Yeah, you're right. We actually have our first tier one centralized exchange that
is natively integrating Elixir. We haven't announced it yet, but we're going to
be announcing hopefully in the next month or two. But yeah, a household
name centralized exchange that you guys all know is natively integrating Elixir to where you'll
be able to, like when you're trading in the interface, you'll see a
supply button. You can actually supply liquidity there. And there's a lot of
other big use cases that we're going to be announcing. For example, there's
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Welcome to the Thinking Crypto podcast. You're home for cryptocurrency news and interviews.
With me today is Philip Forte, who is the founder and CEO of
Elixer. Philip, Welcome, Thank you for having me Philip. I'm excited
to learn about Alixer and of course get your perspective on what's happening in the
crypto markets from a investment standpoint and much more. But before we get there,
tell us about yourself, where you're from, and what's your professional background.
Yeah, so real high level in my background. I got into crypto
back in twenty sixteen when I started the Carnegie Melon Blockchain Group back at Carnegie
Mellon University. I was the president there until I graduated and then started a
company in the space. After doing a two week stint doing a normal fintech
like traditional finance job, I went full time on block Venture, which is
my last company. We were in an alliance of forty one different research groups
and forty four venture funds. We worked as advisors to Solana, Mumbean Flow
Network, a whole host of these different crypto projects and help them go to
market, published high quality research on these guys. And I ran that for
a little over two years up until around three years ago when saw the opportunity
for Elixer and actually sold that company to go full time. So yeah,
been heads down building a Elixer for roughly three years now. And yeah,
that's that's kind of the extent of my professional background, you know, minus
like a few internships and things of that sort. That's amazing. I mean
that you build that company, you sold it, of course, and now
building a new company. I wanted to go back a bit because I'm very
curious about folks their first encounter with Big One and what was your aha moment,
So like, how did you learn about it and what did it click
for you? Yeah, so I remember I was actually a summer analyst doing
institutional asset management at panc which was the traditional finance job that I was originally
doing. And as I was doing this like summer internship, we were just
talking about this is like right heading into the big bull run of twenty seventeen,
and one of my friends was telling me about the World Computer right,
So it's actually a theoreum that I got pitched first, So there was definitely
a little bit of a learning curve, but it's it's similar to like most
people in this space, once you kind of go down the rabbit hole and
you see the light at the end of the tunnel, you're like, wait,
this is actually this is something that can potentially revolutionize all of these different
areas and aspects of you of your life. You know, it really kind
of clicks and you just kind of get you can't get out of the rabbit
hole once you go down it. That was how I learned about it.
It was one of my coworkers actually telling me about it, and then I
started the blockchain group immediately after that, and then twenty seventeen came. We
had a bunch of people. We were originally thirty people. Theyman grew to
like three hundred just during the bull run, everyone just pretty much asking like
what the next bitcoin was, and then eventually after that it calmed down a
bit. But yeah, I mean, my personal passion and interest has been
fully in Web three just ever since I learned about it, and so you
know, that's kind of how I originally went down the rabbit hole. Now
tell us about Elixir, Why did you decide to start it? And what's
the mission? Yeah, so, really, Elixer is a modular DPOs network
built a power order book liquidity. And so essentially what this network does as
it allows for anyone to supply the liquidity to any order book exchange. And
so I mean to date, really, if you were like to look back
a few years ago, marketmaking is really dominated by four or five large centralized
names and the issue with that is that you know, if you're an order
book based exchange, there is no way to attract retail capital of your books,
right, like if you just have to go through one of these big
names and you have to pay one of these guys to try to put put
liquidity on the books, and it makes it very difficult for order book exchanges
to get good liquidity, add new markets and actually get like a diverse array
of parties who are actually supplying liquidity as compared to an AMM, right,
and amms have billions of dollars of liquidity, but it's because it's super easy
for people to supply and incentivize that liquidity. And so Elixir actually has over
thirty exchanges that are launching native features of their exchange that they're offering to their
end users, right, allowing for people to supply liquidity to the order books.
