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- [00:00]
K. Warrick
If this cash tag thing works and Twitter now allows you to buy crypto on Twitter, that's all priced in. I don't care what you say. That is not priced in. Like you want an alt season. That's where your alt season's coming from. If every single person on Twitter can all of a sudden just yolo ape into any token.
- [00:18]
Taylor Monahan
Wait, you're buying alt season King. Like this seems like a lower brow meme Coin season.
- [00:25]
Luca Net
I gotta hustle a Twitter listing.
- [00:26]
K. Warrick
That's.
- [00:27]
Luca Net
That's my new focus.
- [00:29]
K. Warrick
Literally. You got me listed on Twitter. That's the new meta. Hey everyone, I'm K. Warrick and welcome to Uneasy Money. Because what happens on Chain never stays on Chain. I'm here with my co host Taylor Monahan, Security at Metamask and Luca Net, CEO of Pudgy Penguins. One quick thing before we start. Nothing you hear on Uneasy Money is financial advice. We're just three builders talking about what's happening on Chain. And we want you to always do your own research before aping in. You can find all our disclosures@unchained crypto.com.
- [01:01]
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- [01:07]
K. Warrick
It can teach you how to fry.
- [01:09]
Luca Net
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- [01:31]
K. Warrick
Well as you do.
- [01:32]
Luca Net
Visit slack.com meetslackbot to learn more.
- [01:36]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Technology growth firm that has helped create 50+ billion dollars in enterprise value for 80+ clients over the past four years. They're the partner to help navigate markets, build real traction today@multichainadv.com all right, welcome back, Luca.
- [01:54]
K. Warrick
Happy New Year. Happy to be back. All right, so this, this idea that like the bad times of December was all people in America rotating out for tax loss harvesting or whatever seems to be actually maybe true. It feels, it feels like, like they were just selling for tax losses. Like it was like literally like midnight on the 31st in like Pacific time and then the selling just like stopped. It was like, just like massive. Every single pump, like every like you look at the one hour candles, it's like goes up, nuke, nuke, nuke, nuke. And then that bot got switched off at midnight in pst. So what's been interesting is like watch. Okay, so bitcoin's Gone from whatever like 85k to, to 97 or something. We're about to go over 100k again. But let's talk about Monero because we are getting some alt action at the moment. We had zcash before, before the end of the year, last year, late last year and now Monero just crossed 680, which is I guess the all time high.
- [03:16]
Taylor Monahan
No, no, Monero is at 780 now.
- [03:19]
Luca Net
Yeah.
- [03:20]
K. Warrick
Oh wow. Okay. All right. Should have, should have aped. Should have aped. So Peter Brandt compared Monero's long term chart structure to Silver's decades long consolidation before its historic breakout, suggesting that XMR may be entering a similar phase. I love the Hopium there. That's amazing. Like yeah, that's, that's Monero is basically Silver, but okay, I mean it seems to be working. So I think one of the more interesting things for me about this is that Monero and zcash in particular, both of them have had a ton of issues with like exchange delistings, like particularly Monero. Right. Like getting delisted, regulatory scrutiny, all of these, these issues as well as I think some internal. They're old tokens. Right. So their governance is a shit show as always. Right. Every DINO token accumulates like crazy governance nonsense. But it seems like the privacy meta is back. It seems like we're really in this mode where people are looking for on chain privacy. We're trying to solve these things. There's a bunch of things on Ethereum as well. It feels good. Like this feels like a fundamental thing that we can rally around that you know, we have the technology to do private on chain transactions. Yeah.
- [04:51]
Taylor Monahan
I still don't understand this chart though. Like this is a wild chart but.
- [04:56]
K. Warrick
Zcash was the same. It was like 30, 30, 30, 3800.
- [05:01]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah, but that was like I guess a bit more clear. There was a lot of pumping people, a lot of pumpy people.
- [05:09]
Luca Net
I'll tell you this, in a world where you think AI is going to be even a fraction of what we think it's going to be, I think these privacy dyno coins, either Monero or zcash are going to be really good bets. I think logically you starting to see the sharks that are starting to swim around these two coins specifically they have the standing of test of time, which I think is important when you're looking at like assets that you know, you, you, you know, you want to make a case to be worth you know, a trillion or $100 billion. So I think I Don't think like a new player could come in. Obviously, I know a lot of new players are, are building privacy and there's some change. You know, ZK Sync has obviously been doing that for, for a while. But I, I, I think from an incumbent, you know, hedge to the AI, you know, world being taken over and this idea that like bajillions of AI agents are going to be running around the Internet and everything is going to become exponentially more transparent. Digital privacy tokenized via a fixed supply is actually going to be extremely valuable. So I would take the bet that like over the course of 10 years, if there was going to be, you know, I would be surprised if those two weren't in the top 10 performers over the next 10 years in crypto. I'm personally making a really big bet there. It clicks logically. It's obvious there's a ton of one liners around it that I think sticks with people. And you've got all the right players starting to buy and accumulate this stuff. It's the whole, you know, naval chamath and those, those guys go to swing big. And I think this is, anybody who understands AI understands that like something like this is going to be very valuable. I wouldn't, you know, not financial advice, but this is a bet that I'm personally making.
- [06:55]
K. Warrick
So just like we've talked about this a little bit like regulatory headwinds across all of crypto. The tokens that were hit the hardest by this are obviously the privacy tokens. Right? And privacy is in its own category of regulatory overreach, whatever you want to call it, right. It's always, even when during the ICO boom there was still scrutiny around zcash and Monero and them being used for dark web markets. And it's just another level, you think DEFI gets scrutiny. Then the privacy coins, obviously Tornado Cash, then on Ethereum, similar issues. So it's a bit hard for me to imagine even in a world where securities regulation shifts and you know, we start to get some of the, the kind of rulemaking process that we expect that privacy doesn't have like still a bit of a fight ahead of it. You know, like I think it's, it's not, it's not like a clear thing to me that like we are in a world where privacy is just fine now all of a sudden just because we've got you know, a little bit, a little bit more clarity around like other regulatory stuff like this is its own category.
