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We're NOT FUCKING LEAVING!!! ft. Solana OGs
Recorded: Feb. 10, 2026 Duration: 1:23:15Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent discussion among key figures in the Solana ecosystem, participants reflected on the resilience and growth of the community following the FTX collapse. They emphasized the importance of collaboration, innovation, and the unique culture that drives continuous engagement, even in challenging market conditions.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Is one mic working?
Yes, it is.
Cool.
I'm sending out invites to a few other people in the audience, some who are on the list,
some who we were hoping would show up.
If you get an invite from me, go ahead and accept it.
I don't know where Chase is.
A lot of people are in Hong Kong right now.
I think it's midnight over there.
Okay, cool.
Armani's here.
Raj, I sent you an invite.
Oh, there's Chase.
There's Nam. I might have to cycle folks out too.
I don't know how many people you can have on stage.
Alright, I'm going to wait for Chase to come up, and then I'm probably going to start with Armani
because I know it's folks that are out in Hong Kong.
Hey, Chase.
Yo, look at the cast of characters in this chat.
This might be the last time you see a space like this.
It's hard to get this many people together.
Oh my god, there's so many good people in the audience
that I want to bring up here,
but I'm worried about running out of time.
If you were in the audience
and you've been around for five, six years
and we didn't pull you up, I'm sorry.
It's not personal.
We'll try our best to find time at the end here. Um, all right. So yeah, Chase and I were
chatting about, um, you know, what's going on around Solana and, uh, it felt like time to bring
people together and remind folks of the culture that, culture that so many of us have contributed to over the last couple of years.
I think what makes Solana different than most other ecosystems is the culture and the community that we've built.
these folks here show up time and again
no matter what's going on
to see the next day
to try something new
to build something new
for me that's what motivates me
to come to work every day
what about you Chase?
yeah
I think from my perspective we've been through all this before obviously the
markets are shit right now and like everybody's sort of you know just uh you know people are
getting bearish even the most bullish people start to get bearish and i think it's just super
important to sort of just bring everybody back together and and sort of just like just gather the thoughts and sort of
start our war cries because you know like Tully says all the time like this is the best time to
build a product this is the best time to sort of establish yourself as sort of a bear market warrior
and then when things start to pick up again we everybody knows your name. And we've seen this happen countless times.
And just looking at the people on this call,
it's just basically an entire graveyard of people
who thought that it was over and they just kept building.
And now they're basically dominating in all their verticals.
Yeah, I think people, yeah, it kind of gets forgotten over time.
But the voices, people like Mert, a couple people, yeah, it kind of gets forgotten over time, but like the voices, like people like Mert, you know, a couple of years ago, like they weren't names that you necessarily knew.
But they use that time to, especially post FTX, to carve out a name in the history books and be remarkable.
And I don't know, that's the spirit I'm hoping to capture today.
But I don't know, I kind of wanted to, I think there's a bunch of people here
who also only have a few minutes, but I want to start with Armani specifically because I think his story coming out of the last cycle to today is really unique.
And yeah, like the idea of the space is to tell stories and, you know, it doesn't have to be a pitch for anything, but I think people should hear the lore.
And yeah, Armani, tell us about how you found out about FTX and that period between November and end of year 2022.
Yeah, and also sort of like what compelled you to sort of get to where you are now on top of all that? You know, like it's like the what like and the why and sort of like the how of just, you know, you your your redemption arc is obviously incredible.
And like the most recent news for for Backpack isn't also incredible.
And like you came from a very low point to get there.
low point to get there. And I think a lot of people should hear that story. Yeah. So I suppose
And I think a lot of people should hear that story.
it starts on the plane ride from, uh, I think it was Lisbon, uh, to Miami. Uh, there's a bunch of
us. I was flying, um, home from, from break point in, uh, November of, of 22. And, uh, yeah, I
remember seeing kind of the whole thing kind of going down on, on Twitter, you know, I was kind of learning along with a bunch of other folks on the flight kind of, you know, what was happening.
And, you know, I thought pretty, like, long and hard on that, you know, flight, like, exactly what we were going to do.
You know, we had, you know, $14.5 million on FTX.
You know, that was like 88%, 90% of, you know, our, our, our, our capital as a company,
um, you know, rationally for all intents and purposes, you know, the company was kind of
dead if FTX were to go down. And, you know, I remember thinking to myself like, well, this is,
you know, pretty terrible, um, and, you know, a bunch of really horrible ways, but it's also definitely going to be a defining
moment for oneself. And if you stop and think about it, whatever you do in these types of
situations, and it doesn't matter how big or small, whatever you're doing, whether you're
building a company, whether you're running a podcast, whether you're, you know, running a liquor store, you know, whatever type of challenges that are thrown at you, you know,
I kind of just like believe you will always make the same decision. And, you know, whatever the
type of person that you are, you'll kind of like always be that type of person. And so by the time
I got off that flight, I basically made the decision, well,
okay, I want to be the type of person that doesn't, you know, shy away from adversity,
and that, you know, pushes hard, irrespective of, well, how, like, you know, difficult kind
of the world gets. And, well, if you want to be that type of person, which I think most people
that are, you know, building companies and kind of, you know, doing everything, you know, most people in crypto are doing want to be, then the very logical conclusion is that, well, you kind of have to keep going.
And so I kind of like made that decision, you know, at a personal level, you know, by the time I got off that flight and, uh, yeah, there was kind of obviously
a bunch of tweets that kind of, uh, went down where there was like, you know, folks, you
know, I think people, and it totally was like, I'm not going anywhere or whatever.
And then like, I replied to him and then sweeper that just, you know, like to comment here.
I, I think he was the one that they initiated that tweet thread.
Uh, but yeah, that immediately came off right off the slide. And I think there's obviously the perspective of one trying to build something and not wanting to
kind of give up on anything. But there's also just the deserved faith in the Solana ecosystem,
faith in the Solana ecosystem, which I think was just really a huge part of it.
You know, I think I had, you know, a very kind of, you know, privileged experience where I really
got to, you know, experience a lot of kind of the early rise in Solana going back to like 2020 and
2021. And it was just like so clear to me after seeing, you to me after being in crypto since 2017, after seeing so many
kind of chains come and go, every VC chain you can imagine, every professor coin you
can imagine, tons of startups, tons of failures.
Solano is really kind of the only one that, you know, really built a very genuine community folks.
And it was all built on, obviously, this incredible foundation of, you know, Solana Labs and now the deserved respect and all of the deserved commitment that I think all the startups that came to Solana were just able to just really just go all in.
Because it was just so obvious to anybody that was close to the metal just how different the technology was relative to basically, well, everything that existed out there.
technology was relative to basically well everything that existed out there and you know
on top of the underlying systems engineering on top of the startups being built there was all
these incredible companies um and all of the you know in that era of like you know 2022 to 2023
in the beginning of of meme coin era the, the MemeCoin era and like, you know, all these tokens launching, right?