But it's all powered by our network on the back end, and so
you know, when supply liquidity, the procol will algorithmically build and deploy that
onto the order books in a delta neutral fashion, essentially placing a bunch of
by orders and a bunch of cell orders on the books and updating it once
a second. And the LPs have a very similar risk return profile to UNISWAP
B two LP, so it's we bring a very familiar risk return profile.
It's almost you can almost think of it as like units bringing UNISWAP curves to
the order book. And so we have native integrations already live with Vertex,
rabbit X, and Bluefin. Each of these we power more than half of
the order book liquidity on the exchange. And so if you go to any
of those exchanges and you make an order, chances are you're trading against Elixir
on the back end, and you'll be doing that through the actual exchange that
you're that you're trading on. And we have native integrations lined up with d
y D e X hyper Liquid a whole host of different exchanges, right,
We have like Ava Orderly, which are going live the next couple of weeks,
and and a whole host of others. So yeah, the main takeaway
is that, you know, we allow for these ex changes to attract a
whole host of liquidity from their communities themselves to their order books without having to
you know, and just essentially paying out a share of their existing rewards that
they're already paying, right, Like, they're already paying out a certain percentage
as a part of the long term liquidity provider incentive program. But now their
communities can actually earn this by d supply liquidity to their order books. So
correct me if I'm wrong here, because I want to make sure the audience
grasps this to those who don't understand order books and how this all works,
like market makers and so forth. You're democratizing order books essentially, or decentralizing
if I'm categorizing that right where almost anyone can participate. Yep, exactly right.
Yeah, So if you think about most exchanges that you know, people
who are listening to this trade on, are you it's probably an order book
exchange? Right? Most exchanges are order book based sections are the amm ones,
and those are actually moving towards order books. There's actually a few tier
one amms that you guys definitely know that are moving to order books powered by
a elixer, and because a lixer is able to make it to where users
can just supply liquidity normally on the AMM but it's actually an order book on
the back end. But yeah, exactly right, right, like if like
there is no trustless infrastructure that exists that allows these order books, like either
the exchanges themselves or protocols on them to incentivize and bootstrap liquidity in a trustless
manner, and so that is alixer, right, And that's the problem we're
looking to solve. So let's do a mock scenario. Let's say I'm the
average Joe listening, I've got some crypto holdings. Does this cover spot and
futures? And how can I, as someone listening participating as what would be
like the next steps? Yeah, that's a good question. So the we
support both spot and futures, right, so any perpetuals the yeah, the
uh, the way that you can kind of get involved with this is that
you can actually go to the exchange generally, and a lot of times you
won't even know that you're using the links on the back end, but you'll
see a buy button, a sell button, and a supply button, and
you can just press supply and take some of your idle capital and actually supply
it to that order book and you'll essentially it's very similar to supply and liquidity
to a unit swap pair right where you have like two assets, right,
so you just you press supply and then you'll be able to earn a share
of their incentives that the exchange is already paying out. And so generally for
like Vertex, that's usually around like fifteen to twenty percent. For Bluefin,
currently that's roughly around like forty to forty five percent APR on USDC. But
yeah, these are all like native integrations. Our protocol is powering it on
the back end. And then the big kind of other update is that we
have our Apothecary Live, which is essentially so Elixer everything is like Potions and
you know, Alchemy themed for us. But we have our Apothecary Live which
is essentially our version of a points program, and it's going to be running
up until August when we when we're going to be launching our MAInet of our
network, and so you can actually go and supply liquidity to this, Like
we have a elx eight which is a cross chain liquidity provider token, and
you can just supply liquidity there and you'll actually route liquidity across these different native
integrations and supply it to these leading order book exchanges and you'll be able to
earn the incentives from all these different exchanges. And so that's all you know,
available to do on elixir dot x y Z, which is our website.
