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Web3 Global Talks 🎙️ Ep.351 - Powered by Hive
Recorded: April 4, 2025 Duration: 1:06:10Space Recording
Short Summary
In the latest episode of Web3 Global Talks, industry leaders discuss the launch of innovative projects like Redix and PI Protocol, emphasizing the importance of building during bear markets and focusing on user experience to drive growth in the crypto space.
Full Transcription
It's Friday then, it's Saturday Sunday with the lights up there, the lights up there,
the lights up there, the lights up there, the lights up there, running, this is why it's a game I thought the hands of time could change me
And I'd be over this by now, yeah
It's been too long since we got graved
I'm lucky it's spinning out
I'm down, down, down, so far it comes
I'm gonna, I'm gonna do too much
You know I'm all in my back, there's clutch.
Burn it, burn it, burn it, every Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and let's get on the way.
Yeah.
It's Friday, it's Friday, it's Sunday, Sunday, what?
It's Friday, it's Friday, it's Sunday, Sunday, what?
It's Friday, it's Sunday, Sunday, what?
It's Friday, it's Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, Friday, I'm on the way, and I'm running all the way. When they call me Frank. Oh We want the wind. It's Friday day.
It's Friday, Sunday, what?
It's Friday day.
It's Friday, Sunday, what?
It's Friday day.
It's Friday, Sunday, what?
It's Friday day.
It's Friday, Sunday, what?
It's Friday, Sunday, what?
It's Friday, Sunday, what?
It's Friday, Sunday, what?
It's Friday, Sunday, what? It's Friday, Sunday, what? It's Friday, Sunday, what? и и
и It's Friday then.
It's Saturday, Sunday what?
It is Friday, guys.
Hope you guys are doing well.
Welcome to Web3 Global Talks, episode 351, powered by Hive.
Yeah, guys, just going to give it a couple more minutes to make sure that I can get everybody up here.
X is being a little slow adding people here.
So I'm going to run another song back real quick, and then we will go ahead and get started.
In the meantime, if you guys could like, comment, and retweet out the space, we would definitely appreciate it.
But we'll be back in just a second I
I Oh и и
и а all right guys i think we can go ahead and get started here uh ajish uh from polka decks uh
i'm sending you an invite don't know if you're seeing it, but uh, please come up here when you can
Other than that, I think we go ahead and start with the round of intros guys
If you haven't been here about a minute apiece tell people who you are and who you're representing
Then we'll jump into some questions. So I'm gonna start from top to bottom for these so Dan you're up man
Hi guys, it's been a while since I've been on one of your spaces.
So it's good to be back.
I had a busy life recently.
So I'm Dan, I'm the founder of Redix,
which is a layer one protocol,
focusing on the challenges of user experience,
DevX and scalability.
We've been around for a long time. I myself entered crypto around 2012.
And then around 2014-2015, started the Radix project with what was initially an intention to
develop a protocol that could scale to billions. And that's been appended to a little bit
with user experience, which is still quite terrible,
and developer experience,
improving those things over the years too.
So please do check out our stack.
We're commonly referred to as Hotel California.
The people that use our UX, once they have,
they don't want to leave and use anything else.
So have a go, let me know if you have any suggestions
or if you like it or not.
Yeah, thanks for having me here.
Thanks for being here, man.
All right, let's go with Amalgam.
Hey, I'm Will, founder of Amalgam. And for those of you that are not familiar, Amalgam
is a combination of a DEX and a lending protocol. And the main reasons that we do that is one,
we very carefully use the DEX as the value of the assets for lending to enable permissionless lending markets on any asset.
And then in addition to that, we are the most capital efficient DEX because we allow people,
allow the assets in the invariant curve that aren't used to be lent out so market market market market makers earn swap fees and lending fees at the
same time we've seen like a 20 to 60 increase depending on the assets in efficiency versus
other dexes because of that um fact and yeah the combination of these two things just unlocks a ton of things so you know we kind of think of the uh our tam as
all of d5 less maybe stable coins so it's a really powerful uh combination that that
unlocks a ton of utility um so nice thank you man all right uh pi protocol Nice. Thank you, man. All right. PI Protocol.
Hi, everyone. I'm Sudeep, the CEO at PI Protocol.
So PI Protocol is a new stablecoin protocol
that enables users to retain utility as well as the yield
by being able to mint stable coins with a choice of
their on-chain collateral such as t-bills, money markets, private credit. So we are in our beta
phase right now and we should be coming up with a lot of exciting updates on the minting as well as
on the other aspects around our native governance token you know within the next quarter so yeah
thank you so much for being a part of this and really excited yeah thanks for being here man
all right Pokedex.
Ajish, can you hear me, man?
Okay, maybe having some X issues.
Welcome back to you, man.
Aperture.
Okay, hi everyone. I'm Rose, I'm the developer advocate at Aperture Finance.
Aperture is an intent-based DeFi infrastructure project,
one of the most developed projects in the AI and intent space today.
We're building smart liquidity tools that help both individual users and Web3
projects succeed in DeFi. For individual users, we offer strategy-driven LP tools empowered by
intent-based automation. With our tools, you can just simply state what you want and it will automatically find and execute the best strategy for you.
So no need for you to worry about technical details.
For protocols, we provide market making as a service.
