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Engineering at Scale: What FP Block Is Unveiling at Rare Evo
Recorded: July 24, 2025 Duration: 0:59:06Space Recording
Short Summary
Rare Evo is set to be a landmark event in the blockchain calendar, showcasing significant growth and innovation as FP Block launches its new multi-chain development framework, Colme. With attendance expected to hit 3,000, the event highlights the industry's shift towards interoperability and collaboration, attracting key players and fostering valuable partnerships.
Full Transcription
Thank you. everyone just getting started here welcome in sent you uh invite up brand hope you're doing well
getting the rest of the FP block team in here
how's how are you guys doing let me invite you guys up let me know if you're getting the invites up to join.
Cool.
Great.
I'll see you up, Wes.
Ran, sorry.
Biting you up, Wes.
Hey, how you doing, Ran?
Good to hear from you.
Doing great, man.
Doing great.
How you feeling about everything? We we're on the on the cusp
the cusp of the event less than two weeks out but we are excited things are going real smooth
and uh we're putting all the finishing touches on all the fun parts man how's everything been
with you guys the new office everything i hear it's going great yeah it's been going
really well thanks for asking I'm just seeing we can get Wes up here we'll let
some more people join in and send this out to our network here one of the West
has jumped aboard let's go now we've got both. Hello. The double Wes. It's a powerful combo.
Indeed.
How are you doing, Wes?
Can you hear us okay?
Might have to click that little unmute thing.
Can you hear me now?
I can hear you now.
We're live.
All right, awesome.
Good afternoon, everybody.
Good afternoon. Cool. hear you now we're live all right good afternoon everybody good afternoon cool so I'm just gonna
get into our questions here I know the audience is probably all very excited about rare evo it's
coming up just in a less than two weeks now so time is of the essence and I'm very excited about
it I went last year it was an absolutely fantastic event one of my favorites. I've been to and I'm you know
It sounds like it's really growing a lot. We've got
Both Wes here the organizer of rare evo with a brand and then also Wesley from f people who's one of the main
sponsors and is unveiling
New products at where evo with a demo
so it should be really really exciting stuff um yeah i guess just to kick it off if everyone
wants to just do a super short intro that would be great as we kind of get more people in here
yeah i guess we can kick it off you want to go wesley go for it all right cool yeah thank you
ran uh west crook um chief executive officer of fp block excited to be here looking forward
to rare evo again this year a lot of exciting things welcome thanks for having us
awesome in the area if you want to go next.
Yeah, great to be here. Nice to hear your voice, Wesley. Looking forward to Vegas.
And hello, Zach and all who have joined the space.
I'm also Wes and one half of the Rare Network crew, organizers of Rare Evo.
We do Web3 media and events and are known for our flagship conference that's coming up here in 14 days at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
And we have the honor of Gen ZO as well as FP Block joining us. I'll pass it to Rand.
Yeah, and I'm Rand on the other half there of Rare Network and Rare Evo, and I think wes put it great we're here with uh gen zio
and wesley of fp block who've been great supporters of the event and years past and this year as well
awesome i also see we have a blue collar crypto from infinity stone so so welcome in always great
to have more speakers feel free to just chime in anytime um yeah great to have you here
yeah hey sorry guys i still requested uh to come up so i wanted to pop up and say hello
uh really just came in to listen rare evo is uh honestly you know no bias and i know ran and the
guys are up here right now so i'm supposed say, but it really is like my number one event of the year.
And if anyone hasn't gone, I highly suggest it.
It's like no other event, super intimate, awesome connections, insane networking.
And, and people really, they're like to like make stuff happen while having an awesome time.
They do an incredible job putting on an awesome event.
I've gone every year so far, so I can't speak highly enough for the Rare Evo team
and for the event they put on.
Huge props to you all.
But I'm probably going to jump back down into the listener and just follow along,
keep up with what's going on while I'm doing a little work here in the background.
But thanks for having me up to say hey uh always love the always love the gen geo
spaces awesome cool well i'll just kind of get into our uh questions there as people kind of
join in um the first question for this is kind of to build the basis of what we're doing here, just a little bit of more context on Rare Evo itself.
For anybody unfamiliar, what is Rare Evo and what makes it different from other Web3 events?
I love that question, Zach. That's a great question.
So Rare Evo is a blockchain industry-wide event.
We don't cater to any one blockchain and we think it's a multi-chain
industry going forward um so when you come to rare evo you see really a mix of all different types of
ideas and people coming together from all different chains spreading ideas and really discussing
interoperability and i think that's kind of coming to the forefront uh these days
moving forward in the industry and then we also kind of blend i i like to put it as we're the
mullet of blockchain events it's very business forward at the event the main stage the expo hall
all the booths the breakout rooms with all the learning and the demos like wesley's doing from
fp block but we also have a lot of fun as well.
We've rented out Topgolf for a day for developers.
We have multiple nightclub parties going on.
We have a poker tournament in the Poker Go studio.
So there's all different types of activities, networking, and people to meet all at Caesars
Palace in Las Vegas.
Yeah, no, I'm really excited for it as well.
And I guess just to kind of pass it over to Wesley,
and I'll kind of bounce around the questions here,
but what made you guys decide to come to Rare Evo this year?
