Unpacking the Blockchain Hype | KEY Difference

Recorded: Feb. 13, 2024 Duration: 0:59:09

Player

Snippets

Hello, hello guys, super excited to have you all for the key different space today.
We have a pretty interesting topic unpacking the blockchain hype and we have quite a few
interesting speakers with us today as well.
So before I dive into all the details of the topic, the background is very simple.
We have always seen that the blockchain space had a lot of hype around it, hype was how
projects were driven, narratives were driven with that.
So the primary goal of today's discussion is to unpack it to see what and why hype is
driving the space and what is the current hype right now, what's hot in the space right
now and how real is that hype.
So we have quite a few things to dive in on today and I believe it's going to be super
exciting.
And before we start speaking, please do share the pinned post that we have here.
So we have more of audience listeners joining in as well, we'll give it a minute for a few
others to jump in but please feel free to share it and let's make it fun.
As we converse, as we discuss, feel free to unmute and chime in, don't wait for me to
call you because it's a friendly discussion so we don't have to be too formal about it.
Super exciting.
Let's get started.
Why don't we get started with you, Nautak?
I see you have your mic already unmuted.
Hi, everyone.
Thanks for having us.
This is Shreya.
So I had marketing for Nautak.
Nautak is a layer two EVM compatible blockchain and we focus on giving infrastructure to giving
payment projects.
So that's about us.
Great to be here.
So why don't you tell me in one or two words what is the most hype thing that you're hearing,
the hype trend that you're hearing in this space right now, just the key words?
I think we've been in this space for some time and things are changing so fast.
One of the key things that I feel is getting momentum again is NFTs and also regular world
assets plus again the entire hype of transactions, be it on the DeFi side, is just all about
getting momentum again.
So I think we're on the right track.
So why don't we go with you for a quick line of intro and two key words that you see as
the hype, Cryptophytes.
Thanks for having me.
So Cryptophytes is a one versus one strategy fighting game based on the Dungeons and Dragons
dice mechanics.
We actually started in 2018 on Ethereum and then moved to Bitcoin and we have been basically
innovating kind of layer one gaming, so on-chain gaming.
And just recently we went into more of a kind of a web two, web three hybrid model to try
to bring more gaming content to the web three space via our fixed gateway.
And I think your other question was kind of what are the kind of the things, I think one
of the things is probably bull market if you want kind of the key words is people are
excited again that we have been through this lull for a long time and we're finally starting
to maybe get a breath of fresh air in the space.
And I also think tokens, people are kind of hyping tokens as usual and that's exciting
because it's also you know another way to kind of bring money into our ecosystem which
I think is great.
That's amazing.
It's amazing.
When you say Dungeons and Dragons, it kind of reminds me of Sheldon Cooper.
We have those layer one X, why don't you jump in right now?
Sorry I'm running kind of late from a meeting, but was there a topic or anything or are we
just kind of introducing ourselves?
Just a quick line of intro and couple of keywords of the most hyped thing that you
hear about.
Yeah, so I'm layer one X, I'm the CXO, my name is Cody, I'm representing them today
and we are a layer one blockchain that facilitates in interoperability, native interoperability,
bridge list interoperability.
We can basically transfer not only tokens, assets, but we can also do data and logic
And some of the things that I'm pretty hyped about is user experience and design being
a primary focus along with also interoperability being a huge one for us as well.
And Andrew, why don't we go on with you?
Hey guys, good to be back, good to see a lot of familiar faces.
Yeah, I'm Andrew Lubon, I was a 7 year professional athlete, got into crypto in 2017 and now I'm
working at Pulsar.ai, we're the Google for NFTs and we're an upstream solution for discoverability
for NFTs kind of across the entire ecosystem.
So obviously very bullish on NFTs, but what we're excited about really at the moment is
not only JPEGs and traditional NFTs being a use case, but also as different business
models are leveraging NFTs as a smart contract mechanism to unlock all sorts of different
new cases.
So really exciting time for us and I'm sure a lot of people in this room to kind of see
these things come back and hopefully make a stepwise improvement in the real true potential
of what NFTs can do for a lot of commerce use cases, et cetera.
Man, I've been talking about this for years and years and that excites me to hear this
from you.
NFTs are more than monkey pictures.
Margaret, why don't you jump in?
Hi, Margaret Rosenfeld.
I am the principal at Zucumpt and we're an advisory firm, serve on boards, help with
strategic advisory, and I'm an attorney who has been in this space since 2015.
In terms of trends, definitely interoperability at a later one's head, I think is a big trend.
And you said hype trend, so hype usually means you don't think it's going to go anywhere.
And it seems like everyone's just saying what things that they think are going to go away
somewhere.
So I'll say where I think things actually are going to go.
I do think institutionalization, increasing institutionalization, and regulation and infrastructure.
Those would be the major trends that I see for the next bull market.
I think that's a good point that you brought about hype out there.
