Instagram Bringing NFTs to 2.9B People | Sandeep & Mihailo, Polygon

Sandeep Nailwal and Mihailo Bjelic are the Co-Founders of Polygon. They’ve been on Bankless in the past, but not during a time like the one we currently find ourselves in. However, the bear market is not stopping Polygon from building. Polygon is enabling Instagram to bring NFTs to 2.9B people. And that's not all! They're also working with Stripe to allow USDC payments via Polygon. Hear how exactly they plan on doing this, what they plan on building next, how they're thinking about the bear market, and so much more! ------ 📣 ALCHEMIX | Get a self-repaying loan today! https://bankless.cc/Alchemix ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/ 🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST: http://podcast.banklesshq.com/ ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALED ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum ❎ ACROSS | BRIDGE TO LAYER 2 https://bankless.cc/Across 🏦 ALTO IRA | TAX-FREE CRYPTO https://bankless.cc/AltoIRA 👻 AAVE V3 | LEND & BORROW CRYPTO https://bankless.cc/aave ⚡️ LIDO | LIQUID ETH STAKING https://bankless.cc/lido 🔐 LEDGER | NANO S PLUS WALLET https://bankless.cc/Ledger ------ Topics Covered: 0:00 Intro 8:41 Instagram is Adding NFTs 15:01 Meta’s Crypto Team 17:40 What Instagram NFTs Look Like 21:30 The Potential of NFTs on Instagram 26:31 Is Polygon Ready to Support New Users? 29:58 Stripe to Allow USDC Payments via Polygon 35:35 Addresses, Stripe Wallet & Gas Fees? 41:12 Polygon’s Strategy Going Forward 49:04 Polygon Supernets 53:38 Weathering the Bear Market Storm 58:55 Thoughts on the Market Crash 1:02:24 Closing & Disclaimers ------ Resources: Sandeep & Mihailo's Previous Bankless Episodes https://youtu.be/Gf2aalPt8-k https://youtu.be/rCJUBUTFElE Sandeep Nailwal https://twitter.com/sandeepnailwal Mihailo Bjelic https://twitter.com/MihailoBjelic Instagram NFTs https://imgur.com/a/c1vBnM2 Stripe to Allow USDC Payments via Polygon https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/04/21/stripe-taps-polygon-to-allow-customers-to-make-payments-in-usdc/ Polygon Supernets https://twitter.com/0xPolygon/status/1517502692670640129 ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:05Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bankless Nation, welcome to another State of the Nation. Got a hot episode for you today. We've got Polygon on, but we're talking about this. Instagram is adding NFTs, okay? Facebook is getting on board with crypto. This is absolutely huge news, which you might have missed because it came out of Monday of last week. And crypto had other things to worry about rather than Instagram adding NFTs. But we're surfacing it to you today because we think it was the big, one of the biggest news items and most bullish content things that we've had happen in crypto, content events that we've had happen in crypto this entire year. And that's not even the only thing we're talking about, David. What else are we covering in this episode?

• 0:46David Hoffman?

  Yeah, Stripe also doing Web3 things. And really, the theme of this episode, if you can, you know, expand your brain and project this into the future, this is really the Web3-ization of Web2 platforms. So we've got Instagram doing both read and eventually write access to blockchains, to public permissionless blockchains with NFTs, starting with Polygon, Ethereum, and also Solana and Flow. People have onboarded NFTs, creators into their, into their public profile. So we actually took some screenshots. This is live right now. Certain creators have this functionality where they have an NFT page next to their posts and videos and reels pages on Instagram.

• 1:27David Hoffman?

  So, NFTs going into the heart of the biggest Web2 app of all time, which is Instagram. At the same time, this week before this, Stripe announced that they are allowing people to, instead of using USD to go into their bank account, they can allow USDC to go to their Polygon Ethereum address. And so as we just think about these things and ideate on these things on the future, we have Web2 protocols, Instagram and Stripe.

• 1:53David Hoffman?

  That are leveraging Web3 technologies and there's so much potential here. Twitter also allowing their creators who have ticketed spaces and super follows, which is allowing Twitter accounts to make money off of their brand and off of their network, which is very much Web3 ethos, allowing those people to receive money in USDC on Polygon for the value of their Web2 profile. And so you can only imagine what happens when Instagram enables the ability to mint NFTs for the posts that they make and sell those NFTs perhaps natively in the app. This is just ideation. This is just speculation. Instagram is slow rolling this thing out, but you can only imagine what happens when

• 2:34David Hoffman?

  they allow Instagram creators and influencers to monetize the power of NFTs directly in the Web2 apps. Where I'm going with this, Ryan, and why this is such a long-winded intro is that you can also talk about the composability of Web2 apps because now they're based on all the same blockchains. Stripe and Instagram are building both on top of Polygon. Stripe is a commerce platform for selling digital goods. Instagram is a platform for viewing digital goods and also has its own shop features. What happens when we can make these things composable with each other because they're now based on Web3 protocols? Ryan, there's not much that... There's a lot of stuff that's under NDA and so we got as much out of Sandeep and Mihailo that we could from the Polygon team, but this is going to be something that is

• 3:18David Hoffman?

  a long developing story that I'm really excited for. It's going to keep us entertained during the bear market, but really, like I said at the beginning, this is the Web3-ization of Web2 protocols.

• 3:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's certainly really cool and I'll just say it, we said in the podcast, I'll just say it again, 2.9 billion people are part of the Instagram, Facebook social network, okay? They're about to get an onboarding path into crypto through NFTs, you know, our best onboarding tool that crypto has ever produced. Full disclosure, David and I are excited bullish about Polygon. I'm also an advisor of Polygon. We really believe in what they're doing over there and the pragmatic approach.

• 3:57David Hoffman?

  Ryan, I'm super eager to get into this conversation with the two co-founders of Polygon, Mihailo and Sandeep. But we also have got to talk about Alchemix's self-repaying loan technology. Because this is one of the few things in the world of crypto that is uniquely created by crypto. You cannot recreate this feature, this function, inside of the world of TradFi. It's something that only crypto can produce. If you guys are not familiar with Alchemix, it's a self-repaying loan system. So if you take like $10,000, you put it into Alchemix, it'll go yield farm that $10,000 in DeFi for you, just as yield farming aggregators do. But also at the same time, Alchemix lets you borrow 50% of your deposits while your loan automatically pays itself off.

• 4:41David Hoffman?