- [08:20]
Luca Net
But that's where that energy that I think that like Bitcoin and pretty much everything else is kind of lost, right? Like that cyberpunk energy. So when like Peter Thiel says, like, I'm selling bitcoin because, like, it's lost, that cipher funk energy, like, what would he buy, right, that like, would bring that back? You know, they want to fight the good fight. And then like when you're, when you're looking at situations such as the United Kingdom where you're posting on social media and you say the wrong thing and they're going to throw you in prison and obviously the fight in the States, at least you're in Australia, came in. I know it's a little, A little bad over there in the States.
- [08:54]
K. Warrick
A little bad.
- [08:54]
Luca Net
It's getting, you know, worse than ever been. Obviously, I think we're addressing it, but, you know, in a world where censorship and all of these things are actually more prevalent, at least in my short lifetime, I don't remember a moment in my lifetime where censorship was actually playing such a big role. Maybe, you know, a couple years ago during the Biden administration was probably Picotop, but it's still a bad thing. And I think this is a very contrarian, rebellious category that I think is going to accrue a ton of value to all of those doomers and preppers and, you know, cipher funk, you know, going, going against the grain type of guys. And I think there's huge value that could accrue there for through. You know, I'm actually would be curious from a technical perspective. Kane, Tay, you two definitely know better than me. You know, what's the difference between like a Monero Z Cash, you know, which one do you guys like more, at least from a technical basis? Obviously it seems like Monero might be a little more pure in its privacy approach, but do you have any insight there, actually? So.
- [09:57]
Taylor Monahan
The main thing that's preventing you from having like, good privacy with Monero and zcash is sort of the same reason that a lot of threat actors don't use it, which is that a lot of privacy comes from liquidity. So if you're the only one walking into a room and then you walk out of the room, whatever happened in that room, I didn't need to see you do it because you're the only one in there. So, like, if you go in there and you like, graffiti the wall or something, and if you're the only one that walks in, the only one that walks out, that's still like more than sufficient evidence to say that, that you were behind the graffiti or Whatever. And so, you know, with, let's say, like, retail users or like average people who are just trying to like, create that separation. Totally fine. Both are totally fine. The. The technicals of xmr, like, the way that they. The way that it operates is just completely separate, like, completely technically different. They have these things called ring signatures. So basically, like, you're. You're just like creating a. Okay, I'm gonna like, get blown up for describing it like this. Basically you're just creating like a whole bunch of fake transactions and you're hiding in. In the mess. Like, that's where. Where zcash is. Is actually. Like, technically it's. Yeah, it's all ZK Obfuscation.
- [11:22]
K. Warrick
Obfuscation versus, like, moon math, right? Like, yeah, yeah.
- [11:28]
Taylor Monahan
And. And part of the reason for this is that when like, XMR first became a thing, like, the tech just wasn't there yet. Like the math.
- [11:37]
K. Warrick
The moon math.
- [11:38]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah, yeah. The math is. Is hard. It's computationally intensive, and then you have to put on a blockchain. I will also remind people that, like, most of the ways that your privacy is on. Privacy is these days, like, still less about the on chain. I know everyone likes the big long, like, Zach XPT threads where it's all the on chain. It's super fun to do that, but the reality is, like.
- [12:05]
K. Warrick
It'S IPS and you know, triangulating, like, all of that stuff.
- [12:10]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah, yeah, because you're still on your device. You're still on the same device. That device is still talking to like 8,000 advertising advertisers. You still have a huge amount of technology that's tracking everything you do, including the sites that you visit. And then also people are just really careless with their opsec in general. For example, if you're saving stuff in your Google Drive, you see your addresses, your screenshots. Turns out that's super not private, guys.
- [12:42]
K. Warrick
Yeah, it doesn't matter how private your on chain stuff is. So you mentioned liquidity, right? And this is something that, like, I think about a lot, you know, building. Building Infinix because we are going to support zcash. I actually cooked up my own passkey, zcash wallet, right. And tested it out. I had a long thread where I thought I lost like a couple hundred grand.
- [13:04]
Taylor Monahan
Oh my God, that thread cane I had it like, gave me actual real anxiety reading it.
- [13:11]
K. Warrick
So, like, usually like, when you're vibe coding, right, like, you're just doing stuff and like, it's like, there's no real risk here. And like, I even have a quarterized machine that's like, not on my. Like, it's like a separate machine, so it can't do anything, can't do any damage. And then I'll be like, let me transfer 500 grand over there and see what happens. And. And like, it was actually fine. The funniest part was it was totally fine. The code was fine. It. It was just like a bug that it couldn't find the note. Right. But I was sitting there for like four hours. I was like, pretty sure I've nuked a couple hundred grand. But when I burned the die that time, because I mentioned that in the thread as well, it was like two in the morning. I'd been up for like 18 hours, and I had like five different tabs open on two different screens, and I was like, copy and pasting stuff. And I literally, for some reason I forgot that there was a burn function on dai on optimism. It's not part of the abi. On the. It's a different function call in the mainnet contract versus Optimism. Like, they rewrote it for some reason and there's two burn calls, and they were both like the seventh function. And. And I just like copied the wrong one in the wrong browser. And I. And I. I went to bed that night at like 2am and my wife woke up and she's like, what? Like, everything okay? Like, you're like, up pretty late. And I was like, I think I might have burned $10 million. And she was like, huh. Okay, Good night. Just went back to bed. Cause she was like, you don't seem that worried about it. I'm sure you'll figure it out.
