Navigating the Web3 Venture Landscape - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2023

all right uh welcome everyone uh we're going to be talking about investing and obviously investing in crypto so I want to just quickly kick off by letting everyone briefly introduce themselves and also tell me one vertical that you're the most excited about in crypto right now and we can start right here cool hey guys uh my name is akshat I'm head of Investments for Maelstrom which is the family office of Arthur Hayes founder of bitmex right now lately I've been getting pretty deep into d-pin hi everyone I'm Tom I'm a GP at dragonfly we're a global crypto Venture fund um maybe a little bit d-gen but I actually find the sort of decentralized gambling casino space very interesting so I've been looking into that a little bit recently hi my name is LASIK Klausen the founding partner of 1kx um we're an early stage crypto Network fund so we invest only in open source token networks and what I'm pretty excited about it's been out there for a while but it's actually layer twos and layer threes just because we've actually I think we've solved scaling and that's actually a huge thing because that wasn't so obvious for many many years if that was ever going to happen awesome uh hey everyone my name is Augie I'm an investment partner and head of Asia with CMT digital we're a 26 year old trading and investing firm based out of the us we've been investing in the space for about six years we've raised three funds and we've partnered with over 100 companies in the space um and I guess one vertical that I'm particularly excited about is consumer apps more broadly in particular East Asian content which hopefully we'll get into later thanks for having me thanks amazing so I want to quickly touch on uh let's say you mentioned Layer Two is layer three sent scaling in general and how it's been solved what are the biggest opportunities in scaling right now that you're seeing yourself in the market and can you touch on a little bit about you know what layer threes are and like why are you excited about them it seems like everyone's talked about layer twos but layer 3s are still a little undercovered yeah so broadly speaking you know Layer Two is you have let's say ethereum down here and then you do a lot of transactions and every once in a while you sort of settle that state those balances back on on ethereum and so you can kind of do the same thing that you have your layer two and then you've gotten layer three that does the same thing and settle these things on the layer two broadly speaking you'll get to sub one cent uh transactions and then actually Mutual portfolio company ZK sync error that has account abstraction natively built in so it is extremely easy to create a you know a user experience where you can sign up with an email address as a normal user you don't need to backup your key or any of this funny things and so I think it is actually now really for the first time starting to make sense for an entrepreneur to build a consumer app on crypto we've had that earlier but that was honestly just because the bull market and all these people came and said I also want to play around with uh with you know with crypto and experience it and that's great but you know you're buying an nft for 50 and then you have to pay 250 for a transaction fee on ethereum and uh they never come back so I think now in the next three years I do expect some very very serious and consumer um applications to be actually crypto native and do you guys think in general that eventually kind of like the layer two Slayer threes and really like what you're using will be hidden just like on the internet like do you think that the consumers in the end will just not even know they're interacting with these layers anyone come maybe yeah I mean I'm still in my two cents here I just I feel like um you know the the world of um general purpose um infrastructure whether it's layer twos layer threes what kind of um become more app specific but also abstracted away as you say right in a way that when you're actually using the applications um the average user isn't aware that they're they're using interacting with these and I mean it's the same way that you're you're you don't really know which switchboard like you know which internet backbone is my when I'm having a zoom call in London with someone in New York I don't know if it's going to North Atlantic route or like sort of through the Azores like whatever backbone is used under the hood that doesn't really matter what TCP is you know is that average consumer so I think yeah I think you know the app chain thesis has been around for a long time right that hey you know every application will have some specific needs and therefore will have its own chain and have its own block face and uh that was sort of the cosmos polka dot Vision I think we've seen the action thesis was roughly right but it's actually manifesting through layer twos where you had your own app you had your own sort of relationship with end users and you're gonna have your own roll up that's sort of designed for your specific needs um I think the big kind of question and challenge is more it's sort of like an air bubble where you push down one side and it pops up in another where yeah you know maybe the state storage is now decentralized but you have a single sequencer that is actually