Best Crypto Podcast | Dive Into One Of The Best Cryptocurrency Podcasts In The Cryptosphere https://cryptonews.com/exclusives/podcast/ Fri, 26 Apr 2024 14:28:21 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 Zach Bruch, Founder and CEO of MyPrize, on the Evolution of Crypto Casinos, Trading, and Creating Multiplayer Experiences in Web3 | Ep. 329 https://cryptonews.com/exclusives/zach-bruch-founder-and-ceo-of-myprize-ep-329.htm Fri, 26 Apr 2024 14:39:39 +0000 https://cryptonews.com/?p=204552 Zach Bruch, the Founder and CEO of online crypto casino MyPrize, discusses MyPrize emerging from stealth, onboarding nearly 100,000 users, online casinos being a perfect vehicle for bringing more people into the crypto space, and MyPrize enabling content creators to become small businesses and gamble together with their audience.

The post Zach Bruch, Founder and CEO of MyPrize, on the Evolution of Crypto Casinos, Trading, and Creating Multiplayer Experiences in Web3 | Ep. 329 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> Zach Bruch, the Founder and CEO of online crypto casino MyPrize, sat down with Cryptonews Podcast’s Matt Zahab for a comprehensive interview.

He talked about MyPrize emerging from stealth and already onboarding nearly 100,000 users.

Bruch also discussed why online casinos are a perfect vehicle for bringing more people into the crypto space.

Moreover, the CEO explained how the MyPrize team enables content creators to become small businesses, properly monetize their content, and gamble with their audience.

Onboarding Thousands of Users


Bruch entered the crypto space in 2010.

He worked in the startup world before moving to crypto-related companies, holding positions in Kraken, Cumberland Labs, and JST Capital.

This was a “really exciting time”, the CEO said, because it allowed him to observe the entire 2017 bull run, “which was wild to participate in.”

Bruch also co-founded the NFT platform Recur, which shut down last August, a month before the start of MyPrize.

MyPrize emerged from stealth in late March.

The first two weeks were “really exciting,” he said. “We’re onboarding tens of thousands of users. We’re about to cross 50,000 users.”

As of April 25, it has surpassed the 70,000 mark.

The actual casino product hasn’t launched yet, but there is an early access product available for users to start earning points.

The product will come to market “in the coming weeks.”

Notably, MyPrize had the highest-ever pre-launch valuation for an online casino of $140 million.

The project raised $13 million in funding over two rounds ($5 million in October 2023 and $8 million in March 2024) from major players, including Dragonfly, Boxcars Ventures, a16z Scout, Mechanism Capital, Arrington Capital, Breed VC, JST Capital, 2 Punks Capital, and angel investors, among others.

Bruch met with all the teams that wanted to invest in the company to ensure that they were the right partners for this “long journey.”

He said the broader gambling space will experience a lot of growth, and MyPrize is likely to be a decades-long business.

“I really wanted to make sure that whoever we brought onto the cap table was super aligned with our long-term vision – not only for the gaming and gambling space but also for the crypto space.”

Bringing Users Into Crypto Through Gambling


Bruch was “obsessed” with Bitcoin in 2010, and that obsession shifted to “pretty much all crypto and the ethos behind it.”

One of his personal goals has been to onboard as many people as possible into crypto, “period.”

To understand how he’s accomplishing this goal, we first need to understand the online casino space more broadly, Bruch argued.

Less than 10% of the trillion-dollar global casino and gambling market is online. Therefore, “gambling has not had its internet moment yet at all.”

However, most online casinos today actually accept crypto as an on-ramp. MyPrize, too, started with crypto and will eventually add fiat.

Meanwhile, the Web3 world is filled with great products – but not many are interesting to a wide range of people.

At the same time, “everybody enjoys gambling.” It’s exciting, engaging, and entertaining.

Additionally, gambling has the most product market fit in history, Bruch remarked. “From day one of civilization, people wanted to speculate.”

Therefore, the combination of these two points – a massive industry and user interest – represents a huge opportunity.

And it can go further, the founder argued. This type of application presents an opportunity to onboard many new users to the crypto ecosystem.

“Our view is if we can build a killer application that onboards millions of users and then from there expose them to crypto, and also build a big decentralized GambliFi ecosystem over time, then we’re doing something very special.”

Therefore, MyPrize is starting as a centralized business and will build a much larger, fully decentralized GambliFi ecosystem.

This will enable regular people to get into the crypto space for the first time, but “it all starts with having a killer application that people can go and engage on.”

Turning Creators Into Small Businesses


Bruch also discussed MyPrize’s plan for the creator economy.

He argued that creators are not monetizing their content in a meaningful way.

So the team has been searching for a way to “effectively turn every single creator into their own small business.”

They would have no need for a large workforce but would still be able to monetize their content through engagement with their audience.

For example, a creator can stream their gambling content while interacting and betting with the audience, enjoying and participating in the event together.

This completely changes the interaction between creators and the community.

This is why the team is building the Bet Together feature. Ultimately, betting is a social experience, Bruch said.

____

There is more!

In this interview, Bruch also discussed:

  • his background and career before entering the crypto space;
  • being one of the largest individual creditors to FTX, selected by the US DOJ to serve on the creditors’ committee;
  • story behind the ‘MyPrize’ name;
  • bringing new social capabilities to online casinos that capture the feeling of playing with friends;
  • new streaming tools and monetization structures that better reward streamers;
  • the evident development of the crypto.

Head on to the podcast episode to hear the rest of this fascinating interview.

__________

About Zach Bruch

Zach Bruch is the Founder and CEO of MyPrize, an online crypto casino.

Bruch previously held positions at Kraken and Cumberland Labs, where he ran their sales trading desk.

He later created his own trading operation and became one of the most profitable individual traders of all time.

Prior to founding MyPrize, Bruch served as an advisor at JST Capital, a financial services firm specializing in digital asset markets.

The post Zach Bruch, Founder and CEO of MyPrize, on the Evolution of Crypto Casinos, Trading, and Creating Multiplayer Experiences in Web3 | Ep. 329 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> Ian Rogers, CXO at Ledger, on Self-Custody, The Future of Hardware Wallets, and The Launch of Ledger Stax | Ep. 328 https://cryptonews.com/exclusives/ian-rogers-cxo-at-ledger-on-self-custody-the-future-of-hardware-wallets-and-the-launch-of-ledger-stax-ep-328.htm Tue, 23 Apr 2024 16:01:11 +0000 https://cryptonews.com/?p=202475 Ian Rogers, Chief Experience Officer at Ledger, discusses his move from the world of Apple and Yahoo to that of crypto and Ledger, as well as the incoming Ledger Stax, adding that more secrets will be revealed soon.

The post Ian Rogers, CXO at Ledger, on Self-Custody, The Future of Hardware Wallets, and The Launch of Ledger Stax | Ep. 328 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> Ian Rogers, the Chief Experience Officer (CXO) at Ledger, the popular crypto and NFT hardware wallet manufacturer, sat down for an exclusive interview with Cryptonews’ Matt Zahab.

He discussed his move from the world of giants Apple and Yahoo to crypto and Ledger.

Rogers also talked about the incoming Ledger Stax, adding that more secrets will be shared soon.

The CXO gave a wide-ranging interview, which you can watch or read below.

Jumping from Beats and Apple to Crypto


Rogers worked for and with a number of giants across industries. These include LVMH, Beats Music, Apple, and Yahoo!.

He told Cryptonews Podcast that these helped him understand the value and profound change the Internet has brought to the business world.

Yet, he felt his work in music was done.

One of the reasons he joined Ledger in 2021 is the “freedom of choice” the Internet and the wallet maker bring.

This crypto wallet is a major step up from the credit cards we have: one protects banks’ secrets, but the other works only for its users.

“You as a user have ownership, and that’s driving a little bit more at the Internet that I always dreamed of,” the CXO said.

Security vs. Performance


Upon meeting Ledger’s CEO Pascal Gautier years ago, he began understanding the massive difference between having just a smartphone for transactions and owning a special device for one’s funds.

Phones, he said, are designed for performance, not security.

And that has never been more true than today, he argued, as we witness major security incidents all around us.

After meeting the Ledger team, Rogers realized that this company would succeed.

The reason was simple, he said. There was only one bet there: there will be more digital ownership in the future.

“What I actually love so much about this space is this inevitability. We as human beings will have digital ownership,” Rogers remarked.

And because of that, we’ll need security.

Moreover, it is rare in crypto to see a company stand for one message for more than a decade.

For Ledger that is security and self-custody, Rogers said.

Ledger Stax: Readying for Shipment, More Secrets to be Revealed


The much-anticipated Ledger Stax, which will come with the E-Ink touchscreen, Bluetooth, and roomy user interface, was announced in December 2022.

“We struggled through last year to get to the yield,” Rogers commented. “We’re finally there.”

The team was in Asia at the time of the recording, moving toward mass production.

The company will be sending a message out to people who preordered “very soon” to double-check the information.

“And then we’ll follow up with the shipping schedule. So it’s coming very shortly.”

After that, Ledger will put the device back on sale.

However, “there’s actually some more secrets around that that I don’t want to share just yet. So I would say look out this summer, and we’ll have more coming.”

All in all, users will get an improved interference and experience, a secure screen, more features built in, and more interactorability.

Additionally, Ledger is adding new partners daily, so “you’ve got a full array of services in there.”

Lastly, the company has another “big mission this year”: to eradicate blind signing, both with Ledger and with partners.

There’s plenty more to come.

____

But that’s not all!

In this interview, Rogers also discussed:

  • being a huge music fan since an early age, studying computer science, and walking the path to the Apple Music launch;
  • Tony Fadell – the former senior vice president of the iPod division at Apple – coming up with the idea for Ledger Stax;
  • the notion of Ledger as a status symbol with a culture built around it: quality and security of the product must be priorities because only this will result in long-term, successful business;
  • Ledger’s work on increasing ease of use for its users in 2024;
  • Ledger’s transactional business and enabling people to buy, sell, and swap directly into self-custody;
  • speaking to US Representatives and Congress people in Washington DC about self-custody: why it is challenging and how Rogers overcomes those challenges.

Check out the full interview here.

__________

About Ian Rogers


Ian Rogers is the Chief Experience Officer (CXO) at Ledger, a major crypto and NFT hardware wallet manufacturer.

Rogers has spent his career exploring and innovating at the intersection of music, artists, and technology.

Prior to joining Ledger, he spent five years as Chief Digital Officer at LVMH, where he was responsible for building group-level digital excellence and accelerating digital transformation for LVMH Maisons.

Rogers is also renowned for his work in the music industry, where he was the CEO of Beats Music and GM of Music at both Apple and Yahoo.

Also, he built some of the earliest music-related websites in the early ’90s, including Winamp.com, and has been working with Beastie Boys since 1993.

The post Ian Rogers, CXO at Ledger, on Self-Custody, The Future of Hardware Wallets, and The Launch of Ledger Stax | Ep. 328 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> Andreas Brekken, Founder of SideShift.ai, on Bull Run, Meme Coins, and Ethereum Sharding | Ep. 327 https://cryptonews.com/exclusives/andreas-brekken-founder-of-sideshift-ai-on-bull-run-meme-coins-and-ethereum-sharding-ep-327.htm Fri, 19 Apr 2024 15:15:25 +0000 https://cryptonews.com/?p=201058 Andreas Brekken, the founder of SideShift.ai, a platform offering direct-to-wallet trading, discusses buying BTC in 2011, meme coins being beneficial for the crypto space and stress-testing the biggest chains in the sector, multiple markets happening at the same time, and the need to re-examine our interaction with centralized exchanges.

The post Andreas Brekken, Founder of SideShift.ai, on Bull Run, Meme Coins, and Ethereum Sharding | Ep. 327 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> Andreas Brekken, the founder of SideShift.ai, a platform offering direct-to-wallet trading, sat down (in his hammock) for an exclusive interview with the Cryptonews Podcast.

Talking with host Matt Zahab, Brekken recalled how difficult it was for people to buy BTC in 2011, noting that the ease of purchase today contributes to its adoption.

He remarked that meme coins are actually great for the crypto space because they are fun, cheap to get, and generally harmless. Importantly, they are stress-testing the biggest chains in the sector.

The crypto veteran talked about multiple markets happening simultaneously and the potential significance of the Ethereum Dencun upgrade.

Brekken also touched upon the necessity to re-examine our interaction with centralized exchanges and the need for services like SideShift.

In this interview, Brekken discussed:

  • Buying BTC in 2011 vs. today;
  • Multiple markets currently happening at the same time;
  • Rethinking how we interact with crypto exchanges — particularly as the bull run ushers in a new wave of mainstream adoption;
  • How products like SideShift encourage mass adoption;
  • The Ethereum Dencun upgrade;
  • If meme coins are generally good or bad for the crypto space;
  • How increased meme coin trading will show us the limits of current protocols, forcing chains to compete with each other to show who can handle the most traffic.

Brekken gave a wide-ranging exclusive interview, which you can see above or read below.

How the Bitcoin Times Have Changed!


Brekken discovered Bitcoin in 2011.

At that time, he said, there were very few routes for people to get BTC. One option was dark web markets, including the infamous Silk Road.

“But in my case, I’m just too much of a nerd,” Brekken remarked. He didn’t know about this avenue at the time.

But he had an advantage over an average Joe: he was a programmer.

Therefore, Brekken discovered information on BTC online and started learning about the novel technology.

Notably, at the time, anyone interested in BTC needed to install a program on their PC to get it. This program would create addresses and allow users to find a place to buy the coin, receive it, and send it.

This was obviously a much more difficult system than what we have today.

But Brekken said another advantage a programmer or engineer would have at the time is the way they view and think of technology.

They seek to understand how it’s made and how they can build upon it. They’ll to to find a way to improve it, create something similar, find another use case, etc.

Direct-to-Wallet Trading: Recipe for Mass Adoption


And this is how SideShift.ai was created. There was a way to make a piece of tech that would help fulfill a demand, and Brekken went for it.

The team developed an efficient, easy-to-use, newcomer-friendly platform that offers direct-to-wallet trading.

When one uses a centralized crypto exchange, there are many steps to complete before finally getting the coins.

This includes all the necessary log-ins, 2FA, KYC, choosing the deposit, finding the network, waiting for confirmations, and so on, says Brekken.

However, it can get more complicated in certain cases, such as buying a specific meme coin. For example, the user needs to trade BTC for UDTS first before getting WIF.

SideShift.ai performs the trade immediately and delivers the coins to the wallet, the founder said.

“That’s why we call it direct-to-wallet trading because it’s the only way I know to explain that you don’t have to click 700 buttons in order to do something as simple as just going from what you have to what you want.”

There was lots of demand for this service, he added.

But speaking of exchanges, Brekken gave a warning: take your funds out.

The more long-term view for this industry is that people need to stop leaving their money on exchanges. It’s a huge problem, he said.

Simply said, the incentives are not aligned between the user and the exchange.

The exchanges have full control over users’ funds and make money off of it.

Also, they may use the funds without telling users, be attacked, do a rug pull, etc. There are too many red flags.

AI In Name Only


Brekken briefly touched on the ‘AI’ part in ‘SideShift.ai.’

“I’m going to be completely honest with you,” he said, “I just thought it sounded really awesome.”

The closest the company will get to an actual AI is the amount of automation they’ve done.

The company has a small team of people who deal with “quite a lot of volume.”

Yet, they keep everything smooth and stable thanks to “excessive automation internally,” Brekken said.

There’s very little human intervention, he added. “It’s like a giant machine” running nearly everything.

However, when talking to customer support, the team “makes it a bit confusing” for people to know if they’re talking to a human, a machine, or a machine pretending to be human.

“More likely, you might be talking to a human pretending to be a machine,” Brekken said.

And speaking of the team, the founder noted that SideShift.ai is currently hiring for a number of roles, especially engineers.

Meme Coins Are Stress-Testing Major Chains


Commenting on the ongoing meme coin craze, Brekken said that he himself was “really into” Dogecoin when it launched in 2013.

Looking at the craze now, “It was the exact same thing back when there was only Dogecoin, but obviously, this is on steroids.”

There are many more of these coins now, many more communities, and more people involved – even those outside the crypto space. It’s difficult to visit a café without overhearing a conversation about WIF or BONK, Brekken remarked.

But, generally speaking, meme coins are beneficial for the space, Brekken remarked. “I think it’s good in many ways that people are trading meme coins,” he said.

He argued that these coins create fun for friends and communities, that they are harmless, and also an excellent way for people to enter crypto.

Bitcoin’s $60,000-$70,000 price tag can be intimidating for newcomers. Once bought, there’s also a lot to lose.

But with meme coins, it’s a lot easier to afford and trade them.

And this space is growing as well. Now, users have more advanced tools at their disposal trading BONK than they do trading Apple shares, Brekken argued.

Additionally, trading meme coins is potentially becoming a competitor to another giant: sports betting.

“It’s quality fun with your friends,” Brekken said.

Lastly, but importantly, all this activity is stress-testing the technology, specifically the chains these tokens reside and move on.

Solana and Ethereum, in particular, are being stress-tested. Different chains are competing. They must work hard not to fall behind and lose users.

“I will bet you, [the developers] are all working day and night on all these platforms and chains […] to just keep this running and to try to find ways to deal with this record-level high demand for throughput and capacity,” Brekken said.

Multiple Parallel Markets At Work


Another exciting point Brekken made is that we currently seem to be witnessing multiple markets happening simultaneously.

Previously, we’d see one sector at a time significantly rising above others, each with its own cycle.

For example, in the last cycle, there was a decentralized finance (DeFi) summer that turned into a Solana summer. This gradually shifted into a “mania” centered around FTX, and so on.

Today, however, we’re seeing the spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) taking off, the meme coin market continuation, and a new DeFi wave.

It also seems like these three have separate risks and somewhat separate users, Brekken opined.

That said, he hopes that the meme coin cycle will continue to attract more newcomers to the space and encourage users within other cycles to explore other crypto-related markets.

The bull market has been “creeping up on us since the desperation we all felt” when Bitcoin was $20,000-$25,000.

Therefore, Brekken hopes the three different cycles will affect each other positively and prolong this bull run.

“If you’re still alive with a good-looking meme coin portfolio [by the end of summer], I think you are a genius,” he added.

Ethereum Dencun Upgrade and Path to Sharding


Lastly, Brekken briefly discussed certain developments in the space, including the Ethereum Dencun upgrade, which went live in March.

The upgrade aimed to significantly boost the Ethereum ecosystem, reduce Ethereum layer-2 blockchain transaction fees, and pave the way for sharding in the future, which will finally lower Ethereum’s high layer-1 fees.

What surprised Brekken about these Ethereum upgrades is that everybody connected to the Ethereum ecosystem, including other chains, was fully ready at the moment the update went live.

This is a positive development.

There is no longer a need to develop separate software for several years to support an upgrade. These are instantaneous now.

Another notable thing is the ongoing talk about sharding.

Sharding is a solution that optimizes the process of verifying transactions and smart contracts by splitting the blockchain network into partitions called shards.

This way, every node does not need to review the entire transaction history on the network.

Instead, specific nodes are assigned to specific shards, optimizing the process of nodes verifying transactions.

This, said Brekken, has the potential to send ETH to $5,000.

Therefore, the upgrades we’re seeing now are the developers gradually building a path towards sharding. Brekken said it’s a large project that will likely take a few years to complete.

__________

About Andreas Brekken

Andreas Brekken is the founder of SideShift.ai, a platform offering direct-to-wallet trading. To date, the exchange has processed over $1.25 billion in volume.

Brekken first discovered Bitcoin in 2011 and has a deep technical understanding of the cryptocurrency space.

In addition to being a long-term crypto supporter, he has substantial hands-on industry experience.

In 2013, he founded Justcoin.com, a Norway-based cryptocurrency exchange (later acquired by ANX INTL), and then worked as a software engineer at Kraken in 2015 and 2016.

Brekken is also the founder of Shitcoin.com, a wide-reaching crypto content platform.

