the world at https://www.cmu.edu/iii/degrees/miips NetSuite: NetSuite by Oracle is a scalable solution to run all of your key back office operations. Go to netsuite.com/rocketship today. Issuu: Get 50% off a premium account at issuu.com/podcast with promo code ROCKETSHIP Justworks: Find out how Justworks can help your business by going to justworks.com Indeed: Indeed is the job site that makes hiring as easy as 1-2-3. Get started with a free $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/rocketship. BetterHelp: Unlimited Professional Counseling via Online Chat, Video or Phone Anytime, Anywhere. Get 10% off when you visit betterhelp.com/rocketship. Fundrise: Fundrise makes investing in private real estate as easy as investing in stocks, bonds, or mutual funds. Go to fundrise.com/rocketship today. *** This show is a part of the Podglomerate network, a company that produces, distributes, and monetizes podcasts. We encourage you to visit the website and sign up for our newsletter for more information about our shows, launches, and events. For more information on how The Podglomerate treats data, please see our Privacy Policy. Since you're listening to Rocketship, we'd like to suggest you also try other Podglomerate shows surrounding entrepreneurship, business, and careers like Creative Elements and Freelance to Founder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Tristan Frizza is the Co-Founder & CEO of Zeta Markets, an under-collateralized DeFi derivatives platform, powered by Solana and Serum. Matty Taylor (Head of Growth at Solana Labs) guest hosts.00:26 - Origin Story03:08 - Winning the Solana Hackathon05:59 - What is Zeta?08:49 - What's appealing about options?11:17 - Why is Zeta more successful than other options projects?16:44 - Using open-source primitives vs. building20:15 - The front-end24:22 - Mobile user experience28:49 - Rapid Fire Questions: Anonymous Crypto teams30:21 - Rapid Fire Questions: The Metaverse31:18 - Rapid Fire Questions: Insurance in DeFi34:40 - Rapid Fire Questions: Singapore36:12 - Rapid Fire Questions: Sleep38:27 - Rapid Fire Questions: Solana DISCLAIMERThe information on this podcast is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose.The information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice.The information on this podcast is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional broker or financial advisor. Matty (00:09):Hey everyone. Welcome back to the Solana Podcast. My name is Matty. I'm the head of growth at Solana Labs. I'll be guest hosting today and we have a special guest Tristan from Zeta. So welcome.Tristan (00:20):Thanks for having me on Matty.Matty (00:22):It would be great to know just a little bit about yourself and maybe how you started your crypto journey.Tristan (00:27):Yeah, absolutely. I can give you the long and the short of it. So I think I started getting into crypto back in the day, probably in 2017 when I think a lot of people got into it during the last ball run. And that was mostly just speculate on coins, looking what was going on in the ecosystem. DeFi didn't really exist yet at that point. And I feel like a lot of people were still grasping at what is the real use case of crypto at the moment, other than this buying these coins and seeing the moon. Didn't feel like there was a real kind of engineering need for it or some kind of real product market fit. And so that's kind of why I tape it off a little bit after a year in that space, just kind of checking the things out.I went back finished my degree, actually ended up doing a bunch of courses in distributed systems and computing, because I started getting interested in the whole blockchain side of things from the engineering standpoint, it was like creating your own coding up your own proof of work blockchain, which I thought was really cool and just understanding the fundamentals of Bitcoin. And then I think over the years I took a bit of a breather on it. I unfortunately missed DeFi summer, which I was pretty firm about. And then coming back to it, I'd been hearing so much about smart contract programming, what you can build in this kind of new DeFi Boom and what was going on there. And so, I came back into the space after having worked for roughly like two years as a data scientist, kind of in the Bay Area.I think I was a little bit tired of the remote work kind of grind there, even though I enjoyed my job. And so I decided, hey, in my free time over Christmas, I'm just going to go and learn how to program on solidity. And so I made a few kind of smart contracts learned what was up there. Randomly was just putting together a DeFi idea, looped in some of my best friends from kind of more of a trading and finance background, we decided to put our brains together and just be like, "Hey, what can we build in this space?"And then yeah, after throwing around enough ideas, I think we ended up settling on something that was really cool. We thought the derivative space was somewhat untapped, especially options seemed like such a huge market, but no one's really done it. And randomly, we reached out to Dom, fellow Australian, and then we basically, he put us in touch with Tolley and Bartos, and after talking to them a bunch and reading the whitepaper many times, I got really sold on Solana and I've just been developing on it since.Matty (02:40):Nice. And if I remember correctly, you guys were the winners of the Solana Season Hackathon, which was extremely competitive. I think there were like 13,000 plus participants, which I believe is the largest hackathon, not only in crypto, but ever in the technology space. So it would be great to just hear like how you guys worked through that whole event and what you guys came up with coming out of it.Tristan (03:10):Yeah, absolutely. So that was definitely a tough experience and an interesting challenge as you mentioned. Yeah. 13,000 people to compete against. And that was really when we were finding our feet in the crypto space, not having as much of a network or I guess like a reputation being new builders in the space and I won't go too much into it, but we went through a team split and stuff during that kind of time. So it was a really tumultuous period. And so, we just thought, "Hey, we got to give this hackathon 110% and do what we do best. Like we're all engineers and X traders. So we got to build man, because that's what we're really good at. And that's how we can prove ourselves. So we went into that.I pretty much quit my job, I would say two days before the hackathon started to give it 110% as did like a couple of the other guys, and then we just went in there pretty much worked out of the same apartment for three weeks, I would say, putting in 16 hours a day. So we must have worked over a hundred hours a week, just ridiculous hours. It was pretty much like wake up, code, go to bed. Which got pretty tiring by the end, I was pretty exhausted, but we pumped out a lot of work and we built out this very early stage binary options, MVP platform of which is very far cry from what we have now. But, it was amazing to smash that out in three weeks, learn Anchor from fundamentals, still in the process of learning Rust at that time.And then whipping together a front end, we ended up getting the product out, which was fine and it was a little hacky, but it worked. And then we ran into so many infrastructure problems. We didn't fully understand or appreciate the difficulty of RPC Nodes and trying to service all those requests. So our front end got rate limited crazy. So to actually get it out there on Devnet that people could use it, we were like, we have this funny photo where it's six laptops side by side, all hotspoting off different Wi-Fi hotspots, just so we get different IPs so we don't get rate limited on all of them. And then we were all doing what's called cranking, to process orders on the back end, all through these mini distributed cluster of computers in the same room. That was an awesome experience. And yeah, it brought the team together, we pretty much got a lot of our friends to come in who were our colleagues and then we hide them off the bat. And then we grew the team pretty quickly to seven or eight people straight off the bat to hackathon.Matty (05:28):Wow. That's insane. I didn't know that story about running your own cluster of computers to not get rate limited. That's amazing. And so I think you mentioned your initial idea in the hackathon and what you worked on initially was binary options, but that's not exactly what's in the product suite today For Zeta Protocol. So maybe just walk us through one, why didn't you pursue that idea and two, what is Zeta today? What is the actual product?Tristan (06:01):Yeah, absolutely great question. So I think with binary options, that was never really the plan for us. We didn't want to box ourselves into that very niche vertical. I think they have a bit of a bad rep in traditional markets. They're kind of banned in a lot of countries because I think they are a little bit of a degenerate product to be honest. It's kind of glorified betting. And so we wanted to move away from that. We want options that people can actually trade properly in a sophisticated manner in financial markets and Hedge Exposure and do all these things that you currently can't really do in crypto markets. People tend to just go bulls long right now, a 100x leverage and either get liquidated or they become a millionaire. So we're like, there's probably some in between where people can be a bit smarter and this is pretty much what all the pros use on Wall Street and all these other places pro traders are trading options and other derivatives.So we're like, this is a great element to have in your toolbox. So we straight away from, I think binary options, even though the reason we did it was because the math is a ton easier and it was easy to implement. So we got that out there. It proved that we could build something like this. And then we backed away from that. We went for Vanilla options, which we think are far more interesting. There's far more market demand. It's like a multi-trillion dollar industry in traditional markets. People use it all the time, super popular. You even see people getting into it from more user friendly apps like Robinhood in the US, has just blown up in popularity. So we're like this clear market fit. And then now we're trying to, I think historically we've been seen as just purely an options platform, which we were for a period of a couple of months, but now we're really broadening our focus to all derivatives, which is really exciting. Having everything cross margin and viewed under the one umbrella platform, I think is really cool and always building into creation. So what we have right now is futures and options. So we are the first one to offer dated futures on DeFi, I'm pretty sure. Even across Ethereum, I don't think anyone offers it, which is pretty interesting. Everyone seems to go fully PERPs, but we do futures, we do options, which is nice because you can kind of hedge out using the futures for your options. And then we're going to be looking to list stuff perpetual swaps as well. Probably broaden it into a bunch of other categories for derivatives based on demand and what's feasible to build on chain. But really we think the options are pretty limited and trying to build out a whole suite of trading products that people can get dug into.Matty (08:21):That a great overview. I guess kind of double clicking on one of the things you said, which is options are really popular product in institutional, traditional finance. And even now thanks to Robinhood of making it a great user interface for retail to even participate in options. Why exactly is that the case? What is so appealing about options that it applies to both audiences?Tristan (08:50):I think for more casual users, I think the payoff structure is just very appealing. I can't demonstrate it here on the podcast, but essentially you have unlimited upside. So as if you were to get a PERP or hold spot, if Solana rips to a thousand dollars, you're exposed to that whole upside, which is really nice to see. But the cool thing is your downside is essentially capped. So if Solana tanks, you only ever lose what you put up for the premium, which may be a hundred dollars or something or other. So it's almost like you're buying this insurance. You've got unlimited upside, limited downside, which is in stark contrast to say, you buy a PERP and Solana tanks a lot. And then suddenly you've lost a ton of money, you get liquidated, which is pretty tough.So I think that's pretty cool. It's also options are inherently cheaper than spot as with like most derivatives. That's why they're more efficient. That's why people trade PERPs because it's easy leverage, I guess, with options they're inherently kind of under collateralized, you're only paying a fraction of what you would for the actual Solana coin is a spot asset. So that's pretty nice. And then I think from the institution side, and hopefully you're going to start seeing this more from the DeFi user side as well. I think it's a really good tool for hedging risk and this is their primary use case I would say in traditional markets. And you can almost think of it like you're buying fixed insurance on your portfolio. So what you'll do is say, I have a net long huge position on Solana or some other coin, and I want to protected on the downside.I'm just paying a small amount of money essentially to buy put say, and so if the market does tank, I've got this nice thing that's protecting my downside. I think those are all really appealing things. And you can start to pair up a lot of these different options so you can buy calls and puts, and then you can build these very interesting payoff structures. Things like straddles, which are kind of this V-shaped payoff where I'm basically market neutral. I'm Delta neutral. I don't have an opinion on where the market's going to rip up or rip down, but I just know it's going to go a long way in one direction. So you essentially start speculating on purely volatility, which is an interesting new trading paradigm that I don't think a lot of people do. So you might be unsure, I don't know where the market's going to move, but I know it's going to move a ton and you can start placing bets on that, which is really exciting.Matty (11:04):Yeah. That's really interesting. I mean, Zeta is not the first project to try to tackle options and bring it to a bigger audience in DeFi. Why do you think previous attempts that this haven't been quite a successful?Tristan (11:18):Yeah. Awesome question. And this is really what spurred us to start in the first place. We were looking into this early 2021, we spent a good month or two, just not even coding that much, but just surveying the landscape, seeing what was out there and where we would necessarily fit in. And so I think at that time, pretty much nothing existed on Solana. There was what? Serum, Bonfida, Raydium had only just launched. It was very early days, but obviously most of the competitors, or people in that landscape were on the eat side. And so I won't name any platforms, but there were a couple out there. They're mostly these one sided AMM pools, which basically all they do is sell options. And so that's not really satisfactory. You're not doing the buying and selling. You're forced into one.And whenever you are placing your capital into this AMM pool, you're a forced seller all the time. So basically you have no choice whether you want to sell the option and you always get done at really poor prices. It also requires people to have pretty good pricing to make sure they get a good deal for their LPs. But from what we saw with some of those platforms, they've priced them really poorly. You have this parameter called implied volatility that you will have an opinion on or put into your pricing model. And I remember the founder of this one protocol was updating it once a week. Whereas, crypto's very volatile, change is intraday. So, if you looked at the gene analytics dashboard, a lot of the LPs were just down 20% to date, which was like, why would I put my money in this pool? It's just losing me money consistently.Matty (12:46):Yeah.Tristan (12:47):And then there were other nice ones that were more like orderbook based, which I think were cool. But the only problem was Ethereum, gas fees were crippling, you try and put on a call spread, it'd be like $200 in fees. And I'm like, that just wipes out all my PNL. I've got to be a whale that's putting on this massive trade. Otherwise, any kind of smaller fry, just going to get completely priced out of the market. And their liquidity was just nonexistent. They've got one strike on their orderbook that had two trades on or something like that. Everything else was just blank. So I was like, there's no way that I'm going to trade on this willingly versus like Deribit or some other kind of options exchange out there.And so I guess the way in which we're different, we're obviously built on Solana, so you get the really nice performance aspects of the network. A big sell for us was being able to use Serum. So the decentralized orderbook infrastructure, which is a feed of engineering there and powers pretty much all our markets, which is pretty incredible. And something that we've tried to do, I guess the four main points we've tried to hit capital efficiency is super important. So we want people to be able to put on positions without having to go over collateralized or fully collateralized and put up a ton of capital, which makes it really inefficient to trade. It means like, hey, I can't open a lot of positions. Suddenly, I've tied up all my money in this one position. And so this is really bad for individual users and especially market makers. Market makers need to put on 50 different positions across all different markets.So that makes it really tough for them, makes it really inefficient to trade. And if you don't have market makers who can trade efficiently, you're just going to have not very liquid markets. So, that brings me into the second point. We want to aim for liquidity, obviously trying to onboard these market makers. We have two dedicated market makers, which is really cool. They're providing liquidity 24/7 and kind of quoting our markets, which is really exciting. The third point is user friendliness. I think options scare a lot of people and derivatives in general, can be scary, because they're a little bit more complicated. But they're nothing to be scared about. And we're trying to bring down that barrier entry, we've seen what other platforms like Robinhood have done in terms of making it a lot more user friendly, building stuff like a mobile app and having more explainers in product.So we've taken some notes from that. We've tried to build a really intuitive trading interface first and foremost. So people can go in there and it somewhat makes sense on how to trade. And it's not this really opaque, confusing Excel spreadsheet looking interface, like you get on some other platforms. And we just really want to lower the barrier to options and make sure that everyone's able to access them and try and use them. And then the last bit is I think safety is really important because they are a volatile product and like options, prices can change quite a lot because they're kind of non-linear in nature. We want to make sure that users are protected. They're kind of managing risks, so we've got like a lot of safe margin parameters at the moment. So people can't get too over levered and then it's getting liquidated really easily.And we also have this internal risk engine. We have what's called a Mark Price or our internal fair for what we think these options are worth these updates pretty much every block. So half a second, essentially it's based on the fifth Oracle, we update it really quickly. It's kind of calibrated to trades and other things that happen on the platform. So it's meant to be really reactive and we basically built this because we don't want prices to drift off what they actually should be. And then people just get randomly liquidated for no reason when they shouldn't be. So far it's been going pretty well. We've had barely any liquidations. I think people have been pretty happy, but always improvements to be made.Matty (16:05):Very Cool. One of the things you touched on was how you're starting with Vanilla options and you're interested in more perpetuals and maybe other derivatives and creating this suite of a variety of products that folks can use and you need cross margining across all of them. How do you decide from a product standpoint, when to use other open source primitives, maybe you can use Marginfi for cross margining or another protocol DeFi primitive for futures, contracts. How do you decide what you guys build versus plugging into this open source composable ecosystem that already exists on Solana?Tristan (16:47):Yeah. This is a really good question and saying we've been grappling with for many months. I think it does come with a set of trade offs and we do have to put our heads down and think about it quite a lot. I think in the early days we were really looking to integrate with one of these linear trading platforms. So anything that's like PERPs or spot or futures. So, obviously talking to teams like Mango and a bunch of others out there on integrating because we're like, "Hey, we need these futures," and we didn't necessarily want to build them ourselves. Because it was extra time. The one thing that's slightly tricky with early composability is so many of these platforms and protocols were changing every week. So it was like trying to hit a moving target.Their code base is changing how they're doing stuff and we're like, we're also changing and trying to be agile. So in the early days that was a little bit tricky to kind of integrate Mango margins, their stuff's a little bit differently to how we do it. So it's really hard to consolidate and do a cross margin across two things. I know Marginfi's trying to tackle this now, which is why we're trying to work really hard with them and trying to integrate because I think it's such a cool product. But yeah, for example, with those futures we realized there's a clever trick where essentially if you treat a zero strike call, it's more or less a future. And so that was something that we could just pretty much chuck straight into our framework and pretty much pop out futures within a day's worth of work, which is pretty cool.But now in the future we're really focusing on composability that's a massive thing for us. So working with say, some of the borrower lend platforms, I think they've got nice functionality and it allows us to do a multi collateral, because currently we just do cash margin for stuff, if we want people to margin with SOL, they can kind of borrow cash on their sole or something rather. And then yet now there's this whole ecosystem of derivatives apps that they are building on top of futures and options. And so we're really trying to service them. So you've seen these DeFi options vaults really blow up in probably the last month or two. There's this whole popping ecosystem of these now whereas, if you were to look at this, maybe like three, four, five months ago, there was pretty barren. No one was there.Everyone was telling us like, hey options have no product market fit, no one cares about it. And now you've got Katana, you've got Friction, you've got like tap a bunch of others. You would've seen the news. We just brought over Ribbon Finance from Ethereum and we helped them launch on Solana, which to my knowledge is the biggest EVM kind of project to move over to Solana properly, which is pretty exciting. So yeah, we're just trying to service this ecosystem and really composed with all the projects that are trying to build up on us. And you've got like five hackathons happening now almost concurrently. You've got like serum convergence, a bunch of cool stuff came out of there. That looks really exciting. You've got this Solana global hackathon, which is coming up shortly and a bunch of others. So very exciting times.Matty (19:33):Yeah. A related question and you answered some of it, but Zeta, it seems like at its core, it is a protocol and you want external developers to be integrating with your protocol so that they can build things like structured product, things like Ribbon or Friction or Katana. But at the same time, you do have a really nice front end that you guys have obviously spent a good amount of time on, how do you view that piece of it where you are a developer platform in a sense, because you're composable with all these other systems that could plug in and provide value to the underlying protocol. But at the other end, how much work do you put into your front end to make it a trading destination for end users?Tristan (20:18):I think we started very much from the singular mindset of let's build this really amazing exchange ourselves and then have realized that, hey, we only have so many hours in a day and this is quite a grand vision. And you really get this exponential payoff or this nonlinear scaling when you start integrating developers from the community, people start building on top of you and you start growing a bit of an ecosystem. I think Serum's like a really great example of that. Obviously they've got this great orderbook, but now it's used by 50 plus projects. It really scales pretty amazingly. And it's like this core primitive in the ecosystem. And so we want to offer that because we've spent like six months trying to engineer this really complex and sophisticated options and future's protocol. We don't want people to necessarily go through the pain of figuring out how to do under collateralized trading and margining and settlement of options and all the pain points that we've had there.And so we want people to leverage that, build cool things. But at the same time we needed like a front end. We want people to be able to trade. I'm not expecting people to whip up type script or get a CLI going and start placing trades programmatically. That's not going to really appeal to the majority of users so it was us coming up with a really sleek web app. We also built not a mobile app, but you can access it through a mobile browser and we're going to integrate that obviously with Phantom mobile, which I think will make for a really nice experience. But yeah, other than that, we've been focusing hugely on DevTooling. That was kind of a pivot in our focus from, we've built this exchange and it works really well internally.And then I think I pushed pretty hard from our side to focus on composability and how we integrate with a lot of other projects. And so that was releasing a typescript SDK, which basically all the market makers and programmatic traders use. It just makes their life a lot easier. And a lot of people don't necessarily want to click trade through our platform. So if you're running a market, making bot, doing all those kind of essential functions, then that's really convenient for you. And then something else I wrote, which is our kind of like Rust cross program in vacation library. This is basically what the vault projects and all these other guys have been bugging us for months for. And I kept basically pushing back on guys like Katana and just being like, "It's coming, we're focusing on the platform. We're trying to get that out then I'll kind of service you guys once it's ready."And so ended up kind of doing it in parallel. I'm like these guys are pretty important to our strategy, we really should be supporting them. So ended up just writing out that client. I even built a bit of a sample vault implementation just to make it as frictionless to move over as possible. And they've kind of taken that and run with it. And the feedback that we've gotten is everyone's like the developer documentation is really good. It's easy to use. They don't even need to ask questions. So it scales well for us where I don't need to get on a call for two hours and walk them through how our stuff works. They just read the docs, fork it over, start running it, make their own changes. And they've got a product working within like an hour, which is pretty amazing.Matty (23:10):That's awesome. One thing you also mentioned was mobile, which is interesting. I mean, yeah, for those who don't know, Phantom, the browser extension wallet has released an iOS app recently and getting a ton of downloads and it's getting the ecosystem thinking how do we optimize for mobile? Obviously part of the promise of DeFi, is that there's billions of people around the world, they have smartphones, they maybe don't have access to first world financial infrastructure. And so if they have a smartphone and they have a Phantom wallet and they can get some funds into the wallet, you get access to this next generation financial system. But on the other hand, and maybe that works well with simple things like I want to get a loan or I want to make a trade or invest in a stock.Matty (23:56):But when you're talking about using pretty advanced derivatives, whether it's futures or options, screen space matters. You just envision the Wall Street trader with 17 screens loaded up. How do you think about that? Are people, do you think going to be trading perpetuals and stuff from their mobile phones in Indonesia? Or how do you see that of playing out?Tristan (24:25):Yeah, definitely see it happening. To be honest, I think I went through a period where I used to pretty much exclusively use binance and FTX from my desktop computer. And then it got to a point where I just got too lazy and it was so convenient on my phone. If I just hear like, this coin is probably a good buy now, I'll just kind of check it on my app and go and place an order. And it's super frictionless. It's super easy to do and very convenient. So I really like that. And I think what spurred us was kind of a twofold thing. One is seeing what our audience was and what people wanted. And obviously it's a global audience.If you're looking at the whole span of things, a lot of people do use mobiles actually, which kind of shocked me because I came into this being I've never used a DeFi app on mobile and I don't think I ever will. And then I looked at what our discord statistics were. We put out actually like a survey or two, how PM guy wanted to do a survey and figure out a little bit what our user base was. Turned out like this huge proportion of people, I forget the exact percentage, but were accessing and using primarily from mobile.Matty (25:31):Interesting.Tristan (25:31):And I think that tends to be probably more of a third world geography type thing. People tend to be very big on the mobile phone stuff. We were like, "Hey, we can't ignore this customer segment. There's clearly like a fair bit of demand there. And this is something that we should probably cater to." And it was really good from the design side. So this second part was we obviously want to simplify, but still have functional options. We don't want to simplify to a case where it's like click one button and it does stuff for you. It's like, we just want to make it intuitive and easy to use without making it unnecessarily complicated.So we're like, "Let's hide stuff like Greek exposures and all this stuff in options. That's like probably for the pros and it's probably overkill." And so we're like let's design for mobile first, which is actually feedback from Josh Taylor, from the Solana team. The designer there gave us a bunch of good feedback of design for mobile first it'll force you to be really efficient and think about screen real estate and then go back to the web one after that and then you'll probably have a much simpler or more compact information dense kind of screen there.So that worked really well for us. We kind of rolled with that, we had these two apps. We actually kind of split it up. We didn't want to have necessarily the same exact experience for both web and mobile, which we had initially. And I think our binary options won. It was just like a clone of both, but we realized, hey, we're going to have different audiences catering to both. Probably the more pro traders are going to get on the web app so we're going to have essentially the options, kind of the layout of all the options. You've got a lot more kind of parameters and knobs to look at. You can look at like open interest and probably we'll add in like Delta and all these other things that I think the pro traders really appreciate.But when we're looking at the mobile app, we gave the normal interface and we put in other stuff, which is useful from the price. And you can kind of get these little metrics, like what's the probability of the option finishing and the money. And I feel like that's a lot more tangible than I just look at an option and it's priced at $2 or 70. And I'm like, what the hell does that mean? Whereas if I'm like, "Hey, this has a 20% chance of finishing in the money," then that makes a lot more sense to regular users. And we changed the flow a little bit as well, where it's like, if people aren't really comfortable placing options, we made a very simplified flow, which is like, I think the price is going up or the price is going down, which kind of caters to the people who are only familiar with these up-down perpetual products.And that basically auto fills out your kind of, I'm buying a call or I'm buying a put with some nearest to expiry, some other parameters. So it kind of takes some of the decision load off people. Because otherwise people come in there, they're like, "I want to buy an option. I don't really know what I'm doing, but I've got to put in things like expiry, I've got to select the strike and then I've got to select all these different parameters. I've got to buy or sell it. Which one do I do? I don't know. It's kind of a lot of mental load." So we are just trying to minimize that for people.Matty (28:15):Nice. That's awesome. So maybe the last section here, we can go through some rapid fire questions. So I listen to this podcast from Tyler Cowen, who's an economist and professor in the United States. And basically how this is going to work is I'm going to say a word or a phrase, you're going to say whether it's overrated or underrated.Tristan (28:37):Got you.Matty (28:38):And then you can give a brief definition of why you think it's overrated or underrated. So, I'm going to say something first, a word and it's just going to be rapid fire. We can talk a little bit about each. But, you ready?Tristan (28:49):Yep. Let's do it.Matty (28:50):All right. Anonymous crypto teams.Tristan (28:53):I think underrated.Matty (28:54):Why is that?Tristan (28:54):I think they do pretty good work. And I think coming from a background in traditional software engineering where people care a lot about credentials and things like that, I think what you should really be measured on is your meritocratic thing where people just do good work. And I think people go out there in the crypto ecosystem, they don't make a big fuss, but they launch these protocols. And I think people do really good work and they don't need to have a Stanford CS background or something, although to contribute to the ecosystem. So it's really nice and refreshing to see people who might be self taught in crypto. And a lot of people are, I think they take it on their own initiative and they go out there, build amazing products and change and push the financial narrative forward or whatever they're building the crypto ecosystem. So I'm pretty bullish on those teams for sure.Matty (29:39):Out of curiosity, why didn't your team go anonymous?Tristan (29:43):Most people in the team I think are pretty anonymous and want to stay that way. I think it's me who's had to be the doxed individual on the team. But it's more like, you want to do these speaking opportunities or go and publicize or get the name out about your protocol. And I think it's very hard or at least for me it was tough to do that. People don't necessarily take you seriously, especially when you're trying to raise capital or do other things, people don't really... That doesn't fly with a lot of people when you're trying to talk to people from more traditional industries, they laugh it off as a bit of a joke. So I don't mind too much from my perspective, I'm pretty comfortable with it. But yeah, at least we have a little bit of a mix.Matty (30:24):The Metaverse.Tristan (30:26):I think overrated. I just hear it is this buzzword, you hear it from everyone, especially guys like VCs and other people. I hear it from a lot of my, I hate to say it but normie friends from outside of crypto. That's start to become a bit more of a tagline, but especially in relation with NFTs, this is something that everyone gets into in the space. And I think that's good to broaden adoption and onboard the next billion users, but I still don't have a really good understanding of what exactly the Metaverse is. And now I'm seeing all this stuff.Matty (30:55):What is it?Tristan (30:56):I don't know.Matty (30:56):I don't even know.Tristan (30:57):No, one's got a definition. It's just this buzzword that gets thrown around and now I'm seeing Facebook rebrands to Meta. You've got this corporate BS coming out and we're going to build the metaverse and I'm like, I don't really want to be part of Zuck's metaverse necessarily. So I'm a little bit bearish on that.Matty (31:14):Yes, I too do not want to be a part of Zuck's wonderland. Insurance and DeFi.Tristan (31:22):Definitely, I think underhyped. People go to the really quick and easy stuff to understand. And obviously NFT is a nice bridge gaming stuff like that I think is really cool. And not to downplay that. Then I think something, the narrative for DeFi is really strong. We're building a new financial ecosystem. If you're looking back at what's happened in traditional finance, obviously there's been like decades of innovation stuff. I feel like that's kind of slowing down and is not really suited to this web enabled world that we live in now. So there's kind of obviously this Web3 meme that everyone throws around, but I think it is genuinely true and it's going to be a bit of a paradigm shift.Even now, I try and open a new bank account or do a cross-border payment or something although it's a huge pain in the ass. There's so many things and steps you have to go through, it takes forever, you get clipped on fees on absolutely everything. Whereas, I remember the first time I opened up a Solana wallet and I just sent someone USDC, it's confirmed in a second, pretty much. I paid a fraction of cent in fees. I'm like, this is incredible, nothing beats this. And I think Anatoly brings that great statistic of 20% of global GDP just literally gets dedicated and used up by just moving money around and having all these middle men take commissions on things. Unlike, wouldn't it be incredible if we all got a day back in our lives that we didn't have to work if the whole financial ecosystem was a little bit more efficient and more transparent.Personally, I really like it because having worked in the software industry where open source is pretty king there. And the only reason anything works is because people have built all these libraries and other things underneath that all build up. And you can build your application in 10 lines of Python now. And this is kind of like, doesn't obviously happen in traditional finance. You've got all these firms who guard their secrets, it's world gardens. And now you've got this transparent financial ecosystem where everything's, majority stuff is open sourced, it's composable, people don't need permission to go and place and execute orders through Zeta or build whatever their protocol is, their default product on top of us, just go ahead and do it. It's a piece of public infrastructure.So I think that's pretty awesome. And I'm super excited when we live in this world where everything can talk to each other. You're actually earning productive yield on your assets and not the 0.2% that I probably get in my bank account these days. And then following on from that, I think derivatives are pretty cool. I think when you look at any financial ecosystem, you've got a few stages of where you're going through. So, we started with the simple token swaps, then you're going to these borrow lend protocols, then you're getting more into PERPs and leverage. And then I think the last piece of this derivatives puzzle is just trying to get to options and then on the very end of the spectrum, you're starting to get to exotic options and this crazy stuff and you're seeing a few protocols popping up for that. So it'll be interesting to see how it plays out, but I think it's such a natural fit. And yeah, when we started this, we're like, it's such a obvious play that this will take off and we've already seen perpetuals swell to multiple billions, if not more of volume on centralized exchanges, even stuff like dYdX is just blown up massively all of last year and this year. So yeah, I'm super bullish on that. And I think it's under service still. I think it's just going to grow more and more. And if you look at traditional markets, derivatives eclipses spot by 20X or something although it's just huge.Matty (34:42):Singapore.Tristan (34:44):I think under hyped right now. I think it's still fairly under the radar. I think it's a pretty cool part of the world where it's like a nice melting pot between western and east. So it's cool. I think being around here and seeing that it's still an English speaking country, but you get exposure to that kind of side of the world. It was just kind of convenient for us as well because it's that whole kind of APAC time zone. And so far it's been pretty enjoyable. I think there's a really, really fast growing crypto ecosystem. So it's still behind. I would say the US, is kind of the leader. I think all the main people are there in the Bay Area or New York building cool stuff. You're definitely to starting to see more people move here.I think it's a big crypto hub and I think kudos to the regulators for not just trying to outright ban things and trying to have a little bit of a conversation, which I think is pretty rare when it comes to crypto. You have everyone trying to shut it down and label it as this kind of like, this is some black market thing and people are using it for all these nefarious operations, when you have actual legitimate builders trying to build awesome financial infrastructure that will hopefully change the world. So yeah, I'm definitely see like more people moving here. I think hopefully growing a little bit of a Solana footprint, we'll have this Singapore Hacker House going and hopefully a more longer term installment and looking forward to having more startups around.Matty (36:05):Yeah. Completely agree. Huge fan of Singapore. I've been there handful of times and I've always had a really good experience there. So okay, next one. Sleep.Tristan (36:15):I think under hyped for sure. I have a lot of friends, probably more in the kind of banking sphere who are just sleep is for the weak type mentality. They're like I did sleep three hours and go back to my desk job like Goldman Sachs and then just do all my stuff there. And they're like, who needs to sleep? Doesn't really matter. They have fucked up sleep schedules. I've read a couple of books on sleep. I think there's that classic, like Matthew Walker one, on why we sleep and a bunch of other good ones and yeah, it does seem pretty critical. I know at least myself, when I get less than six hours of sleep, I'm super grumpy and just have a lot of brain fog and cannot think straight. And when you're trying to code up smart contracts and Rust, I think you need your mind to be performing pretty well.So we have a bit of a weird sleep schedule going in our team somewhat, we're trying to service 24 hours of the clock. And even though some of us are in the same time zone, say we just have to like stagger our hours. So I'm personally a bit of a early bird. So I try and get off earlier and I enjoy the early hours because I tend to get very tired at night and can't problem solve. Whereas, I'm fresh in the morning. Whereas some other guys in the team, especially on the engineering team, love to pull the late nights and be up until like 3:00, 4:00, 5:00 AM. So, it kind of works, but we're around on the clock. So if a market maker or someone throws a fuss and the platform's breaking, we're always there on call. But I think sleep in general is super underrated. I think it's pretty important in the long run, you want to be getting your six to eight hours.Matty (37:43):I asked this question because I think you had a pretty infamous tweet and I think it was, "Peak crypto living." And it's just a picture of a rug and a ma and a mattress on the floor. I just wanted to get to the bottom of this.Tristan (38:00):That's right. My sleep is terrible. That was when we moved into a new place and I pretty much had no furniture. We bought a wide screen monitor before we bought a bed. We were working super productively, but then I would go up to my room and just more or less sleep on a yoga mat on the floor, which was maybe not the most comfortable thing, but I got by it for like a week and then managed to buy a bit more furniture. I have at least a basic bed now. So my sleep has improved incredibly since then.Matty (38:26):Nice. And this will be the last one. Solana.Tristan (38:30):That one's a hard one to say. I think if you were to ask me last year, it would definitely be under hyped. I still think it's under hyped. I think people have been fighting it and being like, "Hey, this isn't a real chain. It's overblown. It's VC chain bad or something." Although people are kind of always trying to put shed on it, which I don't think is justified. And I look at those people now and I'm like, "Clearly you haven't used any of the apps that are on the platform where you have no appreciation of what the people are trying to build." Because I think being, I wouldn't say an insider, but at least like a builder in the ecosystem, you're like, hey, there are a lot of really cool teams building cool stuff. And there are so many products yet to be launched.So I still think it's in the period where it's under hyped and we're going to have just so many more Solana apps just because it can scale and we're not going to hit these really crappy limits like you hit it on Ethereum L1 where suddenly everything is costing an insane amount of money. So I still think the space has so much room to grow and the way that Solana is built, I think does scale pretty nicely. I think it has definitely gotten some hype towards the end of last year. I think it did feel a little bit toppy, I think in crypto in general and going to break point and there was so much hype and so much crazy sentiment going around. Everyone was feeling really good because their bags are getting pumped and people are in Solana 200 plus dollar territory. And there's this whole NFT thing going on, you've got to listen to announcements from founder of Reddit and founder of Brave and stuff.And you're like, "Wow, this is mainstream adoption. What's going on? Solana's going to infinity." And then the whole market nuked and then kind of brings you somewhat back to reality. And I think now is probably the best time for builders when price is a little bit suppressed. People can kind of put their head down because, I got to say, end of last year was pretty hard to concentrate on just pure engineering. There's a million different distractions going on. So I think it's nice that things are a bit more low key now and it's a bit more of a healthy growth trajectory.Matty (40:20):Yeah, for sure. This is definitely Solana Season from my perspective, because this is the best time to build applications, I think. Yeah. Really happy that you guys are in the ecosystem. I'm really excited that Zeta is now on Mainnet. And yeah. Thanks again for coming on this show.Tristan (40:38):Awesome. Not at all. My pleasure.
