Welcome to epicenter episode 49 teeth show, which talks about the Technologies projects and people, driving decentralization, and the global blockchain Revolution. I'm Sebastian Cujo. And I'm here with my trusty co-host, Felix, couch, and today we're talking with Ryan, zarur? He is the founder of dialectic and also, So a super-early epicenter listener, these OG epicenter listener.
One of few that I've stuck around, all these years and was on the podcast, Believe It or Not 250 ish episodes ago. So half of the life of epicenter, but yeah. So today we're going to be diving deep into a whole bunch of topics including n FTS psychedelics and maybe talking about some investment strategies a little bit beyond that. We also talked about defy and What he sees coming coming down the pike in the future. Hey Ryan, thanks for joining us.
Thanks very much for having me and you don't want. As I mentioned before very sincerely. Thank you for all the work that you guys have done over going on
a decade. Now I remember that epicenter became an outlet for me. I think Roma 2014 era in in recognizing that like ah this When Community wasn't really, the thing that I was after, and that there are other people who are, who are thinking about things Beyond Bitcoin and, and how this technology could be used, and you guys were really the leaders in going Beyond Bitcoin, you know, at that time, it was called epicenter, Bitcoin.
And and and then you generalize that and that important ecosystem building, you know, I can't overstate how how fundamental that has been to to the growth in the education of the space overall. I'm so Very grateful for this work that you've done over all these years. Oh thanks. Thanks for saying that. And yeah, it has been almost 10 years. It is sometimes difficult to Fathom. How long you guys could throw like a huge party for the decade
and like, have I don't? I'll kinds of guest Comer, something like that. Do a big live, like multi, you know, like multi-person podcast or something could be great. It's important, right? The work that you guys do is really important. No, thank you. Yeah. But so you were on in 2018, on episode 25 to 49. So, maybe for our listeners who aren't familiar with your worker, who haven't been listening for? As long as you have, can you give us a bit of background about yourself and you know how
you got here? Sure actually in November, I celebrated a decade in the game myself. You don't early investor in the etherium make or do polka dot file, coin definity file, or Solana near Rowdy, capital x, infinity many others. I came into Polly chain capital in the weeks after Olaf, founded the company and led a lot of the early stage, a private Investments. That time, we created a document called the Saft and that was a really good really good mechanism that we use and I
continue to use. And so at this point I think what I'm most known for in the spaces having been at the eye of the storm of all three major Cycles. So mining in 2012, 2013, you know, I cos and staffs in 2017 and then play during gaming. And NF T's in 2021, been grateful to just be in the mix and and be doing my thing. All these years, just love it and couldn't imagine anything else cryptos a strange addiction.
Yeah. How did you I don't remember the story that with how did you meet all off and and become a partner at Polly chain? Yeah, I'll tell you the real story which I don't think I've ever mentioned publicly. I was talking with Pantera about putting investment into them and I said I'll make an investment in you guys.
If you make any Theory, mm fund rather than a Bitcoin fund and this is in 2015 and they literally Scoffed at me they're like and I was just like you know what, like I'm gonna go do this and so the Dow came up and I participated very expressly in the Dow was fortunate to be to be called by majority Ballina. On A Strange Day to contribute to the the Dow white hack
attack. And then after the Dow blew up, I was like, okay, well, I was going to work as a venture, you know, partner for the Dow, this didn't work out. So I won around and look for who are the smartest people doing, do you know, Venture style crypto Investments because I had been doing some angel stuff. I had already written a check to make er Dao and obviously putting into your theorem crowdfund, a bunch of others and and met Olaf.
And we hit it off right away and, you know, and we got going with with Pauly chain and, you know, that that's an example of something that What you look for in startups, is for what I call a company getting slippery, where it's growing at a pace that you kind of can't keep up with. And we felt like that in in poly chain.
There's this one moment I think it was actually the bank or Ico where we had just passed 100 million a um and it was just two of us and I'm an apartment in San Francisco and these guys raised a hundred million dollars and we looked at each other we was like geez these this probably five people Apartment who just raised all this money. This is crazy. Then we kind of looked at each other and realize like, where we were and what we were doing we right, okay.
Back to work and so yeah, it was, it was a really fun time. We remain good friends, but I'm happy to be doing what I'm doing with dialectic, you know, automating yield in in Market neutral and, and just taking a very programmatic approach to, to Being in the major categories of crypto here in Switzerland and being here in Switzerland, I think is is starting to pay off as an important strategic decision. Yeah, we definitely want to get into that a bit.
I think, for me personally, one of the first things, I think I read from you was around like, keepers in Block Chain networks, I see you like sort of evolved that topic over time can you maybe explain to us a little bit? You know what what you were thinking about there and maybe also how it your view has changed since I think initially you were thinking about just like in 2017 and obviously we're like six years later now. So yeah, curious what your
current thoughts are. Originally, we were thinking about that in terms of maker doubt because I co co rewrote the white paper with with with Rune and Amanda and Nikolai, and shout out to neckline who we tragically lost last year. He was so important for our space and I miss him tremendously. And you know, because we were generalizing Beyond just Bitcoin in mining, I started to think about it in terms, Zuv. Okay, there's a resource provider layer that provides some important resource.
And then there's a user layer that uses this resource. I'm, you know, one of the better examples are cleaner examples to describe as file coin. Where that instead of mining or transaction, confirmation its storage. That is the resource layer and that's like the keepers and in defy that wasn't called defy at that time. But in liquidity networks and financial Networks.
The key resource is liquidity provision so people who provide the market making and liquidity are kind of like the miners of a of a of a liquidity network but we didn't really want to call
the miners. Zookeepers became the term that came up in that in a long late night conversation between Nikolai and I and that and really was just about describing these networks as the resource provider layer and the user layer and The user layer is subsidized by the inflation that the resource provider gets over the bootstrapping arrow, which were kind of coming to the end of an in Bitcoin.
But we can see, we're still in the bootstrapping are of many other resource networks and this can be applied to too many many things Beyond just, you know, financial transaction, verification like in in a theorem and Bitcoin, you know, file coin with storage. But I think there's a good argument that it could be done with ISP.