And I know you guys were there last year as well.
Well, yeah, we're really honored to be there again this year. You know, last year I met up with Wes at, I believe it was Token 2049 or World Blockchain Summit.
I can't remember which one in Dubai.
And we chatted a little interview that he walked up on the floor and just started talking and interviewing.
And we just kind of connected there.
You know, we were the original auditors of Cardano.
So, you know, the Rare Evo kind of started around the Cardano space.
So we were pretty familiar with that space in our early history.
So, you know, I felt like it was a good place to come.
It was in August in Vegas, you know, who can't beat that?
And, you know, we did a sponsorship last year, came out, was a part of it, saw what was going on, really liked it.
And then we came back in this year, did a little bit more sponsor and looking forward to doing our workshop and enjoying what the team's doing there over at Rare Evo and expanding beyond, you know, the original scope of what they've started off several years ago with.
So happy to be there and look forward to it.
Awesome. Yeah, I can definitely see that.
It's a great event and everyone who I've spoken to win,
and that's why it keeps growing year after year, which is really cool to see.
It seems like it's a real inclusive event.
The venue is fantastic.
More and more people are joining every year.
I've spoken to a lot of the different sponsors and speakers.
They always have a really great time.
I'm seeing a lot more people filing into this space too.
So thank you guys all for joining.
We're going to be going over what's going on at Rare Evo,
what FP Block has up and coming.
So it should be a really good space.
So I guess kind of the next question
for Rare Evo, what is a long-term vision for Rare Evo? Where do you see this heading in the next
few years? Yeah. So we intend to be America's premier blockchain event where everyone from
startups to enterprise can partake, actually get an ROI on the conference,
and really, I would say, be an open door to every single industry vertical and every single
blockchain. And as much as it seems like there are general blockchain conferences,
For our general blockchain conferences, every single one really does have its niche, or
I'd say parent companies that have certain interests.
And I think with us, we're more so interested on following the current trends and trying
to find out what the next trend is as far as what's in our programming, new and exciting chains,
as well as hearing from the OG. So the real goal, and I think we do have quite a lot of
dominance in Vegas. I think Bitcoin Vegas' entry into Vegas only helps us. but really to own the West Coast and then from there be seen as, you know,
that top three spot in America. So I think we're climbing. We have a bit of an edge being cost,
I think, effective and not pricing people out and having kind of a more unique, intimate,
curated, and I would say elegance to the conference with a much more affordable price.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And it seems like it's a really good combination of different chains and people and organizers.
And I see we have some more speakers up here, too So welcome James Welcome X co-host. Thank you guys for joining and James. I see it's here. It's your birthday at least on Twitter
So our X so happy birthday
Thank you, my brother. Appreciate that very much
Yeah, thank you for joining
cool and then
Kind of the next question and I'll phrase this to both both the FP Block team and the different folks in the call.
Several different blockchain ecosystems are coming to Rare Evo.
Why is that diversity important to the experience?
And for you, Wesley, from FP Block, why does that make it more attractive to join in?
Cool. Yeah, I'll start with that.
You know, for FP Block coming, joining in,
we've always been a builder that was chain agnostic.
So we've had experience building across pretty much most of the big major chains out there.
You know, some of the L2, L1s in the Ethereum space, Solana, NIR, 4, a lot of the Cosmos space.
And we've built into Cardano in the past.
So we like seeing all the chains come in and learning about what they have coming up and
what the challenges are.
I've been paying a lot of attention to Sway and Aptos as well.
Apex Fusion, those guys, what they're trying to do.
So it's always fun to hear what's going on, the dynamics,
try to get a fix of the universe, so to speak, of Web3.
So that's what's really exciting.
You know, I'll reiterate what Wes said earlier about their event,
what makes it really good is, you know, you go to a lot of these events
and it's just a lot of posers and a lot of people running around
taking pictures of themselves, and there's not a lot of posers and a lot of people running around taking pictures of themselves. And there's not a lot of depth there.
And, you know, what I think I found with RareEva the first time I went was there's real builders there.
There's real folks looking for solutions.
So I thought that was great.
And, you know, the size is a good size.
You're not like in a crowd of 10,000 people like at Token 2049 in Singapore, where you're just kind of lost or East Denver.
You know, you can get around and see everybody and talk to everybody.
And that's what's really great about Rare Evo.
Yeah. And then to take it back to the Rare Evo team, like, you know,
kind of what was the goal to have this sort of like, you know,
a lot of different chains in there, that sort of thing?
I mean, it's really as simple as we're just multi-chain investors ourselves.
Wes and I have dabbled on a lot of different chains,
similar to as Wesley said, you know,
we've invested on the ETH side of things,
played around in DeFi where we ran a node.