Krafton, the South Korean gaming giant and the company behind the popular PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) game, is expanding it crypto empire by partnering with blockchain startup Solana Labs to develop play-to-earn crypto games. The business agreement with Solana Labs includes plans to make blockchain games that allow players to earn NFTs (non-fungible tokens). On this episode, we're taking a look at Solana's massive partnerships as well as Solana Pay slowly taking over retail payment.~This episode is sponsored by FTX US ~FTX US - Support our channel by using our link (limited time 10% off fees!) ➜ https://bit.ly/FTXappPaul#Solana #PUBG #NFT~Solana Partners With PUBG: PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds Studio for NFT Games | Solana Pay Takes Off~⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺⎺Become a Diamond Circle Member FREE! ➜ https://bit.ly/PBDiamondCircleSubscribe on YouTube ✅ https://bit.ly/PBNYoutubeSubscribeFacebook
Chewing glass is what Solana developers do. Introducing the third episode in a new series on the Solana Podcast, Chewing Glass. Chase Barker (Developer Relations Lead at Solana Labs) talks shop with the most interesting builders in the Solana ecosystem. It's for devs, by devs.Todays guest is Brian Friel, a Solana dev and regular contributor to the Solana Cookbook who recently joined Phantom as Developer Relations Evangelist.01:18 - Intro / Phantom04:04- Brian's background05:10 - His experience before working in Solana06:42 - How did he start working in Solana08:06 - When did he start looking into Solana09:41 - First project on Solana11:36 - What are the challenges working in Solana13:14 - Anchor vs. Solana native15:31 - The Solana cookbook18:09 - Contributing to the space21:01 - Solana Native Programs23:01 - Any advice?DISCLAIMERThe information on this podcast is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose.The information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice.The information on this podcast is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional broker or financial advisor. Chase (00:39):Hey, everybody. Welcome to Chewing Glass, the show where we talk to developers building in the Solana ecosystem. My name is Chase Barker, developer relations at Solana Labs. Today, we have with us, Brian Friel. Brian is actually a heavy contributor to the Solana ecosystem. I spoke with Brian, probably, a few months ago. I started noticing that he was writing some really great articles about Solana. I always have my eye out to kind of find people who are just altruistically contributing in the ecosystem. Brian was one of those guys, and here he is today. Brian, how's it going, man?Brian (01:13):Hey, Chase. Good to be here. Big fan of the show.Chase (01:16):Super excited to have you. You have done so many contributions to the ecosystem, everything from your own personal articles about PDAs with Anchor. You've contributed heavily to the Solana Cookbook. Actually, many people probably don't know because you never really spoke about it, there is some great news today. Brian, I actually heard from a little birdie that you just got hired at Phantom.Brian (01:50):That's correct. This is a Solana podcast exclusive. I'm joining Phantom, and I'll be their first developer relations hire there. Super stoked to build out the best wallet on Solana.Chase (02:02):Yeah, that's awesome. I haven't fully grasped what... I know that there's a use for that on a wallet. Every company's completely different whenever it comes to developer relations. You've been hanging out with the Solana Labs devrel team. I'm sure you'll jump in there, and you probably have already started to try to figure out what you're going to do on day one, I'm sure.Brian (02:24):It's a green-field kind of space here. There's a lot to do. I think you're right. One of the best things about this space, too, is that so many people are just building in public that we get a lot of feedback of what developers building on Solana want to see out of us at Phantom. My job is really to kind of get in touch with everyone who's building and start triaging what the biggest priorities are to make this the best experience.Chase (02:46):That's awesome. I'm sure you're going to do great. Also, another one of our wonderful part-time dev advocates, Loris just got hired by Metaplex. But, at the end of the day, we love this. This is exactly what we want. All the better and congrats on that.Brian (03:00):Yeah. Shout out, Loris. He's awesome. Metaplex got a huge win there, getting him.Chase (03:05):For sure. I guess, I usually start these out with some more of the boring things for most people. Everybody wants to hear about the development stuff. Number one, when you did start working with us, had I reached out to you or did you reach out to me? I've been thinking about this today, and I cannot actually remember how that unfolded.Brian (03:25):I think, way back, I actually reached out to you once. At the time, I might have not even been on Twitter under my real name. I just started a Twitter account just to check out a couple different things. I was interested in crypto. I saw your presence pretty early on and messaged you, but I'm pretty sure, at that time, you were just drowning in DMs. I went all out my way starting to build stuff, and then starting to just share stuff publicly, which we can talk about. But, I think, through that, then you had circled back, and then we reconnected.Chase (03:55):Yeah, exactly. If you're listening, that's how you do it. If I don't respond to you, do something cool, and we'll eventually connect. Anyways, definitely, generally curious on your background, whether it's tech related or not, just whatever you are comfortable with sharing and what you were doing before you were involved in any of this crazy thing that we call crypto.Brian (04:16):It feels like a lifetime ago. I, actually, didn't study computer science unlike a lot of people, but, over time, I did make my way into the tech world. Then, quickly after graduating, I got pretty lucky, and I got a job as a front end engineer at a small crypto hedge fund here in the Bay Area. It's called Castle. Was with those guys for about four years. Absolute, awesome experience. It was really interesting to see the whole trading side of the industry, which, obviously, is kind of how this all got its legs. People want to speculate on this. Over time, my role there really evolved from just the pure dev to somebody who was really kind of boots on the ground trying to figure out what's new in the space.Through that, I came across Solana pretty early on. Obviously, seeing Sam Fried throw his weight behind it, but then some other stuff that came along like Mango. I'm seeing the possibilities there. In my free time, I really started just digging to it outside of work. Work was the catalyst for finding it. But, that's really how I got my start, just looking into the developer side of things on Solana.Chase (05:18):What was your experience level directly before Solana?Brian (05:22):I was a React front end engineer, was really my specialty. I, specifically, was tasked with building interfaces for our trading systems. We had a whole proprietary tech trading system, and I was the front end guy, so I would say pretty proficient with React and Node JS and TypeScript. But, I really wasn't a back end guy. I'd never done anything with Rust, and I actually hadn't really done too much on Solidity at the time yet. I had kicked around a few side projects, but nothing really ever got past just a couple weeks, side hobby sort of deal.Chase (05:54):What I definitely am seeing in this ecosystem, and I think Armani's talked about it a handful of times is that a lot of engineers in Solana are actually Solana natives that have never touched Solidity. They've never owned a MetaMask wallet. Obviously, a lot of these guys are probably some of the more younger guns, even some of the older ones as well, probably for a variety of reasons. But, it's interesting to see technologies that have been around for a while that newer technologies are actually being used and developed on first. It's never really been a thing before. There was always a learning path that was you find out about Bitcoin. You find out about Ethereum. You build on Solidity. Then, you find some other things, and you might jump ship. We're seeing a lot of people that are really just going straight to Solana. You were involved in that space, tasked with finding out what's hot, what's going on, and you saw SBF was building a central limit order book on Solana, and, then, that's kind of what set you in that direction?Brian (06:54):Yeah. I was pretty aware of the Ethereum ecosystem before. We actually were running our own validators for Eth 2 and doing a couple other things as it relates to trading, actually, on Ethereum Mainnet today. For me, personally, I think it was just really an interesting time to dedicate my free time in learning Solana because it felt like there was this new paradigm of blockchain development. A lot of the stuff that was coming out with other earlier ones felt a little bit derivative of Eth, but Solana really felt like it was carving its own path out, and I thought that was worth exploring.At the same time, I could see there was people who had serious credibility in the space who were dedicating their time to it. Then, combined with that, they're just wasn't any resources or really any subject matter experts on it yet. That, to me, was the signal that it is a really good time. I still think it is a fantastic time to just dig my heels in and learn about this. I haven't really looked back since.Chase (07:52):The first time we kind of talked, it was probably early on, and I was really just trying to get a feel for everything. There probably wasn't a ton of information or content. I feel like there was some. You made a note to Mango Markets. What timeframe did you really start paying attention to Solana, not necessarily about what's going on in the ecosystem, but rather start looking at the documentation? Was this super early 2021?Brian (08:18):I had kicked the tires on things at the end of 2020 when Sollet was the only wallet, and there really wasn't anything. But, I think Break Solana was out there, and I think Raydium was out there.Chase (08:29):Serum DEX was also there around that time as well, I believe.Brian (08:32):Yeah, Serum. I had just kind of made a mental note around that time. Things were pretty crazy in the space, too, just everything was going on.Chase (08:40):The market, yeah-Brian (08:41):I was pretty busy at work, but, I would say, when the market kind of cooled off in the summertime is when I, personally, started to dig into the development side a lot more. Mango and Phantom, well, trying that out was definitely just the light bulb moment for me when I saw just how insane that user experience was. What really got me down the rabbit hole of development was following Armani on Twitter. Shout out, Armani's the man, and seeing what he was doing with Anchor, specifically.I had stayed away from the development side of Solana purely because I had told myself, oh, I'm a front end guy. I would have to learn Rust first. Then, I would have to learn all the intricacies of Solana. It's just not worth my time. But, Anchor signaled to me that I could start a side project, and I could get up and running with something quickly. Then, if that was interesting to me, then I could dig in further. That's what I did. I think that's actually a pretty good path for people who are just kicking the tires on Solana development.Chase (09:39):I guess that means that you're pretty much intro journey into development. You went straight for Anchor before you-Brian (09:46):Yep, a hundred percent.Chase (09:48):... because I remember... Was the PDA article you wrote the first article that you had written?Brian (09:52):My first thing I did, I think this was either late August or early September, I just said, I'm going to make a really basic app, like a voting app on Solana, something that everyone's made before, but I'm going to use Anchor to do it. I think, at the time, Nader Dabit had just published his first article, so I was kind of using that as a reference. But, there really wasn't a whole lot about the intricacies of how Anchor related to Solana development, in particular. It was hard for me to wrap my head around the account model, which I think is the biggest thing for most people coming into the space, especially if they're familiar with Ethereum. I had just done a very basic, put a key pair on a node server, spin that up, something you would never want to do in a production app. It worked until the Herokuv server crashed, and then it just was a joke of an app.I couldn't really sleep well. I had written up my experience, but I couldn't really sleep well knowing that that's as far as I got. That's when I dug into PDAs. I really started to understand the account model better on Solana, what that was. I just wrote about that experience, really, selfishly for me just to have a memo on that. Then, I just put it out there, but I found out that a lot of other people were simultaneously going around the same sort of journey. I think that was the article that I really started to get connected with a lot of people in the space.Chase (11:09):I mean, it's pretty typical for a lot of these guys to be documenting their journey. A lot of times that really sparks a revelation for people that I've noticed. It's like, wow, this is super valuable. Then, I want to do it again. It's like, if this is helping people, I'm going to keep deep diving these things. But, it all started with Armani being like, hey, I'm going to make this easier for everybody, and he did. Now, he has a massive community of supporters that are just building on top of Anchor. Was the accounts model in the PDAs... Typically, it is, but, for you, is that specifically was, until you got past that, Solana was pretty hard?Brian (11:47):Yeah. In my mind, I thought it was going to be Rust, especially being a front end dev. It's just the total different world, but-Chase (11:54):The syntax is disgusting when you first look at it, at least in my personal opinion.Brian (11:58):Yeah, you can kind of understand. But, I mean, it really is. If you've never touched Rust, it's not bad. It was nothing that, really, three or four hours worth of just looking over stuff. You can understand the gist of things, which is as much as you really need to get your first app up, which I think is the best way to learn, just by doing. For me, it really was the mental shift of just how does Solana work in the account model because I think everyone's so used to... I have Ethereum address. It has all these coins directly related to it. Then, there's this Ethereum smart contract, and it has its state. It has a counter, and it can do these things. It's really weird to, one, you're already saying, I'm going to go away from this ecosystem. I'm going to look at Solana.But, then, two, a lot of what I have in my head as a mental map doesn't carry over. That seemed like a scary drum. That probably was the hardest thing, but, it's really that account model. I think that once you have a pretty good understanding of that, that's 80% of the work. The rest of the 20% of the work, you'll get over time.Chase (12:58):I mean, if we're talking about Rust Native, and then we're talking about Anchor, Anchor also hides a lot of these issues. You don't have to really worry so much about the serialization piece. Honestly, I don't know very many people that actually even know how to really do that efficiently and effectively in Rust. It's a huge pain in the ass to make that work. Have you done any of the serialization in Rust Native?Brian (13:26):Yeah. I've played around with Borscht a little bit now. I think as far as the whole Anchor versus Solana Native debate, speaking anecdotally, I definitely thought it was easier just to go with Anchor. It lets you focus on what you're building. You don't have to worry about all this stuff like serialization. But, then, I think once you do build something to actually really understand how it works, and if you ever were to actually put any money, your own, let alone other people's money in it, you absolutely should understand how Anchor relates to Solana Native, and why it's doing the things it's doing, what each trait and macro is actually doing under the hood. Then, that just makes you really understand, I think, Solana, all the better.Chase (14:03):There's a couple types of people there. There are the type of person out there that's like, no, I want to start with a base, and then I'm going to work my way up. Those people tend to be the more thorough, take their time, whatever. But, then a lot of others are like, I want to push out an MVP because I want to write code right this second, and then they do it. Then, just general curiosity over time when you feel like you understand a language like Anchor, and you're like, okay, I got this. This is great. Now, I'm actually curious how this works under the hood, so you just go in the reverse direction.Brian (14:38):This is, again, anecdotal, but for people like me, and probably if you're a front end dev, actually, it's really nice to have something tangible where it's like you built this. You can show it to a friend, and they can connect the Devnet Wallet to it, and they can use it. Then, you kind of really understand the tangible value of this new platform that Solana is. Now, you're innately curious of, okay, well how does this actually work? I saw that Anchor does this in less than 50 lines of Rust, but half these lines are macros that I'm not quite sure what they do under the hood. It's very natural, your learning path from there, if you can just get the first project done.Chase (15:15):Have you, to this day, written anything in Rust Native. Have you written any programs?Brian (15:21):No. I've transitioned over more to the web3.js side of things because that's what I'm more comfortable with.Chase (15:28):Okay.Brian (15:29):As you know, recently, I've been spending most of my time on more conceptual stuff like the Solana Cookbook, and I dug in some stuff as well about retrying transactions during network congestion and all that. That's a little bit more, conceptually, how the Solana blockchain works as a whole.Chase (15:42):If you guys didn't know, Brian just released a PDA section to the Solana Cookbook, so check it out. Also, the retry portion. That was actually requested by the Solana core engineer team. They were like, there's a lot of people that don't understand how to manage failed transactions and how to retry them properly.Brian (16:04):Yeah, totally. That's kind of what drew me in to this space is that I had seen people like the core engineering team there, Trent and what Anatoly's built, obviously. But, there's all this amazing tech that these guys have built and they've been so focused on building that no one's really there to tell the story and to help make it more relatable to devs, maybe Web 2.0 devs who are coming in. I've seen a lot of people, and I have friends who maybe aren't full-time crypto who are just like Solana just doesn't work, unplug it and plug it back in kind of a deal, like what's going on there because it's very different from Ethereum.But, in my mind, it's an incredible piece of technology that's been built, and there's reasons why certain things have hiccups at certain times, but it doesn't mean it's a bad design. It just means that we're testing in prod. We're moving this thing pretty fast. What I wanted to do is help shed light what is actually happening because as I learned about it, it gave me more confidence in Solana as a whole, the platform, understanding what the growing pains actually were under the hood.Chase (17:02):Whether people like to admit it or not, every blockchain, in its infancy, has suffered very, very similar problems. They're continuously working to improve this with QUICK and other different options that are going just make this more sustainable. The best thing we can do is be honest about it. We have Solana Docs. They're highly technical documentation. They're not necessarily developer experience friendly unless you're a very specific type of learner with a very large brain. The first time I read it, I probably absorbed 10%. The next time I got another 25%. Then, it took me five or six or seven times before I grasped everything that was happening in there. It serves a very specific purpose. Most of that documentation, the brunt of it, was written years ago by the co-founders. It can use some improvement, but, at the time, we're like let's move fast. Let's get the community contributing and kind of get the Cookbook built out.It turned out really great. It has a half a million page views, just short of half a million, which is insane since that just goes to show you how valuable it is, and how valuable your contributions are. The same reason why we have these little developer advocacy teams that join weekly meetings with us, so they can know what's going on and just help. The goal is to get some experience, and then eventually get hired by whoever you want to get hired by. Luckily for you, that seems to have worked out and that's amazing.Brian (18:25):No, the Cookbook's been an awesome experience, and, definitely, shout out Jacob Creech and Leesam [inaudible 00:18:31] and Loris and Colin and all those people who are working hard on it. It's been very organic, and I think that's kind of true of the whole Solana developer ecosystem as a whole is that it's an aptly named podcast, Chewing Glass. But, there's a reason why people are dedicating their free time outside of work to this because it's really awesome. The Cookbook, in my mind, is the best way if you're sort of on the sidelines, or you've maybe built a small project, and you don't really know how to go from here, getting involved with that is definitely the best move I think you can make. Contributing to the space, as a whole, helping other people learn. The best way I've ever learned is writing for other people. Then, once you do do that, it's really easy to connect with others who are building in the space. There's so much to do that you'll get picked up by somebody, for sure.Chase (19:12):It's kind of crazy. When that Cookbook just exploded, also, shout out the SuperteamDAO for actually helping solve [crosstalk 00:19:20].Brian (19:19):Yeah, totally there.Chase (19:20):They really crushed it. Watching that organic just inflow of people that are like, hey, I'll do this thing. I'll do that thing, and they just did it. For a ghost chain, we actually seem to have a lot of developers in the ecosystem.Brian (19:32):Anecdotally, I've seen just an explosion of people who've reached out to me saying, hey, I read your stuff and I want to learn more. What's the best way to get involved? I think that gut feel of the developer buzz and people who are spending their nights and weekends trying to wrap their head around this. I think that's the best kind of indicator you can really have because, at the end of the day, there's a lot out there. But, if you can get people who are actually interested in putting in the sweat to actually learn about this thing that's not always easy right off the bat, but even if they're just interested in it's going to take mind sharing. That's how we can better.Chase (20:08):Yeah. Every day, I'm blown away, but I don't have to reach out to anybody. It's just all people reaching out. Obviously, I love to hear that they're reaching out to you and everybody in the ecosystem has their DMs open. If you write an article, expect for people to come and ask you for advice, and that tone has been set. It started with Anatoly with this whole openness thing, and him and Raj with their DMs open, went down to me, and then to the community. Then, it just keeps spreading and spreading, and everybody's really just trying, out there, to help each other. Without that sort of kind of vibe, you and I wouldn't have met. We wouldn't have worked together. None of these things would've happened.Brian (20:45):I think that's definitely the most important thing is keeping that vibe set because I could have just as easily gone away, but I hopped in an Anchor discord right when it was just getting started. There's people like Armani, but then others like CQFD and Don Diablo and other people who are in those channels taking time out of their day to help me out. Once I learned it, I felt like I had to pay it forward or wanted to pay it forward really and connect with more people. I think as long as we can keep that momentum going, that's a good thing.Chase (21:18):For sure. You talked about, you were doing some Web 3.0 stuff. You saw that the token program was completely rewritten in TypeScript.Brian (21:25):Yeah. Pretty cool.Chase (21:27):Have you touched that yet? Have you played around with it.Brian (21:28):I played around with it a little bit. Haven't done a whole lot there, but I definitely plan to. I think one of the things that I was most interested in when I came here was Web 3.0, web3.js because it's just so simple. It's like an NPM package or a yarn install. You can get up and running with that. I had an idea of making a little site that was a little bit interactive where you could have a snippet of code, say how to send a SOL to somebody, and then you click that. Then, on the right, it's actually rendering and showing what that actually looks like. But, I think the Cookbook has done a pretty good job. My idea kind of started right around when the Cookbook launched, so I've focused my efforts there, on the Cookbook, but I would say that should be a focus of mine and a bunch of other people who are interested in contributing. It's just improving the developer experience on Web 3.0 right now. There's a lot documentation-wise that I think we could improve.Chase (22:22):Even some of the Solana Program Library, for instance, the Solana Token Program JS library, which they dot bindings in the documentation, that doesn't exist for every program. You would, literally, just have to write your own custom transactions and instructions to be able to use it. We are adding that to our little roadmap. I'm sure there's additional components and extensions we can add to these things. We're working on it.Brian (22:51):I think it's the right time to be contributing towards that kind of shared resource like that. Another one that I found that isn't Solana Native programs, but the Saber team has done a great job with their Saber common repos. I think they've set a really great example for other projects that if they want to win, they got to have the whole ecosystem win. They got to grow the pie, open sourcing code and sharing what you know with people. Everyone I've interacted with across all projects has just been awesome so far. I would really love to see that continue.Chase (23:20):I do this every episode. I'm going to put you on the spot and just kind of ask you, give some advice.Brian (23:27):I thought about this. I'd seen your two other episodes, so I pulled a tweet from Armani, which if I can read here because this is what had actually, finally got me kind of off the couch and contributing. This is September 2021. He says, "For every new technology, the pace of innovation exceeds the pace of education. If there's tons of examples to copy and paste, you're late. If you're confused because there's no docs, good. You've discovered a secret that is yet to be revealed to the rest of the world."I saw that right when I was kicking around the idea of maybe I should make an Anchor thing. Ah, I'm busy. I got all this other stuff. If I got a puppy, all this kind of stuff to take care of. But, I would a hundred percent agree with what he tweeted there. I think that's a legendary tweet. If it's confusing, good. Just keep at it. Then, I would say make a really simple project about as simple as you can. For me, it was an app that basically said, do you like crunchy peanut butter or do you like smooth peanut butter? You connect your Phantom wallet, and you vote for an option. The program records it. It's still live to this day. You can check it out, PBvote.com.Chase (24:32):Nice plug.Brian (24:33):Nice plug for the peanut butter there. I'm not sponsored by any peanut butter companies. But, that, for me, was really what got me going. I had set a deadline. I'd said, okay, I have to have this live in two weeks. I think giving yourself that deadline is actually the most important thing because so many people come in. They say, hey, Solana is cool, but then they get distracted by something else because there's something new happening in this space every day. It's easier to watch the price of things, but sticking to a deadline, and even if you fail, but knowing why you failed.If you're under pressure, and you can get something out in two weeks or less, just write about your journey. Just say this is what I built. It's simple, but it's live. Here's the source code. Here's the link, and this is what worked for me. This is what didn't work for me. This thing sucked. This thing was great. Just create a Twitter and tweet about it. I guarantee if you do that, people will reach out because you've probably touched some piece of code that someone else has written and they want to hear feedback on how that was. Then, you have your own experience you can write about, and maybe you can share something that helps other people build in the space. It's all about contributing really. Once you contribute, other people really want to reach out.Chase (25:39):It really just becomes this perpetual cycle of contributing, sharing. Somebody else uses it, and feels the same way, and it just keeps going you going. That's all we want. I'm just there screaming on Twitter to fuel the fire. You made a great point. Nobody's made that one yet. Bravo to you, not about the peanut butter, but about the fact that set a plan because all of us as engineers, in our past, have been like, I'm going to do this thing. You set no timeframe. You start on it, and then you never get back to it. Then, you have about 500 things that you've started, and then you never touch any of them, so really writing that down, setting that timeframe, setting that goal. You got to find a way to hold yourself accountable.Things I've done in the past, starting Chewing Glass, about starting this show. I didn't ask anybody at the company. I just tweeted, "I'm going to start a podcast." If I didn't, people would start asking me about it later, and then I would look like a liar. I had to do it, so accountability can really come from just tweeting because if people follow you, they're going to throw it in your face one day, and nobody likes that.Brian (26:43):I'd say if you're still listening this podcast, if you've made it this far in Solana, you're interested enough to build something. Build it, and then tweet about it. You probably are interested in following people like Armani, people like Chase, people like Anatoly, and share it. If you build something, people will see it, and then you'll have kind of innate sense of accountability because you'll be connected those people, and you won't want to let them down. It'll just totally consume your life. But, it's awesome.Chase (27:07):By the way, if you build something really cool, or you write something really cool, tag me in it. I'll share it so other people can find it, and then you can inspire other people to-Brian (27:18):Join a hackathon. Win some money.Chase (27:20):Exactly. Anyways, Brian, this was awesome. I'm so glad we got to have this call. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for talking to me. Any last words?Brian (27:31):Thank you, Chase. I mean, this whole past couple months has totally exceeded my expectations, and there's real opportunity in this space. I think if you're listening to this, reach out to Chase, build something. He's a man who knows everybody. He can connect you to the right people, and he can teach you a lot. I'm super thankful for knowing him, and I'm super thankful for this space.Chase (27:51):All right, man. Have a good one. Cheers.