That means that we help projects manage and grow their liquidity without them needing
an in-house trading desk or building their own complex
trading systems.
Our tools have been awarded the number one place by the Uniswap Foundation last year,
and we are proud to be one of the few teams delivering real working AI-powered DeFi infrastructure
today.
So super excited to be here to join the conversation.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. All right. Let's try Pokedex one more time. Ajish, can you hear me, man?
Hey, can you hear me now? Yeah, you're good. All right. Okay. I'm sorry about that. There was something to do with the mic. This is Ajij. I am the CEO of Pokedex.
I'm the new CEO. There was a previous CEO who resigned around mid last year.
So I'm pretty new here.
However, I've been an investor with Pokedex for a while now.
So, yeah, we started off in 2021 our core problem statement was about the custody
of tokens when people trade so even now most of the exchanges out there keep custody of
the tokens that are purchased by people and um polkadex tries to address this concern by
the tokens that are purchased by people and
making the the exchange non-custodial which means that the exchange never holds anybody's tokens
it only matches orders and uh takes tokens from every user's wallets and get it exchanged and put them back into their own wallets.
Yeah, so to build this, we had to make it a very decentralized platform. So we built our own solar chain out of substrate uh forking substrate and uh the chain is out there and it's uh it's got
a very strong community and uh the order book is going to be launched for public by in a few
months like by june or so that's it yeah thanks man okay uh before we get started with the questions do you want to remind
you guys one more time to like comment and retweet out the space it definitely helps us out uh other
than that uh i think we'll go ahead and start off this space talking about uh liquidity in defy a
little bit here so uh liquidity in defy is often what I would call, and I guess anybody else would
call, it's often mercenary, right? Capital moves kind of to the highest returns instantaneously.
Can protocols create ways to kind of encourage sticky liquidity that remains during bear markets
and things of that nature so basically how can we
better handle this and for this question I will go off of a hand raise mechanism
so the heart all the way at the bottom and then a hand raise to the right if
you're unfamiliar of how to do it so that's the way that I'll pick the order
here and if I don't see that then of course I will
start to pick people at random a little bit
so I'll give you guys a couple seconds here
and looks like one of you is disconnecting and coming back up here
so we'll see if we can fix that
wouldn't be X without having some random issues on a Friday
so let me approve that request real
quick guys okay all right well i'm not seeing any hands doesn't mean there aren't any it just means
x could be oh dan i do see you okay you're good man yeah i was waiting to see if anybody else
wanted to take it first but then nobody did and you were going to pick someone.
So I thought, okay, I'll jump in here.
Yeah, I mean, liquidity and defy is an interesting beast itself, right?
Because yeah, it does gravitate towards where not only just the best rewards are and the
best incentives, but I think also critically where the least friction to entry is, right?
So if you have a protocol where, such as ourselves, where friction to entry is maybe a bit higher than it is on, say, Ethereum or Solana, etc.,
even though some of the opportunities may be generally better,
opportunities may be generally better, it can still be quite difficult to capture
users to come and take advantage of that purely because the friction is a little bit higher and
maybe they need a new wallet or some new tools. Whereas in the case of say Ethereum, you know,
everybody's got MetaMask, everybody's got everything they need. So the friction to entry and the ability to enter quickly also kind of
adds, you know, it bolsters the incentive, right? So I think if you're in, you know,
if you have liquidity in Ethereum, then obviously on, you know, bear, bear trends, some of that liquidity is going to
exit, some of it's going to get flipped into other assets or maybe hedged into USD stable assets and
other things like that. And I think that's the tricky part when it becomes a bearish cycle is
what is the incentive at that point, right? Like in a bear market, the incentive is, is what is the incentive at that point right like in a bear market the incentive
is is is quite natural you know things are moving value of assets is going up potentially new capital
is entering very quickly and it's looking for a home that further then just feeds that cycle of
ap wise increase uh people you know make money earn rewards but in a bear cycle
that natural incentive isn't there so how do you preserve that momentum how do you preserve that
incentive um i think one of the ways that you potentially have to do that is you know you look
for alternative methods um which may not particularly be yield as such,
but things like incentivization campaigns and stuff like that can work quite well in bear markets.
If you can attract, you know, new novel dApps, that's another good way of keeping that liquidity
locked into that platform. So, so you know people always say that
bear markets are are the builders cycle and i think that's very true but the issue for builders
of course is that maybe they're a bit apprehensive to launch novel products in a bear cycle but
actually i would say a bear cycle is probably your your your best chance of grabbing mind share very quickly if you have a novel product
because there's much less noise, right? Bear markets are fairly quiet, you know, other than
the complaints of the fact it's a bear market, of course, you know, but in terms of new products
and the cycle and where the gains are and all these things um you can rise above the noise quite i don't
want to say easy but easier in a bear market so i think developers should really take a
slightly different mindset in terms of you know think more a bit more business um in a business
sense of the market is quiet we have this great product now is actually potentially really good
for us to enter um and large mind share, which then
obviously by the time the bull cycle comes around, you've already got an established user base,
your product has matured, you've been able to iron out any initial issues, and you'll be known when
the next bull cycle comes around, and you will then just be the effect of either leading the
bull cycle, or you will rise with all of the
boats. And it's kind of a win-win. So I think with bear cycles, developers have to be a little bit
more, you know, think forward. I think that the investors and traders also need to, you know,
have to think a bit more clearly about what their strategy is where they where they're going to deploy this capital um bear markets as well are a good
opportunity to try out some other ecosystems right um and see what's what's present on these
other platforms where maybe the friction is a little bit higher um sometimes you can you can
find you know a golden goose um in those places that other people aren't looking for.
