Aptos Ecosystem Hangout

Recorded: Sept. 3, 2025 Duration: 1:20:39
Space Recording

Full Transcription

Music Thank you. Thank you. Music Thank you. Music Thank you. What's up?
What's up?
I think that's the signal.
Alright, Alix, you're our signal.
What's up?
Someone has to do with that.
Our signal, our siren.
What's that?
Oh, really?
What's up?
Should we get started?
Yeah, Ash, I was waiting for you to say something.
Oh, wow. I get to just start it? Awesome.
I get to be, I get to, you're letting me loose.
Okay, we're in trouble.
But I want to thank everyone for joining us this whatever time of the day it is for you.
for joining us this whatever time of the day it is for you.
You know, last week, we got to put our heads up a little bit
and breathe from grinding nonstop since the beginning of the year.
And we said to ourselves, hey, you know,
we used to have these amazing kind of interaction points
with the ecosystem that were public and consistent. Why did we lose those?
And so I was basically like, wait, I think that's my job now. So I wanted to make sure that I'm,
we're kind of reestablishing this as a place where we can be open, we can have fun, we can debate,
and we can be at mostly consistent with how we show up together on the state of the ecosystem and things we all want to see as a community push forward together.
But also, you know, hard debates in terms of what we think is important versus isn't important.
And so I personally like these things as as public forums i like to be
you know if i could kick out the aptos handle here and it just be us i'd like i i love that
but i like to be as real and open and honest as um as and genuine as as we can be and um you know
i want to say a couple things um you know so i you know i think since the beginning
of the year um just to give you where my mind and the team's mind was in terms of the first
order priority things to get done which were not easy but super fundamental it was really around
our on-chain economy fundamentals.
I don't know who was here earlier in the year, but when you looked at whatever syndicated chart on Aptos on-chain fundamentals, it looked a bit funky. And I think that the immediate amount of
work that we wanted to do is to say, hey, what, you know, how do we make sure
that the on-chain economy at a foundational level within Aptos is strong? And that's where we went
to work mostly in the first six to eight months. And just some highlights in terms of what I'm
very proud about the team and also the community and coming together to get done.
So, you know, obviously in 2024, TVL was the meta.
Everyone's racing for TVL, TVL, TVL, pumping the metrics, pumping the metrics, being wasteful,
wasteful with money, right, to pump those numbers.
We actually said we're not doing that in that way anymore. We're going to be much more holistic in what it looks like, in what it feels like to be an on-chain, to have an on-chain economy on Aptos.
And so even with TVL, you know, I'm excited to say this is the stuff that doesn't get advertised a lot.
I'm excited to say that we've become much more efficient while maintaining our activation there.
You know, this year we've become much more efficient.
And even despite some of the macroeconomic headwinds, we've done very well there.
And the team has gotten much smarter and worked with a lot of third parties to be sharper there.
But moving forward to the other metrics that I looked at for the on-chain economy, right, to make sure that we were really being holistic in our thought piece was how much demand-side activity is there on Aptos, you know, specifically around spot ADV.
our app revenue for projects building on Aptos? And how do we rank versus the other projects? If
we're really trying to build a decentralized economy, we need successful businesses. So
we should really be focused on that and onboarding apps that are driving sustainable businesses.
RWAs, you know the story. We are punching well above our weight there in terms of value
accrued. But then even stablecoin market cap and transfer.
So just to give you some of like when we looked at in July,
how far we've come on some of these things.
Spot ADV, we've nearly 7-dexed since January to July.
And that puts us somewhere in the range of top 10 across all chains.
And I think that is truly incredible.
24-hour app revenue, we've nearly 4X'd.
And that's just getting bigger now that more projects that are building on Aptos are actually piping in their revenue data through things like DeFi Llama.
RWAs, we've nearly doubled.
And that's less stables.
Stablecoin market cap, we've nearly doubled. And that's less stables. Stablecoin market cap, we've nearly doubled.
And then stablecoin transfers per month, we've nearly forexed.
So, you know, these are things that we are excited about in terms of the work under the
hood to get done.
Now, I think now that we've done that hard work, where do we think about focusing next? And I think I put a tweet out there. We need to focus on having fun and more experimentation happening on chain.
And the people that are interested in coming over here have something to hook into on a regular basis.
And I'm talking about ecosystems specifically, bottoms up.
We now have the right to experiment and do many different things that could get product market fit, could inspire a new product, could push people's imaginations a bit further.
And so that's where our next focus is.
And that's a very different type of aperture and focus you need to have, right?
One is fundamentals, really doing a lot of core strategic work,
onboarding very important protocols that fill in certain gaps in the DeFi space,
important protocols that fill in certain gaps in the DeFi space, ensuring users have a trustworthy
venue, a reliable venue to put money. That's the fundamental one. Now it's the imagination
and creative work. And that's, I would argue, way harder. It's way harder, but it's exciting.
It's way harder, but it's exciting.
And yeah, I just wanted to kick off with that.
And I want this forum to be a place where we can chat.
So happy to take this into the next phase of discussion.
Cool, cool.
Thanks, Ash.
I know we also have Alix joining us us i don't know if you want to
quickly say hi hi okay that was very quick anything else to add you said quickly say hi i was like okay
i did i did i'm gonna do what i'm asked for once um no nothing much it's very late for me, so I'm a little bit tired, but I just came back from an amazing event that was hosted by Cajun and Aptos in Seoul. It was packed and it was a lot of fun. So yeah, that's exciting.
Very exciting. It is way too late for you. So thank you for being in the dark on this space. Truly after dark.
That's the true after hours right there.
Do you want me to say anything else?
Do you want me to say anything else?
I think part of it, I knew it was late, so I myself will need to jump in a bit.
I wanted to give you a chance to before it gets too late for you.
But I guess, yeah, I'm seeing a lot of familiar faces in the crowd, lots of global representation,
seeing Nigeria, China, South Korea, a lot of them.
So I just want to say hi to our very global community, where a lot of them, their purpose
is to help continue to find and support Aptos fans, loyal users of the ecosystem, believers
in the chain, and they do lots of events, both online and IRL.
So we on the community team wanted to also help get this global group of fans and users
more exposure to the Aptos team.
And we do that already with our ambassador program.
I see Avery's on the call.
Him and Ash and other team members have joined our special ambassador program, Chills.
And it's nice that we now have a much broader one.
