Hi, welcome to epicenter of the podcast.
Where were you for crypto Founders?
Builders and thought leaders. I'm suggesting questio.
And today, I'm here with Brian, Fabian, crane fed, AKA Ernst and
sunny Agarwal. Today.
We're, we're doing our yearly tradition of having a epicenter
host. Just Extravaganza episode where
we just get to Talk Amongst ourselves.
Talk about what happened in the last year and where we think
things are going and usually break apart our predictions from
the previous year. Before we do that.
I'd like to tell you my responses today.
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today guys. Thanks for being here today and
taking part in this yearly tradition of yeah, talking about
what happened this year and what's happening next year.
So well, So the best part of epicenter, I just grind through
the rest of it just to get to these yearly episodes.
Yeah, and like every year we say, we're going to do this more
often, but we never end up doing it more often so much.
You have to take what Sonny says today with a grain of salt.
Because for him, it's really already.
He's a, he's over in Puerto Rico and it's noonish for the rest of
us and Sonny got up, especially Yeah, really appreciate it.
Sunny. So, yeah, I think like, there's
lots of different themes that we want to talk about today.
And so I think we'll start with, you know, what were the big
themes this year and how we perceive them into an ni, you
know, themes for the future. And how we think things are
going to evolve in the next year or two.
I think the thing that everybody had brought up and it's probably
on everyone's mind is like and if T's ha like and if he's
absolutely blew up this year. So, you got, you were not
surprised, but somewhat surprised.
So basically, I mean, yeah, so basically the nft is thing, it
caught me, totally, by surprise. The really I always thought that
nft is were coming. But very much not in the way
that they've actually arrived. So, basically, to me the way
that they have manifested themselves is mostly in the
status as a Still Main. And I thought that basically nft
is what manifest themselves in the in the realm of all things
Financial but non fungible, which is actually the majority
of assets. So yeah, totally surprised.
You think that this current form and appease is what's going to
be like that, what's used long-term like I do, is it?
So, what I'm personally, really interested in is, like, figuring
out how do you like, use at ftes in, like, more defy, protocols?
I think most of defy, currently is like, it's like one
prediction I have, which I know may be true.
But I think that, like, defying and of teas are gonna become
more and more like combined with each other, right?
Because I think that like, you know, what's Defy Kurdish really
built around these fungible tokens.
And like you mentioned like, you know, most Finance Financial
assets are like entities, if you want to like bring like homes
and stuff onto a blockchain, like we need to have like those
BNF keys. And if I want to have a protocol
that gets a mortgage on those homes, you need to have defy the
interact with those entities. Now the thing is like, yes, I
agree with you that like, you know, third pfp and of T is
profile pic and and of tease, you know, they're not exactly
that. But I think like, you know, Oh,
they're just like s to groundwork and there you can
think of them as these are the easiest things to build.
And so that's why they got there what got built first and you
know, there's all this stuff that's building this like
tooling around them and that will be usable for more things.
Well, it's I mean, it's interesting, right?
Because like anything eise. I mean, they've been around for
a while. But actually I think the first
use case of any tea that I remember clearly is like
centrifuge, right? And they've been working on this
for like years and years. And that was actually exactly
that, right? Because they have basic enfps
for like non fungible Financial assets, where you would
basically have like an energy for some sort of loan, and then
they would get pulled. And then You'd have like a
fungible token that is them back by using ft.
So like you've had you've had that it just hasn't taken off in
the way that it did around all kinds of stuff.
No, no. No, it's not.
It's not just profile pictures, right?
It's like all kinds of like art. The interesting thing about the
art thing is, I mean, I remember very well.
The so, you know, this is team. Team that now works on Ocean
protocol, but they've had a bunch of freed assessors, right?
So, they had this thing called Big Chain.
You be at one point and before that, they had a thing called,
The Scribe, and describe, was basically be basically doing
something like, and if he is rather like cracking art
ownership on the Bitcoin blockchain, and I remember
having a lot of discussions with them back.
Then this was a 2015, 14, maybe 14.
And because I was so positive. Also, like, how is this is
having value, right? Because, like, you have to
Define this like separate, you can still copy like there are
thing, but then you have to stay still ownership, and this is
really how value. And I remember having these
discussions with him and like, yeah, 2014.
And then, of course that didn't take off, but now it is, but it
makes sense to me in a way, right?
Because I think you have something where you, you didn't
have a market before. For like, it was basically not
possible to kind of trade, a lot of these intangible pictures,
images, ideas memes. And now you can have it.
And that's a pretty huge, I think.
I feel like, I mean, the thing that I'm most interested in it
with regards to nifty's at least in the next couple of years.
Like, I don't know how this plays out, sort of like more.
I'm not sure. I have fully formed ideas about
the how this plays out with non-financial assets, like,
homes and loans, and things like that.
But the whole pfp thing and sort of the status of the service for
me, I think can serve as a sort of a base layer for new forms of
social networks where financial services and this kind of ties
in. Into like what you were saying
earlier, so I like fine, social networks and financial products,
kind of like end up merging and it's like the the
financialization of status and the financialization of these
sort of like, in this sort of like intangible idea of status
and I can see where, you know, these things start getting
boostrap where infps are actually used as collateral.
So, like you kind of steak you're in a key in this, these
you're in a teasing this new in these new networks, and then,
From there, these sort of new social networks would issue
tokens that that users could use to like using defy things like
that. Like, it's not fully formed by
like this is where I see like at least of the pfp aspect of an
EFT. He's heading in the next couple
years. Yeah.
I think that's two overlapping things here.
Right? So, basically, the SNF teas and
then there are social tokens, right?
And I mean basically tokens, that kind of grant you access to
The Network's to me, that's a different use case.
It's not because nft is to me. This is a very clearly
one-dimensional thing where basically you have an exact
price point for each n ft. And so on and for social tokens,
it kind of allows for much more for much richer Dynamic, right?
What are some examples of social tokens and talking about?
So for, I think the first ones were the Friends with Benefits
people at, but I think it's proliferated.
So actually, I am not particularly active because I
have two little time, but I know there's tons of tons of social
networks out there that are gate kept by tokens.
So, here's one like, option of what You know, I agree that I
think a lot of NF teas are currently being used effectively
as like social gaming tokens Community tokens and maybe maybe
what's going on is that these are it's a sort of proof of
work, right? Because you know, once you have
an EOC 20 standard kind of thing, it's very easy for anyone
to just go mint a token and just like release it.
And I say, oh this is a community token, right?
But it's like if everyone touching that then like, you
know, maybe it's the barrier to entry is just like so small.
Small. But it's gonna get flooded with
all these Community tokens, other lose their value.
I think by making them ftes and like having to put some artwork
into it. The community Creator had to
sort of look a bit of proof of work that they have to do.
They have to do this like minimum threshold of like
investing like finding an artist and like creating at least like,
you know, whether it's generally like Auto generative or like
hand drawn or something, but you have to like create like, you
know, okay, I got to go create 10,000 artworks and then you can
have this, like, Community token.
Yeah, I think I think one of the things that's important to
recognize here is the importance of first and you know, like on a
theory in like the the sort of first big and ft projects like,
you know, the crypto pumps or whatever.
Like those are going to have. Those are going to remain
valuable like for a long time, like the first crypto bunker,
like the first generative art or like the first like pixelated
art or whatever and then like, you know, on Solana, the
equivalent of that is like DJ. So I think that's the first kind
of like pfp. And I'm like everything else
kind of like comes like Goes To Zero from the Army.
Like, you know, the prices are like, don't maintain the same
value. So I think like the kind of Blue
Chip and ftes will remain valuable on every platform.
And then, like once in a while. There's going to be like, a
first of something, like, it is gonna be a first up, some new
kind of art, whether it's like visual art or film, or, or or
audio or music. And you know, that will happen
on a theorem. It will happen on salon.
And these kind of like new experiences will always remain
sort of like the Pinnacle of like what people expect and if
to use to deliver the value and the floor price will probably
likes a super high and then like, everything else is kind of
copies. It kind of goes down from there.
So two things I want to add, what's up.
So one is you know, about the status thing, you know, I mean,
I actually don't think it's that surprise and I think that's
actually been this like missing piece in crypto.
