Debate: DePIN, Stablecoins, & AI—Where Are We Going and How Do We Win

[Music] give it up harder more do I have Reverb Reverb um all right there's a lot of echo for me I can hear myself it's going to get weird um so do you guys know what pmf stands for product Market fit we're all aware of the fact that we seem to have a lot of dialogue about it on the internet um so today we're going to do a little bit of a debate type style format where people do need to take positions and they they should and they will um I want us to give people a moment to introduce themselves but I think I'm going to do like General introductions this is Tony Olo uh founder co-founder of VII um Maya your last name again remember cadle Maya cadle uh big name in African scene for bringing on developer talent for Education uh and helping teams like find their way general for product Market fit uh Rocco uh let's just be honest like you built a lot of stuff but now you're kind of like in the fun side of things you're in the VC side of things man and like I think we need to hear what that feels like as a product Market fit world the views Express here do not necessarily represent ethereal um and then we have I don't really think I need to introduce Joseph dong but this is what Joseph dong looks like um and he's built a million different things that are very well known in the space I encourage you to Google them but don't go too hard um myself I'm the founder or co-founder of parable uh we work on internet infrastructure and ethereum infrastructure that goes on B uh works on battery powered devices um we're all here to kind of talk about what the hell is going on and where we're going so I want to give you guys that a brief that brief introduction but let's uh start off with what um what trends for your opening statements have frustrated you the most in the last couple of years and why has it contributed to real pmf being difficult to achieve in the space so yeah what trends have frust have frustrated you as you've watched people try and build for the last couple years um and why do you think that it's it's caused a lack of pmf in a lot of different tranches of the industry I think the macro trend of thinking about what is happening right now what is the best uh most hype thing and then um investing like that's going to continue into Infinity you're saying keeping with whatever you think is hype if it's nfds or it's AI right now whatever that is uh as an investor all I can think about is what's happening now will continue forever and so they'll only invest in things that are like but as a builder you have to like plan like 6 months a year and a half in advance so when that market happens it's all like kind of just all right Maya I'm cutting people off in debate time by the way we're doing this is we're going quick no Mery um I think the biggest Trend that frustrates me is that pmf and success is Western defined so I remember building um stable coinbase pro products back in 2022 2021 in emerging markets and saying on stages at Swift at land Stock Exchange whatever we've achieved product Market Market fit um and yet people were like no we haven't but we had we'd achieved product Market fit just not in the west stable coins had achieved product market for in Emerging Markets but because the West wasn't privy to it it didn't count and in many ways I know we're all very critical or many of us especially in the United States are critical of Gary right um but the CH the the benefit that Gary brought was it forced many protocols and projects to actually start thinking and prioritizing markets outside of West the west and then they started to real that product Market fit exists elsewhere um and that is unfortunately now retracting um and so if you're building if you're investing make sure you pay attention and real attention to what's going on in different crypto ecosystems around the world because they're achieving product Market fit that you're not even seeing here yeah I mean let's just acknowledge that your Barbados accent really just put some asses in the in the seats you see that like a little bit of that British twing came through and people started sitting down we love to see it um so I think like on that point Tony uh you want to give your thoughts yeah I guess for me the main thing that um would have seen would have been the obsession with like tokens and VCS being able to like make outsized um louder okay yeah so I guess for me it's just seeing like what the uh impact of tokens and how that that whole token meta has really taken away from what real impact is and like what actual U is and so um a project is actually considered successful not not in terms of the metrics of the users that it serves but by the by its token price and what what that has done is for a lot of people who are building inside of emerging markets and are building tools that people need um the the um they are almost forced to Panda to like a token narrative whereas um a lot of the businesses that uh have actually been formed inside of this uh ecosystem and actually serving users um are kind of overlooked yeah yeah Roco from the venture capitalist but also someone who's actually built projects as well like digital identity with Spruce where did you see all of that stuff frustrate you yeah so especially with decentralized identity um it has a long history of no one actually building products and everyone just building tooling for decentralized identity I personally fell into this trap for a long time with Spruce Until you realize that you can't just and this this happens across the space too the frustration comes from people building like you know protocols and all of these different like tooling but not actually Building Products that leverage these things um so for like identity you had to actually own the entire experience not just give people tooling to just make credentials appear out of thin air um but this is still widespread across the board even in thinking about like both the both the product side and also even like thinking about what's out there is a lot of teams just still suffer from the Field of Dreams idea where they're going to build something and then all these velers are going to come in and build on top of it and it's going to be magical without even showing and demonstrating the value of what they built themselves so if you see anything that hasn't like use their own a team that's haven't haven't even used their own protocol in some meaningful way like avoid at all costs build a protocol build on