We still run a stake pool to this day on
cardano and build a lot of tech there where we had nft tickets on base and on cardano
this year for the event so it's really just in our ethos and our core and when we have a lot of
meetings with folks in the industry we actually get that a lot they they kind of catch on to hey
folks in the industry we actually get that a lot they they kind of catch on to hey people say this
to us all the time you guys are actually in the industry and not just events people trying to
throw an event and get us to come sponsor and you know wes and i are deeply embedded in the industry
and have been for years and it's really just comes from an ethos of what we wanted to build
bringing the industry together and seeing all the different chains in one place. Yeah, just add that, you know, cross pollination, I think, has the most
value. And, you know, when we go back home from the conference, we kind of enter, you know, our
Twitter feed algorithm. And that's a little bit more of a echo chamber in a vacuum. But when you come to a
conference like Rare Evo, some of that tribalism goes away and it's much more easy to have a
discussion face-to-face with someone, even if they're a competitor and actually figure out
where you can find a win. And I think that happens a lot more often than people think
with, you know, how highly competitive of an industry we are. But also, you know, how, whether
it be aligned ecosystems or even competing ecosystems can, you know, really provide a lot
of and serve up a lot of value for you to extract at a conference for that time when you have not only their leadership, but they're also community there present.
And what made you guys excited to work with FP Block again this year?
Well, I think it's just another great story from, you know,
those that hit the conference circuit hard.
And both us and Wesley absolutely do.
And Zach, I know that you definitely follow a similar approach
in really getting a ton of value out of the conference
from content generation and getting people's messages out.
So we had the honor to interview Wesley, understand his deep knowledge and experience
from the tech world, really. I think Wesley is definitely like a dime a dozen when it comes to
tech experience, leadership, and running a dev shop that's transitioned from Web 2 to Web 3 in the very early days and has a ton of experience.
So getting to know him from that side, seeing Wesley come to our rare socials is always also a pleasure.
And really, I think finding those people that understand the value of conference going,
it's always really easy to make things happen and create win-wins because everyone's kind of aligned.
Very much excited also to understand the new chain launch here from FP Block that we'll be discussing and learn more
about the workshop that they'll have offered at Rare Evo. Yeah, 100%. And for those that are
interested, it's pinned here in the chat so you can check it out and appreciate the now growing
67 people we have in here. Thank you guys again for tuning in. We're going over Rare Evo, FP Block, everything that's happening so you guys can get the alpha and get excited ahead of time. So for Colme, can you tell us a little bit about what it is and why you decided to launch it at Rare Evo?
Absolutely. So, you know, FP Block, we've been, for folks that don't know us, FP Completes are a corporate name. We started off about, oh, in 2013, building tool sets in the Haskell world. And that's how we got into the world of blockchain. And that's how we became the auditors for the original auditors for Cardano back in the 2015, 16, 17 range.
the original auditors for Cardano back in the 2015, 16, 17 range.
So we've been in the blockchain space for now almost 13 years, 14 years,
not 14, 10 years, 12 years, 10 years, nine years, excuse me.
But we've been doing this for a very long time.
And we've seen a lot of issues and all the problems and all the fun that goes on
with all the various projects goes on with all the various
projects out there, all the various ecosystems with over a hundred plus projects delivered in
this space. And, you know, what we noticed, you know, a lot of our customers came to us as a rescue
situation where the founders, the guys went out, they hired a team that didn't really know very
well or had a team that didn't really understand the Web3 space or, you know, production building software or how to build production secure software.
And we come in and, you know, basically help them save themselves.
A lot of times they've exhausted their funding, things of that nature.
So, you know, as we were kind of going through and we kept started seeing it, noticing over the last couple of years, these applications that were getting built, the apps were getting built, they were chasing chains.
So, oh, I'm on Polygon.
Well, now I need to be on Solana.
Oh, I need to be over on Near.
I need to be over on Swade out.
And that cost a lot of money, time, energy for the developer teams on these apps.
So one of the things we kind of came to the conclusion on, and going back to our ethos
and our history of being a tooling company and like solving really complex problems,
is we developed Colme.
And Colme was designed basically to eliminate all the problems we're seeing in blockchain
world today.
So, you know, getting rid of the gas fees and limits, you know, the dedicated blockchains and having to be dependent on a blockchain for their availability,
for their all the various things that goes on in there, the uniqueness of it.
it you know what we find is a lot of developers and builders aren't really versed for example if
You know, what we find is a lot of developers and builders aren't really versed.
you've been building over in cosmos and you want to start building in solana you know understanding
how to build in solana there's a skill skill set transfer things of that nature so we wanted to
bring more developers to the space bring more capabilities to the space so really what it
allows us to do is a multi-chain support each application's its own
output on blockchain with all the inherent positives that come with blockchain with the
transparency but you control the blockchain it's yours so what that gives you is that dedication
but it still gives you you know we we've built in triadic um uh triadic uh security so you can also have all
your validators doing your listening processing and approving with the other chains it's all
multi-chains so right now we have built the bridges into solana to near to cosmos to ethereum
a couple of ethereums so that allows you as a builder or a CEO founder to build fast, fail fast, as we say, because most projects getting the MVP out there, what we've seen and we've been a part of it is, you know, it could take six, seven, eight months to get an MVP out that makes sense.
And oh, by the way, somebody might have made a go to market mistake or something's passed by.
way somebody might have made a go-to-market mistake or something's passed by. We're seeing
now using Colme, the ability to deliver MVPs in weeks, days, no more than a month or two,
and some pretty complex systems. And that's why we kind of did it is, you know, if you look at
the world of Web3, a lot of the work is done in the infrastructure space. A big portion of the work, smart contracts, things of that nature are the core building of ADAP.