- [14:52]
Taylor Monahan
But yeah, she's like, I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna dive into this one.
- [14:56]
K. Warrick
Yeah. She's like, I'm just. I'm not touching this.
- [15:00]
Luca Net
So let's.
- [15:02]
K. Warrick
Let's move on to. I mean, one of the things with the market coming back is meme coins have come back and therefore rug pulls have come back because they are intrinsically tied together. So this one was like, pretty crazy to me. Eric Adams made an NYC token. This is like the 15th NYC token. By the way, if someone makes an NYC token, like, don't buy it. Like, that's absolutely financial advice. Like, do not buy a token for New York City. It's always going to be a scam. There's so many grifters in New York City. Like, just don't do it. So. So Eric Adams made an NYC token, and it started pumping. Then they removed the Entire liquidity pool, which was like 3.5 mil. And then they made a statement being like, oh, we're just rebalancing, I guess. Yeah. And then they did the, like, classic post rug pull. We're putting the money back in the chart now that it's crashed 99.99%. It's just wild Hayden Hayden act. It was. It was so bad that Hayden from Uni Swap came out and was like, this is just awful and incredibly stupid any way you cut it. Part of what's so sad is celebrities and politicians can easily monetize their fame without scamming. Like, I don't know, this maybe was more efficient.
- [16:35]
Luca Net
Safe Moon got 10. The Safe Moon guys got 10 years for this. So, I don't know. Crazy, you know, but they. But the way that these are structured, right, Just so you know, is like, it's a licensing deal, right? So like an Eric Adams, you know, doesn't really get in trouble, right, because he's just licensing his IP and, you know, paying for a promotion, obviously, like, undisclosed. Like, the worst he could get is like an ftc, you know, undisclose undisclosed advertisement. Right. But it's pretty nefarious if you ask me.
- [17:09]
K. Warrick
There's a. There's a, like, an OG scam. There's a really good book, actually, which. Which has, like, all of the old scams and grifts that used to happen in, like, the U.S. like, literally, like, every single. It's like, it's a super long book. It's like 500 pages. I'll. I'll find the. The name of it, and we can shill it next time. But it's super interesting. Like, just every type of, like, confidence scam and grift or whatever. One of the scams is people used to go around trying to sell the Brooklyn Bridge. They're like, oh, it's being torn down crap or whatever. Like, this is the crypto equivalent of that. Like, I'm selling the New York City IP like, it's New York City coin, bro. Just buy it. It's amazing. So, yeah, I just don't.
- [17:55]
Taylor Monahan
I don't understand how it just frustrates me again. I think I've said this before on the show. It frustrates me that, like, the. These, like, really blatant scammers who are just truly, like, there's nothing of value here can do this. And, like, everything's fine. And meanwhile, that's taking a huge amount of attention and money away from, like, so many other more valuable things. And there's no recourse for anyone. Like, there's no, like. Like, we can all hope that like someone might get this bro in trouble, but the reality is, like, we all know at this point that, yeah, he's not.
- [18:31]
K. Warrick
But the market, the problem is the incentives are set up in such a way that the market doesn't learn because that you can make money on this. Like, you can make money on this. In fact, these kinds of like, scammy grift things that are like very transparently going to end. It's just a PvP game. Someone snipes it, someone bundles it. Someone, you know, like there's. There's people basically fighting it out on the charts, but then it obviously spills over because it's like the ex mayor of New York City, which is wild. But like, you know, you could imagine, like this could just be like an underground knife fight and people are just betting on people like trying to kill each other, right? Like, it's the same this. Like, it's literally just a PvP thing and people are betting on it, like, that's it.
- [19:19]
Taylor Monahan
And they're all. And everyone just thinks that they're going to get out.
- [19:22]
Luca Net
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it.
- [19:25]
K. Warrick
Like, it's just like, I'm going to buy it, I'm going to sell it, and some people win, some people lose. I mean, part of the problem is like, if you are going to go and play a game like that, right? And you know, by the time we got to the end of the last meme coin cycle, it was pretty clear that it was pure PvP. Like there weren't even like everyone else got washed out, right? It was literally like the bots and snipers fighting each other. And that's why nothing could pump because it was just a bunch of bots and snipers and bundlers and who could be fastest and then it would unwind in like 20 minutes sense, right? But then people are like, it's the Arrested Development meme.
- [20:06]
Luca Net
Hey, look, there was. There was three weeks there in that meme coin run. That was awesome though. It was PvE, it was not the fridge. I know, I know. Some Australians had the fridge.
- [20:19]
K. Warrick
One of our ex employees made the fridge. That was crazy. Yeah, that was crazy.
- [20:23]
Luca Net
Million dollar fridge.
- [20:25]
K. Warrick
Yeah.
- [20:28]
Taylor Monahan
Oh, lord.
- [20:30]
K. Warrick
It's just.
- [20:30]
Taylor Monahan
I don't know. It's also a bad look when it really spills into, like in real life like this. There's just so many people who are just like waiting for crypto to do things like this so they can point at it like if we keep it to our internal memes, I have far less of an issue with it. If you guys want to go be idiots in the corner, that's fine, but I'm saying stop involving politicians in our nonsense.
- [20:54]
K. Warrick
If you want to have an underground knife fight and bet on it, cool. Don't, like, bring the mayor of New York to fight. Like, why?
- [21:01]
Luca Net
Like, like, what are we doing?
- [21:04]
K. Warrick
That's the right take.