What a great show! Matty joins me to discuss how Solana has been able to grow with the use of some of the most exciting and involved hackathons in digital assets. We also discuss their use of "hacker houses" which aim to help developers learn key coding languages in Solana development. Lastly, we discuss Riptide, their newest hackathon that already has THOUSANDS of founders submitting their newest ideas.
In this episode, Dan Albert (Executive Director), Lily Liu (President) and Mable Jiang (Board Member) discuss the role of the Solana Foundation in advancing the Solana protocol and ecosystem with support and initiatives around the world. Austin Federa (Head of Communications, Solana Labs) guest hosts. 0:43 - Intros / Roles3:13 - The appeal of working at the foundation level07:48 - Establishing scope for the foundation12:42 - What's working in the ecosystem?20:01 - From the ecosystem to the foundation21:21 - Growing Solana in new markets33:50 - Shared Ownership of the network36:21 - Predictions for 2022 in crypto and web 3.0DISCLAIMERThe information on this podcast is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose.The information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice.The information on this podcast is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional broker or financial advisor. Austin Federa (00:10):Welcome to the Solana podcast. I'm Austin Federa filling in as guest host today. We spend a lot of time on the show talking to founders and builders in the space, people building on the Solana blockchain or otherwise involved in the Solana ecosystem. But today we're actually going to be talking about a different component, which is the Solana Foundation. Today with us, we have Dan who's the executive director of the Solana Foundation. We have Lily, who's the president of the Solana Foundation and Mabel, who's one of the board members of the Solana Foundation. Welcome to the Solana podcast, guys.Lily (00:39):Thanks for having us.Dan (00:40):Great to be here.Mabel (00:41):Thank you.Austin Federa (00:42):All right, Dan, let's start out with you. Tell me a little bit about what the Solana Foundation's role is in the ecosystem.Dan (00:49):Sure. The foundation is really here to help foster the growth of the Solana network and really the Solana ecosystem kind of in broad strokes at the highest level, what can we do to make sure that the Solana network continues to grow in the most kind of sustainable and decentralized manner as possible? And how can we provide resources and help the community grow to onboard the next or the first billion users to the Solana ecosystem and crypto in general?Austin Federa (01:24):Lily, what attracted you to the Solana Foundation? And how did you get involved in it?Lily (01:30):Well, I've been in the crypto ecosystem for a little bit and I must confess that in 2018, 2019, I actually spent a good bit of time being a Bitcoin maxi. And then I even was part of Little Bitcoin Book and which is not to say, sometimes I feel like people in crypto are a little bit maybe too tribal, which is not to say I don't love Bitcoin. I still consider Bitcoin to be king. But when I took a little bit of time out of crypto, when I came back to crypto, I started just using a lot of the apps that had sort of emerged out of DeFi Summer and I was totally floored by using Raydium in April. I really could not stop talking about it for just about a month because it was very squarely Web 3.0 but it felt like Web 2.0 and it was just so obvious to me at that moment that this was going to be how the next billion people, if we were going to get a billion people into crypto, anytime soon it was going to be on Solana.Solana to me is just such a unique combination of being technically so innovative but at the same time, really understanding that to bring people into the ecosystem, it has to be a good experience. And sometimes for your end user, it really just is as simple as saying, "It's fast and cheap." And that's why ethernet is just better than 56K modems. And sometimes it just has to be that simple to the end user if you're going to appeal to a billion people.Austin Federa (02:48):Yeah, I completely agree with you. There's been so many of those moments I've sort of heard over the last year of people just trying something on Solana and having this experience of, oh, it just works. It's fast. It feels like a Web 2.0 application but it's delivered in a fully decentralized way. Just based on that, what was the decision in your mind to, tons of people have that experience, they go build something, they go work for a company building in the space in terms of a service provider company. What was the sort of appeal of something that's more at the foundation level?Lily (03:19):To me, I think that, I come from a background where I spent a lot of time, I originally started working in more traditional industries. I worked in McKinsey, I worked at KKR and I kind of fell into Bitcoin back in 2013, 2014, which at the time was not a very obvious thing to do. And so for me, I think one of the things that I maybe add to the ecosystem is helping run effective organizations and thinking about sort of how to scale a commercial kind of go to market strategy and having been in the ecosystem for a little bit. And so for me, what's always attracted to me to crypto and Web 3.0, is these kind of new ultimately end user experiences that you enable for, not just those of us who've been kind of nerding out over technical sort of minutia left and right but really making that accessible and available.Lily (04:17):Some of the things that I'm really excited about facilitating through the foundation is kind of new markets growth outside of the US, outside of Europe, outside of the parts of East Asia that are already very familiar with cryptocurrency. And to me, it's so clear that if these types of applications, call it DeFi or sort of more metaverse or social or NFTs are going to take hold, then it's most likely going to start on Solana first. And so just being a part of that and sort of making that more accessible to a broader rate of people is really what's exciting to me.Austin Federa (04:51):And Mabel, you tell us a little bit about your path to becoming a board member at the Solana Foundation.Mabel (04:57):I think among all the people here, I probably joined the board the earliest. I joined when the board started, the foundation started. That kind of history just goes back to when I think before the token launch of Solana happened to that Anatoly and Raj, they were in China and in East Asia. And then that was even before my time joining Multicoin. I met them, obviously at that point it was 2019 and then it wasn't really easy to raise fund for sure. But then we kind of just happened to hang out a lot in Shanghai, in Seoul. I think another places like Beijing and whatever. And then we spent a bunch of time over those three weeks and then talked about, oh, how do I think about or how do we usually think about go to market strategies for public chains? And then how do people really differentiate one smart contract from the other?When they go back to San Francisco, they ask, "Can you maybe write us some sort of expansion or kind of go to market plan for Solana in East Asia?" And I did that. That was right around the time when they're forming a board for the foundation. And then, that's also around the time when I joined Multicoin. They invited, it's like since you're part of the ecosystem and then you are pretty unique kind of position compared to some of the other board members, are you interested to kind of help Solana Foundation or raising the Solana awareness in a global sense? I was like, oh, that was really interesting in a differentiated way to contribute to the ecosystem so I said, yes.Since then, that was start of 2020. Since then over now, I've been doing quite a bit of things, always related to those lines, raising the awareness for Solana in China specifically because that's where I'm sitting. And also in some other places in Asia and also try to just kind of talk to different projects in multiple different ecosystem. And obviously now it's a multi chain world and then people would have different trade offs, like when to choose different things. But when they learn about Solana and learn about why they're optimizing certain things in the design, they're always willing to try it because back in 2020, there aren't that many people know about it. I think the first step really is just to having people understand how the system works and whatnot. I've been doing quite a bit of those. I think that's kind of my experience involved with Solana Foundation.Austin Federa (07:31):And Dan, as you kind of think about your role as the sort of executive director at the Solana Foundation, how do you define scope for an organization like that? What are the sort of things you're thinking about when you're thinking about initiatives that the foundation is engaging in or things the foundation is not doing and shouldn't be doing in your view?Dan (07:52):Yeah, that's an excellent question. Really, I see it as two primary areas of focus with kind of the overarching goal being broad growth of the network and the community itself without an eye towards turning a profit for the foundation. This is a nonprofit organization. We're not taking any equity investments or really taking the position to be picking winners. There's plenty of incredible innovation that's happening on Solana, lots of competing projects, lots of new stuff. And the foundation really wants to position itself to support, really talking how to provide support equally for everyone in the ecosystem. And so one of the primary thrusts, one of our main operational kind of focus points these days is really on growing the network itself from an infrastructure standpoint. That's really been my personal area of focus for really a long time now is how can we get the most number of high quality validator operators, the most humans running the most number of nodes, be it validators or RPC nodes, which serve as the API endpoints or API gateways for applications using the Solana network?And to that end, the foundation has rolled out a number of programs, really leveraging kind of the foundation's holdings of tokens, which are really allocated to grow the community and grow the network. Kind of as I see it, I don't know, maybe a bit of a personal tangent here. I originally started engaging with Solana in early 2019. I was working on the engineering team at Solana Labs and it was early stage startup. We hadn't even launched the Testnet yet, just kind of scrappy early days, trying to get everyone to understand and hey, proof of history is a real thing. We're really going to prove out this tech. And one of the things that was really hard was trying to get people to run validators. A lot of our early stage validators that helped us launch Testnet for the very first time and get Mainnet off the ground were a lot of them came from the Cosmos ecosystem.And so, we have a lot of these kind of OG longstanding validators who really helped get the Solana network off the ground came from standing on the shoulders of giants. The Cosmos ecosystem brought so much innovation to the proof of stake universe and kind of where this ties back to, in early days, myself and a couple of the early labs employees in true startup fashion, we were actually working out of one of the co-founder's basements and we hand built some of the first bare metal validators to run on the Solana network. Ordering parts on the internet, showing up in a bunch of boxes and just going forward kind of hacking on the hardware, trying to see how much performance we can squeeze out of these individual machines.We went and installed them in a data center here in the Colorado area and those nodes are still running today. Some of them are pointed at Mainnet, some of them are Testnet. And that was sort of the, I don't know, the genesis of, at least for me personally, a lot of my personal investment in seeing the growth of the validator ecosystem on Solana, having kind of physically hooked up and bootstrapped some of the first ones. And now having transitioned earlier this year to take on this role at the foundation, we maintain a program for anyone who wants to run a validator, can engage with tier one data centers all over the world that the foundation has. We've really kind of went to bat for our validator community and helped a lot of these infrastructure providers understand that, yeah, it takes a lot of horsepower to run a node on Solana and it can be hard to get your hands on some of these machines.And so in working with some of these execs at some of these older school, I'll say more traditional telco or infrastructure oriented companies, helping them to understand the value of what a powerful and secure and distributed Solana infrastructure ecosystem looks like, that's really been an exciting kind of growth track, I think for the foundation in helping to bring more hardware online and helping more people to learn to run it and get more nodes running and keep the network flying.Austin Federa (12:16):Yeah, I love the parallels to the Cosmos ecosystem being a validator ecosystem being early, early supporters of that because of course, Tendermint is also notoriously computationally intensive and runs better on bare metal than cloud so it seems like a very natural validator group to bring over in the early days.Lily, from your view, as looking over the ecosystem, what are the parts you see that are working really well in the Solana ecosystem? What do you see are areas, be it tooling, Dan talked a little about infrastructure, areas in which the foundation can make a difference in help evolving?Lily (12:53):What I think is going quite well right now is a lot of the interest in the energy and kind of the inbound on various stakeholder groups within the community. I think there's a lot of excitement from a general audience also because it's very accessible to a general audience. Again, as we were saying earlier, if it costs dollars versus hundreds of dollars to mint an NFT, that's a very meaningful difference to many people. I think general awareness has been amazing. I think there's a lot of increased developer interest and accessibility. And if you look at sort of the hackathons that we've had, probably every two or three months, three or four months in the ecosystem, the number of sort of people who are new to Web 3.0 that are starting with Solana, I think is really impressive and has grown tremendously in a very short period of time.We want to continue to extend that in various ways. And we've got a number of ideas as to sort of increasing the accessibility to even a retail audience, putting out sort of better documentation, better tooling to continue sort of onboard both maybe existing Web 3.0 developers who might be building in solidity or on sort of an EVM type environment. As well as, increasingly there's pretty substantial influx of folks coming over from Web 2.0 and thinking about where to get started and are starting off by making choices between essentially now it's really solidity or Rust and Rust, implicitly sort of Solana. And so I think that we can continue to invest in various ways of sort of helping people start within the Solana ecosystem. And I think that because Solana has grown so quickly in a very short period of time, there are also sort of ecosystem tools that are catching up right now.One thing that we hear a lot about is kind of indexing within Solana is something that we can probably improve as a community, data analytics on Solana, given that a lot of the applications are very sort of more consumer retail audience oriented is something that I think is also, actively being worked on. And so those are of the sort of near term things that people are thinking about. Obviously with the pretty tremendous growth of the ecosystem, also making it easier for people to run nodes, have access to baseline infrastructure. That's also something we've invested tremendous resources on through data center partnerships and it's known that Solana some higher hardware requirements but we've invested a lot to try to take down those various barriers. Those are some of the things that we've been thinking about.Dan (15:38):Yeah. And I would actually just kind of add to that. Some people do like to kind of harp on the interesting hardware requirements or high end hardware requirements for Solana. In the broad scope of things, when kind of the history is written about at these sorts of things, it's like, this is going to be something that's in a number of years or maybe even just a couple years, it's going to run on whatever machine you want to plug in to your home. We do have some validators that are running infrastructure out of their home. Some people choose to run in data centers. Some people do, God bless them, choose to run it in the cloud. But I think to Lily's point regarding the incredibly rapid growth of the Solana ecosystem, I think one area where we're really starting to dedicate more resources, particularly me personally and from the foundation side is on helping more people understand what Solana infrastructure really looks like.We've seen Tremendous resources and the developer relations team has put out incredible resources for new developers for Web 3.0 but the kind of tooling and community knowledge base of what does it take to run a good validator? And what does it mean to run a validator? Why should I care? I think it has a little ways to go in sort of advancing that narrative a little bit. In particular to lower the barrier to entry from, oh, you must be a sysadmin or a DevOps expert to, what I'd really love to see is all of these Web 3.0 teams and Web 3.0 app developers who are having a great time enjoying Solana and building on Solana, also participate in running the network that they so appreciate. I'd love to see more community buy in of teams that are vested in their project being built on top of a working Solana to help Solana run.What we've seen, even in just the last couple weeks or so, a number of these sort of NFT based Dow communities that have popped up on Solana over the last six months or so have started really taking this message to heart and are launching their own validator, which is just really cool to see. I know, I think Monkeydow claims the title of first Dow to launch a validator on Solana. I know the Degen Apes and the Degen community have also launched. And so it's just really cool to see these communities that really organically popped up around people enjoying NFTs and collecting these cool RNFTs that kind of blew up on Solana this summer now really starting to take a stake in the consensus and ownership and management of the network itself. And so I'm really excited to see that to start happen and really something I want to hope that the foundation can foster. And it's just something I also am excited to see the community really kind of taking it into their own hands more.Austin Federa (18:39):Yeah. I kind of love that, that it's so easy, even a monkey can do it. Is kind of the tagline there.Dan (18:47):It's perfect.Austin Federa (18:48):And the other, the Degen Apes, which are famous for having probably the least technically successful NFT launch to ever have been done by any organization have now their own validator. It's a good testament to how far we've come.Dan (19:02):It was incredible. It was such a struggle. There were all sorts of technical issues, like with the Metaplex standard had recently rolled out. They had various challenges with the mints and it was this saga that we all kind of watched unfold on Twitter and on all these channels over a number of days. And I got to give them credit. There were frustration, there was joy, there were tears. And it came out with one of the most unique, strong, enthusiastic communities on Solana having kind of gone through the fire of this rocky birth that was the minting process. More power to them. I just thought it was just so cool.Austin Federa (19:48):Yeah. I love how that all gets constructed. Kind of, along those lines, you Dan, you came initially from Solana Labs, you were one of the early engineers in the ecosystem. You're now working at the foundation. What's that transition been like? How closely do you still work with people like Raj and Anatoly? What's that relationship like?Dan (20:08):Yeah. I think the working relationship it's really interesting. There has been obviously, Solana, the whole network was built and originally launched, all the code came out of Solana Labs, where Raj and Toly run the organization. And they're obviously major players in the Solana ecosystem. This is the vision and the hustle that they've really brought to the table has been instrumental in kind of getting the whole community and the whole Solana ecosystem and the tech stack to really where it is today I think. Where we relate from the foundation is as sort of industry peers, I would say, sure, I talk to Raj and Toly, I talk with a lot of the ecosystem teams, I talk with our board and Lily and so many people that have an interest in Solana's success on the broadest terms and that's to really what the foundation is here to foster. As we continue to grow and expand and evolve our kind of working relationships with a lot of these organizations, I think just continues to evolve and expand.Austin Federa (21:22):And Mabel, looking at, you mentioned a bunch of the work you were doing was helping grow Solana in new markets. Can you talk a little bit about that? And I think, a lot of people, especially who are not working in the region, there's a lot of information around whether cryptocurrency is going to be banned in India or China, sort of how do you view some of those approaches?Mabel (21:44):Yeah, definitely. I'll answer the first part of the questions. I think it's going to be pretty much the same line as what Lily and Dan just mentioned but I'll kind of carve out those into details. I'd say, at the beginning you are also, you definitely need to engage a lot of these staking facilities but these people here it's quite differentiated because many of them are running the mining pools, meaning the proof of work mining pools. I remember back in the days, in 2019, 2020, we were talking to a bunch of those and happened to be that a lot of those are just crashing their wifi in the office. It's pretty funny. But at the same time, Dom who's from Solana Labs, we're trying to age of all of these mining pools and then we're just giving out some of those GPUs.But I think that's in the past. Now a lot more validators are actually starting from East Asia. I think there's some problem with in the past, with your location being far from the US so that's it's harder because Amazon cloud and whatnot but I think basically there's what Dan mentioned earlier, I think this will be a problem that can be solved in the future. I thought that was a pretty interesting thing to bootstrap at the beginning. And then the other things like wallets and non-custodial wallets, custodial wallets, because I think for East Asian crypto, you can never kind of ignore the centralized parties and players, especially I think in the past 24 month all the way till the next 12 month or whatever. I think a lot of those custodial wallets, including some of those exchanges, it was a lot of very pivotal work to try to engage them to support Solana, to support STL, USDC, USCT and a lot of the other stablecoins. I think, those steps that we were able to achieve in the past year in order to get a lot of these centralized exchanges to support those, I think that's also pretty interesting.Mabel (23:50):I think the other thing is that you just generally need to go to wherever because like back in the days in 2 18, 19 and 20, not that many groups are fully aware of how Solana works or even if it's like in Rust, I think people here I'd say safely were more familiar with things like Polkadot than Solana back in the days. Talking to some of those developers and just telling them, there's a few different options and then go to some of the hackathons or just developer meetups or even just the Rust China conferences, and then to promote about it. Justin Stery, he spoke there. A lot of these engagement opportunities definitely helped over the past two years for Solana to really get the writers here.I think that work still continue. And I think I believe that there will be a lot more application focused developers coming over, given from the history of Web 2.0, you see a lot of your infrastructure was built in the West but then application wise actually quite a few of them came from the East. I think, for Solana, for anything that's building on top of the smart contract platform, we could probably spec on the same track. You'll see a lot of people are going to build on top. Now once all of these are available.I think one interesting thing is that for things like wallet, you have Phantom for browser because I think in the West, people are pretty used to using browser wallet but I think here in the East, you also need something that has really good user experience and people like to go mobile first. And that's why Slope Finance, which is one of the leading mobile wallet for Solana in China, they were doing really well because they understand the user behavior and all of those to deliver to the specific audience. I thought this is like quite interesting how you will need to focus on specific areas, the same thing for East and West but then you want to make sure that people get to have the best culturally fitting choices for them so that way you can actually get it around.And then to answer the second part of the questions, so I actually the other day had a tweet about similar lines. There's a lot of Web 2.0 venture capitals and then some of the other funded funds, they're trying to deploy money and then we're asking it's still East Asia or some of the other places around still relevant because of the policy. The way I read this is that crypto is really global. I understand that there's certain restriction for developers to issue cryptocurrencies in China or in some of the other countries. However, I think the language circle and then user behavior, what I just mentioned was always going to be something more pivotal than the actual restriction. These people will move to somewhere else in Asia but they will continue to build. And then for people who want to use the kind of user experience for those products who are sitting here.I think crypto liquidity is global but user experience is always regional. And I think, if you're growing an ecosystem, you can't ignore that. I'd say I'm still bullish. And I think people are recognizing some a lot of those things are just better built on Solana because it's higher performance. And then at the end, it's just about how you make sure that you are compliant to the place that you are at. And then not definitely go with the compliance part but then also not hindering yourself building.Austin Federa (27:23):Lily, Dan, do you have anything to add on growth in new markets and that process?Lily (27:29):Yeah. On new markets, we started to invest in building out the ecosystem in India, back in June and July. And it's no secret, there's extremely large both user bases and also developer communities. I think in the most recent hackathon, after the US, the second largest contributor of developers, developer submissions to the hackathon was from India. And I think Indonesia was in the top four as well. And so I think as we continue to look to Eastern Europe, for example, Latin America, Africa, some of the early narratives as to what applications would be unique and sort of the 10X type of functionality on crypto, have been talked about and written about for years, if not decades. And for example, payment applications Which become supercharged when you take DeFi functionality, global liquidity pools and they make that adjacent to an actual you potentially consumer transaction.And I think that that to me, it's very clear that that's going to happen on Solana first. And so, what I'm particularly excited about is some of those seemingly sort of everyday type of transactions but those actually becoming very unique when you, for example, can take a stablecoin and have a Venmo feeling type of transaction or a WeChat pay feeling type of transaction but it's actually fully decentralized, fully on chain and also comes with a potentially a suite of financial services that are kind of baked into the ecosystem adjacent to that. I think those are the types of things that are going to resonate hugely in emerging markets, in new markets. And those are some of the things that I'm excited about maybe exploring in new markets.Austin Federa (29:10):Yeah. I do love how sort of culturally infectious the crypto mindset is. That to use a network, you also have to be an owner of the network and that the success of the network and the success of you as a user are tied in a way that they're really not in the setup of a stock corporation or something along those lines. You can sort of think of these things in some ways as giant digital co-ops that are all working towards this goal. It's really interesting to kind of hear that. And I'm really curious to see in the future, how that starts influencing culture. I think we're already seeing crypto just barely start to influence culture and that might take off a bit in the future. Be interesting to see.Lily (29:54):I think it is. And I think what's under the surface with crypto but what rapidly rises to the surface is that it's been talked about, written about philosophically for a very, very long time, this whole idea of a veil of ignorance, that your opportunity set is determined in large part sort of where you're geographically born today, rather than you know who you are as a person and what's in your heart and what's in your mind. And with crypto, you sort of have this radical accessibility. It's almost sort of radical equality if you will, in a way that we haven't really observed in a long time. And so I think that's really upending in so many different ways and that for me is a big part of why I continue to be interested in cryptocurrency. And also why I think Solana is really going to be at the forefront of that because all of those sorts of ideas, the accessibility, the sort of the very concept of why Web 3.0 is important and where people are most likely to get started on that today is the sort of general awareness funnels.People will hear about Bitcoin. They'll learn about Bitcoin. They'll learn about store value and people will resonate with that. Your average person will resonate with that because it sounds so much like digital goals. But then once they start to learn about Bitcoin, they're like, okay, I've bought it, I get it. It's kind of like gold for the digital age. What's next? Well can I do DeFi on Bitcoin? Eh, no, not really. Lightning, we've been talking about it since 2015. Soon.And then very quickly from there, people move on to, okay, well here, well that's really amazing. These sort of new applications. And I have some friends who bought NFTs and then they click a button and it's a $100 later. Gosh. Oh, that was painful. And I think that's kind of what a number of people have gone through so far. And so people sort of get onboarded to why this is important, why this is really sort of very exciting and part of the future. And then eventually what I've seen is so many people sort of end up with being in the Solana ecosystem. I guess what I'm excited about is accelerating that and maybe making it a little bit less of a circuitous journey.Mabel (31:59):I have a story to share related to what we were talking about here. I think, I now all of these protocols are starting to talk about Shopify type of experience, which is you have an underlying protocol and then you just have different ends. You just host a different way. It's actually not just for the cultural purpose. One story was shared by Roneil who's the co-founder of Audius, last week with me. He was saying that he realized because Audius is actually not, I think the main front end was not allowed in China at some point but then somebody actually set up a separate front end that's actually and filter out and then based on whatever the local compliance should be let a whole thing run. That front end actually works.He was exactly kind of explaining to me how he was amazed by Audius should be the underlying protocol and then it should be determined by the front end itself on the ground, what to feature versus not. And everybody can have their own choices. That's a freedom choice. Nobody's going to question that. I thought that was like really amazing. It's definitely beat beyond just kind of I think this is really relevant to what we were talking about earlier because I think for Solana, it's the same thing, a lot of the things. It may not be compliant for a certain reason in the region but I think at the end it's about the front end. It's not about the protocol. The protocol should be permissionless. Anyone else can just do whatever they want but for the ones that you want to make it work for a certain region, you can just do that. I thought that was really, really amazing and very unique about crypto.Austin Federa (33:30):Yeah. I love that, that sort of view that because of the financial incentives with crypto, you can decouple the application layer from the protocol layer, that those two things can be separate. This is in some ways, this is the dream of Twitter. We had this glorious few years where there were all these Twitter clients and then it all got, because the app engine was introduced, it all got consolidated down to twitter.com and the Twitter mobile apps. And RIP all of our favorite Twitter clients from back in the day. I love that, that the way this technology is built, it allows you to really separate those two things at origin, as opposed to having to think about the business models that support that over the long term.Dan (34:09):I would actually add, I think there's interesting things happening, both in the decoupling of that, like you said, the application and the protocol there but also an interesting sort of coupling there kind of to Lily's point about this shared ownership of the success of the project. And that's really this kind of shared ownership of the network is really the kind of core underpinning, this core idea that underpins this idea of staking on a proof of steak network. Which is your success is tied to the success and this really the security of the network. And what we're starting to see now are applications and DeFi applications, particularly stake pools that have recently launched on Solana that really bring the ability to participate in the shared security and shared ownership of the network to the application layer.There have been a bunch of community launched stake pools. There's some private stake pools. The foundation is in the process of transitioning its entire treasury over to stake pools, which are really this, I think we did a whole podcast episode on this recently so I won't belabor the technical details here but basically it gives people an easy way to enter and exit from a liquid position, which is actively helping to secure the network via staking to various validators in the underlying smart contract. But what I think is really interesting about this is we're starting to see these public stake pools that pop up, Marinade Finance, JPool, Socient, Lido and a few others that are really bringing the application experience, that really slick, fast, fast and cheap promise of what does it feel like to just use a useful service built on top of Solana and oh, how cool that a normal user can transact in these stake pool tokens rather than unstaked SOL.And I think we recently saw the first, there was an NFT sale or an NFT mint that was accepting stake pool tokens, a staked SOL positions, rather unstaked SOL. So we're starting to see this adoption of people who are not only just developing apps and playing around on the application layer but also recognizing that there's tremendous value in sort of moving the denominator of how we transact value on Solana to be pegged to the participation of securing the network itself.Austin Federa (36:40):Yeah, that's a really great point. Looking forwards, Looking into this year of 2022, what are the things that you see in Web 3.0 and crypto that have potential that could become trends that are going to advance and increase? I'll kind of start out. One of my big ones that I think is we're going to see a lot of the sort of tech-ish companies adopting decentralized Web 3.0 technologies as a competitive advantage to compete with a lot of vertically integrated companies. I think you're going to see a lot in payroll. You're going to see a lot in merchant payments, concert tickets. These companies that don't have platform scale are going to look to Web 3.0 as a competitive advantage. And you might see that role into the rest of the ecosystem. Dan, I'm curious kind of what your thoughts are. And we'll just go around the room here.Dan (37:30):Yeah, I think your spot on there, Austin. And I think one of the things that's really going to help unlock that is these sort of higher levels of abstraction of developer tooling and more sort of almost enterprise API access, if you will, to provide a more Web 2.0 like interface experience that someone could just plug in and it's Solana as a service. There's your SaaS for 2022 and it's instant settlement in stablecoins on Solana but no one needs to worry about the fact that it's a stablecoin on Solana. It's they integrate this API and the money transfers or the token transfers from merchant to customer or vendor to seller, whoever, immediately. I think that starting to see people using crypto and using blockchain without realizing that they're using a blockchain technology.Austin Federa (38:22):Lily, what are your 2022 predictions?Lily (38:25):I think industry wide I'm with you that Web 3.0 is going to become the starting point rather than sort of the periphery. I think that we're well on our way where Web 3.0 is going to sort of foment this decentralized center. And I think that there's a few things that are sort of going to happen alongside, in my perspective. One is this kind of movement towards multichain slash interchain future is just accelerating. I think that there's a few sort of different consolations within the ecosystem. There's clearly sort of the EVM world which we're going to have a connection to through Neon EVM. There's a lot of sort of obviously energy within Solana. There's some other, IBC, we talked about Cosmos a little a bit is probably another sort of approach within that and then connectors within these.And so I think there's various foci that are going to emerge there and increasingly there is going to be sort of those sort of layer ones are actually, I think, going to be abstracted away over time as they probably should be when you talk about sort of appeal to your average person. I think that another theme that I see emerging is as more institutions want to get into this and compliance with existing regulatory frameworks, institutional KYC and tooling to allow institutions to participate in decentralized liquidity pools, which I think is going to be pretty exciting. And so that's where the existing world is actually going to start getting onboarded in earnest into Web 3.0. That's going to be quite interesting.I think with that, there's a big theme around a sort of identity and privacy and on chain identity and having a little bit more control over your data on chain is another big thing, the theme that's going to evolve. And then, certainly in a consumer area, I think that NFTs went from being a very analog sort of digital representation of physical art and have now morphed into basically being the entry point into sort of Web 3.0 communities and metaverse and these kind of almost new communities, dare I say civilizations that are starting to sprout online. And so those are some of the from the more institutional to the more consumer, I think there's just so much happening out there. That's all really just going to continue to develop at a rapid pace in 2022.Austin Federa (40:49):And Mabel, what do you see for 2022?Mabel (40:51):Yeah. I'd like to maybe talk a little bit more about the application as in the middleware layer. Especially the crypto native ones. We've seen a lot of DeFi activities, 2020, 2021 for on Solana specifically because people like how fast transactions are like. But I think what's more excited, also something that I've been spending a lot of time thinking about and then exploring is that the actual kind of Web 3.0 application experience, what does that mean? People have been talking about metaverse so to speak for a long time but the things people can do beyond finance is never really happening before but I think there are, we've seen from a lot of the recent hackathons that you'll have address to address IM protocols, you have some of the Web 3.0 social graph where you can just basically have the relationship you with another person.And then another, some of the other things open C collections or some of the other things that you did. And then you also have things like on chain credentialing protocols. All of these, we are seeing them happening on Solana. And then with all of these composable, with each other, you can actually see that you have relationship between people in a game, for example. Or when you bootstrap a new application with the social graph, you can you customize the front page that you push to the users based on the social graph because like you have all those data. Obviously what Lily said about privacy preservation was very, very important. You don't want to share everything, which kind of it's kind of against the purpose but I think the idea is that for Web 3.0, you own the data.You are the one who approves the blockchain or whoever else to access your data of all eth and you control whether you approve someone to be your public connected contact. And then things like on chain credentials, you can prove, what are some of your achievements based on the contribution off chain. At this court discussion or things like whatever you've provided liquidity in the past for certain period of time or you just basically voted every single time in the community snapshot. All of these become your kind of on chain resumes or on chain badges that can later on help whatever you prioritize into a community. It's the such thing we call gated community. I think all of these are coming together. We're going to see actual consumer experience available on Solana. I thought that was extremely exciting because I think with all of these enabled, people will have no difference of experience compared to some of the other Web 2.0 application experience. I thought that's going to be very huge.Austin Federa (43:35):Well, thank you all for joining us today. It's fun to talk about some of these things that are not quite as pressing, as user facing that developers aren't picking up and doing but are nonetheless integral to the network and it's growth and its future. And I think it's really fun to talk with the names and some of the people behind the Solana Foundation. Thanks for joining us today.Lily (44:00):Thanks for having us, Austin.Mabel (44:01):Thank you.Dan (44:02):Great to be here. Thanks a lot.