We're so if you guys know Elaine who she's like, you know, I
really like her blog and I think I mentioned it in the past
couple times, but I remember like she had this post from like
45 years ago where she says like, hey people often forget
this like other values. Like, you know, we talked about
the, you know, Reuses of money, right?
Like medium of Exchange store, value and unit of account.
And say, there's actually this like very forth, very commonly
used one, which is display of wealth, right?
And she's like, gold is actually, you know, made for a
very good like money because it actually served as a good
display of wealth where you could turn it into jewelry and
use it to show off. Right?
And that was something that was missing from the digital, like
what what what Bitcoin was and like, you know, in a few joke
like, oh, maybe what we got to do is rather hit like, You know
these like gold chains that have them like some like trusted
Hardware that like shows, you're like, Bitcoin balance on your
thing. Is it?
Clear? That's not what's happening and
I think and if he's our sort of what came in and like field in
that Gap, all the being the display of wealth digital
Lambos. Yeah, they're digital Lambos,
right? Okay.
So question. How about we go around what is
everyone's favorite nft collection or nft here.
I mean II. So I you know, I my interact
with any of these been fairly limited, you know, there's like
some things like this centrifuge or irbid.
Some that. I actually like non-traditional
use cases. I bought a few entities.
When when we were preparing the rarer podcast, right?
Good that because that was kind of but otherwise I have not been
very active. I have actually not bought any
kind of a Nifty swimming a collection.
I think I have you. Maybe three does this count
sunny. I think that was like so epic.
What they did where like, you know, they mentioned that oh,
yes, these be three positions are nft is but like when they
dropped it, they actually had like a cool artwork for each n
ft. And I think that like surprise
anyone and I think that was like, so cool.
I also said, I also still have a very extensive not-safe-for-work
collection of clovers. I don't know whether you guys
remember this and I'm still waiting for this to come back so
I can dump my clovers bags here. You have to tell people that
like, you know, this was like an OG and if he kills all the OG n
of P projects are what's like become really popular.
It was an OG n ft project. I mean this this I mean it's
like this gent. It's this generative art thing.
We're basically Am I on? I mean, it's a black and white
thing and basically the the It's The End state of a goal of a go
game. Right?
So basically it's and so basically, it's genitive.
It's actually super cool. But yeah, I feel like there's
not a lot, not a lot of people pushing this my favorite and if
he's that I bought, I bought them like way before.
This was any like was The thing, I mean, I don't know they're not
like worth anything, but I just think they're cool.
And but like there are these sort of Ninja Turtle figures on
you can't really see it here, but like with a background of
like the US dollar, they're not worth anything, but I just
thought it was cool to get that collection.
And and of course, you know, my junk dick pics.
Got a and I'm holding onto them because I'm convinced I'll hear
be worth something someday. I think for me, I think my
favorite one is it's called stacked toads.
And what happens is you get these little toads and then you
like steak them and what happens you by staking them, you earn
stack tokens and you use a stack tokens, like take the toads and
like, stack them on top of each other and you get like a tower
of toads. It is the dumbest thing I've
ever heard, but I think it's hilarious and funny and like,
yeah, and I think what's cool is it kind of what?
It did was it started introducing a lot of like nft
people to like Concepts from like elsewhere and crypto like
ideas like staking and things like this.
I think that was actually kind of pretty cool.
Well, let's go to the let's go to the next topic.
We just sort of I think Sonny brought it up.
No, because he had the entity explosion.
And at the same time, we've had 35, I mean, in some ways, it's
exploded, right? There's been like explosion of
activity. But at the same time, like, defy
tokens that I think were like their age.
It's on point, especially these kind of etherium, defy things
like, you know, maker curve, compound urine, etcetera, Etc.
They have not done so well, what's going on?
Yeah. This is this an They should I
made recently which was like Hey, like, you know, if you go
to 2020 and you talk about like what were the D5 Blue Chips,
right? You know what, we had like make
our Sushi uni wifey snx comp, like all these things.
And like, I think out of all the D5 Blue Chips, like none of them
are in the top 50 by like market cap anymore other than uni,
like, you know, Sushi and x n x star like Not even in the top
hundred compound is barely hanging on Ave is like, you
know, I don't know number 70 or something and it's like, you
know, it's so, you know, I asked a lot of people of, you know, I
was asking if you people like more investor e friends.
I'm like, hey, you know, what's going on with defy right now?
Why is it like, just like, not know this this slipping in,
like, valuations? And they're like, yeah,
honestly, I call the in all the interest says, like not.
It's kind of boring. Everyone's just more into like
nft is in gaming now. And so I wonder if that's all it
is or if there's something deeper going on where like, you
know, you know, we had these like Forks upon Forks upon
forks, and I wonder if that's finally like, you know, starting
to be felt. We're like everyone's like
right. And you know, we always like
joked about oh, these are just valueless governance tokens,
right? But I think you know, it might
be coming a little bit true. Now where I think a lot of
people are track starting to realize that like, hey do these
If I tokens really have any actual value and it's in for a
lot of them, they don't even use useful for governance either.
So, but it's also it happened to the one project that has had no
notable, folks, right? So, if you look at maker, it's
also slit down. It's at like 65 or something.
Now, maybe even that isn't meme like the fork of effectively the
fork of maker right there. Like I think what I think in
2020 everyone else started getting forked and like added a
Added like yield farming to the forks, right?
But maker never got forth until this year.
And but now I think spell is like flipped maker and like I
think ma'am is actually in the top is not in the top 50 by
market cap as there like stable coins.
I think maker actually did get out competed or is in the
process of getting out competed right now.
Yeah. I mean, I also Guess that
different topic, we're going to get to but I also you know
Wonder to what extent. There's a factor here that you
know here in gas costs. Just gotten like so crazy
expensive that actually means. Like the, you know, the amount
of users has really shrunk a lot, right?
Where it's only now, people have like a huge amount and then, you
know, you have people going to lots of other things, whether
it's, you know, it's Lana, Avalanche Cosmos chains.
Polygon. I don't know where and then I
mean that's obviously these defy blue chips on aetherium.
Have generally not been able to, you know, like replicate the
success only theorem elsewhere or like even that even how does
that work? Right?
I guess always maybe the ones who seem to be, like, most
aggressive in trying to do this and trying to, like, kind of
launch of another chains. but yeah, I think that's also
something where like It's not working in favor of these D
fibers of chips. So you're saying that there's a
sort of dilution of the user base relative to other chains
and the defy activity happening on other chains.
I mean like let's say someone now, right, someone new is like
hey, I want to start using like crypto and like you're not even
going to tell her. I mean, I wouldn't even say to
me like hey, you know, do some hearing thing, right?
Because it's like doesn't make sense.
But I like the gas calls to like way too high.
Yeah, they're gonna go to be a c or something.
I mean, most people I think via cease Lana, Avalanche, you know
somewhere, right? Yeah, that's obviously bad for
the serum defy projects. Yeah, also, I feel like I feel
like the the D5 protocols that have, you know, tried to like
obvious example, like having, you know, tried to deploy
multiple chains. You know, there are tools like
move your liquidity over but they haven't made it like super
simple for their users to like, you know, move their positions
on to other chains where you know, like these might be lower
and and I finally kind of frustrating it kind of as a user
of of these protocols like being able to just like a one-click
movie liquidity over. I think that user experience
aspects, like not there yet II do think that.
So what I think that the multi chain approach of Ave and Sushi
is like wrong, right? Because I think that like the
Application specific approaches the right one, but we'll get
into that later. But I think like with the Ave,
so specifically. So I wonder what one thing.
I need to understand a little bit better is like, how well are
these things competing on these other platforms?
Right? Because I like, for example, I
think that like, I don't know how, I don't know how.
Obviously anybody knows who she is, getting pretty out competed
on the other platforms. Right?
So if you go and Pauly, got like so Sushi has redeployed
themselves everywhere. Are but like, you know on
polygon Creek swap is the biggest the biggest acts on
Avalanche. Looks like Trader, Joe and like,
thanks. So I think what's happening is
like, you know, these protocols that started on a theorem and
then try to expand are not able to compete with the protocols
that are, you know, maybe native to the other ecosystems.
