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- [00:01]
Sponsor/Advertiser
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- [00:29]
Kane Warrick
Hey everyone, I'm Kane Warrick and welcome to Uneasy Money. Because what happens on Chain never stays on Chain. 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 it. You can find all our disclosures@unchain crypto.com uneasy money and before we begin, here's a word from the sponsors that make the show possible.
- [00:52]
Sponsor/Use Energy
The Energy Network is an intelligent, decentralized grid that coordinates smart devices to balance supply and demand. Energy dollar is the native token of the network from one of Europe's fastest growing energy startups. Follow Use Energy on X to find out more.
- [01:16]
Sponsor/Multichain Advisors
Multichain Advisors is an emerging technology growth firm the 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@multichain adv.com
- [01:36]
Kane Warrick
all right, I'm here with my co host Taylor Monahan, unemployed security expert and Luca Netz, CEO of Pudgy Penguins. And we have a lot of stuff to cover today, so let's jump straight into it. First thing is The S&P 500 has actually officially licensed to trade XYZ their market data, which is wild, I think. Like, you know, the, the crazy. I was thinking about this on my, on my way in this morning and it's, it's kind of insane how much good news there's been. And you know, Hyper Liquid obviously has responded to this, right? It's, it's over $40 again. You know, it definitely doesn't feel like a bear market in the, the hype ecosystem, but it just feels so crazy to me how quickly some of this stuff has happened. And it, and it feels sort of like there's a bunch of independent things that are definitely building on one another. Like Poly Market having so much traction. All of a sudden it's like, oh, okay, this polymarket stuff can be useful. And then Hyper Liquid perps starts to get some traction and some legitimacy and people go, oh Maybe these perp things are okay. It feels like we've branched out from like bitcoin is fine and maybe some DATs to actual utility of protocols that are on chain, which feels like a big shift. It feels, it feels exciting.
- [03:09]
Meltem Demirors
Super exciting.
- [03:14]
Kane Warrick
So some of the details here, they're like. The, probably the most interesting thing is you have people from the S and P being quoted saying, yeah, we're excited about digitally native investors, et cetera. You know, in the past to get one of these price feeds, you'd have to go through like three layers of obfuscation to make sure that the S and P couldn't find you to track you down and shut down the price feed. So, so yeah, I think one, one interesting thing is the fact that it is obviously still limited to non US Investors which you know, we're not quite there yet for onshore US Investors yellowing perps on equities. But, but yeah, it does feel like there is this kind of growing liquidity in, in the hyper liquid ecosystem that is going to sort of flow back to other things on other chains and, and really, you know, have, have an impact throughout the rest of the bear market. So yeah, pretty excited about this.
- [04:29]
Taylor Monahan
I'm curious. Okay. I get why they've sort of just like not included US investors, but I think it's interesting that, that they've like launched it and they've just like restricted the, the typical carve outs. Right? Like the very, very typical carve outs and then it's going to be fine. And I don't know, that feels, to me that feels weird, especially with everyone doing a bunch of PR around it. That's like, in my opinion, like US focused. Yeah, right.
- [05:03]
Kane Warrick
Yeah. I mean it's weird, right, because you know, this is a US market that is now licensing its data for it to trade anywhere on chain, obviously. And you know, it's restricted from the US And I think there's like some sense of argument of like, well, if you want to trade the S P, you can get it in your brokerage account. Right. You don't need to trade perps, but this is making it available for anyone, anywhere on chain. I mean we've talked about this a lot, the purpification of everything. And there is sort of an open question around like, you know, does this eat into the traditional spot asset trading that you know, is, is kind of the bread and butter of, of the S P. And I don't think the NASDAQ and S worried about hyper liquid at the moment, but you know, it's It's. It's definitely kind of, I guess a situation where like, people now have a genuine alternative to. If you're in, you know, Europe or something like that, right? You have a genuine alternative to like the few brokerages that would give you, like, US equities and you had to, you know, to do KYC or whatever. Now you can just like get some USDC and YOLO perps, which, which, you know, my. My guess is, I mean, you know, for me, certainly in Australia, like, it's better than whatever the option would be. And I have like access to stuff. Right. And still I'm like, I would far prefer to. To buy, you know, most of these assets on Hyper Liquid or another perp Dex, or even a spot decks. Right. A tokenized spot decks than go through some like, shitty tradfi interface or whatever. Right. Because it's just like fragmentation.
- [06:57]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah, that. That makes sense. And I do think it'll get probably even more interesting because these will be obviously 24 7, where the real markets are not necessarily like literally 24 7. Right. So there might be some interesting, interesting things.
- [07:17]
Meltem Demirors
In the spirit of a similar vein, though, it's a little bit not right on the nose in regards to Hyper Liquid, but then I think earlier this week you had Stanley Drunkenmiller basically say, everything is going to be run by USDC and USDT and stablecoins. For those who are not familiar, Stanley Drunkenmiller is the best investor of all time, unbeknownst to most. Better than Warren Buffett, better than Dalio. Whoever you think the goat is, Drunken Miller is the goat. Circle stock just won't stop repping, even on bad days. So what a convergence. I mean, for people who've been around here since day one, I'm sure it's pretty fulfilling, but the world is about to change a big way on crypto rail. So it's exciting to say the least.
- [08:02]
Kane Warrick
Yeah, it's. There's no question that we have crossed some kind of, you know, tipping point where like, trad fibros are like, this is just obviously better. You know, like, we don't really know how it all plays out yet. But like, stablecoin rails are just obviously better. Like, these are not dumb people. They are very smart people. And they look at a thing and they go, okay, I get this now. You know, it seemed like a weird, you know, scammy Ponzi scheme for the first decade, but, like, it's survived long enough now that it's got Lindy. And they're like, yeah, this is this is a thing. So
- [08:43]
Meltem Demirors
great time being crypto, even though
- [08:45]
Kane Warrick
it's great time to be in crypto. Yeah, yeah. And, and, you know, like, my, my hot take on all of this is that from a price action standpoint, these are things that we would have crawled over broken glass to get like one of these things in a month or even like six months. Right. Like the, the things that have been coming out in terms of like, validation from existing tradified people, existing institutions. Like, if you said five years ago that S and P is going to license their data to a perp, Dex, I would have said, I don't believe you. Right. Like, it just didn't seem like it was just not even, Even in your wildest dreams. It felt like you were competing against these places and they were never going to legitimize it and just go like, oh, yeah, sure, you can have our data. You're going to have to, you know, fight your way through it to, you know, route around them somehow to stop, you know, to, to stop them from trying to shut you down or, or, or crush you. You know, of course, it's just money.
- [09:53]
Meltem Demirors
Right?
- [09:54]
Taylor Monahan
Right.
- [09:54]
Kane Warrick
Like, eventually someone's like, ah, this is money to be made. I'll license this. Right. And. And, you know, they do it, but it just didn't seem like it was on the bingo card five years ago. So, yeah, I think, you know, what hasn't happened yet from a price action perspective is it hasn't really kind of flowed through to the rest of the market where people seem to be realizing that this is going to happen. So, you know, at the risk of, you know, sounding trite, like it feels still early at the moment, where there are like, sophisticated people who are like, okay, this is obviously over the next three to five years going to change how we do a bunch of things in finance, not in crypto, but, like finance generally. What are the implications of that? And not that many people are paying attention. They're looking at, like, really narrow use cases and they haven't really played it out to, you know, what does this actually look like if everyone everywhere in the world has access to 24, 7 perps and like, significant liquidity flows through to these assets and people start to look at them as, like, genuine alternatives to other markets. Like, what does that all mean? I don't think we've seen, we haven't really seen people kind of play that out, except for very sophisticated people who have long time horizons. But it hasn't gotten to, like, retail yet. I don't think retail is like, aware of this trend?