Bees with energy networks. With you know anything that was a Marketplace can be turned into a protocol with these two layers where the user layer is subsidized and that's ultimately the concept of Keepers is that there's a there's a resource provider that subsidizes the users to get the service for
free or nearly free. how is your thinking evolve and like from when you wrote those first articles which I believe is a couple years ago has that thesis changed over time now that that resource providing networks are a little bit more mature and and also since these networks are no longer operating in isolation and increasingly operating in sort of network of their own right with interoperability I think like if you broaden the definition enough, we actually see it continue to replicate
with fairly High Fidelity. So, for example, the newest types of networks that we see are in play during gaming, where the resources, incidentally, our eyeballs playing a game and they are subsidized by inflation of an underlying token with that
game. So the first example that we saw of that with success was actually, And generally, I just think that that's a really powerful like fundamental mechanism of crypto is that we can use inflation over a period of time to bootstrap Network effects. And then once Network effects kit can we can modify the, you know, the economic trade off such that transaction fees are are are more Paramount and and it's less about inflation. So I think as game Ames games evolve.
What we're going to see next is we're going to see zero-sum, right? Which I've actually been wanting for a while, so today it's inflationary. So if I play you in a, in a play during gaming context, you know, and you win, I don't lose. You just win and and the cost is socialized, across the whole network via inflation, where it's going to flip is, is you win I lose now, there are some questions of whether that On runs and to gambling and gaming regulations and things like that.
And I think, you know, we'll sort those out over time but I'm actually quite encouraged that. The general concept of Keepers continues to you know, be relevant in the space. There's been, you know, I see it be used all the time which is really heartwarming. Like there's been like Dows called keeper Dow and keep her this. And so it's it's been nice over time to see that and see all the things that that I've tried to make a call.
Attribution to the space in be relevant and be used by by folks and so it's great. Right. I think I mean yeah maybe it would be curious to hear I guess, you know like actually Infinity was successful I guess for a little bit in the market, then sort of the engagement I guess, dropped off to you. So you think that's going to change and like future future iterations or like sort of where do you do you think maybe these first play to earn gave sort of failed? Or what's there to entry?
Yeah, so I think the lesson learned that we take away from from Maxie is and just be clear. It's like it's a lot of the same lessons that we that we've had in previous, you know, iterations in crypto is that that crypto economic design is really important and changing it in the middle of the road can be
catastrophic. You know, the allegory that I would use is that In layer ones, the crypto economic design of the initial team distribution and how rewards are dulled out over time either to validators or to Timor to community or to investors. Those can those decisions can be catastrophic to a project? I was part of the debate around etherium is choice where they ended up going 9.9 to team 9.9 to foundation. And I thought that was a great precedent but then we saw many other projects.
Deviate from that precedent over time and really do themselves. A gigantic disservice, you know, the, you know, they start to be calling VC coins. They lost Community from that and, you know, and ultimately these things rest on on, on a community with actually, you know, we didn't know how how these things would we evolve and and then the change, I think created a somewhat of a mistrust because I think we Estimate. The fact that like very literally millions of people
were doing this as their job. And there is this Narrative of like, oh Nova play the game because the game is fun and I was like, man. I know. It isn't like, I like to play this for a job and guess what? That's fine. Financial incentive ization is okay, and if that means that they're playing a game and they
otherwise would not. That's, that's fine because you get to bypass the hundreds of millions and Billions of dollars that it would require to to acquire customers to acquire eyeballs in Instagram ads, and TV slots and and all these other things, you just go right to the customer and you say, hey Will incentivize you to put pay this game. Play this game and I think that's the powerful thing.
Not how great the game is. And so what I look for today, you know, we get, we get tons of pitches of like we're going to make a AAA quality Crypto game, I'm like a night, you know, and be you don't need to. You can make a pretty break bones game and just build community bootstrap that through the in financial incentive ization. The other thing is, I think games will get more elegant in
their crypto economic design. So, you have to balance the like you can't have pay-to-win where I can just like, pay to have like the greatest swords and just like be running roughshod through game like, I'm some kind of monster, right? So the gameplay has to be half has to be High Fidelity to
talent and skill. However, you can have a condom he's that kind of support the game in, you know, whether it's like, like, providing resources or or like re-ups of energy or various things like that where you can make for a more epic experience that is supported by an economy.
And again that's where you have like user layer and keeper layer read it. Deeper layer could be like the providers of resources, swords would whatever it is and they're going around a mining that in the game and consolidating it and selling it in their shop. Whereas, the like the Warriors, the game players, they there's is one based solely on skill.
I haven't seen a model that has completely solve that, but the good thing is, there's lots of experiments and I'm very confident that will solve it as a community over time.
So one of the reasons why I wanted to get you on was because you know you're so plugged into like the nft space and also the gaming space and this is, these are verticals in crypto that I don't have very well form Theses about and I'm sometimes a little bit skeptical of and you just said something that sort of opened my mind to this concept that I think, you know, it overlaps with a lot of other verticals and crypto and that is that Yeah, intermediary elimination.
So essentially with gaming, you know, as you said you the the game developer can bypass the the intermediaries that they would usually interact with. So like marketing for instance in order to or like need these intermediary costs in order to attract players but by directly incentivizing players, they don't have to have some of that like intermediary actor or cost center. To attract the players, they just attract the players directly.
And so it's sort of like eliminating the need for for that intermediary, that middleman in the same way that, you know, Bitcoin or other cryptos eliminate, the need for other types of intermediaries with, with regards to gaming, what do you think is necessary for sake like this this style of gaming to have? It's, it's kind of mass Market
moment. I ask you this because I'm, you know, I know folks that works at Ubisoft or, you know, I've talked to say, Innovation departments there that are looking at crypto and and from from the perspective of like traditional game designers or game studios, there's this I think this notion that the business model the crypto business model, doesn't make sense for the economics of building mass-market games, the costs millions of dollars to
produce Is is crypto gaming fundamentally, you know, orthogonal to the traditional way that we think about building games or do you think there's a, there's a middle ground here that will, that will achieve at some point.
I would say my observation and these interactions with with like epic and Ubisoft and and certainly like the drama around Discord and things like that is more that you know, the innovators dilemma continues to Prevail and that very rarely, the incumbent will be the leader in a new Deluxe in the new up-and-coming category. This is true across technology
in so many fields. And so, I don't think that, you know, Ubisoft or AAA game manufacturers with with armies of teams and, and the corresponding drama and politics that are inherent in, in those size of teams will be the ones that that catch fire here. I think that there, it's easy to dismiss some of the core tenants and the power. ER, of of crypto communities until you see it unfold.
