BBW24 – Day 3 – KEYNOTE: The Rise of the App Layer in Crypto

really really blessed to have uh Boston blockchain week here and uh thank you cubic for hosting we are standing in uh the birthplace of Freedom um and so today I want to talk about that and also the future internet the app player blockchain advancements the path to a new and inclusive internet era so let's get it started anyone know who this is oh where right there yeah anyone know who that is yeah $100 bill guy awesome yeah so um that's Ben Franklin I I like Ben Franklin I also like him with uh sunglasses and he said famously an investment in knowledge pays the best interest right so today we're going to learn about the internet and money also from right here not too long ago before the American Revolution these are Bank notes uh right there big one is New York then there's Rhode Island right next to it then there is uh Pennsylvania so couple hundred miles in between but if I wanted to go from Rhode Island to uh here where we're standing in quinsey uh it wouldn't have worked I wouldn't have been able to transact and this problem is micro at this point in time but it's macro now and believe it or not this is also how blockchains are working right now so um now we have the US dollar again US dollar guy that's why we put Ben Franklin in here but if I wanted to go to France right now who helped us uh get our independence I wouldn't be able to transact I'd have to again change money so what's something that doesn't work like that that would happen to be the internet this is a map of the internet right now in 2024 and the percentage of the population that has access to it big blue part like the dark blue is the most amount of internet access all the way down to the least in terms of uh like 0 to 9% in the darkest color there um and so when we look at this we realize that the internet is free it's cheap it's fast it's borderless right and what has it done to the plan it well this is another map overlaid on this and this is the countries or territories by uh GDP it's a little bit of a chicken and egg situation obviously considering that GDP can be you know an indicator either way um but as you can see the the blue part right there well that's also where people have the most money the most Financial Freedom and so my big question for most of my career um which has been in blockchain is why doesn't money work more like the internet um today I'm going to talk a little bit about that as well so uh just five seconds about me uh Boston native Crypt nerd spent my time in a couple of large exchanges including binance where I ran around 2% of the global hash rate I was in mining at the time then got interested in defi went over to rain uh service the Middle East uh I was a head of innovation there and then finally uh started trust Weare recently um we're a peer-to-peer um payments Network for uh people to be able to send any asset anywhere to anyone so kind of the idea here let's hop into the internet because before just like we wanted to look at kind of where we've come from where we're going we need to understand what the internet did so some of you not me but some of you might be old enough to remember DNS and the time before that right IP addresses to Dooms okay so this is essentially when 10 it the internet host grow by 10x now we just use IP addresses for our routers next is SSL secure socket this is the security type and you could see effectively that these kind of protocols and infrastructure advancements move us forward in this right so this is when Amazon eBay Etc come through um this is the financialization of the internet and and we grow by 14x right it's basically from 20 million all the way up to 280 million giant Improvement and then single sign on this is the access point right this is where I could take my Gmail account and I can log into anything so one account any app really really crucial now let's hop into what we're all actually interested in this is web 3 follows a very similar pathway right this is Bitcoin 2009 title of the white paper I try to read it every year I love that um I love that paper Peter peer electronic cash system now everyone in the world has access to money right permissionless borderless holy crap um that's the protocol level then we go to the multisig side of things this is security this is no more one single private key right you wouldn't trust your new codes with one key one crazy president that's why they have them in two separate rooms two different codes have to push at the same time very similar thing to here this makes wallets more secure now we can actually use it it this is infrastructure then programmable money 2015 that's ethereum right smart contracts the ability to actually build more interesting things on chain and this is the advancements from protocols to infrastructure now let's look at kind of where we are right now ens and you can start to see the patterns right ens human readable names MPC this is cost efficient security offchain signatures for defi Etc account abstraction I don't have to actually sign it I can have some like I can have kind of signatures um that are are not me literally clicking sign um so starting to automate more things and there's a ton of other stuff that we could go into but for time um I've put together some stuff elsewhere here so you can ask me for it later really easy way to understand this just so that we're all framed and then we could get into the mey stuff blockchain architecture this is how I look at it I'm not sure how many people other uh how many else do but this is the protocol layer right Bitcoin ethereum then the walls of the structure infrastructure layer multi Sig layer twos hallways in between abstraction layer API smart contracts that kind of thing right then where is everyone actually coming into this thing that's the client layer that's metamask that's the wallets and then finally what are we doing here that's the app layer I put Unis swap in there because I kind of like Unis swap so when you look at it this way you're like wow maybe all of the infrastructure Primitives have actually been built and you'd probably be right um this slide represents essentially two axes essentially down down here in the blue 1983 we start effectively at um at the DNS side and then 2015 for the orange which is web 3 and that's actually uh like kind of the dawn of programmable money you could see that we're actually outpacing the internet Believe It or Not despite what the news tells you this is actually happening right now and this chart is courtesy of John Hargrave or Sir John Hargrave uh one of the first people I met way back in 2018 here um in Boston so diving into it um let's do it so usability and we're going to go through this really really quick because I don't have a ton of time um cross chain