PoolTogether Community Podcast #11: Brendan

This is the PoolTogether Community Podcast. PoolTogether is the world's number one no-loss prize savings account. You can visit pooltogether.com to deposit. Thanks for listening to the PoolTogether Community Podcast. I'm your host, Tim, and we are here today With Brendan, co-founder of Pull Together. Brendan, how are you doing?

Good to be here.

You, uh, I, let's be, let's be real. We gotta admit it's, the podcast is a little delayed right now. I mean, it's, it's on time for everybody listening asynchronously, but for the Discord, you had to go make some coffee. So tell me about your coffee, Brendan.

Yeah, fair. I'll, I'll dive right in. So, um, yeah, this, this is actually a coffee made with, uh, a very fancy coffee maker. I, I will post the photo, but it's, uh, it's called a ROK, R-O-K. And this coffee maker is kind of like, um, kind of like a wine bottle opener in that you, um, squeeze this thing and it compresses a cylinder and, um, it fires the hot water that's in the cylinder through to, um, you know, the, uh, Actual traditional espresso handle thing. I don't know the names of any of these things, but if you guys know the, uh, if you've ever worked at a coffee shop, you've got the things that you actually load the coffee into, then you tamp it out on a, you know, a knock box or all that stuff. Anyway, it's, it's a little bit artisanal, I guess. Um, but, uh, what I like about it is that it's just like a beautiful unit that is just Handmade or hand-compressed and is easy to wash. So I'm all about simplicity and this kind of minimalism. And this is a good example of that. So that's what I use to make the coffee. And then the coffee itself is just from a local roaster. And yeah, I like to favor the local fancy coffee shops. So that's my coffee. That's the coffee story. And so yeah, we were delayed a few minutes because I had to go do it. This is my time for my second cup of coffee. And so I've got to get that shot of caffeine or it won't be normal. So I've got to, yeah, I want to be, I want to be on point for this podcast for you guys.

Listener, listener, Brennan has, has posted a picture of what looks like a corkscrew that you would put on top of a wine bottle. But there is no corkscrew. It's just like a, yeah, I don't even know how this works. But where does the water go, Brendan?

So you'd see, so it's, imagine a syringe, except instead of just kind of pushing this thing, it's cranked through with arms that are kind of like a wine bottle cork opener. So it's sort of like a mix of a syringe and a wine bottle cork opener, and that is compressing hot water, squeezing it through. Because apparently for the best flavor, it's all about pressure. You want to get that water pressure up on the coffee beans and that'll extract all the, all the goodness that you want.

So, Brandon, I hate to break it to you, but I think someone sold you a Keurig machine, but just an artisanal Keurig. I think that's what this is.

Oh man. No way. You know, the original engineer on the Keurig feels bad about it because it produces so much garbage and they say it's recyclable, but who's actually going to clean out all the coffee grains? It's just silly. Just silly.

You're so right. You're so right. Yeah, this, I mean, I'm a, I'm a coffee connoisseur myself and I, I'm a big fan of the AeroPress and it seems like a similar, a similar vibe to the AeroPress.

It is. And that's the, I use an AeroPress for camping. That's the best camping coffee maker. And if you don't have a metal filter, get yourself a metal filter for $10 worth, just totally worth it. You won't be producing paper all the time.

That's right. But the thing about the, the metal filter, however, is that you need to get your grind right because if it's too fine, you're gonna get sediment. You'll get like a sludge at the bottom. But if you can do like a, if you can do, especially with those hand grinders on your campsite, right? If you can do a French press, like a little bit coarser than sand, if you can get that, then you, then you reduce your sludge.

I think I've got an espresso metal filter, but that impresses me that you are grinding at the campsite. That is, that is next level.

Oh yeah. Yeah. If, if you're, if my beans need to be beans up until I'm pouring hot water on them. So that's like, yeah, I gotta have the manual grinder. My wife wants to punch me in the face, but yeah, it's, you know, you gotta have the coffee, right? It's gotta be, it's all about the process. It's all about the art. And Brandon, I'm so glad that you are, you are caffeinated with me today. I've switched recently to cold brew because I get more bang for my buck. And cold brew's an 8-hour process.

All right. Are you part of the, uh, First Mint community? Do you know what that is?

No, please tell me.

So they're all about the cold brew. Um, it kind of became a meme for them because they had a cold brew anytime the Top Shot drop happened. And, uh, yeah, it just became kind of a meme in the community. And so it's funny to hear you say that as well, because, uh, yeah, they're all about that.

Oh geez. I need, so first mint. Okay. This is going to be a really in-depth and weird podcast description that we're going to create for this episode. What's all the coffee?

Yeah.

Cool. Well, Brennan, I would love to hear how you got into PoolTogether, how you got into crypto, how you came to be in this world. Just your whole story. If you could start from the top and give us all the exciting details.

