Bridging Web2 and Web3 - Movement's Vision for Mainstream - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2024

my name is Davi Wan I'm founding partner um founder for like primitive Ventures and we are a um multi strategy investment firm with no outside capital and then trying to build better future for both the IQ 50 and iq150 and I've been Shing to a lot of people that like rushi is my favorite founder like probably the favorite founder for like this cycle I have so like have been in the space for 10 years now like this is my like fourth cycle um yeah so I'm definitely a boomer I know I know I know right yeah so um so it's a funny story is like when I invested in lushi and then so he even couldn't go to Bar yeah like so he just couldn't go to Bar legally in the United States in Singapore I could like Singapore yeah yeah yeah um yeah so I know like rush you have been through a lot of like you came from a very humble like background right because unlike many other okay from like jump from you know like all this very like top like pedigree and you don't have that pedigree uh when we first met and still don't yeah so you still don't right and so you're really Gras through um can you just tell us like the story of that and so how you just like drop out and hustle all the way and just like keep grinding yeah so start my career in engineering um I was always interested in distributed systems and cyber security I was the youngest engineer at United Health Group helped them convert on- Prim databases of cloud um but specifically I was related to crypto because uh my family friend was into Cosmos um Sunny from osmosis and I was really interested in the whole Cosmos thesis back then um I don't know how that plays out today but Cosmos was cool back then um was early engine of space and started building in moo I would say 2022 um the general thesis behind this initiative was I was used to like five users on Cosmos and 10 users on ethereum and here was the opportunity for Facebook to bring a billion users literally a billion users uh to crypto via the DM project um so I was like in college had about $1,000 maybe less in my bank account um and started writing move um my co-founder was a few years older than me and he was also building a move um he got into crypto uh to make en me as his father was in the Vietnam War and um had to use crypto to make bills pay and stuff like that so um then we started working together November 2022 we dropped out of college um and there's been a ride since understand cool yeah and then so you guys have started in like the Avalanche ecosystem b day as well right so like that's when like that's when we first noticed about you guys and and then so we have seen so many like layer tws out there and then so like avalanch and now even also branded as like Layer Two and um yeah so Layer Two just like come and go come and go and um why you want to build another light layer too so I think in the evolution of ethereum scaling you had optimistic rups which started off as like arbital optimism they had ZK rollups uh ZK sync scroll Etc um and now there's opportunity for this category of nextg rollups uh the general thesis behind ethereum scaling was um having these l2s to scale L1 execution what we quickly found out is that salana Apu and future ones they have much faster execution than any ethereum layer 2 evm layer 2 could offer um and then this cycle we saw the rise of sal mcoin sal trading mostly all retail Traders i' say have migrated to Sal and adjacent E Systems to trade um so ethereum is fundamentally i' would say falling back in terms of this user experience where you don't have low L you don't have low latency you have really expensive fees um and if you look at like evm layer 2s most tap out like 100 TPS so if we're ever optimizing where we have millions of USS on chain evm layer 2os today can't scale so this idea of next gen l2s where we can bring salana speed to ethereum got excited um I was early builder in apos and I was really excited by the movie system um very very fast transactions but most importantly real-time security where every time you execute smart contract checking for resource type memory safety for us the biggest issue is the $4 and half billion dollars loss every year in smart contract hacks so think of like SLX speed and your favorite auditor combined that's the move thesis and we wanted to bring it through ethereum so make ethereum compatible um and scale ethereum in a better way yeah just talking about like Aptos and soy and like those are just like golden like golden spooners right and uh so I've been joking with all my portfolio Founders that like you either have to be um like golden Spooner or like you need to have your own sugar daddy and then so it seems like movement right now it's a very Community Driven and like there's no sugar daddy behind movement yet right W momy and um so like we have seen like Aptos andu like raised like over like hundreds of millions and then so somehow they so somehow they just like didn't like didn't get adoption that we expected right um we have been talking about this like there's a lot of like homeless developers it's a homeless like move developers and then so we can potentially house them and but like what they happened at the first place because they have all the resources I think their background was like web to and for where they are today I think they're focused on Black Rock and