  It is just absolute alchemy, if you will, perhaps why they call it Alchemix. It's a self-repaying loans. Don't tell this to anyone that has student debt, they'll get mad. But it's pretty crazy. And not only can you do this with stablecoins like DAI, but you can also do this with Ether. And so if you just, self-repaying loan, it pays itself back. And so you can get your future yield payments for your stablecoin yields, your Ether yields in DeFi, paid to you upfront, and that loan will slowly pay itself back. You can avoid liquidations, because we don't like liquidations, because this is a liquidation-free protocol. You cannot get liquidated as a function of the protocol itself. So there is a link in the show notes if you want to take a peek at some of this absolute alchemy magic

• 5:25David Hoffman?

  at banklist.cc/Alchemix. It starts as a capital A at the beginning. Pretty cool stuff, pretty cool stuff.

• 5:33Ryan Sean Adams?

  David, I gotta ask you the question before every episode, which is what is the state of the nation today?

• 5:37David Hoffman?

  Ryan, the state of the nation this week is rebuilding. There was a lot of destruction last week. And so we are going into a new phase of crypto, trying to repair what's going on in the crypto industry. But not just that, Ryan. Web2 protocols, they're also broken. They also need rebuilding. And so we are reconstructing the entire broken system of Web2. Because like my genius co-founder once said, if you adopt crypto protocols, you adopt crypto values. And there is a lot of crypto values that I would like to inject into Facebook, because they really need it, and Instagram, and all the other Web2 platforms out there. So, Ryan, we are rebuilding the world, and that's what we're doing here. We're rebuilding the crypto industry, licking our wounds, moving forward. And we're also rebuilding Web2 while we were at it. Ryan, we are rebuilding today.

• 6:21Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well, who am I to disagree with your genius co-founder? You know, we'll just leave it at that. And let's get right into the episode with Sandeep and Mihailo. But before we do, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible.

• 6:34David Hoffman?

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• 7:19David Hoffman?

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• 8:02David Hoffman?

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• 8:46David Hoffman?

  where community members will decide on the token distribution. You can have your part of Across's story by joining the Discord and becoming a co-founder and helping to design the fair, fair launch of Across. If you want to bridge your assets quickly and securely, go to across.to to bridge your assets between Ethereum, Optimism, Arbitrum, or Boba Networks.

• 9:06Ryan Sean Adams?

  Bankless Nation, super excited to introduce you to Mihailo and Sandeep. They are the co-founders of Polygon. Won't introduce their full backgrounds and bio because you know them, you've seen them before on Bankless. Polygon, of course, offers a suite of scaling solutions for Ethereum. From sidechains, proof-of-stake chains, all the way to ZK rollup Layer 2. So there's a lot going on here, and we've got so much to cover. I think we want to start with some of the massive adoption we've seen with Meta, with NFTs, with Instagram. Also talk about Stripe. There's so much to cover here. Mihailo, Sandeep, welcome back to Bankless. How you guys doing?

• 9:43Speaker 02

  Thank you so much, Rayan and David, for the invite. You're doing great, as always. So much work.

• 9:51Ryan Sean Adams?

  As are you guys. You guys are building so much. And I think, so we are coming off of a week that was very hard for a lot of people in crypto. And we've never seen anything like it, I think. This week, we can start to get back to building. Some of the news last week that was missed in the whole Terra, Luna, UST fiasco was absolutely monumental. And any other news week would have been something that would have echoed all around crypto Twitter, echoed around all of our media channels. And that was this: Instagram is adding NFTs. Okay, Instagram adding NFTs. Mark Zuckerberg released some statements where he talked about the integration of Web 2 and Web 3,

• 10:36Ryan Sean Adams?

  how he was going to build components of Meta social network spanning 2.9 billion. Billion people, uh, he was going to build components using decentralized protocols and NFTs. And so we saw the first edition of NFTs to Instagram, something a lot of us hoped for and predicted for a while. I think we want to start there. Can you guys summarize for the audience what Instagram is doing with NFTs?

• 11:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, so maybe hello, I can start, so.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  Of course, of course. I just want to basically mention that we are of course super excited about this. We still have some NDA sign. We cannot talk about everything, but I just want to say that we are super excited. Excited and that I'm very thankful to Sandeep for all his business development efforts and yeah.

• 11:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, so so basically, uh, on the on the, you know, Facebook Meta side. Like, you know, the most important thing is the vision that Meta Meta team is carrying on this, like, you know, we were so, you know, like, uh, happily thrilled to kind of, you know, the the kind of vision they have, like, you know, they want to. I mean, the teams that Meta has, like, you know, they are pretty strong, DeFi, you know, DeFi DJs we had even. You know, the uh, like the blockchain DJ, basically crypto DJ kind of communicating discussions also with them.

• 11:56Ryan Sean Adams?

  Wow.

• 11:56Speaker 03

  So they are pretty native. They know stuff like pretty deep. And their strategy and everything, the the the leadership team over there, both on the product side and technical side is absolutely deep into the. We were very, you know, I mean, as I said, that we were thrilled to to be in those conversations. And right now, uh, what they are starting is that, you know, the it will start with the read. They have, you know, as of yet announced the read of the blockchain, like what all, uh, they will be reading from these four, uh, blockchains. The NFTs where Ethereum and Polygon will go live, uh, first and then eventually, you know, one or two other blockchains will also be added. And then post that, like, basically, it's like Twitter. The phase one is like Twitter where, uh, you know, they, uh, people can, uh, you know, have their,

• 12:40Speaker 03

  display their NFTs as a profile pic or wherever they can on the Instagram. And, you know, the user experience also, they are built around NFTs is pretty crazy, like, you know, we should, uh, wait, uh, when it comes. And then they have. Have a pretty long and you know pretty deep uh and very interesting roadmap uh in terms of bringing uh Web three to you know uh Facebook. So I was actually, you know, even I even joked with them that, you know, Facebook is going to be the, you know, be the Facebook of Web three. Like, you know, a lot of projects will come to you and say that we want to be the Facebook of Web three, I said. So, you know, Facebook is going to be the Facebook of Web three. So it's it's pretty exciting.

• 13:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think I think this this time at least, uh we know the history with Libra and everything. I think this time the the whole the whole team and the whole company gets it right. They understood that they cannot own, if they really want to kind of survive this this evolution that we started with Web three. If they really want to survive it, they need to embrace it. They need to do it the right way. They need to do it properly. They need to accept items or assets that are actually on these public networks. And become, if you want, the interface to these networks and maybe something more in the future. But in general, I think they get it right now. And and and I can just second what Sandeep said, especially on the on the tech side, which is closer to, I guess, to my heart.

• 13:57Speaker 02

  Uh the team, their tech team is extremely competent, like extremely. They uh uh they grilled me for quite some time over there during our our sessions that we had and yeah, I was quite impressed.

• 14:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, and and in terms of the functionalities, like I think we already said that, you know, the read is coming first and I think they have a pretty long plan. But yeah, a lot of things remain on the under N D S, so maybe, you know, they will announce and let let them announce.

