Superfluid with Francesco Renzi | ETHDenver 2023 Interview #2

Sometimes, the frontier is at a crypto conference. One of the most prestige being, ETHDenver! We’re back with a handful of exclusive interviews with some of the most fascinating minds in crypto. Wish you could make it to all the crypto conferences, but don't have the time? Don't worry, Bankless brings the frontier to you. In this episode, we’re talking to Francesco Renzi, CEO and Co-Founder of Superfluid, the real-time settlement solution for the 21st century. Fran and David discuss how games are leveraging Superfluid, why Fran is bullish web3 gaming, and what the cross-chain Superfluid ecosystem may look like. ------ 📣 RhinoFi | Makes DeFi Frictionless https://bankless.cc/rhino ------ 🚀 JOIN BANKLESS PREMIUM: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/subscribe ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS: ⚖️ ARBITRUM | SCALING ETHEREUM https://bankless.cc/Arbitrum 🐙KRAKEN | MOST-TRUSTED CRYPTO EXCHANGE https://bankless.cc/kraken 🦄UNISWAP | ON-CHAIN MARKETPLACE https://bankless.cc/uniswap 👻 PHANTOM | #1 SOLANA WALLET https://bankless.cc/phantom-waitlist 🦊METAMASK LEARN | HELPFUL WEB3 RESOURCE https://bankless.cc/MetaMask 🚁 EARNIFI | CLAIM YOUR UNCLAIMED AIRDROPS https://bankless.cc/earnifi ------ Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 3:35 Superfluid Explained 4:02 Streaming Payments 5:06 Adoption 5:45 Games Leveraging Superfluid 6:08 Building New Economies 6:51 Bullish Web3 Gaming? 8:20 Does Crypto Solve Gaming? 9:14 Crosschain Superfluid Ecosystem 10:05 Closing & Action Items ----- Resources: Fran https://twitter.com/FrancescoRenziA Superfluid https://twitter.com/superfluid_HQ ----- 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://www.bankless.com/disclosures

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

• 0:12David Hoffman?

  We're here at the Interop Summit Series. Coming up next is Fran from Superfluid. What is Superfluid? It does streaming payments. And Fran's got some interesting takes about who and where streaming payments is getting adopted in the Web3 landscape. Small disclaimer here, Ryan and I are investors in Superfluid. But first, before we get into that conversation with Fran from Superfluid, a moment to talk about these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible. Kraken is our strategic sponsor for 2023. Why? Because Kraken has been around for over 12 years and has proven itself to be deeply aligned with the crypto industry. Trusted centralized crypto platforms are hard to come by these days, which makes the few remaining ones even more valuable. With over 9 million users and not a cent lost, choosing Kraken as our strategic sponsor for 2023 was a no-brainer.

• 0:54David Hoffman?

  We need exchanges like Kraken to provide the on-ramps to get people to go bankless. And Kraken's emphasis on security and transparency makes us feel good about having them as a sponsor. If you're unsure about your centralized exchange or on-ramp, perhaps open an account with Kraken today. And if you're unsure about the rest of Web3, well, then maybe you should get your learn on with MetaMask Learn. Learning about crypto is hard. There's no one out there to hold your hand to get into this industry, until now. MetaMask Learn is the best place I've ever seen to send someone to learn everything there is to know about Web3. If you're a company trying to onboard employees, or you're a son or daughter trying to onboard your boomer parents, MetaMask Learn is the place to send them. Interactive and engaging lessons making learning about Web3 fun and easy.

• 1:38David Hoffman?

  Now, once you're through Kraken's gates and you've taken the MetaMask course on what's a DEX, you're safe to make your first stop into the world of DeFi. Where better to start other than Uniswap? Uniswap is, of course, a decentralized exchange for crypto asset trades and swaps, but it's now also an NFT aggregator as well, making Uniswap some of the best decentralizing trading tech that's out there. Uniswap's big announcement at ETH Denver is their Uniswap Wallet, which is waiting to get released to the public as soon as Apple stops being a big old bully about crypto apps in the App Store. Uniswap is based Basically on every chain that's relevant in the crypto ecosystem. So if you want to use Uniswap, but with the cheapest possible fees, then use Uniswap on Arbitrum. The Arbitrum Layer 2 is the host of Ethereum's most vibrant DeFi and NFT communities.

• 2:22David Hoffman?