So what we wanted to do is give the ADAP builders, the CEOs, a way to quickly get their product to market, fail fast, make those pivots they need to make to market strategy and keep moving and give them future proof.
So they can move to
whatever chain they want to whenever they want to they can have multi-chain going everywhere
and just keep things rolling and not be dependent on individual chains so you know it you know you
hear about the oracles and the challenges of oracles you can have oracles you can have your
own data feeds in. Storage issues,
we've eliminated the storage issues because you own it. Your speed is your speed. You can run it
as fast as you can. You're not waiting on blocks. So that's why we built Colmang, is to solve all
those problems. And we are now out with about five different applications that have been delivered.
Everything is running great. We have found that we've built a couple of games within a weekend
with production with them.
We just built a bot agent for a gaming platform,
a sports betting gaming platform, built that in a two-week period.
So we're seeing the fact that you can build faster,
quicker, and in more control.
So that's what Colme is all about.
And what we're going to be doing over at Rare Evo,
and one of the reasons we're kind of launching at Rare Evo is we're getting into this fall season,
I think, with Wes and Ram bringing the multi-chains in.
You know, you have the midnight projects going on.
You have a lot of people talking about consolidation, bringing users in. We felt it was a good place to do it. So one of
the things we're, what we're doing at RareEvo in our workshop is we're going to come in and we're
going to literally build an application in one hour for production and show folks how easy it is
as developers to be able to build on top of Colmate and get their products to market. So I'll stop there and let y'all talk about it or ask questions.
A hundred percent.
Any questions, James, ex-cohost, Rand or Wes?
So I'm curious versus last year's Rare Evo,
what are your expectations going into this year's Rare Evo?
I know Rand and Wes have really been killing it.
Debra and the rest of the team has been killing it.
What are your expectations there at the show itself?
We're going to be there.
USDM will be there as well.
I'd love for you to stop by, say hi at the booth.
But just curious your thoughts there.
I think our biggest thing is exposure.
One of the biggest things we as FP Block, FP Complete have over the years is we've always been behind the veil.
So when you hear projects like Lavana, Perks, SailorLend, Six Sigma, Sports Betting, Future Finance, and others, we were the engineering firms that built
that. We were the guys that are actually the guys that built the software. But people don't know
that. And so we're coming out from behind that veil. So RareEvo gives us a chance, kind of the
coming out party. So FP Block is FP Block and not just the engineering team of X, Y, or Z.
So that's what I'm looking forward to getting out of Rare Evo is getting our
name out there, getting folks to look at, you know,
Colme and say, Hey, yay, nay, whatever.
And build some, you know, build some momentum going into 26.
That sounds absolutely amazing.
Stop by, say hi, definitely.
I might be able to connect you to a few people.
I know Rand and Wes probably would be able to as well.
And look forward to seeing you at the show.
Thanks, Jim.
Appreciate it, man.
Appreciate it.
And then ex-cohost, I saw you had a hand up.
Did you want to ask a question?
Hey, team.
Yeah, I actually have to jump some. Thanks for letting me on now.
Yeah, we have a ton of creators on our platform and just like small teams and businesses.
So it's just curious how like indie creators and small teams can get involved with Rare Evo.
Yeah, definitely message us if you'd like to come and create content. We love that.
The content creators go hard at Rare Evo.
We treat our people well, find win-wins from that angle as well.
So just message us.
We'll make sure you can get there and love to see some content churned out.
I think that's another massive benefit is if you're just going there as an
individual contributor or an organization,
someone will approach you and tell you to, you know,
get your message out there to the people. And we love that the more the merrier.
Awesome. Thank you guys. I'll definitely share this with them.
Cool. And then kind of just another uh question on colme will people be i know you guys are doing a demo but i don't know you probably don't want to spoil everything that's going to be going down but
can will people be able to try this out at rare evo will they be able to meet with you guys
that's kind of a question i got here. Yeah, absolutely. You'll definitely
get to meet with us. We'll be there. Michael Schneumann, who's my VP of Advanced Software,
will be there. And Nick Ferguson, who's my VP of Platforms, and Russell Parker, part of the
BizDev team, will all be there to talk and speak with folks for there. What we've done with Colme is it is an open source license. So we went MIT open source.
We will be opening the repos out for the public for use and looking and touching and all that
good stuff at RareEvo. So folks can start, you know, doing their own investigations and looking
to contribute to the framework that we built. So that is what we will be doing at RareEvo,
and that's how you can get involved with the Colme project
as far as getting to touch it, feel it, and start playing with it.
But it is an open source tool, framework.
Awesome.
And I guess from a builder standpoint, what tech or approach makes Colme stand out?
What should devs and founders be paying attention to?
Well, first off, you don't have to worry about the chain or pick a chain.
You can just build your application the way you want it built within your control.
And you don't have to be in-depth knowledge of Web3 chains and protocols to build your
application.
You can use Colme.
You build into Colme.
It's a Rust-based framework, and it'll give you the hooks to the various other chains.
So you can move your funds from Solana to Ethereum or vice versa without having
to get into all the multi-wallet challenges out there.
So we do all that infrastructure work for you within the Colme framework.
So you as a builder or developer coming from Web2 space into the Web3 space or Web3 builder,
you can focus on your application and building the best application
that will drive users to your application and help eliminate some of these issues that
create not such great user experiences because of the chains are on, they're down, what have you.