A Conversation With Matt Sorg From Solana Labs Episode 13 of the podcast features Matt Sorg from Solana Labs. Matt Leads the tech and product for Solana Labs' gaming features. He explains why a professional background in the traditional gaming industry and understanding traditional gaming culture is vital to blockchain gaming success. Matt also discusses how programs like grants and hackathons help support a sustainable ecosystem. As a reminder, the GamiFi $GMI token is only available on: PancakeSwap: (https://pancakeswap.finance/swap?outputCurrency=0x93D8d25E3C9A847a5Da79F79ecaC89461FEcA846) MEXC (https://www.mexc.com/exchange/GMI_USDT). Be sure to use $GMI token contract address 0x93D8d25E3C9A847a5Da79F79ecaC89461FEcA846. Also, staking is now live on the GamiFi site, and you can earn up to 225% APY by staking your $GMI tokens. The views expressed on air during GamiFi Everything: Beyond the Metaverse do not represent the views of the RAGE Works staff, partners, or affiliates. Follow Marcus Howard on Social Media Twitter: https://twitter.com/ThereAreTwoOfMeFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/marcus.howard.3382/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcus-esports-howard-60785023/ Follow GamiFi on Social Media Official Site: https://gamifi.gg/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gamifiggDiscord: https://discord.com/invite/T4Q3ytzE3ALinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gamifi-gg/ Check Out Some of the Other Shows on the RAGE Works Network Black is the New Black: https://www.rageworksnetwork.com/show/bitnb/Turnbuckle Tabloid: https://www.rageworksnetwork.com/show/tbt/Toys & Tech of the Trade: https://www.rageworksnetwork.com/show/ttott/Trek Untold: https://www.rageworksnetwork.com/show/trek-untold/The Eat 4 Life Podcast: https://www.rageworksnetwork.com/show/eat4life/
Chewing glass is what Solana developers do. Introducing the second episode in a new series on the Solana Podcast, Chewing Glass. Chase Barker (Developer Relations Lead at Solana Labs) talks shop with the most interesting builders in the Solana ecosystem. It's for devs, by devs. Todays guest is pencilflip, a Solana dev who joined the Solana ecosystem just a few months ago, and in addition to contributing tools, guides and twitter threads for fellow developers, he recently founded Formfunction, a marketplace for 1/1 NFTs. 00:39 - Intro01:51 - pencilflip's background03:30 - Working at facebook vs. web 3.007:31 - How pencilflip got into crypto08:52 - Views on NFTs10:45 - Getting into Solana15:29 - Experience working in lower level17:56 - What was his method to learn Solana?21:01 - What's the hardest concept on Solana?23:53 - How fast did he move from Rust to Anchor?27:35 - Building on Solana33:24 - Advice to people moving to Web 3.0 Intro Voice Overs: (00:00)If we can't talk to each other, we're not going to make it. Sometimes I feel like I've been a lot full more than I can chew. Most of the time I work in a glass jar and lead a very uneventful life. Face full of glass hurts like hell, when you're in it. That's weird that glass looks half full to me. Eating glass, eating glass is staring at the abyss. Gosh who gives a shit about glass. It's part of our culture to eat glass. Hey get some safety goggles next time.Chase: (00:38)Hey everybody. And welcome to Chewing Glass the show where we talk to Solana developers building in the Solana ecosystem. Today, we have Matthew Lim, aka pencilflip. Matthew is actually one of the young bloods in the Solana ecosystem. I think I met him maybe two or three months ago. He was doing some really cool threads on Solana. So I reached out, we set up a call. He really dove into everything that has been going on in Solana and produced some really cool content. Everybody's been watching and just really interested in what he has to say. So with all that, Matt welcome. And how's it going?pencilflip: (01:21)It's good. Thanks for having me on here, Chase.Chase: (01:23)No, this is great. I know you and I have been trying to plan this conversation for quite a while. We just kept pushing it back. Things happen. Crypto happens fast. So it's great to have you today. I guess we'll just go ahead and jump right in. One of the first things that I think probably really cool especially somebody coming from Web 2.0 into Web 3.0 is really just, what's your background really interested to hear?pencilflip: (01:51)Yeah, so I guess before I dove fully into Web 3.0, I majored in computer science at Caltech. And then I went to go work at Facebook for a few years or Meta now, I guess. And so there I was working on a few different teams. First, I worked on integrity building out Facebook's content moderation platform, which is the biggest in the world. We have like tens of thousands of content moderators, so building out the tools and services for them. After that, I switched over to AR VR, whereas helping build Ray band stories, like three band glasses with a camera and a voice assistant. And that was a lot more like a lower level protocol work, basically working on the communications protocol between the glasses in your phone. And then finally I was at Facebook NPE. It's like an incubator inside Facebook, a bunch of smaller teams working on more zero to one projects outside of Facebook's main family of apps. And for that, I was doing more full stack web development.Chase: (02:43)I mean, that's pretty amazing. What languages are you actually working in when you're working on this project at Facebook?pencilflip: (02:51)Yeah, so I guess it varied from team. When I was doing more web stuff, the backend is in Hack, which is like Facebook's typed version of PHP. Front end is JavaScript or like Flow typed with flow. And then when I was working at AR VR, it was basically just all C++.Chase: (03:11)So C++, is that the only low level language you would work in at the time?pencilflip: (03:16)Yeah, at Facebook, it's the only low level language I worked with.Chase: (03:20)Obviously Facebook Metaverse lots of things going on there, crypto. So how was that? How was your experience working at Facebook and then to follow up, how was your experience working on Facebook compared to what you're doing right now in Web 3.0?pencilflip: (03:38)Yeah, that's a good question, I think. To just in general, how I liked working at Facebook, I think it is like in the beginning, when I first came into the company, I was learning a ton, basically experiencing for the first time building products that people are using at scale. And then I think over time, my learning curve got flatter or I start learning things as quickly and then stop learning as much, which is a big part of the reason why I eventually chose to leave. And that was like, even though I was switching teams pretty frequently and switching to different text stacks. At the end of the day, you're still working at this really big company. And back when I was at Facebook, there wasn't as big of a focus on the metaverse and all that.Although AR VR was a pretty big focus and in general I'm pretty bullish on AV VR. So it was really fun to work on that stuff there. And I'd say in terms of the differences between working there versus now doing some of my own stuff in Web 3.0, I think now I'm just moving a lot faster. Web 3.0 in general moves so fast. There's new stuff happening every day. Huge things happening every day. Obviously on the regulatory side, things move a little more quickly too, because Facebook is bogged down by all these laws and GDPR and the FTC consent order. And in Web 3.0, most people, I think we're ahead of the regulation and the regulation needs to catch up to crypto. So yeah, just like the speed at which things happen, I think is a big difference.Chase: (05:06)That's actually... I don't know. I was a little more surprised whenever I heard you say that Facebook is slowed down by regulatory things. And I guess it took me back a little bit for a second. I was like, wait, crypto, there's lots of... Wait a second. People just ignore those for now until there's actually something going on. So it was pretty funny to hear that. Yeah. So, I mean, that's really cool in general, did you enjoyed working at Facebook up until the point where you ended up, I guess plateauing, as you say, like technologically?pencilflip: (05:38)Yeah. I think there's a lot of pros and cons of working there. It is really cool to see how one of the biggest companies in the world runs thing. Just to give you an understanding of what the infrastructure looks like at that level, how things are organized. And also when you build stuff, you're shipping it to build millions, if not billions of people, which is just a really cool thing. But on the other hand, right, you're at a big company so the overall impact you have is a lot smaller. And also as you go into a big... Working at a big company, there's a lot more processes in place too. So it's a little harder to get things done, because you have to go through maybe multiple layers of people or multiple layers of processes. So yeah, overall I'd say there's definitely good and bad parts, but I did enjoy working there. And I learned a lot of stuff.Chase: (06:26)The layers involved in the middle management and above middle management, below... All the different levels of management in this corporate... I mean, I came from the corporate world. I'm so glad I found crypto because that was somewhat the vein of my existence, to be honest. And I did a tweet the other day, just really thinking about that. And I was saying if somebody tried to sit me down and show me their spring NBC app, I literally might just die by having to deal with it. So it's the experience going from that world has been really, and coming to Web 3.0 has been incredibly great for me personally. And it sounds like it's the same for a lot of other people, but to your point about seeing how an organization like Facebook operates and being able to execute at scale like that, is pretty incredible.And having people from that industry come here, hopefully what they learn is how to leave the bad and bring the good into crypto because there's probably tons of lessons learned from Facebook, how things could be done better in crypto, but also how to keep the things that were not super efficient out of there, but it's all very interesting stuff to me. So moving on, I would say the next thing is how did you get started in crypto in general? Like whether it was... You could start with how you got found out about crypto when you found out about it and then like how you actually ended up starting to get involved more on the development side of things.pencilflip: (08:09)Obviously the first thing I heard about was Bitcoin back in college and I read about it and I was like, "Oh, this is cool," but I didn't like pursue it that much. And then maybe fast forward to 2017 when CryptoKitties was a thing again, I was like, "Oh, this is cool." And I got a CryptoKitties or two. And then I got-Chase: (08:26)Well, that nostalgia right there, man, CryptoKitty's holy cow.pencilflip: (08:30)And then at the beginning of this year, one of my best friends was basically telling me about NFTs. And then I started looking into it more also based on all the activity that was happening. I actually did try to find my CryptoKitties, but I forgot my C phrase. So it's gone forever.Chase: (08:47)Well, at least you didn't give it away to somebody else who ended up stealing them. So I mean, maybe that's a little bit better.pencilflip: (08:52)Yeah. That's true. That's gone forever. I've never getting that back. But anyways, yeah so at the beginning of the year I started looking more into NFTs and following things more closely. And then it was only really until a few months ago though maybe September, I think around September where I really started going in really deep and learning and reading and also building things and trying to figure out what is web 3.0 and how does crypto work and what stuff could be built on it?Chase: (09:23)What did you think about NFTs? Did you actually see value? And then when you started diving in, how did that change your mind?pencilflip: (09:29)A lot of people immediately get it. And then a lot of people are like, "Well, it's weird." And I was actually more on the latter side. I was like, "Huh." I mean, I got the fact that, okay, it's like people collect stuff and now you can collect digital stuff. I think that's the most straightforward explanation for me, but I was still confused about like, okay, why are people paying all this money for it? In general, it was a little confusing, but I was kind of like dove into it more and both started using the products and like talking to different artists and creators and developers in this space, it started to become more clear what the utility was and why it's actually a really awesome technology for both artists and collectors. So yeah. That's how, and as far as like NFTs go.Chase: (10:16)Yeah, for me, I was never actually really skeptical. I just wasn't completely sold on them as what they were. The art thing was great. But then as time went on, I'm like there's communities forming around this. You now have this visual identifier on social media platforms. It's where before maybe it was a sports team, you see this guy with his shirt and he likes the Chicago bulls, just like you do, so now you connect. Now you, simply scrolling through your feed on social media, like Twitter, you see an SMB or you see a thug birds and you're like, "Oh, we're friends now."It's the community building aspect that's has been pretty incredible to me. And then now beyond that, we've starting to see things with utility, like Genesis Go and different things like that that are trying to take it to a different level on how these things can be used. But it's been really cool to see. So when you got into this NFTs, what was your next step in terms... You dove into... I'm pretty sure when we spoke about this prior a couple months ago, you didn't go directly into Solana. Obviously, you started playing around elsewhere.pencilflip: (11:32)Yeah. And I guess just your point about the whole community thing. I think one thing I forget who said this, but so someone is talking about people have really expensive paintings in their house and the point is just people can look at it, but you know, realistically you probably only have 10 or 20 people over to your house, or I don't know 50 people over to your house every year, as opposed to having a Twitter avatar and like literally thousands of people can see that. And so that's like, well, actually these NFTs... More people are... They're much more visible to many more people than traditional art just hanging in your house.And yeah, as far as getting into Solana, I first started on Ethereum because that's the biggest one. It's the most resources, is it's like the one that the people I knew were working on. And so I did crypto zombies and I started learning solidity. And then I eventually ended up building this pixel art marketplace on polygon, like a layer two for Ethereum, where you can draw and mint pixelar on the website. And so I was doing all that before I got into Solana.Chase: (12:38)Now that you've gone through all the experiences of Ethereum, at what point in time did you actually find out about Solana?pencilflip: (12:46)Yeah, I think I had heard of it when I was exploring Ethereum. I knew what it was, it was another L1, but I hadn't really dove too deep into it. And the point at which I started looking more into it is when my partner and I, Catherine, we wanted to do an NFT collection and we were exploring which blockchain to do it on. And so that's when I started looking into Solana more seriously because we didn't want to do it on Ethereum. It's too expensive. We didn't really want to do it on polygon either because there's not a great community on polygon as far as NFTs use this art collections. It's more about gaming. And so even though it's fast and cheap, we felt like Solan would be better because Solana's also fast. It's also cheap. And it also has this really thriving NFT community.Chase: (13:34)Yeah. You're an Ethereum developer. Then the next thing is you're like, okay, Solana's the one. It's cheap, it's fast. It's what we want to do. You started diving in and then where did you start and what was that experience like?pencilflip: (13:49)I think for me, my approach was, and this may be different for a lot of people, but basically I was like, okay, if I want to build on Solana and really dedicate a lot of time to it, I want to understand it pretty well. And actually have justification for me spending all this time on it as opposed to just relying maybe on like, "Oh, it's market cap is going up." Like coin price is really high. I want to know the tech behind it and know why it's supposed to be better.And so at the beginning I spent a lot of time just reading through the white paper, which actually is not that detailed. Reading through the medium articles about all of Solana's different technologies and how it makes sense.Chase: (14:30)The core innovations.pencilflip: (14:31)Yeah. The core innovations exactly. Also, reading through Shinobi Systems, which is a validator on Solana, has a really good reference on proof of history and how it ties together with Solana's proof of stake. And so really just trying to understand how the blockchain actually works, how it's different than Ethereum and why the architecture allows for higher throughput, cheaper transactions. And that was really important because I wanted to understand that if I was going to spend all this time actually building on top of the blockchain.Chase: (15:07)Yeah. So you've you really deep dove into this, just to give a quick TLDR on the things that you were doing. You did some diagramming around accounts, you wrote some threads on PDAs, program derived addresses. You've done tons of deep dives into a lot of things like these exist and the documentation, but they hadn't really been broken down into these bite size, digestible chunks that are easy to understand for newer developers or web 2.0 developers or people who really haven't taken a dive into blockchain or an Ethereum developer, because lots of people try to do these one-to-one comparisons for accounts in the programming model.And there really just aren't that many. So it's really important. And everybody that's probably watching this, that knows who pencilflip is super appreciative of that. But through that process, you have a lot of experience with lower level languages. What was that experience like for you? I'm assuming you enjoy doing this or sorts of things. So maybe would you call that eating glass for yourself or do you just enjoy this so much that it's not really that for you, this was just a fun little project to understand how Solana works.pencilflip: (16:24)Yeah, it's an interesting question. I think, and I think PaulX was talking about this too on the podcast you do with him. But I think the hard part is not really learning REST. I mean, I think it can definitely be maybe more difficult, especially if maybe you've never programmed before then you're probably going to have a hard time learning REST. But as like if you do know other languages then picking up another language, at least enough to write some basic programs and not too hard especially because... And Paul X also mentioned this, there's no multi-threading in these programs, you don't have to deal with race conditions.Most of it is serial logic. You read some data, you write some data, you do some business logic. So the rest part is not super complicated, especially because Anchor provides you this very nice framework within to operate. Yeah. Like the C++ stuff I was doing at Facebook was way more painful because we were doing a lot of multi threading. You have to do all this address sanitization, thread sanitization to catch all these weird racing editions, which I haven't done in Solana yet.Chase: (17:28)So working at Facebook is also chewing glass as well.pencilflip: (17:33)Yeah. They are definitely some engineers there that are... They're chewing a lot of glass. So yeah, basically I was just going to say, I think just understanding Solana's programming model and the way accounts work and the way that programs are structured was a little more difficult than the language part.Chase: (17:51)How did you work your way through that whenever you were trying to understand these things? Did you just take a one step at a time? Did you have a game plan or did you just dive in randomly all over the place? Because one of the biggest challenges right now, currently with Solana is we're starting to have a lot more content, thanks to people like you and Paul X and many others who are creating, creating lots of content, but there's no clear path to understanding those things.And we're doing something at Solana labs. And my dev team's been working on structuring the actual path for understanding things and the order of operations in which to learn them, because that's the biggest challenge. The information's out there, but people have to cherry pick when and where, but it's a lot easier if somebody says, this is the order that you learn things. It's a lot more helpful, but then there's some engineers who were open to just straight up diving code, but like, what was your method for really understanding these things? Or you just went along with whatever happened on the day.pencilflip: (18:56)Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely a good question. And I think there's like a lot of valid approaches. So mine isn't like the right one, but basically the way I usually like to do things is, I read enough to get a basic understanding and then I'll try actually building something. And then I can just reference things that I don't understand or things that I need more information on as I build the thing. And so specifically I think Nader Dabit tutorial was really helpful. I followed that to get some basic scaffolding and a basic app up.Also, Brian Friel wrote a bunch of really good guys and writing the front end and writing the Solana program. And so I followed those, built something on my own. And then as I'm building stuff, I would like maybe modify it or maybe I ran into something that I didn't understand. So then I would look at the documentation and I think, one note too, is that for Solana, it's really important to be able to actually understand the source code and look at the program library or look at Metaplex' code because yeah, things are so early, it's not really well documented. So I think that is just something you'll have to do if you want to build in the space is get used to reading the source code. Yeah.Chase: (20:04)I, 100% agree, but there are definitely different types of learners out there. And I think we can still make that a little bit easier by going to that source and pulling out some of these smaller little snippets of code and walking through it, instead of just saying, "Hey, here's a massive program. You can just walk through this yourself." Not everybody's used to learning that. Web 2.0, especially in the younger generations, like we're in snippet heaven here. Like if it's snippet, then I don't want to touch the thing sort of, which is why we started to create the Solana cookbook.It's never going to solve all of your problems, but what it will do is give you some really good references to find it. Maybe it's not because you're finding out how to do it for the first time, but because you don't want to have to dive that code again. And here's a reference to something very normal that you would have to do on Solana and have to go back. So that's what we're trying to solve, but it's always interesting for me to just ask these questions because parts of my job is developer relations is to just ask developers what sucks and what's good and do more of the things that are good and do less of the things that suck and try to just continuously iterate and improving on this.pencilflip: (21:19)I mean, don't get me wrong. I don't think the status quo should be like, "Oh, everyone has to look at this source code." And I think the cookbook is really helping with that. Obviously it would be preferable, if you could just look at some docs, the interfaces are clearly documented. Like, "Oh, here are the accounts that get passed in. Here's the instruction data." We're just not at that state yet. But yeah, I do agree with you. It can definitely be improved and I think you, and all the stuff you're doing and everyone else is doing with the Solana cookbook is a big step towards making it easier to onboard.Chase: (21:50)We've already discussed, what were some of the challenges, but if you had to pick the most challenging thing through your experience, which one of those would it have been? Which concept on Solana was the hardest to just fully wrap your mind around and be like, "Okay, I get it. But it took me two weeks." Or however long it took you to figure it out.pencilflip: (22:09)Yeah. That's a good question. I don't know if this was maybe the most... Actually yeah, I think this was probably the most difficult and also the most important was just understanding how the account model works because after you understand that everything follows after. Like PDAs, it's the same thing, except it's derived from some seeds. So understanding how the cap model works and basically how the program state is separated from the program execution, which coming from Ethereum was a little confusing, I think just understanding that was the most difficult, but also the most important be because yeah, it's underlying the entire programming model. The way accounts work.Chase: (22:53)I think in software in general and I'm guilty of this as well, is that a lot of people actually come just really looking for shortcuts. And it's always important to know which pieces are the most... Which pieces are the hardest. Once the hardest stuff is understood, the accounts model, the PDA and the CPIs. Once you just can grasp these concepts, then your life gets exponentially easier because everything else is easy if you just buckle down and make your way through that.pencilflip: (23:24)And I think another key thing is, you don't necessarily have to do the rest part of things in order to get as in the Solana. You can be writing front end code and just interacting with existing programs. Although you still probably have to understand a little bit about how it works, but the build space course, a lot of it is just interacting with existing programs and writing JavaScript or type script. And that can also be a very, or at least a little bit easier of a way maybe to get started initially.Chase: (23:51)Yeah. I think that it highlights a point that I've been trying to reiterate for a long time, is that you don't need to know Rust to build on Solana. There's so many projects out there or even if you just want to play around, but there are projects that are just hiring specifically for the front end Dapp side of things, where it's just very similar to talking to a centralized API, as long as you know how to use Web 3.0.JS or any of these other front end clients. You don't need to know Rust to build on Solana, because the thing is, you start on the front end building in talking to a blockchain or a centralized database. It's very, very similar.Then once you understand how it works and communicating using the RPC client that defines all of the methods that used to talk to those blockchains after you get that, then you're like, "Okay, now I want to write my own program." At least that's the hope and buildspace has done an amazing job. They've had... I know at least over 10,000 people have done that getting started and they love it. And you mentioned Nader and he also has done an incredible job with his tutorial. That's one of the most popular for sure. How quickly did you jump from doing the Rust bit moving to Anchor or did you just do that almost immediately?pencilflip: (25:12)Yeah. I think when I was getting into things, Anchor was already pretty popular and so I started out by writing Anchor programs, like toy Anchor programs. Yeah, this was actually a big question for me when I was starting out. I was like, "Should I learn Anchor first? Should I learn how to write programs with add Anchor? And I remember asking some people in the discord and getting their opinion and looking back at it I think, I mean, either one is fine to be honest, I think it's easier to start with Anchor obviously, but I do think it's super important to be able to understand programs written without Anchor just because so many programs are written like that.Like the Solana program library programs, a lot of them aren't written with Anchor, although they're Anchor rappers or the Metaplex programs, a lot of them are not written with Anchor. So if you need to like... you basically need to be able to understand those programs if you're doing coding on Solana. And so you need to be able to understand programs that aren't written with Anchor as far as writing programs though, I think just default to Anchor.Chase: (26:13)Yeah, for sure. And I think as Anchor matures, I know the Anchor book is now out and Paul X has been working on that, which is going to be incredibly valuable to that. There was mostly minimal examples in the past and just like Solana has been working on... Solana labs has been working on all things like Anchor has been really cranking up the heat with getting out content and making it easier to onboard to there.I think this year is going to be huge. I said it the other day on Twitter that I think that in one year, probably less than that, Armani says two weeks, whatever that means, but that the developer experience on Solana is going to be completely unrecognizable as it is today. People are not going to have to really ask much questions. We'll get to a... We're probably going to be at a place where you would have to be at least a junior developer who understands programming concepts could come in and within a certain amount of time, maybe two weeks, maybe a month, be able to self onboard to Solana without having to just constantly ask questions.Chase: (27:19)That's the ultimate goal. My ultimate job is to put myself out of a job by making the developer experience good that there's no need for Chase anymore.pencilflip: (27:29)I think that's a very hard job to accomplish. So I think your job security is still is fine.Chase: (27:36)No, I agree. I always make that joke, but the reality is like it's somewhat of an unachievable goal to an extent and I'll never achieve it, but we just keep striving to get there, but yeah, I'm super excited for this year and to look back on this year, next year, to see this conversation, the last conversation, all the things that have happened and how easy it is for some new developer to basically onboard to Solana. So, and again, this is thanks to people like you and Brian and Colin, all these different guys who are just altruistically contributing to the cookbook, writing their own content. I could not have scaled myself and developer relations without that. It would be 100% impossible because by the time that me as one person writes a piece of content, it's outdated in like a week.So that's how fast things are moving. Yeah. Just to move on, this whole series of Chewing Glass is really to have the conversations we've been having. Like what was your experience like and how you got into it? But what I understand is, even though you started out as just a noob engineer on Solana, you actually have recently formed your own company on the Solana blockchain. And definitely, we're not going to talk about it too much, but I will definitely let you talk about what you're building.pencilflip: (29:08)Catherine and I... Catherine used to be a designer at Instagram. We are starting this product and this company called Form Function. And basically it's the best way for independent creators and artists to make a living off of NFTs. That's the longer term vision. The shorter term, we're just building the best marketplace for high quality, one of ones, high quality, one of one art, and for these independent artists and creators on Solana.And so you can think about other marketplaces like Magic Eden and Solana as more catered towards collections. The things most people are buying on there is collections like DJ AVEs or Solana monkey business, or et cetera, et cetera. And it's not so much focused on these more independent artists or photographers who do their own art. They don't really have basically a class seat at those platforms. And