- [21:06]
Luca Net
Yeah.
- [21:07]
K. Warrick
All right, before we. Before we go any further. Sorry. Here's a word from our sponsors. Let's. Let's do it.
- [21:17]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
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- [21:59]
K. Warrick
All right, Vitalik's walkway test, which is weird, I've never heard the term walk away test. I feel like that was invented by Vitalik two days ago. But so. So Vitalik published a post outlining what he calls Ethereum's walkway test, arguing that the protocol should remain secure and functional even if the core devs and institutions stop maintaining it. The idea being that Ethereum shouldn't rely on humans, emergency coordination, or benevolent maintainers to keep running. Instead, critical properties like security, censorship, resistance and finality should hold by design that the change should be able to ossify to a point where it just works even if we're all dead. Gabe Shapiro mentioned lawyers call this the Bahamas test, which is a bit on the nose if anything. Like, anytime I read the word Bahamas, I get PTSD from ftx. But anyway, meaning the tech should still work if the team disappears and stops supporting it. If only the FTX guys had fled to the Bahamas and left us all alone. So Vitalik added a stronger version to this, though. Users should remain safe even if the team becomes actively adversarial. And that one, we can get to that. But like, just fundamentally. And I know, Luca, you're going to have a take on this, right? Like, I love Vitalik. I think he pushes us to be better in a lot of ways. But then I look at the world And I say, given how rapidly changing the world is, like, what possible hope could we have of building a thing that is still relevant even in like a year or two years that can all suffy. Like, the world is changing so quickly, we have so little information about what the future will look like. We're, you know, maybe about to go through a singularity. Like, it just feels a little aspirational to be like we should. And Vitalik's not saying like, tomorrow, right? But like, I just don't know that the world starts to get any easier to reason about in two years. Like, it's only getting worse. So, I mean, Luca, I'm sure you've, you've got thoughts here on this.
- [24:25]
Luca Net
Yeah, my take is I've been saying this for years, but there's two different type of blockchains, right? There's a blockchain that is a human necessity, one that's important for the future of humankind. Something that can stand the test of time. That, you know, some, some, you know, if everyone dies, it can still be there and usher that basically that layer of communication so that people can transact. Because transacting is a basic human right. It's a freedom. And right now, anything other than blockchains don't, you know, personify that freedom the way that, you know, like blockchains do. And I think Ethereum is the only, maybe one of the only, but it is the, you know, blockchain, immutable blockchain that basically I think empowers that freedom. On the other side of it, though, you know, I think there's blockchains whose businesses are to compete with Visa, MasterCard, Stripe, PayPal, and they are borderless, you know, payment rails that anybody can build on top of. And those businesses are performance. Those businesses need huge workloads, super fast transaction speeds, and are built to perform. Now, the conundrum, and we saw this until Tom Lee and the fucking, the eth treasuries came and bailed everyone out. Is 1, 1, 1 is super important. As a human, like, I want Vitalik to go, and I'm not like the biggest eth holder in the world. So as a human and not the biggest eth holder in the world, I want Vitalik to go and issue, you know, and to build that vision right? On the other side of it, I don't know if value accrues to that vision in a way that the others do because the others are built to perform like a business in a way that is predicated on driving value to stakeholders above all Else that's what you.
- [26:14]
K. Warrick
Do when you build a business.
- [26:16]
Luca Net
And so the issue is, remember, you know. You know, again, until Tom Lee and crew started bailing Eth out, Eth was thinking up the joint and they were getting a lot of. And you could tell the bothered him, right? You could tell it bothered Eth, it could bother the foundation. It bothered a lot of people that I think. I think didn't believe they would get bothered by it or they had seen so much.
- [26:38]
K. Warrick
There's only so much hatred you can absorb realistically, before you're like, this is like we built. Look at this amazing thing we built. You fucking monsters, right? Why do you keep shitting on it? Like, just because the price has been sideways for like two years. But, like, I get it. I was one of the ones who was like, the price is sideways because we're not like, actually selling the thing, right? Like, we're not actually going out to the world and selling it. And if we don't sell it to the world, then the world won't value it.
- [27:12]
Luca Net
That's how.
- [27:13]
K. Warrick
That's how the world works, right? Like, we can't just sit here and.
- [27:17]
Luca Net
But you can't sell it if your competitor is faster. More users, more volume, more things like that, right? And they conflict because, you know, having the fastest blockchain is not having the most immutable blockchain. Like, do they contradict each other? You two would know better than me. But, like, they probably do, right? Like, you know, well, this.
- [27:37]
K. Warrick
I mean, the thing that's super interesting to me about all of this is like, we are getting close to a world and, you know, in 2018, when we're sitting there and it was like, the merge is coming, and then it didn't come for a very long time. The Ethereum technical roadmap felt for a very long time like it was going to be decades long. And somehow in the last two to three years, it really feels like it's compressed and we've got some stuff coming that it could actually be the most immutable and the fastest with the largest blocks and the end. And so Ethereum has been cooking, the core devs have been cooking. Like, it's crazy. I can't even catch up with. I was having a discussion with our head of engineering and we couldn't remember whether the, like, passkeys, SEPKA256EIP had been deployed or not. It was deployed like six months ago. Like, we're actually behind it used to be that, like, you'd be like, all right, two more years and we'll get EIP1559.
- [28:44]
Taylor Monahan
Yes. Two more years. Literally everything.
- [28:47]
K. Warrick
Everything was like, every couple more years it'll come. And now it's like, things have been deployed and no one even realizes it.