  Arbitrum is already surpassing the ETH Layer 1 in transaction volume, and it's not even close to full capacity. With so many vibrant communities on Arbitrum, Arbitrum is a good place to call home for the era of Layer 2s. Speaking of settling into new homes, the Phantom Wallet is now available on both Ethereum and Polygon. That's right, the number one wallet on Solana is expanding into the Ethereum ecosystem. Phantom is the one wallet for everything. Displaying NFTs, making NFT trades, swapping tokens, staking tokens. So if you're a multi-chain surfer or an NFT power user, then the Phantom Wallet is for you. It also comes in mobile. Check it out at phantom.app. Now, let's get into the interview. Bankless Nation, we are here still at the Interoperability Summit, hosted by Axelar, and I'm here with Fran, the CEO and co-founder of Superfluid. What's up, Fran?

• 3:05Speaker 01

  Hey, yeah, it's great. There's a lot going on. Denver is even busier than I've seen it last year, so.

• 3:10David Hoffman?

  Yeah, so were you here at ETH Denver last year?

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's my fourth time.

• 3:13David Hoffman?

  Fourth time, yeah. That's all of the times, I think?

• 3:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, probably.

• 3:18David Hoffman?

  Yeah, I think that's right. Not many people I've seen also have been there all of the times. ETH Denver last year, fun fact, Bankless Nation, 13,000 people. I think we've counted 18,000 people here this year in a bear market.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  That's insane. Build market, not bear market.

• 3:33David Hoffman?

  Excuse me, how dare I? Fran, speaking of build market, what's your building?

• 3:37Speaker 01

  So Superfluid is a decentralized protocol that allows you to stream money. So using Superfluid, you can basically make one transaction on-chain, which initiates a recurring payment that happens every second. So you can use this for all sorts of different things, from payroll to token vesting. And also, a use case we're very excited about, which is subscriptions, and subscriptions in games. So that's something we've launched recently, seeing a lot of success with.

• 4:02David Hoffman?

  Okay, subscriptions in games. And like, first off, how does this work? Streaming payments, like technically, how does that work?

• 4:08Speaker 01

  So technically, Superfluid has its own token standard, which is an extension to ERC 20.

• 4:13David Hoffman?

  Okay.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  And that token standard enables streaming, the same way a normal token has transfer. So you can do, you know, token dot transfer or token dot stream, right? And streaming is basically moving money every second from one account to another. And when you build it in your game, it allows you to do things like receive rewards every second, or for example, pay a fee every second to get access to a particular part of the game, right?

• 4:36David Hoffman?

  And I think people who go down the crypto rabbit hole, they kind of get that pitch of you could pay per byte of internet access, or you could have your payroll per paid to per second. This is that technology that unlocks that, right?

• 4:48Speaker 01

  That is exactly it. So the world that we imagine in the future is everybody's getting their payroll every second. They're paying their subscriptions every second. They're paying their rent every second. You know, they're getting their dividends every second. Everything is streaming around fluidly on-chain.

• 5:02David Hoffman?

  Okay, and unlocking capital, all of that cool stuff. Where are you seeing adoption of Superfluid? What's getting picked up on the move?

• 5:09Speaker 01

  So that's the tricky thing, right? Adoption is really hard. There's not that many users in Web3. And building an economy based on streams is gonna take a long time, right? Objectively, it's hard. But when you build a game, you can design your in-game economy from scratch, right? And you can design that in-game economy to use this capital efficiency, to use this coolness of streaming from the ground up. And that's where we're seeing a lot of adoption now. We integrated with a game called Planet IX a couple of weeks ago, and they got 25,000 users in a matter of two days.

• 5:40David Hoffman?

  Wow. Oh, this is a crypto game. Got 25,000 users in two days.

• 5:44Speaker 01

  That's a crypto game, yes.

• 5:46David Hoffman?

  And how is a crypto game leveraging Superfluid?

• 5:48Speaker 01

  So basically, it's a strategy game. You have a base, and the basic is free. But if you want to expand your base, you have to rent extra land. And to rent that land, you have to stream their token, right? So you stream the token to the contract. It gives you access to the land, and you basically get better yields, and you grow faster in the game. So it's a bit of a play to earn.

• 6:09David Hoffman?

  And so you're making a bet that rather than trying to deconstruct parts of the economy that already exists, you'd rather inject Superfluid into new economies that are being born right in this day and age?