The post Andreas Brekken, Founder of SideShift.ai, on Bull Run, Meme Coins, and Ethereum Sharding | Ep. 327 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> Vijay Pravin, CEO of bitsCrunch, on AI Enhanced Decentralized Data Analytics, Blockchain Forensics, and Staking Mechanisms | Ep. 326 https://cryptonews.com/exclusives/vijay-pravin-ceo-of-bitscrunch-on-ai-enhanced-decentralized-data-analytics-blockchain-forensics-and-staking-mechanisms-ep-326.htm Tue, 16 Apr 2024 15:54:52 +0000 https://cryptonews.com/?p=199209 Vijay Pravin, the founder and CEO of bitsCrunch, tells us why the team calls itself “the blockchain police,” democratizing data, the merger of crypto and AI, their role in cleaning up the blockchain space from bad actors, the NFT ‘survivors,’ the necessity for integrity and transparency in the Web3 space, and his prediction for the gaming space.

The post Vijay Pravin, CEO of bitsCrunch, on AI Enhanced Decentralized Data Analytics, Blockchain Forensics, and Staking Mechanisms | Ep. 326 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> In an exclusive interview with Cryptonews, Vijay Pravin, the founder and CEO of bitsCrunch, an AI-powered, decentralized NFT data platform, discussed why the team calls itself “the blockchain police” and why data is vital.

Vijay discussed key themes, including democratizing data, the convergence of cryptocurrency and AI, and their collective potential to eliminate malicious entities from the blockchain ecosystem.

Vijay also expanded on the resilience of certain NFTs, labeled as ‘survivors,’ emphasizing the critical need for integrity and transparency within the Web3 domain to foster broader acceptance. He also shared his insights on future trends in the gaming industry.

In this interview, Pravin discussed:

  • the role of AI/ML in blockchain analytics;
  • data integrity and transparency in NFT markets;
  • navigating the regulatory landscape;
  • the ins and outs of staking mechanisms;
  • sustainable economies, network security, and anti-fraud.

Blockchain Police


bitsCrunch is a data analytics company specializing in multi-chain insights for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and digital assets.

It’s an AI-powered, decentralized data platform that enables developers to build NFT applications (dapps).

“We crunch each and every bit of data. That is bitsCrunch for you,” Pravin told the listeners.

Over the past three years, the team has developed a significant blockchain platform with support from industry giants such as Coinbase, Animoca Brands, Chainlink, and Polygon.

Describing themselves as “the blockchain police,” they aim to enhance blockchain transparency.

Their efforts notably support individuals like ZachXBT, a well-known on-chain researcher, by transforming complex blockchain data into formats that are easily understandable. Pravin highlighted their mission: “We help people make their own shots,” Pravin said.

“We help facilitate people like ZachXBTs in the world. And we would like to produce several ZachXBTs in the future.”

Additionally, they actively investigate and address on-chain malicious activities like wash trading and money laundering.

Pravin provided a couple of examples. One is image-level forensics.

If person A takes an image of person B and puts it on-chain as an NFT, earning thousands of dollars, that’s an infringement of what A owns as a brand.

The same goes for companies: B can’t sell company A’s logo as an NFT because it’s an infringement of company A’s intellectual property (IP).

Therefore, bitsCrunch helps brands protect their IPs.

It already has customers on the brand IP protection side and many more customers on the data side, Pravin remarked.

The Beauty of Crypto and AI


Pravin noted that artificial intelligence (AI) is not new: It’s been “with us for more than a decade now.”

However, it has recently taken off like never before.

Notably, bitsCrunch has been one of the earliest proponents of AI in the crypto space. They’ve supported the use of AI “to clean up the blockchain space” for several years now.

“And then if you look at crypto and AI, the beauty is that it can be applied to any domain, any field,” Pravin said. “And when these two converge, then sky is the limit, I would say.”

The CEO explained that data is everywhere – and a lot of it.

The Fortune 500 companies – including Google, Meta, Twitter, Tesla, Microsoft, Amazon, and others – are all very different. But they all use data and produce a lot of it.

Data is invaluable, as it can be applied across platforms, domains, and verticals, Pravin remarked.

The same applies to AI and crypto, he added.

Putting data on-chain creates “a ton of value.” At the same time, AI will help find malicious patterns, “figuring out […] what is good and what is bad.”

Furthermore, with the spot Bitcoin ETF approval and potential Ethereum ETF at the door, “I would say AI + blockchain is going to be huge,” Pravin opined.

Importantly for bitsCrunch, he added, the company is well-positioned to capture that momentum.

The team has indexed five chains: Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, Binance, and Solana.

However, AI will help it sift through the data while indexing other chains as well.

“Exciting times ahead,” Pravin said. “[I’m] looking forward to the next few years and seeing how this space is eventually going to blow up.”

Integrating Solana


And speaking of Solana, bitsCrunch just recently announced the indexing of all Solana blocks.

Pravin described this blockchain as “a beast.” It is “clearly way ahead of some of the other chains in the space,” he argued.

However, its integration didn’t happen overnight. The team had to index more than two terabytes of data.

Moreover, they contacted the Solana Foundation last year. Their foundation and developer teams helped bitsCrunch with the indexing process.

“We wanted to get some tech support because, so far, we have been indexing EVM chains in the past, and Solana is a different beast.”

And because bitsCrunch is a small but growing project, the team was grateful that Solana’s official account retweeted the integration news.

“That shows the trust and the collaboration that we have,” Pravin remarked.

Setting Footprints in NFTs


The team, as the blockchain police, began their work in the NFT space.

The CEO said that they set their footprints during the NFT boom of 2021.

That’s when the company started raising the funds, subsequently seeing major companies backing it.

It was a good time for NFTs, so everybody praised the sector. But bitsCrunch wanted to “look at the dark side of NFTs.”

Notably, very few out of thousands of projects have survived till this day. And some of them have gotten pretty big, establishing major partnerships within and outside the Web3 space.

These include Pudgy Penguins, Azuki, Yuga Labs’ projects such as Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks, and a few others.

“We want to look into what is good, what is bad,” Pravin said. The team wants to “look into the wash trading aspect of the game” and “see who is flipping charts, who is just here to make a quick buck, and we are also here to check what is the impact of money laundering [the result of which is] money flowing into the NFT space.”

And it’s not only over 200 massive brands the company has indexed so far. Artists are using the platform, too.

They index their art pieces, and the platform can detect any malicious activity related to them, including theft.

Stake-and-Earn: Democratizing Data


One of the aspects to stress about bitsCrunch is that it is decentralized.

Major data protocols – such as Chainalysis, Elliptic, Dune Analytics, and Nansen – are immensely valuable, but they are centralized, Pravin said.

Getting data can be very difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. Then when you finally receive it, you may not even understand it.

BitsCrunch wanted to democratize this, Pravin remarked. They wanted to offer readable, quick, simple, and affordable service.

The company’s data package starts at $75 a user, Pravin said.

“We want to democratize the data in a few clicks,” he said. “We don’t care where you are from, what you do. All we need is a wallet, which you can connect to the system, and you get access to the API keys or dashboards in just a few clicks.”

But having all these protocols, centralized and otherwise, is necessary to ensure as much transparency and integrity as possible in the space. This will draw more people in and lead to greater adoption.

Additionally, the team felt that having a token is essential. They never ask people to buy BCUT, Pravin stressed. “It’s all about the protocol. It’s all about what we add as value to the ecosystem,” he said.

The coin currently trades on a number of exchanges, including Bybit, KuCoin, Gate, Crypto.com, CoinList, Uniswap, and others.

Furthermore, people can operate nodes for bitsCrunch.

There are nearly 50 node operators today, in addition to more than 700 people delegating tokens, and more than 7 million tokens staked on bitsCrunch.

The company accomplished this in less than two months since the mainnet launch at the end of February.

“We are glad and humbled to have such numbers,” Pravin said.

Eye on the Games


In the end, Pravin commented on Web3 gaming and its growing popularity.

He said that this has been “a long-waiting domain” for the company to explore. The team has been discussing it since 2019.

A lot of capital has been deployed in this sector over the years, and game developers receive “massive funding.”

However, building games takes a lot of time and effort. “And I strongly believe that this cycle will have a lot more games,” Pravin opined.

That said, bitsCrunch will test a lot of gaming, in addition to the real-world assets (RWAs) and NFTs that will be part of the gaming ecosystem.

“I’m really excited and looking forward to [this],” Pravin said.

__________

About Vijay Pravin

Vijay Pravin is the Founder and CEO of bitsCrunch, a blockchain analytics and forensics company focusing on securing the NFT ecosystem.

Pravin, originally from India, has lived in Munich, Germany, for the last ten years.

The post Vijay Pravin, CEO of bitsCrunch, on AI Enhanced Decentralized Data Analytics, Blockchain Forensics, and Staking Mechanisms | Ep. 326 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> Nikolaj Rosenthal, CEO of Myrmidon, on ETH, Staking-as-a-Service, Non-Custodial Staking, and the Ethereum ETF | Ep. 325 https://cryptonews.com/exclusives/nikolaj-rosenthal-ceo-of-myrmidon-on-eth-staking-as-a-service-non-custodial-staking-and-the-ethereum-etf-ep-325.htm Fri, 12 Apr 2024 16:47:09 +0000 https://cryptonews.com/?p=197810 Nikolaj Rosenthal, former ice hockey star and CEO of non-custodial staking provider Myrmidon, discusses his switch from a professional sports player to a crypto entrepreneur, accepting BTC as salary seven years ago, establishing a staking-as-a-service, new chains coming to Myrmidon soon, why ETFs are useful but going against the basic crypto ethos, how Myrmidon ensures true coin ownership, and the pros and cons of the four staking types.

The post Nikolaj Rosenthal, CEO of Myrmidon, on ETH, Staking-as-a-Service, Non-Custodial Staking, and the Ethereum ETF | Ep. 325 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> Nikolaj Rosenthal, former ice hockey star and CEO of non-custodial staking provider Myrmidon, sat down for another exclusive interview with Cryptonews Podcast host Matt Zahab.

He talked about his gradual and intentional switch from a professional sports player to a crypto entrepreneur, accepting Bitcoin as salary seven years ago, establishing a staking-as-a-service, and chains coming to Myrmidon soon.

Rosenthal told us why ETFs are useful but go against the basic crypto ethos, and how Myrmidon ensures true coin ownership.

Lastly, he discussed the pros and cons of the four staking types: which one is the most difficult but most beneficial earning-wise and which one is the least.

In this interview, Rosenthal discussed:

  • being the first athlete to accept BTC as salary in 2017;
  • Myrmidon, a non-custodial staking provider;
  • what’s going on with Ethereum;
  • the implications of Ethereum ETF;
  • solo-home staking, staking-as-a-service, pooled staking, and centralized staking.

You can watch what Rosenthal told Matt in the video above or read it below.

From Hokey Player to Crypto Player


There’s a pattern in the world of sports, Rosenthal said. Players retire and then feel like they’ve lost their identity. They struggle to live outside the sports world.

Rosenthal didn’t want this happening to him, so he started spreading out career-wise early on.

Being a pro hockey player in the US or Canada pays very well. In Europe, too, a player can “make a pretty good living.” But making money post-retirement is difficult.

Rosenthal returned from the US to Europe, well aware that his career would come to its inevitable end.

Therefore, he went to study and earn his degrees from the Copenhagen Business School.

Also, in 2016, he fell “deep down the rabbit hole” of crypto through Danish Bitcoin entrepreneur Niklas Nikolajsen, who founded Bitcoin Suisse AG in 2013.

This path ultimately led to Rosenthal becoming the first athlete to accept Bitcoin as a salary in 2017.

Many would certainly think this a very strange and/or bad financial decision at the time. Bitcoin and the world of crypto were very different seven years ago, and they were perceived differently in the mainstream.

But it turned out to be an excellent decision, and there are multiple athletes today accepting their salary in crypto.

And “I definitely orange-pilled a couple of boys, that’s for sure,” Rosenthal said.

He noted how relative the term ‘early’ is. In 2016 he used to think of those who had gotten into the space in 2015 or 2013 as being early.

But now that he looks back, he was early too.

Anybody who gets in today will likely be ‘early’ for somebody entering the space in 2030, let’s say.

No Competitor for Ethereum Yet


Rosenthal eventually went on to co-found Myrmidon in 2022. It’s a non-custodial staking provider primarily focused on Ethereum.

The CEO commented that “today, Ethereum is still the biggest L1 chain out there.”

There are some layer-1 blockchains competing with it, including Solana, Avalanche, and Cardano.

But “the bottom line is that Ethereum is still the one to beat, in my view,” Rosenthal remarked.

Since the last time Rosenthal was a guest at Cryptonews Podcast back in 2021, Ethereum has undergone a number of major upgrades. And “everything went smoothly,” he said.

An issue, Rosenthal argued, is that some people may not understand what an update is supposed to do, expecting it to do something else – for example, lower the fees, which are a major pain point for Ethereum.

A negative narrative is then created around the chain when an upgrade doesn’t do what it wasn’t supposed to do in the first place.

Though he doesn’t fully understand why there has been so much negativity recently directed at Ethereum, Rosenthal remarked that it does follow historical patterns of “ETH getting hammered, Bitcoin taking off.”

The latter is up primarily because of the exchange-traded fund (ETF) approval is the US. And Ethereum ETFs are expected to follow.

And while personally he doesn’t “really care about the ETF,” the entrepreneur finds it beneficial for adoption.

That said, “long-term, ETH ETF or not, it doesn’t really matter for the adoption of ETH because I can’t really see a competitor to ETH as it is right now,” Rosenthal opined.

Case Against ETF and For True Ownership


Going deeper into the ETF argument, Rosenthal argued that “it’s a great product for the average person out there.”

It’s an easy way to enter the space and get exposure to the asset class.

But there is a big ‘but’. It’s counter-crypto.

Crypto, Rosenthal says, was invented for people to custody their own assets and always maintain full control.

The Bitcoin ETF is, by default, not a product that allows this.

People make different choices when managing their assets. And it likely can’t be expected that everybody will self-custody.

However, “for me, the underlying asset and owning the underlying asset is really what matters,” Rosenthal said.

This is why the Myrmidon team made the non-custodial solution, Ethereum Staking Dashboard, enabling people to easily stake their ETH without losing control over it.

The stakers don’t give up their keys, and they also earn yield.

Notably, Rosenthal explained, Ethereum staking is a bit different. Most proof-of-stake blockchains use delegation: for example, you delegate ADA or SOL to the stake provider.

However, if you want to stake your ETH, you have to make a transaction to the Beacon chain, and if you want to get the ETH back, you have to send the correct data to unlock it, the entrepreneur said.

“It’s a very complicated process,” Rosenthal opined.

And because it’s difficult for many to understand, they turn to centralized exchanges. This choice comes with its own set of security risks.

Therefore, Myrmidon enabled people to stake their ETH, maintain ownership over it, and exit the staking position easily.

“We’re trying to make a friendly UI for ETH staking, which is not very UI-friendly,” Rosenthal said.

The downside of Myrmidon’s service is that it must support native ETH staking, which means that users must stake 32 ETH per validator.

That said, “as of yet, we haven’t found one single provider [besides Myrmidon] who can safely say that they are truly non-custodial staking providers.”

Hence, unlike Myrmidon, should something happen with the provider, the users’ ETH is gone forever.

The Four Staking Categories: Pros and Cons


Rosenthal went on to discuss the four categories of staking.

These are solo home staking, staking-as-a-service, pooled staking, and centralized staking.

He explained that we can observe these categories as listed from the most to the least decentralized, from the most difficult to the easiest, and from the most secure to the least secure.

Solo home staking is the hardest and requires the most knowledge and work, given the constant updates. But it’s also the most decentralized, the most secure, and the most rewarding.

Staking-as-a-service is what Myrmidon does. It’s a very decentralized way to stake ETH, and it’s also not easy. However, if you know how to operate a wallet, you can choose this option.

Pool staking is a very popular solution. For one, it doesn’t require 32 ETH, but only 0.1 ETH. It’s easy and convenient. But the big issues are smart contract risk and centralization.

The final option is the easiest and the riskiest one: centralized staking. Here, the centralized exchanges do the work for you. They don’t require 32 ETH either. At the same time, stakers give up control over their assets.

Furthermore, the yield gets significantly lower as you go further down the list.

For example, those who use staking-as-a-service, get all base rewards, hence they earn more.

More Chains Incoming


The Myrmidon team has so far primarily been focused on Ethereum.

However, that’s not to say they haven’t worked with other chains or started planning support for additional chains.

“You should definitely check our website because we’re going to pop up new networks over course of 2024,” Rosenthal said.

Just recently, the team launched Cardano, which is “off to a great start.”

Users can now delegate their ADA coins via Myrmidon.

They are also live with the Danish-founded blockchain Concordium.

“We run the largest pool as a third-party provider for that ecosystem,” said Rosenthal.

Therefore, the company supports three networks currently, while the fourth – Fleek – is expected to go live this summer, in Q3.

Myrmidon will not launch any chains before it has customers on them, Rosenthal stressed.

Running various networks without customers is wasting time and effort that can be put elsewhere.

This is especially true for Myrmidon, which hosts everything in-house and does not rely on third parties like Amazon or Google Cloud.

Additionally, they focused on setting up a second server on a different energy grid as another security layer, which can take over should anything happen to the first one.

Therefore, there is plenty to do at all times.

And with their dashboard launched and doing well, these are “great times, exciting times, exciting markets,” Rosenthal concluded.

_________

About Nikolaj Rosenthal

Nikolaj Rosenthal is the Co-Founder and CEO of Myrmidon, a non-custodial staking provider.

He played professional hockey for more than 10 years and was the first athlete to accept Bitcoin as a salary in 2017.

Rosenthal has been involved with crypto since late 2016. This investor and entrepreneur was also the CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange Evonax.com.

He attended Copenhagen Business School, where he earned a BSc in Business Administration and Service Management and an MSc in Organizational Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

The post Nikolaj Rosenthal, CEO of Myrmidon, on ETH, Staking-as-a-Service, Non-Custodial Staking, and the Ethereum ETF | Ep. 325 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> Niraj Pant, Co-founder of Ritual, on The Future of Crypto and AI, Decentralized AI, and Applying ML to DeFi | Ep. 324 https://cryptonews.com/exclusives/niraj-pant-co-founder-of-ritual-on-the-future-of-crypto-and-ai-decentralized-ai-and-applying-ml-to-defi-ep-324.htm Tue, 09 Apr 2024 16:02:37 +0000 https://cryptonews.com/?p=196273 Ritual co-founder Niraj Pant discusses why blockchain and AI haven’t joined hands yet and how blockchain is reaching the point where it’s ready to do that, how the relationship between AI and crypto is mutually beneficial, the lack of AI-enabled dapps and what Revolut is doing about it, the GPU problem and how crypto solves it, why some DeFi aspects are inefficient and how ML can change that, and more!

The post Niraj Pant, Co-founder of Ritual, on The Future of Crypto and AI, Decentralized AI, and Applying ML to DeFi | Ep. 324 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> In an exclusive interview with Cryptonews, Niraj Pant, co-founder of Ritual, the decentralized execution layer for AI, talked about why blockchain and AI haven’t joined hands yet – and how blockchain is reaching the point where it’s ready to do that.

He told us how the relationship between AI and crypto is mutually beneficial, the lack of AI-enabled dapps and what Revolut is doing about it, the GPU problem and how crypto solves it, why some DeFi aspects are inefficient and how ML can change that, and more!

In this interview, Pant discussed:

  • building autonomous worlds and games;
  • building decentralized AI infrastructure
  • applying ML to DeFi;
  • Smart Agents;
  • Story Protocol working with Ritual to train and track models on-chain.

Niraj Pant gave a wide-ranging interview, which you can see above or read below.

Creating the Foundation for AI On-chain


It is notable that AI crypto is emerging now and not, let’s say, during the last cycle, Pant told Cryptonews Podcast host Matt Zahab.

There has been an idea of decentralized AI for a long time. But it faced a number of challenges. It couldn’t reach the level of what is today a growing sub-industry within the crypto space.

A key challenge is that there simple wasn’t the developed transformer (deep learning) architecture as we see it now.

Yet today, we find machine learning (ML) architecture behind numerous large language models used in massive products, such as ChatGPT.

Additionally, there were not even many consumer AI applications to speak of before.

Following the rise of transformer architecture, as well as the creation of ChatGPT and GPT-3 in 2020, “a new renaissance in AI development” has begun.

“We finally saw a big AI consumer use case,” Pant said.

Now, numerous companies and startups are using AI, developing it, and/or raising money for it.