- [28:54]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah. Yeah. I think that, like, I don't know. I think that when Vitalik is. Is going to, like, full Vitalik mode like this, I think it's easy for people to, like, get into the weeds on what he's saying and imagine that, like, everyone is operating like this. Or, like, imagine an imaginary world where, like, everyone is operating perfectly as Vitalik dictates or. Or whatever. The reality is, like, he's gonna say things, people are gonna take that, but then they're also going to keep operating by, like, the incentives and the business and everything else. And I think that's fine. And I think that, like, if you read Vitalik's writings as, like, a pretty sizable, influential piece, but, like, it's not gonna. It's not really actually going to, like, completely change people's incentives. Then it's like, in my opinion, it's a better, like, when you imagine the whole organism, it's just a better way of operating than when the foundation is pushing for the same things that, like, you know, everyone else is already pushing on. And I think a lot of people are like. But then, like, you don't have alignment and all these things. But I actually think that that's good. Like, I think that. That you're gonna get better outcomes when you have tensions and you're gonna have to navigate these things and you're gonna have to fight. There's. I don't think anytime you have, like, a solid, like, one plan and then execute that one plan, I think there's like, a lot of danger there because, like, if it's the wrong plan, then, like, you're screwed. So I don't know. I'm excited. Like, I don't. There's so many things that Vitalik says when, like, I don't know, but the fact that he says them and the fact that he focuses on things that so often no one else is focusing on, I think that that is super, super valuable because it's just like, these little nuggets do stick with people and in ways that, you know, ultimately will. Will result in them being better, even though they're still focused on, like, you know, building actual businesses or, you know, focusing on what user, like any retail users want or whatever, if they have, like, a little bit of italic in the back of their Head. I think that's a good thing.
- [31:07]
K. Warrick
Yeah, I think that's fair. I mean one, one interesting thing for Ethereum, right? It's like, it's not something, you know, if you slice up from 2015 every two years, right, you've had some periods of time where it is like obviously working, right? Like it fits into the world as the world is at that time, right? And then you've got some two year slices where it's like not really working. And most of the time those things are like, you know, expectations got too high, stuff's harder to build, you know, long term investments in things that have not yet paid off, right? So, you know, like the whole of 2018, 2019, 2020 was like too much demand. Like the reason why I didn't, it was, it was like it hadn't caught up with how much people wanted to use it, right? And then we came out the other side of that and then it was like, oh, now no one wants to use it. And I was like, whoa, whoa, hang on. Like there's still the same amount of demand. It's just that, you know, we've got excess capacity. It feels like you take these like two year snapshots and then you kind of look back sometimes like four years, and you're like, holy shit. Imagine if we hadn't invested the time to do like, you know, the proof of like the bitcoin people were like, ethereum is dead because of proof of stake, right? And yeah, like, you know, and like there was a period of time where even, you know, people like, even when I was like a crazy eth. Maxi, like everything else is a scam, right? I was like, oh, I don't know about this. Like, we've invested so much time. Is it actually going to be effective? Like, well.
- [32:51]
Taylor Monahan
And is it gonna ship?
- [32:53]
K. Warrick
Yeah, like, like can it.
- [32:55]
Taylor Monahan
I was like, for years?
- [32:58]
K. Warrick
Yeah. Like, is this too hard? Like, have we, have we like tried to do something that is too hard to like rebuild a network on the fly? No one had ever tried it before. But one of the things that I think, you know, we can say for Vitalik and the EF as much as like oftentimes it feels like they are doing things with too much of a long term focus, at least for me, right. As someone who's like, we want action today, right? Is that most of the long term bets, even if the timing has been wrong, even if it's taken much longer to get there, they have paid off and we're now in a period of time where it Might be the best blockchain without any of the trade offs. It might just be the fastest, with the most block space, with the most censorship resistant, the most immutable. And then you go, holy shit, like I was an idiot to ever question this roadmap. What was I thinking? Which, you know, here we are.
- [33:59]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah. No, and the thing is I think that like people, the thing about some of the like these types of posts and like the values of Ethereum and the EF and a lot of the builders is that it's not just that they can be like inefficient. They can like really cycle into like some like completely like worthless little, little echo chambers of like, you know, where they're. So we see this a lot with like security things. They're so in the weeds and there's like big gaping, like there's a fire right in front of their face. But it's like, you know, perfect becomes the enemy of like, you know, moderately better. But I think that like, like you, you kind of have to take some of that in order to keep that, that core vision alive. You just have to figure out how to navigate that. Right? Like, how do you, how do you make it so that people are always striving for like the most secure and like the perfection in security, even though that, that drive for perfection is going to potentially impact your ability to like ship anything that, that improves the security or the UX or whatever. And I think Ethereum, especially if we continue to see sort of like the, not the EF themselves, but the people around the EF and the people who are building and shipping, as long as we continue to see them empowered, then I think we're going to be in like a really good place because then you can, you can let the EF focus on these things that are more long term and harder core while everyone else can focus on, you know, the best user experience for users.
- [35:40]
K. Warrick
Yeah.
- [35:40]
Taylor Monahan
You know, all that kind of stuff.
- [35:42]
K. Warrick
It does, it does feel like though. And you know, I think Luca, you kind of hinted at this, that there was a period of time where this disillusionment with like our competitors are out competing us did kind of hollow out the builders a little bit. And you know, the people who are building that were like, that were actually building the businesses or projects or you know, things that were going to take Ethereum to market kind of were like, like, you know, this feels hard, right?
- [36:12]
Taylor Monahan
Like Lucas said this, Lucas said this on the show. He's like, dude, I watched a lot of. And it was like way better yeah.
