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ETHDenver Recap with @TheMiamiApe & @doodlifts
Recorded: March 20, 2025 Duration: 0:41:53Space Recording
Short Summary
The Flow blockchain is experiencing significant growth and community engagement, driven by strategic partnerships with major brands like Disney and the NBA. As developers flock to hackathons and events, innovative projects are emerging, showcasing the platform's potential in the Web3 space.
Full Transcription
Hi, Matt.
I'm so excited to be here today.
I know that we just got back from Eat Denver and I'm excited to have this conversation, a little bit of a recap, a little bit of, you know, what is Flow, what has
the Flow team been up to, and also just to get like a, I don't know, maybe some alpha. What do you think?
Oh, okay, okay, jumping right to the alpha. But no, it was great to meet New Denver as well.
I know we've seen each other on the timeline for some time,
but that's kind of like the magic of these events
is we all get to kind of get together
and hang out and learn a lot from each other.
So it was great to meet and excited to chat today.
No, absolutely.
It was my pleasure.
And for those that don't know,
can you tell us a little bit about
what is exactly your role?
I know I got a lot of questions after I had the opportunity to team up and
partner with your team and you don't put out a lot of content in the timeline.
I got a lot of DMs saying like, wait, who can I talk to from that team?
What are they building?
What are they doing?
And now I'm like, okay, now I get to properly introduce you for those that
perhaps they don't know exactly
what you do.
I know you play a lot of roles and have a lot of hats, but if you could walk us through
that.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
And yeah, it's been a really cool experience.
I've been with Flow for a little under a year now, I think a year in April.
But yeah, a lot of people were surprised like, oh, oh wow, like Flow's doing this really cool stuff.
They're building this.
Like, I had no idea.
So it's cool that you're having a similar experience
and get a lot of people hitting you up.
But yeah, my name is Matt.
I go by DoLifts on all platforms.
And so I work in kind of growth and community at Flow.
And so, yeah, I mean, we do a lot of stuff, you know,
help manage the socials.
You know, if there's any apps our ecosystem that are building, I try to
help them be successful to the best of my ability through whatever, whether
that's helping them with their kind of go to market strategy, helping them
with socials, giving them a vibe check, you know, whatever, whatever is helpful.
Like I look at my job as like how to help flow the community and our kind of apps,
which are included
in our community to be fair just to win you know and so yeah that's what gets me up in
the morning and what I try to do every day.
I love that I think it's you know it's such an exciting role where you get to help people
at the end of the day and I feel like that that's something that I could relate to you
where it's not only about the technology,
about the solutions, but also about the people that are being in the space,
whatever role it is, it's something where how could we be of service and then make them feel
more comfortable? And when you describe your role to me the first time, I was like,
oh, I get that. I was like, I like that. I was like, what a wonderful way to wake up and say, hey, my job is
also to be of service to this group, right? And push the boundaries a little bit more and
utilizing the technology that we all are devious about and excited and, you know, loving it day
on day out. I love it. You stole the words right out of my mouth as far as being of service goes.
That's like, that's been a big principle of mine for many years. What's funny is I
had not thought about it in the context of this role. Thank you for reminding me.
Oh, that's sweet. I love it. Many times, maybe we go about our day to day and we don't realize
that what we're doing, it is a service and we could be of service in wearing so many
different hats that they don't necessarily have to look like it's not only when we go and we volunteer with a nonprofit right it's not only when
we go and we you know donate cash it's in our day-to-day and I think that
that's what makes like the bigger impact and and this is why many times like more
than just the protocols that are working on something exciting it's also like
what team is building
around that ethos, right? Not only, oh, how cool that you have this great technology, but it's like,
what does it feel like? And to me, it was really intimidating, but I love being out of my comfort
zone. When we first chatted and I was like, okay, I'm going to go to In Denver. Let's do this. Let's
create some content. Let's get to know the team, but only knowing each other online many times.
That could be a what if, right?
Is the vibe, are the vibes going to be right?
What is that going to feel?
And I'll say a little bit about my experience just going to the Flowcastle being like you
weren't even there.
So I just like walked in, there was a workshop happening and I decided to, I was like, you
know what, I'm going to make the best of it. I hope I can participate because from our conversations
here, like it's open to everyone. I was like, I'm everyone. So let me participate. And then
I'm participating. You know, it just, everything just felt very comfortable and inviting. I
get my ideas. I was like, I don't know if this is a smart idea or a silly idea, but let's roll with it. Got to meet a lot of people and at the end, in that mingling, someone came up to me and they're
like, oh, we really loved your ideas. Thank you for coming and being so engaged. And it happened
to be someone from the team. And then I was like, oh, how funny. I'm actually here with you guys.