So, yeah, just a little bit of a brain dump on, I guess, the entire question and things that I've
thought to myself over, you know, the numerous bare cycles that I've been present in.
Yeah, no, good answer, Dan. You know, absolutely. And I think that, you know know one thing I didn't even think of was what
you said about you know UI and UX kind of playing a role in things maybe it is that the people who
make it a little bit easier just tend to get more people in but it may not even necessarily be the
best protocol right so I actually think it's a great point that investors should be taking bear
markets as a time to kind of look for new things in the market that
have a lot of potential. And plus, I mean, just to be completely frank, the entire industry for
people who are investing could use a little bit more patience as well and learning, educating
themselves. But, you know, that's more of a human component, I suppose. But thanks, Dan.
All right, I saw PI Protocol first and then Pokedex.
Well, I think this is a very interesting, just to add on to what Dan mentioned.
I think also what happens in bull markets is there is definitely a lot of emphasis on cornering TVL.
Effectively, there are marketing budgets.
With that, there are a lot of synthetic factors that get added on to yields in native tokens,
which kind of look like a large number.
Also obviously to attract as much attention and volumes and as you start
seeing you know the market trends shifting you see you know a lot of cuts there so on one hand
as in just kind of adding on to the earlier point is you see wherever the larger protocols have liquidity concentrated, that's where you'll see lower volatility in terms of the actual yields.
And they kind of remain pretty much sticky around similar numbers,
but the ones which actually are on the long tail,
that's where you'll see both, I think, volumes and yields dropping. So I think from a user standpoint, diversification in either
market, bull market or bear market is obviously the key. And from PI Protocol's perspective,
what we're trying to do is we're trying to increase the ability to actually select different
kinds of on-chain collateral that is earning yield to be able to mint their own stable
coins to get as much liquidity as they need for utility and then continue to hold on their
positions in the on-tailed opportunities that they have.
So just wanted to kind of add that.
Yeah. Can you, I'm just curious, can you go a little deeper into what do you mean by minting their own stable coins?
I mean, minting. So what I meant is effectively the approach that PyProtocol has is actually using on-chain collateral to mint the stablecoin,
that is USP.
This is kind of stripping the yield from the principle.
The stablecoin is effectively USP and then you have the yield which is retained in the
form of another token, which is USI. So what that enables is users can actually
utilize stablecoin, which is USP,
and then continue to hold on their selected on-chain
collateral in terms of USI.
Oh, nice.
Thank you, man.
All right.
Ajish Polkadex. Sure. Yeah. Pretty much repeat whatever our previous speaker spoke.
Yeah. It needs to definitely go beyond the APIs.
You know, think about real utility for liquidity providers like governance rights,
liquidity providers like uh governance rights uh fee sharing that's that can be sustainable
and you know access to exclusive uh features uh uh that could i mean that can prevent them
from jumping ship uh every time there's a higher api provided by someone else um
their API provider by someone else.
You can build deeper relationships
with the liquidity providers,
designing incentive structures
that reward long-term commitment,
tiered rewards,
our LPs can stay longer,
get a bigger share of the fees
or more governance power etc and then as
as the previous speaker said the the user experience definitely matters in my opinion
creating win-win to get fair rewards and the protocol gets reliable liquidity
reliable liquidity and community is also important it's a protocol best defense
against a mercenary capital if liquidity providers feel that they are part of
something bigger like a bigger cause they are more likely to stick around that
means more active governance clear clear communication, shared region, et cetera.
If a protocol is just a yield form,
liquidity will leave when yields drop.
But if it's like a vibrant ecosystem
with a strong sense of ownership, that can stick around.
And there are several examples we can see, right,
in the space itself.
Yeah, that's what I, there's two things that I wanted to add.
Yeah, man, and great point as well.
I mean, you know, I think that you and Dan
kind of mentioned that you are in the UX.
I think that's definitely becoming more important
as more quote like normal people come in here right i mean
we'll put up with a lot uh as people in the space you know as far as like maybe not the best ui and
ux uh if we can get the best uh yield or whatever else but a lot of people are going to want uh as
easy as possible uh and it makes a lot of sense as well what you mentioned you know the revenue share model I think going forward
makes a lot more sense exclusives that are gated as well
you know yeah just like exactly what you said man making people feel like
they're actually a part of something and and even giving them
a little bit more usability for things so yeah absolutely
let me see.
Sorry, guys, my panel's being a little weird.
Rose, Aperture.
Yes, thank you for the sharing
from the previous speakers.
I think they have provided
these very rich insights.
I think this is a very interesting
questions uh and yes if we if we rely only on high apy and the passive farming and yes
liquidity will always be short term and machinery this is a good word, especially in the bear markets. And why would be that problem?
There can be several key reasons from my understanding.
