Speaker 1: And I think NFTs posed this challenge, which was how
Speaker 1: do we hyper align a creator with their community and
Speaker 1: have nothing in between? What could happen? Right? That was
Speaker 1: like the big big thing.
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Speaker 2: Welcome into the Thinking Crypto Podcast. I'm your host Tony Edward,
Speaker 2: and joining me today is Ash Pompati, who is the
Speaker 2: head of ecosystem at the app tossk Foundation.
Speaker 3: Ash. Great to have you on.
Speaker 1: Thanks Tony, I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Ash, I'm really excited to speak with you, not
Speaker 2: only about app toss, but your background in working on
Speaker 2: YouTube and you know, working with different initiatives around the
Speaker 2: creator economy and myself being creator and I want to
Speaker 2: explore different ideas and thoughts with you around that and
Speaker 2: how that fits into Web three. But before we get
Speaker 2: to all that, love to get to know you a
Speaker 2: bit better. Tell us about yourself, where you're from, and
Speaker 2: your professional background.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great. I'm Ash. I have lived in New
Speaker 1: York for about nineteen years, so I'm technically a New Yorker,
Speaker 1: but grew up in rural eastern Kentucky, which was an
Speaker 1: exciting character building experience. I got into working for software companies,
Speaker 1: primarily through a company called Spotify. So when it was
Speaker 1: launching in the US, it was a product that fell
Speaker 1: in love with. I was actually vpning it for twelve
Speaker 1: months prior when it wasn't available in the US, joined
Speaker 1: as one of the first marketers there to lead growth marketing,
Speaker 1: and then graduated over to the big mothership of Google
Speaker 1: to focus on music product growth across the company. And
Speaker 1: then I've been in Web three professionally since twenty twenty
Speaker 1: two and now here at Avtos Foundation leading the ecosystem.
Speaker 2: So when did you first Well you mentioned the year
Speaker 2: you kind of made the transition, but what was your
Speaker 2: first encounter with crypto blockchain and what was your home
Speaker 2: moment and how did that lead to you jumping industries?
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I can't lie and say I was
Speaker 1: a Bitcoin MAXI on the forums. That's not when I
Speaker 1: got onboarded. I actually got onboarded while I was at YouTube.
Speaker 1: You know, my primary focus there was how do we
Speaker 1: take YouTube, which has pioneered in trailblazed the native web
Speaker 1: creator economy, and divert that energy towards artists and musicians
Speaker 1: who are kind of held back by legacy systems. I
Speaker 1: saw creators and video creators going up into the right
Speaker 1: in terms of their exposure, the money they were generating,
Speaker 1: the agency they had over their business. And I saw
Speaker 1: our artists and musicians kind of stuck in this stasis.
Speaker 1: They weren't extracting enough value from the Internet in terms
Speaker 1: of modernization. They weren't able to decide where their content
Speaker 1: could be, they weren't able to own their fans, and
Speaker 1: so that was a nut I was trying to crack
Speaker 1: over the seven and a half years I was over there,
Speaker 1: And then about twenty twenty one we saw the NFT
Speaker 1: craze happening on eth but I was actually introduced to
Speaker 1: NFTs on Solana and so in my kind of research,
Speaker 1: because every year, you know, I was the one who
Speaker 1: would compile all the fresh ideas to present to the
Speaker 1: CEO and say, hey, we need to do this. Here's
Speaker 1: the justification. So even starting in twenty twenty one, I
Speaker 1: was like, we need to explore Web three. There's a
Speaker 1: burgeoning creator economy over there. I don't think that YouTube
Speaker 1: is set up to actually attract this segment of creators,
Speaker 1: and it's the first time we've probably been boxed out
Speaker 1: from a true native Internet creator economy. And so you know,
Speaker 1: I was doing my explorations, I was obviously seeing NFTs
Speaker 1: kind of break through the mainstream, but I was onboarded
Speaker 1: through Solana, so Magic Eden and Phantom, and in that experience,
Speaker 1: I kind of experienced the opposite of the horror stories
Speaker 1: I would see on Reddit of people trying to buy NFTs,
Speaker 1: whether it's like paying exorbit in gas skees or high
Speaker 1: floor prices or transactions not coming through. You know, I
Speaker 1: went into Phantom, I went into Magic Eaton, bought my
Speaker 1: first NFT and the ux was as smooth as what
Speaker 1: I was accustomed to as a Web two user. And
Speaker 1: that's when I said, okay, like I need to fully
Speaker 1: jump in both feet in this space. I can't wait
Speaker 1: till YouTube, with all of its diversified interest areas to
Speaker 1: kind of come along with the new economy that's building
Speaker 1: that's being built out here. And so I left fully
Speaker 1: two feed in joined a company called Metaplex, which spun
Speaker 1: out of Solona Labs, which was the base layer of
Speaker 1: token infrastructure for Solona. So that's how I got introduced
Speaker 1: and very quickly jumped in the boat to work professionally.
Speaker 2: That's amazing as a creator, you know, I'm waiting for
Speaker 2: today where YouTube integrates blockchain for profiles, web monetization, maybe
Speaker 2: payouts and tokens and even some sort of NFT marketplace
Speaker 2: built in in some way where I can reward my subscribers.
Speaker 2: Were there any talks about those type of things. I
Speaker 2: don't know if you can disclose that and if you're
Speaker 2: under NDA and things like that, but were there any
Speaker 2: talks about those things down the road?