- [36:18]
K. Warrick
And, and so, you know, there is this like, like, okay, we should give credit to EF when they get things right and we should criticize them when they don't. Right. And I don't think, for what it's worth, that everything we're describing around, like, the technical roadmap, the long term investment, the like, you know, very, like, resistance against expediency and like, shortcuts. Like, I don't think any of that stuff is incompatible with also finding ways to, like, help curate the ecosystem.
- [36:49]
Luca Net
Right.
- [36:50]
K. Warrick
To, like, help, you know, drive. Drive, you know, awareness and, and like. Yeah, I don't know.
- [36:59]
Luca Net
It's a.
- [36:59]
K. Warrick
It's a tough one. It's a tough balance to strike because you had this. You had this period where, like, there was a core builder group in Ethereum. Everyone knew each other, everyone was really bought in. We're there for the mission and all of that stuff. It got so big that the distance between those people got a lot bigger and there was nothing to tie it together. And then competition from outside started to make everyone question the long term roadmap and focus and all of that stuff. Yeah. But here we are. All right, so wait, Luca, did you.
- [37:37]
Taylor Monahan
Did you want us. You want to defend Solana?
- [37:45]
Luca Net
Working on my wi Fi? What do I need to defend Solana on? I can defect. But, but, you know, to your point, King, because I heard most of what you said, like, Ethereum is putting on a clinic now.
- [37:54]
K. Warrick
And.
- [37:54]
Luca Net
And I totally give them their flowers. I wish they had been this way a year and a half ago because things might be different. But, you know, everything that we're doing on the east side, I mean, dude eats. Giving me like three retweets in the last three months.
- [38:07]
K. Warrick
I know they do it.
- [38:08]
Luca Net
I, like, jump for joy.
- [38:09]
K. Warrick
I do the monkey.
- [38:11]
Luca Net
I'm like, this is great.
- [38:15]
Taylor Monahan
Sorry, sorry, sorry. Side story. I have a video. This is years ago. I have a video and my. My co worker Jordan was at my house and we were working and he was like, taking a break and he was like, recording himself with my daughter. And. And then it. Vitalik retweeted me and I literally screeched like a school girl. And I was like, oh, my God. Vitalik just retweeted me. And it's in the video. Like, it's captured from like, you know, but it's like, it hits so much harder when it's him, though.
- [38:46]
Luca Net
Like, EQ side of what makes ecosystems and networks work. Right. Like, everyone, I think here is always excelled on the IQ side of things, but like, there's like two sides of the ying and the yang, and like that emotional, you know, Tay, that made you feel so awesome. I bet I know the feeling, right? Kane, you probably know the feeling as well. Like, that makes the difference. And so they've been doing a really good job there. I don't know if you attacked any of Solana's technicals. I mean, I'll tell you, I still think from a consumer zero to one, if I'm like a new user, I go on fan of my fund. So I still think today it's probably still the best experience. But hey, I mean, dude, Metamask is getting a lot better. The gas fees are getting a lot better. Everything's getting a lot better on the Ethereum side side. So I don't know exactly what jab you took. It came directly at Solana.
- [39:37]
K. Warrick
But no, no, it wasn't. It wasn't a jab. It's more like there was a period of time where the Solana competition really kind of created some disillusionment on the eat side because it's like we're being out competed also, we don't have support, right? We can handle not having support as long as we're winning.
- [39:55]
Luca Net
Yeah, like, that's fine.
- [39:56]
K. Warrick
Right? But if we're not winning and we don't have support, like, what are we doing here?
- [40:00]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
Right?
- [40:00]
Luca Net
But the barbell's evening out, right? Like, it is evening out. I mean, dude, for a year there just everything was in salon. I mean, app revenue, you know, volume, no matter where you skin the cat. You'd have to be a little disillus, disillusioned to, like, think otherwise. But it's. It's starting to play out. It's starting to even out a little bit. And I still think, you know, who's going to win. The blockchain race is yet to be seen.
- [40:24]
K. Warrick
Right?
- [40:25]
Luca Net
I. I still, I still think we don't. We've yet to completely solidify one winner versus the other.
- [40:31]
K. Warrick
Just. And this is the thing, like, we don't know what the world's going to look like in two years. We could have, like, flying robots that are, like, carrying us around to places and, like, there's no cars anymore. Like, it's like the idea that we can, like, finalize our blockchain design and be like, job done. Feels not right to me.
- [40:49]
Luca Net
I'll tell you, the place to win is the AI agents, right? Because in a world where an AI agent and AI doesn't have a Social Security, security, doesn't have an id, it cannot bank. You know, with Wells Fargo, it can.
- [41:01]
K. Warrick
Cook up an ID pretty quick though. Pretty quick.
- [41:06]
Taylor Monahan
There's. There's some new ones too. There's some new models that it'll. It just changes your face.
- [41:10]
Luca Net
I know.
- [41:11]
K. Warrick
It's crazy.
- [41:12]
Taylor Monahan
It's so scary, dude.
- [41:13]
K. Warrick
It's not. It's really nuts. So speaking of. Speaking of bots and. And AI, so this is an interesting arc, right? Like the X arc, the. The post Elon X arc. We had a period of time where, let's not forget, you could link your NFT PFP to your X account, right? Like that was a thing that shipped right before Elon. And then Elon was like, nuke it. Nuke these NFT PFPs. It was my favorite feature ever on X that like you could just like connect your wallet, like check which pfp. You could switch it easily. It was amazing. Got killed. Then cash tags got killed. Not like stopped, but like basically nuked. If you use them, your post would get memory hold, right? Then there was like this, this algo shift, right, over the last few months where almost every single person who's like 50, 100, 250,000 followers just stopped getting any engagement, right? Any. Anyone in crypto. And almost all crypto content was getting funneled somewhere. Some. I don't know if anyone was seeing it, but like I stopped seeing it and the algo really started optimizing. At least this is the. This is like the appearance of the algo, right? And. And Elon saying they're going to open source the algo, so we'll be able to actually like check this, right? But it started kind of tiktokifying X in the sense of like there were. There was only one topic you could talk about at any given time. And if you didn't talk about that, you'd just get zero engagement, right? Like zero, zero reach. And then at the peak of this, Nikita, the head of product who like is involved with Solana, maybe you know more about this. Luca, I don't. I don't know exactly what the relationship is, right? But Nikita's like, listen guys, like, this is not our fault. This is your fault. You guys are suiciding yourselves by like ruining your own reach by tweeting GM all the time. Now this taps into like the infofi thing, where infofi became like, you know, I would see people, people, bots. Whether people are bots or people with an account, with scripting or whatever automation they were running that had 150,000 posts on an account that was a Year old.