You'll have full control. That's what the builders get. that's what the builders get that's what the founders get is a
way to build fast fail fast and not have to get into the depths of dealing with individual
ecosystems or getting locked into an ecosystem only to find that you need to move a different
ecosystem so yeah that probably makes it a lot easier for them to focus on what they're actually building, I would guess, versus trying to figure out what ecosystem, what chain I work with, they can focus on the application layer first.
Exactly. And that's really important because one of the things that we champion and believe in is for engineers, developers, and founders to build good applications first.
Let's build things that people actually want to use.
Let's build for the masses.
Let's not be building for the same 20 people within a chain that want to chase each other
around doing a perp swap or whatever.
Let's build real things that real people need so our ecosystem of Web3 will grow and flourish.
That's one of the big problems we see with enterprises and with adoption of users into
the Web3 world is all the challenges we see with multi-wallet, all the security breaches
and issues.
If we can eliminate that, let engineers and developers and founders build really good
applications and lay it on top of it,
then we're going to get somewhere we believe. And that's the name of the game is to grow our
industry, grow our use of a great technology called blockchain and move the football forward,
so to speak.
Awesome. Any questions from the Rare Evo team?
Yeah, got a question.
So when it comes to like specialties and kind of application focuses, what is Colme's strong suits upon launch and which other applications do you
think that you guys could expand into whether it be like
DEXs, NFT marketplaces, perps, sounds like sports betting platforms, any strong suits in particular
that would attract like a particular developer or builder? Yes, you know, we built it based on our experience,
which is a lot of DeFi products, a lot of games,
a lot of gaming products, a lot of things like that.
So really, if you're anywhere where you're doing
any kind of wallet, any kind of, you know,
basically moving funds around, moving, you know, pieces of the chessboard around.
That's what it's built for. So, you know, the NFTs we haven't really addressed, but I'm sure
it could work on it. You know, Colme won't work for every application, but anybody that's in a
DeFi type world where you're, you know, leveraging wallets, that's a great place for it. Gaming space, great place for it
because of speed. You're able to control and manage and drive the speed. Your servers are in
your control, so to speak. And then from there, what we really look at is bringing the enterprises
in, you know, so looking how we can get banking customers into the system, trading customers,
you know, we're using it into the system, trading customers.
We're using it to build high frequency trading platforms.
We're using it to build perpetual swaps, options, things of that nature.
If you look at sports betting places, anything that's in that realm is where CallMe really falls.
And from there, we'll continue to expand it out and add the various pieces as we grow uh to bring other pieces of the ecosystem in i had kind of a follow-up so when you talk about how you don't need to like
necessarily decide uh what blockchain you build on and you can focus more on the application
how is that kind of done
in the back end like for example using the sports betting analogy here like how do you kind of decide
like okay this this part of the application might be better for let's say Ethereum this part might
be better for Solana is am I on the right track there that's kind of how I'm thinking about it in the back end? No, actually, Zach, you are your blockchain.
So your application is the blockchain.
So you own your own blockchain.
We believe in we're not going to get less blockchains in the world.
We're going to create more blockchains in the world because each application will have its own blockchain to run and set on top of.
will have its own blockchain to run and set on top of.
Then you can go and connect into the other chains
to move back and forth through.
So the idea, the theory and the thesis around it is
once you're in Colme,
you control everything within Colme with your application.
So you're controlling storage, you're controlling compute,
you're controlling security,
you're controlling congestion, gas, whatever you want to do.
And you're not dependent on somebody else.
Then if you want to connect to a Solana or Ethereum or NIR or to be determined blockchain,
you don't have to worry about that because when it comes at time, those links are already there.
So we've already built Solana Interconnect.
We've already our Solana Interconnect.
We've already our smart contract bridge.
We've already built a couple of Ethereum smart contract bridges.
We've already built New York smart contract bridges. We've already built for Cosmos.
So you can actually take your wrapped Solana BTC and slide it right into Colme and then go take it out over in the Ethereum side.
And all you're paying for is any transaction fees on those
chains, but nothing in between will happen. So if you're doing it, so it is your chain,
you're running on your chain and you control your chain. So that is what CallMe does for the builder
is you're not having to go figure out what's going on Solana or near or waiting on somebody in cosmos to deliver something.
They said it was going to be here on Tuesday and it's eight months later.
Thank you for clarifying that.
Wesley,
I had some people DM me asking.
So I think it's kind of just understanding for the,
for the audience in here,
you are literally creating your own blockchain through your application.
And then you can, if you choose, link into different ecosystems.
Is that a better way to think about it?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
It is.
You are the blockchain.
Your app is the blockchain.
You're a blockchain.
So, you know, if you look at it and think back in time of the technology curves, we're basically
that middleware that's going in.
So if you go back in the days when you had all the various systems like IBM and HP and
Sun Microsystems, and you had these middleware systems that would connect everything together,
that's what we're doing.
And that's what we're building.
So it eliminates all that, anything below the network layer and let you just focus on
the application layer.
Awesome.
Thank you for kind of the explanation.
And I appreciate our audience for kind of sending over some of these questions to clarify
as you guys are listening.