so we really want to build a place where those independent creators can be really showcased and their high quality art can be displayed and featured on our platform.Chase: (30:12)Like you said, the Magic Edens and the Solana arts and all the other ones out there they're... I don't think their platforms specifically is for collections, but that is where the world is. And there's Holaplex and Metaplex's spin up auction platforms are doing that. But to have a marketplace, that's almost who knows? This is like an art gallery kind of of 101 creators who can come in here and create their own art. And it doesn't have to be this big marketed thing. People can just... Those collections are not.. They're community builders and some of them have utility, but this is like just shining a spotlight on these creators that have been gate keeped out of being able to get involved because of lack of technical knowledge and that's how it's been. And I think this is going to... I've seen a couple people talk about it on the Twitter sphere lately about like 2022 being the year of creator NFTs, or like one of one NFTs for creators, and it's super exciting. I've seen some really awesome art out there that I have really been eyeing. And there's so many ways to do it. I've seen augmented reality pieces of NFTs. I've seen people doing paintings or photography and it's happening more and more because tools like, it sounds like what you're building are going to enable that to be a lot easier to happen.pencilflip: (31:42)Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Really excited for all the one of one stuff that's been happening on Solana. I think it's been growing, it's going to continue to grow and really a big part of what we want to do is just improve Solana's maybe culture or almost reputation, because I think sometimes people look at Solana and the NFT ecosystem and they see these board app derivative, where they see these soul planks.And it's just like, well, is everyone on Solana just copying the popular projects in Ethereum, and that's definitely not true. There are a lot of awesome collections that are Solana native, but we also want to make it like a blockchain that's known as well for this really high quality art like Ethereum has become and have it be associated with that because that's good for artists. It's good for collectors. It's good for the entire Solana ecosystem. And it also gives these artists who maybe they don't want to list on Ethereum for environmental worries, or maybe the gas fees are too high for them. It gives them a really good place to go and sell their art that otherwise, maybe they wouldn't list at all.Chase: (32:45)Yeah. The, I do have some opinions on that and it's definitely the case that there were some collections that are just straight up clones and a lot of people outside of the Solana ecosystem that don't... They aren't really following it. They look in there and they're like, "Hey, why you guys just keep copying everything?" But if they actually were in the circles or bubbles that a lot of us are in, they would realize that the majority of these communities are also on the same page as them. They hate it as well.There's actually campaigns that campaign around these collections that are just straight up clones telling people, "Please don't buy them. Please don't buy them." The reality is I have, maybe it's a conspiracy theory, but I feel like people who are doing these sorts of clone things, they're not necessarily Solana natives. And there's no way to actually verify that. But these are grifters. They are traveling around seeing where the money's flowing into and they're doing whatever they can as quickly as possible to hopefully capture some money. And then they disappear.It's happening on Near as well. And I also spoke about this. I have a lot of sympathy and empathy for Near because it's happening there. Those clones are moving to them. It's going to happen. People are going to end up losing money. And the best thing that Near and or Solana still can do is to educate your community as quickly as possible, because otherwise lots of money is going to be stolen from people when these rugs are happening and a lot of them are. And if you see a project that's a direct clone of something and you think, oh, this is going to be great because I can get it for cheaper. It's not going to be great. I can promise you that. It's going to be the opposite of great. It's going to be very, very bad for you. So if you're listening, don't buy clones on any blockchain because it's not going to work out. So that's my little-pencilflip: (34:42)Totally agree with everything you just said.Chase: (34:44)That's my little feel.pencilflip: (34:46)It was a great feel.Chase: (34:47)Exactly. So this was a great conversation and to hold round the whole thing off, what would be your advice to people to future builders on Solana, whether it be how they learn or what they should do, or where they focus their time? What would be the one thing that comes to mind to you right now that would be your greatest advice to people looking to get into Web 3.0 blockchain and Solana?pencilflip: (35:11)Yeah, I mean, so first of all, I love what Paul X said here was basically like, "Get started, dive in, build something, read something, try something, how just like gets started. I think that's super important. And I'd add on that, get involved in the community. The Solana community is really welcoming and everyone's like... I think everyone I've met is super nice and friendly and like wants to help. And that's one of the best things you can do, both for the community, like give back to the community.And also the community will get back to you. You can ask for help in these discords. If you DM them, people will probably help you out. And then it obviously helps when you're building your own things because then you have a network of people to ask questions, to bounce ideas off of et cetera.So yeah, I think it's a great time to do it too, because Solana's still relatively small. It almost feels like a family where a lot of the people who are really into it know each other. Yeah. It's a really awesome place to be. So that would be one of my key pieces of advice, is just get involved in the community, make some friends and build some cool stuff.Chase: (36:16)Yeah. That's amazing advice and it's always just go build something and share it with people and just have a good conversation and send DMs to whoever you can find because they're going to answer. This is a very strange time where you can DM a CEO of a protocol or whatever and they're going to probably respond if it's somewhat reasonable and to have that accessibility is a pretty powerful and don't just sit back and submit resumes everywhere and think that's going to be the best choice.Because I get a lot of messages to myself saying like, "Hey, nobody's responding." I'm get involved. DM people. Strike conversations. People are literally getting hired to really amazing companies simply just by being consistent, persistent building things, being involved in a discord. And just, if anything, just start answering questions and helping people. Somebody's going to pay attention to you and it could change your life in a very short amount of time so.pencilflip: (37:18)Yep. Totally agree with everything you just said.Chase: (37:21)Well, Matt, AKA pencil flip. It has been great. It's been about a month and a half since we've been talking about this. It finally happened and I think the listeners are really going to love it. So thanks for joining man. It's been a pleasure.pencilflip: (37:37)Yeah. Thanks for having me on Chase. It was great coming on and chatting with you. Always enjoy talking Solana and everything with you it's always a ton of fun.Chase: (37:44)All right, everybody. Thanks for listening.
In this special Payments episode of the Solana Podcast, Austin Federa guest hosts a conversation between Jeremy Allaire (CEO, Circle) and Sheraz Shere (Head of Payments, Solana Labs). They discuss merchant payments, stablecoins and Solana Pay: the newly released, open, and free-to-use payments framework built on Solana.00:45 - What is Circle?03:35 - The use case for stablecoins and the mechanisms to build them09:34 - Solana Pay13:42 - Integration of USDC and Stable Coins18:45 - How could Solana Pay become mainstream? 25:27 - The Solana Pay toolkit27:39 - Can businesses operate without a bank account?30:05 - Looking at Data Privacy in Solana Pay and Circle 34:35 - Hopes for Solana hackathon outcomes Austin: (00:09)Hello and welcome to the Solana podcast. I'm Austin Federa guest hosting this week. Today we're going to be talking about stablecoins, USDC and Solana pay. So we're joined today by Sheraz Shere, the head of payments at Solana labs and Jeremy Allaire, the CEO of Circle. Welcome to the show.Jeremy: (00:27)Thank you.Sheraz: (00:27)Thanks Austin.Austin: (00:28)Great. Well, let's start off with Jeremy, talk a little bit about Circle. Can you tell us a little bit about what is Circle and what's its role in the US DC stablecoin?Jeremy: (00:37)Sure, absolutely. So Circle is a global financial technology firm. We operate a suite of services to help businesses take advantage of digital currency in payments and treasury applications on the internet, which is all really a mouthful. But specifically we have a couple of really critical things. The first is we operate a stablecoin market infrastructure as we call it called USDC, and we'll talk, I know more about that, but USDC is a dollar digital currency that is an asset backed or fully reserved digital currency that can be used for payments and settlement on the internet. And it's already used really, really widely in the crypto economy.And so we run that infrastructure and provide that to businesses institutions, and through many, many of our partners out to tens or perhaps even hundreds of millions of end users that interact with USDC. And then we also operate a suite of services for companies to have payments and treasury management and other things that are needed to integrate this into the way that they operate. So almost like a crypto native bank account for businesses to store and transact, and then alongside that a broad set of API products.So basically Circle APIs that connect the existing fiat system, credit cards, bank accounts, bank transfers with stablecoins, with the custody, security, blockchain management, and other things that are needed to use that and integrate that into your own application. So lots and lots of fintechs, startups, companies like building on those APIs to kind of integrate stablecoins and fiat in their applications. So hundreds of companies use those and those are the key things that we do. And we've been growing with other products in what we call to treasury services. So Circle yield, which is a stablecoin yield product, which has been growing really fast too.Austin: (02:50)Yeah. I want to get into that kind of in a minute. So stablecoins, they're foundational to a lot of how DeFi has been enabled over the years. So there's lots of different applications for that. Sometimes it's just as a common transacting layer between multiple currencies. There's lots of different applications for it, but as you mentioned, there's more and more sort of enterprises and traditional companies, as well as fintechs that are in that space that are looking to use stablecoins in their business operations. At the same time, you have a bunch of DeFi Degens who are sort of the original core audience for a stablecoin. What does that decision making process look like at Circle when you're trying to balance such a diverse user base?Jeremy: (03:33)Yeah, it's a great question. And sometimes I'm asked "What's the use case for USDC," and my answer is sort of "What's the use case for a dollar?" Well, the use cases are incredibly broad, and we see that actually today, we see people who are making personal point to point payments internationally. We see people making micropayments for digital IP through NFTs, and at the other end you see institutions that are using USDC to settle half a billion dollar bilateral trades. And that's a pretty broad range of use cases that are out there. I think more importantly, conceptually when we built USDC and you can go back and read the original white paper behind it. And the idea of fiat backed digital currencies, our ultimate belief is that what's needed is a sort of protocol layer for traditional money on the internet.So you can have dollars and euros and pounds and yen and other currencies that just function on top of the internet, the same way that other protocols support the exchange of information and communications. And if we had that, and we could use those protocols at the speed of the internet with the cost efficiency of moving data, which is what I think blockchains hold that promise, Solana's executing really well on that, but hold that promise, that it could really unlock the storage of transmission of value to be a kind of commodity free service on the internet. And so ultimately our belief is that anything that any person or household or firm might need to do in the digital economy on the internet could be done with stablecoins.And so we definitely expect that to grow. Now, when we got started, it was anchored in what I call crypto capital markets. So it's anchored in market participants that, for all the work that they do and all the assets that they might be interacting with, they're all digital assets, and they all move at the speed of blockchains, whatever that is and the efficiency of that. And so they need their dollars to work the same way, and so that kind of gave demand for payment and settlement mediums that could kind of work at the speed of those markets and those blockchains. So, that was a good bootstrap use case, and that's really what brought a lot of this into existence. But now the way I like to describe it is stablecoins are both protocols and money formats. It's a protocol that works on top of a blockchain with assurance and security and finality settle a transaction, but it's also a particular representation of value of a dollar or a Euro or whatever it is, and protocols and kind of formats our network affects businesses.And so the more people who have that, the more valuable or more useful it becomes, and the more products and services that are plugged into a protocol, the more useful and in utility that exists. And so we're now seeing the spillover of the use cases go into everyday businesses more and more everyday businesses saying, "Wow, this is a very, very efficient medium. It's very inexpensive, it's very fast, it's secure. I know it's final and it works globally." So we're certainly seeing that pick up. And at Circle, as we think about use cases, we really believe that the acceptance of payments in a business context using digital currency like this is going to proliferate pretty significantly in the coming years, because it's got so many attributes that are superior to existing electronic payments methods.Austin: (07:12)Yeah. And so you touched on something that's really interesting, which I think everyone thinks of USDC as a protocol, but unlike most organizations that have launched a protocol, the underlying token of USDC is USDC. Its whole point is it does not fluctuate in value, it does not go up, not go down. It stays solid at an equivalent of one US dollar. But Circle, it obviously for-profit organization, what are the mechanisms there that actually allow you to run a business as an organization that has created USDC?Jeremy: (07:48)There are a lot of pieces. So the first is today USDC is approaching 50 billion in circulation, and Circle administers and reserves those assets. And so we generate income from that, from that $50 billion we generate income. And as that grows to be a hundred billion or 200 billion, we'll continue to generate income from that, and certainly in a rising rate environment, that's significant. The second is we run a whole set of, what we call transaction services and treasury services, and those are services that we charge fees for. So transaction services are taking traditional fiat payment methods, using our infrastructure to do blockchain, native, custody, and payments. And so those are kind of usage based and scale up kind of like a Stripe or equivalent type of transactional service.And then we also provide treasury services. So people who want to lend their USDC can lend their USDC in a self-service way through our platform, and get fixed term fixed rate returns on capital on USDC, and we generate a spread income from that as well. So we're building out this sort of suite of commercial services that are globally available increasingly, and that provide a lot of incremental value. So those are several buckets as well, that are really helping us scale our business.Austin: (09:14)So we were talking about transactional services. Again Sheraz, You have been intricately involved in building and launching the Solana pay protocol. Can you give us an overview of what that is, and how stablecoins are an important part of that system?Sheraz: (09:29)Sure. Yeah. So Solana pay is basically a new blockchain based merchant payment system. It's open, permissionless, and decentralized, and it's premised on enabling merchants to connect directly with consumers in a peer-to-peer fashion with no intermediaries. And it's really premised on the notion that merchants would accept stablecoin like USDC. Most merchants, unfortunately for crypto natives, don't really care that much crypto per se, they care about running their business. And that's why having stablecoins, US dollar denominated stablecoins are critical, because what this affords us is the ability to move digital assets at speed and cost of the internet, as Jeremy mentioned.So for Solana pay, what we're really trying to do is enable for merchants, things like instant settlement, near zero cost transaction processing, and something that's really important is the removal of intermediaries. If you think about it from a merchant perspective the most important thing a merchant does is collecting payments and engaging with their consumers with commerce, but there's a lot of friction tied to enabling payments of and commerce. And with friction comes intermediaries and with intermediaries come cost and the loss of control. So if there's one headline for Solana pay, it's really about giving power back to the merchant for the most important function, which they do.Austin: (10:48)So can you talk a little bit about that? Payments is obviously a many billion dollar industry globally. There's some big name that have reached some pretty astronomical valuations nowadays based off of providing credit card payment processing solutions and that sort of thing to e-commerce and non e-commerce business. What's the sort of difference of approach here? How would you compare something like Solana pay to a company maybe like Stripe?Sheraz: (11:15)Sure. Yeah. And Stripe, I would say that the removal of intermediaries doesn't mean that a lot of the traditional payments companies don't have a role to play. The actual act of moving a digital asset from a consumer to the end merchant, that's the piece where there isn't need to be a friction, right? So with the Solana blockchain and a stablecoin like USDC, the movement of digital currencies from a consumer's wallet to the merchant wallet should happen like an email going on the internet, it should happen instantly with no cost. However, once a merchant has accepted a USDC stablecoin or settled in a stablecoin, there's a lot of interesting services that are needed to be done that merchants typically don't want to necessarily do themselves. So setting up token accounts, doing treasury management, reconciliation, integrating into legacy bank accounts.So there's a lot of work in the core stack of post settlement of payments that traditional payment companies can be involved in. The protocol itself is just trying to simplify one component of payment processing, which is the most critical one, which is that the transfer of value between the consumer and the merchant. One of the interesting things that we're building on the spec is the ability to also have a bidirectional communication. The benefit of having a true peer-to-peer connection between a merchant and a consumer and not having an intermediary is that this allows the merchant to, for example, send digital assets back to the consumer. So what this could look like is something like, let's say you buy a new shoe, using this protocol the merchant can send you back an NFT of that shoe into your wallet, which you can now take into the metaverse. Just an example, but illustrating why the notion of a peer-to-peer, a true peer-to-peer interaction between a merchant and a consumer can open up a whole new set of new things.Austin: (13:09)So Jeremy, Sheraz was talking there about one of the pieces of the stack that Solana pay is trying to solve, that payment from a consumer directly to a merchant. You in Circle work with companies that have extremely complicated payment flows that are trying to bring USDC into. What are some of the areas that integration has been easy and straightforward for these companies, and what are some of the areas that are still challenges for enterprise adoption of USDC and stablecoins?Jeremy: (13:37)First of all, just to say, as you know, we're really excited to be supporting Solana pay. And we believe that the problem space here is a really critical one, and solving this problem of how to build a better connection between an end user and a business and building beyond just the underlying digital asset transfer and solving some of these problems is really, really critical. The way I would kind of answer the question is there's sort of the base layer of you've got a blockchain and you've got addresses and wallets and you've got this settlement finality mechanism of moving an asset like USDC as well. And that part is kind of fairly low level.Jeremy: (14:27)And so businesses that want to use this as a substitute for say, a card payment, they can implement that out with Circle APIs, they can take Circle APIs and they can automatically generate new addresses automatically for each payment. They can then track that payment to a given payee. And then they can collect that and store it in USDC, or they can sweep it out to their bank account through an automated API that pushes a wire or other things. So there's like critical kind of behind the scenes treasury kind of infrastructure that's there. The problem is most end users, they don't really necessarily know what all these things are. And so I think being able to introduce things like having metadata associated with a payment, such as what the price is, what the product ID is, any other kind of merchant information that would be needed to kind of tie that payment to a commerce transaction, to be able to have of follow on interactions that are associated with that payment.All these problems are I think really important and become things that people expect, whether it's through a traditional legacy payment mechanism, like handling something like "You sent me the wrong product I need a refund," is like the most common, or some loyalty mechanism that maybe is inducing me to want to use the payment instrument. And so how can I use a blockchain to provide that loyalty mechanism as an inducement as well, building a stronger connection between say the business and the user?And so I think the pain points are more that there's incremental value that's needed for both the end user and the merchant to kind of bring this to a point where it's a superior payment, medium to legacy payment rails. And so those are the kinds of things that we see, but certainly the getting started piece is there. There's so much low hanging fruit. And I think so Solana pay is a really good start at hitting some of the low hanging fruit and creating a way for wallet creators. And then folks like Circle on the other end to make this a little bit more seamless for all the parties.Sheraz: (16:41)I would say that if you're a developer, a founder, or even a legacy payments company, there is a tremendous amount of interesting stuff to build. We just kicked off a hackathon and we have a payments track in that. And as Jeremy mentioned, the protocol itself is pretty low level, it's pretty basic if you look at it, right, it's just a very simple... The most native transaction on a blockchain is moving value from one token account to another token account.And we've put some specifications around that to put in like transaction identifiers and things like that. The real innovation is really going to come thinking about what are the new features that can be built on top of this. Now some of this will look like traditional commerce things like offers and loyalty, but there's a whole new set of commerce related features and consumer value props that have yet to be discovered. And I think that's what's really interesting is that there are going to be new businesses built on top of these protocols that will leverage the power of the blockchain. Because this technology opens up, again a peer-to-peer connection between a merchant and a consumer, eliminates the need for intermediaries, and now it gives power back to the merchants. So both the customer relationship, the data, and power in terms of controlling costs.Austin: (18:00)Sort of to push on that little, payments has been the killer feature of blockchain since blockchain became a thing, but there's been no real successful blockchain payment systems that have really emerged. I think the closest is there are some exchanges where you can get a debit card that allows you to spend out of your exchange account, but that's still a custodial relationship with the exchanges holding your tokens. The places where USDC and other stablecoins have been really successful is not on the payments level as much as so far has been on that sort of collateralization level or within the DeFi space. So Sheraz what about both Solana pay or Solana is actually making this a useful place for payments to actually go mainstream?Sheraz: (18:48)So yeah, absolutely crypto payments have been tried before. I mean, it's been talked about ever since maybe the pizza example. The problem is the traditional approach to crypto payments have been settled with several problems. So the first of all is that merchants don't want to settle in volatile currencies, right? With some edge cases aside, most merchants say, "I want to settle in US dollars or something that is the equivalent of a US dollar." Second is that the blockchains in the past have taken minutes or longer to settle, and that just doesn't work when you're trying to complete a transaction right? On an e-commerce site every second, that delay is more card abandonment, so waiting minutes for a transaction to settle just doesn't work. And then blockchains, transaction fees that exceed the actual cost of the item that you're buying just doesn't work.So to alleviate all this intermediaries came in and said, "Okay, great, look, I'll remove some of this friction for you. I'll exchange the Bitcoin and settle with you in US dollars. Oh, and by the way, I'll take on some of the risk of settlement taking 10 minutes. I'll give you an instant authorization and I'll just settle with you 24 hours later, and I'll eliminate some of the fluctuations in network fees. And for all that trouble, I'll charge you 100 basis points." And then it starts to feel and look a lot like traditional payment systems where you've got an intermediary, there's a lot of friction and a lot of cost and an intermediary is saying like, "I'll simplify all that for you, and I'll charge you a hundred basis points. And by the way, I'm the intermediary between you and your end customer."And that's really, well from what I've seen, what the attempt at crypto payments have done. What's different now is a couple of things. So one is rise of stablecoins and specifically USDC as a US dollar backed stablecoin. And then the Solana blockchain technology that has the speed throughput and low cost that eliminates a lot of that friction. Right now you have instant settlement, you have costs measured infractions of a penny, and you have throughput. You're not dealing with congested blockchain networks.And then the other thing is we now have a growing interest in crypto, there's tens of millions of wallets out there. People are more and more kind of normies as we call them, I guess, are dabbling into crypto. And I think you're going to see two kind of mental models, right? One is I buy crypto for speculation and investments, but I think more and more people are going to realize like, "Oh, I can use this for transactions. There are transactional currencies that I can use that provide me utility." So I think there's the combination of all of these factors coming into place with these new technologies are kind of going to give crypto payments a new shot in the arm.Jeremy: (21:36)Yeah. And I would just add to that just at a high level, I think one thing to note is stablecoins and public blockchains have achieved an astounding amount as payment system. I mean, these are decentralized infrastructure, running globally, supporting literally trillions of dollars of transaction throughput, and supporting pretty material volumes that have grown, and including in a wide variety of payment use cases. And we see that all the time, the number of businesses that are just signing up for Circle accounts, because they want to use USDC as just a payment medium outside of the markets themselves. And so it's a pretty amazing achievement, and that's happened in a very short period of time. I think there's many, many thousands of products and services that have integrated USDC.It took like 50 years to get to like 10,000 issuers, which are people who have integrated the visa credentialing. And so the adoption of these standards is happening at a really fast rate, which ties into the other piece, which is there have been a number of things that have been really necessary. I think one has been regulatory clarity, people being comfortable that this form of dollar is as good as an ACH dollar or a credit card dollar in terms of its usefulness and its legal clarity. Businesses knowing that these are legitimate financial infrastructure that they can rely upon and build upon. The other's been, as we've talked about here already is just the reality of the economics, the unit cost of transaction, the speed of a transaction, and through platforms like Solana, we're seeing that be solved for.And so I think what we're seeing is many more businesses, large merchants, traditional digital wallet companies who have large installed bases of consumers who want to wire up these protocols. And I think it's not just that they want to wire them up because this is a way to pay businesses. They want to wire them up, because these are interoperability standards that make it possible for digital wallets everywhere to kind of share value with each other, which is kind of moving outside of walled gardens and into the open internet of value. And so we're seeing all those kind of combined with each other and those are all mutually reinforcing factors that will then I think have more and more businesses saying, "Why don't I just add this as a payment method?"Sheraz: (24:00)As Jeremy said, I think in payments more broadly, tremendous traction and use cases and international remittances B2B. My view is a little thinking more about specifically about like retail, consumer emergent payments. And I think there's this open question that I keep hearing is like, "Well, we can't use USDC to buy milk." Well, we ran a physical point of sale transaction using so Solana pay and purchased a gallon of milk. So we're happy to share the video of that, but wanted to demonstrate how simple it is to use this currency and set up a small mom and pop with our in-store web app.Jeremy: (24:40)I mean, it reminds me of when the web was taking off and it was like, "Well, you can't use the internet to do this, this and this." And people are just wiring this stuff up and it's going to become something that's just so extraordinarily common and every business will be... they'd be idiots not to take digital currency payments as an alternative to the things that they do now, just like they would've been crazy not to set up email accounts or let customers contact them through the web, or through an online forum or through a Facebook page or whatever. It's just, these are just going to be, you have to do this if you just want to be a native internet business.Austin: (25:15)Look, the Internet's great, but all I can buy on amazon.com is books, and I can do that at my local bookstore.Jeremy: (25:20)Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah.Sheraz: (25:22)That's right.Austin: (25:23)So Sheraz, when you're talking about this tool kit for Solana pay, what is actually live now, if someone is interested in actually setting this up for their business and enabling people to buy a gallon of milk with USDC, what's that toolkit look like, and how could they get started?Sheraz: (25:39)Sure. Yeah. We have a physical point of sale client, which is a simple web app. It's a very dead simple onboarding experience as well. We have an e-commerce SDK as well, so if you have your own website, the tooling is there to support both QR code payments and browser plugin. And we have a great set of partners that are working with us to both distribute these tools and help us build the future of this protocol and specification.We have integrations with a set of wallets, FTX, Phantom, and Slope and others on the way. You know, part of the goal of this is that this is the first at bat at the first inning. We've built some of these tools to provide some reference implementations and tooling for people to start building, but there's a whole roadmap of additional things that we want the community to build with us.Jeremy: (26:53)Yeah. And we're super excited at Circle to support this. And we see getting these kinds of standards adopted in more and more wallets, it's great to see. And I think we're hoping that standards and efforts like this can get adopted in many, many other kind of crypto native wallets and other digital wallets that are kind of coming online to support USDC payments.Austin: (27:15)So, Jeremy, with this sort of front end component where you can now receive payments and USDC via Solana pay there's a whole series of other tools you're talking about, whether it's deposit into accounts for merchants. How soon of a future do you think it's going to be possible for someone to run a business, and make payroll and accept payments without actually having a bank account?Jeremy: (27:39)I think we're getting really, really close to that. I think with a Circle account, we provide businesses with the ability to open an account, it's got multi-user support, and administration so you can have multiple employees or people in your finance department using it. It provides on chain payments across multiple blockchains, it provides legacy bank payments, so if you need to get money out into legacy bank accounts, you can do that. We have a pretty exciting roadmap for new things that we're going to build there, so that kind of interoperability with legacy payouts is important as well. And then you have the ability to take your working capital and put it into yield. And so as you collect payments and you have working capital, you can deploy that and generate high interest rates on your USDC.And so those are things that are there today, and there's obviously a lot more that can be built out there. We have a pretty exciting roadmap for things that we're building. We want really any crypto native business clearly to sort of make this their global financial account for their startup or their growth company, but more and more traditional companies as well, who are getting into this who want to use this as payments infrastructure, but then will tie it into some of their working capital management and treasury management.And then underneath that is like any developer that really has something they want to do custom, everything is just a platform. Everything's a set of APIs that you can build on. Developers can automate all the different rails. They can automate how they store and move funds. They can kind of control all of that in a very, very fine grain way. And so while there is like that self-service experience, but a lot of startups want to kind of do this unique to their business so they can automate more and more of it. So we think this year is going to be a year where these types of hybrid digital currency bank like products are really starting to take more and more hold.Austin: (29:33)Yeah. So, sort of along those similar lines, the existing payments rails and industry is one where a lot of it still runs on data collection and data marketing as a way to help subsidize the cost of running a lot of those rails, right? Whether it's American Express offers or whether it's something like a company that actually is tracking purchases that are made in-store and using that to do marketing through direct mail or other means. How does data privacy play in both with Solana pay and Circle, and how are those things part of your decision making framework?Sheraz: (30:08)I think one of the most important aspects of the whole notion of the peer-to-peer transaction and removal of intermediaries is that now when you're accepting as a merchant, accepting a payment through this per protocol you're not necessarily going through Google or Apple or MasterCard or Bank of America or some other intermediary, right? You have a direct connection with that consumer, and because of that you're not potentially losing data. You don't have third parties accumulating all of this data. And the beauty of this protocol is that it's open, so any merchant could take this. We're not pushing an end solution down anybody's throat, this is an open decentralized protocol. Any merchant could take this and build the equivalent of the Target Red Card system, which is a very popular solution that Target built or the Starbucks closed loop payment system.So I think the most important thing is that if merchants have control over commerce and the protocol is open and they can kind of craft on top of it, it gives them much more control over their data. We also have under development APIs as part of our core token program that can provide additional layers of data privacy. So we have a confidential token API that's under development. And there's a lot of technological solutions that can be built in to give either the consumer or the merchant more privacy, or whatever level of privacy they're interested in, but the key is they have control, they're building it in the way that suits their business needs.Jeremy: (31:41)One of the principal benefits of digital currency and stablecoins and public blockchains is the higher degrees of privacy and security that they afford. And I think that's something that people value and it's inherent in the architecture of these cryptographic forms of money and that's really key. And so we merely provide ways to interact with that infrastructure, and so we don't really stand in any specific data around users in that way. And even new technologies that we're working on in digital identity are designed to use cryptographic proof of identity, not pass around a whole bunch of PII. And that's going to be really critical as you start to marry digital identity with payments, with merchant behaviors. How can I, as a consumer present myself and prove to a business that I'm a legitimate individual that's been compliance checked, and make a payment to you without bleeding all my PII to you, and for me as a business to say, "No, I know this is not a drug trafficker or a terrorist or what have you that I'm transacting with," and have those settlements be fast and secure and final and private?So I think those are really, really important things. At the same time I think that the building blocks of crypto give us new tooling for incentivizing customer relationships in new ways. NFTs and commerce are really powerful, powerful phenomenon, which we're seeing early experiments in. But I think for businesses that want to entice customers to give them more information or have a more direct relationship and where that information exchange can be valued in some way, I think NFTs create a really interesting and powerful way to do that. And that's something that can be direct between the consumer and the business and not something that's, again, bleeding all that information and out to other networks that are repurposing that. And so I think there's a chance to rebuild customer loyalty, incentives, loyalty marketing, and secure privacy preserving payments in a way that's superior to what we have with existing electronic payment systems today.Sheraz: (33:58)Yeah. It's like being a founder or an entrepreneur in 2000, right? Think about all of the things that needed to be built then and were built. And we are just on the starting point of this. So I think it's an exciting time to be an innovator and a developer and a founder and an entrepreneur.Austin: (34:20)I love that vision for the future. So, one last question before I let both of you two go. Riptide, the Solana global hackathons going on right now, if there's one thing that you would love to see a team build coming out of this, what would it be? And Sheraz, we'll start with you.Sheraz: (34:38)Sure. I mean, there's a bunch. I think one thing that could be really interesting is what does buy now pay later on chain look like, right? So we have so many crypto users that are sitting on SOL, and other assets that they want to hold that right, they're hold all that. They don't want to use that for transactions. So how could we enable so someone to purchase from a merchant using Solana pay, over collateralize their SOL holding and just buy now pay never? Use your staking rewards to pay for the purchase, call it buy now pay never. That's one example, that one could be really interesting.Jeremy: (35:18)I think we're excited to be part of the hackathon and putting forward some of our APIs that can be worked in conjunction with Solana pay as well. And so, I mean, just generally, we'd be very interested in seeing people who are building wallet experiences that are geared towards payments, whether it's a P2P payment or a person-to-merchant payment in particular, but really building experiences that are optimized for that flow, as opposed to being a DeFi Degen, or trading. And so I think those kinds of products that combine person-to-business and person-to-person payment experiences that abstract away some of the complexity, and then do that around these standards, I think we're super, super excited about that. And we're obviously excited to see what comes out of the hackathon. We're investing in a lot of companies now, and so we'll be watching really closely, because this is a space that we'd love to be investing in as well.Austin: (36:20)Well, Jeremy Allaire CEO of Circle Sheraz Shere end of payments at Solana Labs, thanks for joining us today.Sheraz: (36:26)Thank you, Austin.Jeremy: (36:27)Thanks.