The first thing is that if I imagine I'm a user of a protocol,
when I interact with many protocols today,
I may feel I'm entirely like a passive participant.
I have no control over my own returns.
Everything depends on the product design
and the incentive mechanisms of the platform.
So whatever the API, the protocol offers,
I may just take it.
So in bear markets, when everything's going down, the revenue drop,
and the APY naturally declines, I would, of course, I will move somewhere else to another pool.
Well, if we go from a builder's perspective, I think as our project will always ask,
like, what can we really offer to our users to help them to stay with us through market cycles?
So what kind of unique value we can create?
So this will eventually down to the product and incentive mechanism design.
So if we want to shift to a more long-term engagement with our users, we need to give
users more agency and control over their own liquidity management.
We need to ship them from the initial passive recipients of returns to active owners of
their own strategies.
They may take control of their own liquidity management tools and strategies.
So as a user, if they use something that they feel they can help them to achieve their liquidity management goal,
they are much less likely to live just because the rewards of the platform goes down to that end the rewards are just like
can be only a byproduct not the product itself so of course if we can also achieve this while
integrating the seamless experience so it feels as natural as as intuitive as using the Web2 product,
then over time it becomes a habit.
We're able to cultivate and generate users' stickiness.
So my point is that how we can increase the probability of building sticky liquidity
is not just by adding incentives, but we need to change the foundations.
So we have to think through what do we really reward here?
Do we reward the liquidity itself or users' long-term behaviors?
So I think we need to design some new incentive mechanisms to engage with long-term behaviors rather than liquidity.
So we also need to build something concrete to solve users' real problems, their issues, not just concepts and speculation.
I think they will be the fundamentals to create sticky liquidity. Thank you.
Yeah, thank you, Rose.
Really great points as well.
You know, it's kind of interesting how so many of our questions kind of end up going back to improving the user experience.
I think that we have started to see in the space, no matter what space I'm doing for the week, it always comes up in some form or fashion.
I think we're finally starting to realize that our user experience is a little bit lacking,
regardless of what anybody is doing.
So, yeah, good point.
Let's go with the Malibu.
Yeah, this has been interesting.
I'm kind of coming from the perspective we're looking to launch in May, April, end of April, sometime in May, kind of depending on how quick we can get some of these last things done.
And with that in mind, I've been doing a lot of pitching of LPs, you know, of incentives and trying to, you know, create hype.
incentives and trying to create hype. And the one thing I heard recently talking to somebody that I
was pitching is like, in a bear market, the only thing to make money off of is new project incentives.
Like the whole economy that we've created in this world, when the market is a bull market,
there's not really great opportunities to make money and so
like new projects become like sort of the lifeblood of the you know the bear cycle and so I think that
is just kind of what it is at the end of the day everyone here is just like here to make money
and I think a lot of the stuff that we do, sometimes we're trying to like, be clever and cute. But in general, it's like we're trying to rebuild finance, right? Like we're trying to rebuild finance without the banks. Like, these are the things that I try to focus on, because otherwise, like all the buzzwords and stuff kind of drowned out. Like, for me, the real, the real thing that resonates with users is value proposition.
Like, what's your purpose?
What's your mission?
And for me, the thing that drew me to Web3 and why I started getting involved in Bitcoin
pretty early on was I like the idea of being able to access my finances without an intermediary.
Right.
And so now we're just rebuilding all of finance with that in mind.
And so, I don't know, there's been some great innovations,
but at the end of the day,
we're just trying to give people a better way to make money without needing
to have that value siphoned off by somebody else.
And I think that's like the key thing that I focus on.
The other thing I was thinking about is like, there's been a lot of projects that actually
launched in bear markets that were extremely successful. One specifically is like Athena,
you know, when by tokenizing the basis trade, they were basically able to,
you know, unlock this huge value that probably was not accessible to the average trade, they were basically able to unlock this huge value that probably was not
accessible to the average user because it was hidden behind the complexity of options and all
futures trading that wasn't really understood. But they just really took this valuable thing
and they made it accessible to a really large audience
without intermediaries. Right. And so it's like, once again,
just going back to like, for me,
this all is about focusing on like what the fuck are we trying to do here?
Like, is it to trade like shit coins or it's like rebuild finance in a way that like is value, like a more valuable experience and higher
autonomy and liberty for people's rights to their assets. And so that's kind of my two cents. And so
I don't think that matters in the bull market and the bear market i just think that um you know uh the bear
market you know just it is just a lot less noisy as somebody already mentioned and and so it's
there's less distractions and there's a lot less like you really have to be building a product
that has value and like you really have to understand users and what is missing
um and what they're looking for um whereas in in the bull market it feels like everybody
like you know you could be fucking retarded and like make a ton of money and then you think you're
a genius and then the bear market comes along and you're like, oh, maybe I'm not a genius because numbers just don't go up forever.
So I don't know. That's my two cents.
Are you sure, man? I thought numbers went up forever.
No, it's a great point, man.
