Yes, I hear you loud and clear. Both from the Maple Block side and from the Phantom side.
Sure, would the Maple Block side like to lead or?
Sam, I think your audio is lagging a bit. Is it just for me or are you facing the same issue?
I can hear Sam loud and clear on my side.
Yeah, I can hear Mike pretty clear as well.
Rohit, I think you're on mute.
Cool, let's just give it a couple minutes and hopefully Rohit can hear us soon and we can begin.
Hey Rohit, can you try testing your mic?
Rohit, are you able to speak now or are you still facing the same issue?
For some reason, it's still not able to speak.
Okay, while we wait, I guess I can just start talking and start providing some context on why we're here today and what the discussion might lead to if we can get these mics working.
So, hey everyone, my name's Sam Harcourt. I'm from the Phantom Foundation and I lead BD here.
Today, we're focused on introducing Maple Block, who have recently become one of our ecosystem support partners.
Basically, we've realized something within the Phantom ecosystem which became quite obvious to us was that projects we're building, we're finding it hard to find funds and support through grants and whatnot.
So, what we wanted to do was partner with cool VCs around the world who are interested in investing within the Phantom ecosystem and helping our projects grow and become very active and expand.
And this is one of the first that we've announced. We've got a few more lined up, so please stay tuned. We'll probably have a few more of these spaces and a few more announcements.
And basically, the way it works is anyone who has a pitch deck or something that is maybe just the eyes of a VC to look at, you can send it to us, myself, at info at phantom.foundation.
And we can pass it to, right now it's about a group of six firms we've lined up who are all really interested and they can have a look at your deck and we can kind of coordinate something from there.
So, that's kind of what we're here today to talk about the ecosystem partners, a little bit about Maple Block, a little bit about Phantom as well.
And yeah, let's hope we can get these mics sorted and get it underway.
So, I think Roach is still not able to speak. We'll try to figure it out as we go along.
So, as we begin this space, how has it been for the Phantom ecosystem, like in terms of community since the Baron kind of started, how has it been for the Phantom ecosystem in terms of development or community wise?
Sure, yeah, happy to take this one.
It's been quite good. I mean, if you're not looking at the price action, which I think is a down across the board and any sort of ecosystem or other layer one, but the activity within the network itself has been high, if not higher during before the ball, which is a really key statistic to look at because what are those fees going towards, which are paid for the network transactions.
They're going towards validators and hopefully soon towards the ecosystem vault, as well as the burn mechanism that we have today at about 30%.
So, seeing people still grow, and we're still getting a lot of inbounds coming, I'd say, maybe three to four projects approaching myself each week, each day.
It's really cool to see. So there's no slowdown with the projects looking to deploy, which has been promising.
I'm still not sure if this is just the back end of the bull market and whether we might see slowdown soon.
But it's still really encouraging to see lots of projects looking to deploy, looking how they can get involved within the Phantom ecosystem, and looking how they can get in touch with VCs while we're here today, as well as other funding routes through the ecosystem support vault and hopefully a Gitcoin initiative later this year.
Cool. I'll return the favor and throw a question towards the Maple Block side.
I'd love to learn more about Maple Block and how it started.
Hey, Sam. Thanks for the question.
Thanks for the question. Yeah, this is Rohit. Rohit, I'm a principal at Maple Block Capital.
Yes, coming to Maple Block Capital, it's started by Vijay Kerg.
So it's been almost two years.
We've been actively investing in Web 3. Vijay Kerg invested over 150 companies through various structures.
So he's been in the corporate Web 2 world till 2016 and started investing from 2016, started buying first Bitcoin in 2016 after reading for a bunch of months and researching about what Bitcoin is and what blockchain as a technology is.
And from there, there is no stop from the Vijay's point of view.
And yeah, till now, we have invested in 150 companies and we are actively investing even now.
And yeah, I think from the sector's end, we are more DeFi focused, I can say, but we also look into NFTs, MetaWords and GameFi projects.
We invest across, but mostly DeFi focused, you can say. I mean, maybe the majority portion.
That's awesome. I totally agree. And Phantom is known for its DeFi, so you've come to the right ecosystem.
One point I'd like to just follow up with is what makes a project stand out to you, whether it's in DeFi or the Metaverse or in it?
Yes, definitely. I think it's more about the team in the seed stage. We are a seed-focused venture capital fund in Web 3 projects.
I think when it comes to projects, I think it's more about the team and the product development and the progress that they're having.
And definitely, there has to be some innovation from the product perspective.
Yeah, I totally agree. A big thing I hear across the board is some sort of user number, I think is really encouraging and an honest team that shoots straight is a big win.
Definitely, there should be some traction, some sort of traction or any kind of proof of work, which is very important that we can actually have a look into.