Jito launched, you know, Drift launched,
Tensor launched, Pith launched, Wormhole launched, right?
There was all these incredible companies in 2023,
that next year, that really kind of had been working for multiple years at that point
um and you know on top of the companies there was this incredible kind of community of like very
real people all around the world you know these people revolving around you know on the one hand
all these token projects that were tg and and and there was kind of airdrop season uh for
the first time in a while uh but also kind of the nft communities and kind of the people that hit a
very different point in the kind of you know global social presence of of the slana network and you
know i mean we were very lucky that you know we, were able to, to launch Mad Lads kind of in that moment,
um, where, you know, Mad Lads was, uh, you know, there, there's a bunch of stuff that you can
point to with the success of Mad Lads and that community. There was definitely a lot of just
like, you know, blood, sweat, and tears, you know, building the first version of Backpack and
building a genuine community. Uh, but honestly, I feel like Mad Lads was kind of just like
emergent behavior from kind of the Slana network.
It was really kind of, you know, at a time when, you know,
the network was, you know, turning around.
A lot of incredible people had decidedly stayed.
And I think kind of what happened with the Mad Lads launch
is we were just able to be kind of, you know, had the kind of the honor of being able to represent kind of, you know, just the relentless will of the Solana ecosystem kind of to not go anywhere.
And, you know, that kind of manifested itself itself and you know the the community that formed
there and you know the reignition of a lot of things and then obviously you had bonk which
which was just like a huge milestone um and you know uh you know you could just go on and on with
all these different examples of all these incredible projects um but it was all kind of
based on you know not a hope and a dream know, not this like crazy kind of roadmap or white paper or whatever. It was always kind of, you know, predicated upon, you know, deserved, you know, respect and trust in what everybody was building and kind of the fact that there's really only, you know, one other smart contract platform on the
planet that has kind of been able to get to this scale, right, in Ethereum. And I think kind of,
you know, the network is in a category of its own, I would argue, even kind of in many ways beyond it.
And so in any case, kind of that's a long-winded answer to the question,
but I think it was a pretty incredible time through all the, you know,
pain and glass chewing and suffering, but, you know, rising from the ashes
and, you know, everything that we experienced in the last cycle.
And here we are again, all over again.
And, you know, I expect it to play out
obviously a bit differently
but what's the saying
history doesn't repeat itself
it rhymes or whatever
thanks Armani dude
appreciate it
I wanted to follow along
especially since Raj is here
the people that was sort of like the closest to like really what went down on that day.
And I know that Raj and Tully at least from my understanding essentially after that happened basically called legitimately every single founder that they could get their numbers for and ask how they could support them. So Raj, if you're on there, you want to talk a little bit about the moments after the last
sort of like major bear after that?
Yeah, sure.
I mean, I guess let me say that, you know, when that story gets replayed, I feel like we get more credit than we deserve for, you know,
as if we went and, you know,
gave this rousing speech and offered all this help.
The reality was, I think, you know,
when we got on the phone with everyone,
Armani and his team included,
I think there was just a moment of everyone asking,
well, you know, is this over?
Is Solana going to die?
Is crypto going to die?
Is the grand experiment of, you know, self-custody and permissionless protocols and borderless
finance going to die because of this exchange that blew up?
And I think the answer just resoundingly, as everyone just looks at each other in the eye and gives their honest answer, was like, no, of course not.
If this could kill it, then it was always going to die.
And once you look around and you realize, okay, well, there were two possible outcomes.
and you realize okay well uh there you know there were two possible outcomes uh either the entire
industry dies or it hardens it gets uh you know it gets more resilient um it learns from uh the
the mistakes and problems that caused the last collapse uh and it you know inevitably doubles
or triples uh or or you know or or even more than that in the next cycle,
then you kind of realize like, well, okay, if we're the only ones here when that next cycle comes,
we're the ones that will be building. We're the ones that will, you know, benefit from it, that
will, you know, be able to carry the learnings from the last cycle into the next one. And the fear turns to excitement very quickly.
So, I think we, I've seen that three times now.
One was, when we launched the network,
it was the beginning of COVID lockdowns in March, 2020.
We had already planned to launch the network
and we had no money to get another shot at goal.
We had only a few months of runway for our engineers.
And so we really had no choice but to launch the network.
But the investors for, you know, Solana, for every crypto project and really across all of tech,
were calling all their teams saying, cancel your launches.
You know, this is a black swan financial collapse event.
You know, do layoffs, do furloughs, focus on survival.
And, you know, that was the time when we asked ourselves, well, you know, is this actually the end?
Or is this the beginning of a new chapter where probably crypto is going to find even more purpose?
And I think, you know, in hindsight, the obvious thing there was, well, there was a lot of money printing that came from global lockdowns, and that was good for crypto.
And so to be bold and be the one that launches at that time was absolutely obviously the right move, right?
That was a massive tailwind for Solana.
The second one is the one we were just describing, and we've heard stories from that.
But I think we're in the third one now.
And the idea that right now, I mean, to even ask, like, is crypto going to die because of this or is it over is just ridiculous.
It's so much more obvious that it's going to survive and thrive.
And two of the catalysts and the most exciting things ahead of us
are playing out right now.
You don't have to wait for it.
In the last two, there was months of just on-chain activity
being dead.
Capital was scared away.
You know, assets were not successful.
Lots of build launches.
Right now, there's two things.
One is institutions coming on-chain and, you know, the regulatory clarity around things like stablecoins and real-world assets
causing this massive influx of, you know, logos and brands and institutions that used to be totally terrified
of crypto, they're all rushing in.
And then two, in this completely different part of the market, you've got this explosion
of AI agents and they're all obviously crypto native.
So the next generation of users and builders and companies is not this theoretical thing.
It's all happening right now.
This asymmetric bet of should I stay and be one of the people that carries the learnings
from last cycle into the next one is so much more of an obvious choice now.
But I think you still find you look around and people are still scared
and they still run away.
And what that means is, you know, the reason that people like totally get a smile on their
face when the markets are kind of shooting to bed is that there's so much less noise.
All of the tourists and the flighty, you know, superficial people, they run away.
And there's so much clarity. It's actually like every meeting, every conference becomes so much
higher signal when you have these events. So it's a natural part of the life cycle of crypto. And
I mean, honestly, these are like my favorite parts, my favorite times.
So, you know, it's awesome to be here with you all and, you know, look each other in the eye and
keep going. Thanks, Raj. Appreciate it. Vivu, what you got?
What you got?
So I was thinking about Mert because I mean, I don't know what he was doing prior to late 2022.