So for anyone who's new, tuning in, wanting to just make sure that there's a chance for
the broader community to get to know Ash ecosystem and team better. So with that, we actually did poll the community for
a few questions. And then we'll also have time. We have Sneezy here who helps host a lot of spaces.
He can help moderate some live audience Q&A too. But maybe I'll just start just representing the
community, asking some of their questions. And so one of them was to understand from you, Ash, more details around the plan of accelerating the ecosystem development and any specific roadmap plans for the rest of 2025.
I think for us, like as I said before, we are really focused on where the next edge on consumer adoption is going to come for crypto.
We already have a very opinionated perspective on trading as well as emerging in that on the payment side as well.
And then with Shelby coming along, there's a ton of new use cases that are
going to open up that starts to lead to value creation. So when I think about ecosystem
opportunities, I think about those three buckets, but what about everything else?
And I think what we are really trying to focus on, something that I want to make sure that folks here understand is we have built
a team now, recruited and hired a team starting in May that is really focused on projects that
are getting a lot of hype and excitement from investors that could be the next meta. And,
you know, what we want to to is to have a lot of access
into those folks and those signals to make sure we're betting on founders that have amazing ideas
that might not be so, you know, apparent right now where we sit, you know, every day we're operating,
you know what I mean? We're in the weeds, but who are the people out there that are actually seeing
what's coming next is important. And then with existing projects, I think that's where we, for us, where we really need to make sure we put a lot of emphasis on.
How can existing projects that have spent time in the space continue to grow and continue to innovate, even on the founder level.
I think the one thing on that front that I would say is our space moves really fast.
It moves extremely fast. What was huge three months ago may not be huge now. And a lot of
the time, we have to be super convicted and passionate about ideas and take action,
but we also have to be very transparent and open about what didn't work and
what could work and, and what actually is the next thing that could be done.
So like having like with existing teams,
getting into that motion on iterative process and iterative decision-making,
and even, even on my side,
trying to meet as many people as possible.
I will admit that I don't have a lot of time
to meet everyone or kind of talk to.
I try to DM people on Twitter
when I have a few hours at night, late at night
to chat to folks that I notice on the timeline.
But I need to create more space
on that front. And then, you know, on the operational side, we want to get quicker
around decision-making for new ideas. We definitely want to get quicker around that.
I think it is hard to do when you have so much fundamental work ahead of you.
It's really hard to give mindshare to that stuff creatively and the thing it deserves
when there's so much fundamental hard work to do. But now we're in that mode where we can really
redefine what this ecosystem looks like together. And so that's where I'm going to be focusing more
of my time and expanding more of my bandwidth to meet as many people as possible.
expanding more of my bandwidth to meet as many people as possible.
Amazing. And where can we find you next in terms of IRL? I mean,
we heard Alix is in Korea. Will we see you over in East Asia?
Yeah, making some travels. I'll post some of that stuff soon.
Still buttoning up some things, but 100%.
Cool, cool.
Well, in the spirit, again, of maybe there's some new folks joining this space to Aptos
in addition to a lot of the OGs, I know another community question that we get sometimes is
around, is the Aptos Foundation more about adoption by everyday users or focusing on partnerships with large corporations?
I know sometimes I hear, yeah, Aptos is very institutional, but at the same time, we're supporting a lot of apps for more like retail, everyday users.
So we'd love to hear you comment on that.
Yeah, I think I've talked about this before.
I mean, like my whole job is to focus on bottoms up startup founders, right? Most of it. And I believe that's where the and stickiness as an advantage for them.
You know, what we really need to get into a cycle with is essentially, you know, web
views here, institutions are here, but, you know, startup founders now can get access
to that or get, you know, you know, more insight into how those parties think to build in a
direction that's productive.
But yeah, I mean, I think like, I would really love to like open up this to like more of a
conversation, you know, format and just get a little bit, you know, more engaged with the
folks that are here. You know, I think that's what I would, that's what would be fun.
Okay, I'll start.
I have a fun question.
And then we can, Sneezy, if you want to help me bring people on stage.
And Alix, maybe you have a good answer for this too.
But another question that we did get that I'd be interested in is, from your perspective,
what does a truly thriving ecosystem and happy community look like in real life?
Could you share a few simple examples of where you felt that energy personally?
Um, what does a happy ecosystem look like?
I think I've talked about this a few times.
But I'm going to pivot the question a little bit to talk about where I think we are today.
I think today we're in a very opportunistic position to redefine the direction of the network.
And I say that with a lot of emphasis.
I say that with a lot of emphasis on opportunity.
Now, with great opportunity, I think there's a lot of emphasis. I say that with a lot of emphasis on opportunity. Now, with the great opportunity, I think there's a lot of challenges.
And I think we could all list off some of the challenges within the space, outside of the space that exists.
But any of us who are here for the long term, you know, I don't believe this is going to end this cycle.
I believe that every cycle is different and it just compounds in terms of
what is the thing that's going to break through.
And so for me, we're in a position now
where we need to be hungry.
We need to be imaginative
and we need to also be highly, highly,
you know, we need to be highly, highly convicted on
what we think will win. We have to be right. And so I think that's where we're at right now.
Now, what I will say is, not everyone's going to be ready for that journey right now. Right.
And that's okay. But you know, me personally, I am, you know, that's where I'm at. And so I think like, I think right now we're in a position where the ecosystem is essentially
saying we are going to pull this thing forward together and we're going to actually redefine
It's going to look very different than what it looked before, just like it looked probably
a little, you know, early when it launched.
That's what a living, breathing ecosystem looks like.
You know, sometimes it's rain and sometimes it's sun.
Sometimes it's cold and sometimes it's warm.
You know, this is what it is.
And it's all about moving through the seasons
and continuing to push through to the next season.
So that's kind of where my perspective is.
You know, I think we all know what a happy ecosystem looks like.
I mean, we all know what makes us individualistically happy, right?
Purpose, connection, all of those things, right?
But I think right now in this moment, we are in an opportunity defining era of where we
want to take this thing together.
That's where we're at.
Cool, cool. We're going to start bringing some people up to ask questions. I think I will take this opportunity just to build off that last question about thriving ecosystems, happy community.
I mean, I would be remiss not to point out that we do have a deadline for our Aptos Collective.