So these are the things which are very important for us.
Awesome. So as you mentioned previously, Phantom is heavily in the DeFi side.
So what are the future prospects of DeFi and are there any sectors that Phantom is shifting its focus from majorly from DeFi to maybe NFTs or Metaverse or GameFi?
Sure. Yeah, I'll take this one to you, Mike. I hope I'm not cutting you out here.
So with GameFi, NFTs and Metaverses, we're seeing a massive push. So starting with the Metaverses, you have really cool projects.
I think one of them is listening here today called Slothtopia, a sloth world where you can be actual NFTs, which has been super cool to see.
You see other Metaverses like Rogue, who a few projects have already created their world and have daily active users all interacting with each other.
So it's cool to see that online virtual universe starting to build out.
With the GameFi, you have a bunch of different projects, which I've really caught my eye, such as the Tank Wars, a Tank PvP type game,
Stumble Upon the Jungle, a boxing game, Phantom Survivor. It's a third-person shooter zombie shootout.
You also have Warp, like a space game. And the list can go on and on.
I think another one I'd like to just mention would be 8-bit Metaverse. They're kind of coming out with a really cool game as well.
So definitely lots to see and lots to explore.
We do have a pretty cool game coming out quite soon. I won't actually talk too much about it, but we do have some cool games coming in the pipeline
with, I'd call it AAA graphics, and I'm pretty excited to see how that rolls out.
But yeah, we are seeing a massive push within those other verticals.
I guess one that I'd also like to touch on would be NFTs.
I think one of the coolest places to find cool NFTs would be the Tombheads Auction House.
You have all sorts of projects coming through there like Riot Ghouls. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that right.
And you also have a bunch of other nice NFT projects that are getting mad exposure through their options.
So that's something that I'd like to kind of just touch on as well.
So definitely seeing a branch out into the other verticals, but that's not to say that our DeFi sector has slowed down at all.
I mean, we're seeing really cool, innovative projects come out with derivatives on interest rates on yearn.
We're seeing, you know, it's great to see the expansion of Behoven and their kind of push to other chains.
And we're glad that we've been able to see that growth come from the fandom ecosystem.
So while we are known for our DeFi and that will stay that way, we are also expanding very heavily into the other verticals.
And also, I recently saw your update and I think you also involved Chainlink's VR effect.
I think that kind of brings the NFT people in and makes it easier for people to inculcate the randomness into their NFTs or maybe their games.
Some are focused on sharding, some are focused on...
I'm not sure if that was just me, but I heard both those questions at the same time.
Yeah, sorry, guys. Could one of you repeat your question?
Because I think both of you were talking at the same time as well on my side.
I saw your integration with, you know, you announced the Chainlink PRF integrating into the fandom ecosystem, right?
So I think it will bring in a lot of NFT builders because randomness is kind of a largely debated topic while building stuff on any blockchain.
I think that might give a push to the NFT and maybe the Game5 side of things, right?
So basically, the question we hear is...
Yeah, with regards to VRFs, so like Chainlink recently deployed two new services to the fandom network.
So that's VRFs, which are verifiable randomized functions and also Chainlink keepers, which allow you to do a whole bunch of like scheduling functionality,
which isn't like typically possible, both are typically not possible on using blockchain technologies.
So with regards to VRFs, what is really valuable about VRFs?
And we've been asked about like, you know, just kind of have some form of VRFs for probably about a year now, is that they allow you to introduce randomness to games.
So one of the big technical problems with blockchains is that if you try to introduce randomness,
the way that randomness generates or works with regards to computers is that you call this like function in a programming language, right?
And the computer doesn't actually generate like randomness per se, it's more typically pseudo-randomness in the sense that it generates like a seed,
and the seed has like a sequence of numbers going from like the first number to basically like to infinity, right?
Or to like a very large number, right?
And so if you were to call a random function again, you get like the second number in the seed or the third number of the seed, right?
And so what this means is that if you're using blockchain technology and you're calling a random function,
because the data on the blockchain is public, everybody couldn't read the seed, right?
And everybody can basically know what numbers are coming down the line, you know, it's all predetermined.
So what VRFs allows you to do is basically call a randomized function of chain and then allow you to also verify that data on chain, right?
And so people can't see that original data of chain because it's not on the blockchain, but you can verify that it is true, right?
And so what this means is that people can't basically just look into the numbers that are coming down the line.
So this is very much closer to like, you know, a randomized number generating system that you want.
And the applications are very, very important.
If you think about any application, if you think about any game that uses randomness, you know, you basically want to be using a VRF with regards to blockchain technology.
I mean, just to give kind of like two examples, it's like, you know, you're playing like an MMORPG game and, you know, you get loot after like killing like a monster or like a beast in game.