you know doing all the transaction processing how do you actually make that decentralize how do you actually sort of imbue that with the same properties that we want out of these applications so we're here and it doesn't feel like bear market right now at this conference it feels like you know so many people conference is absolutely packed but it has been a fairly painful bear Market over the last you know two years or so and it's probably still going to continue a bit what have you guys seen uh in terms of like how does it differ to how you were allocating investing in a bull market and are there any like Trends you know are you seeing more deal for Less steel flow and we can maybe kick with Augie yeah no for sure I think um I mean I mean to start on on the topic of evaluations uh you know I'd see I would say at least from our vantage point we have not seen valuations correct as much as perhaps you would have anticipated given the bear Market that we're in um and I think um you know for us we we've always tried to be fairly disciplined when it comes to valuation even if it's a bear or bull I think that's easier said than done uh when faced with you know psychological factors of a runaway Market but that's kind of always how we've operated as a firm I think the one thing that has changed for us uh from an investment process perspective is we now have the luxury of actually conducting diligence right I think probably everyone on this panel has that horror story from the bull market of you know a super hot opportunity you speak with the founder for 30 minutes they say this is the valuation this is your allocation you have two hours to decide let me know I think those situations are much less common today and that is actually to the benefit of both investors and Founders right I mean we fully we very much believe that diligence is is sort of like dating right it's it's it's the process of evaluating both parties whether or not this 10-year partnership makes sense and so I think that's been a positive change in the process recently you don't see a lot of Founders playing League of Legends during a deal called these days that's probably a positive change uh very very much agreed I think um you know in crypto I think kind of the the trend that I've seen always is if you only look at the macro you lose out on on uh the micro you listen like the actual interesting picture and so you know right now sure nft volumes are way down prices are way down but mints are actually going crazy people are minting nfts like crazy they're only down I don't know maybe 30 from the all-time high you know okay maybe overall you know transactions are going down and then you have stuff like front Tech that's just popping off like crazy and so through these little glimmers of interesting traction where there's willingness to pay there's excitement there's retention um but it's hard to sort of paint it with a broad cloth and I think that's kind of what a bear Market feels like is people are trying to experiment and try new things and figure out you know what is actually going to stick and create new value there's also this problem with you know having too much of a bear Market mentality remember in the last bear Market um unit swap was Raising in 100 million and we didn't want to talk to them was like no this is just a late stage fund that's too much money they're pushing this up and it obviously was a fantastic investment and a big Miss on our side so I think the really really good winners this was our learning you have to pay for them even if they're you know their valuations aren't that low in a bear Market but what actually matters more that you hit really some of these incredibly Big Winners and I would say the network effects in in crypto are actually even bigger than in traditional Ventures so that matters more than feeling smart about you know getting a low valuation and have you seen you know it seems like two years ago everyone was an investor it seemed like everyone was an angel investor there were you know a bunch of new funds popping up did all that like just end are you still seeing that let's say yeah I think I think it was you and hasu right the top was what you guys said we were doing Angel text now and uh and so um I think yes there's definitely way less investors it's actually hard to close some rounds yeah uh it's kind of nice because we're all friends again before you know we could actually share deal flow before we're all just like you know I'm not telling you about my deal and so um I think it's good it's healthy you know and also because bootstrapping these networks is very very hard you actually want other good funds in there and then in the bull market everybody's too much money and it you know I think it's I think it's a healthy thing if you if you're a good entrepreneur what you're working on is very interesting you can still raise money there's about 10 times more Capital being deployed now than the bottom of the bear market last one there's still a lot of money being invested um it's just not ridiculously easy anymore and that's a very good thing yeah I think I agree with that what we're calling a bear Market is kind of like a reversion back to what it kind of probably should have always been sort of normal um the the ability to do diligence uh should be a right and not a privilege um and you're kind of seeing that the reversions