Yeah, for sure. Well, my father's from Ontario and I'm just kidding. No, you guys want to hear about the actual crypto stuff. So let's, let's dive into that. So, you know, like we were saying before, how you are getting started just by kind of doing things. I did the same thing back in 2018, I think it was. I started, I was on a quote unquote sabbatical. I was working for the startup and it kind of went sour and So I decided to just do my own thing for a while. And part of that, a big part of that was doing research in 2 different areas that I was really interested in. One was machine learning. I went and did the Coursera course and it was great. It was really interesting. It turned out to be more academic than my taste desired. And so I did the next thing, which was blockchain. And being a programmer, I wanted to build stuff. And obviously you can't build anything with Bitcoin. And so I got immediately into Ethereum and those were the dark ages of Ethereum too. No one remembers how there used to not be any error messages. It would just, the transaction would fail. And there was, it was such rough tooling back in the day, but it was also fascinating. It was like, you know, 'cause blockchain introduces these, the property of scarcity into the digital world. And so What can you do with that? It's such a unique design space that, and what I loved about it was that granted blockchain itself is complex. The actual creation of dApps, like smart contracts, they're quite simple. They're pretty similar to, it's like writing like a simplified version of C. It's not, there's very little complexity there. It's all just mostly mathematics and you know, I mean, with regard to financial software anyway, and kind of just assets and what do those assets represent? That's just what is so interesting. And so needless to say, I got really interested in and started writing about it. And I wrote a few pieces that dove deep into the internals of several projects, projects like Augur, which was a big one back in the day, and Colony as well, which I think is still around. I think both of those are still around, but Perhaps they just never quite made it. But, and then I basically got a consulting gig because of that, because they saw, oh, hey, this guy knows how to actually use this tech. Let's reach out to him. And at that point, so I started working for them and I actually roped in an old colleague of mine, a fellow you've spoken with named Chuck. And he and I formed a dev shop, an Ethereum-exclusive dev shop called Delta Camp. And we ran that for, I think it was about a year and a half before he met Leighton. And in that time, I'd been going to different conferences and really more than ever, more than any time in my life, I'd really tried to get into this industry and meet the people behind it because I just found it so fascinating. And you have to keep in mind, back in 2019, there were It was, it was, you know, the bear market. The, it was still a very young industry. It was still full of ideologues. It was still full of people who were there due to passion, due to this sort of their, their desire to make the internet free again. And those people are still present, but there are a lot of people just looking to make a quick buck, looking to speculate. There's people looking to just make a bunch of money. And while there's really nothing wrong with that, it kind of begins to lose its edge, sort of the reason to be, which was to become this decentralized tech that was censorship resistant, that was permissionless and open to everyone in the world. And so, you know, projects adhere to that to different degrees. It's difficult to make things totally decentralized, but I think it's something that we should aspire to. And it's one of those things where it's all well and good until the shit hits the fan. And that's when you're like, oh crap, I wish this was more decentralized or censorship resistant or robust or what have you. Anyway, so I was doing a lot of networking and getting into the space and ended up hustling enough to get us enough work to basically build Ethereum dApps full-time. And so we did that for about a year and a half and then At ETH Denver in 2019, I met Leighton. Actually, I didn't meet him. So how it was structured back then, and it might still be the case, I haven't been to the most recent one though, 2021 or 2022, basically the one that just happened, I guess that's 2022, is on the Thursday night. So it's a hackathon. So people build, get into groups and build a project between Friday and Saturday night. Sunday morning is the submission time where they get judged and whatnot. On the Thursday night prior, there was a pitch night where the different people can come, different participants can come and pitch their idea to an audience of the mix of developers, designers, business people, blah, blah, blah, all the participants of the hackathon. They can pitch this idea in the hopes to gather together like-minded people who want to build this thing together. And so This was all happening around the time Compound started to blow up. And Compound was a decentralized lending protocol, is a decentralized lending protocol. It hasn't vanished by any means, but it's the OG one. And they were just getting big around the time that ETH Denver happened. And so they were top of mind for a lot of people. And so Leighton's pitch was to build on top of Compound, this idea of a no-loss lottery of a prize-linked savings account. And it sounded like a very simple idea. And I mean, ostensibly it still is, even though it's actually quite complex under the hood. But it, I thought it was such a brilliant idea because it's so simple and it exposes finance to people that In a way that's understandable. You know, it's not like we created a new, you know, liquid futures options protocol or whatever. Like no one knows, regular human beings don't know what that is. You know, you need to come at them with something a bit simpler than that, that still is fun to play and still has rewards that they can, you know, take advantage of. And so the idea really attracted me. And so after he pitched, I walked up to him and said, hi. And that was really our first meeting. But I really just wanted to say hi because Chuck and I went in with a pretense of building a sort of if this, then that for Ethereum because we saw a need for it. And, you know, there's still a need for it. You know, people really haven't nailed that yet, but I'm sure it'll come eventually. We got close with one, but anyway, that's another story. And so Chuck and I went and, you know, we worked, We paired on this project and we built it. We did quite well. We got top 20 out of 120. We went on stage and did all that stuff. And, um, you know, I was happy with our performance, but at the very end of the weekend, it was a Sunday night and it was the beers. It was the, the, the final beers. I mean, you know, kind of after the presentations and I saw Leighton walking around and I pulled him in and, um, I was like, hey, how'd it go? And, you know, he said like they got a bounty, they did okay in terms of getting some cash, but the product didn't work in the end. They couldn't quite get it together. And so basically I was like, hey, you know what? We run a dev shop. Let's, we can build this for you. And, you know, we got along well with Leighton. He's a really nice guy. And so he ended up contracting us to build the first version of this. And it did well enough that Maker then funded the second round. And then after that, VCs came knocking and that's when we decided to band together, the 3 of us, and form PoolTogether officially as a startup. And so it was an exciting time and that was back in, I mean, really we started working on it in basically April of 2019 and I think the company was just formalized in August, the following August. So in April it will have been 3 years, which is decades in crypto time. Decades. And so, yeah, it's really awesome to be here. It's really awesome to have brought PoolTogether to this point. I mean, the first version was built in like, you know, 5 days. It was built in a week and it was very, very simple and was of course riddled with problems, but also enjoyed the low gas of Ethereum in 2019. And so, but it's just, it's a very different landscape now and it's been interesting to be a part of that evolution. There's been a lot of challenges, but It's also, there's also been a heck of a lot of learning. So yeah, it's very, it's amazing tech and I'm still totally committed and still totally believe in it too. After all these years, I'm not jaded. Isn't that amazing? I still love this. I still love all this stuff. So yeah, that's the story of my, you know, my intro to crypto and kind of where PoolTogether came from and was born out of.