• 14:23Speaker 02

  It can be, we believe it can be really exciting, exciting and it can really make a huge impact and and really bring Web three mainstream.

• 14:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  Potentially to to actually their core user.

• 14:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it it goes beyond N F Ts, beyond these things, like whatever, like without divulging too many details, like, you know, I mean, it's pretty impressive.

• 14:41Speaker 02

  And again, the point is that uh uh I think at least that they understand that they cannot make world gardens anymore. If you want to support this Web three asset movement inside and outside of this whatever meta ecosystem. Needs to be permissionless, needs to be allowed and and yeah, it it's pretty exciting.

• 15:01David Hoffman?

  Amazing, amazing. And something that Ryan has said a number of times before is that when you adopt crypto protocols, you adopt crypto values. So maybe cautiously optimistic, of course, but maybe Facebook is turning a page when it integrates Web 3 things. It's going to have to actually induce some Web 3 values into its products. Ryan and I, before we started recording, were ideating about what potentially could be done, both with Twitter, because there's also a Twitter conversation here as well, but also with NFT creators about how they can finally monetize their own platform in self-sovereign ways. So I think we'll ideate a little bit further, further on to this episode. But before we go and start actually showing some screenshots as to what the actual functionality is,

• 15:43David Hoffman?

  as of today, as of right now, screenshots that I took live from my own Instagram account. I just want to double down on the whole technical competency of the team. Because whenever I see some sort of like Web 2, you know, TradFi boomer entity coming into Web 3, I'm like, all right, what are you guys really doing though? Because there's always, it should always be met with some sort of healthy skepticism. You know, there's, there's good and bad ways to integrate Web 3 protocols. And what you guys are saying is these are crypto natives at Meta. These are crypto natives at Instagram who know what they're talking about, who know the values and know the potential here.

• 16:20Speaker 03

  Yes, yes. David, like, you know, what I want to say here is that, you know, we coming from the Ethereum, you know, Ethereum ecosystem and all that, and thinking about all those Web 3 values, how the world will change and all that. Like, if you, you guys are also there in the room discussing all those things, the vision that they presented, you would, you would get goosebumps. Even now, I'm getting goosebumps in terms of those values where they want to take Facebook. Like, it's absolutely amazing.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. And we really had to be also careful, completely transparent, as we're always trying and responsible. When, once we heard the, the long-term vision that they had, we had to basically make, uh, um, make it clear that at this point, the infrastructure that Polygon has can simply cannot support, uh, uh, the plan, the scale that they have in mind potentially. But we're As you all know, we are working around the clock on improving our infrastructure, scalability, and all other aspects of our technology. And again, we are 100% sure, and we told them, you won't find better partner than Polygon. You won't find it.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  But really, the vision is so grand that we are aware that there's a lot of work ahead of us to really be able to support and facilitate all of that.

• 17:39Ryan Sean Adams?

  I think for me, it's been an exciting year for crypto in many respects, last week aside, but this is actually one of the most exciting things I've seen this year. And I'm gonna get David to maybe pop up his Instagram account and show us all what this looks like. And of course, Polygon team, you don't have to comment or speculate. I know there's a lot under NDA that you can't say, so allow us to do some of that for you, if you will. The other thing I'll say, and I'll do a plus one on what you were talking about, is actually the Instagram, Facebook team reached out to us, too. Apparently, there are many people internal to Meta that listen to the Bankless Podcast and listen to the Bankless Newsletter.

• 18:24Ryan Sean Adams?

  And I do think that they are absorbing this content, and as David was saying earlier, starting to adopt crypto values. So, when Mark Zuckerberg on the podcast?

• 18:34David Hoffman?

  What's up, Zuck?

• 18:35Ryan Sean Adams?

  Hmm, we'll see. But David, let's show us what's happening, what's cooking in your Instagram account, because I've been so busy this week, man. I'm barely on Instagram anyway. But first of all, by the way, do you use Instagram for crypto stuff, or is this all personal? I'm just curious.

• 18:50David Hoffman?

  Me personally, it's staying connected to old college buddies while also connecting to newer crypto. The crypto socialites, the Web3 socialites are all on Instagram, so yes, there is a growing crypto culture brewing inside of Instagram. But now it's actually in the actual app. So here is a normal Instagram page. I'm not sure if my mouse is gonna make it into this green recording.

• 19:11Ryan Sean Adams?

  We'll see it.

• 19:12David Hoffman?

  But this is a normal Instagram page, but there's this new hexagon with a checkmark next to, in people's profiles. So you have the typical grid of... Pictures, that's normal. And then recently, they added the whole reels thing and there's tagged photos as well. But also, there is a new tab that has the checkmark with the hexagon, which is the same format that Twitter used to talk about its NFTs. So the hexagon with the checkmark verification seems to be the new status quo. This is one of the few artists, the NFT artists, that have been rolled out in this beginning stages of NFTs on Instagram. The handle is The Blue Great. I don't know who that person is. But this is there. This is a digital collectible.

• 19:54David Hoffman?

  This is what Sandeep was talking about, about the read side of the blockchain. So Instagram is reading the Polygon blockchain to look at this NFT, which is now embedded into the actual Instagram app itself on the actual profile. So it's got the little hexagon checkmark with the digital collectible tag. And then when you tap on that, it shows up as, it just gives you a little bit more details. Who minted it, who the artist is. And then also, at the very bottom, you can see this collectible is an NFT on the Ethereum blockchain with a "Learn More" tab. There's not too much here. It's basic read functionality, but the world is the oyster here. There is so much to open up.

• 20:36David Hoffman?

  Here is the Adam Baum squad, who did an NFT drop on Ethereum a while ago. So here's his picture, which is just an NFT with the digital collectible tab. And then here is just like, again, the same sort of like, the profile for like people's NFT page on their Instagram account. So they have a dedicated NFT page on your own Instagram account for the creators out there. So this is just a very logical first step to like displaying and reading the blockchain and displaying the data on the blockchain on people's Instagram pages. I think listeners can start to ideate with their own imagination as about where this could go from here.

• 21:20Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's like, maybe I'm easily impressed, but I don't think so. Because this is just a flag in the ground for what Facebook, Meta, Instagram are going to do in the future, okay? And crossing the Rubicon of actually connecting and basing your strategy on Ethereum, on Polygon, on other blockchains, that is the thing I wasn't ever sure, and I think a lot of people weren't sure they'd actually cross. Back in 2018, it was very much the narrative was Web 2 was going to come and build their own chains and knock out Ethereum, knock out Bitcoin, sort of centralize the universe. That paradigm has completely shifted this cycle. Now it's not

• 22:02Ryan Sean Adams?

  about replacing, it's about building on top of, which is the perfect space. So David, you know how we talk about the DeFi mullet all of the time, okay? This is the Web 2 mullet, man. We got two mullets going on.