This is our ambassador program of people that want to continue on their crypto journey, support Aptos, help to bring and onboard more users. So for all the folks that are here that are part of the community, please help
to share this application with anyone else that you think would really add value and learn. And
for anyone that's new, yeah, go check it out. Aptos Foundation collective application. We are
accepting until September 5th. All right. With that, Sneezy, do you want to help me bring on
some folks to ask some live questions absolutely got a couple
requests out got some people requested we're bringing them up right now
now i also wanted to shamelessly plug you guys asked where we're gonna see ash in the near future
and i hope to see a bunch of the people in the room listening in New York
in Brooklyn for Aptos Experience and I'll give another shameless plug to
you have a grant to open right now where you're going to be sending three creators
to Aptos Experience if I'm not mistaken. Right, Poan?
Oh, we got 100 emojis. Heck yeah.
All right, we got Kika up here and I see a couple more people on their way up. How's it going? How you doing, sir?
Jam, Jam. Jam Sneezy. Jam Ashim alex jim for one jim everyone listening today
uh so actually i just wanted to ask a question regarding like the pin tweet
so um she said um where can we find you in terms of like um regarding so someone who has a project
for example someone like me who has a project, right? How do I connect with you to have discussions regarding the project?
And also, what stage does my project need to be in for me to have a conversation with you?
So I think for me, I will have a link here that I just got where we will send anyone who has an idea on this pinned tweet in a funnel.
anyone who has an idea on this pinned tweet in a funnel,
and we're going to get back very quickly and fund very quickly
the things we agree on with you.
I think for us, there's a few ways we look at projects.
I think on the DeFi side,
the core DeFi side,
there's a very high bar in DD that goes in know core pillars of defi need to be very trusted
right and so that's that's one layer and then i think there's uh another layer where there's
projects that um maybe are outside of d5 but have or are very crypto-centric in terms of accomplishing
key goals right whether it be an ai uh Internet of Things, and things like that,
which have a lot of consensus around investors funding them, and they could have a lot of
choices for different chains. And of course, they look at the technology as part of it,
but they also want to know there's going to be support behind their project. That's another
kind of segment of projects that we look at, which is a little bit more prescriptive and
opportunistic.
Then there is the projects that what we call are in a little bit of an MVP, but a quick
ship and iterate process.
So we actually just launched the MVP program.
Kika, I don't know if you applied to that, but it doesn't matter.
We'll get you in the funnel in some way.
Where we had like 50 people apply, half of them went through the whole cohort. know if you applied to that, but it doesn't matter. We'll get you in the funnel in some way.
Where we had like 50 people apply, half of them went through the whole cohort, and we'll probably deploy about 10 grants at the end of the week to the people that actually are ready to ship.
I think that's where we... So like DeFi, I think we have a good aperture in terms of
types of projects and where we want to have the bar of due diligence and
long-termness. The opportunistic projects that are very hot, you know, that can really kind of
like expand the imagination of what blockchains can do. We want to compete for those. And then
there's all the projects that are in MVP, right? Like it's basically like, we want to try some
shit, yo. Like we want to try some shit, but but we want it we got to ship it quickly and learn um we have a lot of those in various different
funnels and we're actively deploying brands so i think the the way we need to do it is uh i will
post the link i'll quote the link on this tweet and people can just if they have ideas pipe it
through there i will have someone on the other end basically getting back to
you and being like hey you know how do we move forward or can you work on this awesome thank you
very much yo ready to see you cook kika all right uh i think the next person in queue was uzman
uh i think the next person in queue was uzman
yeah actually i'm really appreciated for what after's ecosystem is doing actually so i don't
have much to say it's just a lot of appreciation of what the world after
ecosystem is doing and very appreciate you uzman appreciate where you where are you calling in from
i'm calling from nigeria yo what's up
fine Yo, what's up? Fine, sir.
Yo, I gotta echo some of Usman's praise.
You had mentioned the team taking their head above water for the first time in a very long time.
Can we just go back in time for two weeks and talk about probably the most prolific week we've seen on Aptos in terms of big announcements and actual deliverables?
Like, that was a massive week. Aave, Backpack, Aptree tagged in that week, Gway Lottery went live, Geomi rebrand. Like a what a bunch of momentum going team is shipping and we're not
going to stop we gotta we gotta keep going we're just going to accelerate this quarter this is the
through the end of the year is just continuing to 2x every every week before the last week that's
that's kind of where we're at and we have some interesting stuff we can't talk about yet that's going to come out hopefully pretty soon um and so you know i look at
it is you operate and you do the big things in the air and that's happening and on you execute
and you do the big things on the ground and you have to do both at speed you have to keep doing
it and that's kind of that's kind of how we look at it.
So we got the right take.
That being said, I don't want to hog all the space.
We'll go to Mindsdow, then Philip.
Who do we have joining us on MindsDow today?
Dot, dot, dot. MindsDow.
Swing and a miss.
Are we going to Phillip?
We'll go to Phillip.
Is that a rocket I see?
Rocketman.
Hey, guys. Nice to be here. How are you doing?
Good, good.
Good, good.
I have no real question. I just wanted to say hi.
I got onboarded onto Aptos because of the whole Emoji Coin narrative around the Konya Labs and EmojiCoin.fam.
Generally speaking, still a big fan of this whole idea.
I mean, the Launchpad Mater, we see it on Solana and on different blockchains right now.
And I really hope to come back to see it on Uptos at some point again.
This was the unique selling proposition at some point.
Now I've got to
know many more luckily uh but yeah i hope to see this whole space come back uh very soon
yeah i want to jam about that you know i think uh i i i think emoji coin was an interesting uh
you know catalyst for why i wanted to kind of have more of these discussions. And I think the way I looked at it
was, it was for the first thing in a long time, something that united us all together
around a conversation. And I think when you talk about DeFi, I know it's boring, yo. I know it's
freaking boring. You know what I mean? Like, I get it.
But it's important.
It's extremely important and we're going to make it super sexy.
Okay, anyway.
But after that, right?
It's what are products that we can all be a part of and build communities around?
That's why it was so, you know, exciting.
And I think like the way I look at it is through the ashes rises a new bird.
And so what I want, and again, I think I was going to say this, is if you have a good idea
on how to take things further for what existed and what you wanted to turn it into, I'm all ears.
That's where I want to focus is from here and now pushing forward you
know with emojis there were so many things right that you know i mean personally this is my personal
like view on these things right is you have canonical tickers they can be associated with
other memes or companies they build communities around this unique thing. But the other thing was also within our ecosystem, things can't be too PVP.