institutions and they doing a phenomenal job with that um I think where we come from was like the builders web 3D and Landscape um and it was hard for the early movie system to capture that for context move launch apus launch in November 2022 which is the week after FTX collapsed um and S launched deps of the bare market so the movie system was born in the worst possible scenario maybe one of the worst possible scenarios in crypto history um so that combined with just like Web Two Silicon Valley Su and Thai mentality LED for some just like not discontempt amongst developers but if you look empirically move monthly moved monthly active Developers for move developers is 75% up double from last year we expect it to go to 14.9% next year um so even if the move devs our nent point doesn't exist it's still faster than that I believe spm's growth for the first two years um so alt VMS are difficult by trade it's a different language um so the coar problem is very difficult um I think the work we're doing is a web 3 way we're young we're ether on ethereum we're even compatible um and we know how to attract the DJ and Native Builders because we were Builders so I think that gives us the edge to bring more talent to the moving system yeah so like what realized is that move developer like when it comes to a growth rate is actually the highest right yeah and then also like the other interesting thing is and then just like like kids nowaday and then so like kids like probably like like gen Z and now gen Alpha right like like gen Z like they don't so they don't use Facebook because that they're parents on Facebook and then now like when it comes to gen Alpha and then so they have their uh fster and they like ringer like like fster is their like fake Instagram and like rster is their real Instagram and then so their like real Instagram is only exposed to their like actual friends and then so what I realized is that for the younger generation developer for like gen Z and for you know like 22 like 23 and they don't they don't see Ras as cool or they don't see city as cool and they always want to do some new like like just said looking for the new cool L programming language right and like programming language is basically the base of the new cult and uh and when it comes Aptos and so and I think they so they somehow just failed just that building the cult of developer around it yep I think what's funny is that I think there's more developers at Facebook that are in crypto total y um so like I obviously not all Facebook developers are crypto I would argue that's very few but the thesis is like there's very very few developers in crypto the best analogy if you look in web 2 is you had PHP which was like original way to build websites and there wasn't that many PHP developers I wrote PHP it was a show um then JavaScript k Market which is the best framework and language to write websites and they had react and view So to that analogy L is like the PHP of crypto today you have rust based programming which is brought salana of VM Market have move VM Market you have alternative VMS that all adapting rust and you have different Frameworks so anchor is the salon VM framework um and then you have move as the move VM framework that's like react and view in JavaScript so yes in the past curve a a Unis Swap all these Blue Chip D5 protocols found pmf and the evm but the future of actually having onchain games or onchain social apps or things that my parents will use uh and Do's kids will use you guys will use um will be in Rust based programming we saw that in AI Microsoft announced they're migrating to AI Bas code basis for rust um and you'll see that in crypto as well yeah like there's always this a lagging U lagging adoption period like would count like a new framework and like a new programming language and can you just tell us a little bit more about what move is that specifically good for yeah so there's two main things right you have uh speed which is the ability doing block STM which is a high throughput optimistic paralyzation engine um that's derived from the work from APTA sui Salon Etc um they will do high high through transactions we're bringing it that to ethereum if you look at most evm layer toos today they're slow they're clunky I don't know if anyone's used arbit Bas recently phenomenal technology start off with from scaling ethereum but simply cannot compete with salana in terms of usability and ux that's the majority of trading volume user experience a the pumped up fund trade meme coins that um retail is using are on salana because the ux is so much better so the first part of the battle is bringing that ux salana has to ethereum liquidity and the second part which is not as sexy and that's why we say make blockchain security sexy again um is the fact that we're trying to stop the hacks that we see today every year like a touched on this $4 and a half billion dollars lost if we ever want to see my parents use crypto or my institutions use crypto like actually on chain defi they have to trust the systems they're using as secure so with the con for verification you have a move Pro or runtime so you check the code for type safety memory safety there's around now withu launching um toen up it's like 1.7 billion in t move and zero hacks to date knock on wood um so while there's four over four billion loss every year in evm the move ecosystem is still bulletproof I'm sure it's not perfect there's