Yeah.
I was like, I couldn't have planned this even if I wanted to.
Um, but how sweet that, that it just clicked, right.
And I felt very much like that where a lot of people from the team, I think,
um, from, from the few people that I've met, I believe I met like five from the
team, like on a more like personal level.
I think that it's cool to see that vision of everyone wanting to make it better, to be of service and to work with the rest of the people that are trying to build and making it accessible.
So I'll take it back to the very beginning if we could talk about that, because many people don't know about, you know, like,
why did flow started, but they probably know about crypto kitties, right? So I think that
that is a beautiful way to get started in this. I don't know, let's call it a walk
down the timeline of flow.
Walk down memory lane. Yeah, like walk down the blockchain, you know.
Yes. I've been in Twitter too long.
That is a, that's how a lot of my conversations actually started at EatDembray.
You know, I'm like, Oh, have you heard of Flow? I'm like, Hmm, not sure.
And I'm like, have you heard of CryptoKitties? Top shot. Like, ah, yes.
Like, okay, great. Let's chat. Like, but yeah.
So yeah, the story of Flow is really interesting.
And I, and with being with flow for a
little bit for almost a year now, it's been really fun to kind of learn the lore behind
flow. It's fascinating. If you've been around NFT Twitter for a while, like the it's, and
maybe I'm a little bit biased, but like, you watch the like the lore thread of flow, it
weaves its way through literally everything in Web3 that I know, at least, which is
fascinating. So it all started with CryptoKitties, right? There's a company called Dapper Labs,
and they made this on-chain, generative art game where you can breed cats on-chain. So you'd have
two kitties, and they'd have different DNA in their metadata, and you breed them, and they'd make a
new cat. It was just this fun on-chain game.
And then I think at its peak about like 17,000 people were using it and breeding cats, which
isn't a ton of people, like if you think about it, but even that amount of people took up
about I think it was like 70% of the traffic on Ethereum at the time, which is crazy, like
which basically like brought Ethereum to its knees.
Like gas prices were like incomprehensibly high. which is crazy, which basically brought Ethereum to its knees.
Gas prices were incomprehensibly high.
There was ICOs, it was the ICO era.
They were having to move their launch.
We can't launch.
And it's funny, it's like if anyone was around
for the ordinals thing during early ordinals on Bitcoin
and all the Bitcoiners were like,
they're spamming our network with these pictures,
like similar response to CryptoKitties, right?
Like these NFTs, like we can't do tokens like because these NFTs.
And so yeah, that's, you know, it clogged the network into the Dapper Labs team.
This is some of the lore that I learned.
You know, they go back to their community and say, we're going to figure this out.
We're going to figure out how to stay on ETH, how to have this game.
You all clearly love it. We're going to figure this out. We're going to figure out how to stay on ETH, how to have this game. You all clearly love it.
We're going to figure it out.
And they spent, I think it was like nine months and like millions of dollars
trying to figure out how to stay on ETH mainnet.
And ultimately came to conclusion.
They couldn't even have to go to the community.
Like we're not leaving you.
We're not doing it.
Like they're like, we just can't.
Um, if we want to kind of stake our business and stick a reputation on this
product and continue to build more consumer products, we need a better platform.
And so the stories I've heard is they've read hundreds of white papers.
And one of the hardest lines that I've ever heard was from co-founder of flow, Deet Shirley.
He said, you know, after our small crew had read hundreds of white papers, we're all huddled
in this boardroom.
He's like, and at that point in history, we may have been the five most like educated people on the planet on like
distributed computing and decentralized systems. And they decided, you know,
this is how they want to launch flow blockchain. And I was like, that's crazy.
If you really think about it, like, I don't know. So, yeah.
So CryptoKitties crashes Ethereum and, uh, and yeah,
and they had to build something new. And so that's how Flow got started.
And to think that, you know, like that, like finding a solution, right? And I feel that
many times in our ecosystem is like, okay, we're creating new things or something else
is dropping and it's like, what is it solving? And that is, that is an amazing start place,
right?
Like we're actually solving a major problem.
This is not working.
No one's happy with this.
This is not sustainable.
What can we fix?
And then, from that point on,
I think a lot of other people that didn't get onboarded
into the space through CryptoKitties,
everyone knows like Topshop, right?
So, and I think, yet again, for some reason someone is like,
no, I wasn't around when CryptoKitties,
I think I know what it is, but I'm not sure.
They will for sure then not know
about the origins of like Top Shot.
So how does that, you know, once they build this,
how does that partnership even start?
Because that is major, right?
This is, I feel like not, if right now we're Because that is major, right? This is, I feel like not...
If right now we're still a small community, right? And I'll say that in quotations.