of that kind of feels like a bear Market but um yeah it's I think it's this is kind of like where we should have been so you guys are all at the Forefront of new projects new ideas what do you think like is there anything that stands out in terms of like kicking another wave of excitement in crypto is there any like New Vertical that you guys are seeing emerge that wasn't there you know two three years ago uh is there anything like that you guys noticed maybe starting with doggy I mean frankly to to lasse's point earlier um while we are a generalist fund we invest in base layer protocols infrastructure and applications I would say for myself and my capacity covering Asia for the firm I spent a lot of time looking at applications and that's very much for the reason that last say mentioned our belief as a as a shop is that some of the core infrastructure challenges of the past few years have now been solved to the point where meaningful consumer experiences cannot be built right I think the the counter argument that we oftentimes hear is you know we're in a bear Market there are no users uh you build consumer apps you're going to be throwing your head against the wall kind of thing and I I fundamentally disagree with that I think for a couple reasons one is um even if you are trying to time your product launch with the bull market you need to build those products and so maybe it makes sense to fund and and start developing your product at this juncture but two and perhaps even more importantly um while a bull market is perhaps a catalyst for initial adoption I think the more important metric oftentimes is retention and retention comes from building a product that people love that solves a real problem where crypto ads a 10x better experience and so long story short I think we're spending a lot of time looking at consumer what that means specifically is gaming which I think is is at this point a bit of an obvious One content which is particularly relevant in sort of East Asia I think anime K-pop these sorts of things and then finally I would say decentralized marketplaces which are also starting to come a little bit more into fashion and how do you think get away from the trend of like building unsustainable you know almost token economics that lead to these like fairly popular consumer apps but they're popular for like three four months and then it all like goes to nothing again it have you guys seen a change from that where now it's maybe focused a little bit more on sustainability because no one's really buying tokens anymore also I think you probably have this sort of core diesel group that's they're going to fall for this no matter what I don't think that's ever going to change but we already had that basically in the last bull market we had a large influx of of mainstream users that never came back right so I think they seem to be smart enough to realize when this is sort of a bit more short-term and cyclical um but I think there will be you know there's a core group of people that will they'll make a casino out of anything and unfortunately uh you know it's very easy to do that in crypto so I'm afraid that it's not going to go away but I think really when we're you know having a 100 million monthly active 500 million monthly actives and they're coming back and they're staying sticky then then we know we've had something now we're now in obviously we're in Asia and it seems like the ecosystem is just vibrant here whereas compared to the US it seems like it's a little bit less so a little bit less enthusiasm um are you guys seeing the same Trends if like Founders you know leaving the us because there's so much uncertainty around regulations around what will happen to the founders um and where are these projects going maybe starting with Tom yeah I think dragonfly maybe has a somewhat unique perspective on this and that our fund is really 50 50. I'm I'm based in New York we have about half the team in the US and then we have office in Singapore we have a half the team out here and so you know we see teams you know in the US in Europe in Asia and it really sort of is you know uh fully comprises our portfolio um I mean I think you know as last week we saw at the cftc settlement with um open and Xerox there's a very sort of um almost predatory environment regulatory environment in the US right now and so even for teams that are acting in good faith even for teams that are trying to build meaningful products it's just really difficult to operate in the US and so stuff kind of Tears back and forth course I think we saw you know the opposite case in 2021 China Banning Bitcoin China Banning you know mining exchanges hopefully you know we saw some guidance from hkma you know earlier this this year around trying to welcoming uh crypto back to Hong Kong I think similarly you know we'll probably see more of that rebalanced effect to Asia but who knows in the future maybe things will shift back and so I think that is kind of ultimately the story of crypto is um people want these products Builders will keep building and um it's really hard for any one government to kind of shut down uh its entire ecosystem that's the really interesting part about this asset class aspect that that it is geographically Diversified right and so you've had um what Tom described right China is sort of turning very bearish or aggressive then the US was open and there