Live Empire: TOKEN2049 Takeaways - TOKEN2049 Dubai 2025

These are the true believers right here. If you guys want to know what like I think a crypto conference in 2014 felt like, it's like this room like the la the last hang we're hanging on. So, how we doing? Good. Good event.

Good. That's energy. I like it. I like it. Yeah.

This feels like uh my first conference uh that I went to was in New York in the Bitcoin Soho Center. Yeah. And I was working at JP Morgan at the time. I had like a suit and tie, you know, snuck out of the office and we'll go down to Soho. Everyone looks at me like a an alien.

They're like, "You've clearly in the wrong room." Like we don't welcome suits very much going to take over and blow up JP Morgan. But anyways, felt like this like no one's there. Like the Andreas Antonopoulos videos. Yeah.

Where he's like standing there. He's the only one presenting. And yeah. Yeah. We can't promise we're going to deliver so much alpha as Andreas Antonopoulos like in, you know, 2010 talking about Bitcoin.

But yeah, does anyone here listen to the Empire podcast? Do you guys have any idea what that is? This guy. Let's go. This guy.

I love it. Um, cool. Well, thanks for listening. Um, so Santi and I have been hosting this podcast for 5 years. Uh, it's called Empire.

Um, maybe I'd love to let's talk about token takeaways. Um, one of the things Blockworks does is run a bunch of conferences. We see a lot of conferences. We've both been in the industry for a while. We've seen kind of a lot of volatility, a lot of different narratives come and go.

What are your big takeaways from the last couple days in Dubai? Maybe there's the there's the onsite app token takeaways, then we've been at some of the kind of side parties and stuff like that. Yeah, I think it's um I started noticing in um earlier in DS this year and I think it's still true uh here which is I just sense that there's more excitement in the about crypto from Black Rocks of the world, Apollo of the world, Stripe, Visa, Mastercard. I mean there's a lot of announcements this week and not just because there was announcements this week. I just generally feel that look, we've been in an environment where prices have either gone down for the vast majority of crypto assets and that naturally has washed away many crypto natives.

But uh you were talking about this, but like you know there's never been a better setup for crypto. The regulatory environment in the US is clearing up. Like Trump has delivered on every single one of his promises. Um and I just feel the excitement like genuinely this time is different. you're not in that like Long Island iced tea.

Everyone puts blockchain on the on their earnings to pump the stock. But I do think that institutions are like now backing up their interests in crypto. And you also see a lot of like the OGs, a lot of my friends are not showing up to these conferences anymore. Yeah. Uh so what that means for me is it's a really exciting time to be in crypto.

Um, you know, I started investing in 2012 in the industry and I just think that I'm earlier now than than what I was before because there's something so powerful about just seeing it actually being implemented. You know, back then it was only Bitcoin. Now, I could just never have imagined the timeline which is like the leading financial institutions are like leveraging this technology. Let's talk about this this idea of OG's crashing out a little bit maybe. Um, I mean, you've been, you know, in the industry for a while.

uh have invested in some of the best founders in the industry and it's been interesting being a token because a lot of those OG founders if you think about some of the best protocols the best L1's they they actually they they're not showing up here and a lot of the presentations are kind of this new crop of founders curious how you your mental framework for that yeah well as much as I miss some of my friends you know uh I think it's uh it's really exciting to see young blood why because so when I think about investing a lot of times in crypto is It's been we've tried a lot of experiments, you know, the cohort of 2014 and then the cohort of 2017. Every cycle you see kind of the same ideas rehashed. Um, and a lot of people might say that's just a waste of time and energy. It's never going to work. It didn't work before.

Um, but I do think credibly like the infrastructure is very different. The regulatory environment is very different. So when you see kind of Drift or Jetto or some of the deepen networks like you know these are some of maybe they're not like the most authentic ideas so to speak but they're working now and it's um I think it's just it's just kind of this idea of like it is worth revisiting experiments that didn't work when the infrastructure was very different and it pays to pay attention in crypto because the infrastructure has come a long way in a very short period of time like in the last two three years. Yeah. Know I mean the the amount of developments on fast like high throughput blockchains and the proof points.

Yeah. Like with memecoins putting memecoins aside like the infra is very much uh ready. And so one of the things that I think you hear here keep hearing in a lot of the panels I heard was when are we going to get a billion users on chain and that's now kind of the focus. Right. Yeah.

And what uh so this so this week talking about some of the news stories of the week this week there was two actually funding announcements that got a bunch basically a bunch of [ __ ] on Twitter. I saw one was um one was Maiden and one was camp and uh and but I know I know both those teams and congrats on both of them for the the the fund raise and the announcement because that's always difficult but I think the thing that people didn't like when you read about these just new chains another new chain another new chain is kind of this like copycat mentality or uh like why why why are we still focusing on building infrastructure why don't we go up the stack start building applications what do you think of that is that fair criticism or it's like look, we'll never stop improving the infrastructure. I'm more of the camp of the latter. Like I think there's always going to be interest and I don't think there's anything wrong with pushing that those limits. Um I still continue to believe we're incredibly early.