top of that to demonstrate the value of it to begin with show people what they can do don't just like put it out there and be like yeah they're going to build on top of it and it's going to be magical which lends to markine being the thing that wins um so let's do this like prop first question right uh I think it's important to know where we've been in order to know where we're going so in classic literature and philosophy there's a concept called the Fool's money Maxim which is often times like a fool and his money is easily separated or kind of evolved into What's called the sucker's BET and we see like for the last few years we see insiders and Venture capitalists weaponizing fomo towards what inevitably be inevitably becomes the sucker's bet so what do you think is the what is this trend of of of purposefully weaponizing a sucker's bet on somebody what is it a Fallout from one early crypto moonshop prices two cultural background of those Distributing money three cultural background of Industry leadership or four poor technical understanding and a lot of marketing yeah you guys should have looked at the questions I sent them to you pick a position I would say for me personally um it actually basically is kind of a a mix of all where we've seen a lot of different um a lot of different teams come up with like different blockchain projects and like there's uh I don't know how many l2s exist now um I don't know how many USD stable coins exist now um I think we're actually running out of alphabets that we could like add as like suffixes or pre fixes to like USD stable coins while the data and the evidence shows that um USC stable coins have strongest product Market fit outside of the US yeah and so there isn't sufficient inquiry going into well how is it how is it um that this is the case and what kind of utility are we seeing and who's actually using it and so even when we are we actually talking about the protocol that we're building we actually educating people about how people are using stable coins from a uh from a FX standpoint and how um protocols need to exist to be able to facilitate that and so it's just it's just that that um that that whole dynamic of very poor understanding of um uh the user and not really solving the user needs yeah yeah and I think Maya was also kind of saying that earlier with uh your opening frustrations and I want to give the opportunity to somebody who I think is probably the only one up here who has actually dealt with people being like I really [ __ ] believe in this project or had people be like Oh sushi or like blah blah and you have to deal with like the general like Vibes of of of how people are weaponizing fomo of your project or how people are saying that your fomo is going to jump on retail or something like this what is that trend for you yeah like like you up there we go okay like like you said I think um my stance is four people have a poor technical understanding of how these um uh what they're in you know um uh investing in or buying into um even from my perspective too um like what what may seem like you know the future of Finance or the future of protocols that you may be buying into might not be as technically sound and it's a lot easier to get people into uh those things through kind of like hype Cycles um and the hype really is is uh outpacing the real valuation of some of the stuff like if you think of a great example of something that could have Revenue that is like dominating the market is like Unis swap like the value of uni like well outstrips like the value of their fee Market um uh that that like their possible future fee Market um and they're absolutely dominating but like it's just like the value is not there and so there's everything across the board is overvalued damn yeah I see that what you're saying I can't believe that you uh are going to say that Unis swaps I we I see what you're saying I think I'm going to come back to it Rocco I want your position I think part of it is is building on this is that I think there there haven't been enough teams that uh understand suffering and I mean that in a let's [ __ ] go I I mean that purely in a sense of like uh it's it's a very Capital abundant uh space and are a lot of overfunded projects and you have a lot of teams that haven't had to struggle and to try to bring something to Market correctly and understand that the time the time is against them unless they do actually build something worth using there there's no death chasing the startup a lot of the times in the space there's no what death chasing a startup oh there's no are you saying that people aren't scared enough like they don't they don't feel the walls closing in they can just keep creating road map or keep our Runway out of just hype cyes a little of both yeah it's always good to see teams that are like either know the clock is against them where they have to build and ship something that people get value out of or teams that have started even without Venture funding try to bring something and pull something together and bring it to Market um I think but I think it's the abundance of capital and I think that's a great point and I'm going to just take that into you two here because I think from the global South perspective or what we would call Leap Frog regions Leap Frog South at Parable I think we're all very used to having death right there at the [ __ ] door and we're like and this is a huge thing we talk about with disillusionment in the space right now the whole Space is like we're disillusioned oh what do we give us something to build I'm just going to say I think from us from the leap Pro South perspective we've been disillusioned for a second so what does it felt like to have death at your door as you guys like build and try and bring things forward I mean um in my previous role so I worked at Adventure studio called NCoin and I built one of the key businesses out um on board so I took it from concept through and we had in different times death at our door sometimes it wasn't even due to our own fault it was actually ramifications of the West um most notably FTX um I think there's also a different Nuance or pressure that you have when you're building in the global South which is the perception that your project is worthless um and also the perception um that you have to work harder to prove and validate yourself um and I think that creates a sense of fear and death that if if you're a certain sort of person who was born and raised in the west have certain criteria or or meet certain