• 22:14David Hoffman?

  Creator mullet.

• 22:15Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yeah, it's the creator mullet. And what's happening is we're getting kind of like Web 2 social in the front, and then we've got Web 3 in the back. We've got crypto and we've got blockchain. So you can imagine, listener, if you saw some of the demos, if you're watching on YouTube, what the possibilities are. The ability to now write back to a chain like Polygon or Ethereum, a creator minting their own NFTs, a link out to a place to purchase these NFTs through OpenSea. My God, like NFT passes where there's like pieces of Instagram that are exclusive and you have to have an NFT in your wallet in order to access them. There's so many different ideas here. And if there's one thing Instagram and Facebook and Meta could do, it's actually build

• 23:00Ryan Sean Adams?

  features that their communities want. So, super bullish on what's coming down the pipeline. David, you want to say something before we throw it back to these guys? I know we're having fun speculating here.

• 23:11David Hoffman?

  Right. Yeah. So since you guys are on NDA, the world is our oyster to think about. And we see similar activity going around with Twitter, and we'll get to this later in the show when we talk about the Stripe integration with USDC on Polygon. Twitter is going to be allowing the users, their users, their creators who have ticketed spaces and super follows, these are, these are current features inside of Twitter. They can, the creators can receive payment in USDC on Polygon for this activity on Twitter. You can only imagine what happens when...

• 23:44David Hoffman?

  Instagram elevates itself from not only just reading the blockchain, but reading and writing to the blockchain. As you upload an Instagram post, a movie, a picture, something to Instagram, you can, maybe there's a toggle button saying, "Would you like to mint this as an NFT on Polygon?" And then it's as you make the post on Instagram, it becomes an NFT. And there's already like Web2, TradFi, normie shop features embedded in Instagram today. So it's not that far away from reason to think that USDC on Polygon can be made to purchase NFTs uploaded by creators that got minted on Polygon directly from the Instagram app itself.

• 24:27David Hoffman?

  I know you guys are under NDA, so these are our ideations. Is there anything that has come to mind about these hypothetical use cases? About what you can do with Instagram on Polygon?

• 24:37Ryan Sean Adams?

  Are we in the ballpark, guys?

• 24:38David Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 24:42Speaker 03

  Maybe you are, maybe you are, maybe you are not.

• 24:47Speaker 02

  I didn't really listen to what you guys were talking.

• 24:55Speaker 02

  No, you guys have great ideas. And as we said, this team really knows their thing. And as you said, they're listening to Ben class. And yeah, it's really, really.

• 25:03Speaker 03

  But David, like one more thing, like you said, you presented very nice ideas that what could happen on Instagram. I would say, you know, think even beyond like, I'll just leave it that like. Their vision is pretty grand, like I would say.

• 25:16David Hoffman?

  I have never been told that I need to think bigger, Sandeep. That is, that is first.

• 25:23Ryan Sean Adams?

  It's even more bullish than you think, David.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  But Ryan, you really nailed it. Like this is a big paradigm shift from, you know, co-opting and hijacking Web3 to embracing Web3 and becoming the interface or the gateway to Web3 in a manner similar to centralized exchanges are. You know, centralized exchanges definitely contributed to the ecosystem significantly by onboarding users to the actual Web3 and actual protocols. Here we have, we have basically a company with. Multi-billion user base. Uh, and they are really, really taking this seriously. And this is really a big opportunity for, for the industry and big opportunity for, for Polygon. First of all, now, now you are basically challenged.

• 26:07Speaker 02

  Previously, we were building tech and we were hoping, you know, we will onboard this, this uh, uh, one billion users and onboard the, the world to, to Polygon and Ethereum as we were hoping. Now we have the chance and now we're actually challenged. Now we need to actually even speed up our tech efforts and everything that we're doing to, to basically uh, uh, prove ourselves and, and take this chance that we have.

• 26:31David Hoffman?

  So, uh, Instagram, the way that they're rolling out, they've only rolled it out to a few creators. I think they're doing a slow rollout plan, making sure like nothing breaks and nothing goes wrong. Which is a logical rollout plan, this is par for the course. Uh, as they onboard more and more creators, they'll figure out more and more things to do and be able to iterate better. Uh, but I can only imagine that like when they finally roll this out to the entire Instagram app for all creators and then also all for users, that's a lot of activity. Is Polygon, is a Polygon L2 have the capacity to support Instagram? If they release the NFT minting, NFT transfers, like are you guys? I mean, L2s are scalable, but like there's limits to everything. Are you guys ready to, to be able to host an entire Instagram app of activity?

• 27:18Speaker 02

  A- as I said, like we made it really, we had to be responsible and disclose to them that this technology, this is still, we're in early days of Web3, building this, this infrastructure. This infrastructure will not be built in one year, two years, or three years. Like internet wasn't built in, in five years, it was built over the, the span of 30 years. Something similar, maybe we, we probably don't need 30 years, but you'll still need, I guess, three, four, five years, maybe even seven, until we really have robust, scalable, proven decentralized technology that can support this massive global scale. But that being said, so, so, so we are definitely planning accordingly. We have so many efforts under the Polygon umbrella on the, the cryptography side.

• 28:04Speaker 02

  Improving, optimizing our our providers on the the actual infrastructure side, the remaining of the stack, how we are trying to deal now with state blow tissues with everything that comes. Once you achieve scale, for example, on the on the ZK side, then you need, then you have other problems like, for example, state load creeping creeping in. We need to see how to address that and we are actively looking into that on the hardware side. So we need, basically with some of our efforts, for example, like Plonky 2, I don't want to go too technical now, but some of our ZK efforts, they are really, really optimized to the to the maximum limits of the software itself. Now we have internal very strong hardware acceleration team that is working on now accelerating more in hardware, actually.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  So we have the custom built hardware like FPDAs in the future, ideally ASICs, that we're currently working on. We have internal team, very, very competent, working on that. So we are really, I think we have the right approach. We are taking this very seriously and we are trying to improve on all all possible sides and aspects.

• 29:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, and one more thing I want to say that, you know, we just mentioned that the the team there is pretty, you know, crypto native, right? So they understand all of these challenges, like, you know, what are the, what is the current scale of blockchains? Where you can go and all that. And the way they have, they have designed their product launch strategy is actually takes into account like, you know, that's what I'm saying that, you know, they know it pretty deep as good as us, that what can be done today, what can be done in six months, in 12 months and all that, and they're planning accordingly.

