Mainstream Moment: Consumer Crypto at Scale - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2025

Good morning Singapore and good morning to all my panelists. Uh my name is Sandra. I work in Kaido and I'll be moderating the panel today. So I think consumer crypto is something that you know everyone's been talking about recently. Um you know we we see consumer crypto everywhere.

Um you know people have been trading these football cards. people are, you know, I guess going on the similar route as like prediction markets or frenche. They're all, I guess, revolved around consumer crypto. So, I really wanted to touch on um you know, each of your background. I know you guys are building very different things, but everything is sort of revolved around consumer crypto.

So, I'll start with Alex um and then we'll move on to Roham and Eva to give a brief introduction about what you're working on in consumer crypto.

Thank you again. So, uh I'm Alex. I'm the founder of Chile. Uh we are the company and the blockchain behind what we call fan tokens which are more or less loyalty program that has been tokenized um on the cheese chain. We work with more than 80 sports property the FC Barcelona, Manchester City, Inter Milan, AC Milan, Paris and Germany and all of these teams uh soccer/ football all over the world.

Um and my background um we I mean we launched in 2018 so 7 years ago. Uh and from a background perspective I was actually uh I've been working in the internet space since 1996. Uh so long time ago uh and especially in online gambling for 15 years so regulated online sports betting and um and sports betting.

Very cool. We'll move on to Roham. Hey everybody, name's Roam Gargo, founder and CEO of Dapper Labs. Uh, Dapper, we're also partners with uh several sports organizations, NBA and NFL, as well as Disney. Our company started in an NFTs.

We started, we wrote the first non-f fungeible token standard, ERC 721, back in the day, created a product called CryptoKitties. And our thesis from the very beginning has been the most interesting use of crypto is in making consumer lives better. Uh but these days it's also happening. The Dash is happening really rapidly through stable coins, through tokenized assets and and our mission at Dapper is always to bring all of the innovations happening in the crypto space, make it usable uh by real people. So I'd love to talk about that.

It's great to be back at token. My name is Eva. I got my start in crypto in 2018 and I've worked around the industry but previously was a principal at Mechanism Capital and then after an extended break I started building a global telco powered by crypto. I'm looking forward to this panel. Thank you guys for um introducing yourselves.

I'll first like to start uh the panel by asking um both Alex and Roham because you guys decided to take a blockchain uh first approach when it comes to consumer crypto. So both uh Dapper Labs and also um Chili's you guys both have blockchains of your own. uh why did you decide to take that approach of you know building your blockchain and um sort of um you know taking yeah that approach of consumer crypto rather than you know building something that's maybe more um generalized

I I think in our case when we started in 2018 actually Solana didn't exist and there was a lot of chain didn't exist at that time and the vision we had was kind of two layers one is the consumerf facing app called socios.com which is the wallet let the on um on on ramp and all the utility provided uh for the tokens that we created and then there is the chain the foundation kind of that is below that. So we we decided to have both the infrastructure and the play on top of the infrastructure mainly because in our case um there is a massive um let's say ecosystem slash network effect where the more we can onboard sports property the more we onboard sports property because everybody wants to be on the same ecosystem a football fan of PSG is also a fan of Barca and also a fan of an Italian team. So the more we managed to create this network effect, the the more it was making sense. And so we we are not I like to say that Chile is not here to disrupt the financial industry.

We are not here to change the world. We are not the fastest chain and will never be. But we know how to do sports. We are the sports blockchain. That's how we marketed here in the in the you know in our booth.

And so we believe that for few verticals few niche niches it does make sense to have a trio chain. So we are more appvertical chain rather than a generic blockchain.

Yeah.

Yeah. For us the situation is maybe a little bit different. So we started our company building on top of Ethereum and uh and now almost everything we do runs on a new uh crypto network called flow flow.com. I am a board member on the flow foundation but the two organizations are totally separate and and look the reason Dapper built on flow originally was just one of practicality what what we're trying to do wasn't possible on other networks um but today flow is serving way more developers than just Dapper some of the biggest builders are folks like Ticket Master Live Nation Ticket Master has minted over 100 million NFTts dropped them to over 13 million uh consumers without them even knowing that there's a crypto uh rails behind the scenes and I That was always a big part of our thesis is for true consumer adoption, you have to hide the wires and you have to make the technology so easy to use.