criteria you do not have um and that has forced innovation in a different sense so let's take an example um or let's use an example Nigeria people incorrectly think that crypto was banned in Nigeria it was not what actually happened around 2021 was the Nigerian government said that any regulated entity um if it was found to be enabling its users to buy or sell crypto would lose its license so we saw a separation of trafi and crypto much like we've seen in other regions of the world so most notably China um and what that meant is that if you let's say were onramp or a centralized exchange crap how do people go from Fiat from naira to into crypto and vice versa you know what the ecosystem did they immediately responded and created and developed and pushed PTP on and off RS so there's this idea and it's partly because of regulatory environment it's partly because of the nature of some of these markets you are constantly fighting and that's why it really frustrates me because when you come and have built an emerging market and try and come to the West your experience is valued less when in fact if you have built and successfully built or even if you haven't successfully built an Emerging Markets trust me your level of resilience is higher because if it isn't your C something going wrong with your product or customers which which happens in any startups your government could actively be regulating against you overnight so that's why when Western projects think oh I'm going to expand into Emerging Markets easy and they get taken for fools they do and or if you are building a protocol if you think that just because you are a western brand have tons of funding you can turn up in emerging markets and and that's enough get over yourself we don't need to be saved by you we have so much resilience and experience that you will never understand so we good here we good here it's fine I mean like yeah I just think let's take a look into at a resilient Builder it building something exactly along with the topics what you're talking about Tools around stable coins for the global south or what we call it the leap frog South let's call it the resilient South [ __ ] it Maya new term uh uh let's get into it like yeah you've had death at your door for months yeah so we've been we've had to endure quite a bit so we've had to endure quite a bit um we've been we've been we are telling VC's that yeah we have people who are moving 100 million a year from Nigeria to China to buy stuff and the VC says is it legal do they have that kind of money where are they getting that money from and Nigeria has a population of what 200 million so is it really inconceivable that there's a multi-billion dollar economy that functions with 200 million people and there's somebody who's buying stuff from China worth a 100 million and they're doing it at a 15% FX ta tax you know essentially and so socializing like the West to be able to understand what this looks like is actually very very it's actually very important but being able to move past the kind of arrogance yes like we've actually been told by a VC who's a Emerging Market VC I mean somebody who's essentially from the region telling you that um your valuation is too high because you are an African startup and so it's kind of like black tax you know kind of like a reverse tax situation and so a lot of what we want to be able to like validate bring out is that there are people who are building a lot of those protocols that tethers 146 billion or is it 160 billion um um market cap does not come from Bushwick it's coming from Lagos it's coming from uh latam it's coming from the Venezuelan diaspora Community it's actually coming from people who are using these rails in ways that that most people would not be able to imagine inside of quick add on by Maya and then we're going to go into our last question um one other thing is that a lot of people when they're thinking about Emerging Markets they're thinking about oh within Africa or within Lam or within Asia or they're thinking about Asia to the West Lam to the West Africa to the west and what they're completely missing is that there's so much money flowing between emerging markets that never touches or involves the west and so many people sitting in the US find that mindboggling and I don't understand why because the majority of the population lives outside the West the majority of Natural Resources you're getting my blood going you're getting my heart going again no because now I want you guys to like who can take that straight into this um so with massive Capital comes massive responsibility we have seen a lot of critique of the EF lately and to their credit they have responded in a number of ways to try and recognize critique about leadership however the critiques are essentially we need to decentralize power and control of this revolutionary technology or we need a neurod Divergent dictator to lead us to the promised land so at the heart of both of these arguments is an agreed upon uh we need an agreed upon road map and clear pmf for future teams to succeed inside of ethereum in the greater ecosystem of crypto so if you happen to be this benevolent neurode Divergent dictator that was elected or brought to Power by the people of ethereum what would you do and let's asse assume that you are uh what are what are the first steps you take to achieve the ideal pmf vision of eth as a utility not as a culture and why um I would focus on engineering yeah and actually I think um U benevolent dictatorships are underappreciated um people tend to like view them in a very negative light um uh but you know um they speaking about like the shaw IR on right like before the Revolution is like um and then he's um exiled and um um in comes uh uh the Islamic Republic who's like you know democratically elected in the beginning it's not like representative of um the the people's values so I think benevolent dictatorships have like a place especially from like a startup perspective and um but for ethereum I would focus on uh engineering culture because it sucks um we're very like research heavy and um we don't focus on how to um build things that are like built to last yeah that's big I wasn't expecting a history lesson on Iran but I'm glad it happened uh Roco benevolent dictator Roco what do you have for us I think I'm on board with the benevolent dictator idea I know the like anytime someone says wartime CEO it's kind of cringey but it's just the idea of that that matters and is important because you need some kind