You know, that loot is like randomly generated with sometimes you get like the common item, but occasionally you get like a rare item.
And so you can use VRF technology to generate that digital item on chain, right?
Another example is that, you know, the trading card games where, you know, they want people to be able to open chests, right?
Or open booster packs. And, you know, you want to have like, you know, the booster packs randomly generated.
So sometimes, you know, you might get like an extremely rare item that people value a lot, right?
And so you'll want to use a VRF for the generation of the treasure chest or that particular booster pack.
So VRFs, you know, have recently been launched from Phantom, I think only for the past few weeks.
And, you know, I'm very interested to see what people use VRFs for, especially in regards to camera fire, which is what it kind of has been targeted as so far.
That's amazing, Michael. From the community perspective, right?
They always want to see some great projects are being on top of a layer one or layer two.
Also, they want to see that, you know, what new is coming in, what new development is coming in the layer one itself.
So they always try to, you know, follow the ecosystem or the community of a layer one wherein they see most number of, you know, interesting projects are being built on top or either the most amount of development is being happened.
So what do you want to say in that regard?
Well, we've got a lot of technical developments happening down the line where we've hired like additional people in the core middleware development.
So, for example, like we've got like a, you know, we've got like a series of postdocs that have been hired by us led by our professor Bernard Schultz and they're focusing specifically on middleware research and development.
So that's what regards to like a new phantom virtual machine, regards to like new sort of like technologies to kind of improve the bottleneck on the phantom network.
So the research that I've released just a couple of days ago really was about profiling the phantom chain and showing people exactly how transactions are processed on chain and what are, what is fast at the moment, but also what are the bottlenecks.
And that it's, it's these bottlenecks in transaction processing that we want to tackle over time, because that means that if you tackle these bottlenecks, you know, you increase network throughput, you decrease the time to finality or the time it takes to process the transaction.
And you basically, you know, in the end have like faster, cheaper and more secure transactions, which is what I always emphasize to people is the whole basis for what is technical development that we've been doing.
We're also hiring more people on the core development side as well. You know, as I've talked about before, you know, also on the core development side, improving our transaction processing, you know, in terms of like, you know, using like a new database, like a modified mobile DB database,
with regards to modifying our existing proof of work algorithm. There's a lot of like work being done, kind of like behind the scenes. So we want to bring out to the forefront as well, which is why, you know, you're going to be seeing more of the technical people being more public, you're going to see a lot of the research rollout at a faster pace, like we've done with the profiling, and it will all be there for everyone to see and scrutinize themselves.
Yeah, and just to, just to quickly add to that, I think a big thing that people come to us and say is, why are you so focused on technology? They always want something else. They're saying, why are you so technology focused?
And to that I say we're focusing on what I call, and I guess a bit more simple speak than what Mark kind of just said, it's vertical scaling.
So currently, what we're seeing across the board when adapt stuffs to get core adoption, something like Didex, who is a good example, actually, they got massive adoption on Ethereum.
And now they've had to scale that horizontally by building out their own chain. So this throws a number of hurdles for Didex. Now, instead of focusing on what died, what makes Didex one of the leading per trading exchanges on Ethereum.
Now they're worrying, and they're going to have to drain resources, handling, you know, new tokenomics around their gas. They're going to have to worry about bridging probably some sort of RPC issue as well, getting all the right tooling on their chain, and not focusing on the core mission of their DAP.
Probably more, you know, now they're focused on the gas tokenomics. And not only that is when, when the chain itself doesn't have the technology to handle the DAPs that want to grow.
They start to lose connection with each other. So DAPs begin to branch out. They want their, again, they want their own chain. And what that does is it disincentivizes and de-aligns applications that were working together.
So say if you have two apps that are working really close together, whether it's, you know, some sort of DeFi exchange in some sort of game, if they both branch out, because the core technology that they're building on top of the infrastructure, the layer one,
if that's not good enough to handle the amount of users they're pulling in, and they have to go branch out to their own chain, well, then now they're both less incentivized to work together because they have their own tokenomics, their own gas, you know, tokens that they want to, I guess, get use out of.
And that's the kind of loses the essence and the magic of crypto. So that's why we push so heavily on the tech, because we want to keep the magic alive.
And we want to have amazing applications who are able to scale with us grow. So when we're talking about the millions of users, and not just for the infrastructure for the application itself, we can handle that.
And we can handle the adapts wanting to grow together and push out and kind of not have to go out by themselves and worry about something they shouldn't have.
Great. Yeah, I just want to add to what Sam mentioned in terms of the profiling results. What we saw from the profiling results, and I don't think it was emphasizing that in the article, actually, is that the two main use caseable fandom that have consumed the most transactions in the past have been one around DEXs, so that's D5, and two around Game of Fire.