And I think that that's what's going to happen and so like, you know, they say, wow, you need all these millions of dollars and an upfront cost and you do and you have to build, you know, mass-market user base. It's like, well you could actually kill two birds with one stone and get you know, like by funding it, through the crowd and getting your community on board both As users evangelists as well as as you know asset
holders. That's a great way to bootstrap all of this together and and so crypto uniquely enables that the the other component of this is I think it would be important to set a parameter for what is like Mass market adoption. There is a point in 2021 where there's about 480, A thousand daily active users of ethereum, addresses, and about four hundred and ten thousand daily active users of Axiom, finity a ronin addresses and you know, it's really inspiring.
In fact being like in the space as long as I have been, there's two stories that I find the most inspiring in the history of the space. The one is all the people in the Philippines who were able to replace their job.
Plane actually Infinity during covid right there, you know, there is no, you know, there's no government, bailout, or handouts during covid, like they had to figure out a way to survive, and they were able to replace their job that they lost in tourism or manual labor, by playing this game. And it became so culturally ingrained that, like, people would buy houses and in the in-game currency and like, like cities were operating using this crypto asset.
And I think that that's really important, especially as we see a II am L, you know, take the World by storm. We're going to have to get real about alternative approaches to to effectively Ubi and and for me, these games could affect a best first attempt at Ubi and and we've had glimpses of that happen. And so it just conclude the second really inspiring story and and I think this may be the next topic that that we can discuss. Are these artists these digital artists who for so long?
Didn't have a way to commercialize their work because if you bought a piece of digital art and somebody copied, it you didn't know who had the original who had had the copy and so there was no, like, scarcity of it. There is no collectability there. And with the Advent of NF tease, these digital artists were able to, to commercialize their work for the first time. And, and, and that was really amazing.
I'm like we saw all these rags-to-riches stories that in an industry that had been broadly based on the speculative use case. Until now this I found these two stories would be really amazing that that artists and the individuals in emerging countries could bootstrap themselves and and, and sort of, you know, take a step forward and be able to provide just a reasonable income.
It, you know, in the case of artist Mike You know, more commonly known as people he jokes around that the highest he ever got for an everyday before. N FTS was $110, right? And and that's like shows that like Crucible moment of digital scarcity, conferred, Rarity to his work. And then that conferred collectability and that then conferred value and and ultimately for for an artist Like Mike can confer Early life, changing value. And and those I just find it be really inspiring stories.
And where I want to spend my time, my capital so, yeah, let's let me talk about in a few little bit and and again, you know, this is a space that I've sort of babbled in a little bit like with in crypto verticals, you know, like the fine of T's gaming cetera and you know, I there are moments where I felt like Yeah, like this is, this is like super empowering for artists, Etc. Write like this, this narrative that you'd that that you just expressed, then there's other
moments where I'm like this is a hot shit show and there's nothing would good will come out of this and you know most of this will go to 0. Can you break a leg break down your thesis for how and FTS are, you know fundamentally like a game changer in terms of how artists Express themselves? And how do we reason about what? actually, of cultural significance and what isn't, you know, I guess I guess like one thing I think about a lot is With with with the 2016-2017
cycle. 2018 your icos were a big part of the narrative and what came out of that. I think you know are things like saps or more structured regulated funding mechanisms like coin list finalists. Yes. Thank you so so I think that you know, from from that exuberance came out like these interesting. Funding mechanisms now within ft's. I don't know that we've yet, maybe I missed it but like I don't know that we've yet really
see. Like what will, what will we look back on and say oh this is what the nft summer produced, right? And so yeah maybe maybe she want to expand on that. It's interesting. I think as venture capitalist we were at peace with a cycle where We're 90 something percent of something rights to 0 because because that, that few percent that survive often go on to be
incredibly valuable. And so whether it's ico's, which is a really important funding mechanism, or whether it's, you know, n ftes which is really important representation of digital scarcity for a variety of use cases and I'll talk about the taxonomy in a minute. I recognize and have gone on record like in the the height of the bull market of both of those saying, yeah, of course, 95% of these will will go away.
And that's fine because the five percent survive will create such extraordinary value, that it won't matter. Nobody, you know, nobody will care. And so I think it's really important to to separate the taxonomy of of n FTS because as a technology, it has such wide sweeping a Patient's, right? Like today it's being used for, you know, digital art and gaming and and some like Social Clubs and and you know, different things, different things in like
that tomorrow. It will be your house deed, you know, your your University diploma, it look and FTS will Encompass eventually all capital assets but for for today's taxonomy, what But the way that we separated is we look at digital art, that is somewhat and So within digital art there's some subcategories so you've got I'll go are like Rafi Canada, all you've got, you know, pop culture are like people you've got generative art generator or is kind of cool
because that's where a platform, a artist, and a user come together in in a critical moment to create something that that they've all participated in that. It's a certain bond between the collector and and that that outcome. And then, you know, you can kind of go down down the list from from there in art, but that is
different. So digital find digital art is different than say gaming assets that are supposed to have utility and that's also different from what we considered to be Social Clubs. So something like board. Apes in its current iteration, is more like a social club, right? People are signaling to the world that they you know, can afford to spend Then six figures on a on a monkey JPEG. And in overtime, it will it will evolve into being a gaming asset.
We think we hope. And so those are, those are very, very different categories of them, you know, we'll see music and of teas which there's been some early experiments on and and I think there will be some more will see full feature films. You know, especially like Choose Your Own Adventure films where like you can compose like six nft. Get one outcome and compose like, you know, 13 to get a totally different film outcome.
Then, than you, otherwise would have Right Down the Line until again, all capital assets are an artiste in the digital. So we with one of one are our collector pool, we focus just on find digital art and not only that we focus just on fine digital art that we can interface with museums because our mission Mission is to help digital artists.
Find the rightful place in art Canon because again, digital artists have been completely dismissed in in the art World in our Cannon for Generations in part because there was no collected in large part because there is no collectability of their work and that has changed. That's what that's the. That's kind of the interesting thing in the digital, art
category. And and from there, you know, my friend Amy couple, that's what has this very famous I've been Spending a lot more time in the art world because just got you know, hurdled face first into it with purchasing both the refika an adult moment piece as well as as human 1 by B people.
And I'm you know met some just unbelievably brilliant people in the art World. It actually caught me by surprise how many thoughtful remarkable people spend most of their time and capital and art and my friend. Amy. A palazzo told me this one piece of advice, you said look in all categories of art across the ages. Only about 52 maximum 10 artists, survive, a decade and matter. And everybody else basically writes 20. And I was like, that's interesting because that's kind
of like Venture, right? And so I take a bench or approach to Art, but what we see is that Upper Crust will survive, right? That bill Very important, he's like cultural monikers these these, you know, these things that we identify as representative of our time. They will survive and be very valuable I'm cautiously optimistic that that both works of Rafiq ended on em and people will be among that that discussion.