Speaker 1: So we were always trying to think of ways in
Speaker 1: which creators could build direct relationships with their users or
Speaker 1: their viewers or their fans, and also monetized that more
Speaker 1: directly so that they had more control whether it's the
Speaker 1: brand they wanted to support or they you know, margin
Speaker 1: they wanted to get from, like the revenue that was
Speaker 1: generating on platform. You know, advertising is this big beast, right,
Speaker 1: And really the majority of revenue from advertising comes from
Speaker 1: like seven big CpG brands, right, And so those folks
Speaker 1: have a very specific opinion on where they want their
Speaker 1: content to be exposed and where they're willing to pay
Speaker 1: for that premium inventory. And so for creators, they may
Speaker 1: flood into that zone for a period of time, but
Speaker 1: they also may graduate out of it. When they have
Speaker 1: a more niche or loyal audience. And so what we
Speaker 1: were always trying to figure out is when a creator
Speaker 1: kind of either before they hit that that leap into
Speaker 1: the public mainstream consciousness where they're at the front page
Speaker 1: of YouTube and they're alongside like you know, you know,
Speaker 1: Netflix shows and HBO shows and they're creating content on
Speaker 1: par What can we do to create sickness? And so
Speaker 1: there was a lot of thoughts around digital goods. There
Speaker 1: was a lot of thoughts around you know, paygated content
Speaker 1: for exclusive you know, I can subscribe, I can pay
Speaker 1: to subscribe to mister Visa channel to get exclusive content.
Speaker 1: But you know, from my personal opinion and not speaking
Speaker 1: on behalf of YouTube, this was always a hard challenge
Speaker 1: to solve for the creator in the sense that they
Speaker 1: were already working so hard to get into that mainstream exposure.
Speaker 1: Like the amount of content you need to create, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure Tony you know yourself, right, Like the amount
Speaker 1: of velocity you need to have to push out content
Speaker 1: to stay on be That's like you're basically like running
Speaker 1: on a treadmill at full speed, and you're probably any
Speaker 1: money you're getting you're putting back into the content, right,
Speaker 1: So what additional capacity does the creator have to like
Speaker 1: start to support new verticals that may have different modernization principles,
Speaker 1: And so you have to do that balance of Okay,
Speaker 1: I need to get into the mainstream, right, I need
Speaker 1: to break through on the front page algorithm, and it's
Speaker 1: going to take a lot of work and a lot
Speaker 1: of time, and there's tons of people competing with me.
Speaker 1: Can I clone myself right to like actually so you know,
Speaker 1: support these other verticals And the majority of the answer
Speaker 1: was no, Like creators didn't have the capacity to say,
Speaker 1: now I do content for paygated folks, or now like
Speaker 1: I have a bunch of new things to like sell
Speaker 1: digital goods, And so for me, that's that's generally. I
Speaker 1: think a core insight from that was the way in
Speaker 1: which web two generally works, which is like broad distribution
Speaker 1: model works for a few, and unless you're that few,
Speaker 1: you're kind of out on past to pasture with being
Speaker 1: able to like earn a living being a creator. And
Speaker 1: so my perspective it was there needs to be a
Speaker 1: new model, and that model needs to be needs to
Speaker 1: be supported by great professionals working in it.
Speaker 2: So on that note of that new model. Do you
Speaker 2: see eventually YouTube and all these platforms are going to
Speaker 2: have to capitulate in one way or the other to
Speaker 2: integrate into Web three because I don't know.
Speaker 3: Usually there's that first mover.
Speaker 2: Who's the big domino to fall, and then game theory
Speaker 2: plays out? You know, how do you see that maybe
Speaker 2: in five years? You know, is it YouTube that capitulates
Speaker 2: because they're like, hey, we need to catch up and
Speaker 2: we need to stay ahead of the curve.
Speaker 1: I don't. I can't anticipate YouTube capitulating on something that extreme.
Speaker 1: You know. My perspective with a lot of these traditional
Speaker 1: media technology firms is that the creator is the algorithm,
Speaker 1: Like their algorithm becomes the creator, and that creator can
Speaker 1: wear many different hats, it can have very different voices,
Speaker 1: it can be from many different places. But that's essentially
Speaker 1: what's happening, right. I mean, you see other companies just
Speaker 1: creating their own content. They're like scanning the data, they're
Speaker 1: seeing what people are vibing with and they're like making
Speaker 1: a movie or a show like in the next three months,
Speaker 1: and like they made it, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And that's what's on the front page. The question to
Speaker 1: me is can they continue to do that if they
Speaker 1: don't have a pipeline of long tailed creators continuing to
Speaker 1: engage with the platform. And so from my perspective, I
Speaker 1: don't know what the time horizon is on whether that
Speaker 1: becomes a problem, but eventually you could imagine it would. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you don't have a two way economy and
Speaker 1: you don't have two ways signal, like your algorithm isn't
Speaker 1: just it isn't going to be as good to produce
Speaker 1: the thing that the user or your viewer would want.
