PoolTogether Community Podcast #3: Leighton Cusack

PoolTogether is the world's number one prize-saving lottery, and this is the PoolTogether Community Podcast. Visit pooltogether.com to deposit.

Hey, welcome to the PoolTogether Community Podcast, episode number 3. I'm Smart Investor, and today we have Layton Cusack, the co-founder and dare I say visionary behind PoolTogether. So we're going to we're going to talk start we're going to start with a little bit about PoolTogether, just cover a few themes, and then we'll we'll expand into sort of Layton's thoughts on other projects that are interesting, a bit about his investing, and and. NFTs and, you know, whatever else comes up. Just, uh, just to be very clear, this, this is not financial advice. Um, nothing we say is, uh, it's for educational information purposes only. And of course, uh, crypto and digital assets are unregulated and very risky, and so you could lose some or all of your money invested. So with that being said, uh, Leighton, uh, welcome.

Yeah, thank you for having me.

Uh, so, um, how's, uh, how's, how's everything been so far over Christmas and New Year with, with yourself?

Yeah, it's been good. You know, it's one of the few times, maybe the only time in, in the year when I, um, you know, try to not check crypto prices for a while and, and, and be on my phone less. And so it was definitely a nice, a nice little break. Um, and it's always nice to come back feeling refreshed and excited for another year.

Okay, that's good. And actually, I should have just— could you just give us a very quick sort of background, just to go over who you are for people who may not know who you are?

Yeah, yeah. So my name is Leighton. I've been working in the crypto world broadly, specifically kind of in the DeFi space full-time for Almost coming up on 3 years now, I think. And so I'm one of the early contributors, one of the early core contributors to PoolTogether, the protocol. I was also, or I am also the co-founder of PoolTogether Inc., the company, which is one of the contributors to the protocol as well. But so that's been probably my biggest sort of contribution in the DeFi space, but I also work on some other protocols, contribute to some other protocols. as well as a few other projects. So just broadly speaking, I'm someone involved in DeFi, in crypto, and really love the space and just trying to contribute any way I can to push it forward.

Okay. Now that's very interesting. So I've got so many different directions to go, but let's just— we'll start with PoolTogether and then we'll move on. What's been your— so with the start of 2022, so what's your— first of all, can you just remind everyone about the vision and the reason behind PoolTogether? Because you have explained this in the community interview, which I'll put in the show notes. But can you just sort of remind us? Because it's obviously not just about making money for the protocol or for the token holders. It's more than that. So please share that. Yeah,

yeah. So, so the PoolTogether protocol is a protocol for facilitating, um, prize savings on the blockchain. And, uh, prize savings is, is a concept that's actually been around for, for a long time. Um, in some countries it's very popular, in some countries it's less popular. But the basic concept is it's like a savings account where you deposit money, you can withdraw it whenever you want to, you never lose your money. But, um, uh, instead of earning, um, like a small fixed interest rate while you're deposited, you sometimes earn an interest rate. But in addition to earning interest or or sometimes instead of earning interest, you have a chance to win large prizes. And so basically the research behind prize savings has proven that it's a way to help people save money. When people have the option of using prize savings, they tend to save more money, they tend to save their money for longer, and they also— it also attracts brand new people. So that's what PoolTogether is and what prize savings are. So the motivation behind it, as you referenced Smart Investor, really came from this idea of doing research around how can we use blockchain technology to empower people financially. And in the course of that research is when I came across this idea for prize savings accounts. And that's when I thought, hey, if this was built on the blockchain, it's an idea that's proven to help people financially. And if it was built on the blockchain, it would function a lot better than it does right now. And so that's kind of the genesis of how PoolTogether got started.

Okay. So looking at 2022, where we are right now, January 2022, how far do you think we've come with PoolTogether in terms of realizing this sort of vision or sort of purpose? And what do we need to do this year in particular to sort of help get us there?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a really, really good question because in a sense, In a sense, not very far, but in a sense, really far. So, so let me start with why, in a sense, we've gotten really far. So, um, what, what has happened over the past 2 years is the protocol has been built. Um, and the protocol is now— it's now built. It's, it's been deployed onto the blockchain. The governance has been decentralized with the launch of the POOL token. So we now have a fully decentralized, non-custodial secure protocol on the blockchain. So from that perspective, we've come a really long way. But if you actually look at like how many people are using it, how much money is being deposited into it, how much— how many people are saving money, from that perspective, we have a long way to go. I don't have the numbers right in front of me, but I think the current— the V4 of the protocol has like $28 million deposited right now. I think like 8,000 unique depositors. So know, in the crypto world, that's sort of a lot. That's especially from a user perspective, that's a lot of users because it's a pretty small amount of numbers. But if you think about the fact that there's, you know, 7 billion people in the world, it's, it's, uh, it's a pretty early start. So, um, I think the thing to, to get to your question, 2022, I think, for the protocol is really about, um, it's really about sort of scaling. It's really about saying, okay, yes, now all the pieces are in place. The decentralization is done, the protocol is battle-tested, it's audited, it's secure. Now it's time to say, okay, now that all these pieces are in place, how do we scale it? How do we let more people know about it? How do we help make it easy for people to access integrating with other financial services and things like that? So from that sense, we're just scratching the surface. But in the sense of the protocol itself, it's, it's like a fully complete robust protocol. And so from that sense, it's, it's, it's, um, it's really done. So I think that's, uh, that's sort of the 2 facets to that answer.