But I don't know, you know? And that's why I take a portfolio approach and we've got more than 50 artists, including 20 female artists in the portfolio and and I find that that just is really exciting. That very clearly digital artists Merit being represented in our Cannon very clearly. They have not been properly represented in our can until now and that will that will change and we can benefit and you know and captured growth in that regard.
Do you think there's like a also maybe like a generational To this I'll give you like an example that something that happened recently like I was in Amsterdam and I went to this this this Art Gallery its place called The Moko Museum and they had a bunch of nft. They're actually I sent you a
picture right there. Was this there was a people there and I sent you a picture of it and and so I was my fiance and I were like by far the oldest people in this Museum and like, you know, or in her late 30s and so and and there Was just like in the nft room everybody was like climber Dan nft room trying to take pictures of the nft S and then.
And then we had a very different experience at the Rick's Museum which is like this, you know, this world-famous it's going to sort of Fine Arts Museum and in that in Amsterdam where you know, it's it's an institution, but you know, nobody's like clamoring to take, you know, pictures of you know, You know, Van Gogh or something or maybe a little bit, but like not as much
as like this people. So, I wonder if there's this if there's like a very kind of generational cultural significance, that that this digital art has to a generation of people that Associates more with like this digital component, and this from sort of very modern contemporary components. Absolutely, I think this definitely resonates with a millennial and gen Z audience,
much, more than traditional art. Now, one of the interesting things that have come out from that is museums, major Global institutions are recognizing this far faster than we think
far faster than I imagined. Like, if a year ago today, somebody would have told me that we'd have a piece in both m+ and MoMA. And by the way, the one in Moma the roof, he can Adele is shattering records, has completely broken the record for the longest period of time on average that people spend in front of a work at the MoMA. We can think about these, the MoMA like ever.
Like this is in front of Starry Night in front of, you know, water lilies in front of all the Picasso's, all of everything. Ever the Rafi Canada Liz tracking as you know, as having the highest engagement and And you know, museums are waking up really fast to to the fact that this matters because post covid museums are having to get, I think more more creative about how they get people back to to museums.
And and as a result, like, I what I'm seeing is again, I can't speak broadly cross and FTS but in the fine, digital art category major institutions are filling the hole where the crypto Community has has sort of like lost lost the narrative and kind of you know I'm sort of missing the forest for the trees, right? Like we're too many people are worried about like floor prices and airdrops and utility and we got Pompey. Du Lac mom Moma.
You do. M+ look all these Global institutions acquiring fine digital art and FTS like this is a really big thing. And again if I would have told you this a year ago, you would have said categorically impossible if you know, if you know the art world you just said, no way Pompey do is going to announce a major like collection overhaul or the MoMA is going to announce the sale of 70 million dollars worth of. They're all important art collection in order to lean into digital.
Right? Like that's a huge huge movement. And so again like that's kind of the thing that I find the most compelling, the most interesting in that will Will Survive and Thrive and create Great Value over time. Right. I'm actually sort of curious. I think what you mentioned super interesting that, you know, we're worried about these a
drops floor prices? Do you think there's some sort of like I guess there's a big difference between, you know, bootstrapping a keeper Network, let's say and the way to incentivize and like the kind of crowd you, you get. And and maybe in the nft space like how you become significant, it's probably like a different mechanism. Do you or do you see like some overlap of how you would like? Sort of bootstrap, these different communities through
the inside of isolation. Or is it like something totally
different? Yeah, I think in fine in the Fine Art, it's fundamentally different because it's not about like, creating Network effects because you have like scarcity that drives drives the value and you know, you actually don't want like velocity in the in the network it's like, let's look at, you know, let's look at a great collection, which is both very high quality, Fine Art. And And also has great community, and in digital art, which is squiggles right now.
Fro creator of this idea of this generative, you know, Trinity that comes together. We're collectors feel really deep resonance with that. There's no velocity, but you can't, you know, you can't get a rare skin. Squiggle a, you can offer whatever you want. You just can't get it. Like, they're just not like people like, no, this is mine and it's always mine. And that is kind of what you're looking for and find her.
That's a bit that's very, very different than what you look for in like gaming or in in other categories. And that was, you know, I started out like being like, okay, I don't know what is going to be cool and then ft so like let's experiment and all the different categories and then from a collection perspective kind of narrowed things down over time to focus on find digital are even though the fund continues to To do a lot of a lot more things in gaming.
I think, you know, the size of the gaming space will dramatically Clips the size of the Fine Art space. Like you don't gaming will be multi trillions or art will will stay well and well into the to the like low billions. And so those are very different. I think you will see like these interactions of bootstrapping and inflation driving things in gaming and Fine Art. It's a fundamentally different mechanism. The art is the utility, right?
All right thanks. Yeah we definitely so much to cover like topics and like vertical. So like we're going to try to make it like a bit of a hard cut here I think I read like on the dialectic website is like says dialectic is a machine that's of ciphers to unlock exceptional value for our members. Can you expand a bit on what that means? So we are a group built by crypto natives for crypto natives. So the vast majority of our members member Families.
Our LPS are you know entrepreneurs that I've done well with over the years or friends in the space and you know and and there are a set of of challenges that that that you face managing significant crypto wealth. And so everything we do is very Krypto - you don't unchain Jane and we look at the architecture and portfolio construction from a crypto natives view with an understanding of the nuances.
The difference between investing in crypto assets that have, you know, shorter timeline to liquidity higher volatility. You some advantages, some disadvantages that you can manage. Then we take a very technical approach to those. And so, you know, one of the, one of the things that I think I'm most proud about in and is very emblematic of what we You is our Market neutral fun.
So we'll ever all of our vehicles are named after Swiss watch complications and our Market neutral fund chronograph, which has of today is yielding 18 point, 36 percent annualized. I think that's probably around four X Out performance of our peers. And the way that we're able to do that is we have this software suite called Medici that oughta, mates, harvesting compounding, It automates a bunch of the analysis of like how to balance pools, how to balance between.
You know, what we've done is we've stacked taken regular defy and on top of that stack delta-neutral and then on top of that stacked Mev in Mev isn't like traditional Market neutral but you can make it Market neutral and it sort of Pops once in a while when you hit a strat and that's like, you know, when a lottery every day for for a week until it gets hard way, but still Good, and the combination of these things and then having a software suite that that delivers more security and and
delivers, a programmatic approach of balancing, you know, when defies down we balance more into delta neutral when delta neutral is not available because of a variety of things, may be worth more than Mev more defy. And then we diversify across a wide range of of pools and having that long tail exposure allows us to put small amounts of money into like high risk and Deegan stuff which can have really high yields without risking going below, zero percent in a month.