- [11:24]
Taylor Monahan
Not yet. It's coming though.
- [11:25]
Kane Warrick
Not yet.
- [11:26]
Taylor Monahan
Hopefully.
- [11:29]
Kane Warrick
Yeah. So yeah, let's, let's move on to the next topic because we have a lot to get through. My favorite part of this. So a user on AAVE and maybe Tay, you can tell us. I know you've got some hot takes, but has there been any more information on like who the user was, what was going on? Like, people were speculating maybe, you know, a user lost close to $50 million on AAVE through the mobile interface, which is just like, even that is like pretty amazing, right? So they basically made. Made a trade incorrectly. The, the interface popped up a warning saying like, you're about to wreck yourself, bro. And they were like, you know, I don't know, maybe watching TV or something and they're like, yeah, sure, fine. And, and just, you know, clicked through the warnings and here we are. Now there were a few people. It'd be good to like at least close out though. Like, was this a real thing that happened? Was this some kind of mev? Like, do we have any info on that?
- [12:45]
Taylor Monahan
So I don't think that the user has been identified. There's been a huge amount of speculation, as there always is. I looked a little bit on chain, but I just, you know, the, the common whale names always show up and I don't necessarily have like much faith in those. I think the biggest thing, the other like big rumor was that this is like somehow money laundering and that it was like intentional. I'm just gonna tell you no, like, because one, you don't need to, you don't need to do this complex better
- [13:24]
Kane Warrick
ways of money launder.
- [13:26]
Taylor Monahan
There's so many easier ways to money launder. Two, whenever you do something like this, it catches the attention and it puts you front and center on the radar. So like objectively speaking, like you're going to be more successful at money laundering if your address is like, doesn't exist anywhere right now. This address and all of the subsequent addresses are like everywhere. It doesn't necessarily mean that people have like tagged those funds as like stolen funds, but they could be right. Like if there have been incidences that are a little bit gray area, let's call them where like a lot of like the MeV bots that are doing like the automated front running and stuff, like they don't use their, their centralized exchange accounts with those accounts, like because they do get tagged as like the exploiter and stuff like that. Even if they return the funds, there's still like that risk score attributed to them. So generally, yeah, I don't. It's also complex, it's also risky. Right. Like you, you can't just like Hail Mary, this.
- [14:31]
Kane Warrick
Yeah, you don't know, you don't know that you're going to get exactly, exactly. Right, so.
- [14:39]
Taylor Monahan
Because there's like four layers and I think that's like one of the interesting things that came out in the postmortem was like the first question was like, whoa, how did the UI allow this? Well, the first question was, whoa, why Was anyone swapping 50 million on mobile? You maniacs.
- [14:55]
Kane Warrick
I know.
- [14:56]
Taylor Monahan
The second question though was, yeah, was, you know, how did the UI allow this? Then you got into the deeper questions like, okay, wait, even if it was a low liquidity market, like, this was really the best route. Are we sure? It turns out like, no, it wasn't even the best route. Although there was just. There were no good routes. And so. Yeah, just all of that. Yeah, it basically like the people that walked away with the money are like the builders. The, the, the layers that are, you know, taking a fee on the transactions. You had like a lot of back running on this one, which was kind of interesting. We haven't seen like background is and
- [15:38]
Kane Warrick
yeah, a lot of money. Right, so.
- [15:43]
Taylor Monahan
And there was also like the way that I think cow swaps, so cow swap provide like it's valuable because it allows you to do these. Usually allows you to do these big orders without a huge amount of like slippage. Like it's going to get you like the best execution and it does this through this. Like there's like these solvers and auction mechanisms and they're all competing with each other and on and on and on. In this case, I guess because the market was just so illiquid and the amount of was so high, the auction process also sort of failed because the solvers, there were some solvers that like put a bid up to solve it in a certain way and get a certain price, but then they either couldn't get it on chain for some reason or the, like, the checks to make sure that it could potentially be on chain failed due to like it requiring a huge amount of gas or whatever it may be.
- [16:45]
Kane Warrick
Yeah.
- [16:47]
Taylor Monahan
And so, yeah, I was like, you know, there was like a lot of really interesting technical under the, under the surface things about this incident. I personally just go back to the first question which is the most important
- [16:59]
Kane Warrick
question, which is how did the fucking interface let someone do that? Look, you know, for what it's worth, right, I have had the experience for the last Three years or whatever of building stuff. We've got a bunch of people building a platform. We've built a ton of infrastructure and interfaces and things and like the number of times that my wallets break in our platform. And people are like, oh. Because they test. Like, you know, I'll say to them, guys like, you got to test with like 10 grand. You can't test with 100 bucks. Like, it just doesn't, you know, you got to like, find the median size transaction, right? And then they'll test with like, you know, 100 bucks, 100 bucks, 100 bucks. Then they'll test with 10,000 and they'll be like, oh, work. Like, you know, this thing's broken. I'm like, okay, cool. Tell me when you're really confident. And then I'll put like a million dollars through it. And then it breaks in a different way. And I'm like, all right, guys, like, you know, so we, we had this with like all of our routing where, you know, someone's like, this works amazingly. Like, we split up the transaction into like three hops. And you know, I'm like, how much do you try? Like, did you do the trade with? And they're like $1,000. And I'm like, okay, let me put 100e through there and see what happens. And it just breaks. And I'm like, well, like, so it is really challenging to test with $50 million, unfortunately. And like, you get weird. Educate. Like CAL Swaps. Like, you know, I remember when Cal Swap launched, I think I was one of the first people to do an eight figure trade on Cal swap. I did like a 10, 10, 11 million dollar swap between like, SUSD and USDT or something back whenever, you know, 2021 or something like that. Whenever, whenever it launched. And I remember like Michael from Curve doing it. And like, you know, people like, did these, you know, and there was kind of a moment where you're like, I hope this works, right? And, and so, you know, it is really hard to test a system for a $50 million trade. Now, that said, you don't need to test the mobile interface with a $50 million trade to see that it should block, you know, there's like some amount of slippage where it should just hard block the transaction and be like, yeah, go to, go to your computer, bro. Like, don't.
- [19:28]
Taylor Monahan
Yes. Yeah. And that's, that's my, my general takeaway. There was a lot of people that were saying actually that the protocol should not allow this amount of slippage.
- [19:40]
Kane Warrick
I. Whoa, whoa, whoa, See, and then like now all of a sudden we're like, oh, okay.
- [19:47]
Taylor Monahan
So for me, on the one hand, like surface level, like, yeah, the protocol shouldn't allow people to like lose money like that. Right. But on the other hand, like, what does that mean? Like what, what steps, what things have to be included? Or like what do you have to do to reality a real thing. And I think that typically at the protocol layer it's going to mean adding a whole bunch of adjacent systems to determine certain things. You're going to have more, you're going to be relying on more or different oracles, you're going to be doing all these checks, whatever. And that complexity generally, I would advise to stay away from it at the protocol layer, right, because the complexity introduces risks as well. If there's like some magical way, like wave a magic wand type shit and you can make the protocol, like make sure no one ever loses $50 million, like go for it, you know. But usually there's some real tangible downsides to doing that. But yeah, the UI layer, especially when you're talking about mobile, you're talking about more retail oriented people. Like, one is it just shouldn't be possible to like lose this much money on a single, you know, pressing a single button. And then two is. It seems like they were somewhat aware of the possibility that there would be like high slippage. And their assumption is that, well, people want, there are certain circumstances where people want that much slippage, so we have them a way to do it.