So, you know, DEXs and game based applications, you know, are the applications that have historically consumed the most transactions on Phantom, and I think they'll continue to be the case in the future.
And that kind of makes sense, because a lot of people, you know, swamp assets, you know, back and forth between, you know, between different assets. And also, with regards to Game of Fire, you know, depending on the game, there can be a lot of transactions that interact online, right?
Because you multiply the number of players, by the number of entities they generate, and the number of like, data save points or checkpoints that they make, you know, it's a lot of transactions. And that's why scalability is really important to capture these sorts of games.
The problem that like, other chains, I mean, looking at is that they kind of just like, push the computation off to like a separate chain, right? Or like a side chain, right? And when you do that, you know, yes, you get better performance, that's true, but it comes at a cost.
Because if you push your computation to a side chain, then the entire validator set from the main chain, basically gets cut out, right? And then you need to have a new validator set for the side chain. And so, you know, you're basically compromising on security to get performance.
Well, we don't want to do that, you know, for obvious reasons. That's why what you got to do is you got to optimize, right? You got to increase your network performance while maintaining a good level of security. And that's exactly what we're focusing on.
Great, great. You all know that Phantom is very highly scalable and very efficient blockchain. At the same time, you know, we are running, I think, into a third cycle, you know, wherein we are seeing, we have entered into it, but we have not seen the real beers entering in the market yet.
So we might see a bit more push down. So what do you see, you know, Phantom would be doing in next two years, specifically, until you know, next bit, when hard being takes place, as per according to the experts, you know, that's when the next bull run going to start.
But according to us, it's all about the adoption, more and more adoption happens, like last time in the last time in 2020 in 2021, there was a lot of adoption from the institution's side.
We saw many billionaires, including Elon Musk, you know, many billionaires or many outsider institutions, fintech companies, they entered into the space.
So the entire money that, you know, were pumped into the cryptocurrency, made cryptocurrency, entire market cap go over $3 billion. So now we are into the beer market, we might go below $1 trillion market cap as well.
We might reach to $750-600 trillion market cap. So what are your plans in next two years? How would you keep alive the community? How do you keep them engaged?
That's a great question. And I think a lot, I think we reached that 3 trillion milestone, probably from all the leverage that was in the system.
And I think that was quite a crazy milestone to hit so fast. And I think that's why we're seeing such a strong pullback today.
And I believe over the next few years, and not just next two, five to 10, it's going to be a slow growth and real adoption.
So we're not talking just leverage, we're talking about real applications with real users getting adoption and building that out and having fundamental incomes and revenue streams, ensuring that they can maintain their margins and create a healthy business environment.
So what we are, we're an infrastructure provider, we want to make sure that the apps that come to us can scale. And that's what we're really focused on.
So I guess what we did touch on was the tech side and why we want to have what's called vertical scaling on the BD side, ensuring that those apps come to us and that we ensure that they want to deploy on us.
It's through a range of things. So one is probably the biggest question we always have from ADAPT is, how do we get funding?
It comes through a few things now. One is our VC ecosystem partners, which I'm glad to be talking with Maple Block Capital today, and to be a part of that.
And I'm very excited to announce the others that we have on board that are very interested in providing that funding to the apps that want to scale.
Two, it's probably through some sort of grant, whether it's through Gitcoins deployment later in this year, hopefully, we're working with them trying to be their guinea pig.
Or three, it could be even our ecosystem support vault, which is a method of getting funding that would actually outlast the foundation itself, because it's basically funded through 10% of the transaction fees.
And right now that has about, I think, about 44%, around 40% participation, and we need about 55%.
And we have that about 99%. So I think that should pass. And when it does that providing another avenue stream for funding those projects that want to grow on Phantom.
Two would be improving our onboarding services. Well, I think we do have some of the best out there. It's, you know, making sure that we coordinate with new projects, making sure we give them that marketing support, that technical support, the intros to other projects who are building like-minded applications so that it can grow together, maybe even help mergers down the way.
Or some sort of cool acquisition that we see, you know, it's providing this connections between the dApps so that they can grow together.
And then another point that we're focusing on is kind of events. So something that we had last year, which was run by a community member, was the Phantom conference.
And while this year we haven't had anything as big as that, and I don't think we have anything as big as that planned, we are starting to hire recently some people who will start organizing events around the world.
It'll start small and start to scale up and make sure that the community feels like they have somewhere to belong and that they can, you know, make those real world connections.
And that really does help the kind of relationships between dApps, making sure that they keep, you know, what I said before that crypto magic.
So that's a big focus over the next couple of years. It's focusing on technology and it's focusing on ensuring that the dApps that come to us get the support they need.
And even targeting some web2 based companies, a big thing people look at is they see a web2 company such as Disney or Meta or something like that.