• 6:19Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. But obviously, it's a stepping stone, right? But if you look at gaming historically, it's been where adoption happens, right? It's gaming and porn, right? Porn, we maybe don't want to get into.

• 6:30David Hoffman?

  We'll save that one for a later day.

• 6:31Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. Gaming, right? You can build unique experiences, and people will adopt new behaviors, not because it's better for them, but just because it's fun, right? So you can introduce these behaviors, and then, you know, when all of your in-game assets are streaming to you... You're gonna ask your employer to stream your salary, right? And that is the next step, but that will take a bit longer.

• 6:50David Hoffman?

  So a lot of people across the Web3 ecosystem are really hammering this idea that it's going to be gaming that really is the next big wave in crypto. And that's a really awesome narrative. It's harder to vet how true that is. But as someone who is actually working with games and they're integrating Superfluid to some respect, what's your vantage point? Where do you believe it stand on like the whole Web3 gaming is the new bull market? What are your attitudes there?

• 7:15Speaker 01

  I think it's very hard to deny, right? Like, we've struggled to get users, right? We get a customer, they're streaming money, right? There's 15 people in a team, right? 15 people streaming salaries. And then we do one integration with one game and we get 25,000 unique users in two days, right? The scale is different. And the scale is different because the use case is lower friction. It's much easier to get into a game than to get a job at a Web3 company, right? So there's a ton of opportunities. And all of those users onboarded for gaming, they learn to use MetaMask, they learn what self custody is, they learn how to use OpenSea, they learn how to use Uniswap. And guess what? That becomes their financial life, right?

• 7:58Speaker 01

  So all those users onboarded will stick around as long as these games are fun, they're engaging, and they have these engaging in-game economies, right? And you tell me, is there a better place to build an in-game economy than on-chain?

• 8:13David Hoffman?

  Right. Yeah, so you're a big plus one on the Web3 gaming is the next bull market. Not a meme, that's a real thing?

• 8:19Speaker 01

  Not a meme, not a meme.

• 8:20David Hoffman?

  What's your attitude or belief that crypto mechanisms actually can make games more fun rather than getting in the way of UX and UI? Like, how do you think that that problem is gonna get solved?

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Well, that's for the game designers in the room, right? I would argue it's another tool, right? But it's a tool that doesn't have competitors, right? In Web2, you just can't do this stuff. The interoperability is a new thing that people have to learn, right? When you're building a game in Web2, it's a world garden, you make all the rules. In Web3, you have composable assets. You don't make all the rules anymore, right? You literally can't know what will happen with the assets you create. And that is harder to reason about, but it's a massive opportunity. And whoever cracks it and manages to create games that are engaging, composable, you know, maybe other people can build games using the same assets. Whoever can crack that is gonna have a massive success that can't be replicated in Web2.

• 9:14David Hoffman?

  So you said the word interoperability, which will bring us back to the beginning of this interview because we're at the Interop Summit here hosted by Axolar. And how does Superfluid work with other chains? You said it was an extension off of the ERC20 token. Does that constrain you to the EVM world? Or like, how does Superfluid work in the cross-chain ecosystem?

• 9:31Speaker 01

  So at the moment, we're deployed on eight different EVM networks. And we are planning to scale that to pretty much every EVM network. It's much easier for us to deploy there. At the same time, somebody actually built for a hackathon a proof of concept on Starknet, which was very good. And they now got a grant to finish that up. So we're very excited. Starknet is going to be our first non-EVM implementation. And I think, long-term, Superfluid is going to be everywhere, right? It's a token standard, tokens are everywhere. Superfluid has to be everywhere as well. It's going to take a while, it's a lot of work, but it's worth it, right?

• 10:05David Hoffman?

  If people have been piqued by this interview and they want to learn more, where should they go?

• 10:09Speaker 01

  So follow us on Twitter, that's superfluid_hq. Go to our website, that's superfluid.finance. Come to our Discord, that's discord.superfluid.finance. And for any developers out there, very interesting opportunity. We host a hackathon every month. It's called the Superfluid Wave Pool. Whatever you build on Superfluid, or even if you just make content, you can submit it. And we're doing prizes every month. There's different themes, different prizes, different cosponsors. So a lot of opportunity to build with us and make that future we're talking about a reality.

• 10:42David Hoffman?

  Amazing, Fran. Thank you so much for walking me through it.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you.

• 10:45David Hoffman?

  Cheers.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  Cheers.