There's very few ecosystems that can deal with PVP.
And I think that's important to note.
Solana is probably the only one.
And people kind of thirst for that there on the PVP side, maybe even
like sociopathically, right? I'm not here to judge whether it's good or bad, but that is what it is,
right? So I really, I think there's, it inspired us, you know what I mean? It inspired us to think
about what could be interesting and new and unique because finding something unique in this space
is very rare is I don't want to take our foot off the gas with that stuff you know I want to kind of
keep pushing forward so if people have interesting ideas now again I want people to also know that
it takes work to take something on you know and and that's what i want to find like who's willing to take
the work and who's willing to change things and who's willing to support the community who has
the community buying you know who's the community rallying around right that's what i want to know
and i'm all ears and you know if it's multiple people that want to try it that's interesting
too that's even more exciting so uh philip yeah, and I know we hung out, I think,
in, was it
Dubai? Sorry, was it
Dubai, right? Yes, it was
the token 2049 in Dubai at
the Aptos side event.
Yeah, it was good seeing you. You had crazy
energy. I got the merch.
You got the merch.
I got the merch.
I got the merch strip. It was amazing.
All right.
Thanks for your kind words.
And I hope to be speaking to you maybe also soon in the future.
I would really like to push this whole EmojiCoin narrative out to the world
and make it even bigger, optimize the old platform,
and, yeah, get some inputs in there.
Let's set up time ASAP.
I will. Thank you. Yo, that's inputs in there. DM me. Let's set up time ASAP. I will. Thank you.
Yo, that's what's up.
Bullish on meetings being set live in spaces.
All right.
I think Unusa made it up here just before tap.
So we'll go Unusa, tap, and then ttv in the house let's go
yo jm i'm out of my golf yeah yeah okay thank you uh so yeah like i think definitely like i
started this case of you know pretty well right he said you guys are about to let him go and he did let's go right
so like you know he mentioned a couple of things like foundational levels right that thought he
didn't to be established and i don't think you can really agree with that at the end of the day
there have been wins right they have been wins and yeah yeah i guess i just wanted to just give
a shout out right that definitely you can see improvements. This year has been pretty good overall, right?
There's a lot of motion that can still come into place.
And I'm excited.
I know that there's going to be some out there from Apple's experience.
You know, so, yeah.
Let's just see what the rest of the year brings.
Exciting for what Shelby, what Decibel will be.
I don't know.
Let me just, like, ask Ash.
I'm actually throwing the proper question here.
Like, what is he kind of most excited about or
Thinking of like going forward right now
That's a good question. That's a good question
So I can't divulge too much yet on the stuff I'm really excited about, but maybe in some one-on-ones. But here's generally
what I'm excited about, right? So I want more projects that unite us. That's number one. So I
want to see a lot of those. I want to see a lot more of those. That's one. I think number two,
I want to see a lot more of those. That's one. I think number two, this might be hard for the rest of the industry to understand, but it's important, is that there are new types of businesses that are building on chain that are scaling revenue, that are scaling revenue, you know.
We're kind of unique in that instance of those are the type of projects that come to Aptos, right?
Because they need super fast, super cheap chain, right?
They're like from like freaking Palo Alto.
They don't mess around on like garbage.
They just don't, right?
Those projects are emerging.
And I think every kind of incubator investor that we have in touch with that we say, hey, what does it look like for you guys in terms of
where you see this is going? And they're basically like, look, we're like one year,
maybe 18 months away from like something really tipping the point where hundreds of millions of
people are coming on chain, not just to trade tokens, but to just do shit. And I think that's
why Shelby is extremely exciting, because it is one of the few projects
that actually cross the world across the industry that is the linchpin to unlocking that and it is
it is the linchpin is the most ambitious project it is backed by the most ambitious teams the
technical prowess behind that and it's going to unlock the data bottleneck that actually lets
a live stream, you know, a decentralized YouTube, right? Beyond it. Now, imagine, okay. So this is
why I'm like, I get chills, right? I think about the opportunity to reinvent this space and Aptos
being at the forefront of that. that's what's super exciting.
I think the other thing that's exciting is, you know, I've been looking at prediction markets a lot, you know, and I think we have an amazing project flick by like an amazing team. And I'm
super excited. And banana predictions, I think, is just is as well emerging as well that's a super exciting space because
you know that kind of essentially makes everything uh tradable in a social way everything
everything you know what i mean that that is like an amazing thing now will i will i say that hey
uh every single person wants to trade every single moment of their life? I don't know. Maybe that's probably a cynical point of view. Could be. And I think that's what's super exciting. that the first one that figures out how to hack into the TikTok creator economy or algorithm is
going to explode in a crazy way. I think the election brought a lot of people in and then
people saw there was some stickiness here and some other stuff popped up, you know, governments
and policy decisions, Fed cut rates, you know, it's still kind of stuck in that now slightly sports, but it's still not fit for a medium to like within a medium to explode.
Right. I think crypto Twitter is good as a news beat. And I think that's where we have prediction in the markets now.
But, you know, I believe that the first one that figures out how to tap into the TikTok or short form creator economy and algorithm,
that's the one that's going to just be insane.
And that's my perspective.
But I'm very excited about something like that happening.
Thank you, Ash.
I got a huge excitement to see your voice. I was going to say, we all got goosebumps listening to you talk about Shelby, bro.
Let me tell you something.
Let me tell you something.
Let me give you something about me, right?
all my chips are in here.
That's it.
I don't live in a mansion.
I don't have a butler.
I don't have shit.
All of it's here.
You know what I mean?
So when I tell you why I'm excited
It's because I'm putting my life into it
And so, you know
I think that's me
And that's why I'm here
And I know a lot of people are here like that too
And so I'm just very excited to ride with folks
Awesome, awesome here like that too and so i'm just very excited to ride with folks
awesome awesome i think like i think when you when the like show we think came out right and then like we saw some speculation around like possibly kind of like decentralized youtube
coming on top of this the first night i thought it was like oh i should see i know
i don't know if you should like comment on that.
I'll just give you any possible timelines,
even if you don't want to talk about what you're most excited about.
So yeah, thanks. Let me end on that.
Yeah, these things aren't too far in the future.
I mean, in crypto, it might seem like years,
but they're in a matter of quarters, right?
And so that's why it's super exciting.