I think that back then, you know, for some something as big as the NBA to pay attention and to say,
hey, we want to be on chain. What does that look like? And how did they have like, what vision did they have around that?
Yeah, that's a great question.
And I don't want to do it at the disservice of being like,
this is exactly how it happened because I wasn't there.
But I think that Dapper Labs, from what I've heard,
so like Dapper Labs started CryptoKitties,
then they're like, hey, we have to build this blockchain.
If you really want to scale, right?
Because like you said, the problem was, it wasn't scaling and you couldn't actually build real
consumer apps to have any hopes of onboarding the actual world on chain, right? And so they
built Flow blockchain and one of the first products on it was Top Shot. Now, and I'm not sure who
reached out to who, how that transpired, but I give MBA credit for being visionary enough to even
think about being on chain, right? Like that's crazy. And I heard recently, it was at ETH
Denver, Roham, one of the co-founders of Dapper Labs was on stage and he was saying something
to the effect of how the MBA actually really was into the fact that they didn't have to maintain these assets, like the storage fees and the server fees, because they could publish
them and they could maintain the front end and the ecosystem and the community, but they
don't have to be paying the AWS bill.
And that could go on as long as the network is live.
And I was like, oh, that's actually a relatively interesting kind of a concept.
And I didn't think that way. But I just saw a video the other day. My wife Emily Rose is really into Tamagotchi. Trust me, I'm making a point here. And someone was doing a video review on Tamagotchi. And they have these new Tamagotchi's you can put these chips in there and like download different like, you know, skins and stuff because of course you can. It's actually called the Tamagotchi metaverse.
And this person in the video was like, make sure you, you know,
plug in your Tamagotchi chip and you download the right one because when Tamagotchi stops maintaining the servers in four or five years,
you got to make sure that you have the right one plugged in because they won't update them anymore.
And I'm like, oh, like, collectors are already thinking this way. Like, yeah, when the web two company inevitably
rugs our product, like, we have to make sure that we're taking care of ourselves. And so
I saw that I think that's really cool. The NBA was visionary enough to say like, oh,
we actually want these things to mirror our physical collectibles that are out there on
paper that people have in shoe boxes and,boxes and basements and get discovered 30 years later.
We want these to exist for a really long time.
Onchain was a really good answer for that.
Like I said, it started the tangent, but the thesis was proofed relatively quickly in the
sense that Top Shot at some of its early height was processing as many transactions just on
that app as the entire theory of blockchain.
So it's like the scaling problem like was clearly demonstrated right there, which I
think is so, so cool. And I think it's cool that NBA is still here four years later. That's
crazy. And we can talk more about that later, but it's crazy.
Absolutely. I think that the fact that they're still in it says a lot about it. And this
little thing, so maybe you and I
didn't even think of because now that you mentioned this example I didn't think of that either but it
makes sense because if you're the one in charge of numbers if you're the one that then has to go
back and say hey in order to maintain this four years down the line five years down the line this
is the bill that we're gonna get these are not collectibles these are things that like this is
an investment even though we're you know the, these are not collectibles. These are things that like this is an investment, even though we're, you know,
if the community is collecting it, then there is still a price tag for us.
And it's just not suitable.
And it might not be as appealing for a Web2 company, right.
And business, because it's not sustainable over time.
And eventually what you said, they're going to unplug the cord and say like,
sorry, it was cute. What he lasted.
It's it's crazy. If a company wants to put out digital assets,
and they have to like grow their digital asset ecosystem, every
drop they do everything increases their cost. Yeah,
forever. If they want to maintain it, right? Like so, in
that, that doesn't seem like a very good business model as
opposed to like, doing mints on chain. It's like, they can they can focus on all the front end stuff. And then once
they're out there, those collectibles just exist, and they don't accrue additional cost, maintaining
them, if that makes sense. Absolutely. And this, this is one of the partnerships that is not only,
you know, huge, I was like, how many transactions, how many people were onboarded through this?
How many people still have them and they're still active?
And but there's so much more.
And I think that, you know, this is a good transition into what are some of those
current partnerships and brand relations that you have worked with or the team has
worked with and why are they important?
I do believe that when we see these names, they
get our attention or people start, you know, they're like more intrigued now. They're like,
oh, wait, what? Oh, you guys are working with them? How? How did you land this? Right? And
not only how did you land this, but like, how did you maintain it? And what was the goal? Because I
do believe that there is a specific goal into partnering with such big names.
Yeah. You know, and I think, um, yeah, there's a lot we could talk about there.
Uh, as far as like what's currently going on, some of the other partners,
I think about like Ticketmaster just is about to mint.
If it hasn't happened already, it's going to have it soon.