I think when it comes to the context of blockchain, hype and where things are going have been
pretty much correlated, except for the fact that sometimes the substance might not be
strong enough, and it might need more than one attempt, almost like the charts, to break
the resistance and get to reality where the technology catches up with the interest.
But I think hype and going forward in the direction progressively could also happen
parallelly, especially if it is like NFT trends we're talking about.
It's not the first time around, it's coming around for the second time or third time.
And when something like that happens, there is more substance to something than the initial
first time.
But yes, usually, hype is much more than what's in reality.
Makes perfect sense.
Jordan, why don't you jump in?
Hey, everyone.
Thanks for having me.
I'm Jordan.
I'm building Eureka.
Eureka is a game that takes place in 1850, where we are using advanced artificial intelligence
to perfectly simulate the colonization of a full-scale continent at eye level, where the
players explore this continent and then build an entirely new country on it together.
In terms of where the hype is going, I think that the answer is on actual shipping products,
on actual execution, that this is going to be the first bull market where the tech is
finally here to be ready for mass market adoption on a lot of different things.
And I think that the hype is going to follow these functional products that have huge user
bases and people are using in the real world for lots of stuff and is going to, for the
first time, not focus as much on some crazy promise of something that might be built in
the future.
Makes sense.
King Julian.
Hey, good to meet you, man.
Nice to see you again, bro.
Likewise, nice to see you again, later on in Android, we just came up with other spaces.
It seems like we're all falling on the same floor today.
So I'm the founder of Masmaa.
We're building the most globally consumer centric Ultra app ever made.
So basically, Masmaa provides everything that the users need in one easy to use self-sovereign
app from seamless wallets, exchanges, payments, social interactions, shopping, gaming, and
more. What we do is basically take the best elements of Coinbase, MetaMask, PayPal, WeChat,
StockTwits, Twitter, CoinMarketCap, and now making them all beautifully designed, simple
to use, and user friendly for Web3 so that it just works.
All right.
And that's for the average or savvy individual.
Some things I'm really keen on, especially since Masmaa is very heavy on account
abstraction and cross-chain, especially with now the ETFs, you know, market adoption for
Bitcoin that we're seeing, you know, all the, you know, BlackRock and all these CEOs now
hopping on the Bitcoin bandwagon.
I'm very excited to see that maybe in the next two years, this super cycle is going to be, you
know, what helps push, you know, Web3 and crypto into mainstream adoption and through account
abstraction, of course.
Elina, you are the last one to go.
So let's let's go.
Hi, everyone.
I'm Elena.
I'm a co-founder of Supermoon with previous background in venture capital, United Nations,
and strategic consulting, built and grew consulting company out of Hong Kong to 15
locations currently based in New York.
And Supermoon, we're helping founders to get access to resources.
Our community already has over 18,000 founders, builders and investors.
With our thousand VC funds and HNWIs plus we host a lot of events that are free to attend,
but are application based for founders that want to connect with potential strategic
partners, with potential investors, and find other meaningful opportunities that can help
to grow their business.
So a lot of non-profit community activations.
And from related to the topic, I think the word hype is actually what is wrong with our
industry.
I really like what Jordan was saying before, in terms so far that we hope to see that this
bull market will be more about shipping and mass adoption, and just hope that our startups
in the web space finally will realize that it's more about the wider audience, about
the wider user base, about real world applications, and we should use this technology as
technology, and not as a trendy word that we just add and try to secure quick funds,
because that's not how you build anything meaningful that can have a long term impact.
So definitely seeing that hype is the word that should hopefully be removed from our space,
and people should just focus on what is important for their target market.
Elina, you said it so right.
And I think the best way to do that is to completely kill the speculation, just like in
the stock markets, if all the tokens are illiquid, and they cannot be traded, and there's
no speculation in there.
I think we will go back to focusing on the product and building right products rather than
pushing the tokens out and speculating on it.
Okay, so now, guys, before I jump in, if you're not retweeted or pushed out the notification to
your community, do so right now.
So we have more interesting listeners looking at this.
Okay, so let's go back to the different keywords that you guys mentioned.
Everyone had different ideas around real world assets, NFTs, gaming, etc.
So why don't we go on into the keywords that you chose and divide them between if it is
really technologically and adoption wise, they're ready?
Or is it a hype?
Or if it is not a hype, why you think it is not?
And there is more to it for it to be constructive in this particular bull cycle of 2024 to
So let's kind of dive into any of those keywords and key terms to see how real they are and
what is behind it right now.
Why don't we start with you, Nordic, and anyone else feel free to jump in if you agree,
disagree, or you have your thoughts on topics that are shared by others, feel free to jump
in as well.
Thanks for giving us the mic.
Yeah, I think one of the key trends that I mentioned was NFTs.
And I think when we were close to 2023 itself, there was a resurgence in terms of the
interest in NFTs and so many institutions as well as brands have ventured into NFT.
And I think as we go into 2024, I think there's going to be more of this Nike, Starbucks, all
of these brands have already shown so much interest into the space.
So I think yet again, we are at a bull market and the use cases have evolved in the bear
market itself when people are building.