Uh you know, in fact, we might, you know, I want to talk about Ethereum because I think like there's just a version of this world where the top 10 and 20 in 5 10 years time is just completely different than what exists today. Yeah. Um so we'll see. I mean companies with a lot of distribution like companies like Apollo are using like existing infra to deploy but that might not be true you know five years down the line. So I don't know if you believe in that or not.

Do you do you think returns will start to come? So all the returns in the industry have come at the protocol layer. They've all come at the L you know if you want to make the most amount of money in crypto you buy L1 tokens. That's bas that's basically L1's and L2s. and all the applications uh I mean the the applications that have made money are actually the exchanges right OKX I mean you can see Kcoin Binance Coinbase the there are applications in crypto they're just called crypto exchanges do you think that the from the uh return profile the returns will start to weight heavier towards applications I hope so for this reason because I keep saying it I was on four panels this week and it's like we have 30 to 60 million active users on chain it's the same users So, um I guess like when when we think about where value has been distributed, a lot of it is mev.

Why? Because like memecoins have a lot of mev. So, it's all all of those most of those users are purely here for speculation. Now, imagine a world if we really nail this right, which I hope we do, is you on board 100, 200, 500 million users. Those users are very different than your speculator that's screaming for an airdrop and moving around.

So I think naturally if that is true if this industry really delivers on that promise more value should be acrewing to the applications to whether it's middle layer like DeFi apps or Athenas of the world uh a world and also like wallets more like onchain wallets like Infinex style not not centralized exchanges. Let's talk ETH. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

So I I'll read um I'll read this tweet from Hib. Aba at Dragonfly said the uh Ethereum pivot now has a tagline. Scale the L1, scale blobs, improve UX. If they can pull this off and buy back some credibility, this may finally be the beginning of the ETH revival. Let's see.

And I think we had some maybe interesting we were at this kind of party last night and there's a bunch of the big Ethereum founders um there last night and this was this seems to be the the biggest topic of discussion at this conference for me is like at least in the speaker rooms and at some of these side events is like the founders who are building on Ethereum a very very very split on uh if this re rep prioritization of the product roadmap is the right decision. Yeah. uh as someone who's early in Ethereum, I'm curious how you think about that. Well, that's been my frustration with Ethereum. It's like it's not practical and it's been, you know, this different factions within the Ethereum community that all kind of like are pushing their own narrative and the L1 and L2 construct, but I I think like everything is now on the table because I think everyone just can align on one thing, which is we're losing a lot of mind share and market share.

And so it's really encouraging to see folks OGs, the few that showed up that were there mostly and saying, "Let's actually just think about how do we know ideas that would have I would have never have heard." Yeah. Someone that I'm really close with. And he's like, "You know what? Like now it's worth considering because if we don't do this, then we're just going to be irrelevant."

Like now, now what is worth considering? Well, like certain proposals out there which is like okay, how do you uh can we integrate other pro like yeah I mean ba basically I think the conversation that will start to happen at the Ethereum L2 layer B okay ba basically there's been this um there's this weird thing in crypto where there's the there there's the tech layer which is like the tech is very important but there's there's the social layer and if you talk to a lot of the I think L2 founders they are more concerned about the social layer. And as one of them put it last night, they said, "What what is Ethereum alignment? It's getting your monthly tweet from Vitalic, right? It's you got you get you get you're we're Ethereum aligned.

Therefore, the EF and Vitalic are going to tweet about us once a month, right?" Yeah. And um I think that social that social consensus layer is starting to break down and people are bas I mean basically what happened in the in the US with like kind of I I think you can equate it with like a lot of the woke stuff of the last couple years and then people fought back against that people are starting to fight back against like does the this social consensus like ETH alignment that we've all really overoptimized for does that matter anymore? So, you'll start seeing that'll show up in the product, right? That'll show up in things like um I think this hasn't happened yet, but I I bet at some point this year, you'll see an L2 start to use their own token as gas, right?

You'll start to see things like uh if you see blob prices, blobs get more expensive, you could see an L2 say, "Fuck this. I'm I'm going to go I'm getting off. I'm becoming an L1." Language or language. Yeah.

Uh look, as much as we like to talk about ideology and alignment, the history, if you go study everything that's happened in crypto, it's very clear as soon as you start getting any traction, you det you you you defect and you use kind of the social layer as a way to get a lot of attention, but at the end of the day, like I mean, Bitcoin works because it it assumes that you can't trust anyone and so it has almost no social layer. it it doesn't have any social layer. That's what makes Bitcoin Bitcoin which is it's sort of like architected in this manner and it's that's solves Bzantium's general problem. You have now social layer and some of these other more fluid organisms calling Ethereum but like you saw it in 2017 most of the big projects used Ethereum as a capital formation mechanism launch an ICO and then launch their own L1. Why?

because the economics are stacked more favorably and at some point that developer says, "I'm developing really good tech, why would I leak that value to Ethereum?" Yeah. And look, it's it's not to say that that developer is greedy or whatnot. It's just it's just the everyone acts in their own. So, by the way, we're we're we're overly um kind of attacking Ethereum here, which I feel like some people say sometimes we do that on the podcast, but it's you talked to some of the best founders on other chains, too, and they're cuz the criticism that I got, which is I'm launching a chain.