Like they're a hundred millionth NFT on flow.
Uh, they put out commemorative tickets for anybody who attends a concert.
You get an email, it says, here's your, you know, commemorative digital collectible. I saw one in the timeline the other flow. They put out commemorative tickets for anybody who attends a concert. You get an email, it says, user, you know, commemorative digital collectible.
I saw one in the timeline the other day.
So when posted, they got a Chris Stapleton concert ticket and they tweeted about
it. I was like, Oh, it just looks so cool. Um, it has like your seat.
I mean, this is so cool. And another great example,
ticket master can mint a hundred million NFTs and they don't have to,
they don't have an AWS bill for a hundred million NFTs.
But, yeah, I mean, some of our, I guess thinking about the big brands, and I think this is important distinction to make.
It's like at this point in the journey, so like the flow of blockchain is built by
Dapper Labs to solve their scaling problem, insecurity, the kind of the blockchain
trilemma. But at some point, you know,
and I don't know exactly how
the decision was made or why, in the sense of the exact kind of minutiae, but
Dapper Labs spun off the flow foundation to manage the protocol, right? So now
Dapper Labs can do what it does best, which is make consumer taps instead of
being like, managing the protocol. So now the flow, now the full blockchain is managed
by the flow foundation. And this is, it's an important distinction because when we talk about
like, oh, these brands made partnerships with flow, like a lot of them have either built on flow or
they're like Dapper Labs is maybe licensed the NBA IP and done stuff like that. And so I think this
is a cool distinction in the way that
companies can work with a company like legacy IPs or traditional IPs can work with a company like
Dapper Labs to really craft their kind of on-chain product ecosystem, all this stuff like NBA Top
Show, like Disney Pinnacle, all this stuff. Dapper Labs has this full product studio, right? Where
they can put out these full apps, which is really, really cool. And then we at the Flow
Foundation, you talked about being of service, like I think about the apps on
Flow, a lot of, you know, some of the major ones built by Dapper Labs, but
there's many others and we could talk about what it's been like since since our
recent upgrade in September. But our job at the Flow Foundation
is not to be responsible for app success,
but I think about it's to be responsible to the apps.
So like we're responsible to them to bring
our best abilities, whether that's uptime
for the blockchain, whether that's go to market help,
things like this, like the stuff that i was talking about
we're just responsible to them to provide the best platform so that they can have the best chance at success for their applications.
They just so happens to have like we have some of the world's biggest brands building on flow which is awesome you know disney nba nfl Disney, NBA, NFL, Ticketmaster, Mattel, Barbie, UFC.
I mean, the list goes on and probably actually forgetting something,
which is a crazy thing to say with that list of big brands.
But, yeah, we're just really grateful to be able to provide
this incredible platform for these brands to have the success that they've had.
Does that make sense?
No, that makes sense.
And I think that just to make sure that I understand fully.
So you guys work with Dapper Labs,
but then there's also other companies
that could come directly to Flow because they're
two different things.
Is that why you were trying to say?
Yeah, I mean, so a company could come to the Flow Foundation.
But at the same time, it's like, we don't build apps.
You know what I mean?
OK, so if they need us to build in the app,
it would go Dapper Labs.
And then once that's all set up, then it
would go to the Flow Foundation, correct?
Yes and no.
It's like, and I appreciate your curiosity
in asking these questions.
It's good questions to ask, right?
The thing is, Flow is a permissionless blockchain. So anybody can
deploy an app on flow. So if you find a developer, like you can deploy an app, you don't need
Dapper Labs, you don't need Flow blockchain, like you can just do it. If you want to work with Dapper
Labs, you know, in create a similar product to some of their like headline apps that they built,
then I would certainly hit them up for sure. But if you have your own dev studio, if you have your own developers, front
end, whatever, then it's like have at it, you know, uh, build an app and we
certainly want to support you in doing so, but you don't need our permission.
Uh, you can just build stuff.
Do it.
Okay.
So then what would be some of the perks if I am thinking of building
something and I'm like, okay, should I build it on flow?
What are some of the perks?
Because maybe I do have some of these things.
Maybe I don't, or maybe I'm just overwhelmed with so many different options.
There's so many different change.
And I think that, uh, you know, sometimes that could get daunting or people don't
even know like how, what is it that sets you guys apart?
I get the story, I get the lore, all that.
I see some of the benefits.
I see that some of the biggest brands are building on Flow, but I'm not one of the biggest
brands.
So should I build on Flow?
Right?
And what support do I have?
I think that just to get an idea of that will be helpful.
No, it's a really good question.
And I mean, it hints at the kind of broader question of why do I build anywhere on chain, to be fair,
because like you said, it can be super overwhelming.