And they think, okay, that's how you get users. They already have the users. We want to partner with them so they play on us.
Well, that's about the strategy, even though it can be a bit tricky trying to redesign.
I had a Twitter limit on so it is cut out. Even if it is some sort of redesign within the whole company so they can become web3, that's something that we also want to explore.
So, you know, through these connections that we're making today, through the expansion of our VC partners, we're looking to outreach to some of these web2 companies and start to discuss, you know, how we can have them on Phantom and showcase what the technology or how good the technology is that we've built
and why they would succeed working with us.
Great, you know that Ethereum is moving from P.O.W. to P.O.S., right?
And now when we see that there are many layer 2 who are working towards scaling the Ethereum as a blockchain, as a layer 1, right?
So how does that impact Phantom or does that, you know, complement Phantom as a layer 1?
Or you see that as a competition or you want to, you are making some changes in Phantom seeing that is happening or that is going to happen in future?
Well, there are several issues like layer 2 is the point of that on Ethereum, right?
One is like, what is kind of like the trade-off, right, from like using the layer 2?
Because again, like, you know, when you use like a layer 2 or like a sidechain, you know, you can't take full advantage of the validated set for the L1 that you're talking about, right?
So, you know, for example, like with Optimism, the reason why you have this like 7-day delay when you want to bridge tokens back from Optimism to Ethereum is basically like a security consideration, right?
And even though it probably doesn't need to be 7 days at the moment, it would need to be at least, you know, of the orders of maybe like, you know, like 15 minutes, half an hour to an hour, that sort of thing.
Because the chain of Optimism is a lot faster than, say, Ethereum because it doesn't have the same bottlenecks as Ethereum because, you know, the validator set is like a lot smaller, right?
And so, you know, that's one problem. The second problem with like an L2 is that yours are bounded by the performance of the L1, right? Because you're sitting on top of the L1.
So if the L1 wouldn't have any issues, it wouldn't have any performance issues, it wouldn't have any security issues, you're directly impacted by that, right?
And so, you know, there's only like so much like, there's only like so much like work you can be done on the L2 to maintain security and scale that up.
And, you know, we recently saw this announcement from Polygon about, you know, having an EVM, apparently like compatible machine with DK Shnarks, you know, that's very interesting what they're like apparently done there.
But still, they're limited by, you know, the underlying performance of the EVM that like, Ethereum has to use.
So they can't generate like a new virtual machine to fix a lot of bottlenecks that exist with the Ethereum virtual machine and a lot of drawbacks using it.
So the amount of work that they have been able to do on creating this new virtual machine has actually been quite limited.
So those are like kind of like the drawbacks of an L2.
Obviously, like the benefits of an L2 is that you're already connecting into an L1, i.e. Ethereum that already has like a lot of users.
And so, you know, to get those users support over an L2 isn't that much effort at all.
So, you know, in the end, I guess what I'm emphasizing is that whether it's an L2 or an L1, there's always like trade offs, right?
There's advantages and disadvantages.
But what's really important in terms of improving the technology is based like optimizing, where you maximize the advantages and you minimize the disadvantages.
That's what technology progress is really all about.
Just super quick, a big thing with Ethereum going from POW to POS is they're focused on more consensus.
Whereas our massive focus where I guess you could say we're a step ahead, we're focusing on improving that virtual machine and we're looking at, you know, pushing out the FVM.
So right now, I'd say we're still, we've got a little advantage there focusing on the middleware where everyone else is, well, Ethereum specifically is so focused on pushing out their new POS method.
Last question is about your ecosystem partners initiative.
Would you like to put some highlight on it?
I did actually start off the discussion with that, but happy to touch on it again.
So basically what we've realized within the Fana Mecha system is that a lot of projects are building, but they're struggling to find the right funding resources and avenues so that they can expand.
What we want to do is offer the right intros and create a streamlined process to the right people so that they can access those funds.
That's why it's so great to be talking with you guys today from Maple Block to be able to chat about the Fana Mecha system and what you're looking at and what you're interested in investing in.
Because I guarantee there's a lot of people on this call who might also be interested in talking with you very, very soon.
So that's a big part of this push is helping projects within the Fana Mecha system grow and expand.
While we do have other avenues, whether it's through the grants by Gitcoin, which we are trying to push out, or whether it's the ecosystem vault, which is going through governance, the VC, you know, ecosystem partners, they provide support straight away.
It's not just the funding and capital that you guys can provide.
I think it's really the influence and the knowledge that you've had over the countless years of investing and seeing projects rise and fall that you can offer to kind of the projects that may be starting a business for the first time on Phantom.
Or maybe they need the right connection to the right people to be able to execute something.
So that's why this initiative is really important.