And I think from a technological standpoint as well, I think we've now reached a stage
of maturity where new use cases are going to come up from here.
And I think the second thing that I feel is RWA's banks and bigger institutions like JP
Morgan have already ventured into RWA's and there are so many protocols coming up with
newer asset classes every day.
And I think just the end of this year, we are going to have a massive surge in terms of
the volumes also coming in, in terms of liquidity that is there for RWA's.
So that's two cents from me.
Yeah, I'll jump in there as well.
I think there's no doubt that bigger players are coming to the space.
I think what we mentioned earlier, the capacity to leverage smart contracts and go direct
to your community and own more of that value stack is massive, obviously, for giant
corporations who can jump into that and take a shot at it is big because big corporations
takes a lot of work to have the capacity to greenlight an initiative like that.
So that's massive.
But what is also extremely exciting is smaller startups or smaller businesses who can build
from the ground up on Web 3 Rails.
There's infrastructure now where you could really be a fully remote and fully decentralized
company, truly built on Web 3 Rails for crypto.
Pulsar.ai is one of those, but it's exciting to see that be like a next stepwise improvement
for the industry.
It really shows a big improvement in the next stage of growth for NFT specifically.
I wanted to jump in real quick on the NFT.
I actually just was doing some really quick research.
Assuming this is right, it says data fetch by cryptoslam.io is actually seeing that January
of twenty four actually saw a decrease of thirty six percent and I believe that's compared
to the previous month of December from December twenty twenty three.
So I'm actually kind of skeptical with NFTs.
I mean, we've we've really are much, much lower than we were in twenty one and twenty
two, I believe, and you know, Ethereum, I think, is lower than in terms of growth and
polygons growing more.
So I'm kind of skeptical.
I'm actually curious of everyone's opinion on the actual NFT volume now or in the last
like several months if you think it's going to pick up or stagnate or is it really just
depend on the content like the content is not there.
So yeah, like I would assume that.
There were projects that had people excited last month versus in your two months ago and
versus in terms of January, you know, we're not in a full bull run yet.
And but there's clear.
So so it's not like everyone's just jumping on like, oh, any game that releases an NFT or
any PFP, you know, in the last run, any PFP project, let's just jump on it.
I think that there is demand there for a good project with a good community.
There are plenty of games that are selling out their collections.
It's just more, you know, sporadic right now because it's just really based on if there's
a project that, you know, has has put the work in to deserve that outcome.
But wouldn't there still be?
I think that's a good majority of the space for sure.
Sorry, go ahead.
Are you saying what I was just going to say one quick comment is is it shouldn't just be
these kind of flash in the pan, you know, we release the collection, people buy it and
then nothing happens.
There still should be some ongoing trading volume.
Otherwise, it's kind of like an antique sale, you know.
Yeah, I mean, I guess there's there's another side to that, which could be like if projects
that are releasing like PFP projects were entirely flipping economies, right?
It's that that's all they are versus.
Well, I don't know.
I don't know.
They're just flipping economies.
Well, I think that's all right.
Of course, they're not right.
But I mean that it has more of that together versus like if a game releases an NFT
collection and the game is still building, there could be people who are much more likely to
have bought that as a longer term hold.
Yeah, I think I think Jordan, what you're keying on is community.
So like if, you know, if if any of the NFT project can do is just putting out an NFT, a PFP
there is and it's going to flip, then everybody would do you fine.
But when it's when they're when they have a very strong community based play and a very
strong marketing based play.
So gaming, that's just naturally built in.
So this is definitely a trend I think you're going to be seeing because you naturally already
have the gamer community.
You don't have to build a brand new community.
But if you look at something like pudgy penguins, which is just, you know, a brilliant
model in in going out marketing, creating a community, creating a game, going into bricks and
mortars, creating, you know, fidgetiles that are soul based.
I mean, you look at that model, I think all of that type of model will survive.
But, you know, will a PFP with a pump and dump marketing strategy, will we see another one that
goes like that?
That's the big question mark.
I do, you know, I think we'll meme coins are having a huge trend again for flipping.
You know, and sui blockchain probably is going to, you know, and and Solana are going to be
the leaders in that.
But then that I see more as, Jordan, what you refer to as just a flip game.
Yeah, I just wanted to add a point on to that.
I think we're looking really micro, actually, into the the technicalities of whether or not
NFTs are going to go bigger or not, if you look at a very macro, and as well tie in just web
two experiences like Rolex, a NFT is the same thing as a Rolex, right?
Just Rolex is just a physical version of the NFT.
Anybody in the world can go and create a Rolex.
Like if I want to go to China right now, I can spend a few thousand dollars create a role
and not Rolex, but like a same watch.
The key difference of the NFTs is, hey, can I create a Rolex brand?
Can I create the Richard Mille brand?
Right. Not many people can do that.
And the same thing with NFTs.
Like so the question of whether or not hype is going to come in or whatever.