But to actually supply, we haven't. We have a community run endorsed
aggregator page that lists all the different pools. But you know there's a you
could generally go to the actual exchanges like Vertex, rabbit X, Bluefin,
you can supply there. We're launching next week with Apex and then the following
week with Orderly Network, so you'll be able to just go there and you'll
you just you press on their Generally you'll have a pool's page or they'll have
a like their own kind of branded page. Right, so for Orderly,
it'll be Orderly Quantum, right. Rabbit x has rabbit x, FAMM,
Vertex has Vertex fusion. Right, all of these are powered by Elixir on
the back end, but they're like native features within their exchange, if that
makes sense. Yeah, for sure. You know, as you're saying that,
I'm thinking about the future of decentralized finance and you know the solution you're
bringing because it's correct me if I'm wrong, this can work with a decentralized
exchange and a centralized exchange. Yeah, you're right. We actually have our
first tier one centralized exchange that is natively integrating Elixir. We haven't announced it
yet, but we're going to be announcing it hopefully in the next month or
two. But yeah, a household name centralized exchange that you guys all know
is natively integrating a Elixir to where you'll be able to, like when you're
trading in the interface, you'll see a supply button. You can actually supply
liquidity there. And there's a lot of other big use cases that we're going
to be announcing. For example, there's like stable coins. I don't know
if like you guys have heard of it, like Athena, right, but
there's use cases like that that are going to be announced in the coming weeks
that are are our network will power because we have fourteen thousand validators that are
securing this this modular blockchain that's built for this purpose. Right, it's like
these HFT use cases. So yeah, this could support centralized exchanges and then
in the future it'll support stable coins like algorithmic stable coins and so yeah,
definitely i'd follow the Twitter and we're going to be announcing some big stuff in
the coming weeks. That's exciting. Yeah, I'm very curious as to who
that. You know, Tier one centralized exchange is no comment. I know
you can't imagine, but you know, that's exciting. And do you see
this, you know being sometimes it takes one mover to you know, you
know, get their foot in the door or open the door, I should
say, and then you have game theory. You know, other exchanges they
are going to try to capitalize on this, and it kind of goes back
to what I was mentioning earlier to future decentralized finance and as well as allowing
people regular retail investors to have more accessibility, more ways to earn and so
forth. Do you see it opening up like more opportunities like that. Yeah,
I mean, I think we're at a spot where most of the leading
exchanges have either committed to integrate or have already integrated Elixir. So I mean
we're just I mean, it's just an engineering question at this point, like
we're just trying to build through these native integrations. We're going to be going
live with do id X, hyper Liquid, AVO, all the all the
other leading order book based exchanges. So it's almost like at this point,
yeah, new enough coming ones, especially when we have I mean, we
have roughly two hundred million in deposits into this elex eth cross chained product,
right, so once that goes live, we're working very closely with DELFI Digital.
Right now, we assume roughly across all of DeFi, there's probably about
two two hundred and fifty to three hundred million in total open orders for all
order books in DeFi, and of that we currently power forty or fifty million
of it. And then we have an additional two hundred million that has come
into this lex e product, right, So when we go live at main
that we will be powering roughly half of all order book liquidity and DeFi,
right, And so that's that's like I mean for us, we it's a
big incentive for future exchanges that like, oh, we'd love to tap into
this, right, So that's kind of definitely a mote that we have.
But you know, we're starting to think about other use cases of this,
right, centralized exchanges, stable coins, right things. So that's sort of
like I think would really kind of open up people's minds to just how powerful
this network is that we've built. So yeah, we we definitely I mean,
our bread and butter is order book based exchanges, and so we'll definitely
keep pushing on that side too for sure. Now, a question I'm sure
many folks are going to have is security. Right, you mentioned you have
a number of validators and so forth. What else are you doing from a
security standpoint to make sure this is uh, you know, the teaser crossed,
the eyes are dotted and so forth. Yeah, So we have we
got an audit from Trail of Bits roughly, I mean that was that was
a few months back and so they completed their audit. We have an ongoing
bug boundy program with respect to upcoming audits. We have another Trail of Its
audit that we're going to be doing. We have a quant stamp audit that
we're in the process of kicking off. So yeah, security is definitely a
large priority for us. The actual mechanism that our protocol uses is we have
a DPOs network that has fraud proofs posted to a theory of made net.