Speaker 1: And I think an element to that is can I
Speaker 1: be a creator on your platform and not have another
Speaker 1: job if I only have a thousand subscribers? That's that's
Speaker 1: the question, right, Like can I earn a living right
Speaker 1: being someone who only has a thousand subscribers? And maybe
Speaker 1: I'm not creating content to have a million subscribers, right,
Speaker 1: And I think that's like the question yet to be answered,
Speaker 1: and I already see it, Like you know, I'm from
Speaker 1: the music industry. From a tech perspective, you don't see
Speaker 1: you see a lot of artists now who could have
Speaker 1: been great getting a job and stopping artists like you're
Speaker 1: seeing that every single day, right, And The question is
Speaker 1: what happens when when that thing prolongs for a period
Speaker 1: of time. And my perspective from where I've always worked
Speaker 1: is nothing good happens. We don't get good experiences, we
Speaker 1: don't get good content, we don't actually build interests that
Speaker 1: are unique as people. But I don't know the time
Speaker 1: horizonal when that would be felt or when a huge
Speaker 1: company like YouTube would feel like they need to make
Speaker 1: a shift.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting because I don't know what that catalystism
Speaker 2: is myself. But I think about these things being in
Speaker 2: Web three and you know, certain industries, what would be
Speaker 2: the tipping point for mainstream adoption? And I don't know
Speaker 2: if it has to be other brands out there, whether
Speaker 2: it's in the sports or gaming world where they onboard
Speaker 2: a ton of people on chain with via NFTs and
Speaker 2: then the public in general becomes more educated and aware
Speaker 2: of this, and then they're like, hey, why can't I
Speaker 2: get it from mister Bees and mister Beest then says.
Speaker 3: Okay, I can offer it, but I can offer a YouTube.
Speaker 3: I want you off YouTube.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's where YouTube's like, no, I don't want them
Speaker 2: to leave, I want to stay the on the platform.
Speaker 3: Maybe something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's it's interesting you say that because
Speaker 1: you know, when I was there, we would often debate, right, like,
Speaker 1: you know, YouTube kind of from its from its core
Speaker 1: in terms of like the thesis of why it was
Speaker 1: important to society was it was like the library of Alexandria.
Speaker 1: Like in today's age, anything you could have wanted to
Speaker 1: know ever know was there. Now principally we had to
Speaker 1: start to peel back that notion because now you have creators,
Speaker 1: You have creators who became brands, you have music, you
Speaker 1: have all of these things that are meant to want
Speaker 1: to be everywhere. Right, So not just YouTube, but if
Speaker 1: YouTube has to have everything there, it really creates a
Speaker 1: big risk exposure for them to like just basically keep
Speaker 1: paying upwards and upwards of everything you know, of licensing
Speaker 1: to like keep everything there. So I think where I
Speaker 1: kind of from my vantage point at the company, we
Speaker 1: kind of sat and said, actually, you know what, it's
Speaker 1: a distribution platform. So like, if you're an artist and
Speaker 1: you have an album coming out, we don't need the
Speaker 1: whole album on there, but you should probably create a
Speaker 1: video that's compelling, that's interesting, or a series of videos
Speaker 1: that fits with what we know, the algorithm rewards to
Speaker 1: push people to that thing, and we always kind of
Speaker 1: positioned it as advertising that pays, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: if you invest in the platform and you push the
Speaker 1: right content and you actually understand how thumbnails work and
Speaker 1: like how the algorithm is triggered, and what atomic networks
Speaker 1: of creators you have to have promote you, and how
Speaker 1: comments like input into like your velocity for viewership that
Speaker 1: can be a jumping off point for you to like
Speaker 1: push people to deeper experiences. And by the way, you
Speaker 1: get paid, like that's monetized and everything. So it was
Speaker 1: kind of a slight nuance in terms of how we
Speaker 1: pivoted our positioning because I think that's true, right, and
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people use YouTube as that
Speaker 1: front door to like push something elsewhere. Yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: if YouTube continues to being effective distribution platform for creators
Speaker 1: to push people in different areas, it will always be important.
Speaker 3: M I appreciate that perspective.
Speaker 2: It's it's I'm really fascinated by what's going to happen
Speaker 2: with YouTube and the creator economy, and you know, given
Speaker 2: how big the platform is, but we'll have to wait
Speaker 2: and see. So on that note though, is app toss
Speaker 2: you and the folks at apt halls going knocking the
Speaker 2: door of these companies saying, hey, let's explore web three together.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I think the history of aptos definitely so,
Speaker 1: like you know, crypto is kind of these cycles of
Speaker 1: huge catalytic moments that propel or pull forward adoption. And
Speaker 1: so I think I was onboarded with NFTs. I wasn't
Speaker 1: onboarded with icos or bitcoin mining or whatever. And I
Speaker 1: think NFTs posed this challenge, which was how do we
Speaker 1: hyper align a creator with their community and have nothing
Speaker 1: in between? What could happen?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: That was like the big big thing. And so when
Speaker 1: I was with the Salon ecosystem, that was everything right like,
Speaker 1: because that's that's what kind of bootstrapped a lot of
Speaker 1: the ecosystem. Was this attention around NFTs, the financialization of communities,
Speaker 1: the discourse within communities of why this project is the best,
Speaker 1: why that project isn't the best, the transfer of communities
Speaker 1: from one community to another. There was so much communal
Speaker 1: activity right that bootstrapped all these products while phantom like
Speaker 1: magic eaten like you know, and really set the foundation
Speaker 1: for I think what like truly financialized communities became with
Speaker 1: for mem coils, right, and that kind of like sprouted out.