And for the 118 people in here, I would definitely recommend following all of the teams that
are on stage right now.
There's a lot of smart people here who are doing some incredible things
in both the development space and the event space.
So definitely encourage everybody who's listening
to give them a follow.
This is just the beginning.
So kind of shifting back over into Rare Evo,
and as we're kind of in a more and more virtual world,
everything's happening online,
but people still really value
these in-person connections and events.
And this is kind of a question for both teams.
What do you guys get from doing an in-person event that you just can't get from doing
online?
And why do you think they're still just so, so relevant in 2025?
I think building trust is just totally accelerated when you meet someone and you kind of know that
or can assume, you know, that they're making an investment in themselves or their organization
by going to a conference. You know, we understand like travel, lodging, conferences, they are an investment to your
mission, right?
And so I think everyone is there with an understanding and it's, you know, the conference
circuit, as it's called, you know, you build your legitimacy by showing up and being involved.
And I think having that human connection, having, you know, not only the ability to go and
do business in a more of a formal setting, but then being able to cut loose in the evening and
know one another as humans, that can launch a business partnership or a customer acquisition
much more rapidly than trying to cold call someone or slide in their DMs or try to work through,
you know, an employee who's on vacation every other week to get connected to the right person
in the right department. At a conference, you can go right up to someone's booth,
ask for the person you want and get the information you need. And, you know, at a side event,
one, they're a lot of fun.
Two, you're not only there for business, you can also make interpersonal relationships.
And then I would say three, it's just a matter of the follow up and consistency.
So we absolutely practice what we preach. I would say, I don't know, Rand, you'd probably agree, like 85, 90% of our business
is driven by our conference attendance and showing up IRL.
Yeah, I just want to say from going last year, it's like one of those events where once you go
once, you're like, you don't want to miss it again.
You know what I mean?
I'm guessing that your guys' return rate is probably over 90%, or I would expect, just because of how quality it is.
And also, I mean, it's just fun to go to Vegas.
And the people who are there, you can really meet some great people.
I mean, we have.
We love hanging out with the Rare Evo team.
It's going to be great to hang out with Wesley wesley and and everybody so i'm uh i'm really excited about this um but wesley
wanted to kind of turn it back over to you like what what do you guys get out of these sort of
in-person events that you think are you know different or better from online yeah oh absolutely
um you know real simple thing you know people buy from people they know and trust and like. And the only way you can build trust and know if you like somebody is to shake or shake their hand, look them in the eye, you know, after hours, break bread with them over the table and just kind of get to know who they are as a human being, which you can't do on a video chat call. I mean, period.
You know, so we find going to the events, you know, the ability to just, you know, sit back, you know, like Wes and I were up in Toronto at Consensus and went and had Chinese
food, you know, just kind of caught up on what was going on in the world.
You know, and, you know, just talking about Rareo as well but it's it's building that human
connection like wes said i mean it's you know people like i said do business with people they
know they like and they trust and you may not get any business out of that particular interaction
but people start remembering you you know i got business out of rare evo last year i've gotten
business out of every conference i've been to this year and last year. And it's because they saw me, we talked, they remembered me,
they took a selfie picture to remember who I was or whatever with Telegram. And that's really
important because, you know, you can look them in the eye and you can tell if they're a good person or not and you know do business with you know ethical and and you know talented people so yeah absolutely it's it's crux
to building a business you gotta you gotta shake your hand could not agree more and uh you know
we're all we're all we all work together in various capacities and it i couldn't imagine
not having met the people on the stage in real life. So I'm really glad that we all have that personal connection.
I also wanted to invite up, this is going to sound funny, but your crypto name here is Young
Snack. So welcome up, Young Snack. And I know you messaged me and you said that you had been
at Rare Evo the past couple of years. You want to just kind of jump in and maybe say what you found valuable about the in-person
connections and what you're looking forward to.
Yeah, absolutely.
I actually went to the first year that RareEvo ever had their conference.
And we were kind of the odd people out because we were an Ethereum project and everything
was Cardano based.
But I absolutely fell in love.
I went in like a sponge and absorbed everything that I could message them like a week later, like, yo, how can I get involved for the next year?
They ended up bringing me on the team.
And I worked with these guys for like a solid 10 months building the 2023
conference.
The first time they went cross chain and the connections that I made there
alone by shaking people's hands,
taking selfies and actually being able to put a human body behind a profile photo and make that human connection,
you know, it was absolutely insane. And honestly, it changed my life in crypto because a lot of
people are like, who is this chick? And now that they got to meet me in person, they're like, oh,
that's Young Snack. Like, that's Brittany. She does this and she does that.
And, you know, like, they're all about fostering connections.
And that's what I really liked about Rare Evo was those connections that got fostered,
but also the intimacy of the conference.
Because you're not going to Bitcoin Nashville where there's 100,000 people in attendance
and you barely have a chance to even meet five people that you want to meet.
But, like, with that, you get to meet the right people because you are in the right place at the right time because there's not that many people there super excited to see what you guys
do at this year's conference definitely got to catch up on the back end here
yeah great to meet you and thank you for coming up. Did you have any questions that you wanted to ask, either the FP Block team or the Rare Evo team?
Do you have any surprises up your sleeve
that you're not telling anybody right now?