Why do you think that is sunny? I think part of it is just like
Community sentiment like or like, you know, the core team
would rather promote the things that are like native to their
ecosystem because they have a higher sense of loyalty and
things like that. So I think that's a large part
of it. And I think also the things that
are native to it, maybe started their first, right?
Like, quick swap was on polygon first and then like, Sushi came
over and stuff, right, but it's like by that time because
because if you're expanding your sort of like playing this like,
you know, mercenary of the okay. All right, fine, you know, the
usage on your platform is good enough that I'm going to.
It's worth it for me to start, like deploying there.
But by that time like the the missionaries who really like
that platform and a charge of building stuff earlier.
They've already built up a user base.
Yeah, I mean I think go so well on one thing is if you have like
an existing token, right? That's already distributed to
like it constrains you a lot right versus okay, you can start
from scratch and in Hughes like the entire token Supply, you
Tara Mae to that, try to incentivize the bootstrap to
project on that chain, and then I think the other thing is also
If you don't have like some coordination, it's just it
increases complexity in some way.
So I think it will also tend to slow down this project.
A little bit, make them a little bit, less agile, and Nimble and
maybe maybe customized through the particulars of that chain.
So, if you think we'll see. You know, etherium defy
applications Port over to Cosmos, when, when kind of
Moses. Live, and well, I think, I think
we will see you through my applications poured over the
cosmos. I'm not sure if it will be via
Atmos because I don't think every most solves the problem,
it just, you know, everyone's just another polygon or
something. Right?
It's like, you know, maybe a more IBC compatible polygon, but
at the end of the day, it shows us a not, you know, it's an evm
running on tenement. I think what might happen if you
might start seeing so everyone has built on the software,
called ether man to which is, you know, built a lot of it was
built by the atmos team, but also, A lot of other teams as
well. Look good.
I'll calm and stuff. And so I think we're going to
see more through applications deploy, their own like,
Sovereign chains with an evm, right?
So they're going to take put an evm module and just have their
contracts on it. And I think, you know, I like I
said, I had a bet. Two years ago, that within three
years maker will be on its own chain.
So I only have a year left in my background.
I'm you know, now I am getting a little bit more worried about
that. I bet I was like pretty
confident. All right.
Well, you know, I made it back because we thought it was a
50-50 over under, but like, it looks it looking like that might
not happen. But, you know, I think things
like compound. Like, you know, they have for a
long time, you know, they haven't been playing that like,
multi-chain game of working deploy everywhere because they
made this bet on compound chain. And saying like, Hey, we're
going to go build an application specific chain to go and have
that be the living market for everything.
Do you think these chains will be IBC compatible or or the
that's unlikely? Yeah, I think they will be.
I think that like, so one, because I think, you know, for
example, compound has been built on substrate right now.
I have it on good authority, that they kind of hate substrate
right now. I haven't heard anyone who has
had a good time building on substrate.
But like, I think that You know, there is an IBC palette being
built for substrate, so that so those with IDC, so subject
change will basically become IVC compatible.
Yeah, I think, you know, cost us just already has this like, big
Network effect on application specific change and being able
to interoperate. And so, I think we're just going
to see more and more of that. Yeah, I'm super bolus on this
Vision. Like, I think that I think that
it's kind of interesting to see if your IAM starting any Theory
and I like I sort of and, you know, evm application start
going down this route. And like, when I hurt, you know,
when when when I heard about like, gnosis kind of merging off
into his own emerging with, with exercise and it becomes its own
chain, if I like, it makes so much sense.
And I mean like it's basically the cosmos Vision playing out on
aetherium only like without the bridging technology yet.
But I would be so happy to see, you know, evm chains.
Well, like first of all IQ, theorem really adopting this eat
this. This this sort of interchain
vision and it's like application-specific blockchain
Vision, but also integrating IBC.
So that just everything works together.
Sorry. I have to clean up.
I think it's my misunderstanding here.
So basically gnosis chain is not going to be a Application
specific chain, it's going to be very general evm base chain,
that kind of that basically is any theorem Forerunner in terms
of implementing eips and does it very best to to scale in such a
manner as to retain reasonably cheap gas prices, which I think
is currently. So I mean, obviously there's
pros and cons for the EVAP, right?
So basically if you were To sit down at the drawing board again.
What would you modify? The evm.
Almost certainly, but I mean, there's such a huge Network
effect around EVMS that basically the bet we hired noses
chain. Is that EVMS are going to be
there. And there are they are gonna
stay kind of like, I mean various Internet Protocol is
actually pretty. Eddie bad standards, but once
they hit a certain level of adoption, you can't get rid of
them anymore. You can't change the email
standard or something. It's like I mean, yeah, maybe
It's Tricky but it's there. And so basically.
Yeah, I mean that's kind of the bad behind gnosis chain.
That seems like give to be honest.
He's kind of like a strange bed to me.
Right? Because if you look at it today,
right? You have I don't know what some
tens of millions of crypto users.
Right? And we're so much at the
beginning and if you say like, oh actually deviance bad, but
like I mean, I don't believe she's never takes exist the same
way. Right?
That you have. It's like whatever TCP IP or
like. Yeah, I mean they they kind of
do, don't they? Yeah, you know, I see both sides
of this a lot because like, you know what?
So I will I will, I have this like tweets and he and my drafts
that I, which is like, but it goes something like, cause like
the early Cosmos came, like Cosmos was right about
everything except evm skepticism.
I think that like, the early cause of seemed like, we had
this entire vision of like multi-chain things, everything
interconnecting. I think the one mistake we made
was that we were way too, evm, skeptical.
And we thought, Tweets been in your draft since last year
because I think you mentioned the same thing online, really?
Well. Okay.
Well, yeah, it's been sitting there.
Yeah, but I think like, you know, I think, you know, I did
not expect that like the multi chain would play out in such,
just a bunch of generalized UVM, change that are talking to each
other, right? I think that's.
And that is kind of mostly what we have right now, right?
Like Avalanche, Phantom polygon. All of these are just evm change
and I'm still not sure that this is like their Because I do, I
still do think that like the evm is the bottleneck on
scalability, right? And like, I think so Lana has
showed that we're like, you just if you want achieve any sort of
real scalability, you just have to throw out the evm because
that like you like Avalanche, you know, they say they want,
they do all these like cool things that the consensus
protocol there, but end of the day, none of it matters because
the evm is the bottleneck, but I mean, what he could do is I mean
you could reduce like the database or the state sighs.
Bye. Taking a snapshot every year or
something. I mean that's way is to actually
combat this and make it workable right?
Or you just build like a compiler from solidity to like
llvm and like, you know, let people write their contract and
solidity and you know running on other state machines.
You know, I guess it was another sort of thing to talk about
would be like I think so this kind of double head because this
is what I want. One of the things I wrote as
like a prediction for the future of.
I think it's mix in where I do think that 2022 will be like the
year wrap change. Where like, I think that Tara
has like set the precedent for this, right.
Tara Tara was like the execution of the cause of the cosmos
division where what they did was they start, they started with
this like application-specific blockchain, which is a stable
coin. And then they have like sort of
built like a tiny ecosystem around me where they're like,
okay, we have this like app this application and then they're
like, okay, we want to like Drive usage with its
application. Let's start building more sub,
protocols on top of it, and they built up a little ecosystem on
top of it. And then, you know, I think
what's going to start to happen now with terrorism, going to see
applications on Tara, start to break off onto their own chains
because, you know, I'm already talking to Applications that are
sort of in the Pro, you know, thinking about this right now.
And I think that like, people and I think there's like, you
know, projects like the door chain and osmosis and stuff have
been like following in that vein.
And I think we're I think we're going to start to see more and
more applications start to do that being like, hey, you know,
I why aren't we also taking this like more application, specific
route and I think 2022, we're just going to see a huge
explosion of these. Yeah, I mean, I think that's
another. Another thing.
That was a big thing in in this year.
I was, I think I BC launching and then it's act, every
division, development forever. And then it's pretty.
I think the amazing thing is been like, you know, just I
don't know. It got to like 1 million
transaction, ID transaction saying like, you know, very
quickly, I don't know less than two months or something and then
Are they feeling that? Maybe surprised me the most, and
I think a big credit to like, sunny and osmosis teams, and
that was just the user experience.
I've always liked shockingly, good because I was all like,
worry, it won't wondering, is that going to be okay, but I
think that's actually. Yeah, it's good.