was a lot of activity now we've had sort of a reverse of the trends and we're actually seeing a lot of interest from uh Chinese Tech sort of successful uh former Founders um that said okay it's great we've made a lot of money in Tech but now you know there's one political decision and sort of our wealth is destroyed and we see a lot of interest actually they're through Hong Kong um where there's realizing okay this is a NASA class that actually that risk that politicians are going to do something stupid that always exists really everywhere and so at least we're hedging in sort of geographically that you know by some countries and regions and do you think that's reversible the U.S Trend overall like do you think that will ever actually fix itself I I'm very uh what's it um uh uh Churchill he said you can always rely on the US to do the right thing after they exhausted every other Opera and so I feel like right now the US is shooting in every direction and it's all really bad uh but I think the it's a system that is based on a lot of chaos right it's if you look at Europe if a financial regulator says something it's law you don't even talk back right that's but the SEC actually has to sue you and win in the court that's the only thing that matters they can say whatever they want they can call it crypto asset Securities as much as they want you know it's really the courts that decide so it's a very very messy system but I think it's also the one that um where you get the best organic change through that kind of very messy process and it really is it's the Biden Administration it's not even the Democratic party so from the blockchain association we know that it's really bipartisan especially among ages so if you have the older members of Congress and Senate unfortunately most of are really old they're very against this and then if you have younger members Democrats or Republicans actually quite protest but we have a very very hostile White House Administration and so we'll have to see next year what you know what the next election brings uh also SEC chairman averaged tenure three and a half years so he's kind of expected against expected to leave next year I think maelstrom's kind of in a similar boat as dragonfly were spread out um I'm in Hong Kong Arthur's in Singapore we have a guy in the US as well and um a lot of the deals so we're focused mostly on infrastructure about probably two-thirds of our deals have been in the U.S but what that means really is U.S teams Incorporated offshore you know being very careful about the way they're structuring um but the infrastructure seems to continue to be built in the west Europe and the US with applications than in Asia and from a regulatory standpoint we're seeing we've been in this uh in this space kind of straddling both continents for a while and I think that Echo what you said there that in the U.

S uh even if there's a hostile regulatory environment there are means uh to fight it in the courts and once that's settled it's settled um and that's a kind of a gradual process of long-term or bullish U.S uh but in in Asia it's kind of you see this like flip-flop kind of back and forth and there's no recourse um if one day Hong Kong is is amenable to the crypto industry that could change in two years and there's really no way to fight it so it's it's kind of uh it's a seesaw and and both have their own unique um you know quirks yeah and I was going to say I think in terms of where people will go I mean at least for us we're starting to have this conversation with some of our portfolio Founders that are based in the US but no not we've not yet seen significant movements but you know the the places that come up as a potential destination I think doc shuts Point Hong Kong for sure uh Singapore to some extent I think Thailand even uh these geographies maybe in some instances can't be considered necessarily crypto friendly but I think what they have versus the US is Clarity right and I think that's what a lot of uh Founders are craving like where do we stand at the very least is a question they want to answer and do you think in the U.S we'll only get declarity once it's actually decided in courts or do you think it will happen before well you could have legislation before I think the stable coin bill is actually looking decently maybe have a chance it is very hard to pass things right now in the US but I think that that could really change things that you just get uh legislation and then the whole thing is that all you know back and forth is over there's actually another thing is that uh it's called the Chevron Doctrine and so that basically gives you in the US these Regulatory Agencies a lot of their their authority to interpret their own authority so everything that genre is doing right now is based on that meaning he's spending taxpayers money to do these legal tricks to get jurisdiction over you know legal precedent over it and and if that is revoked which it looks like the Supreme Court is reviewing that at the end of this year it's a very conservative Supreme Court now if that gets revoked then again any of these guys is nothing they can do unless they have explicit you know authorization and mandate from Congress through a new law to you know go and uh and you know Sue these D5 projects into the ground I think at a minimum we are also seeing good case law come out I mean as you see you know