infrastructure we're just focusing on one key thing here melting away divisions between chains opening up interoperability at the infrastructure layer you have something like Axel then you've got squid router and then you've got for example us and I just want to show you a graphic to see how this works because it'll kind of bring it all together Axel unites 66 different chains so you can actually send messages do transactions through squid unites all the layers on top of that in terms of in terms of liquidity we make it as simple as send payment and send any asset to anyone and there's a bunch of different companies that we could talk about peanut protocol uh friends at printer where you can um where you can send uh or you can mint meme coins on all these different chains at once it's endless here right but these are essentially The Primitives that allow us to kind of get parody with the current Internet uh we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about security so really quickly again the infrastructure layer MPC multisig Etc then something like safe uh like nosis safe or safe. Global now is like I think it's over 10 million accounts registered there making it simpler and then something like splits. org would allow you to be able to do like a treasury wallet with multisig and then something like a hot wallet where you don't have to sign the same way but bringing that security back through and then finally accessibility web aen for example um allows you to uh allows the possibility for something like a pass key which is like the Biometrics on your phone and then from there you get something like coinbase smart wallet um which is you know 15 seconds getting into to crypto for a lot of people but fundamentally what I fun what I believe is that functional parity is actually not enough we need massive Improvement for Mass adoption so we all talk about this this mythical billion people on chain these are the tools to do it what's the use case and we go back to our friend $100 bill guy right um a penny saved is a penny earned so just to give you a real practical understanding of what this looks like right now 40 trillion a year is processed through this ridiculous graph if it's too small for you to read that's probably on purpose because there's multiple intermediaries here and as a result they charge 3.5% Visa Master Card are actually not even the biggest ones they're just the biggest ones here what does that equate to $ 1.42 two trillion in fees now just to give you a perspective on this this is like Greece Ukraine Portugal Spain you name it all of those combine their total gdps so remember that map this is a global problem with global level level issue right and so what's the alternative here are the savings these are public blockchains they're permissionless they're pretty freaking cool and they're all linked together now than you usability as you can see I could transfer million dollars for under a cent on a bunch of these and it's only getting better so how much do we save 1.

1416 trillion if we were to use that for every transaction that happens on a credit card now that's not realistic right now not bashing credit cards really cool that I could hop in here late and swipe my card and get out of that uh um that parking garage pretty quickly um but this is what we've got here as we've gone over the pillars of web 2 usability security accessibility so what's the promise right why is it fundamentally better ownership Freedom inclusivity this is a system where it doesn't matter who your mom or dad were where you went to school what you did before what your credit score is whatever it is you are part of this we are all part of this and we're all probably the weird nerd sitting here on a Friday afternoon learning about it right so um I apologize because I nerd out over this every single day so I just want to show you for 30 seconds about what we do um and uh if you're interested that's great um we believe there needs to be a holistic solution so we've built on top of the advancements of a variety of different uh people in the in in this ecosystem um some of you may have worked on some of these Primitives as well uh usability right going right back to this this uh we take we take wallet addresses we make them into a single cross-chain human readable name secure self- custody we have something we call single uh what do you call it single user multisig basically allows you to control your uh all your keys um and if you lose a key it's not the end of the world then accessibility again right back to that SSO idea want Count any dap also anyone can kind of get in so what does this actually look like in person all of these crazy advancements that we've talked about this is just our take on it claim your username and Seconds come in via web 2 web 3 right here right grab a username set up your wallet addresses Public public Keys private Keys whatever it whatever you want to do even your domain names that are existing and then set your priorities so if I want everything coming into for example alice. Ox to land in my coinbase account or land in my my bank account seamlessly I can do that right in a Wallet Manager build a profile get paid directly right and so this is essentially a payable profile where anyone with any client wallet client can come in pay Alice directly and you can actually scan that QR code and you'll see one it also gives the ability to spend 15 minutes with me we greatly appreciate it because we build this for the community we'd love your feedback what does this equate to you own your assets your data your identity and your connections and if there's one thing I can impart on all of you today it is the following the new standard is here tribalism is is dying out right some of you might be salana people some of you might be Bitcoin people some of you might be eth people the list goes on it does not matter traditionally we look at tvl right total value locked I think that's a dead metric right it's certainly been dead for a lot of VCS who are investing in kind of the infrastructure and protocol layer um and there's not a lot of retail in that um that it's doing that anymore this is a picture of a mountain and I look at liquidity like water so when water falls from a raincloud on top of a mountain it finds the path of least resistance down and forms into rivers rivers go into Seas total value locked no total value linked yes this is where we link it all together so we're not divided like the many states we don't have all these crazy different bank notes we're all together here okay and what does that equate to I call it the the great decentralized disruption right so you look at all of these uh Giants in their own respective Industries Spotify Tinder twitch GoFundMe patreon these are all relationship based apps fundamentally it