Speaker 1: I think for a blockchain like aptoss, you know, we
Speaker 1: need to push to where we think the puck is going,
Speaker 1: and so you know, I think for us NFTs we
Speaker 1: a vibrant like you know, collection and community of NFTs
Speaker 1: on app toss. But I kind of see them as
Speaker 1: a way in which to have a signal within the
Speaker 1: ecosystem of loyal supporters that are highly networked that if
Speaker 1: you're a new project coming to app toss and you
Speaker 1: tap into those, you'll immediately be distributed. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like these micro radio towers, right that have a brand
Speaker 1: presence online because everyone has a PfP or you know,
Speaker 1: can socially signal and there's a discord where people are
Speaker 1: like meeting up and talking all day about every topic
Speaker 1: in the world. So I think they're important to basically
Speaker 1: be these radio towers to help ecosystems bootstrap and also
Speaker 1: just represent the brand of aptosts from a bottoms up perspective,
Speaker 1: So I think in the traditional sense of what NFTs
Speaker 1: were represented as, that's still important, but on the technology
Speaker 1: perspective of what an NFT is to me, it is
Speaker 1: the way I think about it is it is a
Speaker 1: better retention mechanism which would thus give you better monetization
Speaker 1: of your customers. Right. So I think about it as
Speaker 1: every you know, B two C or B to B
Speaker 1: app like in web two, right, they have, you know,
Speaker 1: if they're a good operating team, they really have a
Speaker 1: tight growth funnel analysis and they monitor each element of
Speaker 1: that right of to say, okay, when someone signs up
Speaker 1: on day one, what activities are they taking? Based on
Speaker 1: those activities, what's to drop off to day two retention?
Speaker 1: And then you zoom out all the way to thirty
Speaker 1: day returned And now you're all of a sudden thinking
Speaker 1: about retention overall for your product, and you make decisions
Speaker 1: and fts to meet are, if executed the right ways
Speaker 1: of core technology a better way to drive retention and
Speaker 1: less churn from that moment you log in and use
Speaker 1: the app. Right, And so I think as a core technology,
Speaker 1: they're actually going to be an accelerant to how scaling
Speaker 1: B two C or beat it be apps actually drive monetization.
Speaker 2: Interesting and do you foresee there being what maybe called
Speaker 2: dynamic NFT is that maybe the longer you're a customer
Speaker 2: or you're loyal to the brand, the NFT continues to
Speaker 2: unlock and open up new things for you. So it's
Speaker 2: not just okay, it's static monkey japag, but it's more
Speaker 2: than that, right, and it kind of like a digital
Speaker 2: key so to speak. It just unlocks new features and
Speaker 2: things the longer you're a customer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think that's the other kind of
Speaker 1: like adjacent application to the two things I mentioned, which
Speaker 1: is it is an identity token in a way. Now
Speaker 1: what context that identity is contextualized is dependent, right. It
Speaker 1: could be a soul bound NFT where like this is
Speaker 1: only for you, and because you have this, it's locked
Speaker 1: to you, you can't even transfer to anyone else even
Speaker 1: if I want to pay. It could be an identity
Speaker 1: of you within a community, so you have a unique
Speaker 1: PfP that's like one on one and you're part of
Speaker 1: a community that everyone else has a different one on
Speaker 1: one and that's you, you know, like I'm punk xys,
Speaker 1: like you know what I mean. And so I think
Speaker 1: the concept of what is an identity and a truly
Speaker 1: permissionless and trustless world, NFTs have brought a lot of
Speaker 1: context to but I certainly think there's tons more room
Speaker 1: to establish what the what I guess like the killer
Speaker 1: use cases?
Speaker 3: Oh for sure.
Speaker 2: Now, for those who may not know about app toss,
Speaker 2: tell us a bit about the blockchain and you know
Speaker 2: what makes it different from other blockchains.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So app toos is a highly performance layer one
Speaker 1: blockchain built with a native programming language called Move. It
Speaker 1: was actually incubated or started with the liber dm project
Speaker 1: at Meta, which, if some of your viewers may know
Speaker 1: or you may know Tony, was essentially the plan or
Speaker 1: the strategy to transfer value across metas super app economy.
Speaker 1: So you have Instagram, you have WhatsApp, right, you have
Speaker 1: Facebook itself. How can those users actually send assets or
Speaker 1: money across that ecosystem. Well, you need a blockchain to
Speaker 1: do that, and you probably need a currency on that
Speaker 1: blockchain to do that. So app toss was principle by principle,
Speaker 1: the exact architecture of what was being built at Meta,
Speaker 1: And obviously in twenty twenty that project was shut down,
Speaker 1: and so what happened was app toos fun out and
Speaker 1: became available to everyone as a highly performance L one.
Speaker 1: I would say the way I think about app tooss is,
Speaker 1: you know, you had you had Ethereum, which was smart contracts, right,
Speaker 1: but you know very now looking back, hard to use
Speaker 1: for any scalable use case. Right. Then you had Layer
Speaker 1: twos kind of building on top of that. Then you
Speaker 1: had Solana, right, and a few other chains, but Solana
Speaker 1: is the one we know which was basically like no,
Speaker 1: this needs to be like amazing ux and we're really fast.
Speaker 1: And then there's this another tranch of blockchains which are
Speaker 1: even faster and more performance, and aptos is one of
Speaker 1: the leading ones. I would say. The thing that adds
Speaker 1: additional context to aptas's specific architecture is move, the native
Speaker 1: programming language of Move and Move was developed at Meta
Speaker 1: specifically for them because they needed a higher level security
Speaker 1: on the smart contract level to manage possibly the trillions
Speaker 1: of dollars that would pass through their economy. So smart
Speaker 1: contract architecture outside of that was not sufficient for Meta's
Speaker 1: use case. So we are the bearer of those fruits.
Speaker 1: And when you think about apas's positioning in the market,
Speaker 1: I would say, in the past last couple of years,
Speaker 1: we've really built a lot of headway with institutions that
Speaker 1: really see blockchain as the future to power their business.