People and developers don't even know they're building on top of it. Um and and of course there's network effects from the applications into into the network. And a big part of what Dappver is trying to do now is build things that are open from the jump so other people can build on top of it. Um you know we we brought back our own IPs around CryptoKitties. We have a virtual influencer called Michaela and everything we do is saying hey this is a demonstration of the kinds of products you can build on top of flow including in DeFi and I would say you know from our perspective maybe it's the Silicon Valley guy in me but we are here to change the world I think we we the technology can enable new products and services that completely change the economics the business relationship between creator consumer um between bank and and uh and borrower whatever it might be and especially with the latest boom boom in stable coins, tokenized assets.

A lot of people for the first time are realizing the value of open programmability, of composability, things that maybe they wouldn't they didn't necessarily understand as much when we were just talking about them in the context of games and and entertainment. Um, so I think there's infinite potential in how real consumers lives are going to change and that's what we we've all been about. But to do that, you need a network where you can actually build experiences that feel uh seamless and and trustworthy to consumers.

Yeah. I think one of the most important things for consumer crypto is distribution and sort of network effects, right? As as you guys mentioned um throughout building blockchains. Um I think in crypto as well like a lot of the apps that did really well um nailed the distribution effects um in initially but then I think after you see token incentives running out or you know token price like tanking um then people kind of run away from you know what you're building because they're like oh is this really a product that I want to use um you know like after the network effects or after the initial distribution layer is gone. Um so how do you like balance between um you know distribution and sort of the underlying product um of what you're building?

Maybe we can start with um yeah

well I mean that that's the biggest challenge at least in our industry when you're a consumerf facing product is how do you balance traders or crypto enthusiasts and um users and even though at some point these users are going to be merged or these type of users are going to be merged we do have people who are buying tokens to trade them and we do have people who are buying tokens to use them or to use the utility of these tokens and that's a different need uh that's a different profile. You need to build tools that uh fit both both narrative. Of course, the priority is the utility. That's what we we created in the case of fan tokens. For example, when you own a token of Paris and German or Juventus or Barcelona, you can vote on decision of the club.

So, you vote on chain about what color is going to be the jersey next season. um you can earn uh VIP tickets because we have boxes everywhere etc etc but ironically when you own a token of a team you're going to hold it uh you're going to stake it actually no you need to stake your fun token um and then you have the traders who wants to make money it goes up goes down and there is we we always especially at the beginning we had a bad pure at some point because yes the token goes up because it's hype and it's crypto and that's how it works and then it goes down down down down down at some point. Um, and there is an argument that those fans or end user lost money. Well, the answer is no because they still own the exact same utility and they still own the token in their wallet custodian or not and they own that utility forever. So we we need to educate the biggest issue for us at the beginning was how to educate media about what we are doing and that what we are building is a long-term vision rather than just a short-term hype based out of price.

Yeah, I think I think this a question that the whole industry is still trying to find an answer for. Um to my team I kind of talk about it as this virality that's inherent with token incentives is almost like uh kind of nuclear material. You can use it to build a bomb or you can potentially try to harness it to build a self-sustaining reactor. And I don't think we've figured out the right formula there, but we've run some of the biggest products for the longest uh duration. And you know, we've been through multiple market cycles.

And the most important thing is just to keep building, know who your end customer is. Try to differentiate between the customer and the speculator. Uh but don't ignore the speculator because they're who brings that kind of like viral energy in the first place. And I think that uh you know the the next generation of token incentive products are also going to have much more um mature and and and thoughtfully designed ways to acquire the token and thoughtfully designed ways to u basically get rid of the token. what are the sources and the syncs and I think we're trying to learn as much as possible from everything we've learned in game economies to say well when it comes to fungeible tokens because that's one thing that Dapper never touched in our in our history because of the regulatory uh reason you know pressure from the United States but now that it's very clear hey meme tokens are just collectibles and even uh L1 and L2 tokens have uh different regulatory treatment I think you're you're going to see people experiment with token incentives in ways that are much more advanced than just say hey here's an airdrop kind of do whatever you want with it a big part of here's an airdrop do whatever you want with it was because of the regulatory reasons the legal advice etc um hey this is you know the the the don't make any promises of utility etc and so now that the the pressures are in a different direction we can talk about how do we create long-term sustainable economies that are funded with these sort of uh mechanisms that basically give the value that's created back to the user that creates it.