Right. For NFTs is the same thing as remember, like during the first bull run, Rolexes were
being bought insanely like they couldn't get a Rolex anymore.
Right. Because the bull market was buying Rolexes.
And even Rolexes are a way of an indicator of the market.
If people start buying a shit ton of Rolexes, you know, we're in a bull market.
And then what happens afterwards, people are just selling off all the Rolexes.
So with NFT collections is not just the community is one.
But like, you know, why do I have a Rolex?
Why do I wear Richard Mille?
It's like I want to be part of that.
Whatever, you know, because humans are by nature want to be part of a of a tribe.
Right. Like I wear boarded because I want part of that tribe, which is like kind of a
leaders tribe.
So, yeah, I mean, you know, so once the market kind of gets back, it's liquidity and people
in that specific model.
But there's always going to be divergences.
Like there's going to be people who actually really care about the culture, although
they're a smaller subsection.
Right. There are the innovators are in the bell curve.
They're like the one percent like really buying something because they really love it.
Like, you know, when people are buying the what is it that that the goblins collection
like people just bought it for the means.
And then there's going to be some people who buy it for the utility like that specifically
the gaming community.
Like I'm buying a specific skin or X, Y and Z because I believe it will be it will be
used in the video game.
And that's something I want.
That's why I'm probably saying that I'd like to kind of throw another wrench in the
wheel here because I'm looking again at this.
And, you know, they had the Bitcoin BTC ordinals as uncategorized entities and actually
had a lot of buyers.
And I kind of wonder, you know, where I think, Margaret, did you say that basically like
Solano would be specialized in a specific model, maybe.
So it starts to kind of fragment more.
Do you think there's kind of this multi chain kind of future, like, for example, like BTC
can't handle the volume of anything, you know, growing polygon might.
But I'm just curious of everyone's thoughts on that, too.
No, no, I think I think that's definitely one of the again hype trends is interoperability
is going to be something.
But you also have to look at change.
So Solano, why have so many projects built off Solano?
Well, gas, gas fees, quite simple.
Right. And why.
And, you know, the NFT focus that they had and continue to have has been really a great
builder for it.
You know, it'll be interesting to see where Sue goes, I think, next.
So where will these chains go?
And then you have some interesting plays like let's talk about Ripple.
Ripple today announced that they're they're buying a New York trust.
They're coming into the United States.
So we have some major changes that are not going to deal with do NFTs at all.
But the fact that we're seeing the U.S. in, you know, the approval of the Bitcoin ETFs and what
we're seeing that happened there and the interest in institutionals pop in.
That's why I think, you know, well, NFTs and when I speak of NFTs, I'm not talking about gaming NFTs.
I think those are completely different with utilities and NFTs that have utilities built into them.
But just a plain old PFP NFT, my prediction is, I mean, they're not going to survive into the bull run.
I don't I think I think there's a lot of community that is around that still wants them to do to do that.
But if you look at the volume trading in them and who actually is in different communities, it's not a lot of
folks there.
So what's more interesting is is, you know, the reports that these ETFs have I think it's scooped up 10 times
more Bitcoin than what miners were able to produce.
I mean, that, to me, is a more interesting trend cycle to see.
Two quick things, right? I think one, it's don't fade meme coins or community NFTs.
Right. That's zooming out.
That brings people into the ecosystem as an ecosystem, as an industry.
We still have an attention problem relative to web to our counterparts.
So I think it's silly to maybe because some things are unpalatable or don't scratch the need, which the good
attention for the industry.
We need attention. And two, I think the great thing about Solana, particularly NFTs, meme coins, etc., is not
only are they taking a lot of that attention grabbing community elements from last cycle, but they've taken
that to bring more folks into the ecosystem.
And now they're actually building real world utility with whether it's bank building and utility across
ecosystem, but it's other meme coins that are going to be launched to grow community and attention and then
build in utility with partnerships.
That's a big stepwise improvement that captures the lessons learned from last cycle.
And the same is going to be applied to NFTs and the utility resulting.
Yeah, but is that is that the entryway for the next born in people?
Is that are people going to enter in on that or are they already in and already active?
So that's why I always say look at the volumes there.
Now, I think like when I look at Solana, like Jup is incredible.
I agree with you. There's there's there's a lot of a lot of great projects there.
But can we explain how just a meme coin is, you know, I think we have four dog meme coins.
Will they survive? And I'm not saying these are bad things and I'm not saying at all.
I actually love that community.
But but it's a question of what will we be talking about in September of this year as what is the
trend for this, you know, for this coming out of this winter?
I think, guys, one of the things that I can notice is that the more real something is, the less hype is
around it. That's been the nature of it around the blockchain space for the last many, many years.
For example, Polygon onboarded quite a lot of enterprises.
Algorand onboarded a lot of big enterprises.
They are boring.
Heather Foundation has been doing that as well.
Their whole board is made of all these traditional corporates and enterprises.
Right. But nobody cares about them.
Nobody talks about them.
Even their community is not buzzing about this specific part.
Probably they're buzzing about other tokens that's launching there, but not about this.