Sometimes everything has to be on chain.
I was like, sometimes people want to build things and I'm like, I got it.
But like maybe something else could be on chain.
Yeah, is it made better by being on chain? Or are you just doing it for the
sake of it? I don't know.
There's a whole other conversation. Now I would say that you could do more on
chain with flow than may lend itself to some of those ideas that may be
untenable in other places. Like, there was a great video a while ago, it was,
it was a joke, but it was like this first person shooter game. And for each time
he shot a bullet, he had to click transaction and it was really funny. It was a joke, but it was like this first person shooter game. And for each time he shot a bullet, he had to click a transaction.
And it was really funny. It was like the most silly example, but, um,
yeah, the question, why build on flow? Right. Um, and I think, I don't know,
I think starting with the big brands is relatively interesting. Cause you're
right. You said to yourself, I'm not a big brand.
I do think there is something to be said for like,
I'm building on the same network as these big brands,
like that has value.
We have a flow community reward store
where we like surface trending apps and things like that.
And so that's one of the things that we, you know,
like to tell our builders about,
because we actually, as the foundation,
as people who manage the protocol,
wanna help reward your users.
But at the same time, like you appear in the same reward store that Disney,
NBA, NFL, you know, all these people, which is kind of cool.
So it's like, you can take that around to your friends or family. They, oh,
there's my app in the reward store right next to the world's biggest brands.
That's pretty cool. Um, but from a more like technical perspective,
I think the takeaway is like you can truly, and I know, I know,
we're not like other blockchains. I know every blockchain says this,
but you can actually truly build things on flow that you cannot build anywhere
else. And I won't, I won't belabor you with the details,
like cause one I'm the community guy. I'm also not super technical, but,
um, but I mean the, there is a lot of like depth there, but at the, at the end of the day, it's like, there's a couple of things that I think are really interesting that are happening on flow right now.
It's like, we did just to debut EVM equivalency in September, which a lot of people don't know about.
And that's why a lot of people, we talk about these big brands, they go app builders would be like, wow, I want to build on flow.
I want to build next to the biggest brands in the world.
How do I get started in a lot, you know, a couple of years ago, the answer was,
uh, I don't know. It's got to, it's kind of difficult, you know,
even at a minimum, they're like, Hey, you have to learn this, uh,
new programming language called cadence, which is different than solidity.
And everyone who's already spent a long time learning solidity was like, um,
yeah, maybe I'll just stay where I'm at. I'm good. You know,
I'm trying to bring stay where I'm at.
I'm good.
You know, I'm trying to bring my, I'm trying to put more work on myself.
I'm trying to, you know, make things easier.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The, you know, they had to weigh the calculus.
Like, is it worth me learning this entire new programming language?
I'm not entirely sure.
Uh, what wallets do I use?
What infrastructure I use?
I don't know.
Like, and so now, now we, now that we have fully even equivalents,
it means no code changes.
Like if you have an app that you built on solidity,
you can literally just drag and drop, which is like,
you just change the RPC endpoint and now you're running on flow.
Um, some of the benefits of running on flow EVM are that it's faster.
Transaction fees are a lot cheaper. Like it was funny when we,
when we set out to launch EVM equivalents, it was really just to kind of have that parody to act to be as a lot cheaper. Like it was funny when we, when we set out to launch EVM equivalents,
it was really just to kind of have that parody to act to be as a free port so
that builders could come launch on flow easily.
We didn't realize that the flow architecture, EVM runs really,
really well on it.
So it's one of the most performant EVM environments on the planet,
like by accident, just because the flow architecture is really, really good.
So that's a great place to start for a lot of builders today. Now, we still have our native
programming language called Cadence, which was built for the scalability problem, for all these
things. That's what the native Topshop platform runs on. That's what all these incredible
consumer experiences run on. EVM builders can get a taste of that.
We have what's called an arc function
where you can bring a little bit of that over.
It's stuff like we have a verifiable random function,
which is gives you a random number,
which in other networks you have to pay for.
On Flow it's free.
So you can just like sprinkle a little bit of cadence code
in your EVM app and start getting a little bit of,
we call it the EVM,
we call it Flow EVM a little bit of the gateway drive, right? It's like you start building here and you
go, wow, you're like, oh, it's really fast. It's really cheap. And we say, oh, try a little
bit of cadence. Yeah, try a little bit of cadence. And they go, oh, man, I like, and
then so ideally, we think that, you know, the best consumer apps in the world would
be built on Flow. Maybe just maybe take out the consumer, the best apps in the world would
be built on Flow. And so if you, if you're a builder who has true ambition to build the best things in the world,
we think there's no other place better to do it than flow.
And I would stand on business on that as they say.