And we're super excited to be talking with you guys here today.
And we're keen to announce some more partners as well.
So very excited for the future of our ecosystem partners initiative.
Jamal, you want to speak about something?
Is there anyone who wants to ask a question from the Phantom team?
Then we'll start about the Apple blog section.
Sure. I guess a question for the make books, I would be what is your thoughts on the current economic environment?
Is this just a dead cat bounce or is this something more sustainable?
Obviously, we're not asking for you to predict the future, but it would be great to just know what your what your feelings of the current market are.
Sure. See, I come from a corporate background.
In my last organization, I was leading a group of seven billion dollars as acting CEO.
Worked with more than 100 companies.
You know, there were more than 35 companies in the last organization itself from, you know, some companies were worth one million dollars.
Some companies were worth a couple of companies were hundreds of millions of dollars.
So right now, when I speak to all these traditional conglomerates of in tech companies or even bankers, you know, bankers in Singapore, JP Morgan or bankers in Dubai, Amirite.
So mesh a guy's record bank.
All these guys are very passive right now.
You see the bonds values are decreasing.
You see equity stocks are going down the drain.
We know what is happening in US highest inflation of nine percent in June.
We know what's happening in Japan.
Japan bonds pension funds.
They are generating a yield of point zero something percent, which is crazy, right?
We know what is happening in China.
There is a low down due to COVID.
Then we know what is happening in Germany, Russia and Ukraine is happening.
So macros are really definitely not great at the moment.
And at the same time, there are regulatory concerns when it comes to cryptocurrency markets, not as a whole.
But yeah, we have seen what happened.
What has happened to what happened to defy to some of the projects, some of the VC fund, largest VC funds.
So having said that, yeah, there are some risks which now institutions are considering.
When I speak to them now in last couple of months specifically.
But in the longer run, two things have to happen.
First is regulatory framework has to be there from different countries, different jurisdictions.
Second, consumer more products should be built out for the consumer adoption.
Right now we see many layer on blockchains, including including Phantom.
We all are right now, you know, trying to expand within the web ecosystem.
Every single year we are getting 50 to 100 million new crypto users.
And we are trying to expand the ecosystem to those users so they can start transiting using our layer one or they can build on top of our layer one.
But at the same time, these all these layer ones are not pushed out to enterprise level or all the large enterprises, you know, big companies.
They are not using all this layer on blockchains right now.
So that is going to happen in next three to five years down the line.
You very well said defy is not down.
Defy is going to grow, you know, maybe easily to one trillion dollar market cap, you know, in next three to five years down the line.
But we need more defined products which are truly decentralized.
Right now, if I talk about sticking platform, we talk about any other platform, there is no truly decentralized platform, right?
All are in a way controlled by the centralized entity who is running it.
So these things need to be sold when it comes to defy only and we are a defy focus for.
And if you talk about an empty or gamification, there are several different challenges.
There is not even a single game right now in that three space that is really playable, you know, and at the same time token utility sucks.
Yeah, we have seen the progress in axis being the first more advantage.
But yes, there is not even there is no other game where we can say, yeah, it is it is really playable.
Even actually, according to us, it's not really playable.
Right. So we need to see a game which is great.
First of all, fun to play not on to play and then pay to earn or earn to play or move to earn whatever we want to say comes in place.
Right. Ownership is there.
There is advantage about the three that is advantage about blockchain.
So that is the challenge in gamification.
Similarly, we are seeing the challenges in NFT and Metaverse unless and until we see people like or companies like Adidas or.
Companies like H&M or companies like Google.
These are, you know, these steps into the metaverse or they try to dictate, you know, how it's going to happen.
Or we see a startup, you know, who is really committed towards building a great metaverse like there was a movie called a free guy.
Right. That kind of metaverse unless and until that happens.
I don't think so that we will see a great growth in metaverse.
You might be seeing people doing 100x, 200x, 500x in metaverse in some of the projects that what we saw in gamification or what we saw overall in 2021.
But the real adoption going to come when there is a real product out.
So that is what we think.
And I definitely agree with a lot of them, especially around the game fire.
I mean, it needs to be fun to play because otherwise the rewards are going to dry up and you're going to lose those users.
So a model that I'm seeing that's quite interesting is the free to play and kind of the paid to have cool gear, which is, you know, in turn, NFT.
So you get to own those real world items.
And a lot of games that, you know, kind of are out today, you see, you know, like Fortnite is a good example.
A lot of their revenue comes from selling this in game items, which in turn would be so much more valuable to the game.
If it was something they could own and take away from the game in my eyes.
I'm really excited to kind of see more of those free to earn, I guess, pay to look cool with NFTs models.
But totally agree with a lot of what you said today.
Yeah, I heard your previous question also.