Before all this had happened, bringing AI to blockchains was pretty much impossible. Blockchains could not efficiently support actions such as training, inference, and tuning.

Blockchain is just now reaching the required level of efficiency. We’re seeing improved speed, better cryptography, Layer-2 blockchains, zero-knowledge proofs, and more.

AI may still be a “pie in the sky,” but these developments are “bringing us to a space where we can actually do AI on blockchains.”

Crypto and AI: Bi-directional Benefits


Crypto and AI can help each other, Pant said. There is a “confluence of the two spaces.”

Therefore, the two gain “bi-directional benefits.”

AI is highly centralized. And this is where crypto can help.

AI is basically just a few major products that people use globally (ChatGPT, Midjourney, and Runway, for example), and only a few companies making the models (OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook).

The crypto world, however, is very resistant to the idea of a centralized authority. They realize that hands with too much power in them are bound to abuse it.

It is notable to remember that AI is not going anywhere: nearly all products use it in some way, and “billions of people” will use it daily in a matter of years.

Therefore, having a “decentralized, transparent alternative where you can get privacy, computational integrity, governance rights, ownership amongst the users and the people that contribute to it is really important.”

Meanwhile, AI can also help crypto. There are many interesting use cases, from non-fungible token (NFT) generation, over building customized games, to creating customized movies, and much more.

“We’re really entering this new era where we can combine the infinite abundance of AI with the ownership and self-sovereignty properties you get with crypto,” Pant said.

They are at the opposite ends of the technology spectrum: one is centralizing, and one is decentralizing. Merging them is key.

Missing: AI-enabled Dapps


Before he started working on Ritual, Pant spent six years as a General Partner at Polychain.

He got increasingly interested in AI, while also staying “very close to the crypto infrastructure side of things.” That led him to research the crypto-AI intersection.

While many of the teams he worked with at the time had great ideas, he started noticing that no one was building AI-enabled decentralized applications (dapps).

“That feels like a massive opportunity,” Pant commented. “That’s going to grow in size a lot.”

Therefore, their company, while it started small, is now growing “quite rapidly.” The amount of attention the Ritual team has seen in the space “has skyrocketed.”

The team behind it focused on enabling developers to easily use AI in their smart contracts and on enabling the above-mentioned use cases.

To accomplish this, they built out Ritual in two phases.

The first phase is a system called Infernet.

This is a lightweight library to bridge off-chain compute on-chain. It’s a decentralized oracle network that enables smart contract developers to request computation to be done off-chain from Infernet Nodes and delivered to their consuming on-chain smart contracts via the Infernet SDK.

For example, if a developer wants to create a new NFT mint based on user input, they could build a smart contract that relays the information to the Infernet off-chain compute system, which does the work inside a container, and then returns the result, optionally with proofs or privacy.

The focus today is on EVM-compatible blockchains, but in the future, it will be “really anything.”

The second phase is called the Ritual Chain.

This sovereign, Layer-1 chain extends the ideas around Infernet onto an execution layer where users get more direct proofs, privacy, and on-chain semantics that make it easier to build the applications they want.

It will be an execution layer custom-built to support AI-native operations and enable a new class of applications at the intersection of crypto and AI.

“That’s kind of our roadmap for the next year,” Pant said. “We are looking to do devnet in the summer.”

However, developers can build applications on Infernet and move them to the chain if and when they choose.

The GPU Conundrum and How Crypto Solves It


Niraj Pant told Matt that when it comes to the graphics processing unit (GPU) as a service, “there’s a ton of different vectors that you can innovate on.”

This could be on the geographical side, new market side, incentives with tokens, different types of hardware, being able to coordinate those machines, and more.

Therefore, GPU as a service is “one of the most interesting use cases of crypto AI.”

GPUs can be used for “a whole bunch of tasks.” But buying one – unless you’re a massive company – is extremely time-consuming and expensive.  By the time you get one, the tech has advanced, so “you’re constantly behind.”

Another option is using cloud services. However, these are limited in availability and/or “they just charge an insane premium” on top of the actual raw cost.

These scenarios have resulted in GPUs becoming prohibitive for many startups building AI.

There is a third option: Web2 providers that offer a basic service for more technically savvy users.

While these are great, they don’t have “a full market” like, for example, the crypto market does: buyers and sellers on two sides. Instead, the provider is always on the other side.

Therefore, these companies are “running their own supply.” They have limited hardware, and they get to dictate the deals and with whom they make them.

However, the crypto market could expand the range of hardware suppliers. Perhaps certain groups in Europe or Asia can now open up the supply and satiate the demand.

Another key thing is being able to bridge into more types of hardware through novel, unique architectures. Crypto can do this.

“And one of the great things is that crypto uses a ton of GPUs,” Niraj Pant said.

Meanwhile, Ritual has partnered with an external GPU-as-a-service company called Ionet. They have “a massive cluster of GPUs all around the world” that run Ritual nodes and are able to take down Ritual demand requests.

Using ML to Make DeFi More Efficient


Ritual has recently released a toolkit called Infernet ML.

This is a series of ML workflows that the team has pre-built – a “bunch of examples that allow you to do things like that NFT mint, or use an LLM in a smart contract, or really anything else, across a bunch of different ML frameworks.”

That said, ML helping decentralized finance (DeFi), Niraj Pant remarked, is one of the most interesting applications for crypto AI.

Today, when you launch a DeFi protocol, you’re trying to accomplish a task. Some DeFi protocols are very narrow in what they offer, while others are full-featured systems with many different products.

However, building a protocol is not the end of the job. Now, the team has to manage everything related to it, such as the system itself, the treasury, the protocol security, risk, and much more.

Additionally, a big issue in DeFi today is governance, Pant argued. Decentralized organization (DAO) governance is difficult and “laborious in time and in people.”

It takes days to read through proposals, deliberate, do “politics” to get the required votes, and finally vote.

“And this is very inefficient for many tasks,” Pant said.

However, while human governance will likely remain necessary for treasury management for a long time, said Pant, AI and ML may benefit other aspects.

“This might be things like what’s the interest rate parameter, or what’s the liquidation factor or the collateral factor. You can stream in data from different protocols and stream in price feeds from different exchanges and use that to drive the decision-making around those different factors,” the co-founder explained.

So if the price of an asset that’s on a lending market drops significantly within some bound, this would indicate that a project should tighten up the required collateral and make people shore up so that the protocol doesn’t have additional risk.

Therefore, DeFi can be used with AI in many different ways, Niraj Pant noted, from governance proposals to treasury management to risk parameter management and in many different use cases, such as lending, yield generation, portfolio optimization, and others.

Meanwhile, one of Ritual’s advisors is Tarun Chitra, Founder and CEO of Gauntlet. In the future, Gauntlet could create the models and earn a royalty—a more direct form of revenue than the current one. “So it’s a very exciting future. It’s one that we talk about internally quite a lot,” Pant said.

Also, there’s a lot coming down the pipeline for Revolut. They’ll be pushing “tons” of use cases around AIs and PCs, new types of ways to interact with NFTs, making games more personalized, and much more, Pant concluded.

__________

About Niraj Pant

Niraj Pant is co-founder of Ritual, the decentralized execution layer for artificial intelligence (AI).

Prior to founding Ritual, Pant spent six years as a General Partner at Polychain, leading investment rounds in startups like Offchain Labs, EigenLayer, and Compound.

He began his career as a cryptography researcher in the Decentralized Systems Lab at UIUC.

The post Niraj Pant, Co-founder of Ritual, on The Future of Crypto and AI, Decentralized AI, and Applying ML to DeFi | Ep. 324 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> Matt Duea, Co-Founder of Roobet, on Web3 Casinos and Sports Betting, Crypto Gambling, and The Future of Crypto Gambling Regulations | Ep. 323 https://cryptonews.com/exclusives/matt-duea-co-founder-of-roobet-on-web3-casinos-and-sports-betting-crypto-gambling-and-the-future-of-crypto-gambling-regulations-ep-323.htm Fri, 05 Apr 2024 15:41:51 +0000 https://cryptonews.com/?p=194733 Matt Duea, co-founder of popular betting brand Roobet, talks about the natural connection blockchain and crypto have with the gaming and betting worlds, the difference between Web2 and Web3 gambling, the partnerships with Snoop Dogg and UFC, and why influencer gambling streams are so entertaining.

The post Matt Duea, Co-Founder of Roobet, on Web3 Casinos and Sports Betting, Crypto Gambling, and The Future of Crypto Gambling Regulations | Ep. 323 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> Cryptonews Podcast host Matt Zahab recently sat down for a chat with Matt Duea, co-founder of the popular betting brand Roobet.

Duea talked about the natural connection blockchain and crypto have with the gaming and betting worlds, and how he came to co-found Roobet.

He explained the difference between Web2 and Web3 gambling, touched upon the partnerships with Snoop Dogg and UFC, and told us why influencer gambling streams are so entertaining.

In this interview, Duea discussed:

  • difference between Web3 and Web2 gambling;
  • advancing everyday application of cryptocurrencies;
  • official social casino of the UFC, roobet.fun;
  • future of crypto gambling regulations: how regulations might evolve and impact the industry;
  • blockchain and crypto integration: blockchain’s role in Roobet’s operations and supported cryptocurrencies.

You can read what the two Matts talked about below or watch their discussion above.

Ethereum Predictions (Don’t) Come True


Before Roobet became one of the behemoths in the space, Matt Duea was working a job that would prove indispensable to the creation of this betting brand.

He worked on a marketing team, a position that allowed him to meet and collaborate with various people.

“And when they had a new project kind of rolling up, that is how I got on board,” he said.

The position allowed him to educate himself about blockchain “full time,” and about its convergence with video games.

Speaking of which, Duea himslef was a gamer, so the concept of digital currencies was very familiar to him.

So in 2017, Duea became increasingly interested in blockchain, crypto, tokenization, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and he started “poking around that whole crazy world of people exchanging and trading these virtual items.”

From then on, he went “full steam” ahead, exploring this industry and its community.

Ultimately, the marketing company he worked for joined with a blockchain company. “And we were doing all kinds of cool stuff as a marketing team, introducing these concepts to the world. And I was just enamored by it,” Duea said.

Interestingly, in 2018, “nobody cared,” he said. Even their company was convinced that NFTs on Ethereum would never work because it’s too expensive and too slow.

They were both right and wrong.

Ethereum did end up being very expensive.

“But I guess the thing that was wrong was people were willing to pay the gas,” said Duea.

Not Your Typical Casino


Asked to describe Roobet, Matt Duea said that it was founded by an online community with its online community in mind.

Before he joined the project, it housed a few house games and “a small, quiet, sleepy community.”

But the team worked hard to make it an active space for all involved. They often say that Roobet’s more than a casino – it’s a club.

It may not be the biggest, said Duea, but Roobet aims to be the best and the most fun.

And crypto made sense as part of this business. One of its benefits is that it provides a provably fair mechanism that helps everybody feel confident that outcomes can’t be manipulated.

Furthermore, per Duea,

“We don’t look like your typical casino because we didn’t come from that space. We came from the gaming space.”

The team merged the ideas of crypto, blockchain, entertainment, and betting when they were locked inside during the COVID-19 pandemic.

At that point, “I think nerds really stood out because we were the ones that knew how to play around and have a good time and engage with people socially online.”

At the same time, everybody else was “really paying attention to their digital selves.”

“It was like betting had a golden moment,” Duea said.

Notably, their game Crash became a massive success. The world loved it, Duea remarked, and it became a huge part of how people got to know Roobet. “Many people associate Roobet with ‘the rocket game’.”

There is still a house version of Crash to this day.

The team continued adding house games, as well as “the biggest global providers.”

Moreover, Roobet provides a unique rewards system, trying to “stay true to our gamer, crypto-first type of mentality when it comes to product.”

The platform also accepts fiat in order to include as many users as possible.

Web3 Gambling vs Web2 Gambling


The major difference between a Web2 and a Web3 gambling platform is that the latter offers crypto support.

Roobet has “a fascination and a love” for all things crypto, blockchain, gaming, and internet culture. Odds are that many other operators will not share the sentiment.

Also, from a licensing standpoint, most can’t “really touch” crypto. Very few licenses today are willing to support a brand trying to innovate using this type of technology.

However, this is likely to change over the next few years as adoption increases, Duea opined.

Moreover, crypto is often being villainized and met with resistance to acknowledge its legitimacy.

It is not easy to set up all the licensing, and there needs to be constant communication with different regulatory bodies and constant monitoring of all business aspects and potential risks.

Furthermore, Duea remarked that it is difficult for Web2 brands – especially large ones – to adopt a new payment type overnight.

Even for Roobet, there were bumps on the road. For example, when they integrated Dogecoin (DOGE), there were commenters who laughed at the decision, asking whom it was for.

“Well, who it’s for is the Doge community. Who it’s for is the crypto community,” Duea said.

And while everybody can speculate about Doge’s intrinsic value, “once you’re done arguing over that, if you want to gamble it, come on over to Roobet.”

That said, Duea hopes that more platforms will adopt crypto as it becomes better understood and more popular.

This is relevant, he argues, because crypto would become substantially more accessible – not everybody has access to platforms like Roobet, but they do to many other platforms globally.

It is also important to Duea himself. He wants to see crypto technology more celebrated and less demonized. He also wants to see people make money, he added.

Besides, when people start using crypto for betting, they certainly pay more attention to it, because now they’ve got “skin in the game.”

Streaming Dopamine


Online betting is not going anywhere.

One of the noticeable examples is the emergence of massive streamers gambling millions in front of a captivated audience glued to their screens.

It’s gotten popular during the lockdowns, and it’s still going strong.

Duea opined that gambling content has become a form of entertainment. “Casino content is very entertaining to watch and similar to watching maybe your favorite steamer playing a video game on that last level trying not to die.”

It’s a form of a parasocial relationship, he added, providing a dopamine hit.

And it is unlikely to go away. Gambling and sports betting are actually becoming more familiar to many people.

Also, content creators can monetize it better than advertising or merchandise.

Locking Up Big Partnerships


Partnerships are “cool opportunities” for Roobet to be a part of “these very long-standing legacies” and the innovation they’re pushing for, Matt Duea remarked.

In April 2023, Roobet announced a $420,000 giveaway in partnership with their “Chief Ganjaroo Officer, Snoop Dogg.”

Snoop Dogg has a “classic approach” to business, Duea said, “old school” in many ways. He conducts business very straightforwardly.

And the collaboration with him is deeper than just a betting sponsorship.

“I think when it comes to crypto, entertainment, supporting creators, […] when it comes to helping people own their work and build platforms under themselves that allow artists and creators to feed themselves, long term, and build businesses – those are the things that we realized very early Snoop connects with.”

In July 2023, Roobet.fun became the official social casino of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) in a multi-year deal.

The platform finds the combination of the sport’s brutality and its origin stories interesting to be a part of.

The fighters are like real-life action figures, Duea said.

There are both betting and gaming elements there, he suggested. Fighters “go in, and they just don’t know what’s going to happen. […] And it really gets your adrenaline going just being around it.”

Making partnerships continues. Endorsements from big names, of course, help, said Duea, but it’s not enough to bring in customers.

“It is more of a trust-building thing,” he added. In the end, you must let the product speak for itself.

__________

About Matt Duea

Matt Duea is an entrepreneur and a co-founder of Roobet, a betting brand for the next generation of gamers, and part of the group behind Roobet.fun and Roobet.com.

The post Matt Duea, Co-Founder of Roobet, on Web3 Casinos and Sports Betting, Crypto Gambling, and The Future of Crypto Gambling Regulations | Ep. 323 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> Luke Barwikowski, CEO of Web3 Game Pixels, on The Current State of Web3 Gaming, Growing to 500K Daily Active Users, and Building on Ronin Blockchain | Ep. 322 https://cryptonews.com/exclusives/luke-barwikowski-ceo-of-web3-game-pixels-on-the-current-state-of-web3-gaming-growing-to-500k-daily-active-users-and-building-on-ronin-blockchain-ep-322.htm Tue, 02 Apr 2024 15:21:26 +0000 https://cryptonews.com/?p=193082 Luke Barwikowski, the founder and CEO of Ronin-based social Web3 game Pixels, discusses Pixels’ development and successes, its move from Polygon to Ronin, the token going live on Binance, what it takes to launch a Web3 game, and why projects should wait before launching a token.

The post Luke Barwikowski, CEO of Web3 Game Pixels, on The Current State of Web3 Gaming, Growing to 500K Daily Active Users, and Building on Ronin Blockchain | Ep. 322 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> In an exclusive interview with Cryptonews, Luke Barwikowski, the founder and CEO of Ronin-based social Web3 game Pixels, discussed his early start in the coding space and his move into Web3 gaming.

He talked about Pixels’ development and successes, what it takes to launch a Web3 game, and why projects should wait before launching a token.

The founder also touched upon Pixels move from Polygon to Ronin, as well as their work with Binance.

In this interview, Barwikowski discussed:

  • current state of Web3 gaming and its future;
  • how Pixels differs from other Web3 games;
  • Ronin migration – move from Polygon to Ronin;
  • achieving 500,000 daily active users and 4.5 million in token revenue in the last 30 days;
  • Pixels building the biggest Web3 casual games company — aiming for a similar impact to Zynga’s influence on Web2 gaming.

You can read what Luke and Matt talked about below, or you can watch the full podcast episode above.

Game Maker, K’NEX Winner, and Bitcoin Miner


Barwikowski started young. At just 11 or 12, he began using a program called GameMaker and its scripting language. He made mini-games for his friends.

He taught himself scripting languages, thinking about how it allows him to build “without any limits.”

Interestingly, more than a decade ago, he won a nationwide contest for building with the construction toy system K’NEX, and:

“I thought coding was really cool because I basically got unlimited K’NEX. I can just build whatever I want.”

From then, Barwikowski moved into Web development and other areas.

At one point, he even mined Bitcoin (BTC). At the time, one could still use a home computer. Barwikowski could “just leave my parents’ computer on and make money.”

However, he was wiping his hard drives all the time, as he was in his hacking phase, “so I lost all that Bitcoin, but it’s fine.”

After he moved from coding to entrepreneurship, he sold his first app at just 18.

Creating Pixels


Pixels, founded by Barwikowski, is a social casual Web3 game powered by the Ronin Network.

Unlike many games, even similar ones, Pixels has seen significant traction. It has surpassed a whopping 700,000 daily active addresses and 500,000 daily active users.

Before working on Pixels, Barwikowski was working on a different product. It was an “8-bit pixel art product” where people could host mixers, holiday parties, and other events.

At that time, there were just three people on the team, briefly competing with a product called Gather Town: “a combination of Zoom and an online game where you walk around and if you get close to people, it opens up video chats. It was spatial video,” he said.

This is the technology he started selling quickly to large companies, including Apple, Uber, Rippling, and Twitter.

However, while still working on that first app, its creator realized that it “wasn’t the best business.” The best use-case scenario for these virtual spaces is people gathering about once a week for an hour. And larger companies used it once a quarter with no other need for it.

In 2021, however, Barwikowski noticed the massive popularity of Axie Infinity.

Furthermore, as he studied economics, “the idea of building an economy ground up inside of the context of cryptocurrency made total sense to me.”

And having a piece of tech in their hands they did not know what to do with, they started forming ideas of an avenue to move into.

“We kind of turned that tech into Pixels,” Barwikowski said.

Bottoms-up Growth Approach


Barwikowski noted that Pixels may look simpler than it is. But there’s “a lot of depth” to it, he said.

It’s 40% games and 60% everything else, said the founder, “and I think a lot of people in the space underestimate how much of the rest you need to build in addition to a game to make a successful Web3 game.”

Therefore, the team is very focused on what Barwikowski calls the Growth Engine, in line with their long-term plans and Pixels’ roadmap.

Much of what they do is centered around the incentive design and “basically a new form of user acquisition.”

Per the founder, Web3, if used properly, is an extremely powerful tool. It unlocks new types of ways for games to grow that don’t exist inside of Web2.

“And what we’ve been experimenting with is basically what we call a bottoms-up growth approach,” he said.

In Web2, games grow from performance marketing. They target a specific audience, spend money per user, and “then it just becomes a game of math for them.”

They’ll decide if this game is successful or not right there. If it is, they’ll pour millions into advertising. And they need to raise millions to do that.