But I kind of remember him being just this like meteoric rise.
I remember the microwave avocado.
I don't know why that specific line is stuck in my head for
like three or four years but um like he was like the ultimate defender of the culture and it kind
of for me at least it kind of came out of nowhere um and obviously now we know him uh for so many
things but um but yeah i'd love to hear about merc's experience and his like what how
like how he became uh who we know today there was there was a moment in time when like nobody
seemingly knew much about how to defend solana so there was like a six month period where anytime
somebody said something bad merc got tagged and he responded to every single one of them.
Literally.
Yeah, that's not even an exaggeration.
It was unbelievable.
But yeah, Mert, you didn't come to Breakpoint, right?
In 2022?
Or am I wrong about that?
Oh, sorry.
Is my mic working?
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
The question is, did I go to breakpoint in 2022 or before yeah and also just talking about sort of like the the times that came after that and your your months
and months of fud busting before everybody sort of educated themselves on solana oh sure um yeah Oh, sure. Yeah, I didn't go to the first two breakpoints in Lisbon. I just, I didn't really believe in conferences. I was like, we basically didn't raise enough money anyway. So spending it on plane tickets, I don't know, it just felt weird before getting like paying customers, given that there was roughly 75 developers at the time um
i would say so yeah i mean before um i was working at coinbase and obviously they had me doing a lot
of uh eth-centric things let's say so i got to work on some infrastructure for polygon optimism
i got to work on some infrastructure for polygon optimism ethereum um but then you know those
things weren't really working and so i never had the you know the emotional attachment or like the
story or anything like this um you know i hadn't met anybody oh i actually in fact my first two follows ever from
solana are in this room and the first one was chase and the second one was armani and i think
i had i don't know maybe a hundred followers or something and i was just asking questions
um and yeah i mean a whole bunch of shit happened, obviously, but for me, it was never
like some emotional attachment.
It was very simply put, like, what is true, right?
Like, what are the facts?
How do these things actually work?
Um, because like, if the physics of the situation don't line up,
then you can defend it all you want,
but then you're not necessarily speaking truth,
in which case it won't be as effective, right?
And so, you know, I just looked,
having actually worked with the other alternative systems,
I looked at how the chain was, you know, architected,
and it wasn't just me, by the way, like my co-founders, Nick and Liam,
we all did the same university program.
We did communications engineering, which is, you know, like satellites and shit.
And, you know, Solana was architected basically like a radio,
which makes sense given Tully's background and how he uses analogies of like
radio frequencies. And that's where proof of history came from. And so when I looked at it,
I was like, okay, well, if you, if you suppose that you believe in crypto,
then what are the set of things that might must be true for it to actually work? And to me I had like a decision to make which was you know you can either basically have faith
in the ethereum vision which is highly conditional at the time right it was like well you know we had
to merge or we had to transition from proof of work to proof of stake and then we had to do such
and such with L2s and then such and such the l2s have to decentralize or it was you know
solana already tries to push physics to its limit and if the fundamentals there are correct
then all you need to do is two things one is solve the soluble problems which at that time were
mostly infrastructure um and then two make sure people know about it right
because you can't just do one or the other you have to do both quick quick note like why why
like whenever you finish that thought like it's sort of like why you continue to do that also
like after post ftx when everybody thought solana was dead sort of just like to tie that together
yeah i mean that's very simple uh the
the reason i did is because people were wrong on the internet uh you know you know that meme not
now babe somebody's wrong on the internet um it was just it's hard to like study the system and
have some understanding of how both of them work, or let's say how two competing systems work,
and then just be like, you know,
I'm gonna ignore this when this person
is clearly talking nonsense, right?
And, you know, if I determined somewhat arbitrarily
and depending on my diet for the day and my amount of sleep,
if I determined they were not in good faith,
then I would also, you know, make sure to hit them with an extra stick of verbiage,
let's say, so that they don't do it again. But like, you know, that's all dressing. The
fundamentals are the important thing. And the important thing was that, look, Solana does have problems. There's a reason why these outages happened.
However, those outages are clearly attributable
to certain deficiencies that will get fixed, right?
And when that happens,
then it will become extremely clear
that this actually works better than the alternatives, right?
And like the first moment that I really realized this was
right around when actually,
so Armani, when Madlads launched,
actually what people might forget is that Helium,
my other company migrated to Solana from uh its own l1 uh basically
that same day or like basically during that same week and um you know i messaged him ahead of time
i was like uh can you guys like not do this uh we can't have two colossal events on the chain the
same day and i was telling totally like okay get get ready for an outage because at that time also we were pushing what's called NFT compression
and it wasn't live like the literally the technology didn't work for it and so my
co-founder Nick and along with other folks of course from the ecosystem got
that working and then we basically had to deal with those two colossal events and stayed
up for, you know, roughly 30 hours. But then they worked. And then I was like, okay, so clearly we
were correct. And now it's just about scaling it out from here.
It's an incredible amount of revisionist history going on in this space, but we'll leave that
be. I think the thing that I'm taking away from this is the Solana founders are true
pain eaters in the sense that they can't
even really remember some of the way that it felt back then.
I mean,
my feeling like back then was probably,
I don't think I had as much faith as the other folks here.
I was fairly existential.
but,
I appreciate you telling the story and,
I know you want to get back to tweeting.
Yes.
But yeah, Chase, do you have anything else for him?
No, that was it.
I just like, you know, we want to hear these war stories.
And like I take the weight from Murat.
He doesn't even give two shits about like outages or FTX.
It's just like Solana has the fundamentals and he's just going to build regardless.
And I think that's probably an opinion
shared by many of the
speakers on this call today.
And if you were
betting on the prediction markets on whether
he would mention Zcash, you just
lost money. So, sorry about that.
I think most logical, and there's so many good people here,
and there's people requesting too, like I want to hear from Cab and Victor and folks.
It's going to be tough, guys.
We will try our best, but yeah, I think we really need to hear from Nam,
because in my opinion, for me at least, was like a foundational moment in solana history and
um really like set up the next like the the kind of like where solana is today um and
i don't like the behind the scenes i don't know I think people love to hear about how Bonk came to be
and just the feelings at that time.
And then like, and also like, you know,
the Bonk airdrop saves Solana meme,
which is like, I have, I know at least 10 engineers
that said they lived off of that airdrop
for about six months.
And like like that's
what allowed them to continue to continue building their projects so like it was an extremely
important moment at probably one of the darkest hours of solana um there was obviously tons of
people doing incredible stuff but like that one actually you know had a very outward impact across
people who weren't just builders,
but people who were just losing faith in Solana at the time.
Thanks, obviously, for having me, guys,
and for all the other speakers who I think have made this a massive part of Solana's success over the past few years.