That's the key part is all of us while we're participating in all these social networks and all these communities, we're creating value, but we're typically not getting paid for that value. That value is getting soaked up by those digital middlemen. How can token incentives be a a sustainable part, not just a bootstrap user acquisition, but continued value transfer um in any sort of peer-to-peer network?

Yeah, Sandra, I think that's a really nuanced question. I feel like in crypto, verality and distribution is really the strongest and most potent way to get verality in crypto is actually just selling this idea of profit. And if you're selling an idea of profit, it's you're basically renting attention from people who are not going to stick around. It works spectacularly well in the short term, but when the music stops, it's you're left stranded. So, I think people um I think virality is a really great distribution hack, but what's really important and what a lot of companies miss is that who you go viral with.

If you're going viral with crypto traders and retail traders who just want to turn a profit, the moment they can make money somewhere else or you stop giving them profit, they're gone. So, you definitely need substance and you want to target, you want to go viral with your users that would be around even if the crypto wasn't there. Yeah, I think um I wanted to double down on Roham's point. Um you mentioned, you know, building long-term communities, building long-term like creators or users that can really um you know, be with you even when your token price goes down, even when things are going wrong with your ecosystems, your blockchains. I think it's really important to find people and communities like that.

Um and I think you know once you yeah give them a sense of like belonging within your community they might uh be more aligned with what you're building right so I think for you guys like how do you think about uh communities and building cultures in you know the respective um apps or respective blockchains that you're building.

Well I think the most important thing is to recognize hey why do why are people coming to your app other than farming a token or getting the airdrop. Um, and and for us when we're building games, it's mostly starts with why is this thing fun? Um, and if we're creating more of like a financial product, then it's okay, what's the sustainable value creation here? Am I trying to get it uh make it really easy for people to come in and access crypto for the first time? Am I trying to make it really easy for people to come in and learn what memecoins are, do their first few trades?

uh or am I trying to make it really easy for them to sort of access the the uh profit potential of DeFi but in a way that sort of protects them, introduces them to to new primitives in the right way. So, it's got to start with sort of who's what's the value I'm trying to offer and who's the customer I'm trying to offer it to. Um because to your point, if there's a perfect overlap between, hey, my my customer is actually the DGEN trader and oh wait, the D gen trader is the thing the the customer that's most interested in the airdrop, then that really works super well. And you see that in the example of products like Hyperlid where the token incentives are directly aimed at the community that is actually the long-term um uh ideal customer profile of that platform and and benefits from the long-term value proposition of that platform. So that that's that's about it.

And then if you're if you're building something that's centered around let's say a mainstream audience, sportsman, whatever it might be, then something like token farming isn't going to make sense to them. But this concept of cash back or acrewing rewards or earning points, exchanging those points for future benefits um or even in your case using the currency itself, that that's what potentially makes sense. And so um I think for us it always starts with okay, who's the customer? What's the core value prop? And especially now with um tens of millions of users over the next 6 months, 12 months, 18 months are going to get their first crypto wallets in the context of their stable coins, in the context of real world assets, in the context of they're hearing their banks and their credit unions and everyone from Fidelity to Citadel to Black Rockck kind of getting into this crypto thing and they're asking themselves, well, okay, how do I uh how do I become part of this?

Um and our next series of products are about design about letting those uh people basically have a home where um they can get introduced to the economy for the first time and then earn u benefits as they go through it. But it's very important to kind of make sure those incentives are acquiring you the right kind of user because that's all it is. It's marketing spend and sometimes you want to rent that attention

because that's what marketing is, right? And then you get the attention, you get the press, they you know you you sort of and hopefully that sort of washes over to bring mainstream audience in. But it doesn't always work that way.

Yeah. You need distribution. Otherwise, you're dead on arrival basically.

No.

Yep. I think um one thing that's really important about consumer crypto is user experience and how you sort of onboard users to your platform or onboard users to use your um application, right? Um so how do you guys think about um you know what's the best way to design a user on boarding flow that appeals to both mainstream audience and also crypto native people right because I think like cryptonative audiences they like things that are more complex they like things that are more um you know cryptonative but as a on the other hand it's like mainstream audiences likes things that are simple um so how do you balance between you know building something for crypto audience than building something for the mainstream audience.

So that I guess at least in our case it's um it's a very big question. We started building our consumerf facing app called socials.com as a custodian. So regulated custodian um and we were actually the first European company to have PayPal to be able to buy crypto through PayPal. Um and when we started our app there was no mention of the word blockchain or crypto.