So I think that's, that's clearly playing out well, and I
think that's just gonna Grow a lot.
And of course, you can have all the chair other types of Rich
technologies that will also have great user experience.
I think the ancient did anything to you.
Same thing. It's interesting also.
Yeah, they think about bridges and sort of CDs like two ways.
I think it is is breaking out, right?
I think there's like one thing, which is a bridge where you have
like some trust, you said two parties.
And I think that maybe the two leading contenders there seemed
to be like Wormhole and axel are.
And that's pretty nice because they conveyed, the trustee
parties can basically run like a full node on like whatever chain
and they can make the footprint on the Chain, very easy, and it
could make a great user experience and you can support
like all kinds of chains and then but of course, the downside
is, these operators have to then decide.
Okay. We are going to run the full
node on this chain, and, of course, the nice ring, right?
You see that? Again, pretty amazing.
It's just a permissionless nature.
Right? Like you can just spin up
connected chains. And and and and so I think
that's that's having both of those technologies have a huge
future. And then yeah, I think both of
those have come a very long way. This year may be trusted bridges
are like a little bit behind but not much right?
I think that it's also very soon that I think they'll have You
know, be basically like, very usable for like normal users.
I want to ask you guys about like so IBC and Wormhole Bridges
like type acknowledge. What, what do you what are the
cost structure is look like here and where are like, is IB?
Am I right to assume here? Like, IBC is cheaper for for
users? Then like the Wormhole kind of
model. So what I would say here is how
what I see the difference here is.
IBC is much much higher integration costs.
Where could I be see? Is this like, very trustless
like client protocol and then you have these trusted Bridges,
where you basically have people run note to get IBC integration.
You actually have to build something into the Block Chain
itself and getting that IBC protocol into more Frameworks is
challenging, right? So, you know, we're working, you
know, the console's teams are working on like, you know,
getting Needed to substrate. And you know, I know course, one
is working on getting into cell 0 and this, you know, it's a
work in progress with something like Wormhole.
It's very easy. You just have to ask your
validate. Mr. Set up to run nodes for the
counterparty blockchain. And you know, there's no,
there's no development work to be done.
You know, she'll have to integrate multi saying after
like, you know, there's work to be done, but it's not as much,
but I think the key word there is, you have to ask your
validators. I think that the difference will
come down to So something like Wormhole is really useful for
connecting what I call Trust famous blockchains.
It's like, you know, it's great for connecting things in the top
hundred to other top hundred chains, right?
Where you have to have this. Like, you know, you have to get
people to agree to make that connection and run nodes and
houses like higher cost. The beauty of IBC is given how
permissionless it is. Where literally to make a
connection between two chains. You just make a Action on each
chain and you have a connection going, right?
And I think what happened that. I think that's how you move from
the world of hundreds of blockchains to thousands and
tens of thousands, right? There's like chains.
I have never heard of that are like, enabling IBC on Cosmos
right now and connecting to osmosis and like don't even have
to talk to us about it right there.
Just like going ahead and doing it and I think that's like the
permission. Listen.
This is what's going to be like, very different.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's also if you think of like, okay, what
would these fridges? Well, I sort of did apology of
these fridges. So I think if you look at
something like Axl are right, we'll ask her is a cosmesis
Decay chain and I think yeah, I think we're almost going similar
Direction. I says cosmesis Decay chain, and
then you have basically any bre any calls most share any IBC
chain can just like connect to that, right?
And you don't have to ask anybody.
You can just use the IBC and then acts like an basically have
their protocol the connect to all these other chains, right?
So I think it makes sense to have like, you know Cosmos Pages
via IV. C connect to like, you know, the
bridge chain that then connects to like all these like non-ai
you see ridges. And so you kind of see both
their IQ can see the the advantage of both both
approaches and then you can just combine them by having Saying.
Yeah, basically, like a chain that's run by a bunch of
alligators that you're connecting to.
All these doesn't change, that then connects to all the others
like IBC. so I think one of the other topics we want to touch on
and you probably get to the to the the prediction soon because
we're already at like 40 minutes here, but really interesting is
like the proliferation of Dow's doubt rulings and the Emergence
of new organizational Paradigm Zach, I think like one of the
areas where we've seen lots of dows come up this year is around
in a fees. So that I've been like lots of
entity projects that I've created douse with varying, a
say like like very utility. But what are some of the other
kind of Dow projects that you guys have seen perhaps like
outside of a set of n of T so I can defy or like, Community
governance. I mean, I think what we saw was
like the We've started taking Telegram and Discord groups and
calling them Dallas, which I think is kind of funny, but like
kind of not wrong either, right? We're like, you know, we I think
So what one of my, my friends, they built this project called
Commonwealth, which is this like governance forum for like and
for they pitched this idea to me called token curated communities
where like you launch a token and it builds Community around
it and the community figures out the use case and I was all I was
actually a little bit skeptical when they pitch it to me, but
it's like interesting that like what they did.
So if anyone's familiar with like the ion token ions are Like
secondary token in osmosis that, like it started as like just two
days before launch were like, hey, let's just add in a token
and airdrop it to a bunch of people and don't tell them why,
or what it's for or why they got it or anything, and let's just
see what happens and like it, drew this like, really big
organic Community around it. And this like Community is like,
doing all sorts of like, you know, like, you know, they're
they're building stuff and, like, designing protocols, and
all this kind of Of cool stuff and it's like funny enough.
I think the most powerful doubt tool that's been created so far
as Telegram. Brian, what's going on with like
free time? Because I was just thinking
about it the other day because I'm like man, imagine telegram
figured out a way of monetizing like all the value that's being
built off of there like platform and like it's kind of sad that
it kind of just like failed in such a spectacular way.
Is there anything still going on with that?
Yeah, I mean, yeah, so probably most people don't know the
history here, but like, I can spend like few minutes on it.
But basically, I telegram was, was wanted to launch a
blockchain and they did this huge token tail is like race
like 2 billion or something like that and then the ACC and they
had done a lot of development work.
And then the ACC basically like last-minute was like, you can't
launch this thing and then Telegram, Kind of like we paid
stare investors, but the code was kind of there and there was
some other company that was also like working on this thing.
And so then the other were like, oh, let's go and launch this
thing anyway. And put most of the tokens in
the community pool, right? So and then we of course also we
were like one of the validators that kind of like, you know,
helped launch this thing and it's still running.
They actually rebranding to ever scale now though because
apparently like the whole tall and thing has been like You
know, a bit of a. So, it's still running.
I think this is, it seems to be like a pretty active Community.
I sort of, you know, there's not too much intersection.
Like, you don't really hear about it much because I think
it's like its own community. So let's see where it goes.
But it's pretty active. Of course.
It's totally decoupled from telegram this point, right?
It's just, it's basically just another like layer once more
contract blockchain now, Of course, maybe at some point, you
know, telegram like integrate that or maybe something else.
Who knows? I think in the end it seems Very
likely to me that telegram will probably right turn the telegram
app into some kind of crypto wallet.
I guess it seems like probably not launched her own blockchain
at this point, but But I guess that's another thing that's
starting to happen. Right?
Is that you have just two more more crypto features being added
to like mainstream consumer apps.
And I think if you see the, if you see the kind of monetization
and business models and economic effects, like crypto, then I'm
sure this is some also something that's going to continue in a
big way. I mean, I think even just this
year we did see it added to a lot of like traditional payments
apps and stuff. But like, I think we're gonna
see crypto and more. You know, I'm hoping that we
will see more like proliferation of existing crypto, you know, I
don't know. There's a lot of controversy
this year around, like, signal and how they added mobile coin.
And everyone is like, what is this thing?
And like, you know, it's go out of Bitcoin wallet or something
like that. Right?
So I went, I wonder how that's gonna play out.
I remember there was a couple days ago where the Discord, you
know, I don't know the CEO of Discord was like, oh, we're
experimenting with some crypto stuff and then they got this
like massive backlash from like their Community, which is
obviously a lot of Gamers and it's funny Yankee.
So basically that was also what what amazed me, how big the
backlash. From the Discord Community, who
for me would have been people who are so familiar with in-app
purchases and so on, still was why do you think that was funny?
They're still mad at us for stealing all their gpus, but I
would generally think that's like you said, that's it.