In Web3, the team takes the complete opposite approach to the growth strategy, Barwikowski said. They aim to create the best incentive structures to “help our users help us grow.”

That way, very little money is spent on user acquisition, for example, a few thousand dollars for giveaways.

“But we haven’t done any paid advertising, no performance marketing, anything like that,” Luke Barwikowski said.

And this is how they can grow games in a new way that makes their growth strategies hyper-competitive against Web2 games.

Furthermore, they can take this growth engine built for Pixels and eventually apply it to other games in the ecosystem.

Major Moves: Ronin and Binance


Pixels was established in April 2020 on Polygon. However, the team announced its migration to Ronin in September 2023.

The Pixels team has a lot of respect for the Polygon team and the tech they built, Barwikowski said.

But the hardest part of Web3 is user acquisition and distribution, he added. It’s difficult and costly.

Ronin “had a level of distribution that doesn’t exist anywhere else inside of Web3 right now.” They’ve already done the hard work of onboarding millions of users onto their chain through Axie Infinity. “That is extremely valuable.”

Per Luke Barwikowski,

“I kind of viewed Ronin as almost like a new type of publisher in a way where they have access to a great dedicated user base.”

People loved Axie, and even though Axie’s DAU was slightly down, there were still many users in that ecosystem “that could be resurrected.”

This was “very true,” Barwikowski said, and many Pixels users now are from the Ronin ecosystem – the majority are (former) Axie Infinity players.

Therefore, the growth began with the core Axie Infinity user base that Ronin had built out.

Now, the game is getting very strong traction inside Southeast Asia and other markets.

One more benefit of moving to Ronin, he said, is knowledge.

There were many who tried giving the Pixel team advice about Web3 Gaming – but they themselves never launched a Web3 Game. They didn’t understand what actually comes with it.

The Ronin Sky Mavis team knows what they are talking about, said Barwikowski, so their knowledge, mentorship, and guidance have been invaluable.

Meanwhile, the team revealed that Binance rolled out the PIXELS token.

Binance “probably understands Web3 and tokenomics better than anybody” whom Barwikowski talked with over the last two to three years.

Their due diligence process is extensive, long, and intense, he added, but ultimately worthwhile for both parties.

Binance wanted to “make sure that we had something that was sustainable, of real value […] They have a lot of concern for the things they launch.”

Putting Tokens Before the Game is Easier, But….


There has been a trend in Web3: many teams launch tokens first, while the games come out years later.

The token may start strong but goes to cents because there’s no ecosystem.

Pixels took the opposite approach.

Barwikowski argued that teams launch tokens sooner than they should simply because it’s the easier thing to do.

“Actually having something that’s ready to use a token is quite difficult,” he stated. Launching a token is “a very large commitment” and shouldn’t be taken lightly.

It took Pixels much thought, preparation, and experimentation to get to this point.

Moreover, they had a soft currency as a Web3 currency, BERRY. This helped the team understand better how to manage a live Web3 currency before actually launching the Pixel token.

And yeah, we’re really glad that we got the lessons that we learned through this first go because otherwise, this second go maybe wouldn’t have been successful, right?

The founder advised that a project – be it a token, a game, or something else – should always keep asking itself why it exists, what it aims to accomplish, and what value it adds.

These may seem like simple questions, “but the answers and the things that you learn are not so clear at first,” Barwikowski said.

One needs to be in this space to understand and build an idea around how all these Web3 components should actually interact inside of a game.

Meanwhile, this is still a very experimental company, the founder said, and the community knows that. They’re all testing the game together.

Unlike many other projects, he said,

“We build in public, and we build with community.”

What doesn’t work in the first iteration is fixed for future use.

Per Luke Barwikowski, the team still has “probably one to two years of really fine-tuning what this looks like inside of this first game that we’re building out, Pixels, the game everybody’s playing and enjoying right now. The ambition is much more in the future.”

Additionally, the next chapter of gaming is going to be play-to-earn, and Barwikowski is “all in.” It’s possible to make it sustainable, he argued, and the company “that cracks that has a huge opportunity in front of them.”

__________

About Luke Barwikowski

Luke Barwikowski is the founder and CEO of Pixels, the largest web3 game by DAU.

With over 2.5 million total players, Pixels is a social, casual Web3 game powered by the Ronin Network, focusing on farming, exploration, and creation in an open world.  As CEO, Barwikowski says, his mission is to build the biggest Web3 casual games company.

His background in software engineering started at 12, and he built and sold his first app at 18.

Luke Barwikowski holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Economics from the University of Michigan.

The post Luke Barwikowski, CEO of Web3 Game Pixels, on The Current State of Web3 Gaming, Growing to 500K Daily Active Users, and Building on Ronin Blockchain | Ep. 322 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> Dominic Williams, Founder of DFINITY, on Decentralized AI, AI Dapps, Hosting AI Models on the Blockchain, and Multichain DeFi | Ep. 321 https://cryptonews.com/exclusives/dominic-williams-founder-of-dfintiy-decentralized-ai-dapps-on-the-blockchain-multichain-defi.htm Fri, 29 Mar 2024 17:22:34 +0000 https://cryptonews.com/?p=191994 Dominic Williams, the Founder of DFINTIY Foundation, a major contributor to Internet Computer, discusses the future of AI, its ‘perfect partnership’ with smart contracts and blockchain, how AI can help average Joe and Jane perform complex trades with verbal instructions, the difference between ICP as a crypto cloud from other blockchains, and why it’s currently the only one in the “third lane.”

The post Dominic Williams, Founder of DFINITY, on Decentralized AI, AI Dapps, Hosting AI Models on the Blockchain, and Multichain DeFi | Ep. 321 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> Cryptonews Podcast host Matt Zahab recently sat down for an exclusive interview with Dominic Williams, the Founder and Chief Scientist of the DFINITY Foundation, a major contributor to the Internet Computer (ICP) blockchain and avid AI enthusiast.

Williams discussed the future of AI, its ‘perfect partnership’ with smart contracts and blockchain, and how AI can help average Joe and Jane perform complex trades with verbal instructions.

He further explained what differentiates Internet Computer as a crypto cloud from other blockchains, and why it’s currently the only one in the “third lane.”

In this interview, Williams discussed:

  • decentralized AI (DeAI);
  • why AI projects should be decentralized;
  • why dapps should get into AI;
  • building out a world-class content studio;
  • hosting AI models on the blockchain;
  • multichain DeFi;
  • decentralized cloud computing.

Dominic Williams gave a wide-ranging exclusive interview, which you can watch above or read below.

The Future of AI is Smart Contracts


Sitting in a new studio in the basement of Zurich HQ, Williams discussed the promising future of AI.

The Internet Computer (ICP) blockchain aims to function as a decentralized cloud. It would enable AI models to operate entirely on the blockchain without centralized cloud providers like Amazon Web Services.

Williams opined that “the long tail of AI, where people run their own models, is probably one where AI runs smart contracts on blockchains.”

And this is possible today on the Internet Computer blockchain.

Everyone in crypto is currently talking about AI: blockchains for AI, tokens for AI, ChatGPT integration that people can use to put chat into their Web3 service, and much more.

And all that is great, said Williams. However, DFINITY is more focused on the fundamentals.

The project’s mission is to reinvent computing on blockchain. This means that they see blockchain as it is today on the Internet Computer.

Smart contracts on the Internet Computer are a bundle of web assembly bytecode and persistent memory pages, and they run in parallel. They directly serve user experiences in end users’ browsers.

This blockchain specifically, said Williams, is capable of acting like a “crypto cloud where you can build anything with smart contracts.”

This allows it to process some 330,000-350,000 Ethereum-equivalent transactions a second.

Moreover, some of these smart contracts are now packing up to 400 gigabytes of persistent memory, said Williams, providing enough memory and compute power to run an AI.

“And what we’ve done at DFINITY,” Williams added, “is worked on technology that’s made it possible for the Internet Computer blockchain to run computation at scale. Today, it hosts many orders of magnitude more data and computation than traditional blockchains. And that’s why it’s able to run AI smart contracts.”

AI and Blockchain are Perfect Partners


It’s old news that OpenAI took the world by storm. However, per Williams, it and similar projects are “centralization on steroids.”

However, he said, the good news is that, while these large language models with huge amounts of money do grab a lot of attention, “in the future we’re going to see millions of individual AI models running.” These will focus on specific tasks.

Actually, we’re already interacting with AIs on a daily basis. A common example are services like TikTok or Instagram. This kind of content recommendation neural networks, for example, will be very prevalent in the Web3 field, Williams remarked.

There are some key things to pay attention to, the founder warned.

There will be standalone large language models that coordinate organizations. An example is Delphi AI, which connects to all aspects of a technology company running it: the calendar, Slack, GitHub – any and all apps.

This means that the AI model will have access to all of this organization’s most sensitive data. And it’s going to become the number one target for hackers.

Furthermore, a malicious actor could infiltrate the company and feed the AI misinformation. The AI can’t tell the difference between fake and real, and it becomes corrupted.

Therefore, employers within the organization should interact with this type of AIs only with a strong blockchain-based authentication.

Also, the organization would be fully dependent on the AI. Should this AI run on traditional infrastructure and something mundane goes wrong – a piece of equipment breaks, for example – and the AI goes offline, it would be “incredibly disruptive.”

All this serves to show that AIs must be tamper-proof. Williams said this is achieved through smart contracts.

When AI is accessed via strong authentication through blockchain, “that the AI is unstoppable.”

Therefore, said Williams, “when you think about it, AI and blockchain fit together perfectly. And blockchain is the only way of creating a tamper-proof, unstoppable compute platform.”

All this said, if you want the absolute most efficient AI, you’d run it on a dedicated AI cloud, the founder added.

Power of AI-Based DeFi


Blockchain is complex. Crypto, decentralized finance (DeFi), decentralized apps (dapps), and other sectors of the industry are difficult for the everyday user to understand on the tech level.

“Things start getting complex if you really have to enable people to create almost arbitrary instructions,” Williams argued.

However, this is where AI can come in. Users can just tell it what they want.

Should a project catch a user’s eye, they can get their phone out and verbally provide instructions to an AI crypto wallet that will then carry out a transaction.

Williams provided another example. A user can instruct the AI to sell 5 WBTC if WBTC on Ethereum reaches $100,000 and only if the slippage is less than X.

The AI will then display a concise pseudocode – a simple one that layman can understand – and, if the users likes it, “they press confirm and boom, it’s done.”

Therefore, there is also the convenience aspect:

“The system can make it possible for normal people to create much more complex actions.”

On the Internet Computer, smart contracts can be invoked in a heartbeat, Williams noted. They can be periodically woken up to, for example, check a price oracle and behave according to instructions that have been previously made.

It allows people to buy and sell crypto and make trades conveniently, as well as create complex default actions based on conditions.

Also, it’s very easy to create a simple swap interface.

While the product is not finalized yet, the first AI demo includes image classification. Users can upload a photograph, and AI will identify it.

DFINITY is also working with partners and AI experts, and “they’ve got various things they want to run on the Internet Computer.”

The project’s ideas include face recognition, which would enable fully autonomous KYC.

Hosting AI Models on Blockchain


Running AI as a smart contract involves a certain amount of replication.

The Internet Computer allows users to choose the level of replication. On a standard system subnet, it’s doing 13x replication, Williams said.

In the future, there may be lower trust AI subnets, which only have 4x replication, which still gives very impressive security and resilience, he argued.

And the higher the level of replication, the more queries you can do.

Currently, the Internet Computer’s limitation is the amount of main memory that a smart contract has: 4GB each. That’s because it’s still running 32-bit WebAssembly (wasm).

However, said Williams, “I’m really excited about this. I’m pleased to say that we’re moving to 64-bit wasm soon, which completely removes that restriction and will probably increase the maximum amount of main memory to 32GB or something like that.”

This will enable the blockchain to run large language models. (For explanation purposes, large language models include the GPT-3 and GPT-4 from OpenAI, LLaMA from Meta, and PaLM2 from Google.)

Meanwhile, DFINITY’s pipeline already includes Single Instruction/Multiple Data (SIMD) instructions. They will be put into the smart contract execution environment to “massively” speed up these AI smart contracts.

“And we’ve got a whole lot of other things in the works too,” Williams said. First, they plan to host many AI demos.

Furthermore, they’re working on two major projects: one is Utopia, and the other is Orbit – an open source project that will enable users to create a completely decentralized, institutional-grade, cross-chain crypto custody solution on the Internet Computer.

Creating Utopia


Speaking of future development, Williams noted two main areas the team is focusing on.

One is helping optimize the Internet Computer to run AI so it can run larger and larger models and do so more efficiently.

The other is Utopia, which will enable the enterprise sector, governments, NGOs, and others, to run like private Internet Computers that can integrate with the public Internet Computer and with each other.

People using Utopia to create these private clouds will “just be focused on the fact that online systems and services are tamper-proof and unstoppable.”

Another important aspect to note is that the team behind the Internet Computer is creating advances and milestones all the time – yet there is no “fanfare.”

On other blockchains, there are really trivial features “wrapped up in this big release with a fancy name, and then it’s marketed to hell.”

But Internet Computer “isn’t the best” at marketing itself. Williams noted that it tends to be too tech-focused.

This is also something they’re working to correct.

A great example of this is something called deterministic time slicing. It’s a huge achievement, Williams said. It essentially shows that the Internet Computer is a genuine, decentralized operating system.

And while operating systems like Google’s Android, Apple’s iOS, OSX, Windows, or Linux run on a single computer, the ICP stack “works as a kind of operating system that runs across multiple compute units.”

These “things are so much more further in advance than what people are used to on blockchain,” Williams said.

The Three Lanes of Blockchain Technology


Lastly, in connection with the previous discussion, Williams noted that there are three lanes when it comes to blockchains.

The first comprises blockchains dedicated to hosting a ledger.

The second lane is for blockchains that host smart contracts.

The third lane houses “the world computer blockchain.” This is where Internet Computer is, and it’s difficult to communicate that, Williams says.

People assume it resides in lane two, that it’s one of the traditional blockchains hosting smart contracts with “less compute capacity than a Raspberry Pi.”

However, this blockchain is already a serverless cloud where users create online systems and services using smart contract software.

This is not the same as what the leading blockchains have to offer, Williams said. The difference is relevant to communicate.

Blockchains tend to store “very tiny amounts of data and perform very tiny amounts of computing. […] The difference between where blockchain is today and where it has to go to become a crypto cloud is a long one,” Williams concluded.

__________

About Dominic Williams

Dominic Williams is the Founder and Chief Scientist of the DFINTIY Foundation, a major contributor to the Internet Computer (ICP) blockchain.

He is a crypto theoretician and entrepreneur. He has been involved in the blockchain space since 2013. Prior to that, he was an engineering entrepreneur who created multiple internet technologies and products.

Williams specializes in distributed computing and crypto network theory, having proposed multiple innovations that are in use today.

The post Dominic Williams, Founder of DFINITY, on Decentralized AI, AI Dapps, Hosting AI Models on the Blockchain, and Multichain DeFi | Ep. 321 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> Gerald Heydenreich, Founder of EtherMail, on Web3 Email, Tokenization, and The Future of Email | Ep. 320 https://cryptonews.com/exclusives/gerald-heydenreich-founder-of-ethermail-on-web3-email-tokenization-and-the-future-of-email-ep-320.htm Tue, 26 Mar 2024 16:50:45 +0000 https://cryptonews.com/?p=189411 Gerald Heydenreich talks about his path from Web1 to Web3, the similarities between Web1 and Web3, reinventing email, what EtherMail is, and why it’s an industry changer.

The post Gerald Heydenreich, Founder of EtherMail, on Web3 Email, Tokenization, and The Future of Email | Ep. 320 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> In an exclusive interview with Cryptonews, Gerald Heydenreich, the founder of Web3 email platform EtherMail, talked about his path from Web1 to Web3, the similarities between Web1 and Web3, and reinventing email, which is used by 4.3 billion people globally.

The veteran entrepreneur further explained what EtherMail is and why it’s an industry changer.

In this episode, Gerald Heydenreich discussed:

  • the launch of the new Email-as-a-Wallet product;
  • EtherMail backstory and advertising platform;
  • the upcoming token and mobile app launches;
  • the future of email and how it could change email commerce forever;
  • emails not going anywhere, as 320 billion are sent every day.

You can watch the full podcast episode above or read some of what Heydenreich and Matt chatted about below.

Going From Web1 to Web3


One of the many interesting facts about Heydenreich is that his start was essentially in Web1 with his first business.

It was a crazy time – a new frontier – and it was very similar to what we’re seeing today, he argued.

“It was the same hype, the same craziness, the same crazy parties, the crazy IPOs and everything.”

Heydenreich says he loved this time filled with fundamental changes and “real visionaries.”

There was a “paradigm shift,” offering many new opportunities to those who wanted to seize them.

Web2, he suggests, is different. “A lot of the spaces have been staked, basically. People know exactly where the big players are.”

But then, a new era came. “It’s a blank level playing field for everybody. And you can really start from scratch and re-innovate.”

Gerald Heydenreich found that he was a place in Web3: learning and getting a lot of input on the one hand and, on the other, giving “a little bit back” of what he’s learned over the past two decades in Web1 and Web2 eras.

He can use the lessons he learned in the traditional building and apply them to something new. “So that’s the reason why I made the jump,” Heydenreich said.

The “triggering moment,” he said, was realizing – through Álvaro Morte’s NFT collection – just how quickly some non-fungible tokens (NFTs) can sell for a lot of money.

Following that moment, the entrepreneur dug deep to understand the crypto sector, “realizing, wow, there’s so many opportunities out there.”

Co-founder Shant Kevonian found that many projects don’t have a way to communicate effectively, asking: “Why don’t we try email and connect a wallet to an email?”

EtherMail was born.

Reinventing Email


A major step toward the much-desired mainstream adoption is creating a crypto-focused product that everyone would want to use. And what better than emails, used globally, every day, by 4.3 billion people?

But another question is, Heydenreich said, why hasn’t somebody done it already?

Per the entrepreneur, there is an inherent mindset problem sometimes, specifically with ‘degens.’

“There is a tendency to get away from everything that was there and build everything completely new.”

The assumption is that whatever existed before is inherently bad.

However, many things have the potential to evolve and improve.

Furthermore, it’s really difficult to kill something so widespread: email is the second-largest communication tool on the planet, used by individuals and businesses alike.

And that’s not all. Nobody owns email, said Heydenreich. It’s a protocol.

Communication is a marketplace. There’s a sender and a receiver. So it’s much easier if you already have a communication channel used by millions – who already know what it is – and then upgrade it.

“And that was the initial trigger for us to say, let’s reinvent email. Let’s reimagine email for Web3 by adding the features which are really great.”

With all that said, email is the best-suited product to onboard users from Web2 into Web3, Heydenreich remarked.

This method has proved to be successful so far: people understand how to enter Web3 via email and wallet-to-wallet communication.

For example, when making a purchase, these emails offer users transparency into their actions, security against scams, signing transactions within the email, and a full transaction record.

EtherMail has released the app into the iOS and Android stores. In the beginning, it has “some basic features, but step by step, we’ll actually really fill it out into a [Web3] gateway,” the founder said.

The Three Layers of EtherMail


EtherMail is a Web3-based email communication service that utilizes blockchain to facilitate anonymous, peer-to-peer (P2P) communication among users.

Per the website, its foundational principles are:

  • anonymous communication must be possible;
  • users should be compensated in proportion to how valuable they are to advertisers;
  • users should be able to communicate with each other freely.

So, EtherMail is essentially three different things at the same time, Heydenreich told the viewers.

Number One: The Inbox Email

The wallet address at EtherMail.io is used as any other email with additional benefits that only Web3 allows. You can receive token- and NFT-related emails in your inbox.

Depending on the type of wallet used, the founder said, users give out only the amount of information they want. Using the purchase example from above, they provide only the information necessary to buy what they want to.

Furthermore, instead of a 12-or-so-step process to buy something through an email offer, this solution can do so in two steps. “So it makes a huge difference because all of a sudden, the email is payment, identification, and encryption.”

Whatever currency the two parties agree on will be sent. “At the beginning, perhaps it’s USDC because the company might not be willing to accept cryptocurrencies. But in the future, they might also accept ETH.”

“And the beauty” is that there is no reason to urge businesses to change systems: they already use emails.

Another example is that users can send money via email because it’s a wallet-to-wallet transaction.