I never thought I'd launch a chain, but I'm gonna I want to acquire users through a private equity model, bring them on chain. Yeah. And then one of the OGs says, "Oh, why are you launching your chain? Like, why couldn't you do this on top of Salana?" And I walked him through it, but it's an interesting observation because when I in a separate conversation with one of the main um DeFi protocols of another chain, not Ethereum.

I said, "Is there a version of this world where you bring a lot of the users? It's like the primary DeFi app of this chain." And I said, "Would you ever launch your own chain?" Because a lot of times like the more CTO technical people say, "It's really expensive to launch a chain." And it kind of reminds me of the criticism of Salana, which is higher hardware requirements.

I'm like, "If you get a lot of activity and mev and fees, it justifies it pays for the validators, it pays for the hardware." And I pressed this guy, this this CTO of this project, and I said, "Would you ever leave?" Like, and they're one of the biggest apps on one of the other They have all the flow. Yeah. And I said, "If you have all the flow, what if I told you you could acquire like a Robin Hood competitor and you could spin up your own and and and launch your own chain and beat Robin Hood to the So why why would they would what did he say?

He said, "Yeah, we would." Yeah. And and by the way, the problem Salana is about to go through is I think some of the And it was it was a project on Salon. Yeah. What what hap what if you're in Salana's shoes, how do you prevent how do you solve that?

Well, I think what candidly I there it's like they need to deliver on like you know increase bandwidth, reduce latency because then the chain just becomes a launch pad where you're you got apps and then they grow and they grow and they grow and then once they get big enough then they go launch their own chain. I mean I think the the company to watch here is Athena. I mean they're they're going out they're launching their own chain. They just announced a telegram which is a lot of announcements. So yeah I I I'm not saying that every major protocol that gets a lot of traction is going to launch their own like layer one, right?

But I do think that it's just something that you're going to start if you own the user relationship and you can get more economics by being vertically integrated. I think it's something that will continue to happen. That doesn't mean that Ethereum goes to zero or Salon goes to zero. I'm not suggesting that, but just a phenomen. So the other thing that people were talking about at this event last night was uh I think a lot of frustration from founders saying look we spent all this time building this decentralized network and here comes hyperlquid and is just you know basically like a I don't know the right like a a data ser like a single server chain essentially.

Um you've got other guys like what what Hyperlid is doing in where are they located? Japan or something somewhere what what they're doing in Japan like Fogo is going to do in Chicago. these kind of like hyper localized uh single server chains optimized for just the user experience but not optimized at all for the decentralization things like that. Do you like I don't know if you have any thoughts on like how far that push ends up going like are we are we is this where it goes or are we going to keep seeing this more and more and more? I think eventually crypto is going to be very good at very specific use cases.

technology is incredibly centralizing, but for very specific use cases, DeFi is really good and there's always going to be someone that is going to bid for a guarantees that blockchains give you, which is credibly neutral to some extent and but also the the verification of immutability. And I think that that's like the most important thing. So like if you're Apollo or Black Rockck, you like DeFi, you like uh a network like Ethereum because it has a lot of security and it has liquidity, composability, but more importantly, you're interacting in a system called decentralized finance that minimizes counterparty risk. Yeah. Where you can inspect collateral in a 24/7 365.

And when you and that's not the case for a centralized solution. Yeah. Um so I don't know. I I I think um you know it pays to be practical in crypto. You know like Hyperlink was very practical and how they went about it and and I think there's a lot of merit to that.

Yeah. But I I still think that there's very specific use cases where decentralization and security are still paramount and will continue to be. Um I know we're supposed to talk about token token takeaways. So I I have I have another uh takeaway from token which is this says zero but we can't keep going or what's what's we're done. Did we run out of time?

We're done. I forgot to look at that. All right. Like it's blinking red. I'm like, what's going on?

The market. Sorry. All right. My other last takeaway is uh I just want to give a shout out to T token because they did an incredible job. It's like s such an incredibly uh it's a high performance they're high performing chains.

It's a high performant conference. So the organizers did a 10 out of 10 job and big shout out to Alex and the whole team. So yeah, I've been coming here since years and Singapore and here it's honestly super. I know you run your own conference which is great too. No, we we learn a lot from that.

But uh amazing conference. It's great to see everyone come out and and it's really especially in a place like here which is the government's so progressive and pro crypto and it it's just really nice to to be here. So it's always a treat. Cool. Thanks for listening to Empire folks.

Thanks folks. Cheers. Cheers.