I wish almost that, and I say this quite often, I there was a a clear distinction in people's minds
that things like um shit coins and the like are treated as a completely separate industry separate
from us and then the people who are actually trying to uh kind of do you know new things
with finance uh which i i you, I know that it will probably happen
over time, but I wish it would happen a little sooner rather than later. But yeah, lots of
great points, man. Thank you. All right. Well, we'll get into the second question, which you
guys have actually kind of touched on a little bit incidentally with the first question but the second question is uh just kind of asking
guys's opinions on why uh so many web3 projects kind of fail within a few years and i know that
some of you have already given pretty good answers to this but you know what separates those that
survive from those that disappear outside of random chance,
in your opinion as a builder,
and kind of as a side note,
what kind of advice would you give to somebody
who wanted to come in and build in the space correctly
and actually make some headway?
So for this question, again, we'll go off of a hand raise,
just to kind of see if anybody wants to tackle it first.
Yeah, Dan. go off of a hand raise uh just to kind of see if anybody wants to tackle it first yeah dan
okay i think uh i think a lot of what makes a web3 d5 product successful is a lot of the same of what
makes any product successful right i mean that's your first starting point, regardless of if it's web three or whatever it is, like, is it a product that is interesting?
Is it a product which is providing utility to, you know, to, to quote Y Combinator is
make something people want.
Right.
Um, and then once you have that product, does it have product market fits?
Uh, is it, is it a niche market?
Is it a broad market? Like all of
these things before you really even have anything out there and you can even start to gauge whether
it's successful or not. It's just general kind of business product strategy or all of those kind of
things. And then once you're in market, if you are achieving some success, then you've got to
then be prepared that others are going to attempt to copy that success that you're having.
Right.
Like, you know, Arve is a perfect example in DeFi, right?
You know, Uniswap and stuff, very, very successful and was replicated by who knows how many other
teams to try and capture on some of that similar success
what what are they did well was they they stayed ahead of the curve right they had a very clear
roadmap of additional interesting features and upgrades and other things they could do
smart marketing strategy all of those things that helped them to stay ahead of the pack and just
retain that dominance right um but then you also have to remember that you can't become
complacent in your success either.
You know, you have to still, the way that I see it is like, even
if you're a huge corporation, you need to still think like you're
a startup and you're still chasing that market share.
And how do you get it?
How do you stay ahead?
How do you, how do you compete and win with all the other smart minds that are out there
also vying for success and are also, you know,
capable of achieving it in their own right.
And that's even before you get into DeFi, right?
And then you've got to wait. If you're in DeFi, I suppose,
one of the kind of, you've almost got to become a polyglot and you've got to know tech,
you've got to know products, you've got to know business, you've got to know economics, you've
got to know finance, you've got to know capitalism, you've got to know how the collective works,
you've got to know game theory, you know, you're dealing with communities that can be irrational,
you're dealing with market cycles that can amplify that irrationality you've got to be thinking about
all of these different things um so if just being successful is i don't want to say it's luck um
there is a lot of effort that goes into projects even that that aren't successful right they may
have a great product and you know they've ticked all the right boxes and maybe they just don't
make it
because the timing was wrong or the market suddenly shifted beneath their feet because
a president was elected somewhere and changed some policies or whatever right you know what i'm
talking about um so i think being successful is one half and a lot of that relates to just
traditional product strategy um the other half of it is you have to keep your eye on the ball of all of
these different disciplines, um, manage your community, um, and stay ahead of the
curve, you know, crypto moves very fast, right?
It's so it's a curve that you, it's quite steep to stay ahead of.
And then if you can do all of those things and your product remains relevant as well
like may not remain relevant then you can hold on to your market share and you can be an arve
um so yeah that's quite broad but i think all of those things have significant influence on whether
you're a successful night it's not just one thing now a lot of great points that you made
dan um the fact of like wearing a lot of hats um you know it's my opinion that i think a lot of
teams kind of get stuck in wearing so many hats within just a few individuals right i think it's
important to uh kind of grow your team and let them specialize a little bit whenever they're, you know, actually
finally possible to do so. Another thing I'll mention, and when I was thinking of this question
is, I think in my opinion, and you guys can agree or disagree with this as well going forward, but
I think a lot of people, because this is such an open space and the ability to build, right,
I think you have a lot of really great ideas
people i think you don't have a lot of really great business people uh and what i mean by that
is you could have the best idea ever right but if you have no uh acumen for business uh it doesn't
really matter how good your you know your idea is if you can't execute on it so i just think it's important to uh kind
of have well-rounded teams in that regard just one other thing if i may uh before you move on
i think as well it's very easy to get distracted in this space right so you thought of a product
and it does have you know market fit and it is a great product but then oh this new shiny thing
over here oh and that shiny thing over here oh and that shiny
thing over there right and i've seen a lot of people and a lot of teams get distracted by
everything else that is going on and all of the other new products that are potentially getting
you know some traction in market and they start to doubt themselves they start to doubt their own
products and they then start to consider well these guys over here making a ton of money or
having a ton of success maybe we should pivot to that but then if you do that consistently you keep
pivoting you never actually develop any product whatsoever because you're constantly moving so
i would i would strongly um advise that if you have a good product and you have you have done
all of the due diligence of that product and you looked at the market and you have done all of the due diligence of that product
and you've looked at the market and it fits
and all of those things,
then whatever shiny thing you see stick to your plan.
Because if you've done your prep properly
and you execute well,
then you have a much greater higher chance of success.
Yeah, absolutely.