Number Two: The Company Side

On the sender side, the email looks at what the wallet contains and, based on activity, can send customized emails, Heydenreich said.

The system can also look at the smart contract layer and provide the company with a self-updating registry of all the emails of the current holders of that company’s token and NFT.

“It is ensuring that you always have an updated information connection to the people who own your assets.”

Another example is the future tokenization of assets, stocks, and bonds, among other things.

The wallet will enable a direct communication channel between the issuer of those assets and the holder for as long as the holder has them in the wallet.

Number Three: Changing The Way Advertisement Is Done

“The EtherMail solution allows advertisers and users to collectively provide a high-quality email marketing and communication experience in which both parties know what they’re getting from each other,” the website says.

Today, we receive a lot of spam in our inboxes, and if we are interested in a service/product, we need to subscribe and give permission to receive promotional content. We also lose track of these permissions.

Companies may also decide to sell our data, or it can be stolen in a security breach.

Web3 changes this, says Gerald Heydenreich. The permission layer will go to the user. EtherMail’s privacy wall lets users define from whom they’re willing to receive advertisements.

“We essentially give back advertising money to the users because today, of course, Facebook, Google, they don’t share their advertising with you.”

EtherMail converts a significant portion of the advertising revenue into the soon-to-be-launched email token (EMT) and gives it to the users, Heydenreich said.

They aim to make it a universal email token, Heydenreich noted. They will be releasing it, not on a time-based schedule, but on a user-based schedule, to ensure that there is a supply and demand.

“We believe that the invasion of your privacy in your inbox means your time,” Heydenreich said. This is compensation for the time you took to open it, read it, delete it, interact with it, invite other users, etc.

Also, the team is in the process of negotiating that the EMT can be used in the ecosystem’s third-party applications.

In the future, the AI could also use this communication channel to interact with other protocols that do things on your behalf, Heydenreich said. It’s a transaction and a payment layer, and it knows what you need. “It will just do things automatically.”

Therefore, email is not going anywhere, the founder said. “It will definitely stay, provided that actually can also evolve into something new. And, of course, we hope that EtherMail will be the next Gmail of the future.”

__________

About Gerald Heydenreich

Gerald Heydenreich is a seasoned entrepreneur who has consistently demonstrated his ability to innovate and grow businesses across various sectors.

Starting at age 25, he founded Portum, the first European B2B reverse online auction and sourcing events platform with more than $1 billion trading volume. He later sold it to CapGemini/IBX.

Heydenreich then co-founded BuyVIP, a European private sales club that scaled to over 8 million users, with $120 million in revenues. It was acquired by Amazon.

Heydenreich also created Pippa&Jean, a social selling community with more than 3,500 female entrepreneurs.

Currently, Heydenreich is serving as the President and co-founder of EtherMail, a Web3 email platform building the bridge between Web2 and Web3 to bring full inbox ownership, control, and sovereignty back to users.

He also leads the Barcelona Blockchain Network, which he co-founded with Shant Kevonian, a venture studio focusing on Web3 and AI start-ups.

The post Gerald Heydenreich, Founder of EtherMail, on Web3 Email, Tokenization, and The Future of Email | Ep. 320 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> Max Howell, Founder of Tea Protocol, on Unlocking the Open-Source Economy, Measuring the Impact of Blockchains, AI, and Incentivizing Developers | Ep. 319 https://cryptonews.com/exclusives/max-howell-founder-of-tea-protocol-on-unlocking-the-open-source-economy-measuring-the-impact-of-blockchains-ai-and-incentivizing-developers-ep-319.htm Fri, 22 Mar 2024 16:31:28 +0000 https://cryptonews.com/?p=187752 Legendary open source developer Max Howell talks about his highly popular Homebrew system, the much-anticipated tea Protocol, the massive importance of properly compensating developers to create and maintain open-source software, and how tea aims to help that goal, as well as commercial open-source and the impossible attempt to merge open-source and capitalism.

The post Max Howell, Founder of Tea Protocol, on Unlocking the Open-Source Economy, Measuring the Impact of Blockchains, AI, and Incentivizing Developers | Ep. 319 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> Max Howell, the founder of the decentralized technology protocol tea Protocol, sat down for a chat with Cryptonews’ Matt Zahab, to discuss his highly popular Homebrew system, as well as the much-anticipated tea Protocol.

He talked about the massive importance of properly compensating developers to create and maintain open-source software so they can work on it full-time, and how tea aims to help that goal.

The famous developer also touched upon commercial open-source, the impossible attempt to merge open-source and capitalism, and what open-source is in its essence.

In this episode, Howell discussed:

  • compensating developers to create open-source software;
  • 90% of all publicly traded companies utilizing open-source software across their business units;
  • relationship between open-source software and capitalism;
  • the emergence of commercial open-source;
  • open-source vs. closed-source AI.

You can watch the full podcast episode above or read what Howell told Matt below.

The First Big Success


Howell achieved quite a feat early in life.

He told Cryptonews that in the mid-2000s, online music service Last.fm offered him a job.

It was while he was there that he wrote Homebrew in 2009, a free and open-source software package management system that simplifies the installation of software on macOS and Linux. Tens of millions of developers around the world use it.

At Last.fm, the team was using Mac. But at that time, the state of the developer tooling was lacking.

“I came from a Linux background where I was used to all these awesome package managers that had amazing feature sets and worked really well,” Howell said.

So, after complaining about it at the pub after work, he decided to “do something about it.”

Three months later, he open-sourced his product on GitHub. Interestingly, nobody noticed it for a while, so he started “doing some self-evangelism.”

“One day, I woke up and found that I had a bunch of people interacting with my code,” Howell said.

Homebrew has become “a massive success” and quickly. But this created a different career problem. The then 26-year-old Howell thought that everything should move like Homebrew did or he should give it up.

When Homebrew became “extremely popular,” the developer was able to leave his job and work on the product full-time.

This eventually led him to create tea Protocol, a decentralized technology protocol that enables open source developers to be rewarded for their software contributions.

Open-Source Software and Capitalism


It’s been 15 years since Howell created Homebrew. For most of his career, he’d take up jobs to earn and save money so he could quit and work on open source.

He stated tgat “there’s something really wonderful about working on open source. And there’s nothing else that compares in the corporate world.”

However, the major problem with it is that there’s no way to work on it full-time in a capitalist society.

And while Howell has no issue with capitalism per se, “it really doesn’t map onto open source at all.”

There are people doing “commercial open source” nowadays, but it’s not really open source per some of the usual metrics. The main purpose of open source is to solve a problem that is very specific and often unrelated to revenue models.

Therefore, people have tried to come up with solutions so that some of the open source developers and maintainers can work on it full-time.

Notably, not many realize how important this is. People need to be paid for maintaining such widely used systems.

“People building in Web2 realized that open source was the way to bootstrap entire businesses,” Max Howell said, adding:

“You could build 95% of your product using freely available open source solutions that are performing and well-maintained and perfectly solved the niche they were trying to solve. Then do 5% of your code as the proprietary bit on the top and make fortunes.”

Furthermore, some 70% of enterprise software is built on top of open source, he said.

And this is not an issue on its own. The open-source tools are there to be used. But the fact remains that somebody still needs to properly maintain the solutions on which 95% of products are based.

There is Money, But Very Little Goes to Developers


Open source is everywhere now. It’s “been to Mars, it’s on the bottom of the ocean, it’s in every computer, every phone,” Howell said.

There is “a lot of money” in the software and the internet realms, “but very little of it has ended up trickling back to these people that are maintaining these core pieces of infrastructure.”

And you regularly hear about people burning out and rage quitting, he added.

“What’s happened as a result of trying to shove capitalism on to open source is you’ve ended up with people treating it like a charity, where the only thing they can expect is the goodness of people’s hearts to throw them five bucks so they can buy a coffee,” said Howell.

Developers earning from donations, Patreon, or GitHub sponsors do not receive much either. Upon speaking to many prominent developers, Howell found that the top-earning person makes $24,000 a year. And this man worked on very popular packages.

A couple of years ago, Howell was looking once again for something fresh in the space in terms of working on open source full-time. He wasn’t able to find anything that would ensure that.

“So in a moment of inspiration, I realized that maybe the person who was going to solve the problem had to be me.”

He started exploring technologies he hadn’t looked at before and realized that there was an opportunity with blockchain, smart contracts, and cryptocurrencies.

These could be tools to create something new open source that doesn’t fit onto a standard capitalist model.

While commercial open source introduces agendas in order to find a revenue model, Howell aimed to build a system that “recognized what is open source, why it works, and then didn’t change anything about that.”

The only thing the system needed to do is fix the problem of providing sufficient rewards.

Max Howell approached some crypto venture capitalists in 2022 and subsequently raised 17 million for tea Protocol, with Binance Labs as the lead investor.

10.5 Million Projects Over Multiple Decades Ranked


Tea Protocol revealed its Incentivized Testnet on February 21. It plans to launch the mainnet on June 12.

Commenting on how and which developers get incentivized on tea, Howell explained that there is a system called Proof of Contribution.

It’s a novel consensus mechanism designed to quantify the impact of all projects across all open-source ecosystems.

An oracle ranks all 10.5 million projects created over the past 20-30 years and assigns them a teaRank between zero and a hundred. “Everything above a teaRank of 25 is going to get automatic rewards if they onboard to our system,” Howell said.

In the three weeks since the testnet launch (between the launch date and the podcast recording), tea saw more than 5,000 open-source projects onboard. And the onboarding process is intentionally made simple.

Max Howell told the viewers that “we’ve had over half a million people sign up at this point. And as a result, we have over half a million wallets created on the tea Protocol, and so far, 89% of them are active on the protocol as well.”

The goal is to enable developers to work on open source projects more, and if possible even full-time.

When it comes to tokenomics, the gas fees are paid with TEA tokens. Paymasters facilitates that.

There is also staking, allowing people to “find a project that you think is interesting, […] put some token down, and then earn rewards off of the project.”

Therefore, the project is shifting the view of open source from charity to “an incredibly valuable ecosystem that props up the whole internet.”

Incentivizing Open Source Security


Another relevant aspect, the developer said, is that until now the incentives for open source to keep their technologies secure just weren’t quite there.

What tea is doing is incentivizing whitehats to report any security vulnerabilities they find in a confidential manner via the smart contracts available on the protocols.

If that vulnerability is legitimate, the project must fix it within a certain amount of time. Otherwise, they risk a slashing event where people staking against that project are also slashed.

Notably, many projects are severely underfunded. Often those who need funds the most get the least.

However, tea wanted to introduce an incentive for the open-source maintainers to keep their projects secure.

“I feel that what we’re building here is for open source and run by the open source community,” Howell said. “So governance-wise, open source maintainers are gonna have the most clout. And longer-term, I’m hoping that the governance committee of the tea Protocol itself will be entirely staffed by leaders in the open source space. So we’re going to be courting them actively over the next couple of years,” he concluded.

__________

About Max Howell

Max Howell is the founder of tea Protocol, a decentralized technology protocol that enables open-source developers to be adequately rewarded and compensated for their software contributions.

Howell previously founded Homebrew, a free and open-source package management system that simplifies the installation of software on macOS and Linux.

Since its founding in 2009, Homebrew has become one of the most widely used open-source projects of all time.

He has also served as a Senior Xcode Developer at Apple and as the Chief Product Officer at MyHealthily, an open-source healthcare technology platform.

Howell remains a frequent open-source software developer and contributor.

The post Max Howell, Founder of Tea Protocol, on Unlocking the Open-Source Economy, Measuring the Impact of Blockchains, AI, and Incentivizing Developers | Ep. 319 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> Jimmy Zhao, Senior Solution Architect at BNB Chain, on DeFi, AI, DePIN, Fully On-Chain Gaming, and One BNB | Ep. 318 https://cryptonews.com/exclusives/jimmy-zhao-senior-solution-architect-at-bnb-chain-on-defi-ai-depin-fully-on-chain-gaming-and-one-bnb-ep-318.htm Tue, 19 Mar 2024 16:35:46 +0000 https://cryptonews.com/?p=185820 Jimmy Zhao talks about BNB Chain and Binance being separate entities, different layers of BNB Chain coming into a unified platform, shifting to fully on-chain models, bringing 15x lower fees, plans for more Layer-2 innovations, AI and DePIN projects the team's working with, and their focus on gaming.

The post Jimmy Zhao, Senior Solution Architect at BNB Chain, on DeFi, AI, DePIN, Fully On-Chain Gaming, and One BNB | Ep. 318 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> Jimmy Zhao, a veteran Senior Solution Architect at BNB Chain, recently sat down for a chat with Cryptonews Podcast host Matt Zahab.

He talked about BNB Chain and Binance being separate entities, different layers of BNB Chain coming into a unified platform, shifting to fully on-chain models, and bringing 15x lower fees.

He further touched on the team’s 2024 plans for more Layer-2 innovations, AI and DePIN projects they’re working with, and their focus on gaming.

In this episode, Zhao discussed:

  • opBNB and BSC DAU being no. L1 and L2 (top 2 chains);
  • high-frequency DeFi, AI, DePIN, and fully on-chain gaming;
  • the differences between each chain (opBNB, BSC, Greenfield);
  • present-day crypto market and current opportunities;
  • ETH gas fees – will the new update make gas lower?

Jimmy Zhao gave a wide-ranging exclusive interview, which you can see below. Conversely, you can watch the entire podcast episode above.

Binance and BNB Chain: Separate Entities


Zhao commented that the current crypto market gave the industry participants a chance to educate the community about blockchain: what it is and what kind of value it creates both for the market and people’s lives.

Therefore, he is currently looking for opportunities to meet people in person, including different developers and projects. The goal is to have a deeper discussion about the ways to build on top of BNB Chain, as well as other blockchains, and how to contribute to the ecosystem.

Speaking of which, Zhao emphasized that BNB Chain is a separate entity from the crypto exchange Binance.

For example, the team working on BNB Chain can’t help users with Binance-related issues.

This team is taking care of the chain alone and projects built on top of it – not the exchange.

In that respect, it is incorrect to refer to it as ‘Binance Chain.’

That said, Binance is one of the biggest users of BNB Chain. The latter also provides technical insight and works with Binance Lab-incubated projects.

“So basically, we are providing the technical infrastructure for Binance, and also other projects as well,” Zhao said.

Shifting to Fully On-chain Models


Zhao further discussed the One BNB Chain project.

The recently released 2024 roadmap revealed the so-called One BNB multi-chain paradigm for a unified platform.

The plan was formed as BNB Chain encompasses four layers: a governance layer called BNB Beacon Chain, a smart contract settlement layer called BNB Smart Chain (BSC), a storage layer called BNB Greenfield, and a scaling layer that includes zkBNB and opBNB.

One BNB Chain aims to integrate these different chains to have decentralized computing and data storage, “one holistic solution,” Zhao said.

This would also mean streamlining the interconnections between the Layer-1 (L1) chain BSC and the Layer-2 (L2) network opBNB.

Zhao said that,

“With this paradigm, we aim to facilitate the transitions of applications to fully on-chain Web3 framework, so that [the developers] can leverage the unique strength of each chain within the BNB ecosystem.”

Through this approach, the team will accomplish additional goals they’ve set.

These include enhanced scalability, higher transactions per second (TPS), improved interoperability, as well as “making it easier for developers to build and deploy applications that can operate across multiple-chain environments.”

The applications can be fully on-chain, not only the execution part but also the storage part, to adjust to the growing demands for more efficient, more secure, and more user-friendly applications.

Therefore, while the Web3 applications have so far focused on partially on-chain models, the focus is shifting to fully on-chain.

15x Lower Fees


Continuing on the previous discussion, Zhao noted that, at this moment, OP Stack – the standardized, shared, and open-source development stack that powers the L2 scaling solution Optimism – is the most suitable solution for BNB Chain to have performance optimization.

The team, he explained, wants to make sure opBNB is a high-performance Layer-2.

They reduced the block time to one second and increased the gas limit from 30 million gas per block to 100 million gas per second on opBNB.

This means it can make around 4,500 transfer transactions per second.

Zhao added that,

“We also want to set the gas fee to a new level.”

For example, if a user transfers a token on opBNB, the gas fee is around 0.001 dollars – lower than Layer-2s on top of Ethereum or BSC itself, said Zhao.

Moreover, there has been a lot of discussion lately about the implementation of EIP-4844, which introduces “blobs” – that is, efficient data storage channels – to further reduce Layer-2 transaction costs.

Following the EIP-4844 introduction, the Layer-2 gas fee “will be reduced a lot,” Zhao said and added:

“So we will reduce the cost even further to 15 times lower than the current existing level.”

This will be hugely important for the ecosystem because the gas fee is still a very big issue that needs to be solved.

Gas fees, such as those seen on Ethereum, create an industry that is simply “not sustainable.”

The blobs are a sort of temporary storage that L2s can use, and it will be “a good thing for the ecosystem.”

This is why the team will also introduce blob storage to BSC. Zhao said that they would publish the timeline soon.

“We want to show our respect to the Ethereum ecosystem, and we believe this kind of innovation can also bring benefits to BNB Chain users as well,” said Zhao.

More Layer-2 Innovations in 2024


Decentralized finance (DeFi) may just be the foundation of the blockchain ecosystem, Jimmy Zhao argued.

People do not like the centralization of exchanges or applications. And the financial application is the core function of the blockchain, from Bitcoin to the latest developments, he said.

Therefore, in 2024, the team will focus further on DeFi, given that there are “a lot of the very good DeFi projects coming to the BSC.”

That said, they also want to do more innovations in the L2 realm.

The reason they want to increase the opBNB TPS is to be able to support more innovative solutions, such as high-frequent transactions or trades on an L2.

Also, they aim to ensure that the L2 block time can be reduced even further to increase the latency of the blockchain, especially for high-frequent transactions.

Furthermore, the team will introduce interoperability among different L2s “so that a lot of innovations can be built on top of it.”

This means, said Zhao, that the cross-chain DeFi and atomic transactions among different blockchains could also be possible.

AI and DePIN Projects On the Radar


Jimmy Zhao said he is excited about the artificial intelligence (AI) marketplace that can utilize decentralization blockchain technology.

Furthermore, the BNB Chain team wants to offer specific infrastructure: for example, BNB Greenfield can provide a storage layer for AI.

It can tokenize the data and provide a new economic model for data labeling or data analytics for the AI training sector.

At the same time, they want to allow zero-knowledge (ZK) machine learning.

All of these would be exciting and innovative solutions for the whole industry, Zhao said and added:

“We are working together with some of the AI projects to find the best solution on top of BNB Chain. So, you will see a lot of projects coming to the BNB Chain in the future.”

He couldn’t provide more details at this point.

And speaking of partnerships, Zhao said that they “have some collaborations with the DePIN projects that can be built on top of the BNB Chain.”

BNB Chain provides the tokenization of the Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN) service to the users who can pay for that service with crypto.

Also, they want to work together with DePIN projects to utilize One BNB Chain, with Zhao saying that:

“We want to make sure our whole One BNB Chain paradigm can provide the execution layer for DePIN solutions so that their smart contract and their business logic can be implemented on opBNB or BSC.”

The data part of the DePIN solution can be saved on BNB Greenfield.

Therefore, the team works with the DePIN projects to simplify their workflow, give feedback on their business model, and provide technical infrastructure, including token economy.

“There are a couple of the DePIN projects also on our radar,” Zhao said.

Gaming-Focused Chain


Blockchain can bring more opportunities for the whole gaming industry, Jimmy Zhao told Matt.

And Web3 games are very much in the BNB Chain team’s focus because “we do believe our infrastructure can provide values to game developers or game communities,” he said, adding:

“Right now, we are working [with] a lot of game projects.”

The team aims to reduce the transaction time to make transactions on-chain as fast as possible, thus improving the gaming experience.

At the same time, they want to reduce the cost, making it possible to make a game fully on-chain.

Additionally, there are some challenges that game developers face and for which the team has solutions.

These include the complex computations and the big storage requirements. BNB Greenfield can help here and even make non-fungible tokens (NFTs) “evolutionary.”

Also, due to the bigger block size, the chain can support more complex computations on-chain, while allowing offloading off-chain as well. “A bigger block time can make the game developers’ lives much easier,” said Zhao.

Finally, the team is exploring another solution to help game developers: they aim to provide a more innovative and developer-friendly software development kit (SDK).