- [21:19]
Kane Warrick
Fundamental problem, right? Like if I am trying to trade a million dollars because I need a hundred grand, because it's just critical that I have that money and the market is nuking or whatever and you stop me at like an interface or protocol level and I know what I'm doing. Like there's an, there's a presumption of like, you know what you're doing sort of thing. But I think my, my hot take is that like those days are kind of over, right? Like, yeah, days where like everyone knew what they were doing. Like, sure. If you're like in mist browser, like, fine, you can assume, yes, like this person has a lot. But like you've built a mobile app that's on the App Store that.
- [22:01]
Taylor Monahan
Exactly,
- [22:04]
Kane Warrick
Apple App Store. And you're like this guy, I bet he knows what he's doing. Also there's an assumption of like you have $50 million, you know what you're doing. Like no one with $50 million would. And it's like you also can't trust that Guy could like, person could have been drunk. Like, who knows?
- [22:23]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah. And then it also goes back to just this. Like, you know, I think this is like the one of the bigger problems with, with Crypto UX in general, there's like every single layer just sort of pushes the responsibility to the user and avoids making the hard decisions. Or like the potentially like, like if you have to make a choice, you just push that choice to the user and then you're like, well, it might be bad. So let's put a warning, let's put a warning with the CH checkbox. And it's like, no, like, I'm sorry, nobody reads the warnings, guys. Spoiler. Like nobody reads warnings. Especially if they've seen that warning before. Right. If you warn someone on every single
- [23:04]
Kane Warrick
swap, every single time, you're like, oh, just a heads up, this is going to lose five bucks. And you're like, yeah, sure buddy, whatever.
- [23:08]
Taylor Monahan
Like, they literally don't see it. And so my, my hot take is that anytime you're designing a warning screen, especially one with a checkbox, that that's a failure. As you as a product and a product builder and a product designer, that is your failure. The only people who think that's a good idea are freaking lawyers. It doesn't actually create a good experience even in the best of cases and it doesn't protect people from the worst of cases. So do better, like build a real product where you're actually optimizing for the best outcomes and making sure that the user, you're not just like absolving yourself of responsibility and pushing.
- [23:55]
Kane Warrick
So here's the problem though. Like, like fundamentally AAVE is like, okay, we're going to deploy AAVE shield.
- [24:02]
Taylor Monahan
Yes.
- [24:03]
Kane Warrick
And this is going to be a protocol level circuit breaker automatically block swaps with more than 25% price impact.
- [24:12]
Taylor Monahan
Okay, yeah.
- [24:12]
Kane Warrick
So let's just stop here and imagine that AAVE shield, before this had all happened, was deployed a year ago and this crackhead turns up to try and swap $50 million through the mobile interface. And the slippage is like 22% and it's a $10 million loss. We would still be having the exact same conversation. We'd be like, I cannot believe that this guy. And then we'd be like, ave shield. What are these idiots doing? Why is it 25%? It should be 20% like there. It's a really, really hard thing to get right. Because what's the arbitrary line that you're saying for any given swap? Like should it scale with size? Like, no, it can't do that because then it needs an article to know how much the money is worth because 25% of some illiquid thing. And it's just like, it drags along so much stuff that you just go, eh. Like, I promise you, someone will lose multiple millions of dollars with a shield. And a shield, a shield guy is going to be like, job done, success. And it's like, no, bro, like you. So this is not a trivial problem. You can't just put circuit breakers in because then you go, okay, let's make it 3%. The protocol will never let anyone lose more than 3%. And then some guy's gonna lose like a billion dollars because they needed to pay down their margin. They just wanted to swap and they didn't care and they were happy to eat 5% slippage. Like, yes, it's not a trivial problem to solve, unfortunately.
- [25:48]
Taylor Monahan
And I think the problem, like, if you zoom out a little bit or back, take one step back, right? What is the problem that's trying to be solved? And whenever that problem is trying to avoid something like avoid a bad outcome, whenever that's like, the problem that you're trying to solve, you end up with these sort of like, in my opinion, like bad solutions. Right? I think shield is not a perfect solution. I think that the warnings especially are not a good solution. Right. But if you take a step back, what is the problem? Like, what are you actually trying to solve as a product? Right? You're not trying to, like, avoid people losing money like you. You're trying to, whatever, allow people to get like, the very best fair market rate on a swap.
- [26:34]
Kane Warrick
I mean, I would go further and say, like, you are trying to ensure that what the user thinks they are doing is actually what they're doing. Right? Like, if a user wants to lose $49 million, like, and you know, this is a little bit cypherpunk, right? But if a user has some desire for some reason to burn $49 million to like, prove a point or whatever, and they know exactly what they want to do, you should let them do it.
- [27:02]
Taylor Monahan
Yes.
- [27:02]
Kane Warrick
Like, if that's their intention, if it's genuinely their intent that they want to do that, for some reason they have some thing that they're trying to achieve that you don't know what it is, Right. Let them do it. Don't allow a user to do a thing that they don't understand or is like, you know, counter to the thing that they think they're doing. Like, the guy just wanted to swap some ae, right? Like. Like no one, you know, there's no one who thinks that this person thought that they were going to lose this money, right? Like they, they were just trying to do a swap. They're probably willing to eat some slippage, just 50 mil. Like maybe they're willing to eat 500k of slippage, right? For some reason they wanted to do this. So it's about aligning the intent of the user with the action. And the reason why that's so critical is because these are immutable transactions.
- [27:53]
Taylor Monahan
Yes.
- [27:53]
Kane Warrick
No rollbacks, there's no per, you know, you can't go to like Vitalik and be like, I didn't understand, I made a mistake. Like you know, so, so this is really challenging, right? Because if you have immutable transactions and they're super high value, you need to make sure that the intention of the user is aligned with the result that they're going to get. Right? Like that's the thing that I think is, is the most important thing. But aligning user intent, given how many different flavors of user intent you can have with the action, given how many flavors of action you can have, is just a really non trivial problem. Like there, there no like one shot solution.
- [28:36]
Taylor Monahan
There's no one shot solution. And also like just because they click
- [28:42]
Kane Warrick
a warning that doesn't align, that is not aligning the user's intention because you know the users are dumb and you sit there and go like a person with $50 million is never going to like just hit the X button without reading it. And it's like bro, they absolutely will.
- [28:58]
Taylor Monahan
There are more. Hey guys. Secret ready? The people with $50 million are more likely to not read or acknowledge a warning than the person with $2. No joke. Because people with $50 million have clicked through so many warnings in their lives, have sent so many transactions, have traded so much stuff. They are the worst offenders of just things. And even doing things on frickin mobile. And your job, like old UX product design wisdom was the user is drunk. And if your interface can't be used by a user who's drunk, then you, you failed as a Designer. It is 100% true. And it's weird because in crypto it's often like the biggest, most active people that are the most drunk.