There's a difference between being aware of trends
and chasing them as well,
which we've seen plenty in the space that people really pivot,
it seems like, every other week to something else.
So I agree, man.
All right.
I see Pokedex with a hand raise.
Hey, brother.
Can you hear me?
Yeah, I can hear you, man.
Hey.
Nice to be back on the Web3 Global Talks.
And I'm one of the co-founders at Work at X,
and we thought maybe I'm probably the best person to answer here in this particular question.
Because, yes, it directly penetrates the very core of being a founder in this space, right? Because I've been around for like almost 10 years now,
10, 12 years now in this space.
And the more you look at it, just like how Dan just added,
you know, people approach this industry with a different mindset
and slightly how different would be that, you know, you come in with a different mindset and slightly how different would be that you know you come in with
a different agenda like you you probably want to make some money or you know you start some project
and then try to raise some funds to the token and you've seen that hype cycles happen for us you know
in 2017 and the sooner the you know as soon as the hype is over, the founder exits.
And the reason, if you look at it,
majority, if you look at the percentages,
if you look at overall,
the reason why Web3 for this fail down the last 10 years,
you wouldn't believe almost 30%
or even close to 50% reason is
either poor governance,
DAO conflicts, or the founder just exits.
And the reason is because most of these Web3 projects are easier to exit than raising money
from venture capitalists, right? From a traditional regulatory, yes, exactly. If you raise money from
people legally, you are legally bound to answer for the, you know, the capital that is coming in.
So because, you know, earlier also, since these projects were started by anonymous founders, it is easier to exit.
You know, you have this idea you bring in and you put in the hard work.
The moment you see that the things are not going your way, you feel like you can take an exit and just disappear.
So this has happened and slowly because of regulations, it's now slowly stopping.
But that's one thing.
And also to add to it, what makes it difficult for the founders after a while is that because these projects are inherently decentralized,
they need to tackle this transition of starting from a centralized point of view and eventually having to deal with the DAO or the decentralized structure of governing this protocol,
Gumbling this protocol, which is sometimes a big headache when it comes to founders who are used to having control on starting these projects and later on is now having to deal with all the politics involved.
I believe we need to stick on.
If you have an idea, if you think that your idea is trying to solve a problem,
at least the founders need to, okay, they can work on other projects.
It's fine.
But quitting and leaving completely is really not going to help take this industry forward.
Because if you look at it, I can give you another example.
Because in Polkadix, the problem that you're trying to solve,
it's not a new problem, right? It's been there for a long time. And I remember
there was a chain, it's a top 20 chain, it's called BitChess.
And the founder basically created a wonderful idea.
I mean, if he had stuck onto that, instead of
going ahead and forming another chain, like chasing the next shiny object, I think it would have reached a much better position by now. and put that idea onto another chain to get control and change the direction of the project,
they would choose that over taking all the pain
to convince the community and rally them together
and finally getting what you,
finally achieving that final goal.
So this is what I have to say.
This is what I've seen, at least so far.
Easy to exit and governance problem,
which affects these projects later on,
and less regulation.
This will lead to more people trying to make some money and then if they face an issue, they tend to exit.
Yep, that's what I think.
You mentioned BitShares, right?
Did I hear correctly?
Exactly, yes. I was talking about BitShares. BitShares, Dan Larimer, right?
Exactly. Dan Larimer. You went and did EOS later on, right?
Yeah. Yeah. I've been around for as long as, if not longer than you in this space. So yeah,
I remember BitShares very well and Dan. And BitShares was a great product.
Absolutely. It had a lot of momentum in market around, when would it be?
2014, I think, 2014, 2015.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
And yeah, if it just stuck to its direction and continued doing what they were doing,
there was no need for EOS, right?
They could have just absolutely continued with with that protocol and
it was destined to be you know a top 10 maybe even a top five uh layer one um and dan's clearly
capable as a developer and so is his team i never understood the decision really to to abandon bit
shares and then you know chase eos and all of the calamity that that was with the crazy ico
and all those other things and it's a shame because you know dan is a is a smart guy he
he was he was one of few people that had conversations with satoshi on the bitcoin
uh talk forums um and now he's just disappeared because i guess everybody's just got a deflated opinion of him
after doing that a few times so you know he could have contributed a lot more if it had just
stuck to the direction instead of being persuaded away and going to EOS which itself is you know
essentially a failure as well so there's a prime example like go read upon bit shares and eos and and stuff and you and and
you'll get a you'll get a real picture of of what dangers lurk if you're chasing the trends and new
technology and stuff when you already have a very good product yeah great cautionary tale there and
uh you know you threw out the you also threw out essentially the quiet part out loud, which is, you know,
it is easier to just kind of sometimes create something off of hype and then
bail as soon as you run into any kind of resistance or any kind of problems,
which, you know, again, like you said,
we'll be changing as well here shortly, I think with regulation and things as
well. So yeah, great points.
Amalgam, i see you guys uh yeah so i i agree with a lot of what dan and um i'm sorry i didn't catch the name of the
guy from pokestarter but have been saying i i immediately went to thinking about ave as well
but the the the other thing that i was thinking about was before I used Aave, I was a
user of Compound. And Compound and Aave's products were so similar at a certain stage during DeFi
summer. And yet one is forgotten and the other one is still here. And I think a lot of it has to do with the relentlessness of the founder.