Matty Taylor, Head of Growth at Solana Labs, shares how and why community drives the growth of Solana. We also discuss some of the challenges with trying to shift to a decentralized company / model, and why having a great user experience is even more crucial in building trust within a DeFi application. In this episode we also discuss: Ways that crypto marketing differs from traditional marketing How Web3 is the future of crypto advertising Why Matty thinks Crypto is having its ‘iPhone moment' Market factors in educating consumers and sparking interest in crypto Underscoring the importance of the Brave and Solana partnership (announced at WebSummit in Portugal) Guest Bio: Matty Taylor is the Head of Growth at Solana Labs, and has been obsessed with cryptocurrency ever since he wrote his undergraduate thesis on the economics of Proof-of-Work consensus mechanisms. Prior to his role at Solana Labs, Matts worked at 0x and Square. --------------------------------------------------- About this Show: The Brave Marketer podcast is hosted by Donny Dvorin, VP, Head of Sales at Brave Software - the makers of the privacy-respecting browser with a built-in ads platform that rewards users for their attention with the Basic Attention Token. Brave is at the forefront of a new online privacy frontier and has unique insights into the future of marketing and advertising in a cookieless world. Music by: Ari Dvorin
Chewing glass is what Solana developers do. Introducing a new series on the Solana Podcast, Chewing Glass! Chase Barker (Developer Relations Lead at Solana Labs) talks shop with the most interesting builders in the Solana ecosystem. It's for devs, by devs. Todays guest is PaulX, a Solana developer who invented the Solana Escrow program (lovingly referred to as the "Solana Bible") and core contributor to Anchor. 00:40 - Intro / Origin Story3:58 - How did Paul X find out about Solana?7:43 - Motivation behind creating the escrow program14:13 - Framework, using Anchor in Solana21:08 - How can folks transition from web 2.0 to web 3.029:00 - Advice to other developers chase (00:38):Hey everybody, and welcome to Chewing Glass, the show where we talk to Solana developers who have been building in the Solana ecosystem. We talk about the good, the bad and the ugly. Today, we have our very first and very special guest, Paul X. Paul X is actually the creator of the escrow program. The Solana escrow program, this program actually saved a lot of lives over the months. Back of the day, all that existed was docs.solana.com and the Paul X escrow tutorial, sometimes referred to as the Solana bible. How's it going, Paul?Paul X (01:15):Yeah. Hi, thanks for having me. Yeah, I'm doing great.chase (01:20):Yeah, it's really great to have you. Just for context, Paul and I met probably about six months ago, or five months ago. When I first joined, I was writing a Getting Started blog post. I found out about the escrow tutorial. I wanted to talk to Paul to get some feedback and really just kind of get my bearings about me for what's going on in the Solana ecosystem. Also more recently, had a chance to catch up with him in Lisbon unexpectedly. That was pretty great. I guess we're just going to dive right in. I guess the first question I've got for you, Paul, is when did you get into blockchain?Paul X (01:57):First of all, I really enjoyed Lisbon as well, and seeing you there. Very cool. Just in general, the whole conference. It's really quite an experience, I think. I'm an undergrad in computer science, I'm in my second year right now. So, last year I was in my first and I felt like I wanted... I had been working for a year already, or actually two, I think, just part-time next to university, but regular full-stack engineering, but I got bored. I wanted to do something more challenging and I knew about crypto, so I thought that would be an interesting area to explore. So, that's what I did. I explored.chase (02:52):That's kind of me, I dove in about 2017. My first crypto purchase started building around 2018. Just out of curiosity, what was the first crypto that you ever purchased? The people want to know.Paul X (03:07):Bitcoin, most likely.chase (03:14):Yeah.Paul X (03:14):I don't remember, but if I had to guess, it would have to be Bitcoin, I think.chase (03:20):If it was three years ago or longer, I think most people's probably, really Coinbase, at least for us in the US was it. There was only three at the time.Paul X (03:32):Yeah. Oh, yeah! I actually remember how I bought them. It was actually done through... Not through an order book exchange, but just a message board in [crosstalk 00:03:47].chase (03:47):My Local Bitcoin? Was that the one?Paul X (03:50):Yeah, maybe something like that. Someone just posted, then you sent the money to their private bank account and they sent you the Bitcoin.chase (03:58):One of my friends did the same thing. I was like, "You did what?" I guess the next question, now that we got the "when you got interested in the space" out of the way, when and how did you find out about so Solana? Because being so early in writing the first tutorial, you were here before a lot of people. So I guess, how did you find out about it?Paul X (04:29):I don't remember exactly when. I know that Serum hadn't launched yet. I think it was about a month or two before Serum launched. Like I said, I wanted to explore the space. I'm an engineer, I want to build things, so I looked for platforms to build on. The obvious choice was obviously Ethereum. I wanted to build something that I could play around with and I couldn't really do that on Ethereum because it still is so expensive. So, that just wasn't really an option for me.Paul X (05:16):So I looked around and I... Layer 2s, also, weren't a thing. They weren't live yet. There's only so many options, then, that are left, that are legit, right? Obviously, the 2017 chains, they're still there, but wasn't... I wanted to explore the new ones. Yeah, I just wanted to get started, so I basically just looked up which chains were there, and I looked for a chain that seemed to have a legit team, a legit tech, and something that was actually live and working. Solana was that, and yeah, that's sort of how I got started.chase (06:12):Cool. What was the first thing you looked at when you found out about Solana? Was it the core innovation articles or was it just going straight to the documentation at the time?Paul X (06:22):It was the white paper and the articles, but the articles are not that detailed. There's only an introduction and the white paper also isn't that detailed, but the time, because I was relatively early, there weren't that many people in the Discord. So, I could just-chase (06:49):How many?Paul X (06:50):[crosstalk 00:06:50].chase (06:50):Just curious, how many [crosstalk 00:06:52] were in there?Paul X (06:55):I don't have a number. I just remember that there were a couple of regulars that were asking questions. One of them was [Daffy 00:07:06] from Mango and Smith, but the point is, you could talk with the Solana team relatively easily in the DeFi support channel. You'd good answers quickly, so we just chatted. That's sort of how I learned. That's also how I got much of the knowledge to write the blog post and the docs at the time. The docs are better now, but still lots to work on. At that time, there was just, talking with the Solana team about the docs really, really helped.chase (07:57):Yeah. So, I knew Daffy was in there. I knew of these other guys. Everybody's listening to you talk about the state of the documentation at the time. I'm sure there's a lot of people who have a lot of words and a lot of grievances from back in the day, whenever there's, at that time, really only the documentation. But one of the other big things that, the feedback since I joined, which I found out about Solana probably sometime in August, September, October, something of last year. Everybody I've talked to really just talks about how the dedicated support was really the way that they made their way through navigating Solana, just the Discord's... It's still that way today, we actually have some more developing relations in there outside of core engineering, but they kind of saved the day just to get some of those early movers like you over the hump. I guess-Paul X (08:49):Yeah. I agree.chase (08:51):... one thing I would really be interested to know is, so you found out about Solana, you're in the Discord, you're trying to play around, and then all of a sudden you were like, "I'm going to write this escrow tutorial based off of all this stuff." Or was that how it worked out? What made you decide to do the escrow program in general?Paul X (09:08):Yeah. It turned out to be a little bit of a bigger project than I thought in the beginning. I think it took about one or two months to write, and I still updated it regularly. So, that was one reason. I thought it wouldn't be that large, so I could just write something rather quickly. But also, it's just an effective learning method: if you want to learn something, explain it to someone else.chase (09:46):Right.Paul X (09:47):That's a good way to learn. So, that's what I was thinking.chase (09:54):Yeah.Paul X (09:54):I think that was basically it. Yeah. I didn't expect it to be what it became, to be honest.chase (10:08):It became a lot, it's actually still, probably, one of the most accessed tutorials that we have. I guess maybe for the smart contract side, there are some people just like you that learn by doing and learn by teaching, so we're escalating lots of new content being built. We just launched this thing called The Solana Cookbook, which is lots of code snippets for type script, the CLI and Rust.Paul X (10:36):Excellent.chase (10:36):We just did that two days ago and there's already so many contributors, and a lot of these guys-Paul X (10:41):Yeah, pretty cool.chase (10:42):... "I want to try this, but I don't know how to do it." We're like, "It doesn't matter. This is where you learn. You learn by teaching." I think we're super lucky to have people like you exploring new tech, writing things for other people, because I don't... Like you said, you had no idea in the beginning what this would turn into. In all reality, that document's probably been accessed tens of thousands of times at this point, definitely thousands. Probably into the-Paul X (11:12):It's maxing out my Netlify personal plan.chase (11:15):Oh, is it?Paul X (11:16):I've got 100 gigabytes. I have 100 gigabytes a month and it's very close to the limit now.chase (11:25):That's [crosstalk 00:11:26].Paul X (11:26):So if you know how big a website is, and you have 100 gigabytes, then you know how many views. You can sort of calculate how many views it gets each day.chase (11:39):That's actually incredible. I had no idea. I knew it was a lot. Again, I think a lot of people are going to thank you. Whenever I finally found out about the escrow program, which was when I actually ended up reaching out to you, it was a little bit later after I started, I somehow hadn't seen it. And I started sharing it with somebody who was like, "I need to make some sort of escrow program." Then I shared the tutorial and this ecosystem Telegram group I was in and everybody just jumped in. They were like, "That's the Solana bible." And I was like, "Everybody knows [crosstalk 00:12:12] all know this." They were like, "This is how we all got started in Solana." The thought about what would have happened if you hadn't written that? Think about this. There might have been a pretty decent number of people that started building, never made it to the Discord, your tutorial didn't exist and they just never ended up building... It could be somebody that's actually a live protocol with billions or millions of dollars of [TDL 00:12:38]. I don't know the answer to that, but it's kind of cool to think about that. You might have had that sort of... Well, you have, in a lot of ways.chase (12:46):What was the most painful part? This is a question I have to ask. Did you know Rust before you-Paul X (12:55):No.chase (12:56):You didn't know? You...Paul X (12:57):No.chase (12:58):No Rust at all? So what was the most painful part of this? Because I always thought it was Rust when I first started, come to find out, for a lot of people it's not Rust. It's actually Solana, it's a understanding accounts, PDAs and CPIs, a lot of things that, especially coming from E don't make sense because you can't compare the two, because they're completely different. Just curious on your thoughts on that.Paul X (13:26):Right. I knew C from university. That helped with Rust, but also not that much. I do think it's true, I don't think Rust is the difficult thing about Solana. Mostly because most Solana programs just don't use a lot of advanced Rust features. It's just the setting values. Probably the more comp... Anything with math is probably a little bit complicated, but you don't have to really think about multi-threading in a Solana program or anything like that. The Rust you use for Solana program is pretty simple. So yeah, I would say that programming model for Solana is the difficult part.Paul X (14:32):And also thinking about program architecture and related things, that's a difficult part. Yeah, specifically, it's a little bit far away now. When I remember that time, I pretty much remember a feeling of joy. It was a lot of fun. It's like...chase (15:11):I did it! I've made it!Paul X (15:14):Yeah, it's like you are thrown into a really difficult challenge and doing that, it's fun. Even not just the process of it is fun. But yeah, for sure, PDAs were a little bit tricky to wrap your head around. But yeah, you just put in the work and over time you'll understand.chase (15:49):Yeah. It has to be rewarding. At the time when you created that escrow program, probably one of the first external people ever to do that with only probably a handful, like 10 to 20 people in the world, that even knows what Solana is, let alone how Solana works, is pretty cool. I guess another one of the things that we hear a lot about, and honestly, it's of been solved so we'll talk about how that's been solved in a way, which is serialization and de-serialization. Most people that build on Solana still have no idea how to do it. There's never really been a... Obviously, people use Bosch, but there has been no like guidance to say, "This is what you should use." A lot of people bring that up, but this is a feature, not a bug. Nobody wants to tell you, but this leads us into the next thing, which is there is a framework out there that has very strong opinions on how this thing work, and it's called Anchor. I guess, number one, are you still developing on Solana, and number two, have you used Anchor?Paul X (16:55):Yes to both questions, but I'm not building any bigger programs right now, but I'm actually helping build Anchor now.chase (17:10):Oh wow, switched sides other there.Paul X (17:17):Yeah, I think Anchor is great. I think it's really important for future developers and developers that are on Solana that we improve the framework. I took like little bit of a break in 2021, but when I came back, Amani asked me whether I want to help build stuff. And we sort of thought that it would be a good idea if I come help with Anchor, so that's what I'm doing now. It wasn't really entirely my intention to work on it that much, but it's a lot of fun, so I've just been working on it all the time and thinking about what else we can do to improve it.chase (18:18):Yeah, people love Anchor there. There's actually Anchor Maxis out there at this point in time. I've spoken to a few of them.Paul X (18:26):Yeah. I saw the talk at the conference.chase (18:31):It's a strange thing, and not really a strange thing, but I've had a lot of these conversations. Working at Solana labs, one of the big things that I think about is there's just so many things going on right now and different paths to be taken. What's the right one? Where does labs and all these different people that are building out some... Which path should people be taking? Yes, I understand in order to scale and grow, developers, you're going to need something like an Anchor to be able to onboard people quickly because it takes away having to add all these accounts to every single transaction.chase (19:18):Actually, I'm not sure that Anchor abstracts that portion away, but it does abstract a lot of the underlying work, like the serialization and a lot of these things-Paul X (19:25):Serialization, yeah.chase (19:26):You don't have to think about a lot of the hard stuff, which is great. Frameworks are great.Paul X (19:31):Right.chase (19:32):But also, on the other side of that, you still need these like base layer engineers that can understand what happens underneath so that they can actually come and help fix Anchor. Because I'm assuming if you never did what you did, you wouldn't be very effective helping build Anchor right now, if you hadn't suffered through the pitfalls of just building Rust on the native. Maybe I'm wrong.Paul X (19:58):Yeah. No, this is something that I've been thinking about as well. I do think that if your plan is to deploy a protocol and you expect it to handle hundreds of millions of dollars, you should have people on your team that could write the same program in just regular Solana code. And if you can't do that, then you should probably not deploy right now, but go back and study it a little bit more. But that said, sure, it helps helps people. Raw Solana programming helps people understand Solana, but then they should move away eventually. I can't tell you what you should do, but I do think it would be a good idea to move to Anchor, but it depends on your specific use case. There are cases when maybe a raw Solana program is better, but for most programs Anchor will work fine and it will take a lot of work.Paul X (21:18):It will do a lot of work for you so you can focus on the things that really matter to your application, right? Like, if you don't have to think about... There are different kind of exploits. Sure, right? There are exploits that are sorts of Solana specific where you forget to check an owner of an account and that's something that's very Solana-specific. And that thing, Anchor can prevent for you. But what Anchor can't prevent is more complex interactions with other protocols and maybe there's something wrong with your tokenomics or generally your actual idea that's independent of Solana, so it allows you to spend more time focusing on that, which I think is very good.chase (22:20):Yeah. I guess the takeaway from that is that if you are managing tons and tons of money, your core engineering team should probably understand how all this stuff works. I know that some of these other bigger protocols like Saber and SI Options, they all started out, well, Solana native because Anchor didn't exist, but over time starting to add more features and features using Anchor, probably saving them lots of times. I've heard the term that Anchor, once you learn it, you can probably 10X your development speed or capacity. Obviously, that's subjective, depends on who you are.Paul X (23:04):Right.chase (23:04):But your recommendation would be, if you're coming onto Solana, you're not building this big protocol and you just want to start working and not worry about all these exploits and things, you just want to build something really cool and a lot faster than normal, than jump onto Anchor and get started. And if you decide to become a big protocol, maybe think about finding somebody who actually understands Rust and some of the base knowledge.Paul X (23:33):Right, and I mean, I think this is more or less true with any programming language or framework. If you want to be an okay, or close to good, engineer, just do the framework; but if you want to do great things and you know what want to know what to do when something goes wrong, and you want to know how to de-bug that, you can really only do that if you understand what the framework actually does for you.chase (24:04):Yeah. I think a good analogy for a lot of people who are probably watching this, because you're on the back-end side, I don't know if you do much of the Web 3.0 or the front-end stuff, but you can make the analogy, maybe it's not one-to-one, but JavaScript, you don't necessarily want to try to go start building React applications unless you understand how JavaScript works because when you get some errors and you don't understand some of the low-level JavaScript stuff, you might have a really painful experience trying to figure out what is actually wrong. I'm sure React is probably intuitive enough now to help get you through that. But if you know JavaScript, you're probably going to get things resolved a lot quicker. It's kind of the same thing, I think.Paul X (24:52):Right. Even if you cannot go deeper than that, you're going to have a better time overall if you know what the actual computer is doing underneath, what lies below that, if you understand what the computer is actually doing for you. Like, what is a stack, for example. That's not really necessary to get started with JavaScript or Rust, even, but if you want to really understand things more deeply and learn how to fix things when they go wrong, it's probably a good idea to also learn how a computer works.chase (25:36):Yeah. There's actually been people recently that, I spent a lot of time on Twitter just banging the drum about Solana, trying to get people to FOMO out of their Web 2.0 jobs to Web 3.0. There's people that have zero development experience that'll reach out. They're like, "How do I start developing on Solana if I have no development experience?" Almost like not even trying to jump from nothing to React, they're trying to jump from nothing to Solana, and my response is, "Honestly, if you don't learn so architectural basics and just building programs, or like learn a JavaScript or a Python, you almost have a 0% chance of success rate of building something on Solana. And if you are successful, it's probably not going to be very safe."chase (26:24):So it's kind of irresponsible to tell somebody to go from zero to Solana and skipping everything in between. Like I said, I don't think that you're going to have to be some sort of giga-brain to ever even make that leap. It's probably possible in some world, but...Paul X (26:39):Yeah, if I were to start from zero, I don't think I would try to launch my own protocol one month into my learning journey. Don't think that's a very good idea. But if I'm really interested in this space, then I can start, I still start doing work, I can still contribute from very early on. Not everyone needs to, your don't have to launch your own protocol to start learning and to start contributing. There's a ton of work to do on the open source projects in Solana, or maybe you can have an internship somewhere where you don't work on the core code, the actual program, but you can get sort of familiar. You can get acquainted with the industry and the people. That way you can build up the knowledge and already be in the ecosystem and without touching critical code. Over time, you'll be able to do that as well. chase (28:03):To that point, the Solana... It's not even just Solana, there's other blockchains as well, but I'm more familiar with the Solana community. It's super welcoming, especially the developer community. And if you want to get involved and you're a developer and you find a protocol that you really like, go into their Discord, start asking questions, then start helping people, then start thinking about maybe going and fixing a syntax issue and a GitHub repo. It doesn't matter. It can be the tiniest thing in the world.Paul X (28:37):Right.chase (28:37):Just keep doing that, next time a little bit like stronger. But when people reach out to me from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0, like, "Hey, I want a job. How do I get into the space?" Get involved, write, make a tool that everybody wants to use, give to the community, go contribute to a repo. Now my go-to is going to be, "Go write a recipe in the Solana cookbook and I'll help you out here." I'm kind of just joking here. But anyways, the people in this space, it's different. They're not looking on LinkedIn. They are looking for people that just go out and just get shit done. That's what everybody's doing and it's kind of incredible.Paul X (29:16):Also, if you really want to do this, and you start from zero, of course you can't take an entire degree in one or three months, but there's so much you can learn from online and just so many courses that you can take for free, and you can basically learn really all the time in your first six months. You are going to be fine. At least get a job somewhere, I think, in crypto.chase (30:03):Yeah, for sure-Paul X (30:03):If you really put in the work.chase (30:05):It's really just about passion and motivation, and persistence, and you keep going at it. If you really want it, you're going to eventually get it. I think that's the point that I keep trying to make to people. Everybody working in this space, it didn't happen by chance. They weren't just lucky. It's because they were like, "I want that job. I want to get in here." And they did it. I get messages that make me feel really good about what I do, is I'll get messages, I've gotten a couple from at least one from Phantom and some other places. I'll get a message down the line a month later, it's like, "Thank you so much. I just got hired at Phantom." And I was, "I've talked to thousands of people. When was this conversation?"Paul X (30:46):Nice.chase (30:46):And then I would look back and I'm like, "Oh my God, man, I'm so happy for you." It's great because those people took the advice. I know that they listened to what I said, took the advice, just hammering it down, started contributing. And then the next thing you know, they're working on, in my opinion, the greatest UX wallet there is.Paul X (31:05):That's pretty good.chase (31:08):It's pretty good. So yeah, it's been a wild experience for a lot of people. Things are not slowing down anytime soon. We just had 530-some people in our latest hackathon. If the next one's any more than that, I don't even know what I'm going to do with myself doing [inaudible 00:31:29] but as our content gets better and things get a lot... Compared to two hackathons ago when there was not hardly anything, basically Paul X and then a couple resources, now to having a lot more community content, people were asking less questions in Discord. Anchor is actually taking a lot of people out of the Solana Discord and plucking them into there, which has been much relief.Paul X (31:50):We'll thank them.chase (31:51):Thank you Armani. That's been beautiful. But then there's just a lot more people. The more people that you help get over those big humps of Solana, the more people that they help out. And then it just keeps growing. I can't even put a number on it, but the Solana developer community has been super. It's huge. I guess the final question that I wanted to ask you is probably, I wanted to do this show specifically to talk about people's experiences, where they came from, where they are, how they got there, just so that people out there watching can get some inspiration and motivation to make the jump. There's a lot of people that are literally right there on that cliff of Web 2.0, just every day being, "I've got to do it, I've got to do it," and then they don't do it. So hopefully, talking to people like you, maybe Armani, wink, wink, at some point in time. That they'll just make that jump.chase (32:55):So you've already did a lot of work with the escrow tutorial. Hopefully, this interview also has a similar impact. I guess, do you have any words of advice for Solana devs that are just getting started? Just something. You made the jump into the space, you were in university, you were like, "I'm kind of bored with like this stuff. This thing looks cool." Any word of advice to some younger developers out there?Paul X (33:22):The first and most obvious one is to just get started. You don't have to go full time on this immediately. You can just get started with something so you can see whether that works for you, but get started. And I think once you do that, I'm not sure if I have really general advice for people, it really depends on the person, but once you get started, contribute to the ecosystem and talk to people, to anyone, to me, my DMs are open, Twitter and Discord, and many others you can talk to as well if you need specific advice that's more tailored to your background.Paul X (34:27):But yeah, in general, the way I think about crypto in general is that it's still quite early and we need a lot of experiments and we need experiments on all layers of the stack. So layer one, layer two, maybe the DOW layer above that [crosstalk 00:34:51].chase (34:50):Maybe design in UX.Paul X (34:52):[crosstalk 00:34:52] coordinate. Yeah, everything, right? We need to do those experiments. So if you have crazy ideas, now might be a good time to try and explore them because there's lots of money in crypto right now. You can probably get funding and support from people because crypto is very welcoming. Experiments are really good for this space to push it forward because who knows where we will be in like five years. I don't even... Just thinking about that, I have no idea, but the way we go, we push this thing forward, is to try a lot of different things. And again, I'm not even saying you should necessarily go to Solana, but you should at least, if you want to push the space forward, join an experiment that you think pushes this space forward. That will already be very good for all of us, and hopefully yourself as well.Paul X (36:07):Solana-specific, it's pretty much the same advice. Get started, talk to people, build programs as soon as possible to learn how it all works. And then again, if you think there's gaps in documentation, write stuff or make a video or something like that. At least that has helped me understand the programming model much better. It also helps others, so that's great. Really most of it is just putting in the work every day and grinding.chase (36:51):You mean eating glass and chewing glass and all that fun stuff?Paul X (36:55):Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, yeah. But get started.chase (37:00):I think you touched on something that I didn't really touch on, which is actually huge and part of my job in general is just to help grow the community. The way that I do that is by opening up my DMs to everybody. I'll literally talk to anybody if you're interested in this space. I probably get about probably 80 to 100 every day. I wake up in the morning, I go through all of them, filter out the [crosstalk 00:37:23] drop-Paul X (37:23):100 every day?chase (37:25):I filter out the NFT drop requests, that'll usually take about 30% of those. But anyways, this community's welcoming. If you have a question, don't be scared, reach out to somebody, follow a couple accounts that seem pretty active.Paul X (37:40):Yeah.chase (37:41):I actually created a list on Twitter called Solana Developers. All you have to do is follow that list and all the alpha is right there for you. Start DMing every single one of those people, including myself. Yeah, the community portion is huge. It's probably one of the greatest superpowers that Solana actually has right now.chase (38:01):Getting involved. Like you said, YouTube videos, this NFT space has blown up. There's people that aren't devs, they're starting podcasts. They're just participating. It's like this whole new world. We're getting the chance to kind of reinvent, and my personal view, there's probably some disagreement out there, we're getting to reinvent the internet in a way, so you're talking about these experiments. Get out there and experiment, and maybe you'll come up with something that nobody else has thought about doing on blockchain yet. It could change your life, and I'm not talking about just financially. You could just go into this trajectory of where this is where you were meant to be the entire time. And I've seen a lot of people say that. They're like, "We were unhappy until they actually got into Web 3.0 where we all work a lot, but we love it."chase (38:54):But anyways, Paul, thanks so much for joining. I know that you're a full time Anchor Maxi, I'm surprised you had [crosstalk 00:39:05] here. Just kidding. But, yeah. Thanks for joining. I really appreciate it. Thanks for the escrow tutorial. Thanks for building on Anchor and continuing that. Just generally thanks for everything and thanks to everybody for watching. We'll just check everybody later. Bye.Paul X (39:23):Thanks for having me.