Yes, we do, Brittany.
Rand, I'll let you reveal.
Go ahead and leak what you want.
I don't know.
Do we say it on here?
We do have some surprises built up for the event that I think we'll be releasing.
We're up to 180 people in here, too.
So we must be doing something right.
Yeah.
I mean, I believe we'll have a very famous pro skater.
I believe we'll have one of the most famous actors DJing.
And if you were there last year, he DJed.
I think we're losing you a little bit, Wes.
I'll let Rand cover it.
There it goes.
It came right back on.
I think what Wes was saying, we'll have some pro skateboarders in the house doing some really cool giveaways with our rare marketplace.
We have some celebrity guest DJs that if you were at our VIP kickoff party last year, you'll enjoy the celebrity guest DJ this year.
And then we have some,
some fun business announcements as well to kind of help further the industry
on our end as rare network that I'll leave for the event to happen.
Let's go. I love the surprises, the alpha. That's why people join these.
They get the sneak peek.
Wesley, did you want to unveil anything you may have up your sleeve?
I know there's some amazing polos coming out.
I don't know if that's a surprise or if anyone can have one of those,
but I'm excited to see them at least and some other things too.
We're going to have some shots here for folks to snack up.
We're sponsoring the Game house with Gen ZO.
So we're looking forward to having that there and supporting the gaming community, which we have a lot of history with in the old Terra Luna space.
But, you know, I think for us, you know, it's just getting that Colme out there and letting people see what that can do and really getting that feedback, you know, pick up a Chotsky or two from us,
have some great conversations, meet us over at the Game House
and see what's going on in the world of gaming
and the players that are going to be over there.
And, you know, just meeting and greeting, looking forward to it.
And just meeting and greeting, looking forward to it.
And if anybody's a Haskell fanatic, Mr. Snowyman will be there.
And if you are in the Haskell world, you'll know who Michael Snowyman is.
He is the father of Ysad.
He is the father of the first commercial compiler in the Haskell space.
He is the father of Hackage and Stackage and one of the founding members of the Haskell community.
Even though we don't participate in Haskell world as much as we used to, he is still well recognized there.
So he's always fun to have a conversation with.
So if you're a Haskeller, Michael will be in the house.
Let's go. Welcome. Yeah, it'll be great to see Michael and the team.
And yeah, thank you for shouting out the gaming house. This is something we're really excited for. It's going to be a side event going on. We're, you know, we're happy to have anybody here who's listening. It'll be a great place to check out some different games, play games with friends. There's going to be some pools there so after the event if you if you want to come and just like hang out there will be open bar good food good
people great place to kind of network after the show so I'm I'm really excited
about this and we're really grateful to the rare evo team and their partnership
they've been a great partner to Gen Z as well as FP block so couldn't
appreciate the shout out more kind of
as like you know the next question here what do you guys think that the audience
is looking like this year I mean it sounds like the event is growing every
year was is that an accurate assumption you know what's the growth look like
over these last couple of years and kind of where do you expect that to be
i don't know uh rand if you want to jump on yeah i can i can jump in there uh we've had a lot of explosive growth you know year over year over year we've doubled in attendance every year. Last year we had, I believe right around 2,000,
2,200 in attendance. And right now we're sitting around 2,500 and selling tickets every single day.
I think we'll probably hit around the 3,000 number this year in attendance. So it's growing quite a
bit. I also think the level of content, the participation has grown quite a bit. The
main stage of this year is packed with people from like Bitwise and Jacoby Asset Management
and Grayscale. And, you know, we've got people speaking from Solana and Abstract and, you know,
Hedera and Cardano and Ethereumereum d5 projects so it's really covering
everything i mean citibank is in the house revolute matcha which is doing the back end for
the robin hood platform and all the d5 things they're doing there so i think there's just a
really uh an elevated level of excitement this. And we're seeing a lot more institutional wealth managers and,
you know,
fortune 500 companies get very excited about this industry as well as a lot of
individuals. The gaming space is heating up.
You've got abstract with the streaming and things like that.
So it's a really unique time to see this industry
blossom. We're excited after the past few years of bear markets. It's fun to really have an event
in a bull. I love that. And just, sorry, go Wesley, go ahead. Like I said, here, here to that,
finally in a bull run. So let's have fun. I love that bull run. Let's have fun.
Party time.
And honestly, it is kind of crazy to see because, I mean, obviously crypto goes in these cycles.
But at least to me, this cycle feels different because it's brought on a lot more by institutions and bigger players versus retail.
I don't know.
Would you guys kind of agree with that?
I 100% agree with that. We're seeing a lot more institutions come in. Stable tokens is a really
huge topic. A lot of wealth managers are interested in how do their clients get exposure to these ETFs,
whether that's the Bitcoin ETFs or others, and how do they get that into their
clients' portfolios. And I think that's a really unique perspective that's coming in this year
from the past. We're seeing all this regulation, we're seeing the genius bill go through and
everything else. So I think we're in a unique time here where the industry is really opening up and
starting to mature a little bit. And we're know, we're right at the ground floor.
I'd say we're sitting here at the second or third inning of the ballgame.
Absolutely. I agree with that.