I think hype and a lot of substance do have a gap in how they are perceived because the
hype is built by community and community's retail and retailer are looking for speculative things
which are fast moving.
But some of these enterprise stuff don't move fast.
They don't really materialize into reality quick enough.
And even if they do, they don't really do it in a tangible way.
Like we saw with some of the big brands launching NFTs in the last bull run, they went nowhere.
It was launched and it disappeared.
But along with this, I want to bring in one interesting topic into the conversation.
If any of you are familiar with ERC 404, the standard that allows individuals with different
wallets to hold NFTs, not basically tokenizing an NFT or holding it in a smart contract and
creating tokens against it, but a single NFT can be held by different people.
There is a lot of hype around this, but this also has a lot of substance to it, in my opinion.
If anybody has thoughts, please unmute and jump in.
But in the meantime, there's a beautiful Twitter tweet that's pinned on the post based on some of
the recent discussions that's up and going.
If you'd like to share it with your community, they can also stay up to date with the
conversation that we're having right now.
Is that related, ERC 404?
Is that like kind of like what Gnosis Chain has?
Not really, no, because Gnosis Chain is, yeah, this is a pretty new standard.
So a solution where it's a great idea to be able to have something in one person's wallet and then
have another smart contract, be able to interact with it to kind of verify that it exists without
that person having to sign something at that moment, right?
That opens up a lot of tech possibilities.
Yeah, with the 404, it is still experimental, but what it's trying to do is to allow people to own
a single NFT from different wallets without the smart contract interfering there because smart
contract kind of becomes a bottleneck.
So they're trying to eliminate that.
Almost it's like tokens and NFTs are the hybrid.
And that's that's that's beautiful about it.
But yes, if anyone else has thoughts, feel free to chime in.
That's one thing that we're specifically working on over at Layer 1X is with digital identity and
user names is that they're NFTs and because you hold those NFTs in your L1X wallet, you're able
to basically go without signing anything, be able to connect with people, be able to give
permission to certain to view certain data points about you as well.
So that is something that we've built and we're expanding that out into our ecosystem.
That's perfect.
Why don't we take a shift away from NFTs to also jump in on other hot trends that we discussed, for
example, real world assets that came up quite a bit in different combinations here.
So what are your thoughts on that?
How much of that is real?
How much of that is hype?
How much traction is happening?
Because I mean, I'm a big believer of RWAs personally, and I see a lot of infrastructure
platforms coming out around it.
Many of them not tokenized purely as a business, SaaS or BAS as you can call it.
I'm curious to hear what you guys think about because when someone asks me, okay, can you
show me examples of a few real world asset projects where they're tokenizing something?
Of course, it's not easy.
It's not like you could just go in and throw them a few links.
It's hard because a lot of them are slow due to regulations.
They're speaking about it, but they're not necessarily live other than, for example, gold
or a few potentially promising real estate based tokenization projects.
But it's not like they're out there running and people are buying them in a marketplace.
It's not abundant.
So what are your thoughts on that?
It's actually quite interesting that I definitely noticed this year are a big spy car in appearance
of projects related to RWAs and even some more interesting and unusual applications
because we've been talking about real estate for quite a while.
There are so many companies are tokenizing real estate and the legal framework was improving
in that regard, but there is way more assets that can be tokenized.
And this year I started seeing projects that are tokenizing, for example, even ammunition.
There is like Amacrypt.
They are working on ammunition market.
I see projects working on other applications, tapping into institutional great assets.
We've been seeing a lot of projects working in the gold market.
So definitely see a huge increase.
And even with upcoming East Denver conference, usually it's not covering real world assets
I have been seeing at least like 30 percent of applications that are somehow related
or trying to tap into real world assets.
Definitely a good sign.
Of course, it's been a conversation since early 2017-18 and it was quite surprising
that there was not that much improvement and I would say advancement in that space.
But it's definitely changing this year and tapping into like AWS and like traditional
players in the market.
There is a lot of alternatives existing.
The problem is our community is talking about decentralization, is talking about using technology.
But when it comes to actually utilizing it for your startup, a lot of projects are still hesitant.
There is less information.
Startups are quite busy.
They are not really used.
They don't really want to spend additional time on exploring a new, even new UX, new platform.
And there are a lot of alternatives, even for decentralized storage.
I can name like Oort, obviously like everyone knows IPFS.
And there is alternatives there in our industry that can enable our bigger decentralization.
But it's all about our, I would say our startups and our projects to start actually using these
applications that what will change that option as well.
Yeah, I think you need to revert the question, right?
The only reason there is real world assets or deep end or any of that is because of the progress of NFTs and
tokens, right?
We need to focus on that as the mechanism that needs to be adopted such that you can move those verticals forward.
Well, remember, the first world real world assets were stablecoins.
USDT is a real world asset.
So this is a concept that we have seen for a long time and every cycle you see a trend towards it.
Last year we saw this great hype about RWA.
You couldn't go to a concert without everybody talking about RWAs, RWAs.