losing their their lawsuit against Ripple there's the ETF lawsuit uh there is uh this unit swap lawsuit that was ridiculous recently and so you know it's like you said you can you know bring a suit and you have to prove your case in court and we're seeing that the courts are agreeing with consensus which is yeah no these these regulatory agencies are you know uh acting over the way overstepping their bounds and bringing kind of insane cases yeah what's interesting there though I mean uh and I imagine all of us when we saw this news come out were like popping a bit we're celebrating I mean it was massive right at least for us we didn't see as much price impact from some of this recent positive Catalyst as we would have expected and and I guess I'm just sort of thinking um for the next cycle like what needs to happen now just because this all all this news the the recent Tech 2 uh web 2 Giants moving into the space like PayPal Visa Etc I think recently though 2022 was like a lot of fud Onslaught like the last few months I think generally has had some positive news but that has had very little impact on overall prices and so just makes me think about what will need to happen for our for us to really see significant upward price action I don't know if you guys have any thoughts on that I think kind of going back to what you were asking about Investors I think the difference between now and in 2019 was in in 2019 a lot of people who weren't already in crypto almost had the idea that crypto was dead right this was a fun bubble and now it's dead and it's never coming back now sort of the feedback that we get is it's a pause um it's not no but maybe not this year maybe next year we're looking but we're not deploying um I think that's big people understand the value and they see the potential but they're sort of waiting for different conditions they're waiting for uh somebody to sort of speak out to them and so maybe that's a better regulatory environment maybe that's better applications whatever but sentimentally it's it's a very different direction I think it'll boil down to the applications I mean you look at Zoom as a good analogy Zoom had been building for eight years what eventually would become the norm in the workplace but for that initial eight years it kind of felt like a sort of a fringe um augmentation to the workplace uh you know certain conditions in 2020 create an environment where that became the workplace um you know the change happens very quickly it's kind of punctuated equilibrium so I think crypto will probably go through the same thing with certain conditions probably based on applications which catch fire how are you guys thinking about investing in token opportunities versus Equity opportunity so you mentioned before actually that a lot of the infrastructure is still in the US which is mostly Equity opportunities and then a lot of the token opportunities seem to be more Global non-us based how are you thinking about those two opportunities from like a return perspective as well as like the expected outcome right like obviously you know tokens seem to have faster liquidity but also you know equity in some cases could somehow provide higher returns as well long term depending on how you know what the unlocks look like and all that but how are you seeing the difference in terms of allocating yeah so we've been we've been really pushing companies that we invest in to really think critically do you even need to tokenize um you know if you're trying to solve a cold start problem or there's there's some reason for to have a decentralized token based value flow then do it and design it well and we kind of we help portfolio companies with that um but you know sometimes we're investing in companies that are SAS Lake and there's no particular reason there can be but that that's been a big shift I think from the first couple of cycles that we were involved with I've been in the crypto space since 2013 and kind of going through I guess those three Cycles we've seen a lot of tokens created for the sake of creating tokens I think that is actually genuinely changing now um the other thing is you know how is value actually accruing to the equity versus tokens that's a key part of our diligence and um you know that we we've we've done deals and declined deals on that basis alone even if the product is strong yeah I mean every cycle every bear Market you see this flight into equity and the good thing was that we have a pretty strong sort of thesis around open source token networks that for us is a big innovation because that's what uh you know you have trustless systems so I mean if you think of FTX if it happened in decentralized exchange this whole story would have lasted five minutes right the first guy sending money to their Seasons going out the door and it says okay story over um so with with open source token Network you know networks you really tokens is the only way and we did really well that in 2018 2019 when the existing funds felt safer doing Equity um you know and we doubled down on a lot of our our winners that were basically one-third of the price so with that we became actually a very large fan and so we're kind of doing the same thing again there's some opportunities where it's very clearly you know um uh you know institutional staking infrastructure that is very very clearly an equity company you know it doesn't make