I think for Bonk, the driving goal was really a bunch of people who were, you know, way steep in the ecosystem, who were excited about all the things that we had seen at Breakpoint and throughout the previous year.
And we're just wanting to see what could improve and get eyes and attention on the great stuff that people had been, you know, killing themselves to create. You had a number of different, you know, like developer focused, I think like pretty impressive feats of engineering alongside like the financial side of it,
whether it's going through the MSOL DPEG on Marinade, going through the forced deleveraging on Solent, going through the entire, you know,
essentially like forking and reissuance of serum in the open book.
And, you know, the countless other things that I'm probably forgetting here over the
course of that year in 2022 and 2023 that we just had to rebuild and reorganize.
Bonk was always just meant to give people something to be excited about, you know, give
them a little bit of hope in a pretty dark holiday period. And to make sure that the people who maybe weren't there on the deepest level,
who didn't necessarily see what the hope was going to be on the technical side,
and to get them excited and wanting to be a part of the great apps
and the opportunities that were being pushed out there on chain.
Shout out Mert for helping to set up
the original developer airdrop list
when I realized there wasn't a grand unified list
for developers on chain.
I know that he didn't even sign himself up for that
and has always rubbed me about it,
but he's been a great help
for a number of these different issues.
I think the great legacy of a lot of the airdrop and the things that Bonk has done has not just
been all the different areas that I think we've helped in the chain and the developers
and teams who make up the chain as well as the community itself, but also just in terms
of figuring out how you do widespread rewards, how you get people excited about
tokens, how you get people excited about new opportunities, and really unifying this idea of
what is a Solana community coin versus any other chain. It's one of the main reasons I think why
you find that it's been such a dominant force and really taken over a lot of the EVM mindshare that
when we were first working on launching Bonk,
people told us we were foolish for not building something on ETH
where that's where all the liquidity was at the time.
That's where all the supposed talent was at the time.
That's where all the supposed opportunity was.
And I think I'm just really glad to see all of the incredible things
that people who kept the faith and kept building
and were excited about Solana have been focused on over the course of the last few years
and i'm glad that bonk has been able to help that help that over the last little bit
thanks noam um yeah i mean like for me like that, that was one of those times where I was, like, actually, Bonk was the first time I was like, holy shit, like, there's insane superpowers behind these meme at the same time, I mean, a lot of us were screaming about it.
Like the validators and all the shit that they had to go through at that time.
So like I see we have Brian on here.
I'm going to probably like I think I definitely want to hear from Brian's side of things.
But like I know it's late and I know that Lily also has a massively creative schedule.
So I'm going to pull her up on here.
First, if she's online right now.
Yep, I'm here.
All right.
Let's hear it, Lily.
Let's, let's hear, let's hear,
hear your thoughts on where we were and where we are and like how that sort of all relates and like where we're going around Solana.
Yeah.
I remember the meltdown in November of 2022
and there was a true sense of crisis and panic,
of course, at the time.
But I just remember actually feeling excited
and feeling like, you know,
that probably wasn't the most empathetic thing
to express at the time.
But I thought that I just never had really a doubt, I'm going to be honest, that we were going to be able to deal with it and that we're going to be fine.
In fact, more than fine.
And I feel like what happened last week, which, by the way, was caused by some unexplained $6 billion
sell wall on Bitcoin, which people are still trying to suss out exactly what's happening
there. And just not even just Bitcoin, software generally, silver, gold, markets, tech, everything.
And all risk assets went down with that, right? So it's not pleasant to see, it's not pleasant to feel, it's not pleasant
to be a part of, but I feel like the conviction that we've always had is just no different.
And I remember feeling that sort of sense of conviction and excitement in November of 2022,
and that was, I'm just going to say, not from a position of strength.
I think we all realized that at the time and all felt that very acutely. But what's different now
is I actually feel like we come at this from a position of strength. What we've also seen happen
the last couple of weeks is an admission, I think a very honest one, which I have a lot of respect for,
that the L2 roadmap that has been discussed, envisioned, heavily financed over the last seven years is just not going to deliver what people thought and hoped it was going to deliver.
And so where that leads is, I think that the folks that are going to be able to play for kind of like the original vision of blockchain are all already out on the table.
And interestingly, with regulation having become crypto favorable in the end of 2024, I would say 2025 for the last year,
2024, I would say 2025 for the last year. It's great for our industry in many ways, but it
actually has made it harder for new blockchains that are sort of doing things the OG way.
Grassroots developer communities needing a four or five year window to really sort of do go to
market on building a developer community from the grounds up. Like that model, which we have done
and many tried to do starting in 2018,
that window actually doesn't really exist anymore
because today it's now possible, even desirable,
even strategic, even required by your shareholders
for large companies with all the resources
and all the capability to go and do that.
So I think that the window for folks that
are kind of like building these, building like a bona fide open source L1, I think that window is
over. And the finalists, if you will, are all already known. And when I look around,
And when I look around, I feel really excited about our positioning, our ecosystem, the tech that we have, the roadmap ahead of us.
And when I look across tech community, our growth capability across so many different dimensions,
I am really just so excited about the position that we're in and the opportunities ahead of us,
because I think that many of them are unique to us.
Thank you, Lily. Appreciate it.
And now, like I said, I think the most battle-scarred and bruised people out here,
I think, during some of these really bad times, because around that same time of FTX and just the prolonged bear, the network also sort of got tested and we ate some shit.
And Brian Long here was was one of those guys that were under there doing the dirty work.
So I just want to hear from that perspective of like, you know, you're still here.
You went through all that, you know, and things
aren't first perfectly favorable now. So like, what are your thoughts and just general on, on
everything state of the world? Well, it's, it's, Hey, it's kind of fun. Actually. It feels like
we're in a 12 step program right now. Uh, hi, my name is Brian. I'm not fucking leaving.
But the point Lily just made was actually one of the points I was going to make too. What we're seeing right now is completely different from what we saw in 2022.
Because the big issue today is not about Solana.
It was about that Bitcoin sell wall, all sorts of other things, right?
More macro.
Where back in 2022, it was like, oh, yeah, this actually is kind of about Solana.
And because when FTX went down, they did leave some huge gaps.
And with Serum in particular,
because so much of DeFi was being built on Serum at the time.
And then it became apparent that, oh shit,
we don't control the keys for upgrades.
So what are we gonna do?
And then a community made a quick decision
to fork that into OpenBook.
But at that time, there were so many teams that were funded by FTX,
actually had their treasuries on FTX, like the story Armani told with Backpack, and they were
out of business overnight. When OpenBook started, there was basically one market maker that was Space Monkey.
And I was using my own funds to run cranks just to keep the markets running.
And I offered to do that because, you know, hey, we had RPCs, so I could, you know, I could do it cheaply.