__________

About Jimmu Zhao

Jimmy Zhao is a seasoned Senior Solution Architect at BNB Chain, leveraging over a decade of diverse experience in system and infrastructure development.

Leading the design and implementation of enterprise-grade blockchain solutions, Zhao focuses on translating business needs into technical requirements, collaborating closely with dapp and infrastructure projects.

His extensive background spans notable roles at Alibaba, HSBC, and IBM, showcasing his prowess in the payment, finance, and technology sectors.

Zhao’s significant contribution to the opBNB system and ecosystem development demonstrates his commitment and contribution to accelerating the adoption of blockchain technology.

The post Jimmy Zhao, Senior Solution Architect at BNB Chain, on DeFi, AI, DePIN, Fully On-Chain Gaming, and One BNB | Ep. 318 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> Paul Frambot, CEO of Morpho Labs, on DeFi 2.0, Modular Layered Protocols, and The Next Evolution of DeFi | Ep. 318 https://cryptonews.com/exclusives/paul-frambot-ceo-of-morpho-labs-on-defi-2-0-modular-layered-protocols-and-the-next-evolution-of-defi-ep-318.htm Fri, 15 Mar 2024 13:35:49 +0000 https://cryptonews.com/?p=184146 Morpho Labs CEO Paul Frambot discusses how the four co-founders raised millions for Morpho, what changes to DeFi the protocol aims to bring, how he envisages the next phase of DeFi, why the Morpho team opted for a minimalist approach, contrary to the current DeFi trend, and why DAOs are not suited for managing the risk of protocols.

The post Paul Frambot, CEO of Morpho Labs, on DeFi 2.0, Modular Layered Protocols, and The Next Evolution of DeFi | Ep. 318 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> In an exclusive interview with Cryptonews, Paul Frambot, CEO of research and development company Morpho Labs, told the host Matt Zahab how the four co-founders raised millions for Morpho and what changes to DeFi trends the protocol aims to bring.

He told listeners how he envisages the next phase of DeFi, and why the Morpho Labs team opted for a minimalist approach, contrary to the current DeFi trends.

Finally, he touched upon the recent disagreement with Aaave, and Gauntlet leaving Aave to join Morpho Labs, as well as his opinion that DAOs are not suited for managing the risk of protocols.

In this interview, Frambot discussed:

  • liquid staking and yield farming;
  • next evolution of DeFi Spending;
  • moving from app to infra – the future of DeFi;
  • DeFi 2.0 defining crypto’s coming bull market;
  • DeFi risk manager Gauntlet leaving Aave to join Morpho;
  • a shift from monolithic to layered protocols in 2024;
  • DAOs not being suited for managing the risk of protocols;
  • Morpho Blue;
  • lowering the barrier to entry;
  • raising $18 million for Morpho from a16z and Variant while still in school.

Paul Frambot gave a wide-ranging interview, which you can watch above – or you can read a part of it below.

Students Raising Millions


During his second and third years at the Institut Polytechnique de Paris, where he earned his Master’s degree in 2021, Frambot managed to raise millions over two rounds.

At the time, Frambot was studying consensus algorithms and distributed systems. He had an opportunity to meet “a bunch of researchers and interesting people” working in decentralized finance (DeFi) and blockchain.

This is how the first think tank around DeFi was created there. The members discussed what they could improve in DeFi, specifically lending.

Through the industry insiders, Frambot got in touch with investors and made his way into the VC world.

In the pre-seed round, the group raised $1 million for Morpho. They used the funds to hire a few people and do the first contract audits of the protocol’s first version.

A few months later, they raised more money, including from Andreessen Horowitz and Variant, with Frambot stressing that they have over 100 investors in Morpho.

That said, the four co-founders managed to raise $18 million for Morpho while still at university.

DeFi 2.0: Moving from App to Infra


Frambot discussed what DeFi 2.0 looks like and how it scales.

He argued that the next evolution of DeFi involves moving from app to infra.

The co-founder went on to explain that the earlier protocols, such as Maker, Uniswap, Aave, and Compound, were usable as is, and user-friendly in the sense that they were self-contained.

That was the first iteration of DeFi.

But protocols want to scale and enable more features.

One way to move forward is to enshrine all features in one monolithic protocol. But that may comprise efficiency and security because there are more lines of code to handle.

“You preserve the UX of it, the product aspect of it, but it does not scale.”

Morpho decided not to have a monolithic pool but to break the pool into two pieces instead: the risk management part and the protocol part.

This is a layered approach, with “more layers of abstraction, exactly the same way the internet has been built.”

Frambot said that the internet stack is built in layers. When we use the internet, we don’t experience the full complexity of it. We just see, for example, a browser. But behind the scenes, there are different layers of abstraction.

He argued that “it feels like this is exactly the way DeFi is going, which is having core communication protocols, core financial protocols that do not have any opinion about risk, about compliance. But on top, you rebuild the risk and compliance profile that you want.”

This allows the protocol to be at the bottom, followed by the risk management layer, and then on top, the user application layer.

And we go back to DeFi: what the industry is looking to do is build infrastructure for wealth – on top of which the entire financial flow of humanity will be handled.

With the current security practices, this is unimaginable.

Therefore, the advantage of the described, scalable DeFi 2.0 is that it enables protocols to be immutable and simple, and it segregates complexity in layers, avoiding the dangers of a monolithic pool.

Meanwhile, DeFi is growing. That used to be an issue, and it has been difficult breaking out of the existing circle.

But “I think the approach I’m describing is such a neat way of progressively forcing the boundaries of that space,” Frambot said.

Going Against Latest DeFi Trends with a Minimalistic Approach


Frambot has shared on his social media that Morpho does one job: simple and efficient lending and borrowing. That’s all. There are no stablecoins, DEXes, equity, advisory, etc. In other words escaping from the wave of DeFi trends and services flooding the market.

This is a rare approach in a world where projects aim to venture into various different spheres.

Frambot explained that they want to be “laser-focused, do one thing, and do it extremely well.” They don’t want to spread.

“And this, in my opinion, is crucial in DeFi because there are a lot of opportunities.”

Moreover, unlike most other projects, Morpho’s founders are contractually forbidden to invest in or advise any other project. “We have to be focused on Morpho,” said Frambot.

This approach, he argued, has given the co-founders a unique approach to DeFi landing in general.

Morpho’s first version, which now has more than $2 billion in deposits, “was never seen before in the space and not even close to looking like another protocol,” he said.

Furthermore, the new version, Morpho Blue, is also “extremely different” from what people are used to seeing across DeFi trends and updates.

The protocol enables a very wide variety of use cases, based on top of a trustless and efficient base protocol of just 600 lines of code, instead of thousands.

He remarked,

“Taking such a minimalistic approach goes against DeFi 1.0 trends, which is building and then training as many features [as possible] to be able to do more and more.”

Per Frambot, Morpho’s strategy is “definitely a winning” one long-term.

DAOs May Not Be the Best Option


Aside from his stance on DeFi trends, Frambot has argued that decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) are not suited for managing the risk of protocols, given that effective risk management demands both expertise and the ability to make super-fast, efficient decisions.

During the interview, he explained that he is not against DAO-based risk managers but that he doesn’t believe that it’s the best thing to do. In the end, it will be up to the market to decide, though.

Doing risk management is highly complex. It entails multi-dimensional problems, statistics, math, data, etc.

For example, in the case of Aave, there are more than 700 different risk parameters: liquidation incentives, collateral factors, oracles, supply caps, borrow caps for each asset, and hundreds more.

“Essentially, we’re asking token holders to vote on a daily basis to improve, change, and adjust those risk parameters. […] I don’t think token holders, to be frank, could be anybody. I don’t think they’re the right person to do this job.”

And while DAOs and decentralization in general are excellent concepts, we must make sure “we do things that truly make sense to provide the best possible use cases, experience, and safety for users.”

Meanwhile, in Morpho Blue, the risk management is completely externalized from the protocol.

Everything built on top of Morpho Blue can have its own specific risk management: some can be token-based risk, and others can be centralized, or controlled by users.

“And we’ll see what formula is the best [for] risk management.”

In the end, it could be one approach or a combination of several that will emerge as a winner.

__________

About Paul Frambot

Paul Frambot is the Co-Founder and CEO of Morpho Labs, a research and development company responsible for building and growing the Morpho protocol.

Frambot co-founded Morpho Labs whilst studying towards his now-completed Master’s in Parallel and Distributed Systems from the Institut Polytechnique de Paris in 2021.

During his studies, he raised $18 million from top investors – including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Variant – for Morpho, which has since grown into a multi-billion-dollar lending protocol.

The latest version, Morpho Blue, is an independent, simple protocol that serves as a secure, efficient, and flexible base layer for users and applications.

The post Paul Frambot, CEO of Morpho Labs, on DeFi 2.0, Modular Layered Protocols, and The Next Evolution of DeFi | Ep. 318 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> Lark Davis, Founder of Wealth Mastery, on Bitcoin ETF In-Flows, AI Tokens, DePIN, Aidrops, and 2024 Crypto Market Cycles | Ep. 316 https://cryptonews.com/exclusives/lark-davis-wealth-mastery-podcast-on-bitcoin-etf-ai-tokens-depin-aidrops-and-2024-crypto-market-cycles-ep-316.htm Wed, 13 Mar 2024 10:03:46 +0000 https://cryptonews.com/?p=181783 Popular investor Lark Davis discusses the results and potential effects of Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs, our current position in the market cycle, price predictions, airdrops, BlackRock not being our friend, and more.

The post Lark Davis, Founder of Wealth Mastery, on Bitcoin ETF In-Flows, AI Tokens, DePIN, Aidrops, and 2024 Crypto Market Cycles | Ep. 316 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> In an exclusive interview with Cryptonews, Wealth Mastery founder Lark Davis talked about the massive relevance of Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs, current results, and their potential effects.

Davis further touched on airdrops, major crypto trends, and where we are in the market cycle.

Lastly, he shared some price predictions with the host Matt Zahab and the Cryptonews Podcast audience.

In this interview, Davis discussed:

  • Bitcoin ETF: current results and its long-term importance;
  • Ethereum ETF: its approval and potential outcomes;
  • Airdrops 101: what they are they, how safe they are, and how to get involved;
  • March 2024 crypto trends: AI, Bitcoin20 tokens, DePIN, gaming, and real-world assets;
  • Cycles in the market: our current position in the cycle;
  • Price predictions: when to sell, how to sell, and what to sell.

Expect the ‘Mania Phase’ in 2025


Davis – who has 1.1 million followers on Twitter and 519,000 subscribers on YouTube – stated that everybody predicting the market movements is basically guessing by basing opinions on existing models.

Now we are seeing a relatively standard four-year cycle playing out, with a few notable differences so far.

However, per the investor,

“We’re looking at probably 150K to 200K potentially at the top. […] In that theory, we see markets topping out late 2025.”

The higher the price go, the riskier it is to click the buy button, he warned.

Moreover, spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are exciting, but they’re just a new spark of liquidity for this market cycle, said Davis.

Nothing new. It’s the equivalent of MicroStrategy back in 2020, he added.

Notably, people buying ETFs today are not locked in. They can sell at any time.

Per Davis,

“Around $200K, $215,000, they’re gonna start selling. And that’ll be the big story of late 2025 in the four-year cycle theory idea. […] That’ll be when markets start going down. It’ll be a mania phase.”

This is still uncharted territory, as we can’t tell how much money will keep flowing in and for how long.

However, even if companies providing ETFs start exiting, there’s still be money coming in “because that’s when retail FOMO mania is happening and people are aping in at the top,” Davis noted.

Bitcoin ETFs Are Huge – Yet Just a Tiny Part of the Picture


Davis said that the crypto price action we’re seeing is “exciting, it’s fun.”

But what happens today or the next few days is a lot less interesting than where we are in the cycle and what the implications of the Bitcoin ETF actually mean for the market.

We’ve had some “incredible weeks” for the ETF, and we’re seeing “incredible” numbers already.

But even if we’re observing future performance conservatively – just half of what we may actually expect to see – we’re still looking at $50 million a day.

That’s still $11 billion of fresh inflows this year alone, said the investor.

“That’s insane. […] This is a dramatic amount of cash money entering Bitcoin. And this has a huge impact.”

And that’s just the start of the story, Davis remarked.

The Hong Kong Bitcoin ETFs are on their way, and South Korean Bitcoin ETFs are likely coming in the near future.

“The wild thing about Bitcoin ETFs” is that they’re only “a tiny part” of the whole picture.

Another piece is all the other fiat on-ramps that have enabled millions of people to gain access to Bitcoin.

“You have to understand how big the on-ramp gateway has been opened up for crypto in this cycle. It’s insane.”

A lot of that is focused on Bitcoin, but Bitcoin is where the money starts entering the market, the investor said.

People buy BTC and start looking further. “And that’s where things start getting crazy.”

BlackRock: Deal With the Devil


BlackRock, the world’s top asset manager, is shattering records with its Bitcoin ETF, IBIT.

However, it’s a hard company to understand, Davis warned.

They are “wildly powerful and wildly influential,” but they are not a friend in the crypto space.

Per Davis,

“BlackRock getting into Bitcoin, it is a deal with the devil, make no mistake. Because BlackRock is not our friend. BlackRock’s not here for the Satoshi revolution. They’re not here to fix the financial system. None of that stuff. They’re here for a buck. They’re here for power. They’re here for control. They’re here to help corner supply.”

The company is looking to seize control over this market.

For example, while a lot of “crazy” was happening back in 2022, and many left the market, what did BlackRock do? It launched a spot Bitcoin private trust for institutional clients in the United States.

They allowed their high-net-worth individual investors to start getting Bitcoin a full year before they launched their public Bitcoin ETF.

They’ve been bullish on Bitcoin for a long time.

Therefore, argued the investor, Wall Street is slowly moving over.

Ethereum ETFs Will Be Very Popular


It’s well known that the US Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) had their hand forced to approve Bitcoin ETFs.

They either had to approve it, Davis said, or admit that they were wrong on all the other ETF products they had approved. And they would never admit they’re wrong.

Also, there’s the Chair Gary Gensler element as well. “If he spits in BlackRock’s face, he’s not going to have a job anywhere” after the SEC, said Davis.

Therefore,

“The exact same legal precedents that worked for the Bitcoin ETF exactly apply to the Ethereum ETF. So that means that likely May 23 will be the day that we get an Ethereum ETF.”

This date is the first final deadline for the Ethereum ETF approval when the SEC has to say ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and they don’t have any grounds to reject it.

Moreover, like with the Bitcoin ETF, “they’ll probably drag it out to the last second because they’re children. But it’s going to come.”

That will be massive for the markets because BTC and ETH are the top two cryptocurrencies, which together account for 60-70% of the total market cap.

Also, if we consider everything that the Ethereum ecosystem encompasses, everything built on top of it, “it’s more like 80% of the total crypto market space will be available for people to buy for TradFi money in a very easy way.”

Hence, a lot of money will be able to enter the crypto market easily.

Finally, Ethereum is an excellent product for Wall Street, Davis said. No matter what they are bullish on – be it stablecoins, gaming, NFT, or DeFi – Ethereum’s got it all.

And “here’s the kicker bonus”: they will get a dividend payout, unlike from holding Bitcoin. “It’s going to be popular,” said Davis.

Warning! Be Careful of AI Buzzwords and Bovine Feces


Davis said he’s been covering all sorts of narratives since he started making content back in 2017.

And there’s no new narrative today.

However, the difference is that we might be reaching an inflection point with the cryptocurrency markets, “where we actually see some of this stuff taking off and getting real-world adoption.”

This was missing in previous years. People had the right ideas but at the wrong time, Davis said.

But when it comes to the currently popular AI coins in particular, Davis warns:

“Be careful of the buzz, […] buzzwords, a lot of bullshit, and a lot of hopes and dreams and promises that are never going to come true with these new startups working in the AI space in crypto.”

A lot of companies in crypto will switch quickly to whatever the popular trend is at the moment and claim that they’ve been doing that all along.

People have to really dig in, check out the teams’ track records, partnerships, and other details, “and really ask yourself if what they’re proposing is realistic.”

DePIN AI Coming Together is Very Exciting


However, there are also lots of great AI projects and innovative ideas.

Davis is particularly interested in the infrastructure side of it.

One exciting possibility is AI joining hands with DePIN, he noted.

DePIN on its own is a really big idea, enabling users to get rewarded for doing daily things.

Per Davis,

“One of the most exciting intersections for me, DePIN an AI, that’s where we’re seeing these really come together in a very fruitful and interesting way.”

However, a key thing is to decentralize the infrastructure networks that are training the AI models.

This is where crypto can come in and provide us with a freer AI, a utopian AI rather than a dystopian one.

If There’s Money, Airdrops Will Come


The airdrop trend will continue as long as people can make money on it, which could be for quite a while, Davis argued. At least as long as the bull market lasts.

He argued that,

“Airdrop right now are the exact same kind of impactful money making meta we’re seeing in 2024 as we saw back in 2020 with DeFi Summer, very similar parallels.”

Ethereum Layer 2 Blast – created by the team behind the NFT marketplace BLUR – has been the talk of the cryptotown lately. Introduced on November 21, its total value locked is already nearing $3 billion.

 

The much-anticipated Blast airdrop is set for May 2024.

By then, we’ll still be in the “airdrop town without a doubt,” said Davis.

Notably, airdrops are infusions of liquidity into the market. And this one could be a massive capital injection to the market “that just makes everything pop.”

Blast is a self-fulfilling prophecy, he added. “Everybody wants to be there.”

But the team has delivered on Blur, and they are “probably going to deliver on Blast.”

__________

About Lark Davis

Lark Davis is the Founder of Wealth Mastery, one of the most famous newsletters in crypto.

He is also an Entrepreneur, an investor, and a prominent figure in the cryptocurrency community, widely recognized for his expertise and contributions as an analyst, educator, and influencer.

Known online as @thecryptolark, Lark has garnered a significant following on social media platforms, including Twitter and YouTube.

He utilizes these platforms to share comprehensive market analyses, educational content, and insights into the latest trends and developments in the blockchain and cryptocurrency sectors.

The post Lark Davis, Founder of Wealth Mastery, on Bitcoin ETF In-Flows, AI Tokens, DePIN, Aidrops, and 2024 Crypto Market Cycles | Ep. 316 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> Piers Ridyard, CEO of Radix DLT, on The Future of Web3, Wallets, Account Abstraction, and Creating the Game Engine for DeFi | Ep. 315 https://cryptonews.com/exclusives/piers-ridyard-ceo-of-radix-dlt-on-the-future-of-web3-wallets-account-abstraction-and-creating-the-game-engine-for-defi-ep-315.htm Fri, 08 Mar 2024 16:06:07 +0000 https://cryptonews.com/?p=180048 Piers Ridyard, CEO of the decentralized network Radix DLT, talks about the “wild ride” through the worlds of smart contracts and Y Combinator, finding Ethereum, mining on its genesis block, selling ETH, getting into Radix, the project’s fundamental principles, and how it goes above and beyond to keep users’ funds safe.

The post Piers Ridyard, CEO of Radix DLT, on The Future of Web3, Wallets, Account Abstraction, and Creating the Game Engine for DeFi | Ep. 315 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> In an insightful interview, Piers Ridyard, CEO of the decentralized network Radix DLT, discussed his “wild ride” through the worlds of smart contracts and Y Combinator.

Chatting with Cryptonews Podcast host Matt Zahab, the CEO talked about finding Ethereum, mining on its genesis block, selling ETH, and getting into Radix.

Ridyard told us about the project’s key principles, and how it goes above and beyond to keep users’ funds safe.

In this interview, Ridyard discussed:

  • the founding story of Radix DLT;
  • Y Combinator’s secret sauce: setting the tone and levelling up in business;
  • Radix having a much simpler coding language than other blockchains;
  • Radix as a game engine for DeFi: it is significantly quicker to build applications on;
  • how Radix Wallet improves crypto user experience.

Piers Ridyard gave a wide-ranging exclusive interview, which you can watch above – or you can read a part of it below.

Wild Ride Through Smart Contracts and Y Combinator


Ridyard started the interview with his background. Notably, he described his experience with Y Combinator as “a wild ride.”

First, he entered the Ethereum community very early and got very interested in smart contracts.