Yeah. Okay.
I think that the Gaming Community is still pissed about
the gpus. Has anyone talked to them about
proof proof of stake. Maybe probably, I don't know,
maybe probably not to be honest. I mean, I don't know how well
they understand it. But, you know, we could tell
them all we want about proof of space-time Sonny.
You you sort that out you go sneak to The Gamers.
We created a cohort. I think it should be.
You is I mean, what's this doing here?
I'm not a gamer at all. But yeah, I mean, I don't know.
I mean well, even if we did tell them, Every day they understand
purpose take. But we told them that, are we
coming in? Like what 2017?
And here, we are like four years later and like we're still
sucking up their gpus, right, you know, I wonder even once
theorems which is away from her steak.
I don't know if that's when I get solved right.
Because you know, some other GPU coin is going to pop up and
still going to be the stock of like GPU compute.
So I'm not sure that's really going to be a solved problem.
I think basically the I mean that the demand is going to go
down though, right? I mean, so basically, I think, I
mean if like large market cap chains shy away from from
proof-of-work. It's bound to happen.
Oh, I don't know if we're going to get to a world where I think
that the I mean no matter what, the opportunity cost of using
GPS or gaming vs. Mining is always going to lean
towards the mining. And so the costs are so it's
going to go up for gpus. I have a thesis that kind of
brings together the last two points we talked about so I
think a good Shane fordow tooling and is going to make a
huge. It's going to be a huge asset in
the layer 1, horse, between between different chains.
So, I think the chain that kind of draws other communities
around hours. It's just it'll be difficult to
beat. You know what another thing to
discuss about the, you know, kind of semi related to the ESG
stuff like, you know, kind of stuff is, you know, or talk
about like that Ilan stuff and like the return of Dogecoin and,
you know, so I think for me, I think that was actually one of
the biggest things that happened this year is, like, sort of
this, like, return of meme coins, right?
Where it started at the beginning of the year, with the
gme stuff that happened in, like, you know, don't boast like
Wall Street bats and all that kind of stuff and I No, I wonder
how much of it which direction this like cultural thing came
from. Like was it a lot of like, you
know, it felt very like this moment.
We're like, oh crypto culture is like or like Vibes are like
proliferating into like the normal market and but I wonder
if at the same time it was also like heavily influence in the
other direction as well. Yeah.
I know if anyone has any thoughts on like, you know,
this, how much like, you know, just the meme culinary that's
been happening. And like Sheba entering the top
10 by market cap and things like that.
Yeah, I did not see that coming. So basically I thought you know
II didn't even get to, I mean I kind of semi get Dogecoin but
basically. Yeah, I mean cheaper, I just
don't get it. I mean, yeah, I yeah, maybe I'm
too much on the boom, aside here.
Yeah, and I mean, in the end it's like a lot of non crypto
people who are getting burned by those things.
I mean, all right, so I have two interesting, sock, Tom Dogecoin,
right? One, is I, when I left tender
moment, like last summer and I was freaking out, what do I want
to spend my time doing this once before I start working on our
smokes as one of the things. I spent like a couple days
actually like researching and looking into was hey, I want to
bring do Coin onto proof of stake because I have this like
whole idea of that like, you know, okay, we're going to show
Dogecoin moving to proof of stake.
And this is going to be like set the groundwork to move Bitcoin
on to proof of stake and like 20 30 years from now.
And so and I you know, I don't know.
I just feel really like Dogecoin Dogecoin was actually my first
like exposure to crypto and it was like it has like the special
place in my heart and I guess but then when I looked into it
last summer, you know, I spent time like researching the
community and going through their Reddit and stuff.
So and I came out with conclusion.
Oh, no, one Dogecoin is dead. Like no one seems to care.
But Dogecoin I'm just this, like, weird.
Oh, that's still seems to care about it.
But like otherwise, there's like a dead project and then like you
fast-forward, like six months and it's like, holy shit.
I was very wrong obviously, right?
And so, I think that's like a very funny.
You'd be a dose billionaire by. Now you have, maybe, I still
think there's a good chance that we can get those going on to
pursue state, right? I think that you Stuff actually
helped. We're like, you know because of
this whole like energy usage stuff with Bitcoin if we can get
Dogecoin on to proof of stake and get like a tweet from Elan
like supporting this. I think don't want to move on to
prove steak and I think this will be like actually hit.
Here's the other thing, right? I actually I am very bullish
Dogecoin and I just like, I think it's the second most
important crypto because the thing is I can go out.
Out on the street today and ask someone if they know what
Bitcoin is and they will write they've heard of Bitcoin but I
can ask her if they know what the theorem is.
That they actually probably don't know what it is.
They don't like, you know, but like you can ask them if they've
heard of Dogecoin and they have heard what it is and I do think
that those who and is legitimately the thing with the
second highest like cultural permeance and like I think that
is very important. I've okay.
I think this year crypt the number of People involved with
crypto has expanded massively and I generally think it's from
two things which is 1 is to n FPS and the other is Dogecoin.
So when hyper dojin is ation once well, you know, we got we
got we got to find some people to switch it onto proof of
stake. I think this will, I think this
is like a 11 year project and we know if anyone is anyone.
Listening is interested in taking this on like please reach
out to me. We will fund you to do this like
we have funding for this funding secured an allocation of the
osmosis community pool. That is and as was put aside for
Yes, there's a there's there's going to be a hundred fifty
million dollars in the offices community pool by the end of the
week. And we will make sure there is a
solid allocation for anyone who wants to help move Dogecoin on
to prefer steak. Yeah, I mean I think that in a
way is that those going thing? I go KY and I think the GameStop
analogy may like makes perfect sense, right?
Because basically it's sort of like the power of the crowd.
I could people can be like, oh, let's just rally around this
thing. All like, you know, pop it up
together and it's kind of fun and it can have an impact and it
can, you know, Pumping make money and then maybe crash but
who knows. And I think that's Yeah, that's
just a very powerful thing. Right?
Like, I think we see again. And again, like this means and
ideas are just very, very crucial.
But you need, you need a common enemy.
Right? So, I mean basically the entire
Apes together, strong thing. This only works if you ready,
can someone like, I mean the hedge funds or, you know, the
people who say, oh, why are you poor?
You're eating too much avocado toast.
Just invest in stock and then you You do it and they go like
no, not that way. So yeah, I mean it's like I mean
you kind of you need this, you need this image of what you're
going up against, right? So question is that is that is
the CEO of Citadel. The what like is he like a
literal Bond villain? Because like, you know, he must
have heard of constitution. Now, trying to, by the
Constitution and this like whole Community organizing and I feel
like he like specifically wedding is like no, fuck this.
I'm gonna like go. Ghost rug this like Constitution
from like this like Community organized effort.
Yeah, that is actually Constitution.
Does I mean, in a way it makes sense to write because he's
like, you know, I'm a front-runner.
Yeah, right. It's like, well, this thing I
can forward this pretty obvious. Right?
So in a way it's like, you know, hanging a fish in front of his
mouth whenever they like, yes, eat the fish.
But actually the Constitution guy was like another weird thing
to me like crazy thing because I was like This is a good idea.
I would like support this, and I'm so I put some ether into it.
And I honestly thought of it as like, oh, it's just like, it's
like a donation, right? And then, and then the thing
failed. And the people said, oh, we're
going to shut it down. Bob there is a token and is
hoping and so I ended up you know, like then selling these
people token and it was something like 20 times up in
these terms right? In within like two weeks for a
project that basically seems to fail.
That's that's also such a bizarre thing.
And and the most amazing thing would be okay.
Like Now what if these people actually turn it into something
because that's the real thing right?
Like okay, they lost the auction.
But actually this in a way that whatever 40 million that was
like, put into that thing was at some point.
Then, you know, market cap of, I don't know.
It was like a billion or something or definitely like
more than 10 times up from So yeah, these are clear but I
think goes to show the power of these, these memes.
I like how in the mainstream press basically, the way that
the constitution doll was described was frequently as a
group of internet friends, which I think it's funny and it's
totally not wrong, but it's so funny.
So wholesome. So, to bring it back to, you
know, just bring it back to the Dogecoin thing.
One more last five years is. This one thing I wanted to
mention as well, as you know, I think like every epicenter
episode every end of your episode.