So we still remain Market neutral up every month but you can go and take like Deacon risk on some things if you're if you isolate it enough and if you have the right infrastructure around you, so that's like, you know, that's the kind of stuff that that we do. That's very crypto native. It's very technically driven and I'm really satisfied with the returns. Radeon.
Super interesting and I guess I wonder is this something that you have to do like proprietary or is there also like a way to like sort of built this also fully on train or are there like elements that you just because of the I guess Mev nature of it. You can like build this into like a network type thing or has is that something you thought about? So there are parts of it that we do feel compelled to maybe in
the not too distant. Future release to the world for Community Support. So for example like you know we have this thing like Bridgewater and and also like pool Watchers where what they'll do is they'll watch for specific signals and imbalances in a pool or bridge and then automatically remove
Capital should any of those. Oils occur and it and does it in multi cigs on chain and like the amount of money that would have been saved by people and in exploits over the last year, if you know, if the bridge Watcher was widely available, we've been really significant. You know, we've seen it play out for ourselves where we've been been able to get out of a pool when it was showing these signs and, you know, a lot of other
people got got burned. So I think there is a moment where We open source some of this because it's just important infrastructure. But then we have to balance it because like, you know, we're not, we're not a foundation. We don't like we make money by making money for our members and, and, and ultimately, we have to do that.
First and foremost and and and while these things are producing really compelling outperformance on the yield, You know, where we feel pretty good with where that is, especially in a really highly volatile market. Right? Like, people running, you know, like, hedge fund strategies of liquid tokens or even Venture strategies.
I can empathize with, with that this is a more, a very difficult Market to say fundraising, as well as deploy into because of volatility and uncertainty, around a whole bunch of different topics like regulation. And so, our Market neutral feels like Just Like Home Base right where we can like revert back to. We know we make great money for LPS, we know we return great money to our, our shareholders, as a result and and that that just feels really comfortable right now in the sun, these
uncertain times. Tell me a little bit more about this bridge Watcher. What kind of things are you looking for in order to detect these signals? Like what signals are you looking at to detect when like there's a there's a bridge hack going on and what have what have you learned from that in terms of how these exploits go down? I mean, there's some really like simple ones just like capital and balances that you can take. There's a bunch of social signals that you can also be drawing on.
There are You know, there's a rank, I suppose, I shouldn't get too far into this but some of it is sort of a, what would be called like a defensive Mev. So you're kind of like any being the bridge to not be any vide. And, and that like that, you know, Mev broadly is is I often refer to, as like Inception for crypto. Math Olympics. And so that goes right down the rabbit hole. But there's a bunch of Mev strats that, that that have second-order implications and indications, that that are
certainly important. And then Capital balances, social notifications and a bunch of things like that. Because again, like if somebody is draining from the bridge it's always going to be like one side of the bridge it drains, right? And so if you see a delta in that very quickly, And it's to the - right, it's not somebody's coming in with new capital. It's like someone has taken off Capital then that can be a first
order. Certainly A first order signal and then you can compare with all the other signals to then automatically execute the multisig transactions to remove capital from that pool. Okay. So, how are you guys? Engaging in the nav space, more broadly. I mean, you guys have been a pretty prolific participant in that ecosystem. What what what what types of things are you are you doing to
engage with the Mev space? So my co-founder Dean spun out a separate organization which we you know which we seated and incubated a call Project Blanc and together with a bunch of math phds they run Mev across a number of different networks and that is about sort of like building infrastructure that goes beyond the simple sandwich Tack and and he will, he will. Will literally shoot me if I if I kick Too Deep In The Weeds on,
on his strats. But what I, you know, what I would say is that, I think it's really interesting because I'm what we did internally, so he had spun that out that's been spun out for over a year and they do and they do really well. It's a cash flow business, it's less of a venture thing, but they're just run, run, great, cash flows. And then, the funny thing about Mev is every new layer 1 and layer 2, Pops up presents a new set of Mev opportunities, right?
And so people are like, ah, yeah, well you know, you're going to get our, you can get armed away in Mev and that may be true and you theorem and certainly with like univie for. I think, I think Mev any theorem will be Certainly a full house at best and probably just like, you know, done not maybe not done, but a very Full House, very competitive environment.
But the thing is, there's so many new layer ones popping up every single day that like, you constantly have green fields where you can reapply infrastructure and in other categories and so we really like what they did, you know and then what we do is we use some of their, their data and They're their infrastructure to do this defensive Mev and our Market neutral and, and that helps just like pop pop the yields and take them from, you know, like mid teens to mid-20s and in this
environment when things are going well, and overall, I think it's it's an interesting category, you know, I when I explained Mev to people who have no idea of a crypto, I often say I like, have you read Michael Lewis's, Flash, Boys. It's kind of like Flash, Boys for crypto.
And if you take it to the second and third-order implications, you know, the Advent of Flash Boys and and algo trading at that time, ended up making for more efficient markets, and I am firmly of the belief that Mev makes for more efficient markets in crypto even though. And the funny thing is today in the Mev space, I'm going to preface this by saying this is speculation and not Confirmed rumor.
But our understanding was the top sort of four players in this space were Alameda. CZ Finance who may or may not have been doing very heavy Mev on their own chain, which I think, I think there will be a long discussion about that if that does end up being the case, Justin sun and And jump and the three of those four are now gone right there out the door. And I'm Evie is something that like a cruise to the. So we were kind of like number five, number six, sort of thing
and it's want. It's a thing that accrues to the, to the Upper Crust like many things and so, like top to capture the line share on on a given Network and now that you have the most like, the largest Most resource intensive players
out of the game. It's really like, you know, it's a very interesting new day and that maybe I would say Actually, I want to like sort of take it back also to what we said about gaming and like the bootstrap networks and do you sort of see a world where like these sophisticated actors I guess like you know, Mev participants being like sort of more automated than you know, like person playing a game.
Do you see like an issue there? Where maybe, you know, all the players end up being Bots instead of like real players? And how how does the future look like or is this something that's just like, inevitable? or how can like projects kind of defend against that let's say ER, So I do think that that will be, you know, that will be a thing.