But all those transaction fees just came out of my pocket.
And so at that time, yeah, the story really was about Solana.
And it really did take a lot of fortitude, you know, for everybody to stick in it, not knowing what the future was going to look like.
But at that time, you know, for all of us that are here now, we're all the, you know, it just kind of proves what tenacity will
do for you. Because we definitely worked through a pretty dark winter. But as I look now, it's like,
man, everything's working, right? We saw the transaction volume that went through,
and it was absolutely fantastic. And behind the scenes, the RPCs are humming, the software is working well.
The team at Onza has done amazing work fixing the Agave client in the last year and a half.
And we're, you know, a year and a half ago, this might have been a different conversation, but it's not.
Like Lily said, you know, we're definitely, um, uh, coming at this from a point of strength
right now.
Uh, everything is working.
We're winning.
And of course we're not fucking leaving.
Um, cause it's, uh, just, you know, it's validation for all the hard work, hard work
that we put into it.
Um, and, uh, the, um, I, I can keep telling stories if you want war stories from back
in the day but uh the one
that i thought was most relevant there was uh you know open book uh the you know basically just
trying to keep defy alive um and uh it took a lot of tenacity so yeah i mean i i think in general
like if it if it weren't for everybody here talking and then the way everybody's mentality is about Solana and just like knowing that like the shit's being built and like there's nothing that's going to stop the train is like the reason why we're all still here right now.
And I want to try to get through this, the remaining list of people that are currently listed on speakers. And I think during those crazy down times in 2022, 23, into 2024, we had Mert on the
battlefield calling everybody insane names that I can't even remember all of them.
But we also had Cash, who was leading leading super team and the solana global like
literally like the voice of solana for the longest period of time and like the super team
sort of call that that had that just highlighted every single amazing thing happening on uh on
solana at the time so i want to hear a little bit from cash as well yeah thanks for having me guys
uh i can i say that this is like the most emotional Twitter space
I've had in a while?
It's fun to hear all these stories.
So thanks for putting this together and getting everyone on.
Yeah, I mean, I side with you, Vibu.
It is great to hear so many people who are so confident to it all.
I was definitely kind of shit scared after the FTX collapse
and what was going to happen.
I'm also not technical, which might explain the difference in my approach and some of the other
people's approach. But I think, you know, the insight was just to do it scared anyway. One of
the core insights that came out of Superteam was this idea that, you know, blockchain ecosystems
are obviously technological products, but they are also like social products. And kind of the way
we saw our responsibility was around that social layer. And so like right after FTX, you know,
those were tricky days. Shout out to Lily who came in and did like an emergency town hall in the
super team discord back then. But then me and X-ray were talking about stuff and like, hey,
how do we actually show all the good stuff that is going on? And that's really where the ecosystem call itself was born.
I think too often, you know, there's an old saying that like, you know,
you're never as good as the market thinks you are when the price is up
and you're never as bad as the market thinks you are when the price is down.
And so we wanted to kind of show that, you know,
price is a bit of a distraction in a sense, right?
Like just try to focus on what actually matters
and bringing the kind of builder community together
and highlighting all the cool things that are happening.
I will say, you know,
not to like kind of put down the spirit of this goal,
I think it's great this fall is happening.
Back then was way fucking worse,
if I'm allowed to swear, I don't know.
But like back then we were selling
kind of like a hope and a dream
and hoping that, you know,
people would kind of stick around
and actually build out the future.
The chain was going down, all that kind of stuff. And indeed,
like today, Solana really works well. There's a ton of high quality assets and high quality teams.
And, you know, like it's the only thing that kind of works at scale. So it's an entirely
different game right now. And I'm much happier now than I was back then. Not to diminish, you know,
I know a lot of people lost money and so on, not to diminish
any of that pain that is going on.
But, you know, it's so obvious now that Solana is inevitable.
And at the time, that was, you know, obvious to some, but not to most.
So that's like one major change.
But I think the biggest thing I learned during the last bear market and like my advice to
anyone listening to this right now is that bear markets are where all the opportunity is.
I don't just mean that in terms of like financial investing opportunity, although that is also true.
I really mean it in terms of like the opportunity to learn because you can actually see like, you know, if you're actually good or not at like using products and discovering new products and evaluating security risk and so forth when not everything is going up and to the right.
And in particular, it's a great opportunity to kind of build a name for yourself.
Certainly, that's what happened for me. Like I was very lucky and, you know, just like a random guy.
And then by tweeting aggressively and hosting and like making content and obviously like helping
other builders around the world, I was able to like turn that nothingness into a small
something. And so, you know, now is the time when all the founders that you wanted to talk to
actually have time to talk to you, right? Because they're not getting inundated constantly. Like
now is the time when you can actually get like high quality jobs and build up that proof of work.
Like now is the time to go earn, you know, go sign up for super team earn right now. I promise
you won't regret it. So don't let a good bear market go to waste this is really where all the opportunity is
uh and solana is going to be just fine like there's no no doubt in my mind and you're hearing
that from everyone else on this call um but it is just true every major institution wants to work
with us uh the network is better than anything else that's out there the assets are great the
teams are great the products are like you know i, I bought lunch today with Jupiter Global, like using stable coins on Solana, which was kind of like unthinkable during the last bear market.
So it's important to have the perspective of where we are in the grand arc of history.
And things are, even if the prices are not good, the fundamentals have really never looked better.
To be clear, we're surprised that you could afford lunch or that you still want to...
Yeah, my portfolio is on permanent hide mode.
I don't really look at any of the prices anymore.
Well, I think launch...
Oh, go hard.
Cash.
Chase. Okay. It's you. Okay. Chase, it's you.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
So, you know, we've talked to founders.
We've talked to validators and all these people.
I think, like, another...
I'm going to try to get to everybody who's currently a speaker,
so we're almost there.
We've got 10 minutes left.
But, you know, like, like again we had Mert in the
battlefield like Cash was out there sort of like spreading the positive energy at the time but also
like at the time like Matty Tay was essentially running hackathons and and creating startups
within foundation and eventually spun out so like you, you know, there's, there's a time there
where, uh, creating founders like in the bear market probably was a little bit tough and things
were a lot different. So I definitely want to hear Matty's perspective. He's like one of the
most OG people around. He's been on Solana since 2020. Um, so want to hear a little bit about his
experience, especially through the last bear market and like sort of like where we are now in terms of growing founders.
Yeah, thanks for having me on.
Yeah, I mean, back when FTX imploded, definitely more bleak than it is today.
But even then, yeah, we were running the hackathons and they were still hitting all time highs in terms of developers and and legit startup founders entering the ecosystem.
And I think that's the case right now. I mean, like we just ran a hackathon called Cypherpunk.