You know what I mean?
They're not like, they're not like they're not
some story we're telling that happens at 2030 it's like we're going you know what i mean that's
that's where it's at let's fucking move okay i do want to make sure we get to did you just see near
did you just see did you just see near protocols post oh? Oh, Aptos and Near and Shelby.
Yeah, we did.
Yeah, so think about that.
Think about that.
I mean, that's what the next phase is going to be about, is growing the pie.
You have another chain partnering with another chain on right? On a new primitive that's going to explode the earth in terms of what is
possible. I mean, the people that know see,
and that's all I'll say about that.
All right. I got a couple of those posts pinned to the top. Wow.
That was a mouthful. Let's keep this movement let's go tap ttv what's up guys how are we doing
who do we have joining on the account today it's zm
what's up guys um yeah i just wanna i I think, bring a little spotlight to what Ash's tweet about, right?
Like he said, he'll fund 10 experimental projects that focus on building driver attention on chain and stuff like that.
I think what we have at TEP is definitely something that can help people build faster.
We recently just released our hook documentation so if anyone
wants to iterate quickly, you can just build your experimental project on top of Tab as a hook.
I think that's what Tab is meant to do and that's what we are here to do.
Something else that Philip brought up just now with the sunsetting of EmojiCoin,
that Philip brought up just now with the sun setting of EmojiCoin.
Well, I got some good news.
We have a project that's building on top of Tab,
and it's going to be a new MemeCoin launchpad.
You can basically launch either full-on memes,
which uses words, or you can even launch EmojiCoins.
I mean, emoji as a ticker so you know let's go
well that didn't take long shit moves fast over here
sometime next week
let's fucking go it's about shipping quick trying some shit learning some shit and keep going
so just to confirm we should we can expect some announcements in the next coming week or so
yeah yeah it's gonna launch um So announcements will be coming out shortly.
Well, I think that counts as some alpha too.
Let's keep it going.
I got to check my DMs.
Maybe you DM me that, but I love getting news here.
Yo, it's even better.
You got it live in a space.
Here's what I want.
I never want someone having to DM me to stop them.
So if it's working as well, if my team's there helping and people are just moving, that's the golden.
just move in, that's the golden.
I also want to shout out Aptree.
You know, Aptree was another one that caught me by surprise.
And I think it was another fun thing that brought us together.
But also, you know, I think united the different protocols
under one roof to show how complimentary they are, you know? And I think that's like super key.
You know, I think if we're in a space where, let me just say this, we are too small for people to
compete against each other for the same thing. We're too small for that. And it's a losing equation,
right? We all need to be in a growth vamp attack outside mode, you know, and grow everything
together. And so I loved AppTree because it was essentially a way in which for a single user or
anyone interested in AppDusk can go into one place
and interact with protocols and actually have fun and actually have a loyalty mechanism.
And I love that it was community led because you could tell from the product itself and
the intention behind it and how quickly people embraced it was it came from someone who really understands the heartbeat,
heartbeat of the ecosystem.
More, more of that stuff.
And I know Baba has some more ideas on AppTree that I'm excited to,
Baba and team, sorry, Baba and YAR, to push forward.
So much love, much love to that.
YAR puts in so much work for me to take the credit on that shout out yeah it's been super amazing like pushing up three i know but um big big key keywords you shared today
was um unifying as well as um collaboration over competition i think it we should really look into this. And one of the biggest issues I see
in Web3 is too many things are broken apart. Too many things that should probably be under one
umbrella are broken apart. And different things have tried to resolve this in different ways.
I look at Jupiter and Solana right now, and I see them trying to bring all these things that we think should exist independently
on that one roof and I think that's such a it's a beautiful thing because the team has
gotten all this reputation and now everybody trusts them to achieve this but beyond that
I think we should avoid competition and just put we should put all these efforts into looking outside and i'll say
that's one of the key missions of app3 app3 has i would say to an extent successfully unified this
and next the next mission is how do we take this outside so rather than competing within ourselves
these lovely ideas these lovely protocols that have come to build on aptos
how can we make the beauty that they are creating available to people outside and you think about it
aptos i say this almost every time as some of the best yields across the whole of web 3 but
it's crazy so many people are missing out on this. Like, this has been available for the longest time.
I still catch people on Spaces,
and they are so surprised by how much liquidity is moving in stables and afters,
and how much yield you can get on a stable pool.
As in, this doesn't exist anywhere.
Okay, how do we create more information on this?
How do we make this available to people that are not tech-servy?
How do we bring this to people in the Web2 world?
Because trust me, not only people in Web3 deserve yields.
We should be breaking this bubble.
We should be reaching these people.
And it's just so lovely to see that App3 is achieving this mission one step at a time.
And this is me saying it one more time, that if you're not growing with App3 yet, you should join the mission, man.
Just join the mission.
If you're not growing yet, three yet, you should join the mission, man. Just join the mission.
If you're not growing yet, what are you doing?
Love that.
Beautifully said.
I completely agree.
You know, I was talking with someone and they said the same thing, right? We have these crazy yield opportunities.
And again, right, you know, maybe not the biggest headline, but people like making money,
you know, and the worst thing that could happen is people within the ecosystem are just
moving from one protocol to another protocol and just moving back and forth. What we really need is
people from other ecosystems moving here because it's a huge opportunity, right? And so I think
that's, we need to do way more at distribution. And I think AppTree has been such a beautiful, elegant way to do it.
And I'm very excited about the next steps on that one.
The other thing on distribution I will say is,
maybe I'm talking too early about this stuff,
is we're exploring ways in which to take the best
of what folks like Sonic and Blast have tried, but do it with the Aptos DeFi ecosystem.
So essentially, a singular place, a front door where people can actually see everything that's happening and participate in those protocols.
happening and participate in those protocols, right?
And we can run, you know, competitions, right?
And like kind of like almost like a decentralized ecosystem exchange, you know what I mean?
And I think that's going to be very exciting.
The beauty of what we have, right, that some of those aforementioned don't have is depth
of protocols and products, depth of projects that we can do
engagement with. And so you really need for those two things to work well is one place,
a singular distribution point where you can push attention to, and then depth to get people stuck
in and engaging across protocols. So these protocols are not competing within each other.
They're actually saying, hey, I'm over here doing this, you're over here doing this, and then there's a bunch of new people
coming in ready to explore. So it's super, super exciting. I'm excited. Okay. I do want to make sure we get to as many people as we can.