- [29:45]
Kane Warrick
I mean I've like, I've done this so many times. Like literally I. It's me, right? Like well it's funny on, on X, right? Someone was like, where did Kane get $50 million to burn? And I was like, it wasn't me this time. Bro, like, but. But, you know, it's so easy. So two things I think. One is like, you know, you feel like you know what you're doing. I'm like, I'm. I'm literally interacting directly with the contracts. I've read the function that I'm calling. I know what I'm doing. Then it's like, oh, wrong contract. Oops. Right? And it's like, you know, it's. It's really easy. Like, you've done aave a bunch of times, and you're like, I know what I'm doing. So I just think, like, it's. It's very easy to get lulled into a false sense of security. And I've seen so many people do this. Like, you know, friends of mine over the years that go, I did this thing and I've done 100 times, and I just didn't think that it would be a problem this time. And I didn't pay attention to what was going on. And, you know, they, like, there was. There was a guy who lost like five mil, you know, a few months ago, and just like a simple transaction they've done 100 times, and they just didn't pay attention to it. So, yeah, I think. I think, like, you know, you. You have all of these things that, you know you should do. Like, don't do infinite approvals. You know, this was like an infinite approval issue, right? And then they got wrecked, and they're like, the approval was sitting there for two weeks or something. Infinite approval on an address that had like $8 million in it, and it sat there for two weeks. And if they'd revoke the approvals like they know they're supposed to do, then they would have been fine. And, you know, you sit there for the rest of your life going, like, oh, man, I like, what was I doing? I was eating lunch and I could have been revoking that approval. Right? Like, I was, you know, anyway, so. So, yeah, I, like. I think this is just a hard problem in immutable systems. That's hard.
- [31:55]
Taylor Monahan
It is hard. I think the best advice I have for, especially at the UI layer, especially at the product layer, building a great product means knowing who you are building for and also who you are not building for. In my opinion, the AAVE mobile app should know that should optimize heavily for the core majority demographic and not over prioritize the, like, theoretical edge cases, because they are theoretical.
- [32:33]
Kane Warrick
All right, let's go to an ad break here, and we'll be right back.
- [32:40]
Sponsor/Use Energy
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- [33:35]
Sponsor/Multichain Advisors
Multichain Advisors is an emerging technology growth firm that has helped create over $50 billion in enterprise value for more than 80 clients. Like Pith and Moonpay, Commerce and Wormhole, they've worked with some of the largest and most impactful companies in the space. They're the partner you want when you're navigating markets and trying to break out from the noise. They help navigate TGEs, go to market, BD and partnerships, capital markets, advisory, PR, media placements, KOL activations and more. Driving execution from launch to scale. Their results are measurable. To learn more and start building real traction today, visit multichainadv.com
- [34:15]
Kane Warrick
all right, we are back. So next segment is about the Vanity Fair article photo shoot situation. So, so you know, I think there's an open question and, and I saw a few different takes on the timeline about like was this serious but in somewhat poor taste or was this actually like an attempt to mock crypto? Were they, were they looking to the most. There was a photographer that like dissected this entire photo shoot and like they went really deep. I was like, I'm glad that we have like autism in other domains. Like this is like a like weaponized autism but for photography. He was like the fact that you can see the trolley of the thing and the wheel is sticking out is like subtle dig at the person and this person is like framed in this way. And I was like, wow, okay, I, I wouldn't go this deep on all of these photographs, but I'm glad someone did. But yeah, I think the takeaway was from this guy that like basically this was just like complete mockery of, of everyone involved. So yeah, I don't know. What do you got? What's your, what's your takeaway? After 12 hours of this, I wouldn't
- [35:37]
Meltem Demirors
go as far as saying complete mockery. I think, I think that was a little Overblown, I was saying during the commercial break, somebody on my PR team
- [35:45]
Kane Warrick
reached out to me to do this,
- [35:46]
Meltem Demirors
and I smelled this from a mile away. I knew exactly how crypto would take it. So the crypto. The crypto pool of people obviously doesn't rock and roll. And during the commercial break, Tay were so funny because there's. I think that just shows, like, the duality of the different cohorts, but obviously, like, there's a. You know, there's.
- [36:05]
Kane Warrick
There's a huge pool of people, you
- [36:07]
Meltem Demirors
know, in the real world that think, you know, how would you ever turn down an opportunity like this? Obviously, Vanity Fair is one of the
- [36:13]
Kane Warrick
most iconic magazines of all time.
- [36:15]
Meltem Demirors
I think everybody knows that.
- [36:16]
Kane Warrick
I think.
- [36:17]
Meltem Demirors
You know, I don't think it was a mockery. I think. I think Vanity Fair is better things to do than to take subtle jabs. I wouldn't go as far as that. I think the context and the words behind the image are a lot more fascinating. And I think that, I think, is the negative part. I think the picture is a good picture. Looks like a good picture to me.
- [36:39]
Kane Warrick
I'm not a. I'm not a design
- [36:40]
Meltem Demirors
guy or a stylist or a visual guy by any means, but it's a good picture. It's a good group of people. I think. I think they really try to converge high fashion, avant garde with crypto, specifically in the meat of the article. And I think that's where the mistake really lied. Like, when I see, you know, crypto leaders or the people, you know, in that image, like, you know, talking about, you know, Alexander Wang and John Paul Gaultier, and, like, it just. It just. It actually was worse than I initially thought because when it came to me, I was like, we.
- [37:19]
Kane Warrick
You know, I talked to my guys
- [37:20]
Meltem Demirors
who were like, I know what this
- [37:22]
Kane Warrick
is going to be framed.
- [37:23]
Meltem Demirors
Like, it was worse than what I even anticipated, especially. Especially on the meat of the article, because I think it's just such a disconnect to. I think the core user base of crypto users. You know, crypto people have always been, you know, if you look at the cohorts, it's people trying to get rich, right? Like, being flamboyant and braggadocious in crypto is like, you might as well just shoot yourself in the heart and, like, you know, put your, you know, put yourself on the stake to be just completely brutalized.
- [37:55]
Kane Warrick
Like, it's.
- [37:56]
Meltem Demirors
It's the one place in the world where you really don't want to be that person. And every single.
- [38:02]
Kane Warrick
It's Interesting. It's interesting though, right? Like, I, I, I 100% agree with this, but I think there's also an element of like crypto flex culture, right? And you know, Tay, you've talked about this with like the scammer flex culture, right? That like every culture has their like, acceptable ways of flexing and like unacceptable ways of flexing, right?
- [38:25]
Meltem Demirors
And like buying a 30 million dollar house in London, that's acceptable. We understand. Their computer wants that, right?
- [38:32]
Kane Warrick
You gotta, you gotta, you gotta live somewhere, right?
- [38:35]
Meltem Demirors
Yeah.
- [38:35]
Kane Warrick
And, and so, so, you know, like there, there are things in crypto that you see that are like flexes that people will, will, you know, find acceptable flexes. And usually they're like, around crypto, right? Like someone, you know, like yolo buys like $50 million worth of hype, right? And, and you know, like posts about it, right? And it's like, hey, I just bought 50 mil of hype. And, and everyone's like, yeah, that, yeah, that guy, that guy's, that guy fucks, right? Like, and it's like, cool, okay?
- [39:11]
Taylor Monahan
But like, heaven forbid you wear a freaking floor length leopard coat for Vanity Fair.
- [39:21]
Kane Warrick
But it's like what's acceptable, what's not acceptable, right? Like if that same person with the $50 million worth of hype, you know, had, I don't know, like Gucci sweatsuit that he posted. Yeah, yeah, it's just like, like, you
- [39:36]
Meltem Demirors
know, what a horrible person.