There's a really interesting project called altered state machines that makes autonomous agents for pleasure and gaming games and there are a bunch of other people thinking about that. What my hope is on the other side is that play during gaming will represent an opportunity for effectively Universal basic income and so people will play against the Bots to like to earn you know to earn income and and then log more sophisticated operators will operate the Bots.
And it makes for this like human and bought interaction that like you don't like Mev and like us, The things we're we're greater levels of sophistication or driving towards efficiency. You will have checks and balances in overtime rights like games will have their version of unity. For that is like bought resistant but then at the same time, there still needs to be some Bots because there needs to be enough players to play against the people and the
people need that. Because again, that's going to be Universal basic income or it's going to be like one of the options for Universal. You can go, I always am firmly of the belief that the future that we occupy will be much more inspiring. And frankly better than then the present. And as these things evolve, we will find solutions for them and it will just be better for everybody. Yeah, I'm also quite quite optimistic that that will be the case.
I think that I think it Bears reminding ourselves sometimes just how early we are and I know there's sort of a meme that says like people say like you know that about about about being so early. But we are really fucking early. I mean there are many people that have interacted with crypto today. As there were people on the internet in the earth in the late 90s. You know it we haven't crossed the billion users Zurs yet.
We're far from it and And yeah, I mean there's like just so much more ahead of us that I think it's for those of us who've been in it. So long, it's difficult to remind to like, sort of remind yourself that that this is still a very, very early space. I want to take a step back a little bit and maybe bring it up a little bit more high level, you know, given the the GE, the current global geopolitical climate and how is that affected your your thesis about crypto
and you something? really interested in as how has that affected your, how you look at investing in crypto, I'd start this by saying I would love your your view on this as well you don't because you're you've been a super smart investor in the space for a long time and I'm and I really respect your opinions. Who would love love your view on this as well? Generally I think for the dream of why most of us got into crypto in kind of the 2011 2012 era Seems to be coming to fruition, right?
We got into it because we believed ultimately that the world was going to suffer through a high inflation moment that the u.s. dollar is maybe the most over valued asset in the history of the planet and was going to go through a significant evaluation. And in that environment, deflationary assets were going to matter much more than they ever had this sort of, like return to a version of the Standard once again, and we see this playing out, right?
Like, this is like happening in front of our eyes in this moment. So like broadly, I'm leaning in to the, into the market and and very confident that we're up and to the right from here. Like, you know, when it, when we start a poly chain, I used to go around saying that by 2023 3.
No. Self-respecting hedge fund on the planet would be without exposure to crypto and by 2025, no, self-respecting Capital pool of any kind, you know, pension fund, or otherwise would be without exposure to crypto, think of a little precipitated on maybe both of those.
But by like a year to Tops, I do think that we're hitting the knee of the curve that we've long been waiting for and and that's really Interesting. However, as Venture capitalists what that means, is that our scarce beef and Bitcoin that we are then giving to a, an entrepreneur has to perform even better because we know that like, I know each has a 10 X in it. I bet the farm on that, right? So that means, for the entrepreneur that I give money
to be is mine. Like my opportunity cost has a Neath, he's got to go out and deliver you know, 100 X or more and so it has been you know, it's been making it causing us to pause somewhat and and seek like a more Consolidated portfolio of very high outcome possibilities I would say on the Venture side but on with respect to like liquid toe Guns.
I mean I think I don't I don't think a collection of just like thoughtful like high-quality liquid, you know liquid assets like Cosmos and Ethan polygon and wormhole on a few others. Just look like so obvious right now in my view and I don't know maybe I'm maybe I'm just a hammer and all I see is nails but I think it's like I'm more excited in this moment than I think I ever had. Been in the space ever.
But what's your take? Like, how do you, how are you thinking through this from perspective of like the tectonic changes in geopolitical landscape and how and how that's affecting you as an investor? Yeah, I mean I wouldn't be starting an investment fund if I didn't think that we were up into the right from here so that very that, that idea very much.
Resonates with me. We are also approaching our investment strategy with a very concentrated portfolio strategy and which is why we started with a fairly reasonably small sized fund because we need to deploy it.
And we also wanted to play in really high quality projects that You can generate 100 tax returns because because we are our investors are crypto investors or LPS are crypto LPS and so for them to deploy their, you know, their Ethan, their Bitcoin and and these high-value Assets in, in a fund they also have to, you know, to have that that that conviction that the
fun will outperform. So that that resonates with with our Strategy. With regards to where we're at and and the types of things that we're looking at. I think that there Still Remains a lot of infrastructure to be built and I feel that that that the next cycle is going to be
heavily infrastructure focused. So you know, we've got the, we've got the initial building blocks of of crypto infrastructure in the form of a Block Chain networks with like a decentralized values are set that allows you to settle and
this sort of thing. But the The. the way that that will look and say five years is going to be very different and I I take a lot of take a lot of lessons, I think, from the way the web has has sort of distracted, the different layers of its stack and I see that happening in crypto as well where you know in the early 2000's. You know if you wanted to run any website you know like you had to buy physical server space.
Install a NOS on their, you know, run a web server and you were essentially operating all of that. Structure in one machine, which is sort of what blockchains looking like now. But as things went on all the, basically the layers of abstraction between an application and and, and the hardware there's like, you know, perhaps dozens of layers there and I think that's also happening in crypto what what we need to keep sort of the you know, our eye on this is decentralization and this is
Why? I like the reason we built reason we're building this is because we want censorship resistant, scalable applications and we've been I think I think this space for a long time. The narrative has been that we need to DC. We need to keep blockchains decentralized and scalable and usable. That doesn't really matter. We've had the around the wrong thing. What we really really need is
decentralized. Scalable usable applications that are decentralized and so whatever the stack looks, Underneath I think doesn't really matter so much. As long as the applications, were May retain those properties as the applications that are going to matter. And so we, you know, we need to be careful about what kind of stock were building. And one of the things I look here. I look at here, for example, is like the fact that most RPC providers are centralized,
right? Like that is that's the centralizing point that we need to address but if if every layer of the stack sort of maintains those properties, to some extent, any Applications will also maintain those properties. So anyway, that's the sort of long winded way to say that I think like infrastructure is a big part of what, what will play
out in the next cycle. And certainly something that interop is like highly focused on investing in and where, I think a lot of value will continue to come from right, like infrastructure has been over the last five years like through the outside of like nft using. And so things like the infrastructure has been a one of the highs returning verticals or say yeah and in crypto and I think that will continue to guess.