J-J-Jaden. Uh, so what's your, what's your, how has Pull Together surprised you? And I want a, a, a positive and a negative surprise.

Hmm. How has it surprised me? Um, I think one thing that has surprised me, which is something that as, 'cause so, so prior, prior to the dev shop, prior to the contracting, I really, I was just a software developer, you know, I was, you know, working, you know, just regular jobs and contracts here and there. And so I wasn't really exposed necessarily to the, I guess, the perhaps, I guess, marketing side, I would even say, Tim, in that it's the side of the product where you're really facing the customers. You're really sort of discussing the merits and value of the brand. And what's been interesting is when we, one of the things that attracted me about PoolTogether was that it really resonated with me in terms of values, in terms of, you know, being a safe product, being something that empowers regular people to save money. And I think that that has really just been infused in everything we've done. And what I think is so cool is that The community sees this and people have leaned into this and they really get it. They really, you know, the community's risen up and embraced these values that we haven't even explicitly articulated. You know, I think MK, there's a governance post that was posted. I mean, this is months ago at this point and it's rejuvenated from time to time, but it talked about forming like not a constitution, but like a set of values that the community embraces. And I think what is so amazing is that, um, that the community, there's, it's, it's kind of tacit anyway. We, we all are sort of behaving within these certain boundaries that we haven't actually explicitly talked about, at least in repetition, but, um, it's sort of been born out of just this feeling, this, this, this sort of the values in this core product. And I, and I love that. I think, and I've, and I've said this up before, um, Oh yeah. Yeah. And, uh, and Chark is actually going to pursue that as well. I think he's putting the, uh, the list of values together just to add to that, uh, more concretely. Um, but that is something that has really blown me away and being, I mean, outside of all of this, I'm, I'm basically cynical in every other facet of my life. And so to see that kind of, that wonderful, uh, organic kind of system of values emerge from this, this kind of, um, This core of just safety and social finance, I think is really amazing. I've really loved that about this. And I've said this before and I maintain this, that I love our community. It's a bunch of like really good people and everyone's super positive. It's not some kind of pump and dump and, you know, let's make it, you know, let's risk a ton of money to make it mad. Like it's, there's nothing toxic about this community. And I've really, really liked that. So I think that's been something. Something I really enjoyed. I think, um, I mean, in terms of the negatives, I think for me, it's, it's not really negatives. It's more observations, things like people don't read. Um, this is something that I've, I've, there's a theme that's been pretty consistent through the product is that we've needed to write less and less text because, um, people don't actually read anything. And we've had users Who have depo— like for example, this one fellow that, or, or, or woman that deposited, I think must've been like $70,000 or something, but had no idea how the system worked. Didn't know that, you know, when you, if you tried to kind of exit prematurely, that, you know, you would be, you know, have potentially occur an exit fee. And it blew me away that people aren't actually paying that close of attention. That, 'cause of course when I'm, if I'm moving around any amount of money, I'm going to read the fine print and make sure that, you know, I know what's going on, but it's like, um, it's really caused me to think even more so that we are like shepherds and really we do need to actually take care of these people, these users. Um, because I didn't realize how vulnerable they were to any kind of sharp edges and that no one's paying, no one's paying attention. So I'd say that's more of an observation, less of a negative. It's more of a, been a point of learning for me in that, um, This thing has to have nothing but rounded corners. It's like we need to treat, you know, some people, some people you need to treat as if they're just going to push all the buttons and be like the classic monkeys that are writing Shakespeare, you know? So of course there are plenty of brilliant users as well who actually, you know, come at us being like, hey, I think you can optimize your algorithm this way. But, but it's interesting to see the broad spectrum.