Speaker 1: So companies like black Rock with the middle front, or
Speaker 1: Franklin Templeton and Ave now who is going through governance
Speaker 1: to come to MAInet as the first non EVM chain
Speaker 1: with app toos. They all look at security and performance
Speaker 1: and reliability, right, They're not making any sort of guesses
Speaker 1: in this framework, and so when when you audit and
Speaker 1: kind of look at aptos from that context, it's a
Speaker 1: no brainer in terms of those things. Now, when I
Speaker 1: think about when I think about where we want to go,
Speaker 1: what we want to do as a network is establish
Speaker 1: establish successful businesses and founders on app toss. So that's
Speaker 1: kind of my job, like building an ecosystem. What does
Speaker 1: that mean? It's having successful founders and projects within the ecosystem,
Speaker 1: building on the app tost network and pushing the mission
Speaker 1: forward in their opinionated way. That's really kind of the
Speaker 1: next phase of rep toss.
Speaker 3: Talk to us a bit about the building.
Speaker 2: So let's say I'm a business, I'm a CEO listening
Speaker 2: to this podcast once it goes live, right, and I
Speaker 2: want to build on app toss. Am I building a
Speaker 2: layer to one app toss? How does that work? If
Speaker 2: I want to create maybe my own network.
Speaker 1: So to speak? So we built the L one so
Speaker 1: you need never need to build a layer two. You know,
Speaker 1: traditionally in the sense of why layer twos is because
Speaker 1: the base layer isn't proficient enough at handling what you
Speaker 1: need to handle. So with Ethereum it's slow, like or
Speaker 1: high gas fees, and so it forced like all of
Speaker 1: these abstraction layers right to come and say, well, we
Speaker 1: can't support a social app on Ethereum, so we're going
Speaker 1: to build a L two to like track some of
Speaker 1: that away to make it easier. With highly performance l ones,
Speaker 1: the goal is to not have or need an L
Speaker 1: two to manage a task, right, That's why we were built.
Speaker 1: That's why you know, the beauty of why we were
Speaker 1: built is we were built to handle like Instagram or
Speaker 1: WhatsApp level like of connectivity. Now, I think there are
Speaker 1: ways in like what you what people do is they
Speaker 1: build protocols or applications on app toss, right, So if
Speaker 1: you had if you were building in the trading space,
Speaker 1: you would build a protocol on top of that app tooss. Right.
Speaker 1: So app toss is the network. You build a protocol
Speaker 1: to manage the network a certain way, but you don't
Speaker 1: have to manage a blockchain, you just focus on your customer,
Speaker 1: you focus on your use case, and the rest is
Speaker 1: kind of set for you.
Speaker 3: Got it.
Speaker 2: And then from a privacy standpoint, so if you have
Speaker 2: a variety of companies building on app toss, what are
Speaker 2: the what is the infrastructure there to prevent data from
Speaker 2: certain data from being public and things like that.
Speaker 1: It's a really good question. I mean, I think it's
Speaker 1: a concept that the industry is discussing, right. So when
Speaker 1: you think about native crypto builders, their intention is to
Speaker 1: tap into shared liquidity and understanding of what's happening. Right.
Speaker 1: That's why open and permissionless networks have been really successful
Speaker 1: at bootstrapping startups, right, I mean you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: You see kind of like you see a startup incubate
Speaker 1: for one month, go to main net, launch drive users.
Speaker 1: Now they're making like tens of not hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: of revenue. That's because of the built in network and
Speaker 1: liquidity right that ecosystems have managed to do. The question
Speaker 1: then comes down to, Okay, that next layer of enterprise
Speaker 1: or businesses or retail users, what will it take for
Speaker 1: them to do simple things right for for in their
Speaker 1: day or for their customers. And when I think about
Speaker 1: what that is is privacy is a big piece, right
Speaker 1: because blockchains are uh you know, it's a record of
Speaker 1: something happening, but you may have a reason to make
Speaker 1: sure that record isn't fully public or let's say it
Speaker 1: needs to be partially private. Number one. Number two is
Speaker 1: the transactions themselves. You know, if you if if if
Speaker 1: we are using on chain rails to send payments to
Speaker 1: my landlord, right, do I want that transaction to be
Speaker 1: public that every every month I'm sending so and so
Speaker 1: to this address that this is my address? No? Absolutely
Speaker 1: not right like and so I think, uh, the the
Speaker 1: I think we will see a ton of there's already
Speaker 1: a lot of company is that are already thinking about privacy,
Speaker 1: as you know, in the blockchain space. But I think
Speaker 1: you will see more ideas from networks like us on
Speaker 1: how to manage these controls and how to leave choice
Speaker 1: up to the customer, the builder, right or the user
Speaker 1: to toggle them because I think we are not going
Speaker 1: to get a wide scale mainstream adoption by having every
Speaker 1: all of the information publicly for any bad actor to
Speaker 1: go and you know, use for their own advantage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense. There's a follow up question I
Speaker 2: have because you mentioned, you know, up toss is history
Speaker 2: and genesis coming out from Facebook and things like that.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you can answer this, but there
Speaker 2: was a report recently about Facebook looking to go back
Speaker 2: to that DM project, maybe not in the same capacity,
Speaker 2: but doing some sort of stable coin. Now that stable
Speaker 2: coin legislation's on the way, are you guys going back
Speaker 2: to your colleagues or the folks their Facebook saying hey,
Speaker 2: this is the chain to do it on or anything
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: We always have connectivity with folks like Beta, but like
Speaker 1: every big company that's exploring crypto, I can't really speak on,
Speaker 1: you know, where they're at with their development phase or
Speaker 1: their psychology or psychology around solving the problem. Now I
Speaker 1: can't speak on behalf of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm curious as to what they're going to do
Speaker 2: because I know when DM was being worked on, Congress
Speaker 2: came with a sledgehammer and shut that down, right, And
Speaker 2: I think we look back in hindsight and get why
Speaker 2: they weren't ready. The government was not ready at all
Speaker 2: to handle this and to monitor it. But now that
Speaker 2: legislation's coming, folks are a bit more educated as to
Speaker 2: what's happening. It looks like a lot of these companies
Speaker 2: can now create their own stable coins within their ecosystem.