I've always liked brought up this idea like sort of this bet
with Brian that like a Litecoin is going to remain in the top
10. And I think this year is fine.
I've been winning that that for the last three years, but I
think this year I finally lost that but I will say it is
because of the Black Swan of do toys flipping like going.
I did not expect right? Because II my whole life pieces.
Unlike coin was this like mimetic of like, hey, it is
number two after Bitcoin. And that is a funny meme and
that will keep it going. But once Dogecoin had flipped
like coin, I think that like meme stops working and I think
don't want has basically taken that, like, cultural place of
that Litecoin did even Sheba flipped Litecoin now, So I guess
the last thing that we had on her like, on our like
interesting things for this year was Bitcoin and El Salvador.
So what are your guys thoughts on this?
Is it is it, is it a big deal or not?
I think it's a big deal. I think in the end if you if you
look at the crypto thing, right? Like what what are the potential
response is? I think one big response is
going to be like this thing is threatening, you know or power
it's threatening, you know our control.
So we are going to like, I don't know, try to ban it.
I don't know like in China or maybe.
Restricted in some like very, very narrow control wave seems
to be like India now, right? Or like in some other ways try
to control it. But there's obviously that
obviously means with the ability to just like move somewhere else
and all of this being basically open accessible anywhere.
Anyway, it means like actually the more some countries do that.
The more there is to win by other countries, going the other
way. And and then you also Half the
thing and then you get supplies, you know, if you look at crypto,
right? If you look at Bitcoin, you
always have to affect that. Like if you know, this thing's
going to happen. It has a good chance of
happening. If you go first, you have the
most to gain. And I think the same thing is
true of countries, right? So I think countries that, like,
deviate from this control crypto path and countries, that go
early, you know, have a huge amount of gain and then I think
that El Salvador thing of basically now, Yeah, supporting
the coin issuing bonds to buy Bitcoin and stuff like it.
I think it is huge and I think it will end up being a huge
amazing decision for them. I think you had like an
interesting thing you mentioned earlier where it's like the
microstrategy like play applied to a country.
Yeah, totally. I mean, the opportunity cost for
a country like El Salvador was also a lot lower than of
countries that actually have a financial Market policy for
their for their currency. Right?
So basically if you're for instance, the US you have a lot
a lot more to lose than the country that de facto uses a
foreign hand, foreign currency as its as its currency anyway.
Totally. Yeah, exactly.
Like who's going to do that? Yeah, make countries that don't
have their own currency. I think it's like small
countries. Poor countries.
It's not and it's not going to be, you know, the US and Germany
and China and India, you know, it's huge countries that have.
Yeah, and the end of course, let's see.
Okay, I would say, like, you know, for me, it was like, I
know a lot of people were like, oh, yeah, it's just like, you
know, it's out Salvador. It's like this tiny car.
But you know, for me when I took me a while to like I was just
very busy with a cosmos has lots of that time.
But then one day I was just like sit in the shower just thinking
and I was like, holy shit. Like can we like let's rewind
back five years ago. Like at least when I got into
crypto like I would have never like imagine like we like eight
real country, like not like a fake country, like Lieber land
or something. I know this is like a un
recognized country just aired Bitcoin as legal tender, and
that the just be like, magnitude of like, wow, how far have we
come in this like, great, like, geopolitical game of the 21st
century that like Bitcoin is like legal tender of a country
from being this, like, Internet dark money from like five years.
I think that's a big like big leap for one small step for coin
one, great leap for coin kind. I don't know.
I think this kind of ties in well with one of the themes, you
know, you had mentioned Brian, which is like government
legitimacy and You know if smaller countries that have like
less opportunity that had like a lower opportunity cost start,
you know using Bitcoin as legal tender issuing bonds as legal
tender denominating, you know, perhaps government services in
crypto. If a lot of a lot of these
countries start using Bitcoin, do you guys think that there's
potential for that to become? A sort of dividing line between,
you know, Western countries that try to I'm talking like us and
Europe. That that try to keep like grasp
on like their power of the world and a finance versus like all of
these kind of other countries that Western countries and want
to portray as being like anti-establishment, you know,
anti, whatever money. Laundry and commodity like anti
anti money laundering like anti anti terrorism.
Like do you think that will if this starts to play out and like
lot of African countries and like South, South South American
country start adopting Bitcoin that this new axis of Evil, you
know, we might want to put it like starts to emerge.
II. Let me maybe talk about but I'm
not sure at this point, but let me talk about like this.
My idea of the around this golden legitimacy point because
I see the maybe little bit differently.
So if you know how do governments have legitimacy,
right? Like they make basically a bunch
of rules and then they need to be able to like enforce those
rules most of the time. Of course, there's going to be
like, some people who like don't follow the rules but in general,
you have to be like, okay, if you're going with makes it
rules. I better follow them because
otherwise like they're going to come after me and if they can,
if they could do that, then like okay, you have to like respect
the power of the government. But already, I mean crypto is
it's kind of a problem for that, right?
Because even if you looked at now the SEC, right, the SEC at
some point made the statement of like, you know, all these tokens
sales of Securities and like, you know, that kind of function
that most people were maybe like intimidated enough and they
didn't do it and they enforced if they went after a bunch of
projects, but they even there, they had the problem that, you
know, the number of projects they could go after.
It was like limited because the resources are limited and they
have to do like this. Nations very doesn't scale at
all. And and then, of course, you had
all kinds of stuff going on for a long time that, you know, I
guess is against are the sort of spirit.
And now if you look at, if you look at all of the things
happening now is like defy and dolls and entities, and
everywhere is like the SEC right there, like years, behind
somewhere else. And I was recently speaking
with, you know, some German company that's like Regulated
speak of regulators and everything.
Like, oh, you speak with regulators and like each time.
They're like what's taking again?
Like how and they're just like totally somewhere else like
years behind. And so I think that's already is
a huge problem for like the regulators and the legitimacy
and power Regulators. But I think where it's going to
get like much much worse is around taxes because Taxis is
not something that's just applies to like a bunch of
companies and project, but it applies to like everybody.
And I think that already, you have to chance that if you like
active in crypto, and if you make guy in a dnf TD5 stuff
about, you know, deal forming a bunch of transactions becomes
like really hard to file taxes, right?
Because first of all, like what he even detachable said, apply
and second of all, even if you have some understanding of the
tax rules, how are you going to go?
Like, get all together these transactions and mean it's, it's
like, get pretty quickly to sort of the point where it's like an
impossible task and you know, it's long as it's a small group,
you know, crypto people that do that.
Maybe it's not such a problem. But I think if you get to the
point where you have, you know, 10 percent of the population,
20% of the population that are like using those things because
they're like, I don't know, games and artists and their just
part of, like, the consumer application people, use.
And then they're also even without wanting to basically
violating the taxes, and not fighting it properly.
And like, I think that's going to be like a huge, huge problem.
And I extremely hard to address. I agree.
And I, so basically, there's a couple of governments that have
started addressing this, by just texting.
Ramps, right. So for instance, Austria does
this now? So, basically, there's you pay
capital gains tax on earlier games at 27 and a half percent
or whatever, Austria's capital gains taxes, but it only applies
to our to off ramps and even to a certain extent.
That's a good rule because it you can forget all your crypto
to crypto. You just need to have like some
cost base that you construct somehow.
But basically all the crypto to crypto, Is actions, they kind of
you can forget about them. But on the other hand, I would
assume that we move into a direction where the where the
line between crypto and non crypto acids will be will be
increasingly erased and then basically what are you going to
do then? So basically then your tax like
a certain class of assets said 25%, you class didn't
Differently you class. I mean it's it's a total mess
and I don't know how to go about it.
What do you guys think? Yeah, I mean like friends does
the same thing right? It's like you you only get taxed
on the off-ramp and already there.
It's complicated, right? Like even as a even as like a
crypto user because like you have to you have to kind of like
keep track of like every time you go in and every time you go
out and it's like is that like it's also not clear whether or
not like off, ramping is just selling into Euros on like
cracking or actually moving money to your bank account.
This kind of like it's kind of vague there.
What if you buy it? What have you buy a house with
you as DC? That's also unclear.
That's it. So that's that's that's also
some Advanced area. What if you buy a token that
allows you to live in a house for you?