That ties in nicely with our episode from the previous week. We interviewed Ivy who does UX for Cordonnay and for Sushi. And, uh, she's just, it was really a treasure trove of information on her findings in the space. So that ties right into what you're talking about. And as a marketer, yeah, I feel bad for copywriters because they put so much effort into all this stuff, but really it's like, what's the big, bold, 2 words that really stand out. That's all that matters, really.

Yeah, exactly.

So Brendan, what if you had a, if you had your own like baseball card or superhero card, Marvel card, and you had like your stats on the back, what would be like your, your top attributes? I should, I should use crypto speak. If you were, if you were an NFT, what would your, like, what would your rare attributes be?

Oh man. What would my rare attributes be? That's an interesting question. I would say, well, first off, full disclosure, I only have a couple of the— oh, thanks, Andy. Well, I'm voted by the crowd, ability to speak coherently and eloquently. Thank you. I hope so. You know, if people aren't reading it, let's hope that they're listening at least, you know? So I only have a few NFTs and one of them is the I'm very proud of this one is like the, was it Super Elusive Hacker? Ah, shit. I can't even remember what it was, but it's this, it was released a little while ago and it's for developers that have, you know, deployed more than, I don't know, 300 or 400 contracts to mainnet, something like that. And I was eligible for that. So I did enjoy that, but that's pretty much, you know, the strange little exclusive. I guess I would, I'd pride myself on being able to listen and see patterns. Um, this is, it's kind of subtle, but you know, with our community being able to see the patterns of behavior and then try to develop structure around that, I actually, there's more things I want to do. Um, but I, I see that as being really important. It applies to both code in terms of seeing commonalities and logic that you can abstract into, um, say a shared library or some kind of abstraction. But it applies to people as well, is these behaviors and recognizing these behaviors and being able to form people into teams or structures. There's more that I'd like to do with the DAO because I really want to empower more people. And so I, okay, so just to come back to the list, so I'd say, you know, recognizing those patterns is, I think, I think it's something I'm good at. And yeah, as well as articulating that, as well as Teaching, you know, I think a lot of the days, a lot of days that I'm working, I'm trying to distill concepts down to their essence so that, you know, our team understands it or community understands it, really trying to make sure that I, I understand it well enough that I can explain it as well. And I think that's really important is we need to be able to have a shared understanding. of whatever, whatever it is that we're working on. So I think, um, I think that's another really important skill. So yeah, but beyond that, I don't know, uh, expert coffee drinker. Uh, let's see, guy who sits in front of his computer all day. I'm really good at that. Um,

you have to have like a, uh, a weird one, like upside down smoking pipe or, you know, or like, uh, you know, these NFTs with the unique arrow through the head. Or something, you know?

Yeah, exactly. Goofiness, silliness, for sure.

Right. That's right. Uh, yeah, definitely coffee mug. So what do you think that PoolTogether needs and what are you excited about for PoolTogether in the near future?