Speaker 2: And I don't know, I don't know if there's gonna
Speaker 2: be oversaturation, but it's fascinating. What do you think of
Speaker 2: you know, maybe Microsoft is going to go next Google,
Speaker 2: I don't know, creating your own stable coins.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean this is just me giving you an
Speaker 1: opinion from where I see the market. Sure, it is
Speaker 1: an existential motive for the United States to make sure
Speaker 1: the stable coin that's adopted is pegged to the dollar,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So, like this is happening.
Speaker 1: This is the next frontier of Okay, what's this actually
Speaker 1: going to be pegged two? That's going to hand you know,
Speaker 1: the biggest thing since the concept of global free trade,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Like, and so I don't
Speaker 1: think it's more I don't think it's about saturation of
Speaker 1: number of stable coins. It's more about what are those
Speaker 1: stable coins pegged two in value? What are they anchored to?
Speaker 1: And so that's why I think you see so much
Speaker 1: openness right today in terms of stable coin regulation. I
Speaker 1: know that's still yet to be determined, but obviously we
Speaker 1: in the industry are very excited about where we're sitting
Speaker 1: in terms of the doorstep, in terms of how that's
Speaker 1: executed across a variety of verticals. You know, let's see, right, Like, sure,
Speaker 1: like every company can have their stable their own you know,
Speaker 1: unique stable coin, but but why, right, what are they
Speaker 1: trying to do with it? The natural need now today,
Speaker 1: as we sit for the foreseeable future is, you know,
Speaker 1: unless everywhere accepts stable coin as a transfer of value,
Speaker 1: you will always need to on and off ramp. It's
Speaker 1: fiat and like pay your house to do this thing, right,
Speaker 1: So I think it's still still kind of TBD in
Speaker 1: terms of the actual execution.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I wanted to talk about some
Speaker 2: of the recent developments news items that I saw around
Speaker 2: app toss and versus two hundred million dollars in a
Speaker 2: new DeFi grant or defight grants and investments.
Speaker 3: Tell us about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So for app toss, when you think about a
Speaker 1: highly performance blockchain existing in today's market, what should its
Speaker 1: focus be? And that's a question that every ecosystem or
Speaker 1: blockchain founder is asked. Right, blockchains can do many things,
Speaker 1: but given we are in such an emergent and exciting industry.
Speaker 1: What opinion are you taking right in terms of the
Speaker 1: directionality from the tech that you're building from the ADOS
Speaker 1: lab side to the startup you're onboarding from the aptest
Speaker 1: foundation side. And my perspective is trading within crypto markets
Speaker 1: as a product market fit for multiple cycles that is
Speaker 1: only going to accelerate in terms of adoption with the
Speaker 1: institutional interests. Defies the backbone, but there will be additional
Speaker 1: ideas and use cases brought into the fold. Right, So
Speaker 1: when you think about what is defied today, you know,
Speaker 1: it's risk tolerance versus yields, it's trading crypto native assets.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe in other ecosystems it's trading you know,
Speaker 1: creator assets or mean coins, or speculating on trends in
Speaker 1: the market. And so what I think is what I
Speaker 1: believe is going to happen is you're going to see
Speaker 1: highly liquid assets start coming on chain that have been
Speaker 1: off chain equities, gold, things in between. And so for me,
Speaker 1: what I wanted to basically state is we are fully
Speaker 1: invested in seeing a diverse and robust, defied trading ecosystem.
Speaker 1: And in that kind of post, I kind of detailed
Speaker 1: some of the elements of products and use cases that
Speaker 1: we need. And so every day from the app tas
Speaker 1: foundation side and my team side, we go and try
Speaker 1: to find founders building in those interesting areas. And so
Speaker 1: you know, the fund is kind of broken down as
Speaker 1: a signal in the sense that we invest in these projects,
Speaker 1: we also help accelerate those projects to come to market
Speaker 1: and things like that. So that's like a huge focus
Speaker 1: for us is having a robust trading environment on app
Speaker 1: toss and we believe that US as a blockchain finally
Speaker 1: brings the technology to a web to like experience. So
Speaker 1: trading on robin Hood is no different than trading on
Speaker 1: a crypt native app, but instead here it's fully decentralized.
Speaker 1: You have a much more diverse portfolio of assets you
Speaker 1: can participate in, and you can participate in interesting defive experiences
Speaker 1: as well. So that's kind of what our focus has been.
Speaker 1: And that was the flag in the sand to show
Speaker 1: where we're going.
Speaker 3: That's great.
Speaker 2: And then the other item I read was Runa from
Speaker 2: saying that right an EI driven white label event infrastructure platform.
Speaker 2: You guys formed a partnership with them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Runa is an exciting project. One of the biggest
Speaker 1: They throw some of the biggest festival networks in the world.
Speaker 1: Very tech forward founders, And what's interesting about Runa is
Speaker 1: going back to what I said earlier about NFTs and
Speaker 1: the underlying technology of what they can do. They're building
Speaker 1: deeper and more retentive connections with people who go to
Speaker 1: festivals and what happens after. And so for us, that's
Speaker 1: an exciting project business to bring on app toss And
Speaker 1: for them, they can't go on any other any blockchain.