• 29:35Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, that's also very important to say. Maybe it wasn't clear for what I was saying. They have this gradual plan of of embracing, basically, web three and slowly onboarding. And it's also as important thing for them. They cannot bet all in immediately, you know, and and just open the floodgates of their whole user bases and all that. So so I think we are aligned there.

• 29:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  So guys, this in and of itself is absolutely massive meta Instagram, Facebook. Again, 2.9 billion users potentially have a way to now onboard into crypto socially. That's like, that's a lot. So I know like, Mihailo, get your, get your technical capabilities ready. We should also mention that, of course, the in the Facebook announcement post, it was Ethereum and Polygon and also Flow and Solana were other chains that are going to be added to this. So some of that burden might be alleviated, but that in itself is amazing.

• 30:33Speaker 03

  No, I think right now, right now, Ryan, it's only the read and read also is going live with Ethereum and Polygon only.

• 30:40Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay.

• 30:41Speaker 03

  The Solana and Flow are going to come later on.

• 30:43Ryan Sean Adams?

  Yes.

• 30:44Speaker 03

  For the read, for the write, it's like undisclosed from them. They will disclose when the right time comes.

• 30:49Ryan Sean Adams?

  Got it. And so of course, for Bankless listeners, if that wasn't clear, the read portion is where you can actually connect your NFT, be able to see it with an Instagram. That's kind of step one, phase one. But the write portion, that's where things get super interesting for creators, when they can actually mint things on Instagram, straight to the blockchain. And of course, they're going to need a scalable solution in order to do that. So gas fees aren't super expensive. Okay. But that's not the only onboarding path we have. David alluded to it a little bit further up in the episode with Stripe actually coming on board. And this is, I can't even keep track of all of this, but I think it's within the last 30 days,

• 31:30Ryan Sean Adams?

  that Stripe just announced they are going to let clients make payments in USDC, the stablecoin, of course, on Polygon. Again, I'm going back like the old crypto grandpa. I'm going back to the days of 2018, when none of the fintechs would even touch crypto. Okay. It was sort of like, is it a scam? You know, what is this thing? Fintechs completely staying away. Blockchains don't really have a use case, that sort of thing. And now we've got Stripe, a major payment processor. Okay. Stripe is, actually does the payment processing right now for the Bankless newsletter. For example, if you want to become a premium member, we use Stripe under the covers.

• 32:13Ryan Sean Adams?

  So they, I don't even know the scale of Stripe, but almost all of these SaaS, web two platforms use Stripe in some capacity. And now here they are allowing USDC payments and they're using Polygon to do it, starting with Twitter. So again, it's a pilot test, right? The floodgates haven't completely opened. Mihailo and Sandeep, do you guys have any comments on this? Give us some insight. Is this all part of the business development effort? And what are fintechs and the stripes of the world thinking about this?

• 32:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. I'm gonna leave it again to Sandeep. I just want to say it's really, really exciting as you said. Exciting as you said that we are seeing these big names with huge user bases, infrastructure, embracing basically and being ready to embrace web free. And on our side, it's again like one great bin from Sandeep's side and the team that he established. Yeah, so I'm gonna leave.

• 33:05Speaker 03

  So yeah, on the Stripe side, like you know, I mean, the basic part is very clear that you know now the users can actually pay via USDC using Stripe, right, to their account. I think Twitter already is going to pay the creators if the creators choose via USDC. So it's not like a product announcement. There is a client which is actually, you know, Twitter in this scenario where the creators can actually opt in for the USDC payments. And the other part is that, you know, this is a, you know, kind of,

• 33:43Speaker 03

  you know, place where like, for example, this is basically into payments, right? So we, our business development is like, you know, multipronged, right? So, you know, DeFi, there is DeFi, there is gaming, like Polygon Studios, everyone knows, which has gaming and NFT. Then you have like, you know, Web 2 segment and there also we are seeing such a huge growth. Actually, you know, Meta is a part of that, our Web 2 division itself. And then enterprises and all that, which nobody right now even talking and all that. And we have a pretty strong, you know, base that is forming over there also. So, so payment is one part which, you know, has not grown as much it was expected. I think because both BTC and Ethereum payments were not, you know, tenable before.

• 34:27Speaker 03

  But now with, let's say, the layer two, you know, layer two is coming around. We have a Ethereum, like Polygon Harme's rollup is already live, which only supports payments. And then, you know, Polygon POS chain is there, which supports all these stablecoin payments and all that. So the payments are one particular division where we keep, you know, we have a long-term strategic focus. We have like probably to the scale of Stripe or some even bigger players on the payment side. Uh who are you know dabbling with it and probably we'll reach a place where you know hundreds of millions of payments can be routed through uh you know Polygon and you know when people think Polygon right now they all think only Polygon POS but Polygon is a multi-chain uh you know

• 35:07Speaker 03

  ecosystem maybe you know uh maybe there could be a roll-up which is only optimized for payments which could process like you know hundreds of thousands or millions of payments in a single day and you know those roll-ups uh can be there on top of Ethereum and all that so there is a lot happening in that sense and you know this this particular Stripe announcement is a part of a larger concerted effort on the payment side of things uh from us at Polygon.

• 35:34David Hoffman?

  Amazing. A a technical question that I have is uh with people who are using Stripe like businesses, creators, their Stripe is really doing a great job of allowing individuals to create their own shops, stuff like this. Uh where does the address come from? If creators can get paid in USDC via Stripe on Polygon, do creators need to bring their own Ethereum address or does Stripe provide one for them? How does that work?

• 36:01Speaker 03

  No, I think like you know uh in terms of the implementation, I've not seen that interface, but you know uh basically when you are getting the from the ugly discussions, I remember that you know it is basically the the the end user actually brings their address Ethereum address and he gets the payment on on Polygon.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  Okay. It's on their side. Maybe they can even allow to they can even create an address for for user if user doesn't have one. It's a matter of kind of front end.

• 36:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, on the front end, basically you can you can allow multiple wallets. So you can allow Metamask, then you wouldn't have need to bring your own address. You can allow, let's say, a custodial wallet like you know all of these like you know Torres, Bentley, Portis and all that and you can you know with your email you can create an address and get over there and things like that. So all of them are on the cards.

• 36:52David Hoffman?

  Is it is it crazy to think that Stripe might actually get into the custodial game? Because they kind of already are with other payments, right? Like if you are building up a balance based off your sales on Stripe, regardless of whether it's USD from like Visa or USDC on Polygon like and you are building up a balance because you're making a bunch of sales, Stripe is holding that balance for you either way. Uh and so is it that crazy to assume that Stripe would also custody private keys for their users?

• 37:21David Hoffman?