And so the way that it works, right, just at the super highest
level, say we have fourteen thousand validators. Of those a top subset actually
participating consensus, right, So the final number we're finalizing right now, actually,
but say it's one hundred. If one of those one hundred says something
different from the others, it gets jailed, it falls out of the validator
set. Another of the fourteen thousand gets subbed in, right, and then
there's an on chain fraud proof that is posted that slashes that malicious validator.
And so that's like the high level. And then that whole process happens,
pulling the exchange order book data, coming to consensus on an order proposal,
cryptographically signing that, sending that to the relay infrastructure signing within the SGX plus
Schmer's secreaturing relay essentially, and it's sending that off to the exchanges. That
whole thing happens once a second, and so there's a huge amount of data
that's coming in. But it's really important obviously to make sure that the validators
are able to come to consensus, and then having everything fully transparent for people
so that they can have the confidence and actually see, Okay, if I
supply liquidity on some external exchange, I know it's not just like the elix
or team running around with API keys or whatever, right Like, so it's
super important to have that fully transparent and auditible. Does it matter as far
as assets are asset types or blockchain types or do you support pretty much,
well, you know, it doesn't matter whatever is on the exchange. You
can support as far as crypto assets, anything that is on the exchange.
Right. So the actual supplying the asset that you'll be supplying to the order
books, it really depends on the exchange itself, right. So a lot
of these different order book based perpetuals exchanges take USDC, Right, you supply
USDC. You can open long and short contracts on ethereum or bitcoin or whatever
for those pairs you're supplying just straight USDC. If the exchange takes USDT is
collateral, you'll be supplying USDT. For spot markets, you'll actually be supplying
fifty to fifty of the underlying So yeah, we're able to support any order
book market. The Elixir network itself actually is you can't actually bridge funds onto
the Elixir network. It's almost like a decentralized consensus engine. And so when
you supply on Vertex, for example, you press that on, your funds
go to a smart contract that lives on Arbitrum. In Vertex's case, because
arbitrump Vertex that wills to Arbitrum, and then we issue signatures based on the
funds held in that smart contract. When you press withdraw, the funds go
back. So the actual elx token when it does go live will be on
Ethereum and that will be an ERC twenty. But when interacting with the system,
you'll be just supplying the assets to the exchange based on what is accepted
as collateral for that market. Ah, got it? Okay, that makes
sense. Now you guys got some funding rounds. Can you tell us about
that? Yeah, So we just closed our Series B roughly two to three
months ago. So we made that announcement. We raised eight million at an
eight hundred million network valuation, so we pulled in some strong partners. Were
really excited about we had you know, Mailstrom as well as Miston Labs who
co led that round, and then a bunch of different marketmakers with had Arthur
Hayes who participated Mailstrom the mist In Labs and Mailstrom co lad and then everyone
else kind of just piled in validators, marketing makers, strategic kind of other
angels who came in with slightly bigger size for the Series B, and so
yeah, we're really excited to have these guys on board. Before that,
we we closed our Series A about a year or so ago that was around
at one hundred million network valuation from hack VC and so they led that round
and we raised seven point five million in that round. And then we had
a seed round that we closed like two and a half years ago that was
allowed led by Commonwealth and falcon X, where we raised roughly two and a
half million and I was, yeah, like two and a half years ago
or so, so yeah, that's like kind of the high level history of
our fundraising rounds. But yeah, we've we've onwarded some strong partners who will
be great in helping us come to market. Now as far as uh,
you know, I know you mentioned like you got some centralized exchange top here
and so forth coming. You can't announce yet. Are there any large VC
firms that are working that you're working with outside of just investments or institutions,
which are can institutions use this solution? I want? I don't mean exchanges
but an apologies if I'm framing this wrong, but more of like if they're
a hedge fund or a venture capital firm. Yeah. So there's a few
different parties that we're working with. For example, Delphi Digital is one.