I think when you were asking about NAPPLBLO, why we have partnered with NAPP Phantom, you know.
So there are a couple of reasons.
I believe that we have seen two cycles in the past, right?
And, you know, I was chairman of a committee, you know, wherein we drafted the regulation of one of the largest economy of the world.
I can't name it because of the confidentiality.
But I've seen a lot of faces.
So what we have realized, you know, first of all, as a VC, we need to make sure we understand the market.
We understand the industry.
We understand the rounds we want to invest in.
So in the bull market, generally, we try to invest in, let's say, four, five, six, maximum eight projects a month.
And when we turn into beer market, there is no limit.
We can invest in even 10 projects.
We can invest in 20 projects per month.
There's a very strong reason.
In bull market, you get to hear more than 100 pitches every single week.
And 99 percent of those pitches will never execute, will never be executed.
In beer market, you get to hear limited pitches, but of good quality.
Real builders actually build in the beer market.
That's why we invest more in the beer market.
And we are partnering with Phantom in the beer market.
We believe Phantom has a great ecosystem.
It's a growing ecosystem, right?
It's not a hype ecosystem.
It's a growing ecosystem.
And it's using different technology than many other layer ones.
So it has a very unique concept as well.
I definitely agree that that comes back to that Warren Buffett quote where it's,
be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.
So it's cool to see you guys executing on that.
So to wrap this up, anybody has any questions?
Jamal, you want to speak first?
Thanks, Jamal, for the question.
I think you might be in the wrong place for it, though.
The foundation doesn't run Felix Exchange.
That's run by another organization.
So we can't provide any context for you today.
There can be hundred projects, Jamal, on top of Phantom, but they wouldn't be aware,
you know, what is happening inside it.
And what are the issues from there?
Well, I thought the exchange was beautiful from Tom ecosystem coins.
So I thought you could just rely on it.
I'm speaking from Nigeria.
I'll be very simple and straightforward question to.
And my question is, so I've, I've noticed a couple of a couple of fundraising
And of course, they are absolutely wonderful.
So we are building on the moonbeam ecosystem.
And of course, we are building on the moonbeam ecosystem.
We have built to the point of fundraising.
So we have been, we have been, okay.
So one of the things that we came across, of course, I'm asking this question to
hear from you as one of the biggest funders in the industry that I've seen.
What are some of the, what, what are some of the things you would consider for
a startup like us who haven't launched out of belts to an MVP stage and we're
trying to fundraise what, what's the word for what's the simple advice for, for us
because it's been, it's been quite difficult to, to get anybody who would want
to listen to us in the bear market.
The complaint has always been that it's, it's bear market and it's very difficult
funds to startups or rather to projects like ours.
So I would want to just find out from ABC like you who has been investing in both
bear market and the bull market and then to know what, what to take home.
So yeah, this is just basically what our question is.
Thanks for your question.
Big love for Nigeria and our whole Africa.
I have my first incubated projects was from Africa only, Nigeria only, basically.
It was then finance, if you know, definitely would know.
I don't know who is a co-founder as well.
I invested in him, you know, he was at the same stage where you are today, 2018.
We were in the bear market and, you know, he was short of liquidity.
I believe he invested and then, you know, he got funding from Binance and few other stuff.
So I would suggest to you, you know, you keep trying, you know, definitely.
If your MVP is ready, you can send your pitch deck to us.
We'll definitely consider.
If it's over thesis, we'll definitely invest.
But at the same time, you know, you should keep trying, keep sending your pitches to
Or if you are not able to reach out to the VCs, you should start attending more events
like this one, wherein you would be able to connect to the right person from that VC,
And you can, you know, try your luck.
I've seen people, I can't name those projects.
They are worth, including layer one right now, they are worth multi-billion dollar,
They were literally struggling, struggling very, very hard in 2017 and 18 to raise money.
They were sending emails to all the VCs.
They were sending emails to me as well for the funding of even hundred thousand dollars,
And as of today, they are a multi-billion dollar projects in the market.
So it's you never know where you will get the support from.
The only thing you can do is build your product out.
You should believe in your idea.
Do your best and keep trying.
Actually, the reference that I got was from the zinc finance because I noticed the just
recently made an announcement and with with you guys as one of the funding partners.
So I was I was really keen to know what what we can do, what we what we should do
But thank you for the advice.
And you should build a top offender as well.
Yeah, that should be something we should think about.
We will we will think about that.
Feel free to reach out to us and we can help with the marketing, technical support and
interest to other builders.
So the best way to get on to us would be info at phantom dot foundation.
Or you can reach me at my telegram handle, which is at Sam S A M H A R C, or you could
just ping me on on Twitter.
I'll I'll drop you from Twitter.