  This probably might be a question for Stripe better.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, we can only speculate, but I believe many of these big traditional payment companies, or even whatever, centralized exchanges, etc., probably most of them will enter this custody business. And it's a fair game, as long as everyone are still able to own their assets and own their private keys, as long as that is not the default, but an added feature for people who actually want it, or service, sorry, as long as we keep the core ethos alive.

• 37:59David Hoffman?

  Right, and Polygon's not the only crypto integration. They also have a partnership with FTX as well. So one can start to begin to imagine what all of these features look like when they start to get stitched together. One last technical question: who pays Polygon gas fees when a USCC transfer happens?

• 38:18Speaker 03

  So, you know, many of the times, like, for example, in case of Stripe also, as far as I'm aware, they are using meta-transactions. And, you know, they cover for the payment, and it's adjusted within the transaction fees.

• 38:36Speaker 02

  Generally, we also have a budget, and we are generally willing to cover these costs, because fortunately, they are still very much negligible most of the time. So it's not really a huge expense, either for us or for that company that is doing the integration, actually.

• 38:57David Hoffman?

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• 39:41David Hoffman?

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• 40:25David Hoffman?

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• 41:10David Hoffman?

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• 41:41Ryan Sean Adams?

  Okay, so guys, the theme of this episode so far has been onboarding the world, which is really what we're beginning to see in a way we've never seen in previous cycles, right? And this is all happening during the so-called bear market that crypto is in, this crypto recession. So this is why we are so bullish on Bankless still. All of this building is getting done. Sandeep, you were kind of talking a little bit about how Polygon fits in, the strategy, this Swiss Army knife of tools that you have. And so now we're seeing the two themes we've discussed so far is Web 2 entering the game, the big social media platforms. Boy, once you get Facebook, I mean, who's bigger than Facebook,

• 42:22Ryan Sean Adams?

  right? So we've got that going on on Polygon. We also have the stripes of the world and the fintechs that are starting to build on crypto rails as well. What is Polygon's strategy in the midst of this? Are you trying to provide like a suite of technical solutions with different degrees of security settlement assurances across the scope? I know we haven't had time to talk enterprise. That's another thing, or gaming. We'll talk about that in future episodes. But even if you're just scoping it to all of the potential opportunities in social media, Web 2, and DeFi, how does Polygon fit in here?

• 43:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, so see, on the technical side, like as we said, and Mihailo can speak more, that the technical solutions are, you know, multi-fold. On the business side, like my goal is that, you know, simply that, you know, if, I mean, I feel that, you know, in this current, since 2020, mid 2020, when some of the proof of stakechains went live, Polygon went live and all that, like the amount of users that we could address on blockchains, you know, suddenly grew from like a few million users a day to probably 10, 15 million users. And with this new wave of scalability solutions like Layer 2s particularly, which are, you know, which we are at the, you

• 43:42Speaker 03

  know, approaching the dawn of Layer 2s very soon. And then, once that comes in, I think we will reach a place where, overall, as an industry... I'm not talking about only Polygon. Overall, as an industry, we could probably support like fifty to hundred million users, right? So, you know, my goal at Polygon is that, you know, if hundred million users are going to come into Web three, how can we, uh, you know, make sure that Polygon is that, uh, you know, uh, the, the transaction layer? And, and you know, then being layer twos like, you know, Ethereum becomes the settlement rate and all that. So that is, that is the way we are approaching into it. And from the, like, I am looking from the business side, like, okay, these, these, these are the various segments.

• 44:23Speaker 03

  And here all we need to speak to the partners and, and, and you know, people who are looking to build and bring them on board. And then, you know, uh, you know, our other co-founders like Mihailo, Janty, and Rag, and, uh, you know, like Polygon, Hermes team, Zero. They all are, you know, working on providing all those tech pieces in place to reach or to realize that vision. So, uh, you know, that's like the, on the higher level, the strategy. And for Polygon, yes, like, you know, we want to be press, present across the spectrum for Ethereum scalability. Whether it's like super net kind of, uh, dedicated chains, because, you know, all these public chains that we see today are kind of like those shared hosting servers that used to be there in, uh, you know, two thousand three, four, five.

• 45:08Speaker 03

  And, you know, many of us, they were used to be in college and we built our first website, we always share, you know, hosted on a cheap shared server. So these current public blockchains are, uh, are, you know, shared servers in that sense, right, in that analogy. But as and when these bigger players are entering the, the field, many of them would need public dedicated chains for them. Like, the chains are still public, fully, like, fairly decentralized or fully decentralized, depending upon the, the player and everything. But it is dedicated to one particular application or one particular DAO, which allows certain applications, uh, to be run on that particular chain. So that, that feature is approaching and our goal is that, that multi-chain future for dedicated chains, for public chains,

• 45:51Speaker 03

  for fully secured chains by Ethereum, or, uh, you know, just connected chains to Ethereum, all of this, you know, should fall under this Ethereum ecosystem. And within this multi-chain blockchain vision that we are building at Polygon.

• 46:05Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. I mean, I can only second that. We see Polygon as Ethereum's multi-chain. We see Polygon as a massively scalable, moving forward massively scalable multi-chain system that consists of multiple public nets, if you want to call them that way, like Polygon POS, Polygon Hermes, etc., and potentially unlimited number of these dedicated networks, which are, as Sandeep said, they can be thought of as an equivalent to dedicated hosting in Web2 world. So nowadays, when Web2 is mainstream and we have these applications with high, with the big user bases, no one is even thinking of shared hosting. They all have their dedicated, dedicated servers, etc. So we see as the industry matures, Web3

• 46:49Speaker 02

  matures, we have, we see Web3 applications reaching product market fit, establishing big user bases, they will, a number of them will move to these dedicated networks. And it's, then it's important to, to basically provide a powerful enough technology for these networks to be built and remain secure with something like Ethereum mainnet.

• 47:14Speaker 03

  Yeah. And one last piece I wanted to add that with like our other, like, you know, I mean, this, this looks like more crypto shilly statement, but you know, the goal is that, you know, with all these Polygon tools around, can we take Ethereum to a 1 million TPS, right? You know, where we were saying that can we take Instagram scale if there are 100 chains, right? And somehow the interoperability is figured out and all that, like, you know, imagine a hundred or thousand chain probably, and each chain has its own, you know, reasonable amount of TPS fast chain, but there are multiple chains on Ethereum. Can overall TPS in the Ethereum ecosystem with Polygon, with other layer tools also, can that touch 1 million TPS or even beyond? Technically, it should be, you know, Mihailo can comment more, technically, it should be infinite TPS on top of Ethereum,

• 47:59Speaker 03

  right? Where Ethereum has a settlement layer providing all that security and decentralization and, you know, the transactions are being done on these layer two chains.