going to be workarounds but General thesis is speed and security and we're bringing to ethereum yeah and especially if you if we want to funel like the trii liquidity over to Def because I uh I see the line becoming more and more blurred right and then we have seen the open interest on like CME flid binance already uh and we have seen like ETF like ETF will be the biggest like clal like going forward like for our like crypto lending space um so like those are the things all require like Ultra secure and compliant kind of like so can pass their internal so can pass their internal compliance check y um yeah and you look at after us like they're partner with how Hilton Lane Black Rock um Arthur H is talking about all the institutions they're bringing to abos so I think the tradition of the move chain and institutions is actually bring this new way of users that never would have touched crypto in the past um so I'm pretty bullish on the moving system across the board for this cool um yeah so like rushi like do you have any so when I look at Founders right because I so one interesting background story like because we have our internal decision- making process and then so um all my team are really against to investing movement back in the day and then I actually use my Silver Bullet so because I cannot veto everyone but I can have I can use my Silver Bullet so I actually use my Silver Bullet online movement like even though like the fund has no outside money but we still follow the process and um so my biggest take away from that is it's always about the founder and also the Founder's like growth potential and then whether like the founder can up higher because I have seen so many Founders that they cannot grow with the vision like brushi you recently hired someone much more much much more senior than you are right so can all so can almost be your dad I guess I think the entire average AG on team was like 45 our head of research was a head of research mantle and head of formal ucation consensus and he literally twice my age which is pretty fun um but I think like as a Founder the number one thing to recognize is weaknesses so I recognize I'm not going to have PhD I'm not going to be smartest guy in the room in fact I'm probably the dumbest guy in the room right now um but I know how to find talent and bring the talent to me yeah so like how to up hire like effectively I think it's like we start the first few hires we made were within the community and also like we were early movie system so I knew the devs that really good that wanted to try infrastructure project I think for like the senior level hirers it's explaining the vision that we have this vision for a future where ethereum can scale fastly and secure um and finding talent that were in disgruntled positions so I was like okay this chain isn't doing so well right now who's the who's the top person for this um so there were some Leen L ones l2s that were leading l1s and l2s in hype and then s in the bare Market kind of fell off um and these are people that had obviously token positions and they weren't near phenomenal um so it's if you're hiring I would recommend going after that maybe poaching is the better term here but um I would say I'm pretty good at that cool and then what are the other interesting application like currently like bu on move uh like just like bu on like movement and yeah so because I know like the developer base is a highly spread out like geographically and there's even developer in like like hjo Shanghai Korea and then so like Vietnam right and then so like do you see this very Global developer like building inter things like on top of that movement yeah so I'll start with def5 but like it's like a common principle Meridian which is kind of our core liquid sticking protocols offering secure rwa so if you're institution um we want to be the hub for secure Define ethereum um they're announcing their big seed raise next next week so I'm super excited about that hopefully didn't spoil but it's really interesting is like you ass C defi system what's beyond that um for deepend we're working with two maor major protocols up network is a mobile phone that has sold over $5 million in phones yeah like that one is interesting like the GU from Samsung right yeah kinds of Samsung and the head of beatron um bringing a movement phone to Market second one is sentiment which is jewelry brand that's doing onch memories so every time you gift um something to your mom you can tap your phone and you can remember exactly when you gifted it um on the gaming side we have like a fully onchain um RPG game which is called infinitees um like battleship so it's super cool to see that um and I think like what's really interesting we're putting a lot of effort towards is like this overlap of like alternative assets to the m system so next week we're announcing cardano uh coming to movement via what cardo actually Giga bullish cardano it's an asset class it's a number six token I know I know and no one is touching it age age so next week we should have a big announcement of a team bringing cordano which is hundreds of millions of dollars on TV out to movementum and then Bitcoin system um gigal along cool okay we perfectly on time and thank you rushi and uh we are in for the long journey yeah I will see you probably in a decade and you will be working on your third company then no mve for life thank you guys really appreciate it