There you go.
That's the pitch, I guess.
No, I love it.
I think I think that's a great pitch.
And where would they go?
So if they're like, you know what, I'm curious, I'm building something, I do want to be in the best place where I could build right now. Who do I contact? Or do I go on Discord? Is Twitter the best way? What have been some of those places that you're fostering this community that you're mentioning. Yeah, I mean, if you want to kind of join in on the community side, Discord, we have a Telegram,
all these links are on Flow.com. So ultimately, the punchline I'm getting to is like Flow.com is the best place to get started.
We've recently brought on some really, really awesome people to work on our developer docs who are like trained educators.
Shout out Brian Doyle.
And yeah, they've done a great job. And so like people can go to flow.com and they can start building today.
Like you said, if you want to kind of engage the community, discord,
telegram, Twitter, definitely follow us on Twitter. Yeah. Yeah.
It's a great place to find out what's happening on flow, just on a daily basis.
So yeah, those are great places to start, but flow.com easy to remember.
Amazing. No, and, um, no, you, no, no, you said a daily basis. So yeah, those are great places to start. But flow.com easy to remember. Amazing. No, and now you know, you said flow.com. I'm like,
every time during December, I was like, Oh, yeah, everything
is just flowing. I'm like, I'm not doing this on purpose. And
then I would say another sentence. And I'm like, Yeah,
let's just go with the flow. I'm like, I need to stop.
It's kind of, it's kind of, it's kind of the worst. I'll be in
calls. It'll be like, they'll be like, they'll be like, they'll be like, what's the user flow and I'm over here like flow mentioned, you can't get away from it.
You can and then every single time I'm like, I was like, is this too cliche? I'm like, yeah, it's okay. I'm like, let's see. No, we're gonna record the podcast. I'm like, yeah, let's just go with the flow. I'm like, I need to stop now. But it's, it's a, it's a, it's a, there you go.
I have to embrace it and that's it.
I'm working.
Um, Oh my God.
I have so many questions in my head that I'm like, okay, which one, which one's
so big because I know that we're going to be wrapping it up soon.
Um, but Matt, I think that one, what are some of those exciting projects or
events that you're going to be
attending for the rest of the year? Places where if people want to meet IRL and really connect,
they're like, oh, you know what, I couldn't go to Ithamber. Now I would love to go to the next one.
What are some of those next events? And probably my next question is going to go around.
What do they do in this castle?
Right. I know that we cover some of it.
We cover the activities.
But if I'm someone that wants to develop or that is developing an app,
it's like, what are some of the benefits that I could possibly have by attending one of these?
Yeah. As far as the events go, we're still kind of hammering out or like big events like,
like ETH Denver,
but even you asked about builders, we've developed a really great relationship with ETH Global.
They just put on the best hackathons.
It's so good.
There's some kind of OG developer relations guys on our team.
They always laugh about it.
They're like, when I was going to hackathons, we would get pizza and we would be sleeping
on the floor like and the
ETH Global team, they're like, they're doing like, you know, geographically and culturally appropriate menus like sushi, like, we went to one in
Singapore and it was in the MBS, like we're in the Premier Hotel, like these hackers are like living large, ETH Global does a fantastic job. So we'll be in
And ETH Global does a fantastic job.
So we'll be in Taipei, like, I don't know, in less than two weeks with ETH Global.
I believe we'll be at Khan, near ETH CC, Prague with ETH Global, and then I think New Delhi
with ETH Global as well.
Maybe also New York.
So we like ETH Global.
And so hackers can meet our team there.
We always have great bounties, people building really, really interesting stuff.
I mean, I think you met some of the builders in Denver who are building on Flow.
And so, yeah, so that's a great place to interface with us if you're a builder for the remainder of the year.
Love that. I think, you know, all those places sound great.
And also the perks of, like, you know, the, there's, there's, I don't know, they're attending very nice places and not just having, you know, a little
pizza or sleeping on top of each other.
I was like, you guys were very comfortable in Denver too.
So that's, you know, that's an exciting and exciting, um, I don't know,
like next steps to have.
And, and Matt, what are, from some of this, you know, events, and when you have seen the builders,
if you had to describe like some of the community, because sometimes, you know, I would hate
for people to be discouraged of attending if they're like, oh, I never been, I don't
know anyone, should I reach out to someone before, you know, I think emphasizing on the
importance of like, it's an open door policy, please come, please that.
You know, like walk us through what is expected
if you're new to this community,
how approachable the team is
and what kind of activities can they expect
in this site event?
Yeah, I mean, so like for like our hacker houses,
like the castle in East Denver, which was like so cool. Yeah, yeah, it's like kind of come as you are, you know?