• 48:06Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. In such setup, we're very confident about scalability. Scalability is basically practically unlimited. In that case, we figured out. How to secure all those transactions by Ethereum. So regarding security, regarding throughput, there are no particular concerns at this moment. It's just a matter of time and we're basically racing against the time and working around the clock. And we strongly believe we're going to be the first ones to offer this ZK powered EVM compatible solutions. We are very confident about that right now. So these challenges, we don't consider them as, we consider them solved, basically. We're going to, what we need to focus on is interoperability at some point and how we're going to connect this multitude of chains

• 48:48Speaker 02

  and enable them to exchange messages in some seamless manner. That is something that we need to focus on. But these other challenges like security and throughput, I think they are practically solved. It's just a matter of time now.

• 49:03Ryan Sean Adams?

  I do think for people who haven't listened to our previous episode that we did with Polygon where we sort of broke down the Swiss Army knife of different chain tools that you have and the degrees of kind of security and settlement risks spanning from like side chains to like POS chains, all the way to all of the ZK rollup stuff you're doing. You should go listen to that episode or for Bankless listeners back to that to get the full scope. But there's one thing that you mentioned Sandeep and I'm wondering Mihailo if you could comment on this. So this thing called SuperNets was also launched within the last 30 days or so. This is another, you know, tool on the Swiss Army knife, if you will. What specifically are SuperNets, Mihailo?

• 49:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, so SuperNets are exactly this concept that Tanya and Sandeep previously mentioned of this dedicated blockchain network. So as we said, as the industry is maturing, as Web3 is maturing, we will see more and more applications, ideally with huge user bases. And these applications really need high throughput and the other day even dedicated throughput. They cannot allow themselves to share resources with the 100 or 1,000 other applications and hope for the best, basically. So this is the concept of this application or use case specific. Chains that we are now offering to the to the whole community. What is specific about supernet?

• 50:30Speaker 02

  So the concept of application specific or use case specific chains is not new, of course. What you're offering with with supernets is, we have several, I guess, unique value propositions. Polygon supernets are first of all based on Polygon Edge, which is our framework for building these dedicated blockchain networks. But on top of it, we're offering several things. First of all, we're offering offering this shared security concept where we offer this polygon set of validators that can provide out of the box security for these chains. And in the future, these chains, once the L2 technology is ready, ideally based on CKA, they can upgrade seamlessly to layer tools if they decide to do that. It's completely up to up to these projects.

• 51:16Speaker 02

  So basically, we cover this whole spectrum of of solutions and we provide different options for security, which is not really the case or which was not the case with this previously used application specific chains. On top of it, we are offering this managed service, what we call it. So unfortunately, with these application specific chains, launching them, it's it is easy with Polygon Edge to launch these application specific chains. But maintaining, upgrading them is not really a trivial task, especially for application developers that don't really have that protocol level expertise, don't have expert knowledge, domain knowledge, et cetera.

• 51:57Speaker 02

  So unfortunately, we have recently seen some high profile hacks in not in the polygon ecosystem, but in in these application specific chains. And that is partially because the teams were not really fully ready to to maintain this somewhat complex architecture. So what we're offering with supernets is basically a team of certified partners. These are experienced dev shops and dev teams that can actually help these application teams manage their chains, manage upgrades, manage security, DevOps, et cetera. So it's like a convenient thing for these application developers to basically focus on what they Do the best to focus on their application, focus on their users, on adoption.

• 52:39Speaker 02

  Don't bother kind of with with the with the securing the chain and operating it. And the same goes for this security, whether you opt in to use this polygon validator pool or you opt in to become a layer two. You don't think about security anymore. If you want to bootstrap your own application specific chain, you need to bootstrap a validator set. You need to, if you have a token as an application, you need to think, okay, how I'm going to reward reward the validators now. You need to incorporate that in your token design. So all these things are consuming a lot of bandwidth of you as an application developer. Instead of this, you you kind of, with supranets, you get your dedicated Ethereum compatible chain out of the box. It is optionally managed by one of Polygon's certified partners.

• 53:23Speaker 02

  And what you do, you just build an application the same manner, in the same manner like you would on Ethereum. You deploy it to your dedicated chain. You're part of the Ethereum, wider Ethereum ecosystem. It's being managed for you and you just focus on your application and what you do the best.

• 53:38David Hoffman?

  A line that I recently heard out of HAZU actually has stuck with me and it was that Ethereum has deregulated the market for execution. And I think that is actually a great way to describe what Polygon is up to is that there are infinite many ways to construct an execution layer on top of Ethereum. And Polygon is doing every single one. And it's just throwing everything at the wall and whatever sticks, sticks and whatever's in demand is in demand. And I think that is a really elegant way to find product market fit because you let the market determine as to what they want. And so this openness and permissionlessness about literally the design constructions that can go into Polygon layer twos, I think is is particularly elegant. But Mihailo and Sandeep, I have one last question for you guys.

• 54:23David Hoffman?

  You guys have grown, Polygon has grown insanely. And Mihailo, I ran into you at Dev Connect and you talked about just like the scale of the Polygon team and how that's grown. And there's so many different chains and so many moving parts. And also crypto prices ether is down 65% in the last like four months. And so I'm wondering how you guys are going into this quote unquote bear market. Like, how would you guys plan on weathering the storm? And just overall, do you have any sentiments into the layer two side of this industry as we go into a bear market?

• 54:53Speaker 03

  So, I mean, you know, I mean, as we we do like some of the critical things like, you know, we uh, you know, even though we are moving at this accelerating, you know, speed, but there are some critical fundamentals that we always, you know, take care of. And you guys know that, you know, recently, uh, the part of like that four hundred fifty million dollar fund that we raised, the reason for that was in anticipation of something as catastrophic as this, like, you know, that we experienced. And then we are fairly, you know, I mean, I would say that we are one of the most capitalized, uh, you know, teams in that sense. And one more thing that, you know, for Polygon, how we are seeing this, you know, this decentralized transaction layer that will emerge out, like, you know, how Polygon is built.