It was the largest hackathon ever. And, you know, we we not only is it just total participation, it's it's just the quality at the very top is exceptional. And I think the one,
the one big difference, I would say, beyond a lot of what people have mentioned today,
with the network going down, and, you know, more, more stability today, is that we have
this gift of cloud code. And, like, we are developing way, way, way, way faster on a per founder basis.
And so not only are just like total number of founders entering the space going up, but also just the efficiency and production just using these AI tools has has really, really catalyzed, at least in the last like, few months from what I've seen. And so
I think just today is like a much, much more fertile place for for founders to build. And I
think it's it's awesome to see that there's also I mean, there's a lot of great work being done of
just like, you know, integrating into the traditional financial ecosystem. And there's a lot
of amazing startups around like you know stable coins and
and such but um i see see folks like profit in in the in the crowd like we have a ton of
kind of unique to solana i would say is like a lot of the original like cypherpunk
and sort of startups uh also forming on solana and and hitting some hitting some product market
fit and so yeah we're i'm just super excited
um more you know more for just that that the ecosystem is firing on all cylinders
tradfi integration stable coins cypherpunk weird stuff it's all happening on solana so
yeah just super excited to be here and play a part in it
thanks maddie yeah i remember the uh Grizzly Thon very well.
I think one of the amazing things that Stellana teams have done is when the pain is there is
the time to try things. And yeah, like doing a hackathon
when Solana was like, I don't know,
eight to 10 bucks in, was it February 2023?
It just shows you the incredible persistence
of the folks around the team there.
Am I getting my time right? Yeah, let's not go back to that place. the incredible persistence of the folks around the team there. Was that,
is that,
am I getting my time right?
Yeah.
Let's not go back to that.
Definitely not.
Yeah.
I was going to say like,
if we can,
we might spill over.
So we capture every speaker,
but I think Viv has like,
whoever has to drop.
Yeah.
Please feel free.
But I think we want to get to all the speakers that are currently on stage.
But Viv, who do you want to call up next?
Yeah, I think thinking about those early times and one of those foundational memories for me at least was the Clay No Mint at the end of November.
I met Cab at Breakpoint and he didn't know anybody in the
salon ecosystem um i didn't know who he was and i probably um mostly ignored him uh and then they
became completely unignorable and um i don't know like a different time but uh clay dinos were like
the coolest thing happening around solana um like right after ftx but yeah hey what's going on cab dude i remember
when i met you at breakpoint and we were talking about the fucking shoe um i was like oh my god
you're that guy uh i'm so why would you bring that up gotta talk about the shoe come on man um
and i'm so stoked to be here it feels it feels just like the old days and if anybody remembers
that other like post ftX space we had kind of
feels like that. I agree with cash. Today, it feels more like business as usual. I think it just
kind of feels like a momentary blip and not to discount, you know, the people that are seeing,
you know, downs and things like that. But it's not as scary as it was after FDX. And for us,
you know, we went to break point.
There was a lot of hype around our mint.
We wanted to change the world, build like a super IP, all that kind of stuff.
And then FTX happened.
It was like the worst two weeks ever because we had these plans and the NFT market was hot and all that kind of stuff.
And everything felt like it fell apart.
But the Solana ecosystem
really backed us up and we still broke records. We still did our thing, but it was tough that
first year. And I remember some fun lore about Raj actually, as we sat down with Raj, maybe a
year into our journey. And he said something that stuck with me, which was something like
And he said something that stuck with me, which was something like the fact that unicorn startups are usually the ones that are constantly battle tested in their early cycle.
And the teams that can develop grit early on and are forced to be smart and never complacent.
And I think that was maybe one of our differentiators is we were never complacent.
It was never easy at the start.
But the Solana ecosystem was always around
to support what our vision was.
And it was amazing.
And man, do I appreciate what Raj told us a couple years ago.
I think when he told us that in the beginning,
we're like, oh, fuck, yeah, but I still wish it was easier.
But damn, we were never complacent.
And it's been a wild ride.
And Solana have such deep emotional ties to this ecosystem
and and what Nam had said I see him still in the audience but he said something that
also really resonated with me was like at the time like everybody was looking at the
Clano quality like dude this like like we were getting like all these notice and messages from
people on a theory I'm going like why the are you minting on Solana? This should be on Ethereum and whatever. And I'm like, dude, like, no, like this, this is going
to be home. There's a reason we're picking the tech, the speed, the scalability and that community
over Ethereum at the time. And, and it was tough. But today we are, I'm proud to say we're basically
one of the biggest IP native digital collectibles ecosystem on the fucking planet.
We have won awards against Pixar, DreamWorks, Paramount, Warner Brothers, Riot Games.
We are, you know, basically the new kids on the block in the licensing world.
And we did that because we had so much support from the Solana ecosystem in the beginning.
from the Solana ecosystem in the beginning.
And that will always be our history.
And we're so proud to be building here
in any way we can.
And it's been a crazy ride.
And I love it, man.
I love the juice.
If it was easy, it wouldn't be worth doing, right?
100%.
Thanks, Cab.
100%.
I wanted to chat with Cobra.
I don't know if Edgar... I tried to invite Edgar up
before, but especially relevant
because they... I don't know if people
know, but Mountain Dow has been one of the
institutions for Solana Builders for a long time
Barrett
has been right there
in the trenches of Solana for as long as i can remember
but yeah maybe uh share your experience and what's happening right now
barrett's also onboarded so many people that nobody knows about basically going around and
just saying fuck ethereum to anybody who said that and like he's probably onboarded like 100
people just by himself and i've random
conversations i've had with people that like i was like how'd you get on solana and they're like
barrett and i'm like how i mean they i mean mountain does what six or seven hundred people
now and uh founders something like that and uh it used to be how many like 10 15 cobra god yeah i 10, 15? Cobra, go ahead. Yeah, I mean, longer the days from where MountainDAO started.
But yeah, like the very first MountainDAO, well, I guess at the time it was like Mountain
Compound, is actually how I found out about Solana, from an ETHMAXE.
And they recommended me, they intro'd me to Ben Sparango, who was at the time like the
chief strategy officer of Solana, because they disliked me so much. And I think that that's probably where my disdain for Ethereum really began.
But yeah, I mean, you know, back in what, 2022, still in the bull market, we hosted like the very
first like Solana, you know, specific like Mountain DAO V1. And then I think we probably had like 250 people,
you know, apply probably like 100 and some change probably came through over the entire month.
And then, you know, effectively had maybe one more that was that August that was like kind of in
the bull run. And then we hosted, you know, Mountain Dow throughout the bear, right?