They're working with us very closely to do a lot of like risk modeling within
the system. Obviously, we work like auditing firms with respect to these bigger
institutions, guys like Samsung and Sony. We've talked to a lot of these
bigger parties as well around like potentially running a validator and security a network.
Some of these bigger names are are really excited about about crypto and looking to
move more into it. AWS is one great example. They we have a
partnership that we're going to be like you know that we've already solidified with them.
We have, We've mentioned it in the past, but essentially allowing for
one click deployment of Elixer validators, So you'll be able to just go to
Amazon Marketplace and just one click deployed an Elixer validator for our test amp three
And so that'll be something that we're going to be bringing a lot more kind
of eyeballs to. But yeah, just I mean as you think about kind
of the prime target for Alixer, there's obviously the exchanges which want to integrate
this. We have the protocols themselves that want to boost the liquidity on their
markets. You have individual LPs that want to come in and supply liquidity,
right because we're unlocking this new source of deal that like to date has never
been accessible, right, Like, it's only going to a few big market
makers, so now anyone can supply and earn a share of these rewards.
So there's a few different parties obviously. We have, so yeah, really
big announcements dropping in the next few weeks that I think will be Yeah,
it'll make it very easy for anyone to participate, and yeah, so definitely
statuted on that side. But yeah, there's a lot of different ways for
people to get involved. But yeah, the like individual hedge funds probably not
as much unless they're looking to supply liquidity and they're looking for a passive delta
neutral way to earn yields, and then in that regard, this is a
perfect a perfect place for them to part capital and boost the liquidity in de
five. Now, obviously you've got a lot coming up right with the launch
and everything and the announcements, But is there anything else on your twenty twenty
four roadmap that you want to highlight? No, I mean it's mostly Elixir
for me. I think Elixir is is definitely at like a really kind of
big inflection point. So I think that's definitely like the main priority of everyone
on the team right now. We've been traveling a fair amount. I went
on like a pretty long road show from We went like from New I'm based
in New York, so New York to la to Hong Kong to Singapore to
Tokyo to Dubai. There's like all these different crypto conferences where I was speaking
at these different events and hosting side events and meeting up with people in our
community. You know, our community has been really taking off. So making
sure that we're able to meet with a lot of these parties and get a
lot of these ambassadors some skin in the game right to where they are really
excited to to you know, they know a lot of the developments of Elixir
and they're able to kind of put things and help explain inspread the message.
So that's really the main focus, at least for me for sure. So
let's talk about the crypto market at large. Obviously, we had an incredible
start to year, even twenty twenty three was incredible. You have the bitcoins,
boty tf's got to prove incredible inflows. Market's kind of cool down now.
I'd love to get your thoughts on how things your perspective and how the
ETFs have affected the market, and what's your outlook for the later the end
the year. Yeah, I think we're still at a pretty healthy spot right
where in the market where obviously the inflows for the bigcoin ETF have brought in.
I think this level of institutional capital that wasn't previously in crypto, right,
So I don't think that was people were talking about like all the institutions
are coming. Institutions are coming, right Like, I think they're actually here.
But I think it's very different from previous bowl markets and that there's not
this huge retail presence we saw that it kind of a lot of the retail
folks flocked to like meme coins, right, So meme coins specifically on Solana,
we're all the rage for what like two three months, where people are
just going in and just like kind of doing it almost like a lottery ticket,
right, And so I think that's kind of been a big theme where
it's it's like meme coins have been really hot over the last few months.