- [39:39]
Kane Warrick
Yeah, so. So it's just, you know, I think like, subcultures are weird like that, right? And you know, the interesting thing about crypto though is that it is not a single subculture. You've got, you know, the like X crypto flex trader bro. People that have like one culture. And then, you know, I think that there's a lot of OGs who are like, yeah, I'm really rich. I've been doing this for 15 years. I'm gonna buy some nice clothes. It's fine.
- [40:09]
Taylor Monahan
And that's what, So I don't know one. I just generally love this photo because it's so intriguing. Also the like, because I know most of these people. In fact, the only people I didn't know was Opensea, like Bi Face. But like Olaf. Yeah. In real life. Melted. In real life, like 100%. It is like such an intriguing photo. Like, how the hell did they get all these people?
- [40:35]
Kane Warrick
It looks like a Wes Anderson movie poster or something, right?
- [40:41]
Taylor Monahan
In the best way.
- [40:42]
Kane Warrick
Like, and like Novo's like the evil
- [40:45]
Meltem Demirors
guy that's like Dr. Doofenshmirtz over there.
- [40:48]
Kane Warrick
Yeah, exactly. Literally that. Right? Like, it's like, what the.
- [40:52]
Taylor Monahan
And then you have Danny over here with no shoes on, on the Marvel freaking windowsill. It's just like. I don't know, it's. It's incredible. It draws intrigue.
- [41:03]
Kane Warrick
I think that they must have tried to get Vitalik. Surely. They must.
- [41:09]
Taylor Monahan
Well, they obviously, like, you know, and they have Arthur Hayes quoted in the piece, but obviously they said no to showing up.
- [41:18]
Kane Warrick
Well, I mean, what's interesting though is like, you know, some people that they definitely didn't ask because if they had, they would be there. Right. So there's like, interesting dichotomy of like, well, Justin's son clearly didn't get the call. You know, I feel like. Although, yeah, I mean,
- [41:36]
Meltem Demirors
hey, you're principally right. Just so you know, like, I totally, as somebody who's just comes from a real world and now is in this, you know, new world. Like, you're principally right. It should be a thing that's accepted and loved. I'm telling you. I think the backlash came and I think if it was just the image with, you know, maybe even good context or neutral context, you know, but when you have guys, you know, you know, when the whole article is about, you know, and I'll say, you know, people. Novogratzes of the world didn't get hosed for this. There was a. There was a couple people in there that got hosed for, you know, certain things. And, like, I understand how that got to that point in the meat of the.
- [42:20]
Kane Warrick
But also, like, Novo has that vibe of, like, he can do whatever the he wants.
- [42:26]
Taylor Monahan
And this. Okay, this is. This is actually why this. Okay, so one, let's be straight, like, Vanity Fair is trying to mock crypto successfully mock crypto with the article, with the shots, with everything. Right? Like the. Yes. At the same time, like,
- [42:44]
Kane Warrick
there's some own goals. There's some own goals in here.
- [42:49]
Taylor Monahan
There is something inherently valuable about the fact that, like, you can do crypto with no shoes on or with like an absurd outfit. And that actually does not really impact whether or not you're going to be successful. Right. And you can't over index. You can't just automatically reject anyone who wears absurd outfits and you can't automatically accept anyone who doesn't wear shoes. Right. This is like the SBF image. He. He honed deliberately. This. Like, I'm too busy to wear clothes. Right. You can't over index on that. You have to look deeper at the actual value that people are actually creating. And in my opinion, the People that came off worst in the article was OpenSea because they were so obsessed with how they looked. Meanwhile, Meltem over here is, like, making fun of a theory of people only liking organic cotton and talking about getting drunk and then also, like, going deep on her, you know, the. The spirituality of crypto and value and, you know, buying the shoes or whatever. There was like, I don't know, it was just more focused on what matters at the end of the day, because it doesn't matter what you choose to wear or not wear. If you create value for people, if you deliver value for people, you're going to make it. And I think that it's. It's increasingly more acceptable in, like, the trad world, right? Like, Elon Musk on Twitter are calling people, like, yeah, if you create value for people, you're gonna make it.
- [44:24]
Kane Warrick
Yeah, agreed. Agreed. Yeah, I. I mean, the. There was a lot there. I don't even know. I don't even know where to start, to be, to be honest. But, like, there. There definitely were some parts that I was like. I just, you know, I've. I've. I've done some interviews before, and I've definitely been caught, like, kind of unawares by something, right? Like the one. The one for me that was like the most. I'll say lucky, because I really got, like, kind of sideswiped and did not think about what I was doing and who I was talking to. But I got asked to be interviewed for an article about crypto Fight night, right? Like, this. This guy. This guy had. They had, like, followed around some of the. The actual athletes, not the, like, LARPers like me, right, that were doing karate combat. And then they're like, oh, this is interesting. You have influencers fighting as well. Like, what are these idiots doing? Right? And I was like, good question. And. And so this guy was like, hey, we want to interview you. Would it be okay for you to, like, give us your take? They went to Eat Denver and, like, followed some people around. And, like, I was like, cool. Like, I'm. I'm totally happy to do that. I get on the call and the. The report is like, hey, I just have. Before we start with this, like, whole crypto fighting thing, right? Which is clearly trivial compared to what I'm about to ask you. And my brain did not switch into, like, oh, this is danger mode. He's like, I noticed that you are number seven on the Trump coin owning scam site.
- [46:14]
Taylor Monahan
Oh, no.
- [46:15]
Kane Warrick
And I was like. I was like, well, yes, I am, sir. How. What would you like, to talk about. And like, it just, it did not occur to me at the time that that was going to be the thing. Like, it was like he was, he, you know, report. Good reporters are really good at, like, being disarming and, like, making you feel like we're just having a chat or whatever. And I was like, yeah, I'm super excited to talk about this. I think it's a really interesting trade. But I just was like talking to this guy for like 40 minutes. I get off the phone and I was like, that may have been a mistake. And I was like, no, no, no, I'm sure it's fine. Two days later, my mother in law sends my wife a message. Being like, Kane is in the New York Times, like on like the front page or like the second page or something. Quoted 85 times in this article because no one else was willing to talk to this reporter about the fact that they own Trump coin. And the only person stupid enough to talk to this guy was me. And he had nothing else. So he's just like throwing in every quote. And I was like. And luckily I didn't say anything completely outrageous because I have a tendency to do that. But, you know, so I can see how someone calls you up and they're like, hey, I want to take photos of you. And you can wear like, whatever couture, you know, fucking designer you want. It's going to be amazing. And you're like, cool. And then you start just saying really dumb shit without thinking.
- [47:44]
Meltem Demirors
Some of these guys totally got a short. Totally got hoes. Exactly how you explained. Came like, Devin from OpenSea.
- [47:51]
Kane Warrick
I feel bad for the guy.
- [47:52]
Meltem Demirors
The dude totally got a bad beat. I mean.
- [47:54]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah. And I think what they said to
- [47:56]
Meltem Demirors
him was not fair.
- [47:57]
Kane Warrick
I would have been really upset.
- [47:59]
Meltem Demirors
Yeah.
- [47:59]
Kane Warrick
Yeah.
- [48:00]
Taylor Monahan
And I think it, it stems from the fact that I think they went. They were probably the ones that went into the piece really thinking that, like, Vanity Fair could, like, create value for them or, like, this would be valuable.
- [48:14]
Kane Warrick
Yeah, well, yeah, there's an assumption when someone's like, hey, I want to interview you. And this is a dumb assumption, right? Like, this is a dumb lizard brain response. Like, I'm important. This person wants to talk to me about important things that I care about and it's all gonna go great. Like, but, you know, that's not how the world works.