Oh absolutely. I mean no no no no. Yeah without question and you could just boil it down to The like the conceptual decision Tree on infrastructure of people outside the space always ask me like why do you like dozens of blockchains are worth tens of billions of dollars? And I say because the decision Tree on it is a Monumental payout. Like you're talking about being the financial substrate of the modern world, that's a
multitrillion-dollar outcome. So even if it's a point, 01, % the net present, Value of that you know ten billion dollars that's why these letter wands and some letter 2's are efficiently priced at this value, it's not it's not incoherent, it's not irrational. It's actually very rational because you're talking about literally like the financial substrate of the world and Beyond over the next, you know.
However many decades, you know, I often say there's never been an industry on planet Earth is Bulls programmable money. And within that the infrastructure layer is, where naturally all of the value accrues or not all the value. But, but the Lion's Share of the value of cruise. If you look at the like top 10, most successful Venture outcomes in the space, I think I think acts. He's the only one, that's not a layer, one more layer to you do.
And I think that that's a really Smart investment strategy, especially in a concentrated fund. I'd actually like your feedback on the way that we look at at early stage investing in a slightly different approach and that we have these buckets. So we go conviction thesis exposure generally as buckets and then we create this long tail across the different buckets, conviction, buckets, or larger bets. Done really deep due diligence.
We know the team, they have traction, all these things that you would look for. And that's, you know, that's that's kind of like your traditional Venture place you've thesis which, you know, maybe there's like one red flag in there, but you like the team team is always a hard box check in that one. And and outcome, it can be really interesting. And then differently than most Venture funds we have this long tail.
Of exposure. It can be like, Angel checks, you know, kind of 100 to 300 K that usually rest on is the
technology interesting. Like is this conceptually a massive outlier outcome or do you really like the the founder and question and we we leave sort of single digit percentage of the portfolio in our Venture book which is called resonance available for these long tail, exposure bats that are somewhat Experimental and often allow you an option on making a conviction bet later on. So like at the at the precede, you maybe make this exposure bet because it's a party round and
they're only raising a million dollars. So you know, you've right the 200k check and that's really to like get the information to to then later on make a conviction back and in crypto different from Venture. So it traditional Venture would. Tell you that's a waste of time but in crypto because you have shorter timelines to liquidity and because you have much higher Delta's in the return profile,
right? Like things go very rapidly into the hundreds of X. Those exposure bats are actually, in our view, in our analysis, the exposure bats are actually an important part of a coherent crypto portfolio because you don't know, you know, you can't constantly telling my team, like, don't think you're that smart. You don't know what a outcome will be a big, a big outcome, and those can be really fast turnaround sun exposure bets.
Yeah, that like I love how you think about this because as a as a new manager, right? Yes yes. These are things that that were trying to sort of, you know, construct and like put down on paper. You know, what is our strategy? And I think when you're investing as an angel you make investment decisions that that affect you and no one else. And and when you're investing LPS money, I think it It forces you to have a little bit deeper thinking around how you're constructing your portfolio.
How the, how these allocations, what word for word, portion of your portfolio is allocated with like these convictions or the these high exposure things. And yeah, this is an interesting way to look at it that I'll certainly take back and probably, you know, integrators in some form into into into the way. We're constructing our
portfolio. But that, but I think you know, when we We have we haven't like, sort of expressed it that way but it does it does I think they resemble the way in which we have been thinking about how we want to construct a portfolio. I like we have these things that are super high convection. And then we have a smaller part of the portfolio that, you know, we've sort of labeled like these high-risk more like high-risk bets and you know, some something in the middle there.
So but yeah, it's a it's cool to know that. You're also thinking about it this way and so built built your control for fellow press strategy around it. I'm happy to send you some analysis that we've done on this and that's they just look at it because again it you know, it's not it's not like normal Venture like this flies in the face of a lot of the long-held tenants of normal Venture.
Yeah. So we had so many other things to discuss here but I just realized we're way over time but I do want to talk about your work in psychedelics a little bit and then you've been what you've been wanting to talk about this as well. So you're also one of the founders of Vine VC which is a VC firm that has focused on health and wellness and Consciousness and certainly psychedelics, you know what? What what are some of the for thinking things are seeing in this space?
And what's your involvement with maps? This multi-disciplinary Association for Larry. Likes a good audience. Yeah, science.
Yeah. It started just very quickly, it started, when I went with a friend of mine to to Peru, he was dealing with a really debilitating addiction problem, and I saw the transformation that he went through, and I kind of went like, okay, like something's going on here, this isn't just people tripping out the forest, you know, mental health is a massive is the largest pandemic that mankind faces before the pandemic. One in five people, People suffer from mental health problems.
I think. Post pandemic, it's probably close to maybe 40% of the globe. So there's a problem. And ssris are not doing them are not a solution and I think you know, for many people who have tried a psychedelic therapy of any kind that you realize that it's wonderful experience both for curing the SEC as well as betterment to the well. And so I just kind of wanted to like learn more about this. So I I spun up a very small separate. Experimental fondant in Vine which is now kind of it got
really slippery and took a long. It took a look on a life of its own and we've been fortunate enough to back some really interesting things in mental health. So like you should try other ship.
If you can if it's in your in your area, it's a community and people in crypto would really resonate with other ship using holotropic breathwork and hot cold therapies to 2 + Community to like take a new approach to mental health, but the most sort of the highest conviction bet that we made certainly was in maps. I'm so Maps is the multidisciplinary association for psychedelic science, 37 years as nonprofit led by Rick, doblin to bring MDMA over the
line of FDA approval. They will get that FDA approval by February March of next year. Ear and then they can actually legally sell MDMA in North America for PTSD. But very quickly. I think you'll see The Dominoes fall for depression as well as couples therapy MDMA for I funded a study in couples therapy a couple years ago and the results are shocking of how effective it is for for for couples, going through various challenges.
You know, generally I just like I didn't look at this as like a for-profit thing because again like we work in the most profitable industry on the planet, right? Look, if I want to make money, I'll go over crypto, right? Like, you know, nothing's more profitable and programmable money. I just looked at it as kind of an exploration project that where I wanted to be a good.
Custodian of LP Capital, I'm very grateful for the LPS that have supported Vine and very You know, very happy and very optimistic about the returns that they will have but you know, ultimately just playing around on the capital model because these are, you know, this is the largest problem that mankind faces and Maps is unquestionably, the leading
organization. They've been a non-profit and I would like them to be able to stay a non-profit because I think the social experiment of a non-profit leading a Pavel Pharmaceuticals category is really important. I think if we could prove to the world that you don't need these 20 or patents and Pharma margins and the whole Farm industrial complex to deliver life-changing therapy.