Right. And, you know, I love both Robert Leshner is like one of our investors,
as well as like, you know, Stani is obviously just a very capable person having brought Aave
to where it is. But like Robert failed, kind of like he that like compound isn't his like lifeblood, right? He got distracted with other things. He's doing the super state thing now. And, you know, he's, you know, kind of just a value investor at this point, right? And like doesn't he's not, he's not the face of compound anymore and he's not driving compound anymore.
And so I think it's hugely related to, you know,
the relentlessness of the founder.
And I do a hundred percent agree with what Dan was saying about like, you know,
not getting distracted by like, you know, diamonds, like, you know,
seemingly like getting pulled away from like the mission
and the vision of like something that's working.
But also to like, just counter that, like Aave also like,
Stani went and created Lens and while, you know,
maintaining Aave, I don't know if Lens is gonna ever
really get past where it's current success and become something bigger or not.
But like, you know, some there are some of these founders that have the ability to sort of like or like Elon Musk.
I mean, he's, you know, in the government running Tesla, running, you know, a rocket ship company and doing all these different things.
company uh and doing all these different things uh but like the one thing that you know I think
he makes a bunch of dumb decisions but he's fucking relentless like he you cannot argue
with him and how relentless he is um the the other thing I would I was thinking about as well as like
Uniswap versus Bancor I think Uniswap largely gets recognition for coming up with
X times Y equals K and the decentralized exchange that finally took off. But that concept was not
novel at that point. Bancor was really the first one to try to create a DEX using X times Y equals
K, but largely forgotten because they just really didn't nail the user experience, right?
They made some poor decisions and it just never took off the way that Uniswap was able to really simplify things.
And now, you know, Uniswap is obviously, you know, a leader of the industry.
So, yeah, just a few thoughts from me.
That's all I got.
Yeah, we have Mark from from bancor on here uh actually fairly often uh and they are he's still pretty relentless man so uh you know i believe they could uh go a little further as well i i didn't
mean to say that mark is not relentless as much as it's just sometimes like somebody who's got
ideas sometimes like being having a good idea doesn't necessarily make you successful.
I don't know who's.
Yeah, that's what that's what I said, actually.
Yeah.
So it's that's the case of that.
It's nothing against Mark.
I know that he's still at it and they're still alive and well, but they're not they're not
anywhere nearly as successful as Uniswap.
And I would say that they were much more of the pioneer
in that than Uniswap.
They just didn't have that same Uniswap magic
of being able to unlock a product
and make it really take off with the product market fit
and all those different things.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think he'd probably agree with you, honestly, if he was absolutely. And I think he'd probably agree
with you, honestly, if he was here. And I think he's probably working on that as well. But,
you know, another thing you mentioned, I just want to say this, the reason why I think,
you know, like you mentioned Elon Musk and people who can kind of do a million different things,
right? I think the reason why is they didn't try to do a million different things right from the rip, right?
I mean, they let whatever they were doing grow to a certain point that they could either kind of delegate or something like that and then branch out themselves afterwards.
I think if you try to front load too many things while the first thing you're trying to do isn't anywhere close to successful yet, I that's probably most of the problem but uh yeah just my thoughts dan yeah just jump in on the back of this
as well like you know uh standing with lens and stuff clearly at that point arve was was well
established and you know he delegated got himself a good team they had a strategy marketing whatever
to follow and there was some capacity for him to step away and and and that's fine right it's like if your product is
established then you can look at other opportunities um and i think it's uh you know talking about
elon musk and you know guys like jeff bezos and stuff for example um i think it's jeff that that
has this has spoke a few times on this philosophy of too many founders think
of things as a one-way door when they should be thinking about them as a two-way door.
And what that means is, is that a lot of founders, when they have an idea for something to go
and do that maybe benefits the company or expansion or a new product entirely, they
they get stuck in the mindset of this has got to succeed.
get stuck in the mindset of this has got to succeed.
Whereas Jeff's philosophy is,
well, actually, if you already have a successful company,
which is your bread and butter, and that's running fine,
it doesn't have to be a one-way door.
You can try something out, and if it doesn't work,
you just stop, and then you try something else.
And if that doesn't work, you stop.
And instead of trying to force something
additional to be successful, you can take the opportunity to try a
bunch of different things. Ones that don't, you know, succeed or
not profitable enough, or, you know, don't wash their own face
in terms of revenue and profits and stuff, you just shut them
down and try something else. Safe in the knowledge that you've
got, you know, the broader company um behind which is
allowing you to chase those opportunities now i'm i'm sure that if there is a you know some
some catastrophic issue with amazon uh that all of these you know kind of side projects would
immediately be be ditched and amazon would have had just 110 attention and same way that you know
spacex and tesla will elon musk Elon Musk and many other people are the same way.
It's also about a mindset. Mindset is also very
important the way you look at things. Yes, I can go and try some other things
but don't get trapped into the fallacy of this has got to be successful because it hasn't.
You really have to pick your bets. That's the art
of this is like you
have to pivoting isn't necessarily bad it's just when and where and like you know i i think that
is is the yeah i wouldn't i wouldn't say i wouldn't say it's picking your bets i mean that's
the the the two-way door thing is is is the antithesis of that right but it's well but you're
still picking a bet you're saying hey should i keep working on this thing now that I'm doing,
or should I go work on something else, right?