Well, there's so much. There is just so much. So, um, short-term or shorter-term, I believe that we need to do more with the Pool token. We need to make sure that our pool— there's so much more we can do with tokenomics to basically grow PoolTogether. And then I think a lot of good things will percolate out of growth in terms of traction with users, in terms of the You know, community involvement in terms of people wanting to contribute. And it's, there's, you know, we have this pool token that's sitting there that people are quote unquote governing with, but there's so much friction between coming in and be like, okay, how do I affect change? And then actually doing it. It's incredibly opaque. And that is, that's a huge problem to me. I want to create better channels, better funnels through people. I mean, Shark has done a good job starting an onboarding call. We need to go beyond that and actually have like more public roles. I know I see a lot of things in the community, little, basically different bounties that need to get done. But what we need is we need more executors. We need more people to actually go do the preparation, go do the creation of a list. I think we need to empower more people in the DAO to not have to ask permission to just go do it. It's, there's, there's still a lot of permission being asked by people and you don't have to. I mean, it's really just, I think this is a real meritocracy. I do think that we need structure though, as well. This is not a flat organization that doesn't work. We need teams. We need team leads. We need people to be able to make decisions and feel empowered to do so. So there's a ton of, I think, friction there. And actually there's, there's a really great, I don't know how many of you are following, uh, I don't know, following Twitter and whatnot, but there's a great article that was written by a feminist, I believe, back in the '70s that talks about the, um, how flat organizations don't work. And it was, it was a really interesting, for her, it was an observation of the feminist groups that she was a part of. And that just happens to be the, the theme because she was involved in these groups. But the point being, there were these flat organizations. And nothing is ever flat. It's— there will inevitably be some kind of social structure of what she called elites that are the ones that actually, you know, hold some degree of power. And that makes the actual hierarchy hidden. And so it becomes impenetrable for people to actually become part of that hierarchy. And so by making hierarchy explicit, you actually provide a path for people to get involved. And I thought this is a really interesting observation is that it actually makes it more transparent and makes the structure more transparent so you can get involved. And so that is, I think, yeah, let's see. I could probably dig up a link, maybe, maybe in a minute, Andy, I'll dig up a link to that. If you look up like feminist flat organization, Or if you Google that, I'm sure, I'm sure you can find it. But anyway, that, so that to me underpins this idea that we do need hierarchy and we do need structure and we do need to be able to onboard people and give them some direction immediately so they can get engaged. And so I think that's another thing we can do. And I think we'll see more engagement if the TVL goes up, if the pool token's doing well. So anyway, just to bring it back, short-term, I see the pool token as Being able to help us grow the protocol. Other things that I think are really exciting are collaborations with other protocols, such as like this one I just thought of the other day is Alchemix. You know, people have been asking for a prize boost. Now imagine if, because what Alchemix does is you can basically borrow your interest ahead of time. And so imagine that we created a pool where it uses Alchemix. And so you can be like, okay, well, I'm going to commit, you know, too used to this, but you immediately get a prize boost. You instantly have a higher chance of winning, but you do have to commit over a certain amount of time. So I think there's these kinds of ideas are, are really cool. And I think there could be some great synergy there. NFTs, I am really excited about as well. This one has grown a little bit more organically in that we're starting to do these different NFT campaigns. But if you combine that with the the ability to kind of imbue chance in these NFTs as well. I think that's really cool. I think we can add a whole other value layer to NFTs in general. And so that's something else I'm really excited about. I mean, this is kind of nerdy as well, but I am excited about governance and bringing governance style too. This is again, coming back to the fact that most people don't really care about decentralization. They're just sort of, it's only when things go bad is that, that's when it's really concerning. It's still very much top of mind for me. We need to, we need to get this governance across all these L2s that we're going to be on. You know, that's, that's essential. We need, we need governance to be able to provide a ton of pool liquidity across these different L2s like Uni V3 on Polygon, Uni V3 on Optimism. We just need the pool token all over these places. And so, and we also need, we still have certain parameters that need to be controlled by governance. So not everything can be managed by the exec team. The exec team, I honestly visualize them as kind of like bank tellers. Bank tellers only control a limited amount of money for a certain amount of time. They're kind of ferrying money between customers and the bank, and the bank is what really holds the bulk of funds. And so ideally we can structure it the same way in that the exec team simply has a limited scope and is kind of ferrying funds on the fly. I think that would be an ideal to shoot for so that we don't create sort of systemic risk in the, in the structure of the protocol with ownership of contracts and ownership of liquidity. I could go off on so many different tangents here. I'm really trying to bring this back. Okay. So short-term pool token, community engagement, NFTs. Long-term, I'd like us to start building better APIs that we can connect to neobanks and we can actually allow PoolTogether to be easily integrated and have a bunch of Web 2.0 APIs. I mean, already, and people are already asking for it, even though I think part of it is a bit of an education piece is that in that you can just connect to the blockchain. I mean, all the smart contract reference, like API reference online, that's based, those are basically all RPC calls to just a regular Ethereum node. But I think people don't really get that. It takes a lot. It took me a while. It took me a while to figure out, okay, how do you actually build an app? Like, how does this work? So You know, and also having some kind of Web2 API where we can kind of aggregate some information and make things simpler, I think is really, really, really important. So yeah, there's a million things to do, but short-term, I'm really thinking about tokenomics. I'm really thinking about TVL. We want to have big prizes. I'm very excited about the DPR. Again, this is a bit more under the hood, but it'll allow us to have like, say for example, we decide we're going to have a million-dollar prize. But it might only be given out once per year kind of thing. Statistically speaking, that is going to, I think, create an amazing design space for us so that we can really start to play with different value propositions in terms of, uh, in terms of, uh, prizes. So I'm very excited about that as well. Um, so, so yeah, I think that would, I think that would summarize things pretty clearly.

And listen, this is Discord. This is the pull-together stage. You are free to take any rabbit trail that you want to take. We're mesmerized by your voice and we are listening to what you are, we're picking up what you're putting down. So you mentioned neobanks and I would love to know, are there any other, what are some partnership opportunities that you could talk about that Pull Together's exploring? Any partnerships, any new ventures, any pivots, any innovation stuff? That you could disclose for us here today?