I do think like venture activity has not slowed down at all. There's like
a lot of really cool developments that are happening behind the scenes for people who
are who are developing. But I honestly think it's actually pretty pretty healthy where
we're at when the market and I don't I think that like obviously with the
happening and all these institutional flows, you know, we're in a much better
spot, at a much healthier spot versus where we were a year ago,
right obviously or two years ago, but we're really not. Yeah, it's
really like the market is thawed, but it's not impossible to get funding for
builders. And then on the other hand, right, it's not like super
anemic on the retail side, it's kind of just like very cool altogether.
So that's kind of at least what I've what I've been seeing just straight on
the builders side, there's a lot of really innovative companies that are coming to
market still a lot of heavy zero knowledge proof protocols, right, which these
researchers that are PhDs from Stanford that have some crazy research right that you know,
to date, those hadn't really worked that well. Whereas like because you
just a lot of cryptosis narratives and like you know, marketing. So it's
like if you're just a very very technical team, you kind of struggle a
lot as a builder. But I think what we've seen is that a lot
of these parties are starting to get like really solid traction obviously on the funding
side, but then on the adoption side as well, like people are starting
to really think about like some of these new trends. So overall, I
think the market's in a pretty good spot. I got a couple of questions
based on statements that you made there versus mean coins are very controversial. You
know, I have a love hate relationship with it because it's not quality projects.
You know, it's not like solving a real world problem. It's just
a lot of speculation. What are your thoughts on meme coins? You know,
I mean, are you in the same mindset? So I don't,
I don't buy, I don't do anything right, I'm like, I'm I'm
the most like boring, like standard, I'll like invest into I guess a
small angel in the companies, right, So I angeled into like Blast,
I angeled into uh like Monad and bear a chain just like small checks,
super close with those teams. But I'm not. I'm not in the trenches
like I have. There are people that I know that are like, have
done really well buying these mean coins and you know, capitalizing on these these
speculative frenzies. Right. But I think just the way that I feel it
is it's also very love hate for me, right, Like, I think
a lot of people come into crypto, like they hear about some mean coin,
and that's how they hear about it. They come in, they buy
some mean coin, and you know, they get rug pulled because it's like
some you know, some team. Then it's just like, you know,
whatever they pulled, they pull out the rug on some salot and a lot
because they launched it like two hours ago and they're all anonymous, and that's
it, right, So that's like I do think that like it does.
You know, a lot of the use case of crypto has been a speculative
frenzy, right, Like anything that's touched speculation of cryptos said really well,
right, exchanges have made a lot of money, while its have made a
lot of money. Stakers have made a lot of money. So if you
touch any of those things, you generally do pretty well in crypto if you
achieve success. But like we've been trying to find like use cases for crypto
that are not like just speculation on like a very obvious like meme. But
the thing is, I guess to round it out, I don't think it's
going away though, right, Like there is always going to be a subset
of people like just similar like when I was working at like before I moved
all in on crypto, right, Like I was working like a normal job
where I was just like in traditional finance, and I looked at crypto or
I was like this is kind of like you. I looked at this,
and there's the potential to meet outsize games, right, And there's like potentially
like really innovative technology, And so there's a subset of people who will just
look at crypto and they'll go the extreme and they'll think it's just a casino,
right, and they'll just go in and then just you know, it's
okay. Well I could put it, I can put a thousand dollars on
black at the casino, or I could snipe you know, snipe it into
a Salona mean coin. Right. So that's I think it's not going away.
It's very like kind of love love hate for me too. I don't
I don't trade them, but I have a lot of friends who do.
Yeah, same same thing. Now, let's talk about those vcs, right,
Uh, based on your experience, you have a plethorough experience, I
mean obviously with block venture and so forth. How have you seen the the
VC investments change over the years going back to let's say twenty seventeen. Have
there been different patterns anything to call out or is just the same old like
they they find good projects they and maybe good tokenomics and so fourth. Well,
I think DC in crypto is also a little bit like kind of love
hate for me. Obviously, Alixer could not be where it is without venture
funding. We have a team like of of fifteen sixteen full time people,
right, it's obviously because we raised funding and we're able to pay everyone like
a wage, right, So it's like it's needed that being said. Right,
Like the way that that adventure that venture operators kind of think about the
crypto space is they everything is comparable based, because no one knows how to
value anything, right, So everyone just says if you if you launch a
layer one and you're raising your seed around for your layer one, and you
say, oh, well, like Solana is, if we just get to
one one hundredth of Solana, we're worth a thousand x where you are.