sense to try to push a token in there but um I think independent of the prices of tokens you know you should invest in great projects uh whether they should be token networks or Equity companies um that's TBD but we definitely see a lot of flip-flopping of investors uh in every bear Market you know Equity gets overfunded and then when tokens are mooning then you know everybody's chasing tokens again yeah how do you guys view the role of investors in general in helping companies like for example structure token economics or like think about you know go to market think about sustainability is that something that you guys advise the companies on once you invest or is that something that like is a requirement before actually allocating capital you know if if you're a Founder I think building a cap table is kind of like portfolio theory of your own um each investor has their own value add and ideally you have non-overlapping uh differentiated investors with each one adding something to the mix so you know Maelstrom our MO is Small Checks we're not we're not competing with these guys we're not overlapping we're additive um so we like to help portfolio companies with what Arthur's good at which is storytelling um but we also you know advise on on things like tokenomics and other stuff like that yeah I mean for us um I would say one of the more special things about partnering with CMT if you're a prospective business or founder is the fact that we are attached to a world-class trading operation uh and all of the trading expertise Market making support and tokenomic support that entails so we do have Specialists that kind of assist on this piece to answer your question more directly um I mean it really depends I do think to Oxford's point it is it is a little bit the the latter for us right um we are and have been asking the questions why does a token even matter instance and I think it's only recently that a lot of Founders have had more carefully constructed answers to that question at least in my experience yeah I think uh a dragonfly a lot of people in the investment team including myself uh were Technical and worked in the industry prior to joining I used to lead product at Xerox before joining dragonfly and so you know for our portfolio companies more often than not most of the time that we're spending is talking about product technical architecture go to market things like that I think token stuff is sort of like a cake it's like you need kind of a good foundation but they're like I think you know adding frosting doesn't really add that much more to the cake and so that's kind of one thing that we look for but really it's more hey can you build a compelling product that people actually want to use versus um hey can you engineer some Ponzi token scheme to try to like you know make this number go up yes we for example we created a new governance framework for safe uh because it actually is uh you know it is very very complex and we've seen basically dials being all over the place um so it is it's a nice space especially as former entrepreneurs you know you can actually really you know work and you don't even you can Loosely coordinate with the founders but you just kind of do it right these are sort of networks of loosely coordinated actors and and you're sort of battling it out there in these governance forums and and then yeah you can have a very thoughtful proposal and then you know One retail guy you know actually comes up you know with a brilliant counter and you're like you know I mean like it's huge team that's we didn't think of that so this is a nice thing that you know it's basically a company but it's a protocol that is you know developing itself in the open and so it's a very participatory process uh but you can also become very very proactive and do a lot of things yeah Tom uh you guys invest in larger check sizes most of the time right like most of the time more than five million dollars how is it different if you could describe to the audience versus investing in the seed rounds and like you know a few million dollars here and there doesn't mean you know longer due diligence doesn't mean getting to know the founders a little bit better or does it just mean investing in later stages yeah I mean we raised our third fund um at the beginning of 2022 which is our largest it's 60 female and different sort of investment process than our other funds which are much smaller we're still doing C checks occasionally but um you know a lot of times a lot of the CDs that we're doing are just too small for us these days unfortunately and so looking at later stage you're right it is more diligent it is more sort of providing more proof around product Market fit around economics of the business around financials and and uh you know sort of there's more to look into as well seed stage investment it's just a proof of concept or sort of a prototype and so you know the diligence is more a little bit lighter weight I think what's interesting right now in the market is um I think overall later stage crypto has been kind of tricky there's not been a lot of great wins and so what we're looking at is things like secondaries things like adding structure to existing deals um things like hey there's those few companies that you know actually uh maintain the healthy cap table didn't raise too much generate some crazy evaluation looking at their next stage