of Direction you need like clear decision making and clear places to go uh but I think I'm also in agreement to I'm going to do the cheap thing and agree a bit but it's it's kind of the truth it's like you have a lot of research but not actually applied anywhere or applications to be used or things to scream about might have certain breakthroughs on the research side but it comes to like practical applications it's still lacking in various ways and I think there needs to be more of an emphasis on that and the usage of andun from certain entities that want to go down this path to some of these startups that are building a lot of these cases because most of the time these funding processes in the ethos of decentralization are actually not clear at all there's no clear like process by which funding is granted uh there's no clear uh guidelines it's all based on Vibes most of the time uh someone who's dealt with us very much Vibes funding has given us so much yeah it's given me headaches and uh it's giving me gray hairs as well um but they look good on you though but honestly I think it comes down to that it's not only just the benevolent dictatorship side of of ruling it's also starting to have clear processes around what gets funded what's encouraged and what's actually used and put to use so all right Maya I think you might have a a different take feel free to be spicy um I think I agree actually with pretty I so I'm Pro benevolent dictatorship um especially in stops um yeah I feel like this could be taken out of context so so easily um but especially in early stage startups I think there is a a space for them it's okay it's it's the it's it's a dictator of decentralization it's the decentralized dictator uh model I'm I'm Pro that um I would add though that as well as focusing on engineering culture and focusing on not just R&D but actual building I think the other thing that sometimes etherum was the ecosystem does incorrectly is they focus too much on Engineers um just building when they need to also think about utility um and what actual problem are we solving and that's not just Engineers who come up with that I think we also as an ecosystem need to think more about how we also bring in the best BD marketing Etc Talent um without because it's for too long we just prioritize um engineering and to be honest if we look at a salana one thing that they've done really well is they've catered to both arguably engineers but also to BD and marketing talent and that's something that ethereum has done incorrectly time and time again just look at hacker funds and how they're structured um as a prime example of that go um so I really appreciate ethereum and all of those things right like we I definitely appreciate ethereum and what is the platform that is created but as an Emerging Market founder I haven't really seen the impact of like the EF inside of these regions so the EF last year had a budget of 149 million or something of that sort and the main question I want to ask is how much of that went into Africa um we've seen the EF employing like one black person from Nigeria and that person is super super low and has to spend 6 months curring favor to get a single decision to move things forward and this has been the consistent experience so a lot of emergy Market founders don't really care what's going on at the EF um because the EF hasn't really demonstrated that they care about them but then what's essentially happened is that we've seen a very aggressive push from different like um L2 ecosystems into uh into all of these markets and their and their push and their motives are domination they want to win I don't know I want to beat so and so so I could be the biggest in this particular region and the EF is just sitting idly by as the the there's basically a scramble going on now um for like attention inside of these markets and so the places where I would say would would need to be prioritized the places where the funding is needed the most and the building not just the not just a engineering culture which is a very good point but also a entrepreneurial culture inside of these regions so that you're not just doing the lazy white savior nonsense we've been seeing like them doing for the past I don't know however many years um we really we really need to stop funding um Emerging Markets as places that we're going to redeem I don't care about a garden we need to build a city and we need to build things that actually matter and on the top of that since I am the benevolent dictator of this panel I'm going to answer this question as well um I think on top of that the Assumption of scam is attributed to one half of the planet that's building on ethereum and the Assumption of scam isn't accurately attributed maybe to the other half of the planet so I've tried uh in the past I've done a lot of stuff for organizing different education uh initiatives hey um and so what we did with eth logos was get a bunch of people from the the Western ethereum Community to sponsor eth logos and we focused the entire hackathon on the power deficiencies of logos I mean like this is what I build on Parable I'm interested in energy and internet and what happened with eth logos was the gis which is this German uh Investment Group and stuff they were sending checks immediately and we ended up having to have the gis who is a [ __ ] like old organization they had no problem sending ethereum or sending to a Nigerian bank account they had to get on a call with people from the EF at the time it was like years ago and basically be like can you guys act like adults and send the money to the Nigerian bank account so that it's easy for these people to throw the hackathon because they were trying to send the money to the New York bank account that they were like having it was absolutely ridiculous and they're like well we just don't feel comfortable with the Nigerian bank account being in charge of this funds and it's like how about you be adults like period so uh thank you for joining us I'll just I'll just oh let him go have you been shut off yeah yeah yeah so the point there is just that there needs to be stronger representation of the communities that you that you claim you want want to impact and like not just at Junior levels inside of the EF but like at senior executive levels where programs are designed and things are actually done like there needs to be yeah shout out sound gu yo the the moderator just sent us a message on the screen that said y'all game in the system so so we got to go [Applause]