- [43:50]
Taylor Monahan
They just reply, guy. Like, yeah, but.
- [43:53]
K. Warrick
But it was like. It was like, well, hang on a second. Like, what the fuck are you doing? How do you think that that makes any sense? And Nikita's like, if you do that, you only have. You have a finite amount of potential reach that you get. And I think a bunch of people retweeted and kind of attacked him for that. And then they were like, I'm not doing this. You're talking about, like, infofly my guy bots, not me. I tweet twice a day. I saw. I saw like, bold. Leonidas was like, bro. I like, tweet a cartoon once a day and no one sees it anymore. And they used to like, walk me through that. Like, how is the algo? Like, what am I doing wrong? Right? Then they're like, okay.
- [44:36]
Taylor Monahan
No, it would be a great idea since we screwed up the algo so bad. Like, I'm sorry. They go, we're gonna improve how cash tags work, guys. Let's go.
- [44:48]
K. Warrick
But then, like, they showed this, like, whole thing where you can, like, buy crypto in the app. And. And you know, Elon's been saying, this is going to be the everything app. It's going to be all of finance, all of whatever, right? I don't know. Make it make sense. Like, it just feels like absolute insanity right now. Now, I don't get it. I don't get backtracked it.
- [45:09]
Luca Net
He fixed it, right? But I think, like, this is an important part of, like, I can't tell you how many times they've. With that algorithm and our whole business, like, it really with us bad. And so, you know, we've obviously made a focus to distribute our communities through a bunch of different platforms, which I recommend any builder and founder listening to, like, make that a really big focus. Because, like, even this month, I was like, I'm just not gonna tweet. This is awful. Like, I just already know what's going on. It's another big tweak. And yeah, it just goes to show that, you know, you can't be dependent on any single platform. But they fixed it and now it's back, and now it's good. Now's the time to ship that announcement. That probably also affected your Infinix stuff, Kane.
- [45:50]
K. Warrick
The whole, like, trust me, you know, like, it was actually funny, right? Because the. The organic reach was almost zero, right? The inorganic reach. Because bots don't care. Bots will brigade everything you do. They will find you, right? Like, they don't need. Like, these are like, Hunter seeker bots that are, like, coming to fud you. Right. And. Yeah, so. So I think, like, it feels a little bit better last couple of days. My barometer for this is Gainsay. Gainsay will always tell me how the algo's doing. He seems to have a sixth sense on. On the algorithm, and. Yeah, he was saying it seems a little bit better. So. So I don't know.
- [46:32]
Taylor Monahan
I just know that, like, for a lot. It used to be my timeline was like, crypto things. Like, 100 crypto things. Every once in a while, something that was, like, super big outside the crypto sphere would get onto my feet. But, like, it had to be big.
- [46:50]
K. Warrick
But even then, even when it did, like, the response was always like, shut the up about Libya or whatever you're talking about. We're talking about crypto here. Like, get back in your lane.
- [46:59]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah. Yes.
- [47:00]
K. Warrick
Everyone would, like, shame people, but it's interesting to see the incentives, right. Because crypto stopped actually working. You've got people that are like, well, I'm gonna optimize AI and. And silver and, like, whatever. Right.
- [47:17]
Taylor Monahan
Like, it's super weird. Have you seen, like, Adam Cochran's entire, entire feed? He's like, actually, I'm not in. He's. He decided a while ago. He's like, I'm not in crypto anymore.
- [47:26]
K. Warrick
Yeah, good. That's a win.
- [47:27]
Taylor Monahan
He's just like a political commentator now.
- [47:30]
Luca Net
I served one Pudgy Penguin post in the last month, and it was a guy basically saying, if you don't pick a side, you're a fascist. Speak on Renee Good or.
- [47:42]
Taylor Monahan
Pudgy Penguin.
- [47:43]
Luca Net
I saw this last month, and it was about. I got hit with the. I got put in political Twitter, wherever that was. I.
- [47:51]
Taylor Monahan
It's so easy. I'm constantly tweaking my, like, my personal little thing. Because the thing is, like, there's two ways to really, like, if you don't want to see something or you want to see more of something, the easiest way is to use the share button. Even if you don't actually, like, share it. If you say share it, like, it. The weight on that is so heavy or whatever. And so, like, every once in a while, I get sucked into, like, political Twitter and be like. Like, it's like, a feed of, like, ice stuff, and I'm like, I don't want to see this.
- [48:19]
K. Warrick
Yeah, it's crazy. But you couldn't escape it. You couldn't escape it for a while.
- [48:24]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah. And then the issue is that I'm constantly, like. Even if I share, like, Crypto stuff though, it doesn't like, do anything because I actually do legitimately share crypto tweets all the time. Like I'm copying and putting them into Telegram all the time. The way that I got rid of the political stuff from sneaking in is to, to share the little like the cat videos or like the whale who like, or like the sugar gliders are a favorite in this house. We love our sugar glider videos. But then like, it doesn't. I'm not actually fixing my feed, right? I don't actually still like, get crypto stuff. I'm just like, okay, at least now the ice agents have been replaced by adorable sugar glider AI videos.