At the time, smart contracts were a new thing in the space, and everybody wondered what they could create. Ridyard finds that most of these ideas will come true, it’s just a matter of timing.

But he had something specific in mind:

“One of the things that I thought – it was an obvious use case for smart contracts – was insurance.”

Ridyard started “playing around” with this idea of automatic insurance. Having no knowledge about insurance, he first reached out to “a bunch of” insurance companies to understand their problem set.

He talked to them about blockchain, and they told him about insurance. “So I ended up speaking with a bunch of the senior people in some of the biggest insurance companies in London.”

However, the crypto sector was very different at the time and was ultimately not equipped to facilitate automatic insurance. Specifically, there were no stablecoins.

They could only use ETH as collateral, and that wouldn’t work, he said.

Meanwhile, Ridyard learned from the insurance companies that their sector was a slow, manual, disorganized “mess.”

Soon, he began the process of product discovery and came up with the idea of Surematics: a way of creating smart contract-based deals around large syndicated insurance deals.

It would enable the control of the programmatic flow of money, creating criteria for insurance, and more.

He went on to apply for Y Combinator. And Surematics got in.

Y Combinator taught him that,

“There can be a million excuses, but if you want to be successful, this is what you have to achieve. Either you’re going to move heaven and earth to achieve that, or you’re not going to be as successful as you could be, and that’s your choice. We’re not going to give you shit for not doing it, we’re just going to be like, this is the bar and this is what you need to get to. And that changed my perspective from that point forward.”

And at the same time, Ridyard “started playing around” with other blockchain technologies because he had realized that Ethereum had a number of issues.

He soon discovered this new platform called Radix and became friends with its founder Dan Hughes. He then decided to build Surematics on top of Radix.

Mining On the Genesis Block


In July 2015, Ethereum created its “genesis block,” i.e. the first block in a blockchain.

Ridyard was one of those mining on the Genesis Block. More precisely, he had already set up the mining equipment before the Ethereum mainnet launch.

He stated that,

“I think we probably mined maybe in the top 50 blocks, something like that. And so it was a really weird entrance into crypto for me because it started from a point of complete skepticism.”

When he first learned about Ethereum from a friend, he wondered if either of them should invest. Ultimately he told his friend it was a scam and not to buy it.

However, Ethereum started testnet mining a few months later, and “I was like, oh shit, I’ve taken a completely wrong view on this.”

Following some intensive research, he realized that they “just need a bunch of GPUs.”

Notably, before he got into crypto, Ridyard had manufactured consumer electronics for the Apple market. So mining was “right in my wheelhouse.”

They bought “a bunch of hardware” and started mining on the testnet. And then they simply continued mining on the mainnet.

“And we were mining sequential blocks at many points where we would win a block, and then we’d win the next block. And that’s how low the computing power was at the time.”

Ridyard was there for many of Ethereum’s firsts.

Following his mining entry, he got into smart contracts, invested in the first decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), known for The DAO hack, and was there during the debates about whether or not Ethereum should fork.

Meanwhile, he sold most of the mined ETH.

“I think we mined 10,000 ETH in about three months. But the irony of it was if we’d taken the money that we’d spent on hardware and just bought Ethereum, we would have done about 5X better than we did through mining.”

That said, Ridyard wanted to buy his first house, and he had enough money from mining to make a deposit.

There appeared another irony. This one hurt. It took six months to close on the house. By that time, he could have bought the house in cash.

On the other hand, he had put his ETH in various wallets. When he opened one of them previously holding about $300-500 in ETH, he found it reached $20,000.

“I think the thing that I learned from that is never sell your moon bag,” Ridyard said. “Always make sure that you’re always holding something. But yeah, Ethereum has definitely treated me well.”

The Core of Radix


Ridyard noted that the technology of Radix excited him “way more” than the application of insurance.

The three things that make the core of Radix, and that the team delivered, are scalability, developer experience and tools, and user experience.

The company took a thorough approach, thinking:

“Let’s take a bit more time, and let’s actually work with developers to get to the point where you have a programming language that feels really intuitive for doing the things in Web3 that make sense”.

Therefore, they spent about two years talking to about a thousand developers.

They knew that the syntax had to be “super easy” as well.

The team kept iterating until they got it to the point where “developers are just getting it immediately” once they went through the documentation.

“They spend an hour going through it. And they’re like, I understand how to build Uniswap, I understand how to build Aave.”

That’s when they released the programming language at the end of 2019. It has grown “incredibly well” since.

They also worked thoroughly on what the user experience (UX) paradigm needed to look like.

The team wanted to shift the way people think about wallets. It’s not just a place where they keep their money – it’s their portal to Web3. It’s how they interact with Web3.

“And without it, without that making sense, you are in a situation where consumers can’t use it,” Ridyard argued.

No Nonsense on Radix


Radix is seen as a no-rug-pull, no-nonsense place.

But Ridyard stressed that it’s always possible to rug pull someone.

The point is to assume that everyone at every level of the stack is malicious – to make sure that everything acts on the minimum trust possible and the maximum user information possible.

This leads to two key actions:

  • put as many guards up;
  • make sure that every interaction is human-readable so that users know what they’re signing.

What Radix offers is transparency that ensures more security. Users can see in their wallets the information about the token type issued to them.

People behind tokens are not able to hide the rules associated with the token, Ridyard said, and added:

“You can’t stop people from scamming, but you can make it a lot harder to scam a user into doing something that they don’t consent to because all of the information is available to the user.”

Furthermore, Radix doesn’t allow project makers to “present an action as one thing” and get the users to approve something else.

What you see in your wallet is the action that you signed to happen on the ledger, said Ridyard, adding:

“And once you signed it, no one can play with it.”

Therefore, somebody can’t commit a rug pull via something that looks like Uniswap, for example. Radix shows users if they are not actually interacting with the genuine Uniswap application.

Also, there is always a guarantee. For example, when a user clicks to confirm a transaction and it fails, the smart contract built by the app enforces the swap guarantees.

But “if you’re with a naughty one, then they’re just going to take your tokens.” Radix doesn’t allow that. The guarantees are then enforced at the ledger level.

“So even if I signed it, they couldn’t steal my money, because for the transaction to succeed, they would have to return to me the minimum guarantee that the transaction was enforcing in the first place. And if it can’t, then the transaction fails,” Ridyard concluded.

__________

About Piers Ridyard

Piers Ridyard is the CEO of Radix DLT – a decentralized network that will enable developers to build quickly without the constant threat of exploits and hacks.

Radix will reward improvements and will ensure that scale is never a bottleneck.

Ridyard also founded and exited Surematics, a Y Combinator company, and was mining on the genesis block of Ethereum in July 2015.

He graduated from the University of Manchester and the University of Law and has a CFA level 1.

The post Piers Ridyard, CEO of Radix DLT, on The Future of Web3, Wallets, Account Abstraction, and Creating the Game Engine for DeFi | Ep. 315 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> Matty Taylor, Co-founder of Colosseum, on Solana, Hackathons, and Growing the Solana Ecosystem | Ep. 314 https://cryptonews.com/exclusives/matty-taylor-co-founder-of-colosseum-on-solana-hackathons-and-growing-the-solana-ecosystem-ep-314.htm Tue, 05 Mar 2024 15:31:23 +0000 https://cryptonews.com/?p=177760 Matty Taylor discusses Colosseum, growing the Solana ecosystem, accelerating its adoption, how the Solana Foundation hackathons help accomplish just that, and more.

The post Matty Taylor, Co-founder of Colosseum, on Solana, Hackathons, and Growing the Solana Ecosystem | Ep. 314 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> In an exclusive interview with Cryptonews, Matty Taylor sat down with Cryptonews Podcast host Matt Zahab to discuss Colosseum, the independent organization he co-founded.

He talked about growing the Solana ecosystem, accelerating its adoption, and how the Solana Foundation hackathons help accomplish just that.

In this interview, Taylor discussed:

  • Colosseum as a platform focused on growing, accelerating, and investing in the Solana ecosystem;
  • Colosseum streamlining three pillars: hackathon, accelerator, and venture fund;
  • Colosseum’s aim to onboard the next generation of on-chain developers and make decentralized technologies as ubiquitous as email;
  • Bonk DAO making a first-of-its-kind investment in Colosseum to back ecosystem builders;
  • hackathons as the backbone of the Solana developer community, attracting $600m in venture funding for the winners.

You can watch the video above to learn what Matty and Matt talked about – or you can read a part of it below.

Not the Y Combinator of Solana

The team announced the launch of Colosseum in late January this year. The organization aims to run Solana’s hackathons, accelerate winning founders, and invest in crypto startups.

Many have described it as “essentially Y Combinator (YC) for Solana.”

The comparison comes due to the organization’s aim to sponsor and nurture promising startups.

Taylor commented that the Colosseum team is flattered by the comparison and that they have a lot of work to do “to lift up to that sort of legacy.”

However, he said,

“Honestly, long-term, we don’t really want to be compared to Y Combinator, because we think we have a very differentiated model on what we’re trying to do. This is specifically built for the crypto industry and Solana in particular.”

While one can think of Colosseum as a traditional accelerator, like YC, there is no written application. Instead, projects must win a five-week hackathon to be even considered for the program.

Taylor argued that this model is “a much better indicator of potential founder and founding team talent” than a traditional written application.

Therefore, Colosseum will run hackathons that the team has been doing for the past three years at the Solana Foundation.

Besides hackathons, they have added two more pillars to the organization: the accelerator and a venture fund.

The funds raised will be given to the hackathon winners. Up to fifteen teams per hackathon will be accepted into the Accelerator program and will receive a pre-seed $250,000 investment each.

Colosseum will continue to support them and help them go from DevNet to Mainnet, where they can sufficiently pitch seed investors and raise a proper venture fundraising round.

Two Touch Points with Solana

Asked if Colosseum is directly involved with the Solana Foundation, Taylor explained that it is, in fact, a fully independent organization.

However, there are two particular touchpoints between the two.

Firsts: The Solana Foundation is a liquidity provider (LP) in the Colosseum’s venture fund. They have invested in the fund itself and have signed a commercial agreement for Colosseum to “take the reins” in administering their official hackathons.

Second: Colosseum is focused on Solana “just generally.” The team feels “very strongly” that most of the growth of applications and the ecosystem around them will happen on Solana over the next several years.

And so, Taylor said,

“We’ve basically decided to focus all of our efforts on that particular ecosystem.”

This approach also helps the team modify the accelerator experience to help embed the projects in this ecosystem rather than going multi-chain and “diffusing the experience across many different L1 or L2 ecosystems.”

Moreover, Taylor commented that we are still early in crypto’s evolution – and hence, Solana’s evolution.

That said, Solana’s Mainnet went live just four years ago, in March 2020. “There’s a ton of room for growth left,” Taylor said.

Therefore, Solana will inevitably get to the next level of adoption, he argued.

Taylor added that “we’re seeing the fruits of that right now, where the developer ecosystem and founder ecosystem is stronger than ever, hackathon submissions are at all-time highs.”

Renaissance is On

Colosseum recently announced the start of the next hackathon with the Solana Foundation, called Renaissance.

It will run from March 4 through April 8.

“It should be pretty big,” Taylor said.

This will be the first hackathon where the team will choose winners and then select a subset of those winners to join the accelerator program. These will receive the funding.

More specifically, there will be 30-40 winners in the first round. These will then proceed to have an interview with the three Colosseum co-founders.

The second round of evolution will determine the top 10-15 teams that the organization will invest in.

“And hopefully, this will usher in the next wave of breakout startups in the Solana ecosystem,” Taylor said.

Interested projects can sign up now.

Renaissance will also show the level of interest in the Solana ecosystem, but based on the activity on the Colosseum platform, “we think it’s stronger than ever.”

BONK DAO’s Surprising Investment

BONK DAO made a first-of-its-kind $500,000 investment in Colosseum earlier this year.

Taylor noted that the move was “pretty surprising” to the team.

But the BONK DAO Council had been looking for ways to use their treasury to help support the ecosystem. And they felt that becoming an LP in the Colosseum fund accommodates this.

The DAO held a vote on whether to invest, they voted ‘yes,’ and Colosseum accepted the offer.

Per Taylor,

“I’ve never heard of this happening before for another venture fund. So definitely uncharted waters. But we’re excited to help fulfill the vision that they have, which is growing the startup ecosystem on Solana and helping founders get off on the best foot.”

BONK DAO, he argued, is not your average meme coin. There seems to be a lot more actual development around it.

“It’s probably one of the most integrated tokens just into the Solana DeFi ecosystem,” Taylor noted.

As for other developments, Colosseum finds the social network space interesting.

“That’s a whole green field of opportunity that we’d love to see more experimentation with,” Taylor concluded.

__________

About Matty Taylor

Matty Taylor is the co-founder of the independent organization Colosseum. The other two co-founders are Clay Robbins and Nate Levine.

Taylor was previously the Head of Growth at the Solana Foundation, where he kickstarted the Solana hackathon program in 2020.

Over the past three years, that program cumulatively resulted in over 60,000 participants, 4,000 projects launched, and $600 million in venture funding for winners.

Top Solana ecosystem founders from Tensor, Squads, StepN, Jito, and dozens of other leading projects got their start through Solana Foundation hackathons.

Taylor previously worked at 0x Labs and Square (now Block).

The post Matty Taylor, Co-founder of Colosseum, on Solana, Hackathons, and Growing the Solana Ecosystem | Ep. 314 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> Brock Pierce, Co-Founder of Tether, EOS, Blockchain Capital, on Tokenizing Real Estate, 2024 Crypto Markets, and Bitcoin | Ep. 313 https://cryptonews.com/exclusives/brock-pierce-co-founder-of-tether-eos-blockchain-capital-on-tokenizing-real-estate-2024-crypto-markets-and-bitcoin-ep-313.htm Fri, 01 Mar 2024 16:07:15 +0000 https://cryptonews.com/?p=175778 In an exclusive interview, Brock Pierce discusses the current bullish situation in the crypto market, the US returning to the crypto scene as a participant following the spot Bitcoin ETF approvals, democratizing real estate investments through tokenization, and projects avoiding the ‘securities’ label, even when it suits their products better than 'utility.'

The post Brock Pierce, Co-Founder of Tether, EOS, Blockchain Capital, on Tokenizing Real Estate, 2024 Crypto Markets, and Bitcoin | Ep. 313 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> Brock Pierce, a crypto and blockchain OG and founder of Tether and EOS, sat down with Cryptonews Podcast host Matt Zahab to discuss the current bullish situation in the crypto market.

In a wide-ranging, exclusive interview, Pierce talked about the US returning to the crypto scene as a participant following the spot Bitcoin ETF approvals, democratizing real estate investments through tokenization, and projects avoiding the ‘securities’ label, even when it suits their products better than ‘utility.’

In this interview, Pierce discussed:

  • his motivation to join EstateX as an investor and strategic advisor;
  • the difference between securities and utility tokens;
  • brick and pixel = where physical and analog meet;
  • how crypto provides solutions to the traditional banking system;
  • Bitcoin ETFs and 52 million Americans holding digital assets.

The Bull is Running


This has been an exciting year so far for everybody in crypto, Pierce told Matt. The entire space went from “bull-ish” to “likely full bull.”

And we’ve just begun.

The first massive event for this year was the approval of the spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Pierce argued that people don’t really understand how big of a deal this actually is: both for the Bitcoin (BTC) price and the crypto industry in the US.

This former presidential candidate argued that the USA is an innovation leader but that its position on crypto is “a very real concern” in the country’s congress.

“American entrepreneurs were leaving the country left and right in droves. A lot of America’s greatest talent was leaving. A lot of America’s highest-potential businesses were leaving because of regulatory uncertainty.”

The ETF approvals changed this. There will be more regulatory issues and discussions. But “everyone can rest assured that America’s position in being a participant and not continuing to make this industry go away and pushing America’s finest across and out of our borders. It’s a game-changing event.”

Besides ETFs, another major event will be the much-anticipated Bitcoin halving in April.

Meanwhile, people tend to feel two kinds of ways in these market circumstances.

On the one hand, “all of a sudden, everybody feels poor,” said Pierce, because they measure their wealth based on their highs, not their lows.

However, a lot of people who have invested in crypto now understand what it is to have some degree of wealth. Per Pierce,

“This has been one of the greatest wealth transfers ever.”

The problem arises, Pierce argued, when people don’t diversify. Many people who have already invested in crypto will choose to diversify a bit in this next run, he said.

Notably, they are unlikely to reach for memecoins or non-fungible tokens (NFTs). They will seek to invest in real estate.

From ‘Brick and Mortar’ to ‘Pixels and Bits’


The tokenization of real estate is not exactly a new idea, but it’s an increasingly popular one.

And now is a good time to jump into democratizing real estate investments through tokenization, Pierce argued.

There are many ways to democratize access to this type of investment product, and blockchain is not necessary to do that. However, these novel technologies are helpful in the space, Pierse said and added:

 “We talk about the brick and mortar business, call it real estate, and let’s call it ‘the pixels and bits business.’ This is where brick and pixel, the digital and the analog, the hard and the soft assets meet.”

This is a very clear value proposition, Pierce said. Real estate is a major asset class that most people do not have access to unless they are very wealthy.

Tokenization is here to help them enter the real-world asset (RWA) space and diversify their portfolios at the same time.

Per Pierce,

“[Real estate] is just something that any person that is going through asset allocation and wants to have a well-rounded portfolio with a diverse set of assets that can weather any storm or market condition that comes […] should consider.”

Near the end of February 2024, Pierce joined real estate tokenization startup EstateX as an advisor and strategic investor. The company aims to democratize access to real estate investments, allowing investors to benefit from increased liquidity and lower investment minimums.

The possibility to invest as little as a hundred dollars and speculate on real estate as an asset class is something that “will make the world a better place,” Pierce said.

He continues to look for more real estate projects that can deliver the types of yields and returns “that are needed for this to be a viable long-term solution that is ultimately delivering on the promise, which is value.”

Also, another theme he is interested in is self-sovereign identity, describing it as the Holy Grail.

This is the foundational layer, he said. “Identity is more foundational than money value finance. […] So I’m interested in sort of the continual tokenization where people can be enumerated for their participation in open source software development.”

Security v. Utility: Some Things Are Better Left Securities


Pierce also touched upon the ongoing battle within and beyond this space: securities versus utilities.

Real estate is a regulated market, and rules are much clearer than they are in the crypto industry. The latter’s lack of clarity has been a sore point for years now.

A lot of work has to be done to be compliant when offering securities – it can’t happen fast, and it creates a barrier to entry.

Therefore, Pierce stressed that,

“Some people are busy taking what should be a security and making it into a utility to avoid rules and regulation and to not have dilution and getting free money for themselves.”

He referenced the security token BCAP, created by Blockchain Capital under Pierce’s leadership, which went through an initial coin offering (ICO) in 2017.

At the time, Pierce stated that BCAP was a security and was critical of projects that tried to avoid this label.

“I was watching a lot of people doing their ICOs back in the day where I’m like, you’re really better off being a security,” Pierce told Matt.

“Because there is a difference between utilities and securities. It doesn’t all have to be a utility token. There are things that are designed that way. And then there are some things that should be securities.”

It’s taken a while for the right infrastructure to occur, argued Pierce. But one thing that hasn’t happened yet is security token exchanges and offerings becoming “the thing.”

For something to get mainstream adoption, it needs to be an order of magnitude better than whatever it’s trying to replace, he said. “Otherwise, it’s a long, slow grind.”

Pierce concluded by saying that he’s “just so excited by the world’s potential and what it can be.” He told listeners that “the future is going to happen to you, or it’s going to happen with you. So get involved if you want to live in a world that is of your liking.”

__________

About Brock Pierce

Brock Pierce is a well-known figure in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space, recognized for his contributions as an entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and advocate for the digital currency ecosystem.

Pierce began his career in the entertainment industry as a child actor but later shifted his focus towards technology and innovation.

He co-founded several high-profile projects in the crypto and blockchain sectors, including Blockchain Capital, Tether, and EOS. He has also served as the chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation, aiming to standardize, protect, and promote the use of Bitcoin cryptographic money worldwide.

Pierce is also involved in certain philanthropic efforts and supports organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, and the Brennan Center for Human Rights.