Uh it was really like hey you can buy this token of teams uh you can do you can vote you can earn tickets you can do all of this cool stuff but we were not a crypto app we were a fan engagement app that's how we started but by doing that we we were not able to attract cryptonative uh which are the big wallet and the non-custodial transaction etc etc. So more recently we actually changed into non-custodial wallet everything we are doing because the technology allows us to really have a smoother experience. Uh we still we still do the on the on board or the on ramping from the fiat perspective with a regulated product that we do either oursel or with partners. Um but we we really try to offer everything in a very smooth and not um not having bad words. uh in that way because yes at least in Europe US is not a market for us for now but in Europe you know when you use crypto and you use blockchain it was like scary words and in in Europe we've been educated that crypto is a that's a scam and everything goes to zero so we had to actually fight against that and fight even more when you work with legacy brands that are football teams when you work with Barcelona you work with a brand that is 125 years old.

So you have much more challenges when you work with CryptoKitties. You own your IP. You actually can be more creative and that's great. Um and that's one of the biggest challenge we had is to convince these major brands to that what we were doing with their brand is legit. And that was one of our at that time one of our biggest challenges.

Yeah. Look, I think it's I I agree with that and for me I think of it as two separate extremes. If you're serving crypto natives, it's got to be backwards compatible with all the other wallets and and AVM infrastructure that exists. So flow is fully AVM accubid and you can build apps on flow where someone can show up with MetaMask and it looks like just like another L2, switch the network, etc. But if you're building for the next wave of entrance, then that makes no sense whatsoever.

And so what you have to do is abstract all of it away, hide the wires completely and and ask yourself, okay, well, what's the what's the core value problem offering and how do I how do I make that an immersive experience? You know, switching apps to sign transactions, downloading an app before using another product, none of that works whatsoever. And so even when we're talking about um financial use cases, um it's it's sort of like a two-way road. If you already have a wallet, then I want to be fully compatible with that wallet. I want you to feel like I'm just like another DeFi app.

But if you don't have a wallet, then I want to hide all of that complexity. Create a wallet for you on the back end. Have credit card rails, a on-ramps, recovery, whatever it might be. Um, and sort of make it feel like a uh a product that gives you the benefits of web 3, but doesn't require you to get a PhD and sort of how all this stuff works behind the scenes. Nobody knows how TCP IP or packet switching works.

Everyone uses it every day. And so, it's about how to hide that. uh how to hide that. You know, I remember the first when I first got my first smartphone, there were so many app developers, so many different products that were showing, hey, what's possible when you use a phone as more than just a communication device. At that time, there are also lots of games that showed, hey, this can be a consumer entertainment device, not just a a telephone.

Um, but all of that world changed once Apple brought that sort of consistency to the user experience. And that's what was necessary to get 100 million people and eventually billions of people interfacing with the phone like that, not just you know geeks like me. And so I think that's the same place we're at in this cycle where for the first time the infrastructure is starting to be ready for application developers whether you're building in sort of consumer finance or entertainment or the things we're talking about fan loyalty whatever it might be to sort of completely give a uh a web two- like experience to to their to their customers.

Yeah. I want to maybe touch a bit more on your point because I've been thinking about um this point quite a bit but it's more like some applications they try to hide all the complexities of um you know like uh crypto complexities of like any apps and um but but for some apps they only do well because they are like a crypton native application right like it's not going to do well if you kind of put it in a web two market it's not going to scale that way but just because it's on web three people are like Okay, this is a cryptonative app. I'm going to use it. I'm going to try it. So, like, you know, I'm just trying to think like how do you balance between making something like fully like web two fully stripping away all the like crypto words and you know, crypto lingo versus like doing something that's uh yeah, the opposite.

But it's easy know. So, who's your customer?

If your customer is a crypto holder and a trader, then make it fully uh sort of backwards compatible. If your customer is a that new person and you know building expanding the pie then it's kind of crazy to try to push them into that world.

They'll get themselves hurt.

Yeah. I think it's all about knowing your audience and I guess where they stand with things.

Yeah.

For for us I mean we we like to call oursel web 2.5. We we don't think we are a web tree uh company right now company or ecosystem. We are web 2.5 because we are still working with this legacy community.