Certain aspects of the draught cryptocurrency law may need more debate, following which Prime Minister Modi will make the ultimate decision on crypto regulatory measures in the nation. Opera announced a collaboration with Solana Labs on Friday, December 10, to bring native support for the popular blockchain, allowing it to operate a native Solana wallet alongside all of the ecosystem's dApps.
Anatoly is the co-founder and CEO of Solana Labs, the organization behind Solana. Solana aims to be the fastest and most scalable decentralized blockchain in the world. Anatoly previously spent more than a decade at Qualcomm after graduating from The University of Illinois in 2003. Follow him on Twitter @aeyakovenko and learn more about Solana at solana.com. [2:18] - Anatoly's story and how he came to see the opportunity to build Solana [6:51] - Carrying Qualcomm's culture over to Solana [9:46] - Leveraging incremental software improvements to create the fastest blockchain [14:25] - Anatoly's solution to the "clock problem" in a distributed network [17:52] - Why Solana might not exist if not for the obscure sport of underwater hockey [19:21] - Building through a bear market and why focus matters more than funds [22:41] - The toughest trade-offs of maintaining a singular focus on Solana's performance [25:58] - The importance of censorship resistance and information symmetry [31:52] - The engineering mindset of building something useful [32:47] - What excites Anatoly about the super connected world Solana seeks to enable [36:45] - Advice for aspiring young founders on starting companies and biking uphill [41:10] - Anatoly's hope for a decentralized future --- Support the show by checking out my sponsors: Join Levels and get personalized insights to learn about your metabolic health. Go to https://levels.link/jake. --- https://homeofjake.com
On Unchained, two co-founders of Solana Labs, Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal, dive deeply into the Solana ecosystem, discussing everything from the price of SOL to the Solana network outage to the competition between Ethereum and Solana. Show highlights: why Raj thinks SOL's market cap grew from $86 million to $68 billion in less than a year Anatoly's and Raj's background and how they found themselves working together to build Solana why Anatoly thinks Solana will be a general-purpose blockchain rather than specializing in gaming or high frequency trading Anatoly's goal to make Solana the first billion-user blockchain why Raj thinks NFTs on Solana have been so popular why, in the opinion of Raj and Anatoly, Solana's purpose has shifted away from high-frequency trading how NFTs could replace ads why “everything is DeFi” how Solana Labs plans to allocate the recent $314 million funding round it raised what lessons Anatoly learned from the 18-hour September network outage technically speaking, what happened to cause Solana's network outage why Anatoly believes that outages, at this stage, aren't necessarily a bad thing whether “trading mercenaries” dominated at Solana Breakpoint why developers are interested in building on Solana how Solana and Ethereum compare as execution and settlement layers why Raj doesn't like framing competition between Solana and Ethereum as a fight how Anatoly views the competition between Ethereum and Solana whether the arrival of Neon Labs, which is bringing EVM to Solana, could lead to developers leaving Ethereum how NFTs and Phantom wallets are bringing in new users for Solana whether Raj and Anatoly would roll back Solana if something like Ethereum's DAO hack were to occur why Solana has the competitive advantage in throughput, according to Anatoly what would happen if FTX cofounder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried gave up on Solana their predictions for Solana five years from now Thank you to our sponsors! Crypto.com: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/unconfirmedcardearnfeb2021 Nodle: https://bit.ly/3AXGydJ Brave: http://brave.com/Unchained Episode Links: Anatoly Yakovenko https://twitter.com/aeyakovenko Raj Gokal https://twitter.com/rajgokal Solana News Anatoly Yakovenko -- It ‘doesn't really matter' if the network goes down again https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/124887/solana-labs-ceo-it-doesnt-really-matter-if-the-network-goes-down-again Neon Labs https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/123744/neon-labs-developer-of-ethereum-virtual-machine-on-solana-raises-40-million Aave + SushiSwap going to Solanas through Neon Labs https://twitter.com/joselitommutuc/status/1462043806207938563 Solana + Brave integration https://decrypt.co/85538/privacy-browser-brave-expands-beyond-ethereum-solana ATH at $260 https://decrypt.co/85457/solana-hits-all-time-high-of-260 Solana Breakpoint https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/11/15/solana-throws-a-three-day-party-for-itself/ https://www.cryptoglobe.com/latest/2021/11/solana-network-highlights-from-breakpoint-conference-paint-a-very-healthy-picture/ https://decrypt.co/85934/the-view-from-solana-week-in-lisbon FTX US + Solana NFTs https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/120044/ftx-us-launches-marketplace-for-trading-solana-based-nfts Solana Outage The Block's coverage https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/117711/solana-blockchain-validators-restart-network-after-transaction-stoppage https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/117624/solana-experiences-transaction-stoppage-as-developers-report-intermittent-instability Why the mainnet went down https://twitter.com/buffalu__/status/1437792673784549383 Potential ramifications https://twitter.com/CometShock/status/1437870278684590091 Anatoly Yakovenko Solana outage tweets https://twitter.com/aeyakovenko/status/1437887482897518595 https://twitter.com/aeyakovenko/status/1437784552324358155 https://twitter.com/aeyakovenko/status/1438496595360862215 https://twitter.com/aeyakovenko/status/1438465508412739588 https://twitter.com/aeyakovenko/with_replies Solana $314M Fundraise https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/107749/solana-labs-raises-314-million-funding-a16z-polychain-capital Solana Topics Raj thinks Ethereum cannot be killed https://twitter.com/rajgokal/status/1458420316569489410 NFT Growth https://twitter.com/masonnystrom/status/1455556328404013057 https://twitter.com/masonnystrom/status/1459157853848195079 Pplpleasr https://decrypt.co/85964/the-collectoooooor-pplpleasr-latest-nft-art-solana-ethereum Investment in gaming Forte https://decrypt.co/85966/cosmos-solana-ventures-join-725m-series-b-crypto-gaming-platform-forte Alexis Ohanian investment https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/cryptocurrency/articles/why-reddit-co-founder-alexis-ohanian-will-invest-100-million-in-solana-social-media/ FTX + Solana https://decrypt.co/85302/ftx-solana-ventures-lightspeed-100m-crypto-gaming Phantom wallet hits 1M+ users https://decrypt.co/85563/phantom-wallet-preps-mobile-launch-reaching-million-users-solana Solana Basics CoinMonk: https://medium.com/coinmonks/solana-more-update-for-sol-becb65024877 Solana Labs: https://medium.com/solana-labs/proof-of-history-a-clock-for-blockchain-cf47a61a9274 The Tie: https://research.thetie.io/solana-ecosystem/ Binance.Research: https://research.binance.com/en/projects/solana Genesis Block: https://genesisblockhk.com/what-is-solana/ Block Explorers: https://explorer.solana.com/supply + https://solanabeach.io/supply + https://solanalysis.com/ Messari: https://messari.io/article/the-perpetual-sol-rise
On Unchained, two co-founders of Solana Labs, Anatoly Yakovenko and Raj Gokal, dive deeply into the Solana ecosystem, discussing everything from the price of SOL to the Solana network outage to the competition between Ethereum and Solana. Show highlights: why Raj thinks SOL's market cap grew from $86 million to $68 billion in less than a year Anatoly's and Raj's background and how they found themselves working together to build Solana why Anatoly thinks Solana will be a general-purpose blockchain rather than specializing in gaming or high frequency trading Anatoly's goal to make Solana the first billion-user blockchain why Raj thinks NFTs on Solana have been so popular why, in the opinion of Raj and Anatoly, Solana's purpose has shifted away from high-frequency trading how NFTs could replace ads why “everything is DeFi” how Solana Labs plans to allocate the recent $314 million funding round it raised what lessons Anatoly learned from the 18-hour September network outage technically speaking, what happened to cause Solana's network outage why Anatoly believes that outages, at this stage, aren't necessarily a bad thing whether “trading mercenaries” dominated at Solana Breakpoint why developers are interested in building on Solana how Solana and Ethereum compare as execution and settlement layers why Raj doesn't like framing competition between Solana and Ethereum as a fight how Anatoly views the competition between Ethereum and Solana whether the arrival of Neon Labs, which is bringing EVM to Solana, could lead to developers leaving Ethereum how NFTs and Phantom wallets are bringing in new users for Solana whether Raj and Anatoly would roll back Solana if something like Ethereum's DAO hack were to occur why Solana has the competitive advantage in throughput, according to Anatoly what would happen if FTX cofounder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried gave up on Solana their predictions for Solana five years from now Thank you to our sponsors! Crypto.com: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/unconfirmedcardearnfeb2021 Nodle: https://bit.ly/3AXGydJ Brave: http://brave.com/Unchained Episode Links: Anatoly Yakovenko https://twitter.com/aeyakovenko Raj Gokal https://twitter.com/rajgokal Solana News Anatoly Yakovenko -- It ‘doesn't really matter' if the network goes down again https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/124887/solana-labs-ceo-it-doesnt-really-matter-if-the-network-goes-down-again Neon Labs https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/123744/neon-labs-developer-of-ethereum-virtual-machine-on-solana-raises-40-million Aave + SushiSwap going to Solanas through Neon Labs https://twitter.com/joselitommutuc/status/1462043806207938563 Solana + Brave integration https://decrypt.co/85538/privacy-browser-brave-expands-beyond-ethereum-solana ATH at $260 https://decrypt.co/85457/solana-hits-all-time-high-of-260 Solana Breakpoint https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/11/15/solana-throws-a-three-day-party-for-itself/ https://www.cryptoglobe.com/latest/2021/11/solana-network-highlights-from-breakpoint-conference-paint-a-very-healthy-picture/ https://decrypt.co/85934/the-view-from-solana-week-in-lisbon FTX US + Solana NFTs https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/120044/ftx-us-launches-marketplace-for-trading-solana-based-nfts Solana Outage The Block's coverage https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/117711/solana-blockchain-validators-restart-network-after-transaction-stoppage https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/117624/solana-experiences-transaction-stoppage-as-developers-report-intermittent-instability Why the mainnet went down https://twitter.com/buffalu__/status/1437792673784549383 Potential ramifications https://twitter.com/CometShock/status/1437870278684590091 Anatoly Yakovenko Solana outage tweets https://twitter.com/aeyakovenko/status/1437887482897518595 https://twitter.com/aeyakovenko/status/1437784552324358155 https://twitter.com/aeyakovenko/status/1438496595360862215 https://twitter.com/aeyakovenko/status/1438465508412739588 https://twitter.com/aeyakovenko/with_replies Solana $314M Fundraise https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/107749/solana-labs-raises-314-million-funding-a16z-polychain-capital Solana Topics Raj thinks Ethereum cannot be killed https://twitter.com/rajgokal/status/1458420316569489410 NFT Growth https://twitter.com/masonnystrom/status/1455556328404013057 https://twitter.com/masonnystrom/status/1459157853848195079 Pplpleasr https://decrypt.co/85964/the-collectoooooor-pplpleasr-latest-nft-art-solana-ethereum Investment in gaming Forte https://decrypt.co/85966/cosmos-solana-ventures-join-725m-series-b-crypto-gaming-platform-forte Alexis Ohanian investment https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/cryptocurrency/articles/why-reddit-co-founder-alexis-ohanian-will-invest-100-million-in-solana-social-media/ FTX + Solana https://decrypt.co/85302/ftx-solana-ventures-lightspeed-100m-crypto-gaming Phantom wallet hits 1M+ users https://decrypt.co/85563/phantom-wallet-preps-mobile-launch-reaching-million-users-solana Solana Basics CoinMonk: https://medium.com/coinmonks/solana-more-update-for-sol-becb65024877 Solana Labs: https://medium.com/solana-labs/proof-of-history-a-clock-for-blockchain-cf47a61a9274 The Tie: https://research.thetie.io/solana-ecosystem/ Binance.Research: https://research.binance.com/en/projects/solana Genesis Block: https://genesisblockhk.com/what-is-solana/ Block Explorers: https://explorer.solana.com/supply + https://solanabeach.io/supply + https://solanalysis.com/ Messari: https://messari.io/article/the-perpetual-sol-rise
Daffy Durairaj is the co-founder of Mango Markets and is currently working full time as a developer in service of the Mango DAO.00:28 - Origin Story04:44 - Seeing the order book10:20 - The idea behind creating Mango Markets15:38 - Going from creating smart contracts to creating Mango17:32 - How big is the DAO?20:01 - The Launch29:15 - VCs and the launch32:43 - Decentralization and getting stuff done34:55 - Will DAOs ever compete with big tech companies?40:43 - What's next for Mango Markets? Transcript:Anatoly (00:09):Hey folks, this is Anatoly and you're listening to the Solana Podcast, and today I have with me Daffy Durairaj, who is the co-founder of Mango Markets, so awesome to have you.Daffy (00:20):It's great to be here.Anatoly (00:22):So origin story, how'd you get into crypto? What made you build Mango Markets?Daffy (00:30):How did I get into crypto? So, I started off really not wanting to get into crypto. I was really interested in algorithm training. I did that in college and did some competitions that I did well in, and I wanted to trade equities, but it turns out if you have not enough money, if you have a few thousand dollars it's just not allowed. You're not allowed to algorithmically trade. There's a patent day trader rule, and I was infuriated and I was just looking around and I found Poloniex where you can do anything you want. The thing that actually hooked me first to Poloniex was the lending market because immediately as soon as I saw an open lending market, I was like, "Oh wow, I have to buy some bitcoin, and I have to lend it out." And, Poloniex was all bitcoin, and then it gradually got into just the meat of it, which was algorithmic trading and everything about crypto seemed exciting, but I actually didn't want to hold bitcoin. Poloniex was all bitcoin, but again, I think the government sort of pushed me in the right direction.I was like, "Okay, I don't want to hold bitcoin, I'll hedge off my risk on BitMEX, but again, not open to US persons, and so I was kind of reluctantly holding bitcoin and thinking, all right, I have a few thousand dollars if things go bad in this whole bitcoin thing. I'll come out okay. I'll get a job or whatever, but just never got a job, just kept holding bitcoin and continue to trade crypto, and I did that for about five years. Then, I wanted to actually start trading on chain because I thought this was probably for a lot of the reasons that you built Solana, the censorship resistance, and the global liquidity of it, and the openness of it, the fact that you're not excluding people that have a few thousand dollars. I wanted to build on chain and I was just not very bullish on a lot of things, so I kept going back to trading, and then I saw Serum DEX, and I was just hooked. I placed a trade and it felt totally natural and normal. It wasn't like $40 and takes 20 seconds and you don't know if it... And, then MetaMask was jammed and you're like, "Oh, but how do I cancel this?" So, that was a long-winded way of saying I was a trader and then I saw Serum DEX and then I had to start building the tools that would make Serum DEX even more fun.Anatoly (02:59):That's awesome. I got into it by trading. Basically, I set up like an Interactive Brokers IRA account, and that let me kind of bypass the rules.Daffy (03:11):Really?Anatoly (03:13):With a very small amount of money. I think they probably closed these loopholes already. I wrote a bunch of stuff on top of their Java STK and started trading there.Daffy (03:22):I remember I actually got started that way too. I did a bunch of stuff for their Java, and we can tell you we're both programmers. We wanted to build this money machine. It's so fascinating, and it's a machine that-Anatoly (03:40):It prints money.Daffy (03:40):It does things and it prints money. What more could you want? So, I got started with Interactive Brokers, but I guess the whole IRA thing... Because I was a college student, and so even talking to an accountant would take a huge dent out of my net worth.Anatoly (04:01):Totally, it's all really not designed for... The whole financial system in trading in the US is designed to funnel retail towards an app like E-Trade or Robinhood, which takes a cut, and then sells that trade to somebody else, who will take a cut, and then 10 other people until it gets an exchange, and that's how everybody's protecting their neck. They're all taking a little slice, and I think what's cool about crypto is that even centralized exchange like FTX is 1,000 times better and less extractive of the users than anything in traditional finance, simply because they can guarantee settlement. Such a very simple thing.Daffy (04:49):You feel it right from the beginning. You go to Poloniex in 2016, and it's like, oh, you have an email, you have deposited bitcoin, and now you're just lending to people. So, just talk about not being extractive. To see the order book through Interactive Brokers or Ameritrade or whatever costs you a lot of money and it costs them a lot of money to provide it, and I don't think I'd ever seen an order book. This was my passion, this is what I love to do, and I've never actually seen it.There's that story of the blind men who are touching this elephant, and so I had kind of figured out maybe what the order book looks like, but then on Poloniex, you go there and you just see the order book and you see all the lights flashing and you're like, "Oh, this is it. This is where the trades are happening." And, that's free, and of course, a big part of Mango Markets as well is you can see the order book. That's it, that is it, there's nothing more, and it's all on chain and all this stuff. So, in terms of not being extractive, it's a really big piece of what motivates people to come in.Anatoly (06:02):I don't know if you ever tried to get data, real data. I wanted timing information when a bid comes in or when an ask comes in versus when it's filled. How do I get access to it? Because when you get data from any of these places, basically it's like a little better than Yahoo Finance, which is like every five minutes they give you a low and a high.Daffy (06:27):I don't know, did you ever succeed at doing that in Interactive Brokers?Anatoly (06:32):No, I recorded some of it, but it just never had that fidelity and it always felt like a gamble. I'll build some models and sometimes stuff would work locally against my simulations, but then whenever I would actually try to run it, I'd see that fills take a little longer than they should and all this stuff really feels like you're not interacting directly with the trading system, that somebody when they see your order they're like, "Well, maybe I'll put my order ahead of yours or do whatever or slow you down a bit." It just sucks.Daffy (07:16):It feels very opaque, it's like a black box, and of course, this is all for people like me who are kind of looking on the outside looking in. So, if I had gotten a job at Citadel or somewhere, then I could probably see what's actually happening, but the fact that the vast majority of people are going to look at it and not really know it's actually happening, not everyone wants to see an order book. That's an important fact, but there are a large number of people who need it to be a little bit transparent to be involved.Anatoly (07:49):What I hate about it is that there's a lot of people that make a lot of money from you not seeing, that they're in the business of information assymetry and fuck them.Daffy (07:58):So, it's not a family friendly podcast, so it's good. I was going to ask that. So, there's a funny story on RuneScape. I don't know if you've ever played RuneScape.Anatoly (08:17):I played Ultima Online, which is I think similar vibes in the early days.Daffy (08:22):Yeah, so on RuneScape, just like on the point of no one being able to see anything, on RuneScape, also they had an order book because that's the most natural thing to do, and I actually had to figure it out from first principles. I would place a trade and I would see that sometimes it would get executed and sometimes it would not get executed, then I realized, okay, if I place a trade for these water runes or something or oak logs or something, and I put the price really high it gets executed at some price that's not the price that I said, and then I was able to form this concept of that's the asking price. I didn't even have the terminology for this, and then I did the same for set the price to zero for a trade and now I found the bid, and now I can make a lot of money actually underbidding the best asker and overbidding the best bid.Anatoly (09:18):So, you're market making.Daffy (09:20):Yeah, so it's funny, I was reminded because you said there's a lot of people who make a lot of money in you not knowing, and I was just minting money. It took me years to accumulate like 1 million gold pieces in RuneScape and then I was able to just 30X it in a month.Anatoly (09:46):Too bad RuneScape is not a crypto currency. Whoever is running RuneScape, you're missing a huge opportunity right now to just go full crypto.Daffy (10:00):There was some talk about some NFT or something on Twitter. Somebody was trying to encourage Jagex, the company, to get involved in crypto, and of course, I tried to signal boost it, but eventually everyone falls in line.Anatoly (10:17):How did you end up with the idea for Mango Markets?Daffy (10:21):So, I have to give credit to dYdX. It was like 2019 and I hadn't really considered that this was possible. I was heads down writing, trading algorithms and trading crypto just kind of holding all of my wealth in bitcoin and I was borderline bitcoin maxi on that, and just seeing dYdX do it in those early days... Now of course, they're way more successful now. Those early days seemed that you could do leverage trading on chain, and they kind of showed it as a proof of concept, which I just kind of started pacing back and forth like, oh my God, this is changing our worldview completely.Ethereum was slow and whatever, so years went by. Actually, maybe just like a year, and then I saw Serum DEX where I felt finally, okay, all the pieces are in play and also I wanted to market make on Serum DEX, but I really need leverage. I don't really need leverage, it just makes market making dramatically more efficient and safer. Leverage is just this tool that people who are involved in the financial plumbing really need, and it wasn't there. I was like, "Okay, this is the time and I have to learn how to code smart contracts," which sounds like a very scary and daunting task, but it was not that bad.Anatoly (11:54):The scary part was that you guys were building on a platform that was really rough around the edges at the time.Daffy (12:02):Well, no one told me that shit was really rough around the edges at the time. That was actually maybe important. You come in and there was nothing to do, this was August of 2020, things were not locked down necessarily here in the United States, but people kind of scattered. No one was hanging out in the major cities, they had kind of went to go live with their families, as did I. I fled San Francisco and went to the rural part of North Carolina. So, there was nothing going on and you just have all the time in the world and bitcoin is doing well, so that's funding you in a way.Bitcoin is this big, or crypto in general, it's all the people who bought it or own some crypto, as long as it's going up, it's kind of funding whatever zany side projects you have in mind. So, this is just a side project. Wouldn't it be cool if I could access this part of the world or this technology? And so, that's why chewing glass... You probably coined that term, I don't know, that's why chewing glass wasn't so hard because that pressure to... You have all the time in the world basically.Anatoly (13:30):Basically, COVID and lockdowns were so boring that chewing glass to learn how to code smart contracts with Solana was like a reprieve from the boredom.Daffy (13:45):And, I've heard you kind of say, okay, a bear market is when everyone is coding. To give the opposite perspective, I feel like a bull market, unlike much more chill, oh yeah, nothing really matters. Crypto is going up, it doesn't matter what I do. The rent is going to be paid for, everything is going to be fine, might as well engage in high variance new ideas, new projects. In a bear market, I'm very I got to grind, I got to squeeze out a couple of more bips out of this trading algorithm because I got to pay rent. So, that's the bullish case on bull markets.Anatoly (14:30):That you can try something crazy. That is the point where people enter this space is in a bull market. It's that they kind of start coming in droves because they're like, "Everything is crazy and I can also be part of the party." But, it's hard as a founder to stay focused because you are in that high variance, high risk taking kind of mindset.Daffy (14:58):There's a trade off of during a bull market there's a lot of things looking for your attention, and a bear market is very calm, or it can be. If you built up a lot of liabilities during the bull market, now you have to stay afloat during the bear market. Maybe it's calm in the external world, but internally it's not calm. You're like, "I got to do X, Y, and Z today every day." There's that natural pressure.Anatoly (15:32):So, you decided to learn coding on smart contracts on Solana. How did you end up going from there into Mango?Daffy (15:39):Initially, it was called Leverum. Not it, there was just an idea and there was a command line tool where you could... The YouTube video might still be out there, and Max was out there somewhere on the internet and he saw it and he thought it was a great idea. And so, he reached out to me and we did some other things like speculative about a prediction market, and then we were like, "Okay, no one is going to build margin trading." A lot of people are saying it, but it doesn't look like if we just wait it's just going to happen in the next couple of weeks or something. It's probably we just have to build it.Not we just have to, but we totally should. This is clearly a very important piece of the Solana ecosystem. So, we started building it. Mango was just we were thinking alliteration is good. Everybody loves mangoes, it's a fruit that I have never heard of anybody who doesn't like mangoes. It's probably the high sugar content and Mango Margin was the idea, but then we got the domain Mango.Markets. It's kind of evolved now. When you're starting off with something, you have kind of a narrow scope. You're like, "I just want to be able to borrow money." And now, there's this Mango DAO and people are talking about NFTs and drones. I'm talking about drones. I don't know if anybody else is, but it's just gone way higher and now I'm like, "I'm a humble servant of the Mango DAO." And, that's totally a normal thing to say.Anatoly (17:27):How big is the DAO?Daffy (17:28):How big is the DAO? That's a good question.Anatoly (17:30):In humansDaffy (17:31):That's like a philosophical question. In human terms, wow, again, even still a philosophical question. So, I think if you go to MNGO token, if you go to the Solana explorer and just type in mango or MNG or something, you can probably... I don't know if they have a list of unique token addresses, so in some sense that's the DAO, but in terms of the number of people who actively post on the forums and make proposals, that's much smaller. I'm guessing there's thousands of people who have votes, but the number of people who make proposals and add meaningful commentary on the forums is maybe 20 people, and it's expanding pretty quickly.I always see new people coming in. There's also not just people, there's the wealth of the DAO and the cultural reach of the DAO, the spiritual significance of the DAO, all of those seem like size if you ask how big is the DAO. You interviewed Balaji Srinivasan, and there's this idea that he had on Twitter that was like a DAO should buy land in Wyoming and send a drone to circle it and this is kind of like a moon landing sort of kind of thing or some kind of significant breakthrough where the DAO is controlling physical objects in the real world. So, this is very exciting to me, but it has nothing to do with margin trading, it's just something exciting that maybe in a bear market, I don't know, I'll push to get this done.Anatoly (19:23):Do you want the control to happen on chain?Daffy (19:25):Yeah, I think that's necessary. Maybe not the total control, but some kind of signal that distance... So, you can kind of think of Congress authorizes a certain thing and then the executive branch does it. If we could make that link be as automated as possible, I think there's something useful there, at the very least something exciting and interesting, kind of like the moon landing where maybe there wasn't anything useful, but it was inspiring for sure.Anatoly (20:02):So, the DAO, if you guys decided you want to do something with leverage and lending, and