connects me to another person for a donation say GoFundMe I can watch a streamer twitch I can connect with someone I want to go on a date with Tinder I can listen to music from an artist what if we could just pay them directly I don't want to spend $10 on Spotify I want to give the artists a scent it's more than they would make right now I think that's a great future right cool that is what's coming so highlights uh and then I think we will have time for questions here number one web 3 is here to stay and payments are product Market fit right now we're seeing this right now stable coins represent 10% of onchain liquidity but they are outpacing visa and MasterCard right now at trustar and a lot of my friends outside of even our organization believe that we can achieve great things when we uh link the other 90% uh roughly $2.2 trillion dollars in in in assets already on chain not bringing other people in already on chain for payments use cases hybrid Vigor is real we're not throwing away web 2 web 2 plus web 3 equals a better future there are some things that don't need to be on chain for everything that touches the user that includes privacy that includes like money that includes your sovereignty that should be on chain ownership and identity are are human rights I I know that this can be controversial and Big Data doesn't want you to believe this but this is fundamentally true in my opinion just my opinion most relationship B staffs that we just looked at right here could be eventually smart contracts right and so I believe because of that the disruptors of yester year will be disrupted pretty heavily um and so what I would hope is that some of this has has started helping you guys think about what you could actually do uh because the game is changing number one uh or the last two things here the fastest adoption right now is in emerging markets in places where the traditional Financial ecosystem passed over them because it wasn't a big enough market or what there wasn't enough infrastructure this is where we're already seeing adoption and this is where we can improve billions of people's lives all over the planet it starts there so we're very lucky to be sitting here again in the birthplace of freedom I believe this is freedom through technology and the last thing I will say is like I look around this room and I see a variety of different people from different walks of life from different backgrounds if you're coming into this after a after a career in trafi or technology we need you thank you so much for being here if you're like me and hopped out of college and realize there was this wacky thing called Bitcoin and like holy crap I could wear jeans on a stage when I talk to people like we need you too and then for everyone else that is just getting into it right now um it's the same damn thing we need you we need everyone here and always believe this because seven years ago I was just a guy that thought cryptocurrency was kind of cool you can make something good so last thing we're gonna end up with $100 bill guy before questions tell me and I forget teach me and I remember involve me and I learn so if you're interested in some of this stuff uh you can scan that QR code it'll take you to some of the information um all I ask 15 minutes to talk to you because the best thing we can do is that we can learn from the people where it matters most to them I want to thank everyone for being here especially on this beautiful Friday in quinsey thank you cubic for having us and uh now couple minutes for questions thanks uh that was awesome thank you almost as cool as your shirt matching those chairs I didn't plan that at all oh man that just that that's all I was I was completely thrown off by that for the whole conversation anyway that was fantastic and I really felt informed so thank you very very much um I would love now or later if you could kind of give me that sentence I want to talk to the 99% of the world who really don't want to understand everything you just said who I could introduce and give them something it's like the link thing maybe maybe it's that I don't know that was pretty cool but something that I can pass around and have those non technologist go wait a second I think I might give it another three minutes that's an awesome question um I so fundamentally the first thing is I think blockchain will mostly be in the background so people won't know that they're using it but we're not there yet right we have a lot of the infrastructure to do so um fundamentally the way I describe this to non-technical people um is is the following um if your bill was 2.5% cheaper or less um at the restaurant you went to with your girlfriend last night would you be interested because maybe that restaurant wouldn't charge you as much and uh and so like that's kind of a very easy way to do it it's the freedom of money it's a way that we can uh lower costs and like say what you want about trickle down uh economics I'm not going to comment on that all I'm saying is if we save people money I think it's a better world so really simple use case yeah so I just took a look at your Twitter awesome um does trustworth support Unstoppable domain names and do you generate stealth payment addresses oh my God uh you're hitting on some really awesome stuff so yeah we believe in cooperation not competition especially because we're all weird nerds trying to do some cool um so yes Unstoppable domains we work with something called space ID um in the background where we can resolve different domains so if you type in your Unstoppable domain it'll actually resolve your ID in there um and and the underlying wallet so yeah good call um also ens and a couple of other things and we're working on a couple of other kind of Integrations as well um stealth addresses really important um we spent a summer uh after we got into Tech Stars talking to like hundreds of users in Europe and that was one of the big things and basically they were saying I don't use my ens because it's doxing me I got Sim swapped in 2019 I know how bad this is um so not yet for stealth things but at least right now the way it resolves is that you have to send me a transaction before you can see it um which is much better right there's a financial uh side there and what we're working towards although not trying to look like a a mixer is that it hits a smart contract first and then per and then pays out to the um to the the username and Associated wallets so even it so you actually can't see the linkage on chain at all right versus a lot of the people out there are actually linking you directly and then it's like well I don't necessarily want my Twitter and my uh and all of my wallet addresses to be linked for privacy and security so great question something we've really thought about and we're working on yeah