But now we're seeing a lot of statistics coming out that the market is shrinking.
And that is because right now RWAs are where crypto investors go.
They're not where the mom and pop investors go, right?
So crypto investors look at them and crypto investors, they're going to go and they're going to hunt for riskier bets
right now as we see a bull market because they're going to have bigger returns there.
In the long term, moving towards a whole economy that tokenizes real world assets makes sense.
We're going to see bonds.
I mean, Ando Finance, I think they've announced that they're going to integrate into Sui now, for example.
But that's a place out of Mexico.
There's a project that is licensed there and offers bonds.
Uranium, I think it's called Uranium X.
You'll see all those.
But in terms of the returns that you get from them, they're never going to be as wildly swinging as what we see in other crypto bets.
So I think as we go into a bull market phase, we'll see real world asset market take a backseat again,
except for I think I do know that in traditional finance and that that continues to be an infrastructure focused.
And eventually in, you know, I don't know how long, let's say five, ten years, we'll move to a completely tokenized securities market, for example.
You know, we move from paper to electronic entry.
We'll move to tokenized at some point.
But this is going to be a focus of institutional more than it will be the crypto native investor.
Yeah, just to jump on that point, I completely agree.
I mean, I've talked to investors and, you know, investing in both web two world and web three world,
you'll see actually the web three investors like, oh, no, actually, even if it's like a 20, 30 percent gain for like six months.
I'd rather put my money in crypto and wish for like, you know, 10 X. Right.
So I think that once we and this is already kind of happening now, whereas you're actually put like putting stocks on chain.
Right. And then soon the market will be so much more favorable for actual real company like web two companies to want to actually put their tokens on chain.
And that is then going to open up a whole new subsection of market.
Whereas like all of us here, I mean, I made people invest into REITs and all that crap.
Right. Like real estate. But obviously the general market, there's going to be there's a lot of people who invest into REITs or real estate markets.
Right. So I think once they get their hands dipped into the tokenized stocks, right, they're then going to slowly dip their hands into the tokenized real estate assets.
But currently just us as investors who came in like through a meme coin or through X, Y and Z.
We just been programmed from the 10 X's and stuff. So like that stuff is boring.
You know what I mean? Like I don't want to put my money into real estate when I can be buying some, you know, smog shit coin that's that's like trending on salon or something like that.
Being part of a cool community. Like, you know, I mean, like real estate is kind of like for old people.
That's why they say slow money to grow to, you know, becoming wealthy.
Yeah. The Red Candle Watcher is not going to buy an RWA in real estate.
Yeah. So once once we have the on-chain stocks and then we have like a new platform or whether it's Coinbase or Binance that does this, I don't know who.
And then the traditional investor comes into the platform. Oh, this is cool. I've never been able to do this before.
And then they have their investments and some REITs thing. And then they just slowly transition into, you know, the RWA type REITs investments.
I think that that also like this brings the conversation full circle into what makes the price go up of a token.
Right. Real world assets are like a nice hike thing right now.
But like your point, Margaret, about the first RWAs were stablecoins.
It's the best possible example for just like real world asset doesn't make the price go up.
You know, crypto is this very, very speculative thing.
And a lot of times if you're attaching it to a real world thing, you're actually clamping down on the multipliability of it.
You're making it more physical. You're making it behave more like the traditional asset.
And that goes all the way back to what like what's going on with Ethereum. Right.
What like what makes the price go up? You have all of these chains that are EVM compatible.
Like you could consider all of these competitors that are taking energy that would have been invested into Ethereum and are instead directing it towards them as a success of Ethereum's technology.
Right. But that doesn't mean that the price of Ethereum goes up.
And so it's just it's very interesting when something becomes more of a platform.
And you can think of it more like, you know, if there was a project you were excited about a few years ago and you bought the governance token for it.
You're like, oh, the project's super bullish going to get the governance token.
It's like, why isn't the governance token moving? Right.
You know, when we talk about projects with huge someone had mentioned like huge institutional onboarding, right.
If JP Morgan, they just made a huge partnership for an avalanche subnet.
Right. And they're going to build their entire banking system or something on top of an avalanche subnet.
Does that make Avax go up? I don't I don't know. Right.
It's great for the company and the technology. But price only goes up if a bunch of people are buying the token.
Or if there is a mechanic in the token itself, which causes increase, which means increased volume causes the supply to decrease a lot or the price to go up for some other mechanic,
which tends to not be the kind of mechanic that you put into a token that's meant to be used a lot because it's detrimental to that kind of efficiency.
So again, you know, it's just like there's specific conditions that make price go up.
And if they're not aligned with what the project would define a success, which I think we're seeing with Ethereum, then I think that's kind of part of the explanation.
Just to touch up your point there and as well with like, you know, Mr. Key, is that when you do tie something more tangible,
our caveman brains just go like, oh, now I can I can actually actualize the price that that this could actually become versus why meme coins are successful, which is like, oh, wait, I actually don't know where this is going to go.