- [49:03]
K. Warrick
Yeah, that's bullish. But so, so I don't know, I mean, it's. It feels weird to me that you would have like one of the most like culty engaged subcultures in online, right, in crypto Twitter, and you would ever fuck with that. Like, yeah, what is your fucking job, bro? Like, how, like, how does that one ship, like, I think, and then you.
- [49:34]
Taylor Monahan
Write it off with all the other stuff? Like at some point you're just like, Jesus, like 90 of our spam, 90 of the scams, 90 of the GMs are crypto. And you just fail to realize, like, there's like an entire population of really like good original content and breaking news. And you're like, no, no, it's all gm.
- [49:55]
K. Warrick
Which by the way, remember the whole, the whole premise for Elon getting out of buying X, which thankfully he didn't manage to do, was the bots he was going to shut down bots, right? Bots are so much worse now than they've ever been. And like, in fairness, right, the technology has gotten significantly better for running bots. Like any cracked like 3 year old at this point can cook up a bot army using Claude code, right? So I get it, it's hard to manage, but it feels like they, they have just given up on trying to like manage the bots and pivoted to this like algo thing, which is, I don't know, it feels, it feels weird. Like, surely I, I get this is asymmetric warfare a little bit, right? Like, and the bots have, you know, no downside and, and X has all downside, but it feels like you could solve this problem. Like we, like, what was he was saying? Like the Algos running on like the Colossus Data center on like 80 trillion gpus or something like that. Like put like train that thing on bots.
- [51:08]
Luca Net
Like, yeah, you got to give them that because for years they were actually dropping like fishing links on their head. Yeah. So they did fix that. So now it's like sloppy like AI LLMs running around, which is very annoying. And it doesn't. What we mentioned an hour ago, like, when I speak to like the Fudders, I definitely get inspired by the AI Slop. It like gives me the lingo and how to communicate to.
- [51:35]
K. Warrick
To.
- [51:35]
Luca Net
To the. But there is no phishing links anymore. So fair. That is the good.
- [51:40]
K. Warrick
We should. We should.
- [51:41]
Luca Net
Part of that.
- [51:44]
Taylor Monahan
Part of the reason there's no phishing links was that they basically just gave the, the, the power to you. The poster so you could like hide the replies.
- [51:52]
Luca Net
Yeah.
- [51:53]
Taylor Monahan
It wasn't necessarily that Twitter figured out how to like ban phishing links. Like, they did make some tweaks to like who would show and how it would show. And like, you know, but they trained.
- [52:02]
K. Warrick
But like they trained that then on all of the like organic hiding activity, right? To like get the model to be able to. And then once, you know, once.
- [52:11]
Taylor Monahan
But like on the. For example, on the MetaMask account, right, like we would tweet and then we would just go. And you couldn't do anything. We would just hide them and then they would go like they wouldn't be on. They would. They reply super, super fast, right?
- [52:22]
K. Warrick
Yeah.
- [52:23]
Taylor Monahan
So you, you just sit there, you tweet, you sit there for five minutes, you hide them all.
- [52:26]
K. Warrick
Hide, hide. Yeah.
- [52:27]
Taylor Monahan
And then they, over time they just stop replying to metamask because they don't get any clicks. Right. Because it turns out that like the Fishers do actually monitor their campaigns quite closely.
- [52:42]
K. Warrick
I always, I love like just imagining. And I'm sure you do this as well, Tay. Like, I love imagining the like five guys sitting in like a basement somewhere in, in Europe, right? And they're like, they've got their like giant TV that's monitoring their stats, right? And they're like, stats are going down and they're like, what? Like our conversion rate is just through.
- [53:05]
Luca Net
The, through the floor.
- [53:06]
K. Warrick
What are we doing here?
- [53:08]
Taylor Monahan
It's true though. They do to a certain extent. It's not, it's not super well executed analysis, but like, if it's not working, they go somewhere else. And I was, I was talking about this earlier.
- [53:18]
K. Warrick
If this cash tag thing works and Twitter now allows you to buy crypto on Twitter, like it's gonna get. That's not priced in. I don't care what you say. That is not priced in. Like you want an alt season. That's where your alt season's coming from. If every single person on Twitter can all of a sudden just yolo ape into any token.
- [53:38]
Taylor Monahan
Wait, you're buying alt season? K, this seems like lower brow meme coin season.
- [53:45]
Luca Net
I gotta hustle a Twitter listing.
- [53:47]
K. Warrick
That's.
- [53:47]
Sponsor/Ad Voice
That's.
- [53:48]
Luca Net
That's my new focus.
- [53:49]
K. Warrick
How do you literally. You gotta get listed on Twitter.
- [53:52]
Luca Net
That's the new meta. That's. That's the new 500% pump is the X listing.
- [53:59]
K. Warrick
There's no more Binance listing. It's like, way like Penguin's gonna get listed on Twitter next week. I'm sure. Sure. Yeah. Sure of it.
- [54:07]
Taylor Monahan
Great. Okay.
- [54:07]
K. Warrick
All right, guys, let's. Let's wrap it up. I know we. We got a couple hard stops. So that's it for this episode of Uneasy Money. Thank you all for tuning in. If you like the episode, follow us on the Unchained feed on X, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. We'll see you guys next week.
- [54:25]
Taylor Monahan
Awesome. Bye, guys.
- [54:27]
K. Warrick
Thank you.