Now all the investors think the same way, right, So there it's all
about kind of following the pack, and a lot of times they just follow
the herd, right. True zero to one innovative things actually don't get very
much love from vcs, Like I think there's there are a lot of like
really successful launches that have happened in the last year, where like the vcs
have kind of been very much like hit or miss on because it's been very
zero to one, they can't really compare it to anything, so they go,
oh, like probably I don't know, it's probably just a path for
me, right, But like a new copy paste Layer one that's backed by
Paradigm, right, every every especially if it's out like anything sub five hundred
million, it's just people are going to pile in because they can just say,
oh, it's back with Paradigm and it's going to go to there,
right, So there is Yeah, VC investment is super important, But yeah,
I think there has been that. That being said, there have been
a lot of like really great innovation that we've seen just across the space,
and I think venture funds have gone I think too to some really strong builders.
So I'm really really excited to see that. Obviously, Elixer did our
Series B, you know, we've there's like Monad who did a huge mega
around. We had like like eigen Layer obviously did like a huge round before
their launch. Like the launch itself. I think there's a lot of hate
around how they did their their air draft and stuff, but overall, it's
it's exciting to see that funds are getting in the hand to good builders for
sure, So Phil, but I want to get your perspective as a builder,
as an entrepreneur, with and especially being in the United States, there
is still a lot of uncertainty. Congress has not passed regulations, and you've
got the SEC which is acting like a rogue, you know, run away
regulator essentially, And there's a lot of things happening in the courts and battling,
but I love that the crypto industry is fighting back and winning somebody these
cases. I would love to get your thoughts, especially from a perspective of
a builder. Yeah, I mean, I think it's it's it's you have
to try to play that. You have to play the play by the rules
right at the end of the day. You have to, like, if
you're taking on a credited retail investment as a pre launch company in the US,
like you're going to have a bad time. You have to, like,
you have to play by the rules. Generally. That being said,
it is like there has been very historically bad guidance right where if you are
a founder. I mean most of the leading crypto protocols are in New York,
right, and they're all in New York, but they all have like
offshore structures and stuff, and it's like, well then what is kind of
like you almost like you're allowed to so you get these weird like convoluted structures,
and so, I mean most of our team is actually remote. We
have a very global team. You know, we have a foundation with that
is offshore where you know, and then there's a very clear like developed devco
offshore foundation, right and that's the standard for everyone. And I think it's
just really important to make sure that you do things right kind of from day
one as a project. Otherwise you really can get into hot water right where
it's like, you know, if you do doing like public sales or things
like that, or you're representing that you're whatever, like token is going to
go up or whatever you're gonna like the I think a lot of that is
also kind of in the some of that there is an overlap right there.
Some of that is actually good for the space too, because if every project
was just saying that our token is gonna go up, our token's going to
go up by our token, right, it like is not you're you're not
like it gets very much kind of just like a there are people who are
like really excited about the tech in Web three, and you know that's like
our team we like really look for that the people who are actually trying to
unlock these use cases, and like that's really the most important thing we think,
And so it's important. I think having some of that regulation that's there
so you can kind of weed out the back doctors that are like all about
fast money and you can just you can you can just you know, focus
on buildings. So yeah, I mean I think it's overall, I think
some guidance would be great. I think it's great that the industry is fighting
back, and especially it's like just perceived overstepping, right. Like the one
thing that I am like pretty annoyed about is like how like Gary guns and
the SEC is not like come up with one one way or the other on
ethereums like designation as a security. It's like like there is no good faith
argument for why they couldn't just put like they couldn't just say, hey,
this is what concerns us about this, right, and then all the industry
goes, oh, okay, well then we won't do that, we'll do
this right. So, but like that hasn't happened, so everyone's kind of
in this like purgatory. So anyways, it's interesting to see how it goes.
But yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, a
lot of a lot of our close friends who are builders have moved out of
the US so it's kind of a bummer to see for sure, now a
hot topic and it seems to be mostly from the institutions like black Rock and
so forth. Is tokenization. I love to get your thoughts on that.
And you know, is it, as Larry Fink says, it is the
future of finding hands? I think, I think on a long enough timescale
that's correct. I think that it's just one of those things that people have
been saying for a long time. But I wouldn't put my money where my
mouth is there yet. Right, It's almost like vr AR, right,
people have all been saying vr AR is the future for like twenty years now,
fifteen years before it was when it was just like kind of just an
idea of people were saying, wow, this is going to be how it
is? Right, But if you invested in any VRAR company, pretty much
any AR company in the last like fifteen years, you pretty much got a
full right off on your investment. And just because the market isn't ready for
it yet, and I think the market is at a spot where a successful
tokenization play will come out and be really successful. I think if you've maybe
just conceptualize real world assets and tokenization as look, you have right now,
which is a whatever one trillion dollar industry or whatever it is, right,
and then you have all of the whole real world realm, which is however,
many hundreds of trillions of dollars. That's like eventually there will be crossover
between those two and whatever that crossover is will be very important. And I
agree with that, right. I think that's like one small, tiny little
use case of that is like oracles, right, Like Oracles bring real world
data and put it onto the blockchain and they do really well, like chain
link. Everyone knows chain link, right, But yeah, thinking about the
actual tookenization of like you know, like private blockchains, enterprise blockchains, taking
you know, paper like that is essentially like and then just like storing it
onto a private blockchain, there's no like real big value unlocked there. And
so that's not really where it's going to look like. I think it'll be
something that we're not really thinking about that will come along and just absolutely just
be like an amazing opportunity and also like bring into a huge amount of value
for the builders in Web three. So I'm excited to see it. But
I yah, I yeah, I've just been I've been here in the tokenization
real world assets narrative since like twenty sixteen when I first joined, and it's
still that we're still kind of at the same spot. So we'll have to
see for sure. Yeah, we got ways to go, all right.
I got some wrap up questions here for you. First is, if you
could create your own metaverse, what would the theme be. It's a good
question. I would have to do something Liquidity themes, because it's like the
Elixer theme. We have like a really cool we actually are we were thinking
about building out a metaverse for Elixer, like our own like just like funny
like because we have our own tight knit community and we have like we have
like a private telegram and then we have like a public lounge and we're doing
One of the things we're thinking about doing is making like a Minecraft server and
making it all like Liquidity theme that you could join in and we'll do like
competitions for some potions, which are like our point. Right, So yeah,
i'd have to do something Liquidity themed. Oh nice? Uh? And
some rapid fire questions here. Firstus favorite food, favorite food, pizza?
Easy, favorite musician or band. Oh, that's a that's a hard one.
I'm gonna say Aerosmith, favorite movie, The Godfather, favorite book.
Oh, I would say, yeah, there's there's a lot of good ones.
Man, That's that's a hard one. I'd say forty eight Laws of
Power for the controversy too. It's just like, very like controversial books have
a lot of like cold hard truths that you can kind of sift through.
I'm a big fan of those, so I'll do that nice. And then
when you're not working at alix here, what are you doing for fun these
days? Very not very much, but I would say yeah, uh,
hitting the gym, hanging out with friends are probably the main two. Philip.
A pleasure chatting with you. I'm exciting for the launches and everything that's
coming up in the announcements around Alixer. And since you're in New York,
our next interview we have to do it in person. But thank you so
much for joining me, No, thank you for having me. It's been
great and yeah, I'm looking forward to the to link it up in person.
Thanks Tony,