And so so then actually the meme claims are not a product in above itself. It's actually a product of hope, right? They're selling hope.
And then just the way our brains work in terms of like, OK, if I'm thinking this way, I think everybody else is thinking this way.
So like they're selling a dream of financial freedom, right, being part of a group.
And then you're basically now buying into like, hey, if I just say the same thing is why we buy lottery tickets.
Like, I might not win it, but like, hey, you know what, there's a chance just like going just like Shiba token, just like, I don't know, you know, the meme frog one.
I could be that person that just put in a thousand bucks and now I'm like, you know, I have a five hundred thousand dollars and I can solve a lot of my life problems.
So sometimes that's kind of what you're selling and people will move mountains for hope, right?
Because we don't, you know, that just way humans are like we love to hope.
That's what kind of continues us through our daily lives. And then tying that back into what something I mean, like crypto, if I was saying was that, well, hope is actually a great way of getting people on board it on to a specific chain.
Like slanted right now, like I'm seeing slog token, which is like a token that's coming up, really cool token or the blank.
And then now you're like, you're actually interested.
Actually, let me just try to throw a few dollars into this chain, whereas normally I would never put five dollars on Swana.
And then slowly enough, you have one hundred thousand or maybe fifty thousand people on Solana.
And then just by nature, the product is actually great.
You use the product, you love the product, you talk about the product, which is why you were hearing it today.
And thus, then the listeners compounding effect now draws in.
Right. That's the key factor.
It's like, you know, we're actually now drawing into a word of mouth, the next wave of people.
And this will continue and continue and continue until we reach like early majority.
But that's a very, very good perspective on that.
Yeah, I guess there's always this balance between what is real and what is hope, as you said, with the meme coins.
And there is always a balance between what is interesting for a specific interest group, like Margaret said,
the crypto audience would definitely look for those with the higher returns because that's the nature of the early adopters in the space.
We're all early adopters and we do want that high returns.
And that's why we're here. But the good part of the world likes something stable.
And the question really is if the real world assets and some of these boring businesses can drive that mass adoption of that large group of people
who might not look for even one X or two X, but they might look for something tangible real that they're not going to lose on.
And if that increases the volume or even the blockchains total value, I think that is exciting because, like you probably said,
the governance token goes up because of speculative value, not because there is an inherent tokenomics that creates a demand.
And it's not a balance of demand and supply. It's a balance of people's excitement and anticipation,
buying the news and excitement of what might come before or in the next upcoming cycle.
So those are definitely quite quite a few interesting perspectives and I believe there is enough market for both of these corners to exist for the high speculative,
high driven environment and the boring traditional businesses where the real volume and adoption will be in the upcoming years to come.
And I personally believe this is the last of the bull cycles, the way we have seen it over the years.
I've personally been in the blockchain space for 10 years. I've seen so many cycles, but I think the future cycles are not going to be as exciting as the previous cycles have been.
And this probably is the last of those opportunities that we have. And moving forward, it's going to get more real, more tangible and more boring as well.
But I guess that's how things mature and that's that's good for the industry as a whole. And that's good for every one of us here.
Guys, as we have a few more minutes left towards the closure, I want to address on the other side of the story.
What do you believe is not having the hype, but it deserves some attention.
What is not seen and heard about and spoken about loudly, but that is required, that is important and that should deserve some light to it.
What are the keywords that comes to your mind on this?
Well, I mean, I don't hear a lot about account abstraction often.
I mean, it's being pushed a lot by Vitalik and stuff like this.
But even if you look at the main account abstraction group, which is called, I think four, six, six, I mean four, two, three, seven mafia account abstraction is going to be one of the things that unlock blockchains potential.
Right. Because kind of traction breaks the UI UX experiences of the protocols.
So I think that is something that needs to be, you know, I mean, I know it's in it's in like, you know, a lot of these, you know, top 20 things are trending.
But account abstraction, I think is going to be what enables RWA or enables everything.
All the user experiences that we have are terrible right now is solved to account abstraction.
So that has to be one of the main driving forces for all of those. Yeah.
I think that's a very good point.
Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead, Jordan.
I agree. That was a very good point.
I think that another one and people do talk about this, but is interoperability and blockchain tech that powers that.
I think we're seeing more and more and more different kinds of blockchains now.
It's not just parallel chains competing to, you know, take a theory and lunch or something.
There's an increasing number of chains that are being built for a specific use case.
And I think we're learning as an industry that I mean, I think we're trending towards a world where there are an incredible number of variations on blockchains that are incredibly use case specific and being used really, really efficiently to do one thing very well.
And I'm really interested to see where do we get to, you know, HTTP, like where do we get to these standards?
You could say EVM where all of these different chains can build and be their specific thing, but they still plug in in this unified way.
And if you want to talk about like a tech use case that could really just, you know, succeed where the price could go up.
You could say it lets you any project that is working on interoperability, that's working on being those rails that all these increasing number of blockchains can plug into to work together.
That's how you bet on the industry, right?