Um, and if you are a builder or if you were a fan of flow or you're curious or
you just want a place to cowork, like that's not terrible wifi. Like we,
we try to just kind of cultivate a really cool environment, um, for,
for people who are come to these conferences.
And I don't know, we get a lot of feedback about the Flow team.
People are always like, oh my gosh, you guys, your vibes are so good.
And I'm thinking we're just regular.
I'm like, if you guys think we're the best, I don't know.
I'm actually kind of horrified to know what else is out there.
So people generally feel pretty welcome around, by our team, from our team.
And so Hacker Houses, yeah, that's great. At ETH Global and things like that, you know,
we always have people at the table who are ready to help and like, and they'll help you, you know,
with your PMF, your pitch, your, you know, your tech, whatever. And people have really enjoyed
interacting with the Flow team at those events as well.
Yeah, I mean, I think we try to be as inclusive, you know, as possible. I mean, that is like baked into our protocol layer. You know, we have, I know I'm not going to get off on too much of a tangent,
but even things like Mev, right, which is a big topic of conversation right now. Like Flow doesn't
have Mev because the builders
thoughtfully considered that they didn't want people
stealing other people's money at the protocol level.
Like, and so like that inclusivity, that attitude,
that kind of like openness is like at the core
of even our tech.
And I think that's how we try to approach
just how we interact with people in the ecosystem as well.
So hopefully that's helpful.
Does that answer that question?
Absolutely, I think it does. And at the end of the day, there's not like one specific answer for a
question so broad like that. But I think it's just an invitation, right? For people to feel that
it's not too late. Sometimes also when we are going, you know, speaking of like a blockchain
that has been around for so long that you guys have built so many things, it could feel intimidating.
And like I said, I was like, I also want to think not only of the big brands,
the big brands amazing come one, come all.
Um, but I would like for someone that is building really cool things to feel
encouraged to say, Hey, let me, let me knock on the door, right?
Let me find out a little bit more.
Let me see how could I be part of this big opportunity, but not feel intimidating
that it might be too late or I don't know anyone or I'm not connected with anyone. It's
not about this. This is more about if you need a blockchain that is the best in the
game, that is doing all these things, that has all the solutions, that you're going to
have all this support, that people feel comfortable. And if it could be in person, even more so, right?
Like even, even more so of like, Hey, take advantage of this hackathons to me, some of
the opportunities for hackathons.
It's incredible.
Like the more that I find out about it, some of these prices and then the work that is
being done.
Um, I think that would be one of my last questions. some of these prices and then the work that is being done.
I think that would be one of my last questions. Do you mind sharing a little bit,
like a little glimpse of some of the,
maybe one of the winners.
It doesn't have to be top one, two, whatever,
that like maybe out of your attention,
you're like, oh, how cool what they were able to build.
And some of the prices,
I feel like some people don't know,
hey, you know what, like put your
brains together and you want to build cool things.
Like there's actually, you know, a lot of resources out there and really good prices
to get you going.
Yeah, I think there's a lot.
Yeah, we try to be really competitive with our pricing because we want, you know, to
attract people who are building the best stuff.
And so I know a lot of builders who I saw at multiple ETH Global events want, you know, to attract people who are building the best stuff. And so I know a lot of builders who I saw multiple ETH Global events, who, you know,
if they're really talented, you know, they can kind of travel around the world and kind
of, you know, subsidize some of their cost of living the digital nomad lifestyle through
like building really cool stuff.
And, and I think about, you know, you mentioned kind of, yeah, the, the little guy and how
do you get started and how it can feel intimidating.
And that's, that's the funny part is like,
I spend the majority of my time talking to kind of newer builders,
up and coming builders on the ecosystem, as opposed to these big brands. Like,
you know, I think about, you know, teams like Kitty punch, more markets,
pumped out flow, like pumped out flow is a great example.
We actually met them at a hackathon in Singapore at ETH global and they came up
to us and they're like, Hey, we want to build on flow.
We noticed you guys don't have a meme coin launch pad.
We want to build that for you. So they started building.
They ended up winning a prize there.
They were on main net like a couple of weeks after like already cooking,
generating fees.
And then we saw them in another ETH global hackathon after that.
And they were like working with other hackers to add additional features. Like, and we just flew them out to Denver
to be scholars. And so like, they've kind of grown and become like an integral part
of our community just from starting as a hackathon builder. And like, I love that team. They're
so much fun. They're hilarious guys from Turkey. But in Yeah, it's just like, and they just started building
stuff and they built it a hackathon and now they're have a real working app and,
and, and, and generating some success from that, which is really awesome.
Love that.
Thank you for sharing that story because I think this, this is yet again, where,
where both of our worlds meet.