I mean, the fact of all the regulatory relief coming out of Washington is allowing the United States to catch up to the rest of the world as far as that,
the United States to catch up to the rest of the world as far as that,
which is freeing up these wealth managers,
freeing up these financial institutions to start looking how they can
participate with their client base in the Web3 space and how they can
leverage that technology either as an investment or as a use case for their
businesses. So I think that's really, I think, crucial to what we're doing.
And I think that's why a lot of people have the interest.
You're starting to see the big boys show up, so to speak,
at places like Rare Evo because they're realizing that this is an industry.
There's, what, $4 trillion in lock value out there.
And, you know, money men like to make money,
so they're going to follow the money.
And I think you're seeing it.
You know, I think a lot of people are looking at Saylor over micro strategy
and either loving or hating, you know, corporations with his, you know,
if you're a public corporation, it's all about stock price.
He's got a stock price that's really rolling.
So, you know, they need to look at how they can be exposed to this. So it's all good. It's all
goodness right now. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And it is just kind of cool to see how much the
industry has grown up. And, you know, as an American, obviously, I think, you know, we all
travel a lot and everything, but it is really nice to see kind of the momentum coming back to the U.S.
because there is a while there where people are saying it's over.
It's over for the U.S. and crypto.
And I never believed that.
You know, I worked at Ripple and their American base, but the government did all they could to push them out and shut them down.
And now they're stronger than ever.
So I couldn't agree more with the sentiment here. And it's really cool to see kind of like the American ecosystem being,
you know, the leader in this space. And, you know, of course, it's not just about the US,
but it's just great to see that we're able to be back in the mix and kind of leading in this space.
So that honestly makes me really excited. Cool.
So kind of the next question I had here is final thoughts from the Rare Evo team here as we kind of wrap up the area or the hour.
Sorry.
What do you want people to walk away with from this event?
Like, what would you like them to say when they leave the event to tell their friends and so on?
You know, we always want people to have a good time. But most importantly, we always say we want all of our exhibitors, our sponsors, our attendees, everybody to walk away and say they got a return
on their investment. You know, that they went away with some more knowledge, some friendships,
some business networking, whether that be clients or
vendors they need or something like that. We strive every year to make sure that everybody
that comes to our event, that we understand what they're looking for out of the event and to try
and provide that. And we want everybody to come back next year. We enjoy the growth. We enjoy
creating a family of what Rare Evo and Rare Network is.
You get to see these people on the road all year long when we travel.
And Rare Network kind of is that party.
And Rare Evo is that party at the end of the year kind of where we all get together in Vegas and celebrate and network again.
And new folks show up and join.
So we're always looking forward to that growth and everybody walking away
saying being able to tell everybody how much of a good time they had and what they got out of the
event yeah i think from my perspective this is wes over at fp block is i hope that ran and west
have a very successful event and they continue to see the growth uh they've definitely shown me the rois
in my attendance over the past couple years i look forward to it again this year but you know really
i think what i hope comes out of this is people are starting to see a direction in web3
that's beyond all the noise that we've lived over with all the rug pulls and the token gains and the meme coins and all the things that are congesting up our space and seeing that
there's real engineering, real building, real commerce happening in this space.
And it's a technology set that will take us in the next 20 years and be in that next life cycle of technology.
So that's what I hope comes out of RareEvo
and look forward to it.
Awesome.
Any last questions from YoungSnack slash Brittany
or anybody else?
Awesome. Well, I just want to say thank you so much for everybody for tuning in. I can see in the comments people are excited. I saw we had someone share their poker set that they've made,
Doug. So it looks really cool. Nice poker set. We've also seen a lot of new followers during
the space. So appreciate all the new followers, both on Genzio and FPBlock.
We appreciate you guys for tuning in, listening here.
And I'll let the RareEvo team and FPBlock have the final word
if you guys want to leave the audience with anything.
Thank you so much, Zach and Wesley, for being here.
We're just really excited to see everybody in 14 days. It's been
amazing to hear what FP Block is building and releasing at the event. And I'm excited to be
in the workshop and honestly hear more myself and, you know, see Zach and the Gen ZO team doing
their thing, crushing it, getting media and having a good time. Yeah, I just, I mean, I look forward to the event.
I'm looking forward to catching up with the Rare Evo team,
the Gen ZO team, and, you know,
meeting up with some of the folks that I've met over the years that,
you know, like Cash Money and, you know,
the M3 Labs guys and others and just enjoy the event and, you know, come check us out
on Colme, you know, love it, take a look at it, we'll be here to help you with it and understand
it and, you know, 14 days out, we'll be all together, looking forward to it. Awesome, thank
you guys so much for joining and I saw that, you know, almost 100 of you have followed both of us. So we really appreciate all the all the interest and what we've spoken about here means a lot. And we all appreciate the support. So hope everyone has a great rest of their Thursday. And appreciate you guys all for joining. And you know what, I'm going to see you guys at Rare Evo. So for those in the audience, it's not too late. Definitely get your ticket, come to the gaming house, sign up. You do not want to miss this event. You're going to be seeing it all over
social media and you're going to be like, damn, why didn't I just get a flight to Vegas?
So get on a flight, get your flight, figure it out. You do not want to be missing this event.
So thank you guys all so much for tuning in and hope everyone has a great rest of their day.