And so we got to see like firsthand, one, you know, being a builder myself,
and then two, just like seeing, you know, the community come together, I think,
you know, and still working pretty tirelessly throughout the bear,
even in like the darkest moments, right? Like in the bottom,
what is this, August of 2023. I remember, you know, like thinking like, wow, dude, there's,
you know, people were messaging me, you know, that they couldn't come to Mountain Dog because,
you know, they're out there paying for, you know, Brian and Mertz RPCs. And they're like,
hey, I got to keep the lights on.
And we had, I don't know, probably that August was like,
maybe 80 people came through right after, you know,
a couple big mountain dolls in a row.
And just being like, wow, this is like, you know, like,
people are really struggling here.
And, you know, still seeing the conviction of the community, of the builders, you know, willing to fly around, you know still seeing the conviction of the community of the builders um you know willing
to fly around you know the us or the world to come to you know an event that we put on that was like
for the slant ecosystem i think really instilled you know a lot of like faith uh in the community
it really like you know effectively put like a backstop in in on like how bad it could be when you see other people,
you know, alongside you building in what seems to be, you know, one of the darkest hours. Right.
And so it's been it's been quite the, you know, quite the roller coaster and quite the exciting
like excitement of a ride for for us at Mountain Dow being, you know, coming from the bull market through an entire bear market back into the bull market and having,
you know, a couple of like the biggest offices or sorry, the biggest like events that we've ever
had, you know, over the last year, probably had like, I don't know, probably like a thousand
people, you know, come through last year. we're probably going to do bigger numbers this year,
even though like the market is down. You know, I think like if I look outside, there's probably
like 100 people in our office right now. And it is effectively, you know, all is normal, right?
Like markets are down, but the people, the builders are still here, putting in the effort,
you know, getting here super early early staying super late um and it's
definitely the baseline is incredibly different this time right from like the last bear cycle
where there was i think there was one point there was like eight people in the mountain
dow office uh in like that august of like in the in the pico bottom uh and now right like we're we're
you know in in a downturn in the market, right? People are concerned.
People are leaving, you know, the space in general.
And then, you know, we're having one of the highest like baseline attendances that we've
ever had at Mountain Dow, right?
So I think that that's like super exciting to see.
And just goes to show that, you know, I think Cash said this and a couple other people,
right, that it truly is like, it is the same bear, right?
But it's different in the sense that the fundamentals are better than they've ever been, right?
We're still doing tons of like transaction volume on chain.
People are still starting companies at record paces, right?
Funding can be a little tight right now, but, you know, this is like really where we'll see
super exciting apps, maybe even like, you know, new protocols, especially like come out of this
like cycle. So definitely excited to see, you know, what people are, you know, pushing out and
very grateful for all the people that continue to show up right in the Solana ecosystem. And,
you know, Chase, I will still continue to evangelize Solana the solana ecosystem and you know chase i will still continue to uh evangelize solana until until the you know until they put me in the grave right until i'm an
old man withered away hell yeah brother edgar uh we got to get through with some more people but
do you want to add anything to that yeah i'll tap on to bear really quickly um with with a single story from a conversation i had a couple days at mountain down so i'm sitting
with a you know with a guy a kind of newer uh newer founder in the space and he's talking to
me and he looks at me you know we're in the office he looks outside and he goes man he goes
you know the price is down and people are saying it's a bear market but like
the vibes are great here.
Like the energy is great. I don't feel that at all in this office.
And I remember just, you know, reflecting on that and being like, yeah, like you're right.
And in at Mountain Dow this time around, I don't feel it at all. Right.
That was not the case in 23.
Barrett and I were trying to figure out if there was going to be another mountain dow every day of
2023 um and i think that's a reflection of the resilience that the entire solana ecosystem has
built right we were we were forming and and finding uh i think our our our cohesion um as an ecosystem
in 2023 and we are formidable now and i i think that's a blessing so
a lot yeah that's all i'll give you today thanks for everything you guys have done dude you guys
are crushing it so big props to that prophet you've been sitting there patiently silent with
your mask on this whole time like let's let's hear let's hear what the masked man has to say yeah so i think uh i maybe have a different perspective from some of the people
at least up here which is uh i was not like anyone on solana while uh while ftx was happening and um
yeah well ftx was collapsing and price was going down. That was when I just started to build, actually, like, just started on MetaDAO.
And yeah, I mean, at the time, it felt...
Obviously, there were not that many people,
but it still kind of felt obvious that Solana maybe was not, definitely gonna win I think it now feels more like sure that Solana
is the top contender but like it's kind of just physics right like if there's another chain that
was costing like $250 a transaction to use and then there there's one that's like 100 times faster, cheaper. I mean,
actually, it was literally 1000 times cheaper that people would use the 1000 times cheaper one.
And yeah, I feel like right now Solana is still in. It's still the top contender in the blockchain race because, yeah, you have now both something that's really fast and something that has hit a critical mass of ecosystem.
Versus you have other ecosystems where there's either not sufficient ecosystem or it's not fast enough.
And so, yeah, I guess I'm not fucking leaving for those reasons, which is just like, I think, yes, price is down, but Solana is still the place to be if you're building in crypto.
Hell yeah, man.
You better not fucking leave, man.
We need Meta down to succeed.
We got a couple people left.
This one's a little bit different um not necessarily a builder but he's a big vibes community builder solana sensei's on here well
the two biggest bulls on solana consistently i saw curbs in the chat too but solana speaking so
let's uh let's uh let's hear what he's got to say. Namaste, guys.
It's a pleasure to be here with all of you.
Just want to say I'm fucking grateful for all the real builders behind the scenes in Solana.
People like Brian, keeping everything afloat during the hard times.
All of you guys, really.
I'm obviously not a builder.
I'm not as smart as you guys. I always been kind of in the nft trenches in 2021
and and yeah building building a community uh spreading good vibes and
wow it's been more than five years now i think it's it's just been insane you know um fdx was
brutal for me uh not just for my backs, mentally, everything just,
it felt like everything we had built up was just evaporating.
It was scary for the first time.
You know, for anyone that knows me, I'm delusionally optimistic 24-7.
I'm a big bull poster.
I'm 24-7 bullish on Solana.
I don't care about the short-term things.
I'm always zoomed out and looking at the bigger picture.
So I've always been very, very, very bullish.
And so FTX, for the first time ever, made me doubt.
It was very scary.
I'm not going to lie.
But for some reason, I felt like the whole tech, the whole community,
all the apps we had built, all the platforms,
all these huge projects that had appeared,
we now had them in the ecosystem.
And coming from like 2021 days and looking at what we had back then,
flipping NFTs on Discord and Telegram DMs
because we had no marketplaces
and not having competition within the marketplace ecosystem
and having all these different features to swap
and exchange tokens and everything was made so much easier.
The community had only grown.