Yeah, or like what if you use u.s.
D.c. To like invest in equities, or
invest it. Like, I mean, there's all these
sort of edge cases that like, what if you take a loan against
like, you know, like position Ave and use that us DC to like
invest in a company like or you know, where you get shares
essentially. Like, there's all these sort of
edge cases that laws. The lock currently doesn't
account for at least in France. I think like a lot of places
there are. All these things are gray, areas
that probably will get figured out. next couple years, but then
then there's just the question of control, and I think it
touches on Brian's point is like You know, we're like how easy is
it for governments to actually control these things?
And I think it does fall into the bigger problem.
The bigger issue of legitimacy that I was talking to about it.
I said a different facet, you know, it's like the legitimacy
of crypto as the thing that people use to like, you know,
like by things in fast, excetera versus the legitimacy of like
existing institutions and whether that exists sort of at
an individual level where it's like, people You know, having to
pay their taxes or whatever or like a government issuing bonds
and being like, fuck you to the, to the, you know, to the dollar
standard it touches on like the same, I think legitimacy issue
of like well established economies and well-established
countries, like trying to really have a like the development of
crypto. And that's your look to see what
the response is. I think the taxing off-ramp
things, just, that's clearly not going to work, right?
Because I very quickly using a stable coins and all that kind
of stuff. You don't need and you don't
have to offer. Am I ever, right?
Or like maybe only if you have some sort of consumption, but
then it may be like just equates to like the 80 right?
Or something. I mean, so I don't think the off
ramp thing is gonna is gonna fight.
I think, from a confirm, it comes Respective of like it
being easy for people to like pay their taxes.
I think a wealth tax is actually easiest to do, right?
Because I let's say if it's at the end of the year is just have
to see. Yo, what am I crypto assets?
And then like self-report it and you're like, oh you're paying
like half a percent of that in taxes or something like that?
Like that. At least I think that's going to
be pretty, you know, you have to think worry about your
transactions during the year and like I think That that will, of
course still be hot. Everything's not.
It would be hard for governments to like, make sure people
reported honestly, but at least if people want to pay their
taxes, honestly, I think that's something that's, you know,
going to like work. Well, even in the future, but of
course, that's completely different from the way taxes
work. But even where you have a wealth
tax and in the Mean Streets and you have wealth tax, you don't
have capital gains tax. So like that it kind of like
still Pretty well, I think there I'm not sure, you know how like
staking and yield farming and stuff like that is treated.
So it's probably still going to be issues.
But I think that tax system works like much much better than
a lot of others in this kind of environment.
Yeah, and I mean Germany and principle that has a wealth tax.
Basically, it's just current 20 percent.
So I mean in principle this has been done before, right.
I just basically we just got a new government and there's a,
there's a one of the one of the parties that have come to Powers
the business-friendly, free Democrats.
And yeah, so basically in Germany, there's no chance of
that happening in the next four years.
Do you guys want to talk about, Mev?
I know it's one of the things that kind of, we Talked about in
advance and speculate about what would happen in 2022.
And there were, there were pretty desperate opinions here.
It's a solvable problem. Anyone who tells you otherwise
is lying. Yeah, I'm 100% with Sonya on
this one. Great on to the next point.
Katie. Yeah, so you can gets how is it
so low or like you think it's a solvable problem for like a
particular application or like let's be more specific.
I guess what I'm talking about is like yeah, what I care about
more about than Mev is front-running, which is like a,
very specific type of Meb. But, you know, I think there's
just like, harmful meme that's in the community right now, that
Mev is like an inevitable. Like evil that Have to like deal
with and like, okay, we should just like, you know, instead of
instead of a trying to solve the problems.
We should instead, you know, it is build these tools to like
extract them and like, you know, have this be a profit source and
like all this stuff where it's like no this is like literally
harming users and like, you know, I think one of the were
talking about were the our team like, okay, why is why our decks
is better than centralized exchanges.
And I think the biggest reason we could come up with was
Because they can provide immediate assistance in a like
front-running resistance in a way that centralized exchange
just can't I think that is you know, that is the reason why you
should use a decks over a centralized exchange.
And yeah, so, you know I think that certain times, you know, is
Mev going to be eliminated, 20 know there will always be some
Mev and some front running but it's like I just think that the
community is like settling on a very harmful like spot where
it's like oh, this is actually okay.
So if he can quite a lot about this and also thinking a bit
about, you know, like that ethical thing, but yeah, like
one. So, you know, sandwiching,
right? People are like, okay, that's
clearly bad, right? People using, and like, okay,
that seems to be bad and but then I was like, looking at this
other things. So, this is like liquidity
sandwiching. It was called my basically.
It's like, okay, someone's making like a trade on like Yuna
swap, right? And on units will be three,
right? You can say, Where you provide
your liquidity, right? So you can provide it in that
very and, you know, normally somebody might say, oh, I
provided in this larger range where most of the trading is.
And then, but if you can concentrated very narrowly,
right? It means like with little
Capital. You can provide a lot more
liquidity. And so basically just because
he's tarnishing was like, okay, someone seeing all some Traders
coming in there and they putting in basically the quiddity in
this pool before the trade happens to take it straight out,
right? So basically they have like Like
provided liquidity for like, an infinitesimally, small
infinitesimally, small moment. And now, is this like good or
bad? Right?
Well for the Trader, it's good, right?
Because they're getting less slippage for the liquidity,
provide the other liquidity providers in the pool.
It's bad, right? Because they get less 50 fees.
And this other guy just comes up with, like, little There was
some guy from unit swap right to like comment and adults thing
and it was like this is amazing. Like what?
An amazing use of the power of units.
What we see right now, if you think of this know that called
that's called that's called an order book.
Yeah, well, but I think if you think I'm like, okay, what are
they like second? I mean, first of all, what a
second-order, consequence of that like, I don't know, maybe
you can start with three as to change their design, right?
Maybe you could make a maybe it just is the reality of how it
works. Right?
And maybe liquidity providers have to just like, but it makes
it very much of a thing. Like, good bad heart.
Like, how do you even know how to even look at it?
And so I think if she looked at, he, I kind of like feel that.
So, Phil died in, you're the guy who they loved his work and is
one of the flash co-founder, yet an article where you use,
basically, sort of saying, okay, if you look at that, maybe
there's like, if you like a minor about later, you should
like extracted if you're not application developer.
Well, you have to design your application, right?
So for example, Eunice, well 33 has to Think about.
Well, it's possible for somebody to show up right liquidity for a
single block. We move it straight again.
And like what does that mean for their Design?
This is designed to work or not. I'm not sure right, but maybe
they have to change it and then by of course, right?
Like if you like, let's say it was, Moses is something maybe
probably makes a lot of definitely will make a lot of
sense to think like, okay, what are the types of things that
validated could do, right? That would be bad for the user
and And then prevent those right?
That always say make sense. Yeah, I think that what I mean,
two things one, I think I so about the u.s.
Rb3 liquidity example cheering. I think this is going to have
like second batt - second order effects that like, you know,
like I said, you know, your devolving back into an order
book and I think the a M&M's work because they have these
like, really cool second order effects where it became very
easy. It's okay.
When you have this angle quiddity sniping charging, the
more prevalent, No One's Gonna Be Price of LP anymore because
you're basically going to get screwed.
You're only going to take that IL and basically get none of
these. So what's going to happen is,
people are going to stop being passive, LPS.
You can evolve into an order book and part of the beauty of a
M&M's was like you're like, hey, if you have a new token, it
decreased the barrier to like entry for new projects right
where you know currently without an mmu, have to go higher
basically professional. Get makers to go, like
market-maker token and like do all the stuff but like without
that M&M's you could just have your community be the market
makers for the thing and this decreases the barrier to entry
to launch new projects. And like, that's how we got this
proliferation of like, New Tail End assets of which some of them
go on to become these multibillion-dollar things,
right? But like, if you get rid of that
and like basically make it so no one can be passive.
LPS anymore. You're gonna Basically just
increased the barrier to entry and that's going to have like
harmful effect on the ecosystem as a whole.
But don't you think that there are ways to actually design
Market mechanisms that also work for basically for a for for
discrete time as you have on blockchains and be for long for
a large number of long tail tokens.