Yeah. I mean, I don't feel comfortable disclosing the name of the neobank, but we are talking to one. And you know, what's interesting is that we're kind of, we're more positioning ourselves like PT Inc. is, it's like more of a consultancy in that we're going to help them integrate into PoolTogether. Like PoolTogether, the protocol is its own thing now. And so we're going to try to streamline their integration with it. But what I think is interesting in what they're pursuing is they want to become more of a place where you can discover these different protocols, these different, you know, places, things that you can do with your money. And because PoolTogether is such an attractive consumer application, consumer product, they are really interested in integrating PoolTogether into their into their community, into their sort of their bot. And so I think that's already evidence that because of its consumer friendliness, I think we're going to see more of that. I think some, an area that really excites me is more and more we're seeing crypto being integrated into traditional financial products, which was kind of inevitable. This is something that, you know, has been, the writing's been on the wall now for years about how Crypto is going to be a spectrum. On one end, you're going to have the OG, you're going to have the crypto hardcore that self-custody and only deal with protocols that do not KYC and do not do any kind of, that are totally permissionless. And on the other end of the spectrum, I mean, already we're seeing this, you can buy through, say, Wealthsimple Ethereum ETFs. And that's, those are the 2 ends of the spectrum. As the years progress, we're going to see more and more progression towards the middle where they'll meet in the middle. And perhaps some banks will allow users to self-custody, but have some kind of recovery mode like Argent. Some banks might unbundle their services so you can pick and choose from different services and then allow people to plug in. Other banks might decide, okay, these are the protocols we integrate with and we're going to streamline all interactions between them. It's, I think it's going to be pretty amazing over the next 5 to 10 years to see how, to what depth does crypto integrate with the traditional financial system. And, you know, I think we're going to see it sooner rather than later. People talk about the United States created their own stablecoin or nation states creating their own stablecoins. But in a way, the US already has one, USDC. If Coinbase is adhering to AML and KYC rules, then— so AML is anti-money laundering. Basically any transaction over a certain amount has to be reported to the government. KYC is know your customer. So you have to be able to identify the different wallets that you're facilitating transactions for. And both of those, if Coinbase sticks to that, Then why does the US need its own coin? It's got USDC, which has already deeply penetrated into all these different protocols. I mean, so we have some pretty serious systemic risk here, but at the same time, we all operate in that system anyway. We all have bank accounts, you know, at least the people here, I'm sure, are all from the Western world and, you know, are Are well within those boundaries. And so crypto will just allow you to have some more freedom. Something I was thinking about this morning, I mean, this is such a basic feature, but I can't do a regular recurring payment to my landlord who's just a human like me. You know, it's not like some company or something. I still can't do that with my bank. That is unbelievable. That is the most basic thing to say, have a recurring payment to somebody. That's going to be possible in crypto. You're going to be able to do anything you want in crypto. And so, yeah, I think it's really going to just completely upend what we think of, what we think we should be able to do with our money. You know, it might not look like crazy self-custody wallets to a lot of people. Perhaps it'll just like, hey, this is better banking. And that's fine. You know, it's going to be a very broad spectrum. Wow. Okay. Yeah, that's a rabbit hole. So you were asking about neobanks. So, okay. The point I'm getting at is that I see a real opportunity with neobanks. I see a real opportunity with bridging to these different financial products or financial institutions that are interested in crypto. And so PoolTogether supplies this really cool thing out of the box. And if we make it as easy as possible for them to integrate, we're probably going to see more integrations. And if we actually can get institutional money in here, you're going to see tons of money in PoolTogether. I mean, it, it like the actual, the traditional market is so much bigger than crypto. The influx of cash will be massive. So it's a really matter of us kind of, we just need to stay Afloat. We just need to keep going. We need to survive. And that's actually been, you know, that's been an interesting theme for the past few years as well as we've been through some really tough times. The first one that comes to mind is the transition from DAI, well, SAI to DAI. That was very difficult for us to do the upgrade and manage the migration. And then with, you know, just working through the bear market as well was really challenging. So it feels like Part of this success is just being able to stick around for a long time. You know, we're getting a lot of inbound leads now, like from this neobank, because we're known. People know about PoolTogether, they know about us. And that's, that's still really powerful, this brand that we have and this wholesome brand that we have that, you know, Chark is going to outline what our values are. And it's, this is a really powerful thing. And I think I think we've got a really, really great road ahead of us as well. We just need to stick around. We need to build out these different integrations and keep, keep going.

Brendan, what do you think PoolTogether's values are? I want to hear your take on— give me like 3 to 5.