Uh eventually our job is to tokenize communities. We we tokenize communities of fans of sports property but that that's our job and so we we talk to an audience that does not natively understand what we are doing which require more education more investment um when we want to own more them. On the other end we have native users uh who are who understand immediately what we want to do but don't necessarily care about the utility we are providing. So we are going back in this question about how do we balance that

but but if I can just say something I mean I said I said web two but what I maybe should have said is mobile native user experience because you know the things that makes web 3 special to me are are true ownership are the the skin in the game which which you have with all these things it's openness and programmability it's transparency auditability all of these things can still exist in a world where I show up with my credit card and I use Apple Pay right there's no there's nothing that that that that sort of I think the web two uh is web two to me the negative part of it means that you don't own anything that you pay for your information your data your access to the application is mediated by the the developer you can be deplatformed at any time and a third party developer cannot build on top of your data without their permission um whether you know there is a JP Morgan Chase or whether it's EA or whatever it is and so everything changes in a web 3 world even if we're trying to hide the wires and make it easy to access and make it seem seamless and safe to use. Um, so I just wanted to correct myself.

Yeah, 100%. I think abstracting the crypto part is only if you're going for mainstream audience before crypto becomes mainstream, you have to abstract the crypto complexity. And I think what's more uh overlooked is that you need to abstract it and then you need to teach people new crypto concepts because like owning like uh tokenizing loyalty or owning uh digital moments or even like having a phone bill that rewards you with airline like coins it's not something that's been done at scale and actually that's the UX barrier that we need to overcome and at the same time we need to abstract away crypto complexity.

Yep. Um since we are almost running towards the end of the panel, I will maybe end with one more question. Since this panel is really about how do you bring c consumer crypto into uh mainstream and how do you really break into the mainstream market? Um do you think we're there yet in terms of like you know do you think that uh consumer crypto is at a stage where you know even your mom or your grandma knows how to use it? Um if not like where do you think we are in the cycle?

Um me I have a seven-year-old kid spending all my money on Roblox and Minecraft. That generation will be the when really crypto become mainstream because they are fully educated about digital asset items and everything and maybe not seven years old but the 10 15 of today. So I think we're still 5 to 10 years of really talking mainstream as we define it today. Uh and and that's fine because like every technology and every usage, the only thing that matters is time.

Yeah. Look, I mean even today whether it's your daughter or or or your grandma, they can go on the app store, download Disney Pinnacle, and I'm sure they will be able to figure out why to use it, how to use it, why it's cool, and and we see both kids and parents, they really get into it. But that's just one sort of entry way. That's one product. And I think over the next 12- 18 months, tens of millions of consumers are going to get their first crypto wallets without knowing that they're crypto wallets.

I think every single mainstream consumer platform, whether you're talking X or Discord or whatever it is, is going to be looking at, hey, what does it look like if we give wallets to our customers? Again, behind the scenes, let them hold balances. Let them stake those balances. Let them earn yield. Let me earn yield off of their balance, whatever it might be.

And I think the programmability that's going to come from putting the financial system on chain um even finance people don't fully understand it. And then then the the universe of opportunity for us crypto folks as developers etc is is is massive. Um and every mainstream user every mainstream users uh assets are going to be on chain even if they're not. And so it'll be this kind of pull that that basically uh uh gets them over to this new world. And then people like us, okay, what else do we give them to do?

Because once you have that install base of tens of millions of wallets, hundreds of millions of of potential users, then you can start building much more interesting consumer games and applications on top of it as well. So I think that, you know, games and entertainment, people ask me sometimes, hey, why, you know, why why weren't games the first thing to kind of cross the chasm? I would say, you know, the stable coin adoption that's happening today would not have happened if it wasn't for, you know, Topshot doing two billion dollars of transactions, onboarding a million users, showing that the technology can be used by real people, um, and that it is corruption ready. Now, now we're going to go to trillions of dollars of transactions of volume and hundreds of millions of users. And that's great because then we can come with the next act beyond that and and and build on top of it.

So I think uh mainstream adoption happening right now and it's the best time to be in technology in general but I think also in crypto.

Yeah just to add on I think mainstream adoption is inevitable maybe it's happening right now and we see it with payments we see it with stable coins um different countries there's strong product market fit with stable coins it's inevitable and really excited for that future. Yeah we'll wrap up the session today. Thank you so much to all my panelists. Um, I hope you had a good time listening to their insights.