It's like there was this great moment in this movie about the US auto industry in the 70s, where I forgot to name in the movie, but Matt Damon's character.
He was saying he builds the roads like he's part of the regulatory body that manages the roads and that that lets him profit from the entire auto industry growing.
And I think that that is, you know, it's a phenomenal point from that era that it doesn't matter which car brand goes up and down, there will be more cars and so the roads will, you know, earn money.
And I think anyone building in interoperability, it's massive potential for, you know, owning the success of the whole industry, regardless of the individual player.
I would jump off that and just say it's not just interoperability. It's always at this stage of technology, evolutions, the infrastructure players that are going to be the most important.
So interoperability is one of them, but look at the cost of just any blockchain for AWS.
You know, we got to solve that problem. Indexing, there are a lot of things where we have to build the entire roadway.
I remember, I'm a little long in the tooth, so I remember seeing an early deck for Amazon and at the, you know, it was all about the delivery of books right to your doorstep.
People can do it online. And at the last slide on the deck, there was the breadcrumbs to what they were really about, which was about global fulfillment infrastructure for the internet, right?
And that is what Amazon is. Their infrastructure play is what revolutionized e-commerce and made e-commerce what it is.
So we will, I think what we need in the next year or two to see is not just the interoperability, but all of those aspects that will take blockchain technology.
And in addition, AI data analytics and coming quantum computing, which will be all part of this.
But take that, look at it, think about the infrastructure that is needed to support, bringing it from elementary school now into middle school, into high school.
That's a good perspective there.
Okay, so right now, one of the things that I keep thinking about is like Julian was mentioning about account abstraction and all of these different technologies with the challenges that we are passing.
The challenges need to be crossed. And that's where these solutions came about.
But I think the end goal and the biggest attention should be diverted towards the adoption itself. Why and how can we get these audience from the rest of the world using what we have here?
Because if that goal is met and if that direction is tried for, then there is an obvious focus that goes towards simplicity and things like account abstraction and all of this will pick up as a side effect to it.
But I believe that focus has kind of been abandoned a lot even by the chains. I have had a lot of conversation even with many head of BDs of many top layover chains.
They kind of resist towards that direction because it's hard. But I guess that's where there is difficulty. That's where the biggest benefit also lies.
And I think we definitely should be moving more towards bringing that audience and bringing those businesses to use blockchain for what it truly is.
I think that's that's one thing that always made me sad with the last bullet run that people even corporates use the NFTs just for the fun of it and not for what it can help them with supply chain and carrying the experiences to all the users out there and saying the story of the brand.
It can do so much more than just being a speculative asset. So I'm super excited to see where all of those things can lead. Guys, do you have any closing statement from many of you here?
Just to play off of what Margaret was talking about, the infrastructure layer. With Amazon, it wasn't just the infrastructure for Amazon that kind of redefined the whole industry.
It was Bezos' mission of the company. He took the inspiration actually from Sony where Sony said, we don't want to make Sony known for quality.
It was during a time where Japan was very unknown for quality. And then they said, you know what, we want to make a mission bigger than ourselves, which is we want to make Japan known for quality.
And thus, they then went out to create the most consumer centric company in the world, which then led other companies to lead.
We want to be as great user experience as Amazon because there's going to be lots of players in the space, so we don't care about that. I mean, our job is to make sure that the users experience is amazing, which is what they've done.
So I think that creating the next company that enables this amazing user experience, that's exactly what Amazon did, or same with Apple, we wanted to create amazing user experiences for the customers.
I don't want to give a shit about the technology, actually. So I understand that the infrastructure layer is very important, which is actually why Web3 will move light speeds faster.
That's why for with MAsma, we call our application an ultra app, not a super app. In Web2, infrastructure takes a long time to build, because data and smart contracts are not available, like transparent.
In Web3, you can literally grab everything like a build a blocks bear, right? And they build an ultra app literally within months.
So I think now unlocking that next application that's just like, well, it's so beautifully designed for people, which is why I'm coming back to the account extraction.
It is damn hard. We had to rebuild our infrastructure like three times with the actual platform because you had to think completely different out of the box.
With MAsma's application, it doesn't even look like any Web2, Web3 app. And that's where the account extraction is actually so cool.
If you throw it just regularly in the Web3 app, it actually just it does a lot of cool stuff. Gatsby, abstractions, like, seamless keys, you don't have to sign anything anymore, all this cool stuff.
But then if you open up your imagination, it allows you to create something really beautiful for customers. And I think that's where the focus should be, not on the technology.
That's a beautiful summary out there. Thank you, everyone, for joining in here. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts.
This was super vibrant, super exciting session, and it was hot as well.
We have sessions like this every week at the same time with different interesting topics. Feel free to drop in, to listen, to participate in the future Twitter spaces as well.
Thank you all speakers for being here, for all your amazing, interesting perspectives. All the listeners hope you had a great time as well.
Super excited. See you guys next week, same time here. And until then, have a great time and enjoy the markets.
Thanks, Kanaka.