The post Brock Pierce, Co-Founder of Tether, EOS, Blockchain Capital, on Tokenizing Real Estate, 2024 Crypto Markets, and Bitcoin | Ep. 313 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> John Paller, Founder of ETHDenver, on Present State of ETH, and Future of DeFi, DAOs, and NFTs https://cryptonews.com/exclusives/john-paller-founder-of-ethdenver-on-present-state-of-eth-and-future-of-defi-daos-and-nfts.htm Tue, 27 Feb 2024 16:19:21 +0000 https://cryptonews.com/?p=173618 Cryptonews Podcast host Matt Zahab sat down once again with US-based blockchain entrepreneur and Founder of ETHDenver John Paller for another exciting interview. The two talked about ETHDenver setting the main themes for the year and what we may see in 2024. The founder further explained how investing in UI, UX, and specific tools leads to […]

The post John Paller, Founder of ETHDenver, on Present State of ETH, and Future of DeFi, DAOs, and NFTs appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> Cryptonews Podcast host Matt Zahab sat down once again with US-based blockchain entrepreneur and Founder of ETHDenver John Paller for another exciting interview.

The two talked about ETHDenver setting the main themes for the year and what we may see in 2024.

The founder further explained how investing in UI, UX, and specific tools leads to greater DeFi and DAO adoption.

In this interview, Paller discussed:

  • shifting regulatory dynamics in the US and how crypto can influence it;
  • evolving public sentiment of crypto post-FTX and Terra;
  • preparing the Web3 community for the impending bull market;
  • Web3’s focus and capital allocated to infrastructure needs to return to users;
  • predictions for DAO 2.0, DeFi 2.0, NFT 2.0

Read a portion of what Matt and John chatted about below, and listen to the full episode above.

Super Bowl of Crypto


ETHDenver 2024 has started on February 23 and will last until March 3, boasting a number of events and speakers.

Paller noted that over the years, ETHDenver became two things.

Firstly, it’s the Super Bowl of crypto. There are family and friends reunions, and the community gathers.

Secondly, it’s a menu of topics to be discussed during the year. This is the first major event following the holidays in the US, so many are curious to see what will be placed on stage, what and how it will be talked about – that is, what the year’s main topics are.

The event often sets the main themes, movements, trajectories, players, etc.

Per Paller,

“I think what ends up happening is ETHDenver becomes sort of the distiller for that narrative for the year. […] The narrative gets formed and then walks into the rest of the year as a sort of fairly big thing.”

The team behind ETHDenver gets a lot of input about what goes on their stage – and there are bound to be changes to the narratives and themes throughout the year – “but we’ve been pretty consistently successful at [setting the year’s themes] over the past six years.”

As for 2024, we’re going to see some finality around Layer-2s, Paller argued. The “protocol wars” will end. There will be no more fights, we will “just use it.”

Also, Paller opined that the industry has already solved many of its issues. And while there is plenty left on that list, all of these will eventually be crossed out.

Investment Leading to Mass Adoption


Paller noted “a huge opportunity” for investment into user-facing tools, be it user interface (UI) or user experience (UX) in general, governance tools, tooling for decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), or anything else.

There is a clear difference in the amount invested currently. If you look at the dollar-for-dollar investments in protocols versus just DAO tooling or UI/UX, “it’s like a thousand to one,” said Paller, and added:

“Imagine if we had put in that kind of money to UI/UX, where we would be with adoption.”

Therefore, Paller’s prediction is that we’ll see “a huge effort from” the community to improve UI/UX and crypto products, which is how we compete with Web 2 products.

You don’t win acknowledging a trade-off in crypto, Paller warned. For the past five-six years, the industry has been making excuses about trade-offs that we have to make around security, privacy, and transaction costs, among other things. Something is always sacrificed.

At the same time, we must accept the truth that the average user will never use the products as we make them because it’s not convenient and fast enough – simply put, it’s not better than what they’re currently using.

And while some people are willing to, most do not want to go through “eight layers” of a decentralized finance (DeFi) product to figure out how to “stake their damn tokens.”

This is not getting the industry where it wants to go. It proved not to be durable. Also, we don’t really have a product market fit for DeFi, Paller argued.

Furthermore, most people, “let’s be honest,” said Paller, don’t currently care about owning their self-sovereign data.

What they do care about is using something easy, fast, and better than what’s already out there.

“Now, if we can give them fast, easy, better, and sovereignty, will they take it? Yeah, they will.”

Therefore, be it DAO tooling or DeFi products, investing in usability and UI/UX is the key.

“I think the 2.0 on the back of all of this stuff is the application of better user accessibility,” Paller opined.

And though he supports making money, all that these products are currently doing is just making money. That’s a problem. It only showcases the opportunistic side of what this technology can do.

Per Paller,

“If that’s all we do, then we’ve already failed, and it won’t work.”

We’ve got to have more than just making money as the goal. We’ve got to make what we’re creating widely accessible, transparent, permissionless, secure, and convenient for all to use.

The DAO That’s Got It All Figured Out


DAOs are going to make a comeback, John Paller said.

He couldn’t say when exactly, but as other aspects of the industry improve, the DAOs will rise. These aspects include user experience and user interface technologies, which will make DAOs more functional, usable, and configurable.

But DAOs have so far been just “grand experiments.”

Therefore, what’s missing is “a use case to point to that says, here’s the recipe [that] can be used to replicate the success in various contexts of the world,” Paller argued.

We don’t have that yet, and it’s a key ingredient.

Until we get it, we’ll continue to see a lot of experimentation. We’ll be seeing fidelity, development, and tooling enhancements.

“And then one of these days, it’s going to be slow and steady, and then all at once, you’re going to see this big narrative pop up where there’s this DAO that’s got it figured out.”

And who’s that going to be, Paller couldn’t say yet.

What he could say with near certainty is that,

“It’s got to be something people genuinely need, not just what they choose to want.”

This will create a natural demand for this and similar DAOs.

Paller noted that the industry needs to keep working methodically on user experience and abstraction technologies, not compromising security, privacy, data, and identity – but also making it cheaper, better, and faster for people to use “so that we can find these use cases to plug-and-play.”

One of these days, such a DAO will appear.

__________

About John Paller

John Paller is a US-based blockchain entrepreneur, inventor, and futurist. He is the Founder and Executive Steward of ETHDenver, the world’s largest Web3 and Ethereum-based innovation festival.

Paller is also the Founder and Executive Steward of Opolis, a digital employment cooperative for independent workers.

Prior to discovering Ethereum in 2015, Paller spent more than 15 years in talent acquisition, HR Technology, and employment systems, building multiple successful enterprises.

He brings a breadth of experience in fundraising, investor relations, community outreach, and crypto economies, guiding his vision of democratizing employment and growing decentralized communities.

In 2014, Paller was awarded “40 Under 40” by the Denver Business Journal for his contribution to shaping the future of business.

The post John Paller, Founder of ETHDenver, on Present State of ETH, and Future of DeFi, DAOs, and NFTs appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> Harsh Rajat, Co-Founder of Push Protocol, on Bringing Notifications to Web3, Token-Gated Messaging, Web3 Native Communication | Ep. 311 https://cryptonews.com/exclusives/harsh-rajat-co-founder-of-push-protocol-on-bringing-notifications-to-web3-token-gated-messaging-web3-native-communication-ep-311.htm Fri, 23 Feb 2024 16:14:10 +0000 https://cryptonews.com/?p=171975 Push Protocol's Harsh Rajat discusses the potential for Web3 to hit the one-billion user milestone, how Web3-native communication helps the industry achieve that goal, and the protocol’s industry-altering partnerships with Unstoppable Domains and MetaMask.

The post Harsh Rajat, Co-Founder of Push Protocol, on Bringing Notifications to Web3, Token-Gated Messaging, Web3 Native Communication | Ep. 311 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> Harsh Rajat, the co-founder of Web3 communication network Push Protocol, spoke with the Cryptonews Podcast host Matt Zahab about the potential for Web3 to hit the one-billion user milestone and how Web3-native communication helps the industry achieve that goal.

Rajat further talked about the protocol’s industry-altering partnerships with Unstoppable Domains and MetaMask.

In this interview, Rajat discussed:

  • Web3 UX and how Web3-native communication can help in getting to a billion users;
  • Unstoppable Domains token-gated group messaging unlocking the power of community-based engagement;
  • what security considerations are crucial when building a token-gated group messaging platform;
  • Web3 notifications: bringing Web2 notifications to a Web3 world;
  • MetaMask Snaps partnership: integrating with the most popular wallet.

Continue below to read a portion of what Matt and Harsh discussed, or listen to the full episode above.

A Billion-User Idea


Web3 can have a billion users in the future. Web3-native communications and user experience (UX) are a path to that number.

Push Protocol is working hard to contribute to the adoption.

Rajat explained that, in terms of communication, Push abstracts away all the Web3 complexities of “how to make the thing work,” how to make it compatible with wallets, and how to have the blockchain of communication.

All the protocols need to do is just use Push to re-engage the user and “get that entire Web2 UX to Web3.”

What Push did was invent the pre-notifications. These help all its users be notified about the things they are interested in and which they often engage with.

Therefore, Rajat noted that,

“This idea is so crucial, for Web3 to grow into a billion users. I always maintain and say that we have to remember that a million devs does not equal a billion users.”

He went on to explain that Push is a decentralized communication middleware. It enables protocols, blockchains, and even Web2 companies to send notifications (on-chain or off-chain), send chat, audio and video calls, etc. – that are now directly tied to a wallet address.

And because this is an interoperable and secure network, mobile apps or crypto wallets can now just tap into it and show their users all the important notifications about their activities. This can be related to loans, governance, social media, and pretty much anything you can think of.

With this, Rajat said,

“Push [has] changed user experience.”

More than 600 protocols are using Push. These include DYDX, Decentraland, Uniswap, Gitcoin, Polygon, and many others.

“They are using Push to basically make sure that this re-engagement is getting into Web3,” the co-founder added.

Unstoppable Path to Connecting the Community


The Push team has had a long relationship with the popular Web3 domain names and digital identity provider Unstoppable Domains. Unstoppable too has integrated Push.

In April 2021, Ethereum Push Notification Service (EPNS) integrated .crypto domains to the EPNS products. In September 2023, the partners enabled business-to-user (B2U) messaging through Unstoppable Messaging.

And in January 2024, the two announced the launch of the token-gated ‘Group Chat’ on Unstoppable’s messaging platform.

With the Push integration, Unstoppable shows all notifications to its users. Per Rajat,

“When that integration was happening, we understood the value of community, and we understood that Web3 communication as a whole hasn’t tapped into the community part of it.”

Going back to the billion-user aim, Harsh Rajat said, they had to ask themselves why anyone would switch from a popular site where their friends are, for example Telegram, to something else and unknown.

“The user will shift when you provide them a feature which is over the top of what they are already doing, and that led us to creating this gated group functionality.”

The idea here is that a gated group works like a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). Be it an NFT project, a DAO, or a project with some unique tokens – anything really – these entities can create a group via Push Chat and specify the parameters to join, i.e. how many tokens one needs to have to join and/or send messages within the token-gated group.

Unstoppable, on its side, has a Badges feature, which translates a user’s wallet transactions into achievements.

And all of these communities, “they love to talk to each other,” Rajat noted.

“And there is no way for Web2 chat to bring that community together.”

But with the gated group chat, you can define those Web2 chats, personas, or attributes, he added.

“And all of a sudden, you have a way by which all of these communities that shared the same vision can join this group chat and can talk about it.”

‘Huge’ MetaMask Partnership and Incoming Push Features


Unstoppable Domains is not the only major partnership for the Push Protocol.

It has also partnered with the popular MetaMask wallet.

MetaMask was working on the Snap feature, and “they asked if we would love to work with them so that notifications can be natively bought into MetaMask,” Rajat said.

And they did. In September 2023, the two announced Push Snap, a tool designed to seamlessly integrate notifications directly into MetaMask wallets.

Therefore, MetaMask users can now see the notification section where they can click to install Push snap.

“Once you do, whatever protocols you have opted into to receive notifications, they can send it right on your MetaMask, and it will appear right over there.”

As for Push’s near-term future, Harsh Rajat named two events the team is “very excited about.”

One is the upcoming launch of Push Network. With it, Push becomes, “let’s say, our Layer-2 for all the communications.”

The other thing is the unveiling of Push nodes, which will “basically make this a network in its own, or a blockchain in its own,” Rajat concluded.

____

About Harsh Rajat

Harsh Rajat is the co-founder and Project Lead of Push Protocol (formerly EPNS).

He has over 12 years of entrepreneurial experience in various spectrums of tech. This includes system architecture, as well as development and design in different tech fields, such as mobile, web services, SaaS, and blockchain.

Rajat previously spoke/judged at multiple tech conferences and hackathons, including Messari Mainnet, ETHCC, ETHDenver, Schelling Point, ETHAmsterdam, NFT NYC, Liscon, HackMoney, EDCON.

The post Harsh Rajat, Co-Founder of Push Protocol, on Bringing Notifications to Web3, Token-Gated Messaging, Web3 Native Communication | Ep. 311 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> David Johansson, CEO of BLOCKLORDS, on Blockchain Gaming, Web3 Gaming Airdrops, and User Acquisition for Web3 Games | Ep. 310 https://cryptonews.com/exclusives/david-johansson-ceo-of-blocklords-on-blockchain-gaming-web3-gaming-airdrops-and-user-acquisition-for-web3-games-ep-310.htm Tue, 20 Feb 2024 16:28:31 +0000 https://cryptonews.com/?p=169776 BLOCKLORDS CEO David Johansson discusses the indestructible link between crypto and gaming; how BLOCKLORDS came to where it is today, despite the obstacle; how the team utilized the circumstances in the space and the knowledge they gained to set up a platform to help others launch Web3 games; and how user acquisition changed over the past six years.

The post David Johansson, CEO of BLOCKLORDS, on Blockchain Gaming, Web3 Gaming Airdrops, and User Acquisition for Web3 Games | Ep. 310 appeared first on Cryptonews.

]]> In an exclusive, gaming-focused interview with Cryptonews, the BLOCKLORDS game CEO David Johansson talked about the indestructible link between crypto and gaming.

He told us how the game came to where it is today, despite the obstacle; how the team utilized the circumstances in the space and the knowledge they gained to set up a platform to help others launch Web3 games; and how user acquisition changed over the past six years.

In this exciting interview, Johansson discussed:

  • the origin story of BLOCKLORDS and what inspired creating the game;
  • BLOCKLORDS dropping 300,000 LRDS to mark more than 60,000 players;
  • industry layoffs at companies such as Riot, Epic, Activision Blizzard, and what this means for the future of the industry;
  • the possibility of AAA developers venturing into blockchain/Web3 gaming:
  • the secret sauce of airdrops for Web3 gaming.

Check out the full podcast episode above, or read some of the many things Johansson and host Matt Zahab talked about.

Marriage Between Crypto and Gaming


Web3 games weren’t really a thing back in 2018 when BLOCKLORDS was born. Notably, this was always a Web3 game, its co-creator noted.

The pitch has always been the same: BLOCKLORDS is an MMO strategy game that’s designed entirely around Web3.

Per Johansson,

“I’ve seen many games come and go. And so definitely that’s one of our strengths as a team; we’ve stood the test of time, we’ve survived the bear market. “

Johansson’s work in the film industry in Hollywood, followed by the gaming industry in China, taught him countless invaluable lessons about creativity and the creation process. And then,

“In 2017, I discovered crypto. I fell in love with it.”

Wanting to start something new, he joined up with co-founder Nicky Li, with whom he has worked since 2014.

He learned about crypto, and as soon as he understood how smart contracts worked, Johansson realized that,

“Gaming and crypto are forever linked.”

Gamers are already used to digital ownership, scarcity, and value. They care about what they do inside a game.

Meanwhile, crypto needs a better onboarding vehicle: a way to reach the masses. “Crypto people handle financial markets the same way gamers handle games essentially,” the CEO said. “So it was just perfect.”

From Zero to 15 Million


The BLOCKLORDS’ team is working on the game’s third iteration now. But the road to this moment was a bumpy one.

In the spring of 2018, the co-founders started looking for investors. However,

“Nobody believed in crypto gaming back then.”

On the gaming industry side, many would state that crypto is a scam. On the crypto side, particularly in the young decentralized finance (DeFi) space, many wondered why they’d bring gaming into a serious financial matter.

But in August 2018, the team won the Best Blockchain Game in NEO’s competition, earning $80,000. “That was essentially our seed funding,” Johansson said.

Building the game was difficult, and the funds quickly ran out. The team, however, won a TRON contest, receiving $30,000. So they launched on Tron, “and that did pretty well.”

However, noted Johansson,

“What we noticed right away from launching blockchain games was that it was easy to get users who were very dedicated and who would spend quite a lot on their game experience.”

But getting users was a problem.

The team of about half a dozen people continued building the game on various chains in 2018-2019, but it was a learning curve with numerous issues popping up. In addition to that, they were living off of grants.

And then, the DeFi Summer of 2020 arrived. By this point, the team had gained extensive knowledge in blockchain gaming.

“We started getting a lot of requests and demands [from other teams to help them make their games.”

That’s when the idea for Seascape came: to build a tech solution for NFT and DeFi gaming.

The Seascape Network launched in 2021. The team raised half a million dollars for it with Binance as the lead investor.

In 2021, following a number of questions about the status of BLOCKLORDS, the team created a new studio, formed a content team, and got to work on the new iteration.

“And investors really went crazy for it.”

The goal was to raise about $4 million, but BLOCLORDS ended up raising $15 million from a number of notable investors, including Makers Fund, Bitkraft Ventures, Delphi Digital, Animoca Brands, Shima Capital, WW Ventures, Spartan Group, Huobi Ventures, Funplus, YGG, and others.

User Acquisition Came Far Over the Years


Web3 user acquisition has matured quite a lot, David Johansson argued. “There’s still a lot of work to do, but it’s definitely gotten better.”

Firstly, the ad platforms have opened up. Promoting blockchain games on social media sites, including Meta and Twitter, became easier.

“It’s much easier to get ads now, and it’s much easier to reach more users with the ads, which is great. And I definitely think our brand potential has grown with the ads.”

It’s not easy for Web3 gaming to go against Web2. It’s not only getting players that’s a problem, but keeping them. However, the ad system is essentially broken – as seen in Web2. And ironically, the way this is being revamped is through Web3.

Meanwhile, there are now many more sophisticated tracking tools, “so there’s a lot of experimentation” being done in targeting Web3 users that were active in the past.

Importantly, the community is a huge part of user acquisition, Johansson said.

“I would say that that is the vertical that really Web3 has an edge over Web2: the community is an integral part of your user acquisition and your user retention. So you need to put a lot of focus on that.”

Among other efforts, BLOCKLORDS rewards users with game drops where they distribute the game’s native token LRDS.

Shift in the Playing Field


Recruiting people to work in Web3 gaming has also become a lot easier. It is no longer a field from which people are running away.

For example, developers would previously not even entertain the idea of working on a free-to-play game. “And now basically every good game is a free-to-play game,” said Johansson.

“A lot of that hate is going to pass. I think there is a brain drain happening from Web2 to Web3.”

Additionally, talented game developers who want to start their own studio will have greater chances of getting the funding as a Web3 project than as a Web2 project.

“I think we would never have gotten the funding we got as a Web2 project. That’s just a fact. And […] strategy games don’t get a lot of investment generally.”

The capital is “much more fluid in Web3,” so projects are getting funded. Some are bad, and some are excellent.

There are more opportunities, so there is more capital in the space, creating more jobs – and all this will benefit the industry as a whole.

The Web2, or legacy gaming, has “a lot to figure out.” And Web3 will start taking some of its share over time, Johansson concluded.

____

About David Johansson

David Johansson is the CEO, Co-Founder, and Creative Director of Web3 strategy game BLOCKLORDS. He is also the CEO of Seascape Network and Metaking Studios, the creator of BLOCKLORDS.

A passionate gamer and industry veteran, Johansson has held numerous creative and production roles on some of the most successful products in their fields – including Crusader Kings, Liberators, and League of Angels – before turning his focus towards building out BLOCKLORDS in 2018.

He never looked back.

The post David Johansson, CEO of BLOCKLORDS, on Blockchain Gaming, Web3 Gaming Airdrops, and User Acquisition for Web3 Games | Ep. 310 appeared first on Cryptonews.

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