So basically my position would be that of course Phil day and
says what he says because Cuz I mean, I mean, I mean, of course
he would say it's a morally upstanding thing to extract Mev
to kind of keep the system secure.
I also find that I mean to me it's it's it's not just
questionable. It's its outright morally wrong
and whoever come see that is is I don't know what they're
looking at. But yeah, I think there's lots
of ways to actually design Apps to eliminate Mev to a large
extent. I think privacy is going to do
the rest. So I think that's going to be
the solution. I think, I think, I think the
burden falls on a combination of the app and the protocols,
right? Because I think the blockchains
can actually do a lot of the heavy lifting here, right?
Where I think you can do, you know, threshold encryption, you
know, order randomization. We have this thing called Joint
proposals where, instead of having one person proposal
block. You have multiple actors be
allowed to contribute transactions to a block and like
you can buy a lot of these techniques together at the
protocol layer. You can get rid of like 90% of
the heart. So let me be and then you know,
I think you tack on additional application layer things like
batching and like they like this.
I think you can you can solve this quite a bit.
I want to hear Brian's taking honor bit because you've been
talking about it recently and again today.
And this is a project that I've not followed very much as we
like that one side them on, but that usually, to be pretty
bullish on. So, what's going on with Urban.
Yeah. I mean, I was, so I guess I've
known to orbit. Oh, Kailyn.
And like some of their with Team since like three and a half
years, I also Bought some some, some Intergalactic real estate
back then. And I always liked enormously,
like, strong to the division of irbid.
But basically, having, I mean, it was the vision over be.
The one explanation that has to me, always felt like
understandable and kind of makes sense to me is okay, like back
in the day you have like your own computer and You went to the
store to buy a CD with the software and like you put this
to talk through it, like CD in your computer, and your data was
in your computer, and then you run the software on your data.
And like, that's kind of how Computing work, right?
And then you'd the cloud and then the program is in the cloud
and you dated was in the cloud. And it sort of my understanding
were B is crazy. Okay, let's create something.
Like a basic Computing framework.
Again. That kind of works out back in
the day, were I have my own kind of virtual computer and my
software runs my computer and my data is in my computer and I can
and and then you can yeah distribute software and you can
communicate with other peers. And so I was always very drawn
to this. Now, of course Urban is gone
like ultimate hardcore in terms of we don't use any existing
technology and we do everything from scratch, right.
And And if the Project's 20 years old at this point, right?
This is the first 12 years. The guy, this is just one guy
who did it on his own and then I think Kailyn and so, it's a very
old project, right. A huge amount of work went into
this. But now I think earlier this
year, you know, there was like now you I honor bit like
landscape and I've been yeah, like using it a little bit and,
and it's nice, you know, you can You can see actually I think you
can see the potential already. There's some people who built a
Bitcoin wallet in Arabic. All right, so you can have like,
you know, so your Bitcoin in orbit make transactions from
there and And it's cool. We've had we had some people at
course, one who like pretty in like rainforest innervate to and
so we've been actually been wanting to like on board
everyone in the company on to Urban.
So like maybe you can start using it a little bit.
So I I'm definitely bullish in urban and I think it could
become a sort of a bunch of different stuff.
I didn't know. It could definitely be a
replacement for this court may be right at.
You can have communities on there and chat and stuff like
that. I mean you have an addressable
name, right? So like you can easily like
message others on Irv it. You could have it as a sort of.
Yeah, you can still keys in there.
There's also one thing there's something called herb advisor
where they basically built some kind of Minimus like thing.
So it's like a browser extension and then, you know, you could
like go and something and then you can basically like, you
know, sign something from proving your of it.
Right? Like you asked exactly.
This is your herbal planet and like that.
So you could use like, I know sign in Reverb it right?
Then you are like, I think that would be would make a lot of
sense. Right?
Because you also have your yeah you username.
That is human readable and they have great design.
I think we always had like just amazing aesthetic.
So, yeah, I'm excited. I'd like to read a little while
ago. Asking people what project do
they think has the best Aesthetics and I think like herb
it was like buying far like the number-one like response.
Yeah. I totally agree for sure, for
sure. Okay.
So let me get, let me take a stab at trying to explain irbid
because I think that like, no one understands it at because
part of the problem is every time you You ask them, they like
go on through this like deep weird tangents about like
division, which is cool. But like no one had no one
explained to me correctly, how it works.
And so this is my understanding. Can you confirm whether I'm
correct or not on this? From what I can do.
You guys remember secure scuttlebutt?
We did an episode with them a little while ago, you know,
while ago. And it was basically this like
social network that used like Hash a dag like hash linking
structure to build like a network.
So basically it will use a gossip Network and you know that
Sebastian will send a message to me.
I'll add it to my little hash chain.
And then next time I send a message to Brian.
I'll also pass. Along all the messages that
Sebastian had said to me and basically we get some sort of
eventual consistency on the Topography of the social
network. And like, you know, if people
like you and it's okay for an eventual consistency because
like a double sign problem is less of an issue when we're
talking about social networks than it is when we're dealing
with like payments and money. So here's my theory of what
Urban is. Okay.
So Bitcoin invented this cool new data structure called a
blockchain and it was just like very fast and system see all the
stuff cool things and they invented it for payments and
then etherium came along and said, hey cool data structure.
What if we slap a turing-complete VM on top of
this? Now, my theory is what herb it
does, is it looks at Sakura scuttlebutt and says, hey, cool
data structure. What if we slap a
turing-complete VM on top of this?
And so, basically, what's happening is, I have my little
VM that's like doing all this computation and it's like it's
hash linking the result of all the computation.
But every time, your VM sends a message to my VM, let's say it's
a your scent, you know, anything that you would send over the
internet, but Message you sent me.
I include that into my sort of hash linked tree and then when I
talk to Sebastian, I tell him, hey, by the way, Brian's VM sent
a message to my VM. That's what I understand Urban
to be. Is that am I on the Mark here?
I'm not sure. But that so here's another like
when we had this internal talk and then we had escaped from the
team Irvin who gave talking one of the ways he explained
additional support was nice. Was that if you, if you look at
crypto right in crypto, we have that transactions, right?
When you focus, you have all these chains where you have
different accounts, any different transactions, and then
identity, and data, often something as kind of, like,
layered on top of it, or on the I and then Weaver bead, right?
You really have. It's like identity and data
that's like the the foundation and there's actually no
blockchain, right? And there's no transactions, but
then you can put those on top. And, and so it's kind of inverts
a little bit normal approach. We are having in blockchain, and
I think that Makes sense, right? And also sort of like what or
maybe another way to think about is like, what's your like you
digital home? Like, where is where is your
like you base in a way? Like maybe it's like your
computer. I don't know like that your
heart is going to computer or is it something like LastPass like
a poor? A password manager, maybe or
like I get I get that. My question is I want to
understand is how does it work? And that's what I'm like, you
know. Go, I haven't fully understood
like, okay, they say like, okay. Yes, you can transfer your like
state of your computer. So, you know, instead of being
linked or physical server. It's just like transferable
thing. But my question is like, yes,
how am I assumption? What's happening here.
Once again is like, you know, let's say I have this entire
hash think of all the computation I've done, I sent
that over to Sebastian and then I destroy this computer move to
a new computer when I'm thinking up.
Again. I find out from Sebastian.
Oh, here's the current. State of or at least Sebastian's
knowledge of the current state of my VM.
This is all the computation I had done up until then.
Yeah, actually I so that is something.
I don't know that you have to ask somebody more technically
competent of a sudden. I'm not sure.
I'm trying to boot up a ship right now and it's telling me
it's going to take an hour or so.
No, I mean this sounds really interesting II.
I think I mean I was like secure Scott about was a project that I
thought was really cool like technically and like I like this
idea. Of.
Yeah, being able to create a sort of hash chain without a
blockchain. And like I said, chily, you, you
you sort of like sink State like whenever whenever you want,
right? Like you send a message and you
can sink that state over, you know, even a like over over when
like, if you're in the same in the same place or over like a
USB stick or some like that. And so yeah, it seems cool that
you could also do that sort of like with computation.
Yeah. If my understanding of describe,
that's really cool. I think there's a lot of cool
use cases of that. That this was super fun and I
will look into a bit now. Thank you for joining us on this
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