Values. Oh man. Well, That's a good question. We made a whole list when we first started PoolTogether, and I would be so curious to hear from the community how that's changed. But I would say number one, our number one value is no loss. We want to protect our users. We want to make sure that everyone's taken care of. No one, you know, no one loses. I think that's part of the attraction. This is the first way in which we are Nothing but rounded corners, you know, soft edges where no one can hurt themselves. Another value I would say would be fun. We want to have fun. And that's something that's kind of underpinned a lot of what we've done. We even had like, I think the second version of PoolTogether, I think it was V2, had like a lottery scratch as the reveal. So we actually had this digital version where you scratched away This, it was this really cool thing that Chuck made and you could, you could actually effectively scratch, it was a scratch and scratch and win and it would reveal whether or not you won underneath. So there's always been an element of that. I think we could even lean further into that. But no loss and fun are 2 really important things. And another one, which I think is slightly different than no loss, is financial health. So we definitely want to encourage people to be financially healthy. And I think this is one reason why we've really stuck with stablecoins. There has been some serious interest in non-stablecoins such as Olympus, and more recently Klima, I think, has approached us. But with stables, at least we can make sure that the, you know, regular Joes who are just buying this token called USDC and then depositing it, that they'll be protected to at least some degree by having, by virtue of having a stablecoin. In terms of other values, those are the top ones that come to mind. But in terms of our community, in terms of our day-to-day, Something that we established long ago in the Discord was being kind, being kind to other people and having really healthy discourse where there's no attacks, there's no personal attacks. You know, there's, there's, in fact, I'd say there's even fairly little cursing. There's not even any cursing. I mean, we might all curse like sailors in our offices, but when it comes to Discord, it's very, we're, it's very Um, very approachable. We want to make this as approachable to anyone as possible. There might be kids in here. There could be all sorts of minority groups. We want to make sure that we reach as many people as possible. Um, and, uh, so that's been really important in terms of, you know, our day-to-day discourse. Um, I would also say that, um, we're a meritocracy, I think. You know, yes, there is some hierarchy, but we're also willing to explore different ideas. Like everyone has a voice here and, um, you know, we're, we're always, no one's going to get shouted down or, uh, ignored, you know, uh, well, unless they're, unless it's a totally crazy idea. But, uh, the point is, is that we really, I think, listen to each other and really try to discuss things and I think that's a really, another really important value to have. I'm not sure if I could articulate that in a single word, but that's just kind of a, again, kind of a vibe I get from our community. So I would say those are some important ones. It's kind of, it broadly includes both the product in terms of, you know, no loss, financial health, fun, and well, actually let's add another one to that. Rewarding. It's gotta be rewarding. You know, we want to basically try to pump as many incentives into this as we can so that you actually make something out of it. It, you know, that's part of the fun is getting rewards. And then from the social side, definitely, you know, I'd say kindness and engagement and being very engaging with each other and just supporting each other, I think, are some really evident values in the community.

That's a good list. I would Add to that list generosity. So it's been cool to see people who are like, oh, I haven't won yet. Or, oh, what, you know, this is disappointing, but I believe in PoolTogether. And then somebody will delegate their prizes to that stranger, that literal stranger from Discord, uh, and, and make their week, you know, they're gonna win some prizes, which is great. And it was really cool to be on the community call this past Friday. And ditch the agenda and create this delegation page for Ukraine and be able to, you know, I think we're at $333,000 in, of pooled together savings delegated to Ukraine. So any prizes that are won by that $200,000, that $333,000 go to Ukraine. So it was really cool to see that spin up in an hour and be a part of that generosity. vibe in pool together.

I was really impressed with how quickly that came together and the generosity of everyone. I think it's, you know, it's great. What's happening over there is so sad. So it was so amazing to see the community come together like that and just decide, you know, you know what, how can we celebrate our birthday? Let's, let's, let's talk about what's really matter, what really matters right now in the world. So it was pretty amazing to see that.

Yeah. And also like the delegation feature is really cool to onboard people with. I, I, My, I have a best friend who I talk to, you know, like daily, maybe, maybe every other day. And I could tell when he's not listening to me, but he was, he was mentioning yesterday, oh my gosh, I'm like winning PoolTogether prizes all the time now. And I'm like, yes, because I delegated to you, bro. I told you this. And he just thought God was smiling down on him. And no, his bro was delegating, but he doesn't listen to me. It's fine. So I took that delegation away and I gave it to Ukraine.

That's great. Yeah, it's, I, I, it's so cool. I, this is such an interesting feature. I'm very excited to see how it gets used as a Lego piece because, you know, it's, there's, you can, you can delegate without losing anything. You know, it's totally, it's free. It just feels like you're just giving away this free chance and then people start collecting those, those, those prizes. It's, it's so cool. Yeah, I'm very excited about that. And that multi-delegator, Yes, Tarek, it's coming. It's coming very soon. So I think today the, uh, just a quick, quick update today, the audit mitigations are going to be completed and the work has already started on the front end. We're going to have a nice, beautiful front end so that people can easily, uh, delegate portions of their tickets to different people. And, um, yeah, it's going to be great. And also what's cool is that the contract will be able to serve as a ticket staking contract. And so if we do decide to, uh, have You know, uh, some kind of APR, then, uh, it'll be easy to, to build it out. So that's pretty cool too.

What did you just say? You said, uh, oh yes, that should be added to the values of PoolTogether. You have to have a beautiful front end.

Yeah.

And that's the value.

It's, it's been a great experience. It really has got, you know, props to the front end team. You know, Chuck and Dylan have been really polishing that thing to make it Just buttery smooth and pretty much bug-free. I mean, the odd one does pop up, but it's, yeah, that it's been a lot. It's been, it's a great experience.

Okay, Brendan, we're, we're going to wrap this up soon, but I want to hear your predictions for 2022 in the whole crypto space, all of Web3, metaverse, DAOs, tokens, governance, all of it. What are you most excited about in 2022? What's that juicy alpha that we need to be looking out for?