Speaker 1: They have to be on the fastest and most performant blockchain,
Speaker 1: right because their consumer is not someone who's going to
Speaker 1: tolerate something going down. They could just use something else,
Speaker 1: right and web two to manage that experience. So Runa
Speaker 1: is kind of a flagship partner that we're bringing to
Speaker 1: the ecosystem, but it is a representation of products and
Speaker 1: founders that we believe can thrive on apps us.
Speaker 2: That's great, And you know what do you see kind
Speaker 2: of the convergence of AI and blockchain? How's that playing out?
Speaker 2: Are they kind of is it kind of a symbiotic
Speaker 2: relationship where they benefit each other. Blockchain being used to
Speaker 2: police AI in some way, deep fakes and all that
Speaker 2: while AI is enhancing blockchain attributes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean my personal perspective is I think less
Speaker 1: about blockchaining policing AI and more about how is AI
Speaker 1: and accelerate to make blockchains more useful? And I think
Speaker 1: about that in a few capacities, one is trading, right,
Speaker 1: So how does AI actually help folks manage their risk
Speaker 1: tolerance and return in a systematic way? Right? Because using
Speaker 1: or even interacting with define, no matter what ecosystem and
Speaker 1: you you are in, is not even remotely close for
Speaker 1: just a regular user who has one hundred things going
Speaker 1: on the other day. Right, So I think about AI
Speaker 1: as a way in which to enhance that experience, to
Speaker 1: broaden the customer made base, to bring more people in.
Speaker 1: Same thing with payments. You know, when I think about
Speaker 1: from an agentic framework, if they're supposed to do things
Speaker 1: for us, what do they do when we when they
Speaker 1: need to pay for something? What are they going to do?
Speaker 1: What is an agent going to do? Are they going
Speaker 1: to go to a bank and then get into your account. No,
Speaker 1: They're going to use blockchain, they can use your stable coins.
Speaker 1: They're going to do micro transactions like you could imagine
Speaker 1: a world where I don't know self driving cars, right,
Speaker 1: everyone is in a self driving car and my car
Speaker 1: I need to overtake this car. Maybe this car needs
Speaker 1: to pay a micro transaction to that car so it
Speaker 1: can actually you know, coordinate between each other. This is
Speaker 1: a very radical example, but you can see where I'm
Speaker 1: going with it. What are they going to use. They're
Speaker 1: going to use blockchains and on chain rails because you
Speaker 1: can send a scent for no cost. Where can you
Speaker 1: send a scent to someone In traditional banking rails, you
Speaker 1: can't send a cent to anyone. AI will need to write.
Speaker 1: They will need to be able to send things at
Speaker 1: that level and at a higher frequency to manage the
Speaker 1: coordination of the Internet of things. I think there's a
Speaker 1: third area, which you know, I haven't gone that deep into,
Speaker 1: but you know you have all of these you know,
Speaker 1: large language models like chat, GBT andthropic and Rock and
Speaker 1: all of these things that all have their own way
Speaker 1: of kind of coming up with what you want. What
Speaker 1: if you were someone who said, I want to take
Speaker 1: this from chat GPT, I want to take this from Rock,
Speaker 1: I want to take this and I want to localize
Speaker 1: my ll M. And there's things blockchains can do to
Speaker 1: increase transparency of code across those things, and developer tooling
Speaker 1: to help people who want to build I don't know,
Speaker 1: their own personalized LLM, but that's a much more greener
Speaker 1: pasture in terms of what can be done.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm really fascinated by that and to see
Speaker 2: how that unfolds. It just seems that there's a lot
Speaker 2: of possibilities. And I'm exploring a may in how to
Speaker 2: create maybe an AI agent and see how it can
Speaker 2: be leveraged in different ways and that can monetize it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, I mean, look, I look at crypto
Speaker 1: and AI as two parallel tracks. And what I'm excited
Speaker 1: about is whenever we look at a founder, whenever we
Speaker 1: see a project, whether it's trading or payments, the question
Speaker 1: we always ask and dive into is how are you
Speaker 1: thinking about AI to level up your experience? Right? We
Speaker 1: always go through that question and answer, and more often
Speaker 1: than not, most of the founders have a good answer.
Speaker 2: Hm, what's on your roadmap? But what can you share
Speaker 2: that we can expect?
Speaker 1: So you know, we don't really have a roadmap, right,
Speaker 1: We're in an ecosystem, so our roadmap is finding great founders.
Speaker 1: But generally, what we are looking for from a trading
Speaker 1: perspective is folks that are building there's a couple of things,
Speaker 1: Folks that are building interesting trading environments to tokenize real
Speaker 1: world assets. Right, A lot of they only really use
Speaker 1: real world asset right now as stable coins, but there's
Speaker 1: some of the real world assets that are tokenizer can
Speaker 1: be tokenized. How do those things get utilized in a
Speaker 1: defined environment for a regular user. That's an area in
Speaker 1: which that we're hyper focused on. When I think about payments,
Speaker 1: what I'm really looking for is, you know, the next
Speaker 1: founder or project that's going to build the next HR
Speaker 1: payment software fully on chain, or the next P two
Speaker 1: P payments app fully on chain using stables. And one
Speaker 1: of the ideas that is interesting for me with kind
Speaker 1: of the adoption and pull forward institutional and mainstream interest
Speaker 1: in stable coins is there are markets in the world
Speaker 1: that need stable coins from an existential perspective. Their local
Speaker 1: currencies debate, their government can't be trusted. But there's high
Speaker 1: intellectual capital in those markets, right, There's a broad culture
Speaker 1: of education and innovation and all these things. And so
Speaker 1: with the adoption of stable coins and kind of this
Speaker 1: true global economy what you're going to start to see
Speaker 1: is the average revenue per user right in Web three
Speaker 1: outpace in the average revenue per user in Web two
Speaker 1: in emerging markets, right because Web two can't solve this problem.