I do want to throw TTV, Santee, and then I think we got Mindsdow back in the house.
Hopefully, their microphone's working this time.
So, we'll go TTV first.
Yo, AM, everyone.
It's great to be here once again, as always.
Pretty much, the A apters team has been
doing a fantastic job when it comes to um the integrations the news um all of the amazing
stuff you actually see on our timeline yeah um talking about the distribution as you've been
mentioned of um we can see or i can see from the the community point of view that we have lots of emerging
homegrown talent right here in the community that try as much as possible to amplify all
of this news we see on the timeline, all of this amazing piece of articles, contents,
which have been expressed in simplified forms done by community members and we have seen
projects like mind styles as distribution layers for the afters creators alongside um
uptopia and other projects now what's your view on the afters creator aspect and what plans do
you have for these homegrown talent because most of the
individuals right here are from here and are trying to scale up and yeah what plans do you
have for literally the individuals the creators as well as these separate institutional bodies
powering creators and driving distributions.
Are you talking about creators specifically within the community?
Or are you just talking about creators broadly?
Can you hear me?
Yeah, I can.
I can hear you.
What? Are you talking creators broadly or creators within the community within the community the ecosystem yeah all right here's what i would say uh and i'm gonna be myself
on this one right uh i don't need people to talk aboutptos news to people who are already in Aptos.
I need people who are really good at capturing attention and imagination and can pill people to Aptos maybe in the second or third piece.
Like, I think there are, I would actually say the creator world in our industry is completely untapped.
I think a lot of creators get a lot of quick attention because it's all PVP.
You're basically calling a shot on a coin and whatever,
and then people are like,
oh, this person's a shot caller.
But if you think about just the regular world,
don't give a shit. Sorry for my language for my language no one cares about these careers they're
not interesting to watch you know what i mean uh you know and i think that for our community i would
think canonically of hey if you come to me said ash this is what's going to make me a great creator
this is how i grow my reach on tick tock this is actually how
the youtube algorithm works i'm going to do shorts and then i'm going to do a long form and then
here's my thumbnail and here's what i'm going to and i'm going to build a base for distribution
because that is your only value as a creator is your base for distribution that's how you monetize
and have leverage to make money and pull people towards you.
And so I love I would love if the creators within our ecosystem take that vantage point to say, oh, you know what?
I'm going to actually at first just focus on how to be a great creator so that let's say anyone who's exploring content can find me.
Number one. Number two, I'm going to have a unique insight that keeps them around, a unique perspective.
That could be like how you shoot things. That could be like how you talk about things.
It doesn't need to just be I'm a crypto maxi.
This is what it is.
And then how do those people connect the dots from that attention for high signal, high
value users or founders into Aptos.
So I look at creators as an acquisition funnel that's really high value and huge retention. But
for it to be that, every person needs to think canonically, what will it take for me to pierce
this age of abundance and over dilution in terms of attention. I need to pierce through. That's
number one. I need to go figure out a way to find a voice and have a distribution as foundation.
That gives me leverage. That's what I would love folks to focus on. I'm less interested,
just to be quite frank, like this info five stuff, this like all this stuff that's taking over. It's just to me,
a natural accelerant to the conclusion, to the natural conclusion that the way to actually
drive real growth is to be authentic and genuine and have a unique perspective. That's it.
And so I think that's what I would say. And I would say that to all of our creators,
right? Like, think about it when you're posting something, right? Time, like timelines are fucked
up on Twitter, right? It makes you think because of you following someone who's naturally like,
it puts you in a bubble super quick. And now all of a sudden you're getting the wrong signal back,
right? You're looking at people when you're in a bubble and they all kind of hive mind.
And then they say, hey, why aren't you doing this?
And you're like, fuck, let me just create some content like this.
And guess what?
You start doing that, it becomes this downward funnel in terms of you getting reach.
I've seen it, you know.
And so I would really urge creators in our space, and I think there's so many talented
ones, is to first and foremost say, what do I need to actually to canonically be a creator in this age of abundance?
Which platform am I actually going to focus on and have a unique advantage in?
What's my insight or my creative direction for this stuff?
How can Ash help?
That's what I want.
Okay, so I think I got you clearly.
Creators in the ecosystem should
pretty much have the intention of going outside
and then flourishing on the land,
on the brighter scale.
Not necessarily focusing in just one ecosystem.
All right.
Just waiting for Santee
to get back up here.
I see Kantian finally made it up
and MindsDow is here,
so maybe we'll throw to them in tandem.
I'm not sure who's behind Mindsdow today.
Oh, Mindsdow ran away again.
Cantien, you there?
Hi, GM, guys.
Yeah, yes, I'm there.
I don't have any questions.
I don't know why I joined as a speaker.
We wanted you here.
Ash manifested you.
Oh, okay, okay.
What's up?
What's up?
Yeah, how it's going, Ash?
I'm good, man.
How are you doing?
Yeah, I'm good today ash i'm good man how are you doing yeah yeah i'm good today i'm good yeah
bright riding the uh riding the waves of life yeah kind of kind of that's what it's about
sometimes we get stuck here too often and think this is the whole world uh but it's important to see everything, you know? Yeah.
It's good to see you, man.
I do have a question for Ash, actually.
But it's not necessarily about creator stuff.
It's about how do you see the fact that, for example,
Apno's Labs product can compete with, you know, third party products?
Like how do you approach this situation? And is there a way you can balance that? Like,
what's the, you know, what's the thinking behind that?
Yeah, it's a really good question. So, you know, I think, first of all, I mean, I'm at foundation, right? So I look at it from the outside in, and I think it's very bullish when the most well-capitalized,
let's say, quote unquote, ecosystem team is shipping products. I personally think that's
very bullish. On the topic of competition, I think it's a good question.
But the way I look at it is it's our job at the foundation. Did we lose Ash?
Yes, he's like...
Okay, thank you.
I thought I just cut him off mid-sentence when no one said anything.
No, no, no. Spence is too nice for that.
All right, we'll give it a minute and see if Ash makes it back here. Otherwise, I think we hit the hour mark.
Yo, Sneezy.
Yo, Sneezy, before Ash gets back, what did you think on, like, I think those were, like,
really, you really got to thinking what you were saying, you know, about, like, going
outside of the ecosystem, and, you know, like, an OG creator yourself, what do you think,
like, what kind of, like, things do you think would be done to try and, like, do that?