- [48:39]
Meltem Demirors
I, I almost didn't do the Forbes cover for this exact reason.
- [48:42]
Kane Warrick
I don't know if you know, but
- [48:43]
Meltem Demirors
I have, I had the. And, and so the. I almost turned it down. Similar line of thought to Vanity Fair. I almost turned it down because everyone who had a Forbes cover ended up going to jail. And so I literally had to sit down with my guy. I was like, dude, Forbes cover is pretty, pretty cool. But I was like, dude, you know, every single one who's gotten them in crypto has, like, impress the curse.
- [49:05]
Kane Warrick
Yeah.
- [49:06]
Meltem Demirors
So. So thankfully that they didn't take that
- [49:09]
Kane Warrick
one too far with me.
- [49:11]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah, I think it's like, there's just something so interesting about the fact that, like, you look like Olaf and Meltem. I mean, Melton's obviously, like, it's just talking her talk, right? And she knows, she knows how to like, she, she's one of the few people that can have, like, really serious ideas and get really serious, but also is literally never gonna take herself seriously enough. And so you're always sort of like, on your heels when trying to interpret her. But, like, Olaf, like, the journalist is trying to get Olaf to say literally anything and, like, get political. And Olaf, like, I do this two points where the story says, Olaf just walked away to, like, go talk to Cathie Wood or talk to Mike about something else. And he was like, I'm not like, this is cool. I'm gonna get a photo taken. But, like, I want to know what Cathie Wood is buying. And like, that is telling. Like, that is really telling.
- [50:04]
Kane Warrick
Yeah, Yeah, I think. You know, this, like, again, the first time that, like, someone important actually wants to talk to you in the real world outside of crypto, right, you know, is like the most dangerous time. You need people in your life that are like, hey, heads up. If someone who's a non crypto person wants to talk to you, like, just be on your, like, best game.
- [50:31]
Meltem Demirors
Right?
- [50:31]
Kane Warrick
Like, and you know, in the olden days, people would have, like, publicists and like, PR people that would make sure that they didn't say dumb shit. That would be like, sitting there coaching them on, like, how to present the right thing. And crypto's like, we're too smart for that. We don't need that shit.
- [50:46]
Taylor Monahan
It's not even that, like, they have, you have PR people, but they also fall into the trap of how do we make sure that Vanity Fair is going to write like, an a good article about us or whatever. It's like, no, you can't ensure that.
- [51:00]
Kane Warrick
Sorry. Just to be clear, like, you know, they're professional people and then they're amateur hour, like, you know, so, like, they're professional. I, I, one of, one of my close friends. I've known. I've known this guy for almost 15 years now. He. So Blueshift. My. My other startup, the. The main investor is Rupert Murdoch's nephew. And so there's a bunch of media people that were involved in that startup in various ways. And I learned a lot about the media. Not enough, because I still make dumb mistakes, right? But, like, enough to be wary, right? Like, you know, like, I remember, you know, one of. One of the early investors and people who was an advisor to us was like, you know, the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald. Like, this is like a serious fucking dude who, like, knows the game, like, knows all this stuff, right? But one of the other advisors is, like a crisis PR manager, right? And the funniest thing to me is, like, anytime there's ever, like, any crisis thing that's going on, I'll call him and I'll be like, hey, I just want to get a sanity check from you, because here's what I'm thinking. And he always says the exact opposite of whatever I'm thinking. It's crazy. I'm like, how can I be so dumb still? I'm like, hey, there's a thing. And, like, I just want to make sure that, like, I'm on the right side of this. And, you know, and he's like, don't do that. Like what? Like, just do the opposite of that thing. And. And so, you know, there are people who are very, very good at this, have been doing it for 30 years. They've seen everything. They know how the media works. They know how reporters work. They know what the angles are that they want. They know the game really well. And then there are people that are, like, LARPing as, like, media consultants or whatever, and they're fucking retards. And it's just not the same group of people. Like, you know, if you want someone who is going to stop you from getting slayed in Vanity Fair, you need to find someone who knows that game, who knows how that works, who is a professional, you know, person who's got, like, experience with that stuff. Otherwise, you're just getting wrecked.
- [53:11]
Taylor Monahan
And by the way, the best advice for, like, everyone is like, don't freaking do this. Like, Lucas Luca got it right. Like, don't do this. This is insane. Don't do this. However you can make. You can. Even if they're trying to make fun of you, you can make it, like, valuable, right? You just. It just has to be such a. You have to have such a deeper level of, like, going over the game.
- [53:36]
Kane Warrick
You got to know the game you're playing, you got to have like a real. Yeah, you know, it's funny. Like Hayden, I saw Hayden tweet that. He was like, oh, they asked me to do it, but they wanted me to take a photo in a bathrobe, in a sauna or something, something like that. And I'm like, good call that you didn't do it. But I'm not sure that that was the thing that should have stopped you from doing it.
- [53:56]
Meltem Demirors
Right.
- [53:56]
Kane Warrick
Like this weird photo they wanted, like, I think there were worse concerns than like the sauna photo. The sauna photo probably would have been the least concerning thing of, of this whole thing. So. All right, let's move on. So the EF feels to me and like I don't want to get canceled by the EF crowd here, but it feels to me like we've had this tension, like internal tension in the EF for a long time that seemed to be somewhat resolved where we're like, okay, we're gonna go out and do some things differently, right. We got to Mars, we got these people that are going to be more commercial. You know, they're going to be focused on different outcomes. We're going to engage with builders who are doing financial stuff more. And then, you know, Tomas is gone now for reasons. And, and we've shift. It feels like we've shifted a little bit more back towards communism. Like let's put out manifestos and let's, you know, do these like long term thinking, virtue signaling games and stuff. And, and I don't know, I'm Salana at 250.
- [55:22]
Meltem Demirors
Let's go compete. Solana at 90.
- [55:24]
Kane Warrick
Ah, let's go back to what we were doing. Is there, is there a, is there a sense when you luca that they're like, oh, we won't, we don't have to pretend anymore.
- [55:34]
Meltem Demirors
I mean, in my. I just don't know. I just wish that, like I, I just don't know what story they're telling themselves. Like, you can have the best of both worlds. You can be Cypher Funk and you can be this, you know, important thing to humanity. And you can also have an operational layer that doesn't need to be the best, but it just needs to exist. Right. Like the other day, you know, I would love. There was this guy, I forget his name. I'm God bless him.
- [55:59]
Kane Warrick
I want to, I want to give him a shout out.
- [56:00]
Meltem Demirors
But a guy at the Ethereum foundation, you know, two months ago they re. Three months ago they retweeted us On Pudgy, one of our, like, big animation videos. It was the highlight of my day. I couldn't believe it. I was like, I, I was like,
- [56:12]
Kane Warrick
damn, maybe I should have launched, you
- [56:13]
Meltem Demirors
know, Penguin on Ethereum. Like, I, I, it just, it just made me excited to be on Ethereum. And now, now we're just going to go back to, you know, not even being acknowledged. Not. And again, like, I under, I, I've always understood Ethereum's purpose. Like, nobody understands that. Obviously.
- [56:28]
Kane Warrick
Tons of people probably do.