Speaker 1: So you know, unless an advertiser can monetize and pay
Speaker 1: the top dollar fee for that inventory in that market,
Speaker 1: or that user can pay twelve dollars a month for
Speaker 1: a subscription, there's no answer to generating revenue from those
Speaker 1: users directly in emerging markets. In Web three, that's going
Speaker 1: to be different, right, You're basically going to have stable
Speaker 1: coins as like the way in which to transfer value
Speaker 1: at speed and reliability. The folks that are building or
Speaker 1: innovating or incubating in emerging markets now have higher purchasing power,
Speaker 1: and you can basically start to see unicorns just be
Speaker 1: built solely in these localized markets, which is going to
Speaker 1: be fascinating to see. So that's kind of it's less
Speaker 1: of a roadmap because we're not a product and tech company,
Speaker 1: but a focus of where you'll see us onboarding new projects.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that absolutely makes sense.
Speaker 2: I'd love to get your take on the crypto market
Speaker 2: at large, and you know, legislation on the CUSP of
Speaker 2: being passed. I saw every chain the CEO app toss
Speaker 2: Labs testify this morning on Capitol Hill. It seems like
Speaker 2: things are moving in the right direction. We have a
Speaker 2: much more favorable environment. You know, how how do you
Speaker 2: feel being on the building side and you know, maybe
Speaker 2: under less pressure after the past four years?
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I I feel lucky that I came
Speaker 1: at a time where so many people went through the
Speaker 1: pain to let us be able to have this conversation.
Speaker 1: You know, for more than a decade fifteen years, right,
Speaker 1: people have been pushing this space forward, pushing for decentralization,
Speaker 1: pushing for self sovereignty. Paid for the price of being
Speaker 1: first to push for that, and now we're here at
Speaker 1: moment where everyone sees blockchain as a core technology to
Speaker 1: move society forward. And so, you know, Avery is the
Speaker 1: CEO of Aptos Labs. I'm very grateful to him for
Speaker 1: going and speaking to the public who have tons of
Speaker 1: variant concerns right in terms of their market, their economy,
Speaker 1: how they're going to put food on the table, and
Speaker 1: being able to explain blockchain in a way in which
Speaker 1: that they can understand and also start to apply to
Speaker 1: manage their own outcomes. That's where we're at, and so
Speaker 1: we're moving past this bubble of Okay, there's a select
Speaker 1: few here, they're really powerful users, they're very loyal, they're
Speaker 1: very vocal, they're very high signal, and we're moving to
Speaker 1: a point of there are people with a lot of
Speaker 1: things on their mind and a lot of other things
Speaker 1: they do, and they're interested, but how do we relate
Speaker 1: to them? So that's why I think now is really
Speaker 1: important for the entire industry, no matter if your naptos
Speaker 1: ecosystem sol on, ecosystem theory, and ecosystem to all kind
Speaker 1: of come together and start to explain this thing in
Speaker 1: uniform terms. So that's you know, at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, this blockchain can be widely, widely accepted and adopted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, great points. I'm hoping fingers crossed Congress gets
Speaker 2: everything through this year. It'll be amazing for this industry.
Speaker 2: It feels like this could be part of the next
Speaker 2: economic boom, you know, kind of what happened after a
Speaker 2: legislation was passing nineteen ninety six Pty Internet and just
Speaker 2: opening up all types of innovations and wealth creation. So
Speaker 2: I'm really excited. It was certainly really rough over the
Speaker 2: past four years, but you know brighter days are ahead.
Speaker 1: Hey we're still here, Tony.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, good stuff, man. So I got some wrap
Speaker 2: up questions here for you. First, If you could create
Speaker 2: your own metaverse, the theme be.
Speaker 1: I could create my own metaverse, the theme would be nature.
Speaker 3: Nice rapid fire questions. Favorite food.
Speaker 1: My favorite food is pizza, Come on, man, New York
Speaker 1: for sure.
Speaker 3: Favorite musician or band.
Speaker 1: My favorite musician is Wow. That's so hard to answer,
Speaker 1: but I will say Sergel Simpson. Favorite movie Glenn gerrig
Speaker 1: and Ross.
Speaker 3: I don't think I've heard that. I got to check
Speaker 3: that out.
Speaker 1: You have to check it out. Classic favorite book. My
Speaker 1: favorite book is And you're catching me on not reading enough?
Speaker 1: I mean, can I count Twitter threads? Can I say
Speaker 1: that's one of my favorite books?
Speaker 2: I've been saying like podcast lately because I haven't ready
Speaker 2: read a book with podcasts.
Speaker 3: You know, I've been helpful in learning.
Speaker 1: From my favorite book, or let's say the one that
Speaker 1: influence me. The most professionally old man in the sea.
Speaker 3: And when you're not working at app toss, what are
Speaker 3: you doing for fun?
Speaker 1: I'm blessed to have a beautiful family, so I spend
Speaker 1: as much time as I can watching my kids grow
Speaker 1: up and making memories with my wife.
Speaker 3: That's awesome, man, Ash, pleasure chatting with you.
Speaker 2: We're gonna have to do the next one in person
Speaker 2: because we're not far from each other, you know, and
Speaker 2: where you guys are located. And I'm looking forward to
Speaker 2: the future updates around aptos. But thank you so much
Speaker 2: for joining me.
Speaker 1: Appreciate you, Tony. Thanks for the time