I think the most important thing I see going across ecosystem is being authentic, being genuine.
If you go into most spaces and start trying to shill right off the bat without being yourself, you'll have a hard go of it.
you'll have a hard go of it but i think that's my advice in life too is just be genuine be
authentic be yourself and the rest will come yo i'm back did i get rugged oh hard rug bro
classic classic you're back though no let me where did get rubbed? Canton asked a good question. I was literally talking for like two minutes.
I think like 20 seconds into the answer.
All right.
I think the way I think about it is,
number one, very bullish, right,
on labs launching products.
I think that's super bullish.
I think for us as a foundation,
we want to be,
have good bidirectional info flow on where teams can build as the network continues to mature and reaches the next level.
And I think by having that tight flow, the compounding success opportunity for the teams here now is huge.
Now, what I will say is not every team is going to be happy with the direction.
not every team is going to be happy with the direction.
And in that regard, I'm always open in the sense of,
hey, you know, do you still want to build this?
Do you want to build this?
Where's your heart at?
Maybe you want to think about this.
And I like having those conversations.
I love having those conversations
because at the end of the day,
the thing that I could do at a more base level
is build connection and help someone
no matter where they
go. And I'm being very honest with that. I'm being very honest with that. I think people are the
threads more so than the blockchains in our industry. And I believe that in my heart. And
I think it's good to know that anyone who says, hey, you know, damn, I really want to do this, but I'm thinking of this.
I want to be there and be like, I support you, you know.
But hey, you know, if you want to also build these things that we think are super interesting, we support you, too.
You know, and I think that's kind of our role in this.
I think Shelby is a completely different, you know, that's kind of like exploding like a color bomb into a bath.
You know what I mean?
It's like there's going to be tons of new things to build around Shelby is like a technical stack with Aptos 00 Shelby.
That's going to be like, you know, it's going to be like a renaissance, you know, in terms of what could be built.
going to be like a renaissance you know in terms of what could be built i think we've also i mean
i don't know what you guys think but i think the interestingness of the products that are just
coming out in the industry right now is waning it is i think if you talk to anyone who's been around
they say what's exciting to you it's kind of a weird answer right they're kind of like yo uh
it looks bullish but like i'm i'm i'm you know i'm kind of like, yo, it looks bullish, but like I'm, you know, I'm kind of like missing the spirit and imagination.
And so I think that's going to come again. And so that's how I think about it, can't you?
The other thing is like, you know, even if you think about, you know, differentiation, right?
you know, differentiation, right? Let's say, you know, on a level, Decibel is a Perps product,
and Ekaden and Kana are a Perps product. You know, they're actually quite different in the
total package in terms of what they want to accomplish, right? If you even just think about,
like, market segmentation, right? Or what is the type of behavior we're trying to drive?
Like, one of the beautiful things about Merkle, for example, is, you know, they enable 150
X leverage, but people are like essentially gambling like five to 10 bucks.
That's fun.
You know what I mean?
That's like a unique value proposition that can scale to a lot of people and probably
informs the type of product you build and your go to market.
Whereas something, you know, in the other side, you know, might go for more institutional traders, right?
Which might have to have a very different roadmap
and market focus.
And I think there's still tons of pie
to grow and eat in this space.
And I think it's our job to kind of like telegraph
and coordinate those things.
Yeah, that was a great question by Kantian.
For someone who didn't have a question,
look at this guy.
Always bringing the heat.
Okay, I do want to respect
the order,
but the hand, I think,
takes priority. Do you have time for two more,
Ash? We'll go Arthur and then Santi.
Yeah, let's do it.
Let's do it up.
Arthur, how are you doing?
Hi, Sneezy. I'm doing great.
Actually, I wanted to ask this,
and it's good to hear directly from everything.
I'm curious, beyond the Aptos experience in October,
what other milestones, protocol abuse, or grant programs should we be watching for later this fall?
You know, the one thing that I'm thinking about is we just opened up a payments track.
I don't know if you've seen that.
We opened up a payments grant track.
We have about 40 teams that have come through that we're evaluating.
That's an area I'm very interested, but admittedly, it is less clear, right?
In terms of what are the right things to bet,
but I think it's important to bet on some teams there.
You know, for me, I think payments
in terms of people I talk to,
you know, obviously we're the payments chain
that was built at Meta, right?
So obviously we're there and our hearts are ready, but that's a space to watch both from,
you know, a bigger perspective for things like Aptos experience, but also an ecosystem building
perspective. I want to see way more teams that are actually fundamentally trying to solve
whether it be stablecoin or payments problems i think it'll
be hard for them to scale because there's a lot of infrastructure and stakeholder management
especially across the key corridors but i want more activity there i want more founders saying
hey we're like really betting on that so that's like a big piece and then what i would say is
when shelby's in market that's going to have like a whole new ecosystem building energy
you know that's going to basically that's going to have like a whole new ecosystem building energy.
You know, that's going to basically, that's going to have its own team. There's going to be a lot of areas to innovate that probably didn't make sense without Shelby, content, AI, you know,
things like that, creator economy stuff. That's going to be super exciting. Kind of like a big
bang moment, if you will. So, and then even like, you know,
I think on the primitives,
on the core global trading engine,
I think for us,
I'm very excited about companies like TAP
and as well as like Despo,
but kind of like companies
that are building composable frameworks
so that ecosystems can build on top of them.
That's what I'm actually very, very excited about.
So you can kind of see it as like there's the Aptos ecosystem.
We keep pushing it.
There shall be introducing a whole new level of possibilities in it.
And then there's the teams within both of those ecosystems that are actually allowing
for innovation on top of their platform by building through a composable nature.
And so that's, it's just kind of like, it's like, it's going to basically,
the opportunity is going to like, keep like, 2, 3, 4xing in terms of what's possible.
All right.
Santee, I know you've been waiting a very long time.
Please don't have a mic issue now.
How you doing, bro?
GM, GM, guys.
I'm actually doing very fine. I just have, like, two or three questions before um i i actually step down so my
first question is um i had them i should talk about um and consumer house and all that is
so i wanted to know what consumer app doesn't feel like it's missing from the app to this ecosystem
i think there's a lot of things being built that not a lot of people know about yet, and that we need to do a better job of promoting, but are more in immature stages.