• 55:35Speaker 03

  It's it's kind of a, you know, conglomerate of various different independent autonomous teams like Polygon, Hermes, Zero. All these teams collaborate with each other, but they have their full autonomy within their divisions and all that. And eventually, when it emerges out like now with the, including the Polygon, Hermes and Zero co-founders and all that, we have probably like around ten co-founders, right? Kind of like, you know, who will act as the leader figures in the in the in the in the coming days. So it's not dependent on one single party or one, you know, single person in the future when we fully, uh, sort of decentralized. So, you know, we had to take care or, you know, uh, that these die separate teams are amply capitalized for at least three to five years of work, which we believe is, you know, kind of, you know, at max should be the

• 56:20Speaker 03

  unless we get into a great depression kind of situation, you know, like it should be like a one or two year maximum beer cycle. And, uh, you know, we have enough amount of firepower to reach there. And on top of that, we have a, you know, one billion plus dollars worth of, you know, Matic tokens also in the foundation, uh, you know, uh, with even at these prices, right? And maybe probably even more than that. So I think we are fairly settled on that for long haul. And, uh, in fact, like, you know, yesterday only I wrote the mail to, uh, you know, to my team internally also that, you know, uh, to everyone basically, and then, uh, you know, all the founders are also chipping in over there is that, you know, this is The time for us at Polygon to double down.

• 57:05Speaker 03

  This is what we were preparing for, right? You know, this is the beer market where we really shine. Because everybody will will will get throttled out, right? Everybody will slow down and this is the time where we go aggressive on hiring, marketing, you know, business development, building the cutting edge infrastructure, getting the maximum tile, you know, best talent into the into the company. And we are already 400 people strong and we probably, you know, like as a whole, I'm saying the whole Polygon, various different different entities which are contributing to Polygon protocol. And we'll, you know, we believe that within this beer beer market, I think we will grow to probably 800 or 1000 people also, who knows? But you know, the the goal is to build this, you know, large conglomerate which has individual small, small protocol teams.

• 57:50Speaker 03

  But they are highly autonomous at their this thing at their level. But they collaborate and, you know, share resources with each other. Each one has their own well-defined role. So that's the goal we see and, uh, you know, that's how we are preparing for the beer market.

• 58:04Ryan Sean Adams?

  Modular Polygon, just like modular Ethereum, huh?

• 58:07Speaker 03

  Yes, yes.

• 58:08Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. And Sandeep said, we're we're really well capitalized at this point, so we have no concerns on that side. We're more motivated than ever, but we're more optimistic about the future than ever both in terms of the interest that we're seeing now on the adoption side, on the tech side. We have really, really great teams. I am humbled day after day by by the quality of the talent, the time working with the people who are who are building these these advanced solutions at Polygon. So we cannot be really more bullish on the future. And as Sandeep said, he recently, he yesterday sent this email because some of the people working on Polygon got basically concerned, you know, with this whole market crash, what is going to happen? Are we going to cut down our costs and whatnot? Actually, we're planning the opposite, as Sandeep said.

• 58:51Speaker 02

  So we cannot be more really bullish and and optimistic about about the future.

• 58:55Ryan Sean Adams?

  Uh, tell us your thoughts on the market crash. So what happened last week? How do we recover from this, guys?

• 59:01Speaker 02

  I think this was expected, really. And I think what happened with the with the this project that we all, I can even say with Luna, basically. It was it was a Minsky moment, basically, for for crypto. And funny thing, the term misty moment first was used, as far as I know, in 1997, when speculators were putting increasing pressure on some Asian dollar pegged currencies. So in this case, history repeats itself. So I think the whole market went a little bit irrational. We became a little bit reckless as an industry, as the whole community. We kind of saw signs of something like this happening.

• 59:43Speaker 02

  And I can only say that it's really fortunate that this happened now, not in, let's say, one, two, three months from now, the impact would be probably even bigger. So we are still kind of lucky, and I would say crypto gods still saved us to a certain extent. And yeah, I think as every market correction, it's, at the end of the day, it's really healthy. Like, we really need to get rid of speculators, people with monster egos, people who don't really approach the whole founder concept responsibly, and people who are investing irrationally. We really need to kind of level down and calm our heads.

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  And that's basically a healthy foundation for us to move forward. That being said, the fundamentals of the industry have never been this strong. The fundamentals are, I don't know, my blowing is strong, I would say so. We have really zero concerns about the long-term perspective of the industry, but this correction was really kind of, you could see it coming, and I think it was unavoidable, and better that it happened now than in one, two, three, or six months.

• 1:00:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, but I mean, I as a human being, like, you know, I mean, I feel that, I feel for the community, like, I mean, I think you guys also multiple times said that, you know, overall, it was no fault of Luna community, which, you know, many of them were very passionate supporters also over there, and I hope that the builders in that community somehow are able to survive and, you know, figure out their challenges. Obviously, we invite all of them to Ethereum, because this is, you know, we believe that, you know, this is the, this is the, this is the place to be. And then individually, as the team members also like, you know, I also tweeted out like, you know, as human beings like they, I, I, I, I, I know that I think that Doe recently had a baby and I also like last Friday had a baby and you know, imagine I had to spend like four

• 1:01:39Speaker 03

  days without even, you know, looking at five for five minutes at him, you know, I'll be going crazy. So as a human being like I also, you know, tweeted out that I hope team maintains that, okay, at the end of this, this is not beyond life, right? So, okay, you know, this was a big mistake, big, you know, problem that, that got created or, you know, they created, I still find like, hopefully, uh, they would have more chances in future to come back. Uh, but nothing is, you know, bigger than the, the, the lives that we, that we have. So everybody like, uh, for the community, for the team members, I would, you know, request them to calm down and, you know, think about the future instead of like, you know, uh, being sad about this, like, of course, it will take some time, but this too shall, shall pass.

• 1:02:25Ryan Sean Adams?

  Well said, well said. Let's, let's end it there. Let's end it there. This too shall pass is a great, is a great ending. And at the end of the day, if you were affected by, um, the Luna events of, of last week, um, you know, life goes on. You can pick yourself up. All of us have been, have done things in crypto. We've regret, we've all ached into things. Uh, we have gotten back up and we've recovered and been better for it. And I think the industry will be better for it as well.

• 1:02:50David Hoffman?

  And this is still the greatest financial opportunity of all time. Uh, and so we still can't forget that.

• 1:02:57Ryan Sean Adams?

  Absolutely. The best opportunities are ahead. Guys, we've gone through so much today. Okay. We just talked about onboarding the world through Instagram, adding NFTs and the fintechs like Stripe, adding Polygon and Ethereum capabilities, stable coins, USDC. And then we talked about how do we build through the bear market. So Sandeep and Mihailo, thank you so much for joining us. This has been a fantastic episode.

• 1:03:22Speaker 03

  Yep. Thank you, guys. Thank you for inviting us here.

• 1:03:25Speaker 02

  Thank you so much, guys.

• 1:03:25Speaker 03

  Always a pleasure.

• 1:03:27Ryan Sean Adams?

  Of course, as always, risks and disclaimers, guys. Crypto is risky. We say this every episode. I hope you realize it. We make it a point. You could definitely lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It's not for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the Bankless journey. Thanks a lot.