- [56:29]
Meltem Demirors
But, like, I really, deeply understand their core values. I just don't know. Like, you don't need to have the best operation, but you can have 10 people, right, running just an ecosystem. Like, you know, it doesn't need to be this robust business with new principles and new values, and it's not a corporate takeover, but you have, you know, these. I would almost even argue, if I was talking to Vidalic, I would say you're looking to build a decentralized network state, right? And if you think about what a network state is and what a network, a network and a community are synonymous, like, those two things mean the same thing to me, right? And like, if you have a community and the network consists of people transacting within this community, you know, within this, you know, community and ecosystem, like, you, you should nurture those people. Like, that's down to the Byzantine Empire. Like, that's since the beginning of human civilization. The beginnings of the earliest networks had these functions, right? Like, they're not indifferent. They don't mean opposite things, they mean similar things. And I think they maybe, you know, went. You know, again, that's why I started
- [57:33]
Kane Warrick
off with my point.
- [57:34]
Meltem Demirors
Like, solana was at 250. Those guys are, you know, running a stripe operation. Like, maybe they thought that that's what they had to do, and maybe that's the path that they pursued. And maybe Vic.
- [57:52]
Taylor Monahan
Oh, no, Luca,
- [57:57]
Kane Warrick
he'll. All right, he'll figure it out. Yeah. So,
- [58:02]
Taylor Monahan
no, okay, so on Luca's point, 100. 100.
- [58:07]
Kane Warrick
But, but under duress, this is the problem, right? If you do something under duress, right, and then the duress is removed, you're probably going to go back to your old ways, so. Oh, there he is.
- [58:20]
Taylor Monahan
In my opinion. Luca, thank you for coming back.
- [58:26]
Kane Warrick
A lot of scars. They, they want to protect people from bad actors, for sure.
- [58:32]
Taylor Monahan
And, and the core values is like, this is a permissionless thing that is like, anyone can do anything. And we don't want, we don't want to permission it explicitly or implicitly. By only supporting things that are in same vein or whatever. The problem is that they kind of actually did that by only supporting things that were like not financially reliable or sane or valuable. And so they need to back the frick up and like, okay, you have your mandate, you have your things. These are all great. They're fantastic, right? You are building a freaking thing for other people to build on top of and you must support them. You do not need to support the end thing that they are using necessarily, but you have to support the people that are building on your thing because that is why you build. If you don't centralize, if you don't,
- [59:29]
Kane Warrick
they're human beings and until we have like agents building everything on Ethereum, the people will be offended. Like Lucas, point about like, oh, I got a retweet from the EF and I like felt good. Like that made my day, right? The inverse is also true. The EF told me to go fuck myself. Not explicitly, but implicitly. And I felt bad that day, right? Like I did a big thing and you know, we were focused on Ethereum. We did this really cool stuff. We launched a whole fucking chain. You told me to build an L2 and you're like, ah, fuck off, I don't care. Like there is, there is a sense. And like again, it's not fair to say that, you know, like not supporting is the same as like being against the thing. But as a builder, if you spend a bunch of time doing stuff and someone's like, meh, it feels like you, it just does it. Like people are emotional and you, you chew a bunch of glass to like deliver something and no one cares about it because it weirdly is flavored in a way that they just don't like. And that's going to be offensive to people is going to be offensive to the person who built the thing.
- [60:35]
Meltem Demirors
It's a very savvy and obvious IQ decision, but with no EQ relevant. And like if you're not factoring in the human element of it, in the, in the spirit of building a network, right? No matter what that network is, it's a centralized network. Immutable censorship presents resistant network. Like the network thrives on human capability. And I think there's takes very little resources to have this element. And it can be as simple as a social media manager with four or five head ecosystem guys running with a project manager in between, right? It doesn't need to be, but it seems like we're just back to square one. I think there's just like you guys all said there's just a human element to it until robots and AI is
- [61:20]
Kane Warrick
running the whole thing.
- [61:21]
Meltem Demirors
And we're probably five, 10 years away from that. And maybe it doesn't matter. And until the AI agents become innovators and entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs. But you know, at the end of the day, like, what, what, what brings the most stress to the foundation? If I were to be in Vitalik shoes, of all the things that bring me stress, what is the thing that brings me the most stress? It's the community crying about Price being down and coming after his head. And at a minimum, like, this is a layer for that. And like, I'm even thinking about like their mental health and their ability to execute. Like, no matter how many ways you skin this cat, I don't understand the decision, but, you know, have respect for those guys nonetheless. But I, you know, wait, wait till Solana gets, goes to 500 and then all of a sudden we'll be back to competing again. Corporate. You're gonna see a corning will be acceptable again.
- [62:14]
Kane Warrick
Look, I, you know, I think my, my, the interesting take for me, the reason why I am. I feel super comfortable joking about this, but not like stressing about it the way that I did two years ago, is that there are two tracks here. One is like the technical track of actually delivering the right. And the other track is like how they talk about it, how they deal with people building on it or whatever. My hot take is that the technical track is going so well and is going to accelerate so much this year that they could actively tell people don't build things. That's 1% how they made the decision.
- [62:54]
Meltem Demirors
And you said it doesn't matter, they can. I forget where it was. It might have been on this.
- [62:57]
Kane Warrick
It was on this.
- [62:58]
Meltem Demirors
He said this last week, which is they're making so much advancements and I totally 1000% how he underwrote it. He said, this thing will be so good that you can. I don't need to do fucking anything. And then you'd be fiscally irresponsible to go anywhere else here shortly. And he really believes that the Solana and everybody else on the tech sides and get smoked and he's gonna win.
- [63:20]
Kane Warrick
And, and so you can, so you can afford at that point to be like, huh, well, what do you think about communism, my friend? Yeah, like, and it's like, no, no, you can like, you can. You act if you like. And you know what? My, my, my even hotter take is like, if you build the best decentralized platform and Every single person in the world has no choice but to use it, then go nuts, like, have whatever weird ideology you want. I don't give a. Because I'm going to use it anyway. And you know, could you have made it a little more palatable for people to use it? Sure. Could you have supported, you know, people who are building the financial applications? Sure. Will it matter? No, I do not think it will matter. And I think as soon as, as soon as the inevitability of this e. Technical roadmap hits people and actually is reflected in the price, people will go, yes, Communism. And the irony of like, people that are driven by price action, that are like the communism was actually the key component to this entire thing, right? Like that will happen. People will start to like, post hoc rationalize this whole thing and they'll be like, it was all because of the communism, not like the other stuff. And, and it couldn't have worked without the communism. If you take the communism out, it doesn't work. Right? And, and the reality is that, like, it just doesn't matter. It's fine. I think ETH is just going to absolutely run away with this over the next like 18 months. There's, there's just too many white swans in the ETH technical roadmap. The, the like, consolidation around L1 away from the L2s, the fragmentation, the distancing of L2s as like investable assets. When it comes to like the core Ethereum mandate, all of that stuff is going to create a shelling point where people go eat is investable again. The price goes up and number go up is still the best technology. It will outweigh everything. And people will look at eth at 5k or 8k or whatever the price is and they will go, yes, everything that they did was right and they should have never deviated from the plan. And you know, and yeah, I think that.
- [65:45]
Taylor Monahan
So for people who are like building things, especially like right now, like starting to build things, I think objectively speaking, Ethereum is like the strongest contender.
- [65:56]
Kane Warrick
If not, it just is like I've, I've got stuff on every single chain now. We integrate every chain. Like, you know, we, it just is absolutely unequivocally clear that Erie, you know, and, and I think it's still, there's still a little bit of alpha there because it is not quite 100% consensus for people to, to believe this yet that like building something on ETH main net. But you're seeing the signs, right? Like there's people that were like base Maxis that are like, we're coming to Ethereum Mainnet. There's people that were on Solana that are coming back. The next six months will be, I think, the kind of point where it becomes really obvious to everyone how much the investment in the Ethereum platform and network has paid off over the last three years and.