A couple of things, obviously, in the prediction market side, I'm very excited to see the go-to-market
and development. I believe there's a ton of opportunity on the creator-first strategy
and distribution model there, and also just the modality of how that product is built,
like what is it built for?
So I'm super excited to see development there.
I'm very excited about seeing essentially like mobile first
apps that make seamless money transfer possible.
There's a few products that have incubated earlier this year uh through
the through the accelerators that are going to come to mainnet pretty soon by you know amazing
builders and things like that um and then you know for me the other like the other thing that
i'm very excited about is um you know i'm talking to people who, uh, I'm basically finding people, I'm getting
to know them that have basically been able to produce a shit ton of new projects at an
insane velocity so that we can actually go vampire attack other ecosystems through their
distribution channels.
I'm really thinking about that.
I'm really thinking about PSYOP,
like growth mechanics to essentially say,
yo, like there's a bunch of apps
that are being shipped on Aptos.
You know, how do we go vamp attack,
the Tone ecosystem, the Salon ecosystem,
the base ecosystem,
and just, you know, get people in on chain
and they don't even know it.
You know, that's another area I'm thinking a lot about
and speaking with some people with some good ideas.
And thank you for the answer because that actually makes me very, very bullish on Aptos.
My second question is about, you said something about a project that
can unite the aptos community so do you think that there's any existing project in the aptos
community that's is actually uniting the community or am i still going to wait for
a project to come and unite the aptos community
uh i mean i can't really make the claim of what will unite the community, but I think there's tons of things that are in service of that.
I think folks like Phillip's ambition in terms of driving the Rocket community forward and figuring out the platform of how to take just generalized community building forward.
The tap team with their hooks protocol can actually build meme coins that now it sounds like you can actually
ship emojis on that. That sounds like pretty incredible. App trees there, they have a roadmap
of kind of bringing the community together, but also getting outside attention in. I mean, really,
I ask you guys that question, right? And to me, again, I want to clarify, it's not about just
building stuff to align our community now in an echo chamber. It's about building stuff that can align communities.
Communities, right?
And so that's where the focus should be.
Because if you just focus on who's here now and what everyone here wants, it's not going to be built for anyone.
It's not going to be built for anything that can scale further.
And I think we all win when we can scale further.
So that's the one thing
I would say on that.
Okay. And thank you, Ash, for the question. Okay. My third question will actually go to
Alice because I saw that she posted something about the Aptos that is, I'm using something
like that. So I think me and other guys want to know when there'll be an Aptos about this
addiction.
What did you say? What'd you say?
What'd you say?
Okay, I think that my question was directed
She posted the Aptos Baddies edition.
Oh, Aptos Baddies auditions.
That is the Aptos Baddies edition.
Listen, listen.
Every great show has a first season,
but they also have multiple seasons okay so uh i'm excited for
apthos baddies to become a season you know like love island i would love for it to do that
and you know hey listen i here's what i also know i also know my clip was the shortest. So I'm just saying, I'm a humble guy.
But I know my clip was the shortest.
There's more baddies in there. 100%.
Chris got the second zoom in on the bicep.
I'm like, what is going on here?
There's a nice correlation with the length of the clip
and the amount of baddie that is in the individual.
So listen, okay?
The data speaks for itself.
I need to compose myself. I'm over here. the individual so listen okay the data speaks for itself
i need to compose myself i'm over here actually laugh my ass off
arthur you have your hand up yeah hey actually let's talk about the app thoughts and near partnership and you know introducing things like intent and AI data layers what new developers or
user behavior do you expect you made that weren't really possible before this collaboration
it's a good question I mean I think uh I actually know about near intense for a while obviously
but you know what the interesting thing with that product is that, one, it's meant to integrate across other networks, right?
I think that's one.
That's a very good, similar to Shelby, it's a very good, you know, first principle, like, positioning approach on what this product, how it can be useful.
I think the other thing is, I don't know, when I think about, and it might be a boring use case, but when I think about AI agents, right?
I say, okay, what are they going to do?
What do they do generally?
I think we all kind of know.
It's like, you know, we're inundated with what AI can do for us as just consumers, right?
But what could they do especially well using crypto?
especially well using crypto. And I think that's going to be around microtransactions.
And I think that's going to be around microtransactions.
I think that's going to be around on and off ramping, no KYC, right? I think it's going to
be around being able to process microtransactions. And I think that, you know, things like Intense
and things like integrating across protocols, it essentially allows an agent not to have to be stuck
within the network.
It just makes the most logical decision to do whatever.
You know what I mean?
And if we think that AI is not going to operate on logic and going to care,
oh, this is this ecosystem and this is this, it's like, no.
They're just going to find the most efficient way to do a task.
And so I think that's what's super exciting about that. And I think that's going to take a lot
of internetworking of ecosystems to make possible and to actually drive tons of adoption. But I
think that's what's super exciting. You know, AI is kind of one of those things like autonomous,
you know, when we think about like, autonomous agents and things like that,
least amount of friction, right? And most efficient
pathway. And you know what? A protocol like Daptos is built for that. I mean, we're like the
youngest one who's integrated all of the big stables and we're growing faster than anyone.
What does that tell you? Well, it's pretty logical to pass a dollar on our network versus another network, especially if you're doing a lot of transaction volume.
So yeah, I'm very excited about that.
I think AI is going to be the great equalizer.
And it's the one that's going to say tech does matter, by the way.
Oh, Ash, what a banger love you guys that was great i apologize if i talked too much um again we're gonna do these do these consistently maybe we'll do a little
you know uh video one like i'm excited to experiment and if you didn't get to uh mention
anything today like you know uh we can talk about it another time too or you can get in touch with
me so i really appreciate everyone spending their time uh first and foremost everyone's days are
busy and they got a lot of shit going on in this space out of this space and uh i just really
appreciate the time and people showing up
you know i'll let go that a huge shout out to everybody listening huge shout out to everybody who came up on stage grabbed the mic asked their questions shot their shot and a huge thank you
to you ash and to po on taking times out of your time out of your day to come and hang out with the community.
I don't want to overstep, but I'll speak for the community and say,
hell yeah, when are we doing this again?
We'll schedule it.
No, it's been a great space.
Thank you to everybody.
Alix, over to you, parting words words We may have lost her to the late night
We lost her
I think it's probably like freaking 3am over there
But she sends her regards
Peace and love everyone
Until next time
Bye bye Peace and love, everyone. Until next time.