That's your decision on where to focus.
And that is a bet.
It's a bet with the presence of mind to know that if the parent company
that is allowing you to take that action, to take that opportunity,
that's your kind of first ultimate priority.
And yes, it's a bet, but it's a bet that you don't have to see through if things aren't
working out, right?
You can back out of it and you can shut it down and you can try something else if you
still have capacity to do so.
So, I mean, yeah, of course you want to have some strategy and do some due diligence on the idea first but i guess my point is is that when people have a successful company
and then they're looking to expand out into different things or different opportunities
they get they get tunnel visioned into that alternative opportunity and then neglect the
the broader company or group of companies that
enable them to try that thing out, right? It's fine to fail, but this is the point, right? It's
fine for things to fail because that's how you learn and you can apply those learnings to other
areas of the company or future ventures and stuff. Just don't get sucked into the whole,
this has got to be successful,
otherwise I'll look like an idiot.
Who cares if you look like an idiot?
At least you're trying.
Yeah, absolutely.
All right, let's go with Pi Protocol.
Hey, I'm so sorry.
There was a bit of a lag for me there.
Just maybe rephrase the question for me for a moment.
Yeah, essentially the question was, you know, why do so many Web3 projects, you know, seem to fail within the first year?
And, you know, what would be your advice to people kind of looking to build
in the space was the question yeah thanks a lot for that so i think uh every product goes to a
life cycle and um like they say the best time to build a product is in the bear market uh that is
the whole phase in terms of you know the beta uh the soft launch, the MVP, and then effectively trying to re-engineer a few aspects.
I think all of us have spoken a lot about UI and UX, of course, trying to get that better.
And then everybody hopes to kind of peak at the right time, which is effectively the bull market.
So I think the approach that we have is
we're trying from our perspective and I think what I've seen in general for good projects is
they try to effectively you know not rush along with market cycles but try and build on the right
fundamentals and understand effectively what and where the value proposition lies in terms of, you know, retail versus institutions, what effectively drives the journey, what is effectively the target audience in terms of the chain that is being launched on, whether it is more on the yield side, whether it is, you know, more on the trading side and effectively, you know, try and improvise the product over the phase of the lifecycle.
try and improvise the product over the phase of the lifecycle.
So I think everybody, I mean, all the protocols that have kind of,
you know, been there for two cycles and beyond, they've started off, for example,
just, you know, look at some of the large protocols like, you know, Curve,
if you see their UI initially in the first phase, and even now for that matter,
it's been fairly minimal,
simplistic, building on the right metrics. So I think the way possibly everyone is approaching
is in terms of the right metrics for each cycle of the product lifecycle. And then hopefully
working on the same fundamentals as we move ahead and everyone hopes to peak at the right time.
So I just think just trying to follow that would hopefully help.
Yeah, great point. Sorry, I got to go all the speakers' contents. I totally agree with many ideas just provoked, such as the quality of the founder, not a hype intention versus the long-term vision and mission user experience I totally agree with those
well there's one thing I want to add it is about like the host just mentioned
whether this is a workable business or not well even for those long-term minded
projects they can still fail due to some business paradox,
such as the product logic versus the market logics.
Well, from the builder's perspective, you are delivering more value by technical innovation.
But from the market side, okay, you are doing something new.
But the cost of understanding and trusting a new product on a new project can be overwhelming
especially in web 3 new stuff coming out every day it is very costly for users to process so
much information in market and give commitment then if we translate this phenomenon to business
it all comes down to onboarding new users for the new projects onboarding new users is always
expensive well not just in money but also in the cognitive cost so eventually a web3 business is
no difference from no different from a web2 business or any other businesses in different industries it just um it just has a lot of you
know a lot of uh a lot a lot more active fund or capital in this market so there are many new things
coming out but the basic business logic is still there so as a, if we are still, if yes, we believe in the things where we
have been building, we have a long term vision, but still we have to work out all those business
logics as a starting point. And that's something from my side. Thank you.
Yeah, that's actually one that wasn't really touched on very much, which is actually getting users in, which is incredibly difficult.
But actually, we are a bit different from Web2 businesses because we don't have a lot of the traditional advertising outlets, right?
We're not really allowed. And the way that we have to get users is a little bit of a roundabout kind of way.
I mean, we only have so many avenues. So that's actually a really huge barrier, I think, for a lot of people that needs to be thought of as well. But yeah, good
answer. Good answers to all you guys as well. Thank you, by the way. We are a little bit over
time, and I do have to run. But I want to thank you guys for sticking out with me to the end and
really engaging in the conversation. I appreciate it very much. I want you guys to follow each other as well
because that's what these are all about.
You know, it is a spirit of collaboration
and we've had a lot of cool stuff happen out of these spaces.
So if anybody you've talked to kind of interests you
and you think you guys can work together,
go ahead and give them a follow and hit them up.
That's what this is about.
But that's it for me for today.
This was Web3 Global Talks, episode 351, powered by Hive.
I will see you guys next week for 352.
Until then, I hope you guys have a great weekend and stay safe.
Talk to you guys later.
Thanks for doing this. Thank you.