Okay, any any anyone else has any questions from us?
So you have a question, please.
Thank you very much for the conversation so far.
It's been very insightful and very interesting to learn more about the middleware that you're
researching and developing my questions around business development.
Really interested like I've been watching you guys for a long time.
You mentioned some pilots around a year ago with a couple of governments.
I think mainly in the Middle East, just wondering and working with the likes of SK chain advisors,
just wondering if you can comment on how that's going or anything like that at the minute.
Appreciate if you've got any NDA's in place, though.
So like last year, we did work a couple of pilot program projects, you know, one of them
probably the one that we made most progress in was supply chain management around verifying
products being imported from India into Afghanistan.
So we label we physically labeled around 30 to 40,000 products, I think across like three or four
different types of like items.
And these were like generic medicines was ever big kind of a problem in Afghanistan, especially
related to generic drugs, I think 30 or 40 percent of the drugs, generic drug products that are
sold in Afghanistan of some standard quality, because they're just they're just like counterfeit.
They get into like the legitimate system.
Right. So we had developed this technology where you would basically scan this QR code and you would
be able to get like the provenance of the item.
So you would track like, you know, the entire history of the child and of the item, et cetera,
as well as being able to add additional like marketing functionality to it.
You know, we had launched that pilot program in Kabul.
And the idea was to extend it to the rest of the provinces in Afghanistan.
But unfortunately, you know, the government like fell in August twenty twenty one.
So we couldn't continue that program at all.
So we had to scrap it entirely, which is unfortunate.
There was also another project that we're working on in terms of working with the statistical agency
as well, which unfortunately couldn't go ahead as well.
The good news is that we own that technology.
So we always kept the initial technology.
So we're trying to expand it to like other countries and organizations.
So there's like a whole bunch of discussions going on right now in some continental European countries,
as well as a few other countries in the Middle East.
For example, like Bangladesh, where we want to take phantom technology and integrate into the systems,
whether it's like, you know, related to CBDCs or financial based settlements or supply chain management.
You know, those discussions are happening at the moment.
You know, I can't really go into too much detail about it.
But like, you know, if something were to close and we can announce it, we will definitely will.
Awesome. All right. Thanks very much.
So sounds good, guys. Anybody else has any questions from us about random team?
I've got a question. Thank you, guys, for having this space today.
I'm Sonic. I'm with the take protocol.
We're building a decentralized perpetual exchange on phantom.
My question is for Maple block.
So having heard and read, I'm sure, countless pitches.
What are some common mistakes that you've noticed projects make in their presentations?
Sorry, can you repeat your question, Sonic? There was a disturbance.
Yeah, sure. So having heard and read countless pitches,
what do you think are some common mistakes that you've noticed projects are making in their presentations?
Two things which can come to my mind right away.
First thing, they are not able to pitch their idea clearly what they are building.
Sometimes they create a very complex pitch deck.
Idea is very simple. Keep it simple.
Pitch deck should be very simple. Right.
Second is, you know, how you're going to execute it.
Idea is great, but there are VCs who are investing not only in idea.
They are investing in team. They want to know how you're going to execute it.
Business model and your execution plan in the pitch deck itself should be very strong.
So these two things, I think, you know, makes a VC who is on the call with you,
makes him or her more interesting to hear more about the project itself at the first place.
So anybody else has any question, guys?
Cool. I guess that's a wrap.
I'll just add one last comment to the sonic question.
From my experience, what I've seen, although very limited compared to the other guys on this call,
it's they love to see some sort of user number.
So whether it's some MVP that's been launched and you can show some sort of adoption and growth, it speaks volumes.
That's just from my personal experience.
Yeah, for sure. Sonic, also, you need to make sure you do your due diligence on the VC you are going to speak to.
If that VC is investing in the pre-seed stage, it means they are interested in the team and the idea itself.
You're speaking to a VC who invest in the seed stage.
You need to have your MVP in place and your MVP should be very strong and you should be able to display a demo
But if you're speaking to VC who is in series A and you're raising your seed round, then you're wasting your time.
So it's always important to understand what sort of VC you're speaking to.
So, guys, should we wrap this up? Sam?
Sure. Sure thing. It's great to look into you guys. It's such a pleasure and welcome to the Phantom ecosystem.
Thank you, guys. Look forward to investing in some really great projects being built on top of Phantom.
Awesome. Thanks, everyone.
Thank you, also. Thanks, guys, for listening.
Thanks so much for choosing to invest in the Phantom ecosystem and for hosting this Twitter space today as well.
I'm sure everyone is eager to see how FVM is unfolding and how the technical developments are going to take place in the next two years.
We'll bring good fortune to a lot of people.
Yeah, thanks so much. Really appreciate it.
Thank you, guys. Take care.