I think that that really matters and so I designed a SPV 4 maps last year which I led and we would raise been under fifty million dollars. And and what that was was a Revenue share. So you could as a for-profit investor, you could you could make money. As you know, Maps has has increasing revenues but then there is a reciprocity component to it. So as you make more money as you go, you know, 2X and 5x. And and you know, 8 x Mo I see on your return you give
progressively more back to maps. The organization's of the can stay nonprofits that can fund other other research and other philanthropic entities. And we're kind of coming up to two maps, needing to do another fundraise to get to the point of sustainability. They would need probably around another 60 to 80, and I have started to think about you. Don't how much overlap there is in crypto and and psychedelics. Like, these are my two life's two, passions.
And I've constantly tried to keep them apart and not have any interaction between the Areas. But we saw a glimpse of how much the two communities love each other in the Christy cell last year. We did a digital art sale Christie's for the benefit of maps and all it was just amazing. The, the artist that showed out for that and that kind of got me thinking of like, okay are there things that we could be doing to to have the crypto Community
engage further. And I think this would be an important moment for Do to support a company like this in part because we have a narrative problem in crypto right now that the outside world thinks of all we are is a bunch of like Ponzi scam. ER, you know, profit tears that are just interested in the speculative, use case. And so supporting something that really matters, that really moves through the ball forward for mankind.
Solving, you know, arguably the largest problem that mankind faces the mental health pandemic, I think could be really really compelling and then the joke that I've made with Rick is, you know, when we originally designed the regenerative financing vehicle last year for four Maps, it was like 40 pages to have this reciprocity pledge in the actual company in the vehicle and I was like, you know, this is like a few dozen lines of code in a smart contract.
Look like, you know, in crypto this is like, you know, refi And decide like these things are like native and natural to us. We're in like the traditional farming. I'm Destro complex. They're like nah this is crazy. Like you're gonna like give profits back to a different
organization on a program based. I'm like yeah because if you just ask somebody at the end of the day, to give a philanthropic donation after they've made, 100x on investment The Wretched, 25k check, and tell you to go fuck off, right? And and so you have to program it in. It has to be like baked into the Of model and that's true. That's trivially available in crypto. So I've been trying to think around you know there's I'm not
here now seeing anything. I'm just sort of like thinking through like okay what could be a model that provides cash flows to investors like provides a really compelling Venture outcome but has this reciprocity baked in, you know, could we draw on the crypto Community to support this? This fundamentally important organization that has done?
The most to push, psychedelic therapies forward across the world and and you know, and then could we kick start regenerative financing as like a new defy summer, but have refi summer and we're doing more, you do more good for the world outside of, you know, of just pure pure profits.
Could we kick start real like decentralized science and in Something like this and I feel like, you know, not to be too hyperbolic, but I feel like crypto needs maps and Maps needs crypto, and the two belong together, even though I've tried to keep them apart for as long as I've been involved with both. So that was a bit long-winded my apologies but but yeah no it's super cool. And I mean, certainly the Psychedelic space is one that I think.
Yeah, I think you're right. Like there there there are a lot of synergies with the crypto space and certainly People in crypto, I think are more likely to have done psychedelics than most other people in most other Industries. So, I think it makes sense that the, the maps and in crypto sort of come together in some in some form or fashion it seems it seems quite natural. And yeah, I do also like agree that the mental health pandemic as you call it is.
Feels like it's it's getting worse and I think covid accelerated it. But also, what's going on in the world right now? I think is certainly not helping and Anyway that we have to come back from that is is a good friend that net positive for Humanity. Yeah a lot of the things that are happening in the world that are terrible for Humanity are functions of of mental health like why is Russia in Ukraine? Because Putin, sat in a basement
for two and a half years. You don't only allowing people to sit on the other side of a 30-foot tapeworm. Table from him in his own, you know, in his own thought cycle, just doing away until he convinced himself that he was going to like reunite the, the former USSR think that's a mental health issue and you go right down the list of so many other things that are like world leaders have us Alice on these like insane Misadventures and they come down to mental health problems. Right?
This is a, this is, you know, with the exception, One of death. This is the largest problem that mankind faces, maybe for a different time. We could die die. The I think we've really, to do another one, like deep deep into maps and psychedelics for epicenter spin-off, podcast about psychedelic. But yeah, it's a Bromley I'm looking for feedback right now from the community, like, you know, is this something that the community wants to get behind like we do need to come through
from apps. Like somebody's got a gotta write this check, like, there's no way we're going to let this 37 year. Journey of Rick doblin like die at this precipice moment, right? Or even have like a you know a farm of EC come in and own it in the end and it's like all this was for naught that doesn't seem like the outcome that we've been
waiting for. And so I do think I am optimistic that that there's a important Synergy to be realized between crypto and Maps. I haven't cracked the nut of what that is yet, but would just love the community. Unity feedback. Cool. Ryan, thanks so much for coming on. It's been a pleasure. Thank you guys with you on all these topics as love to have you on again at some point. Maybe not in 250 episodes though. You know what the important thing is?
I know that you guys are going to be around in 250 episodes because you do great work, your is as photo. I hope so. We're super grateful for for everything, you do. Thanks Ryan, cool, thanks again. And I do want to I do want to plug one thing before we go, just because we didn't have any sponsors today so it feels fitting. So maybe Other Summit, it is happening and it's happening in Paris on July 24th and 25th. So never let someone is The Interchange Builders conference.
It's two days it's going to be epic for anybody who was there last year and I know Felix you were there last year so I know you can you can vouch for this that never this time it is probably one of the best investments in feds events in Europe for interchange Builders. So anything related to Cosmos interoperability Cosmos D Phi and cos awasum staking Surah. So this year we're doing it again.
It's going to be two days. It's happening at this place called Albert School in central Paris which maintains his is larger than our veteran venue last year. But you know, tries to keep the Very Cool vibe that we had at last year's venue and tickets are on sale. So the early bird tickets went on sale on Monday April 3rd and we still have some available so I think by the time this goes out they'll probably be some very few early bird tickets
left. So if you plan on being at ECC, this year, you should definitely get a ticket to another Um, it's going to be great and we've already got some like 15 speakers lined up, and probably will go up to 70 80 speakers. So yeah, that's happening. And would love to see all of you there if you can make it. So, thanks again for joining us this week and we'll talk to you in the next week's episode. Thank you for joining us on this week's episode. We release new episodes every week.
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