but it's definitely a strange market right now um there isn't sort of the sort of very healthy going from seed going to a going to be uh sort of sort of ladder that we see Venture traditionally it's a much more sort of back and forth and trying to find a round and a cap table that makes sense for a given company yeah for what it's worth I think I mean this topic and uh um like I do think that this is one of the fundamental traps that Venture investors can frankly fall into and I'm not saying that dragonfly or anyone on this panel is it's more like um moving outside of your core competencies and a bit too far adjacent right and you've seen this in the past more in traditional funds than in crypto but we don't want to just be Venture investors we want to be growth and maybe not just growth but we want to do public markets and do Crossovers and buyouts and incubation and this and that and maybe maybe that's possible but I think we have seen notable examples to the contrary even from my own alma mater on how Venture doesn't scale in certain instances and so I think that is uh another interesting discussion point I don't know if anyone has views I think I'd agree with that yeah we try to stick to our Niche you know Arthur is one of those uh investors who's built um uh you know profitable unicorn from scratch and and that's kind of a phase that we like to get involved with companies that kind of the precede through seed um product Market fit process has begun there's line of sight into Revenue but they're not quite there yet um we we like to invest where we can be helpful and bring whatever track record that we have as as like as an organization that invests but has a building Heritage to our portfolio company so I'd say yeah focus on your core competencies I totally agree so we're running out of time we have one last question I want to ask every single one of you and that's which recent Investments that you guys did is exciting to you and why and we can go one by one and then uh that'll be it we can start here if you're ready um yeah so we've uh our fund is pretty new we've uh we just got launched in November last year and we started doing deals in February so we're pretty pretty early shop uh we're writing 100K to 250k checks for the most part pre-seed through seed and um I think one of the biggest categories for us has been ethereum staking infrastructure um anything that you know contributes to the cause of eliminating Central points critical points of failure um and making the entire network safer so one of the deals that we did that we're super excited about uh early on is one of our first deals it actually was our first deal was opal they are building uh to simplify their product offering it's essentially a way for um multiple sub nodes to act as a node to uh decrease the the number of critical points of failure in uh in you know proof of Stack networks cool Tom uh one deal we did recently which as a co-investment uh is Athena um I think one of the classic Ben your faults is uh saying hey you know this idea has been tried before it's never going to work I think it's Dina is truly the best approach at creating a cash and carry stable coin of a decentralized stable coin backed by decentralized assets that also generates yield um and so uh you know if Dina actually has a very brilliant design for tapping into you know massive Futures Market that exists in crypto but coupled with staking yield that you're actually getting from liquids taking derivatives so really excited about that one I think it's you know tackling this massive stablecoin Market in a new way uh we recently invested in a project called story verse uh it's the co-founder of Zynga so I think it's probably the the the the person in crypto with the most experience of creating you know consumer products with three four five hundred million monthly active users um so I'm very excited that uh we're gonna get uh you know one of those entrepreneurs with that experience to really build a mainstream application in crypto so I was going to say Athena and then I was going to say story verse so now I'm a little bit scrambling we also invested in those two companies maybe another example I can give from Asia in the consumer space more broadly is a company called super fine super fine is a Ho Chi Minh based gaming infrastructure company it's basically a tool that assists web3 Studios to acquire users on traditional web to ad networks like Google ads or Unity ad networks and the thesis here I think is quite interesting where um you know crypto in the context of gaming content uh has value but it feels a little bit far away right it necessitates uh the value proposition of ownership in content specifically in content and gaming usually means that you need interoperability Etc to make it make sense on the infrastructure side I think it's quite clear the value proposition of crypto which is in a post idfa degradation world where it's impossible for any Studio to Target and bid on their users profitably arguably wallet data historical purchases is a better indicator of future spending so you can build better propensity models on the back of this wallet data and so that's exactly what uh what superfine does cool well we've run out of time I appreciate everyone for coming thank you guys for a great discussion and please give a round of applause for the panelists and thank you guys [Applause]