- [66:51]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah. And how much risk there is on any other, any other chain at this point, like has the value, has the network, like any other team that you go to, you're, you're, there are trade offs and some of them are gonna be worthwhile. I would say like design a build on Solana still. Like, there's like, there's liquidity.
- [67:14]
Kane Warrick
There are liquidity in users that are like a specific, specific, you know, cohort of users who are on Solana that are, you know, absolutely kind of impossible for you to ignore. If you're building a certain type of product, you cannot build them anywhere else. So like Solana has a really strong moat for like certain, you know, certain things. Yes, certain things, right. Certain, certain types of users, certain types of traders. Hyper liquid now has like, you know, a lot of momentum in this like global, you know, liquidity house or whatever the meme is. Right. And so, you know, it's not to say that like every single thing will happen on Ethereum, but the, the kind of aggregation of liquidity that exists on Ethereum I think is going to become really, really obvious just how much untapped potential there is. And you know, you look at things like aave, you look at, you know, a bunch of protocols that have just been around for a long time and people kind of price it in. But when you, when you kind of zoom out and look at them from an outside observer perspective and go like, what the, there's a 20 billion dollar money market that's running on this network. Like when did that happen? Like, it's crazy. It's really crazy.
- [68:31]
Taylor Monahan
So, and so that's what like this a lot of people are like, oh no, they're this manifesto or this mandate is like very explicit in that, in that you can build whatever you want, anyone can build whatever you want. There's basically like no platform risk, right? They're not going to disappear, they're not going to rug you. They're not. Right.
- [68:50]
Kane Warrick
On the flip side, incredibly neutral thing, right? Like we will be so incredibly neutral, we won't even help you.
- [68:56]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah, we won't even help you. And so that's the other thing is like they're also not going to make big bold promises and give you money and give you retweets and however, like there's some benefit of knowing where you stand, right. Like you can't get run there.
- [69:11]
Meltem Demirors
There's tons of benefit. It just, and if, if, as I'm saying, the thing is, is like at a certain point it'll come down to the products and if, and if Ethereum is not competitive to Solana, Solana will win, right? It will. I, I'm very confident and, and just the value accrual. When I say, when I say if Solana has the better tech stack by a Texas mile. From a execution perspective, it feels like it. Again, I'm a consumer, we could argue exactly what better means. Right? But like to Kane's point, if they build and he's so confident with AI and everything that's going on, they can ship that four or five year roadmap and they can do it in 12 to 18 months and it's on bar from an execution perspective to what Solana feels like. Just when I, you know, just when I withdraw usdc, I get it within a millisecond when I'm Ethereum, I can't stand that thing turning. I can't stand it. I can't, I can't do it. I can't, I can't do the 10 second lag. I can't do any of that.
- [70:11]
Kane Warrick
Right.
- [70:11]
Meltem Demirors
It's not where the world is going. The AI agents also will not do that. They do not.
- [70:15]
Kane Warrick
They do not.
- [70:15]
Meltem Demirors
That's gonna their whole workflow up every time they make a transaction if the thing is taking seconds to approve and confirm. But if they can do that, to Kane's point, I understand the decision and let the fucking shipping speak for itself.
- [70:29]
Kane Warrick
Agreed.
- [70:30]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah. I also just want to say that like as someone who is building or choosing where to build, I think the EF mandate is again, it sets expectations correctly, which is good for you. It's also like, in my opinion, like quite empowering to be like, like anyone can build anything here. And by the way, like Defi never had the EF's approval and it freaking thrived.
- [70:54]
Kane Warrick
And everyone, you can like, yeah, you can totally succeed.
- [70:58]
Taylor Monahan
Yeah. And you can genuinely win without the EF's approval, which is not the same as nearly anywhere else.
- [71:07]
Kane Warrick
I think this is like, this is the, the trade is we won't support you, but we won't suppress you. Right.
- [71:13]
Taylor Monahan
Like, yeah, we're not gonna support your competitor either.
- [71:16]
Kane Warrick
Correct. We're not gonna, we're not gonna king make and pick winners. And yeah, you know, okay, so, yeah.
- [71:23]
Taylor Monahan
However, I also want to say for like the people at the EF or the people in the Ethereum community, right, because the thing is that Defi people did have support. It just wasn't the ef, but they had each other's support. There were places that you could go to learn. You had shared resources, you had things that made your journey easier. I think the Ethereum community, you know,
- [71:47]
Kane Warrick
I would go and cry on Sani's shoulder about the fact that Vitalik didn't love me. That was that we had support groups for this stuff. It was fine.
- [71:55]
Taylor Monahan
So I think that that is something that Ethereum can do better and that's on everyone, right? Don't just dismiss projects because they don't align with your freaking ethos. Find communities. Encourage people to find communities. Build them. Support builders, regardless of what they're building. But I also think that YAF could do a better job of actually upholding its mandate. And its mandate at the end of the day is to be credibly neutral, which means not picking things. Which means that you can't pick the. As fucking Meltem says, right? The nice things, having fun and only pick the tofu and organic cotton, right? You can't only pick those things either. It swings both ways.
- [72:34]
Kane Warrick
You have to support everyone, you know, but. So this is a. This is the same issue that we raised three months ago or whatever when they're like, devcon is going to be on the moon because the moon people are. Have been suppressed. And so we know it's a really arduous journey on the moon and there's no air, but like, get a spacesuit because it's worth it and we're going to support the moon men like that, like, genuinely. Like, there, there is, you know, still this element of like, you know, the Global south is persecuted and so we have to like put all of our conferences in like the dumbest places possible where it's polluted as. And no one wants to go there. It's like, dude, like, put the. Put defcon in New York once or LA or something like, make it easy for us, right? Like, oh, but then visas, it's so hard to get a visa to la. It's like, you know, there, there's stuff like that that still is a bit pervasive.
- [73:36]
Taylor Monahan
Dude, there's so many things that are pervasive. And I think that in the earlier days it was slightly more acceptable to. To like, the way that they're operating was slightly more acceptable because everything was theoretical. And so it was like, okay, they are highlighting theoretical things that could be built that are in their vein today. It's real. Okay? There are real products that are being built by real people. They come in all different flavors. You have to support all of those builders, every single one. And if you don't, if you only choose the ones that align with your personal view, that is just as bad as, like, Solana only supporting casinos or Base only supporting Coinbase employees Weeks. Okay, that one.
- [74:22]
Kane Warrick
That one's gonna get clipped. Salon only supports casinos. That's getting clipped. 100. Awesome.
- [74:30]
Sponsor/Advertiser
There.
- [74:30]
Taylor Monahan
Before I screw myself somewhere.
- [74:32]
Kane Warrick
Yeah, let's end it there.
- [74:33]
Meltem Demirors
Yeah.
- [74:34]
Kane Warrick
Yeah. Agreed. All right, that's it for this episode of Uneasy Money. If you enjoyed the conversation, follow the show on the Unchained feed on X and subscribe. Wherever you listen to podcasts and if you're watching on YouTube, hit subscribe and drop. Drop a comment. It really helps the show reach new people. Until next time.
- [74:50]
Meltem Demirors
Till next time. Later, guys.
- [74:52]
Taylor Monahan
Bye, guys.
- [74:52]
Meltem Demirors
Bye.