So I'm looking to make a buck, I guess. I would, I would say we're going to see more institutional adoption of crypto finance. That's something I'm obviously, you know, talking about it before, I'm really excited about because it's just more and more accepted. I mean, we're looking at like Ukraine is receiving donations in crypto. Crypto now is top of people's minds because You know, people perceive it as an exit for Russia or as like another way that Russia can actually move funds in and out. So, you know, I think, and whether that's good or bad, it's the important thing is that it's top of mind and people are really taking it seriously. I know I've had some friends and my mother that have gotten into ETH. And so there's still so many more people that are wanting to get involved. And so, and again, like these neobanks, these neobank integrations, Are going to happen. They're, they're, they're, you know, it's, the ball is rolling on that. We're even seeing, and you know, again, for plus, for better or for worse, Aave now has permission pools. And I think Aave had their recent, their, the first institution deposit recently. And that's just showcasing how TradFi is getting involved in finance, decentralized finance. So that's going to continue to get bigger and bigger and bigger. So I'm really excited to see where that goes. And then with the NFT space, so NFTs are getting more interesting to me. I'm not so big on the PFPs and the art. I think it's cute, it's cool. There are some interesting projects out there that allow you to morph your NFT and, you know, they're actually adding some utility to it. But what I'm excited about is to see where NFTs are actually beginning, where they begin to be bridged with real-world assets. where they actually are imbued with some serious utility, whether it's music NFTs, which I still need to dig into, but I've heard great things about Sound XYZ. And in terms of the art, the NFT art is interesting too, because you can actually license them. And some of them do include licensing. So if you have a Bored Ape, you can go print 1,000 t-shirts and sell them. So that is pretty cool too. And so I'm really excited to see how NFTs sort of blossom into something more than just speculative art, because that to me is really shallow and kind of, I'm not terribly interested in that. But, and yet NFTs at their core are just, it's just the fact that you own this ID. It's literally a number. That number could be associated with art, could be associated with, say, a house. It could mean anything. And so I think there's, there's still so much design space there to see what, to see what happens. So. You know, I think that's, I think those are my 2 things. One, institutional involvement in finance, decentralized finance, and 2, the continued evolution of NFTs. I mean, I feel like anybody who would say that though, you know, I think that's pretty evident, self-evident in that NFTs are continuing to evolve. But I guess, wait, no, one more, one more space. And I would say in terms of DAO organizations. I think there's been this huge Cambrian explosion of DAOs, and I think a lot of them will die. A lot of them will fail. You know, I think it's really easy to create one. It's very difficult to run one, to run one successfully. And it's been an interesting challenge for us trying to figure out how to structure the organization and you don't really empower people. And we've seen examples like Sushi, which, you know, the CTO, Joseph DeLong, he tried to structure it like a traditional corporation and the community didn't like that, even though that's actually a very effective model. I mean, there's a reason that we've evolved into that shape. But I think there's a mix. There's got to be some mix. that makes it work. And that's something I'd like to continue to evolve with PoolTogether because, you know, on one hand, yes, it's important to have different team leads, different leaders in some rights, but it is also important to make sure that people feel like they can contribute and become part of that structure. So again, that comes back to having a transparent hierarchy, is having a very transparent sort of way things are structured and then make sure that we have the token holders, the DAO, be able to act as an arbiter, act as a backstop. You know, if somebody goes rogue and they're at the top, hey, no problem. They can be, you know, removed or the, the, whatever the problem is can be mitigated. So yeah, I'm very curious to see the evolution of DAO structures and hierarchy because there's a lot more to be done there. So yeah, 3 things. That's what I'd say. DeFi institutional, NFT evolution, and DAO hierarchy and evolution. It's going to be a good year.

Love that. Love that. Well, Brendan, we're going to wrap up here, but I want you to have the final word. Is there anything else that you want to talk about this on the podcast, but we haven't gotten to yet?

I mean, there's things I want to talk about, but there's some things I need to sort out with the team first. We are hammering on a tokenomics idea, but it is not quite ready for primetime yet. We're just going to try to polish it as much as possible beforehand, and it might actually still have one or two iterations. So that's something I'm really excited about. But otherwise, Tim, I'm pretty transparent. If I've got an idea, I do tend to talk about it. So it'll be in either Discord or discourse. And, you know, I'm pretty upfront about that, but I've just had a really great time talking to you. It's been really nice, you know, having the community on board as well. I see MK is here too, which is great. You know, we haven't seen him in a while, so it's good to have him back as well as all of our traditional, you know, members. So it's really been really great seeing everybody pipe up in the, in the chat. And yeah, I'm happy to talk again. I mean, I will be on the community call this Friday, so I'm also happy to bounce ideas around then or answer questions or anything. But It's been really great chatting. It's been a really good time.

Thanks for your time, Brendan. This has been the PoolTogether Community Podcast. None of this is financial advice. Thanks for listening. And as always, the real action is in the Discord. So join us in the Discord, deposit in pooltogether.com. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to the PoolTogether Community Podcast. You can visit pooltogether.com to deposit, and we'd love to hear what you thought about today's episode. So visit the PoolTogether Discord and let us know.