how you guys launched was really unique. I don't even know if people did this in Ethereum. To me, this is the first time anyone's kind of done this style of launch. Can you talk about the design and how you guys thought of it and what let you make those choices?Daffy (20:25):So, people early to Solana may be familiar with the Mango market caps and how that went, which somewhat argues the first NFT on Solana, and that was done pretty much sort of like how NFTs are typically done where there's a mad rush to grab the caps as soon as possible and the price is swinging wildly and there's a lot of people. Now, I think we put that together as an April Fool's kind of thing, very quickly, and so it was great for what it did, but the experience from that was, okay, there's going to be a lot of angry people. If you do it in this way where the DAO is raising funds, and this is the inception of the DAO, the DAO is raising funds for insurance fund, you probably don't want it to just be distributed to the people who were the fastest to click.And, that was the idea. We probably don't want that. It doesn't seem useful, it seems like a lot of angry people, and a lot of frustrated people. So okay, so you take out the time component, you take out the luck component, and then you're left with you kind of have this sort of auction that lasts 24 hours, but then what if X somebody comes at the last moment and dumps in a huge amount of money and raises the price for everyone? Everyone gets the same price. So, our design was we'll have a withdrawal period or a grace period at the end, the remaining 24 hours where if you kind of don't like the price, you can bail out. It had some flaws and I think we knew about those flaws from the beginning. We were like, "Okay, we just pushed to this game of chicken to a later point where someone can put in a lot of money to scare other people away and then they pull out at the last second. And that did happen, but it's not clear if that was net positive or net negative.Anatoly (22:28):And kind of in summary, there's this 24 hour period where people deposit funds in for a fixed supply of tokens.Daffy (22:36):Correct.Anatoly (22:37):And, then the period is over, and now everybody knows what the total amount in the pot is for the token and there's kind of this price that's created and then if you don't like the price, you can withdraw the entire bid or as much as you want. You can only reduce your bid.Daffy (22:54):Correct.Anatoly (22:54):But, you don't need to withdraw the entire bid, you can just reduce it.Daffy (22:57):Correct, yep.Anatoly (22:58):So, then that pushes the average price down at the same time, so for every dollar you take out, you kind of get a better price per token.Daffy (23:07):And, you see the price ticking up during the first 24 hours as more and more people are putting money in and then the price ticking down over the next 24 hours.Anatoly (23:19):I'm a huge fan of this setup because it creates a lot of... There was news, you guys made the news because it was almost half of all of USDC that was minted on Solana ended up in that smart contract. It was like 45% of it.Daffy (23:43):I remember actually because we saw the USDC on Solana was 700 million the days before and then it had climbed up to like 1.1 billion or I don't know what the number was at the end, and there was 500 million in the contract at the end of the first 24 hours. That was not the intention.Anatoly (24:05):It's like it was minted.Daffy (24:05):And honestly, I think you could appreciate it better from the outside than from my point of view for sure, and of course, I also could appreciate it better from the time distance, but that was not expected. We kind of knew that there would be a lot of money placed in the beginning and then money would go down. That was in all the documentation that we wrote, and that was expected and we had all these dev calls where everyone was always talking about it, and I was like, "Okay, come on. Literally, there isn't that much USDC in Solana." So, it can't be that bad, but of course, I underrated the possibility that someone could just mint a whole bunch of new USDC and bring it in from somewhere else. It made the news and a couple of other projects did the same thing, and I wonder if maybe it's a one time kind of thing. The game only works once. You can't expect to scare people every time or use the tactic every time.Anatoly (25:10):Maybe, I think a lot to be said, but there was no other way to go. Mango took it all, so there was no private round, they were never listed anywhere. This was really the only way to get it, and the anticipation of a project that was awesome, and from every other perspective is... What I always tell founders is that you should always raise the least amount for the highest price. The VCs kind of have more power than you usually because they have more information, they look at many deals, people come to them, they have the money, but it's sometimes the founders have this asymmetry where they're the only ones without equity. They're the only ones without tokens and that moment is if you can get everybody at the same time to compete for that thing, then you've kind of created the symmetry there and you maximize the capital raise for the DAO, for the project, for the community, and therefore that actually is a good thing. You have more resources to build a vision.Daffy (26:16):Although, I'll clarify, I think the DAO is still handing out a lot of tokens, so there's still a lot of ways to acquire Mango tokens, and that was kind of the inception for the insurance fund. The DAO has been paying people out of the insurance fund, and so it's been useful, but there's still more tokens to be had. There is a slight private rounds and I totally understand why people do them, but like I said earlier, if you are in crypto for a while, and this the cool thing about bull markets, I don't actually need money, I just need to pay rent and bitcoin has gone up 50%, so I'm solid.And, no one was paid anything. There was just Mango tokens that were given to people and they were told the DAO values your contribution or this is the inception of the DAO, and everyone worked to build this thing. People worked without even the Mango tokens and sort of the tokens were given after the fact. I think it's a valuable way to build crypto projects actually.Anatoly (27:30):I want more teams to try to totally from genesis this DAO first approach, but it's really tough because you guys had such a principled view on how things should be done and there's a lot of people out there that are offering money for that one thing. How did you guys have the discipline to just go stick with this?Daffy (27:54):We had a lot of discussions about all these things. We talked to VCs and we still do and we like all VCs actually. So, I think Satoshi, I'm not trying to draw a comparison to us to Satoshi or anything, but there is this beauty in that story and I think there's a lot, maybe even the majority of bitcoin's value at least to me... To me, I just love the narrative. I love the story of Satoshi, the pseudonymous founder who is one of the richest people on the planet right now. Obviously, they're in a no VCs. This person wanted to not make a big fuss. It was kind of like this clockmaker prophetic person who just came and then left, built this thing and then left, and that's such an amazing story.There are these long, long payoffs. Maybe they take a while, but they definitely do pay off that if you're not hurting for rent, again, I was in a position, all the other Mango devs were in this position as well where it was a bull market, we're not getting eviction notices or something, we could kind of float the boat for a while. Just consider the longterm payoffs, consider the five year payoffs. Stories are amazing.Anatoly (29:17):The weirdest thing is that every good VC will tell you that you should maximize for the highest return. Don't worry about the middle exit, or don't compromise. Actually, imagine you're taking over the world, what are the steps to get there? And, the risk don't matter. Actually maximize for the high and this is the irony here is that I think this kind of fair launch, most distribution will probably result in overall longterm, better, and higher returns, but the risks that I always find is that humans are hard to organize and at the same time, cryptography is this new tool for organization.It is what allows us to massively scale agreement and complex problems, really, really complicated problems. We can just click a button and vote and agree on that one and you know. You know that the decision was made, but I'm curious, do you see tension between the decentralization, kind of the disorganization of the DAO and getting shit done? I've got to build stuff.Daffy (30:34):No, 100% actually, on a daily basis actually. There was a podcast with the guy on Twitter that goes by Austerity Sucks and this was back in April. We talked about this and he brought up a similar point and he was, "Yeah, this DAO thing, it's all a fine and dandy idea, but do you think this will work?" And I, to be honest with you, am skeptical, however it is always felt to me sort of a high variance idea, kind of like if you were in the 16th century Netherlands or the 17th century Netherlands and you were like, "Okay, we've got to get spices from India. How do we do it?"And, you come up with a joint stock corporation and then the join stock corporation is everywhere and I don't think anyone has really figured out how to do DAOs well or what's the right mix, how do we communicate, how do we coordinate, all those things. I don't think anyone's quite figured it out yet. No one had figured it out like six months ago. I still don't think we have figured it out, but if it works, the payoff is enormous. There is global coordination, there isn't a jurisdiction. I imagine the DAO is controlling drones one day. It could be wild. So, even taking into account all of my skepticism, I was still like, "Okay, we should do the DAO idea." Anyway, not just me, Max is totally on board with this and Tyler and all the other people who kind of built Mango Markets. But on a day to day basis, as of October 2021, now I'm thinking, okay, maybe what we need to do is have small teams that build things and then pitch it in front of the DAO and get compensation. So, the DAO is kind of the government and it subcontracts out to people. Maybe not like direct democracy rules everything and we'll try that out and if that doesn't work, we'll try something else out, but try new stuff out quickly.Anatoly (32:45):That's awesome. This is actually a really good strategy to incentivize product development. Building an MVP, which means you're the PM, and the implementer, the dev, and you go do all the work and here's your management. It's all done, just give me money.Daffy (33:09):And, there's some maintenance tasks, so it's not purely new products, so I'm thinking Mango V4, but also in the meantime, there are all these nodes that need to be paid for.Anatoly (33:24):I think you guys will need to split. We called it KTLO, keeping the lights on work. You for six months, you're on KTLO duty, and you get paid a salary effectively, and you just got to keep the lights on, but then some other folks are like, "Go build something that you can propose to the DAO and the DAO will fund it."Daffy (33:49):I think that's basically what we have coalesced on is that, well, some people should be doing KTLO and other people should be doing new things, building the new product, and it takes kind of the risk out. The DAO doesn't have to pay for whatever stuff that I produce for Mango V4, but we both have some kind of incentive to be honest about it. If it's clearly a huge improvement or even a very substantial improvement, DAO should pay me something because if the DAO doesn't, then you can expect future builders to not go for it. And, we have these discussions on the forums.People make good arguments like this. I think the average IQ in the Mango Markets forums is very high. I think probably higher than most legislative bodies. I'm just going to go out on a limb and just say that. Not ours of course, ours is obviously very high IQ, smart people in our government, but you know.Anatoly (34:55):Do you believe five years there's going to be a 30,000 person DAO. Imagine a tech company, 30,000 engineers, or 30,000 people, they got product managers, teams, layers of bullshit. Is there going to be a DAO that's competing with a big tech company?Daffy (35:16):It's legitimately really hard to figure out how this might look. The reason why I hesitate so much with the question of a 30,000 person DAO is I'm not sure it'll look exactly like a corporation that we can say, okay, these are these 30,000 people. You might never be able to figure out who is part of the DAO and maybe that's one of the benefits of the DAO. If I asked you, how many people are part of Solana, not Solana Labs, but Solana the community? It's a little bit difficult to even answer, lots of people, various levels of involvement, and financial. Some people have a lot of financial stake until you don't, but some people have a lot of financial stake and no involvement at all. It's wild all over the place. Does Bitcoin look like a country or a corporation? I can even point my finger on what it is.Anatoly (36:20):So, even LINE had a battle that had 8,000 people all coordinating over something and I think they have corporations within that game that are maybe probably span up to 1,000 I'd imagine. So, that's people organizing using tech for a common goal without a job, without a structure that you normally have at a company. Linux was built by people organizing online. I think as soon as you have something to lose and in Linux and even LINE you start building up a virtual token, your reputation is a contributor to this thing and becomes a thing that we don't normally think of as valuable in a monetary way, but it's valuable to that person, but I definitely care about my ability to continue contributing to an open source project. So, where tokens I think can get there is if there is something of value being created by the community, some common goal that everyone is working on and that token is in the middle of it and is uniting and organizing it. I think that could scale as large as a corporation.Daffy (37:45):No, I agree with you. I just think it'll always be a little bit hard to figure out how many or who is involved, just by the nature of it. I just think it'll be always a little bit hard to figure out, but will 30,000 people be building on Mango or some DAO? You already know the numbers better, but we might even be approaching that with Solana. So, I'm not part of Solana Labs or affiliated with Solana in any way, but building on Solana, and also I have a financial incentive too, but also I have a reputation incentive and it feel like I'm part of the Solana corps or whatever it is, but I don't know what it is. It doesn't even exist. It's not even a DAO. There isn't even a DAO there.Anatoly (38:39):Oddly enough, I feel the same way about Eth and bitcoin even is that we're competing with them.Daffy (38:50):But, it all feels like we're actually kind of a part of the same team and-Anatoly (38:54):This is the weird part that I think is going to be really interesting how it plays out because I don't think it's obvious to anybody what is crypto. Is it the token? Is it the coin? Is it the network? Is it the cryptography itself?Daffy (39:10):It's not the cryptography itself, so we can strike that one out.Anatoly (39:14):Are you so sure? I think it's honestly the power that a person has to be able to make these very concrete statements that are unbreakable no matter how... That's the math. The math behind it is what allows them to do them.Daffy (39:36):I don't totally know the cryptography itself. I know basic 101 number theory stuff, but I remember going through my first programming class and coming up feeling just very powerful. I'd write stuff down and then it happens. Kind of like a king, actually, more powerful than a king in a lot of ways because I was writing these training algorithms and it was happening around the world in ways that probably a medieval king couldn't imagine and crypto brings that to finance where things of actual value can be moved.Mango Markets exists and you can go there and place a trade right now, but it was just somebody who wrote it. I was involved based on you can see the GitHub contributions, but it was just people who wrote it and that's probably... We can maybe chalk that up to the cryptography.Anatoly (40:43):So, what's next for you guys?Daffy (40:46):There's drones on the horizon. Yes, sometime in the future, but we have to do a lot of the nitty-gritty, roll up your sleeves kind of work. On Solana so far, there isn't... Maybe a lot of projects are struggling with this, indexing all the data and providing it for people in a usable way because there's just so many transactions. It turns out if transaction fees are really low, people just make a lot of transactions and they don't think about it.And so, gathering it up and displaying it in a useful format to people, that's a very immediate term and then slightly medium term is sort of becoming the place where everyone does leverage trading and does borrow and lending, all the crypto natives. And then of course in the longterm, I would say it's somebody like my mom should be able to store her money in Mango Markets and not think twice about it. It's not a good idea right now I wouldn't say, but that's the goal. That involves a lot more social things than just technological things. That's get it to a level where she can do it safely and feel comfortable and manage her keys, or even if she's not managing her keys, have a solution for how the keys might be managed, that she's not falling for scams, and that's I would say my longterm goal.Anatoly (42:09):That's awesome, man. On that note, man, really awesome to have you on the podcast. Great conversation. I'm always excited about what you guys are doing and how the community is building this ecosystem of its own, so really amazing. It's serendipity that you guys started going on Solana, just really lucky to have folks like you in the ecosystem.Daffy (42:35):Thanks a lot. It means a lot. This was really fun.
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Anatoly Yakovenko, CEO & Founder of Solana Labs, joins Chris Blec for a frank chat about the level of decentralization of Solana as compared to mainstay blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum, the impact that Solana validators can have on the state of the network, how the Solana project was conceived, whether or not the SOL token truly has real value, the impact that VC investment has had on the project, and much more. Learn more about Solana at https://solana.com Follow Anatoly Yakovenko on Twitter at https://twitter.com/aeyakovenko Follow Chris Blec on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ChrisBlec --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/proof-of-decentralization/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/proof-of-decentralization/support
It has been a wild summer for blockchain project Solana. From the meteoric rise in the price of its native token to technical problems facing NFTs launched on the blockchain, the project has entered the forefront. On this episode of The Scoop, Anatoly Yakovenko Founder & CEO of Solana Labs joins host Frank Chaparro for a deep dive into Solana, which some believe can compete with Ethereum despite being less decentralized. As for price specifically, Yakovenko admitted it doesn't always make sense. "This is just mind-boggling that if the price of Solana doesn't make any sense, then I have no clue why Ethereum has anything in terms of its value," he said, adding: "I don't pay attention to the price so much because I have no control over it and I'm an engineer. So, like, if I can change it, then it's just like one of these variables." Solana Labs completed a $314.2 million fundraise back in June 2021 (that amount raised is a play on the number Pi). Investors included Andreessen Horowitz, Polychain Capital, FTX via Alameda Research and CoinShares. But as of yet, Yakovenko said much of their capital raise has not been deployed. It is also known for powering Serum, the decentralized exchange launched by Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX. Solana recently launched its Metaplex NFT marketplace, which Yakovenko acknowledged experienced server issues. Still, DeFi still comes to the top of Yakovenko's mind as a core use case. “I've really felt that finance was a place where blockchain makes sense," he said. In Yakovenko's view, users could even one day use their own hardware to tap into the network in order to access financial market data as quickly as professional trading firms with access to exchange data. "The network guarantees as close as possible to an impossible problem, which is that information propagates equally to everybody at the same speed," he said. Episode 55 of Season 3 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block's Frank Chaparro and Anatoly Yakovenko, Founder & CEO @ Solana Labs. Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com. This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Bakkt, Kraken, and Exodus Bakkt® unlocks the $1.2+ trillion of digital assets that is currently held in cryptocurrencies, rewards and loyalty points, gaming assets and merchant stored value. We began in 2018 with the vision to bring trust and transparency to digital assets. Through the Bakkt Warehouse and Bakkt Bitcoin Futures and Options contracts, we serve institutional clients in an end-to-end regulated market with true price transparency. For consumers, Bakkt aggregates digital assets to enable instant liquidity and to empower users to trade, transfer and pay however they want. Visit Bakkt.com for more information About Kraken Whether you're an experienced crypto trader or just starting out, Kraken has the tools to help you achieve financial freedom. With 50+ cryptocurrencies to choose from, industry-leading security and a wide variety of features to suit any investing strategy, Kraken puts the power in your hands to buy, sell and trade digital assets. Visit Kraken.com to get started today. About Exodus Exodus is leading the world out of traditional finance by building beautiful and user-friendly crypto products. Forget having to learn the nuances of different cryptocurrencies. Exodus is designed for everyone and hides the complex details behind a beautiful and intuitive interface. Buy and sell one cryptocurrency for another from the comfort of your wallet, in seconds. Funds remain under your full control. Secure, manage, stake, and exchange all of your favorite cryptocurrencies from one wallet. No account registration is required. Download Exodus at Exodus.com or directly from Google Play and the iOS App Store and you're ready to go.
Anatoly Yakovenko , CEO of Solana Labs talks about scaling blockchain applications to millions & how Solana differs from Ethereum 1.0 , 2.0 & beyond. Solana recently raised $314M in Token Sale led by A16z, Polychain & others. Visit https://solana.com/ to learn more.Join discussions with Solana community.https://solana.com/communityApply to Solana Developer Grantshttps://solana.com/developersLearn more about Solana Ecosystem https://solana.com/ecosystemFor understanding concepts relating to Solana also checkout :https://solana.com/news/proof-of-history---a-clock-for-blockchainSpecial shoutout to : Trezor hardware wallet Protect & store all your cryptocurrencies offline.Zebedee Win Bitcoin rewards for playing your favorite games.Freehold community is built around contributors who hodl cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), Stacks (STX), & others. Join the movement @ https://www.joinfreehold.com/Sirius Labs is conducting Chia hackathon ( $500k prize pool ). Go Buidl. Listen to Rob Braxman the real Internet Privacy Guy, on how to protect your privacy online . Visit his YouTube channel at Rob Braxman Tech.
Dingo interviews Solana Labs CEO/Founder Anatoly Yakovenko. We talk about his previous experience working at Dropbox and Qualcomm and what lead him to develop Solana Labs. From there it's a deep dive on all things Solana - why it's catching on, Proof-of-History, the inflection point of mass crypto adoption, censorship resistance, NFTs, Ultima Online (?), and more! You can find out more about Solana ($SOL) at their website below: https://solana.com/ Don't forget to follow Anatoly and Solana for updates on upcoming hackathons: https://twitter.com/solana https://twitter.com/aeyakovenko Saffron Socials Web3 app: https://saffron.finance Telegram: https://t.me/saffronfinance Discord: https://discord.gg/pDXpXKY Twitter: https://twitter.com/saffronfinance_
We sit down with the hottest new protocol layer in crypto today: Solana, and its cofounder Anatoly Yakovenko, who is the CEO of Solana Labs. If you listened to our Ethereum episode or follow crypto even at a cursory level, you've likely heard of Solana and its ability to scale transactions thousands of times higher than Ethereum. And, unlike other so-called "ETH killers", Solana is doing so in production today with large and real applications. We dive into the project's history coming out of the 2017-18 crypto winter, how it works and what's ahead now that they've recently raised $314m (yes that is Pi $million) from a16z and Polychain Capital, with their native SOL tokens currently trading at a market cap around $10B (!). If you love Acquired and want more, join our LP Community for access to over 50 LP-only episodes, monthly Zoom calls, and live access for big events like our Book Clubs. We can't wait to see you there. Join here at: https://acquired.fm/lp/ Sponsors: Thanks to SoftBank Latin America for being our presenting sponsor for this special episode. SoftBank has truly been the first and best large capital allocator in the Latin American startup ecosystem, and we are very excited to work with and learn from them over the rest of 2021. If you are an entrepreneur, employee, other investor or simply someone who's interested in learning about the best young companies in LatAm right now, get in touch with them at: https://bit.ly/acquiredsoftbanklatam and tell them that you heard about them on Acquired. Shu's Twitter (which we highly recommend following!): https://twitter.com/snyatta Paulo's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulo-passoni-67195/ Thank you as well to Modern Treasury and to Fundrise. You can learn more about them at: https://bit.ly/acquiredmoderntreasury (and you can find our reverse interview with them at https://www.moderntreasury.com/acquired ) https://bit.ly/acquiredfundrise Topics covered: Anatoly's background as a wireless engineer at Qualcomm, and how it led to a fundamental discovery of how to improve crypto system scalability Solana's role in the crypto protocol ecosystem and why there's a need for it (and why it can and will exist) alongside Ethereum versus "killing" it Starting Solana during the 2017-18 crypto winter, and how it forced them to focus just on building and shipping versus raising and posturing Bootstrapping adoption with the mining community (Solana's "true believers") and the early and ardent support they provided Where Solana falls on the Vitalik "Scalability - Security - Decentralization" trilemma, and why Solana's superpower of maintaining composability is so attractive Links: Solana: https://solana.com Solana on Twitter: https://twitter.com/solana Solana Hackathon submissions: https://airtable.com/shriNT26cAZeDJagn/tbl5fZ4E1BBbVAttW FTX: https://ftx.us Audius: https://audius.co Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.
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Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of FTX and Alameda Research, and Anatoly Yakovenko, the co-founder and CEO of Solana Labs, discuss the Project Serum ecosystem that they are building on the Solana blockchain, and the unique approach to scaling the Solana blockchain is taking. In this episode, they talk about: their backgrounds, and how they became involved in crypto why Solana takes a different approach to scaling and how it is implemented why they think a relatively lower number of nodes is sufficient to protect from attacks or collusion what the vision for Solana is, who they see using it, and how Serum fits into that vision why they think there haven't been more crypto projects migrating to Solana yet Solana's proof-of-history algorithm and how it works how Solana plans to attract DeFi developers why Serum was made interoperable with Ethereum the types of traders they are hoping to attract with Serum, and what their experience will be like on the platform why Project Serum is an ecosystem and not just an order book exchange how high-frequency trading firm Jump Trading came to adopt Serum how Serum will manage trading tokens from different chains the purpose of Serum's two tokens, SRM and MSRM and what's in store for Project Serum in the future Thank you to our sponsors! Crypto.Com: https://www.crypto.com Gods Unchained: https://playgu.co/unchainedpod Episode links: Anatoly Yakovenko: https://twitter.com/aeyakovenko Solana: Solana.com Sam Bankman-Fried: https://twitter.com/SBF_Alameda Project Serum: https://www.projectserum.com Project Serum on Twitter: https://twitter.com/projectserum Solana CoinList auction in March: https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/59952/blockchain-project-solana-raises-1-76m-from-its-launch-auction-on-coinlist Solana network stats: https://explorer.solana.com The Block Research on Solana: https://www.theblockcrypto.com/genesis/76615/solana-blockchain-overview Proof of history: https://medium.com/solana-labs/proof-of-history-a-clock-for-blockchain-cf47a61a9274 Serum: https://www.theblockcrypto.com/daily/72924/ftx-dex-serum-solana-blockchain Tether: https://medium.com/solana-labs/tether-to-bring-usdt-to-the-solana-network-77864184b20 Jump Capital: https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/76826/veteran-market-maker-jump-trading-forays-into-defi-to-provide-liquidity-for-ftxs-solana-based-dex