And I'm like, this is where you truly feel that this is a global
community, right? This is a global community. It's a lot of opportunities for anyone, regardless of
if you're in Turkey, if you're in the US, if you are in Singapore, that because of this global
community, you know, you, I don't know, you could subsidize traveling the world and building really
cool things and then having the support
and being with like-minded people.
So I'm just really excited to see what comes next.
I'm really excited for more builders
to see what you guys have been doing
and see how can they add value
and also take on some of these opportunities
and to bridge that gap
between the whole blockchain technology,
but then real use cases that are
Continuing to solve to find solutions to so many of the problems that we're like, okay, this could be solved with blockchain
I'm one of the big brands that you mentioned now like ticket masters
I could come up with a lot of problems that they were having and they're probably still having right now
But if they're dipping their toes and they're utilizing this,
hopefully it could trigger down to so many other things
that could be solved with blockchain on that end.
But-
100%.
I don't know, before we wrap it up,
I wanna make sure that I give it back to you
to have any closing thoughts,
anything that we might have missed
or that you wanna share. Well, thoughts, anything that we might have missed or that you want to share.
Well, I guess now that we're kind of talking about builders in our ecosystem, like, and
we talk about these big brands and, you know, how, what is the relationship between, you
know, I'm just getting started building on Flow and there's these kind of big monolithic
brands like think about there's a builder in our ecosystem, his name is CJ, who has
an app called AI Sports Pro.
And the cool thing that he's done is he's used the open on-chain data
for NBA Top Shot to build his app.
Now you can like NBA Top Shot has its own kind of daily fantasy style
game called Fast Break.
And so now he's building features that take the, the, the winning or
loss data and build on top of that.
So you can log into his app with your Dapper wallet
or your account linked wallet.
And then you can kind of like add some extra,
what he calls juice on top of that, on top of that.
So he's able to go and say, hey, Top Shot users,
I've got an app that you can use.
Like you don't have to do anything else.
You don't have to buy new stuff.
Just come to my app, use the digital assets you already have
and I'm gonna give you extra utility on top of that."
And so that kind of composability is something that we all talk about.
We all talk about permissionless, composable, interoperable, but we don't see a lot of it
because everyone's too focused in their lane trying to build their own app.
But it's like, no, this is a huge user acquisition unlock.
You can build on top of the world's biggest brands, compose on top of them. Top Shot's happy you're doing it. You're getting more utility than NFDs. You're getting more,
you know, more users. It's like kind of a win-win that doesn't exist on web two, you know?
It doesn't. And I feel like for many people, even you mentioning what he's working on is going to
open their eyes and their thoughts of like, Ooh, I could also
do this or what can I do with this other ones? I'm like, I didn't know you could do this.
So I don't know. I'm excited. I'm excited to see what comes next.
You get, you get, you get vibe coding now. I'm like, yeah, you're like, Oh, I've had
this idea about this sports app and now these are NBA Top Shot moments. Maybe we'll just
like five code some weird app. Like, like go for it.
And have fun. Yeah. And have fun. And let's see.
Also, I think that this is where you could test it,
and then you see how people receive it.
And that's it.
And I was like, well, you might be surprised.
You probably have been wanting to build something,
and now you have this opportunity.
So excited to see what comes next.
I thank you for your time. I'm excited for everything else that is yet to come.
I love that we got to have this chat
and really recap not only Edinburgh,
but the whole journey and to encourage people.
I think at the end of the day,
encourage more people to build and flow,
to pay attention,
to seek out help when you need it, and also to seek out some opportunities because the
opportunities are there.
And I think that many times, you know, perhaps you have a good idea, but you don't have the
right team to connect with other builders.
There could be a set of skills that you might have that are very particular, but guess what?
Maybe someone else out there is probably waiting for you to be like that co-founder
and be able to build something exciting. So, yeah. Exactly. Thank you so much.
Yeah, no, thank you. Thank you, Laura. This has been a super fun conversation,
and it was great to once again be at Meet We Need Denver and looking forward to chatting some more.
So, appreciate you. Absolutely. I hope that I get to join many other events
and be part of the team as an ally,
as a formal friend and colleague.
So I don't know, I'm just excited to continue to build
in the Web3 space and see where this whole thing takes us.
I think this is the fun part about innovation
that at the end of the day,
we're like, we know what we're doing today. Three months later, something else is new,
something else is happening. We need to adapt, we need to grow, but continuing to be excited
about learning and enjoying the process and collaboration. So yeah.
A hundred percent. And yeah, I know, I know we forget it, but we're still early. I know it's
cliche, but we truly are. Absolutely. Well, thank you, Matt.
I hope you have a great day.
Thanks, Laura.