The tech was still working. Everything
was going great. We just had a bunch of hiccups, but it made zero sense for this to die if we had
way more than what I had seen in the beginning. And so I just couldn't give up on the idea of solana and i remember just going all in
i just went all in uh with all my money i was broke in real life people don't know that but
i just went all in i was scared but i went all in because i knew that this had to work out there
was no way that with everything we had not financial advice by the way not financial advice, by the way. Not financial advice, of course. But yeah, I just went all in.
And it was the greatest decision I ever took.
I remember thinking, as a sort of big account at the time,
I remember thinking I had to work double time.
no one was paying me of course I'm not part of the foundation or anything but I felt that it was
No one was paying me.
Of course, I'm not part of the foundation or anything.
my duty to tweet you know way more consistently and try to dm more people and connect with them
more and try to uplift everyone because the vibes were horrendous like we've never experienced
anything like it and I just remember feeling like you know I'm scared too but I have to be
a positive voice I have to be the one that tries to uplift people and and bring some hope and we
obviously had things like bonk we had things like play now and slowly when when things started to
kind of fix themselves naturally uh we just all got back together and things just,
we started getting that momentum again.
And yeah, it was just unbelievable.
Obviously now like five years after,
or I mean three or two years after the bear market,
things are looking way, way better.
If this is a bear market, it doesn't feel like it.
The vibes are amazing.
I don't feel like I have to work double time.
I don't feel like we have to put so much effort to keep everyone together.
The people are showing up.
Nothing has changed.
Price is irrelevant.
If everything is working better than before, we're still reaching all-time highs,
transaction volume.
The cheaps are still dirt cheap.
The tech still works.
We have more consumer apps than ever before.
We keep on onboarding institutions.
Everything is happening to Solana.
You can trade anything here now more than ever.
It's easier than ever.
We're getting spoiled.
There's literally nothing you cannot do on Solana.
It's incredible.
There's nothing like it out there.
So I don't think this will even feel like a better market.
Dude, thanks for...
Yeah, man.
Well, we're glad to have you here.
Can you hear me, Chase?
Yeah.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, man.
Thanks, Fensai. yeah okay um yeah man thanks sensei yeah people uh easy to forget how much of uh
influence since i had since they had at the uh especially in that first in first run just the
iconic uh character and just never left so love to see it um all right i'm gonna uh we're going to end with Aditya. And the reason I wanted to bring Aditya up
is I think a huge part of the future of Solana
is our, you know, and was relevant,
you know, super relevant back in the day,
but continues to be more relevant.
Aditya, I don't know if people know,
he's the new kind of global super team lead.
And, you know, I think going forward,
you're going to continue to see us just,
you know, no matter the market conditions,
take this kind of local approach.
And if you're not part of super team,
you should find your local approach. And if you're not part of Super Team, you should find your local organization.
I feel like one of these EBS sales guys, but call your local Super Team organization and
join. It's the best group to be a part of in times like this because you're surrounded by high agency founders, engineers, builders
who can support you literally and therapeutically as well.
But yeah, hey, what's going on Aditya?
Hey, can you hear me okay?
Is my mic working fine?
Yeah, I can.
Awesome.
Yeah, I mean, I was actually back when this meltdown happened, I was a super team member. So I was sort of consuming the community, a part of the community, Cash, Aksha is in the audience as well.
So I don't think it's an understatement to say that a lot of the folks who were super team members or contributors
at the time who are now doing very well in the ecosystem like from india you've got you know
yash and aryan doing send ai or abbas who helped with the metadaw raises and is now with amra
irfan who's with pocket sheikh who's going to do stuff like a lot of the folks stayed back because
they sort of had each other and I think that was the most underrated
thing about Superteam was that you know you felt like you had your own in-group so to speak because
I think like everyone here it's awesome people are sort of you know we all like everyone here
knows each other and we're reliving like wall-time stories we sort of travel from conference to
conference meet each other we have group chats but for a lot of the newer folks who are now being onboarded who are now new to the ecosystem
uh even though you feel overall that yes it is inevitable that you have on-chain finance it can
feel lonely and intimidating at times because not everybody here speaking is as accessible just by
sheer number and volume and i think one
of the one of the most awesome things that super team does that super team did and sort of continues
to do is it created an abundance of in groups you have your own in group right and so you don't feel
left out you don't feel lonely in the ecosystem because there are other people facing the same
problems as you who have the same questions as you and have some shared identity locally with them. And if done right,
if sort of the members are selected well, you end up with people who are productive, who want to
work, who are not obsessing over short-term charts or price movements and are sort of still
trying to figure out or in that phase where they're yet to break out and are sort of still trying to figure out or in that phase where they're
yet to break out and are sort of struggling.
So I think back then, at least, it was a lot about developers, founders, and that still
sort of continues to be a big part of it.
I think each community having their own culture, having their own membership and going through
these problems themselves is one of the most underrated things about the slana ecosystem that i think despite
every other chain trying to copy the super t model now in the last few years uh you know
haven't been able to do because it's really hard uh to create to to to sort of create uh your own
in group and your own your yourgroup and your own sort of community.
So, yeah, I would echo what Vipu said,
is that if you're in a country that has a super team,
you know, go and win or sort of compete in their bounties on earn
or go show up at their events or take your product to them,
depending on what you're doing.
You know, there's various ways that you can sort of get involved.
So you should sort of definitely do that.
And even if you're in a country that does not have a super team,
I think super team earn now has, you know, a pro tier where if you win a certain number of bounties
or build up a certain amount of proof of work, you also get, you sort of get,
you're able to build out your portfolio there so i think uh i think as you guys are saying earlier this is when the next batch of folks have
an opportunity to find their voice and uh i think we try and strive to make sure that's that it's
basically like super team is for anyone who is willing to
put in the work it could be a developer founder it could even be someone on the asset side of things
now and and you should you should definitely go find your local super team oh yeah i can't
help myself spilling the beans but super team is not done growing there's. There's a lot more to come this year.
We're sandbagging some pretty big stuff.
Awesome.
Thank you, Aditya.
With apologies to many people in the audience, I see you guys.
I see EZ, who was on the OG space at the very bottom.
I don't know who was there.
Maybe you can emote if you were
on the space and uh it was what's like december 29th or something like that 2022 and literally
on the spaces like vitalik bottom posted solana um with this uh uh incredible post and um and uh
yeah that was kind of i mean obviously it's a different time so it's never going to feel
exactly like that but it's kind of
like part of the inspiration here
yeah shout out to
so many people in the crowd
apologies to folks
that requested as well we didn't get you up
we might have to do this again but
you know
thanks for joining
Chase
any last words
oh yeah we're not fucking leaving
I don't know if you got that message from the space
we're not leaving
thanks for showing up everybody
appreciate it
see ya Thank you.