Okay. So just, um, in terms of your voice, can you maybe speak more into the microphone because you're coming in and out?

Yeah, sorry. Um, okay. Yeah, let me know if it's a problem.

Uh, yeah. Okay, that's better. That's better. Okay, great. Now, so this is, would you say that In terms of the crypto space, that PoolTogether is unique, or are there other protocols which are in the same mission, if you like, that you're aware of?

There are a couple others. The one that jumps to mind is one called GoodGhosting, which is specifically around helping people save. But I would say it is really unique. The reason I would say it's pretty unique is because most protocols in DeFi are really very financially heavy. Like, they're like options protocols for like trading options, or they're like derivatives protocols for creating derivatives, or synthetics protocols for creating synthetics. And these are things that are obviously important, they're useful, etc., but they're very, they're very kind of niche. They're very, they're very, they're highly specialized would be the way to say it. Whereas PoolTogether is really something that's useful for anyone, almost anyone, right? Who doesn't either have savings or need or wants to have savings? And so I do think PoolTogether is unique in that it is something that's not necessarily like a super niche financial product, but it's actually something that's very broadly applicable. And that's why I think you hear a lot of people say PoolTogether was the first ever DeFi application I used. And I think that's because It's, uh, yeah, it's because it's, um, it's easy to understand. It's broadly applicable to anyone, you know, not, not everyone's going to want to trade options on the blockchain, but everyone has— wants to save money.

That's good. Okay. Um, is there anything else that you'd like to mention, pull together? Is there anything exciting or anything, uh, you know, we've got planned or, or for 2022 or any other initiatives which you, which, which you'd like to share?

I think that I would just sort of reiterate what I was saying. I think 2022 is going to be really exciting because it's less about building and more about scaling. And obviously scaling, you have work, but it's cool. If you rewind one year, the Pool token hadn't even been issued. The protocol was still non-custodial, but the governance hadn't been decentralized. And so when we were walking into 2021, we weren't ready to scale. Walking into 2022, the protocol is ready to scale. It's, again, it's audited, it's tested, it's built, it's used, etc. And so I think it's a really exciting time because scaling is a lot of fun, and it also requires a lot more unique skill sets, right? It's a lot different skill set to scale something than it is to just build something. And so I think it's a really good time to get involved in the community because there's a lot of opportunities around how do we scale this, how do we make this accessible and easy to use.

Okay, that's great. Okay, great. So let's move on to some other areas. So you mentioned projects and protocols that you're working on. What can you tell us? What's the— can you tell us about a couple of these and why you're involved in them and what is the vision behind those? Those other protocols or projects?

Yeah, well, I've been pretty involved in Compound. So Compound Finance, for those of you who may not be aware, is a lending and borrowing protocol, as well as Aave, which is another lending and borrowing protocol. PoolTogether uses— the protocol uses those for yield. And so that's sort of why I initially got involved in those protocols. just from a governance perspective, I've been involved in that. I'm also involved in VentureDAO, which is an investment fund, like an on-chain investment fund. So we do a lot of investments into early-stage crypto projects. And then I'm also involved in PleaserDAO, which is an NFT collection, like art collection group. So those are a few of them. But I do think, just real quick, I'll say, broadly speaking, one thing that's really cool about crypto in general is that it's pretty normal to work on multiple different projects because that's just sort of the way crypto works. Everything's interrelated, everything's connected. And so it's really fun to be able to, um, obviously, you know, PoolTogether is what I contribute to the most, but it's, it's fun to contribute to a lot of other things as well.

Yeah, no, no, absolutely, absolutely. And, um, in terms of like, uh, the, the sort of governance and so on, what is— do you bring any— is there anything specific you do there, or is it, uh So more just about providing— what's the kind of input that you're giving?

Yeah, it's more just being an active participant in the community. So it's not like an official role. It's more of, you know, on the governance forum, responding to things, voting on things, engaging in things. You know, there's a lot of people who hold governance tokens, and there's not that many people who actually actively participate. And, uh, yeah.

Okay. No, no, I think that's, that's always, uh, always, always a thing that, uh, it's sort of important, isn't it, to, to make sure people are actively participating? Um, okay. Um, I might come to Chuck. Chuck's got a question about being able to listen to the Woo album.

I've never even heard it. So hopefully we can hook that up for pool token holders at some point. But I will say, as of now, I have not heard that album.

All right. So there's many NFTs. Well, why don't we— well, since we're talking about this album, let's just talk about music NFTs before we go to general. Like we had Oops a couple of weeks ago who was saying that music NFTs are likely to be very important. And I've, I've been following things. Cooper Trooper is talking about getting involved with these. What's your thoughts on, you know, involvement on music NFTs and where they're likely to be headed?

Yeah, well, I guess I'll say I don't have, um, I don't have any involvement in music NFTs. I'm not involved with any projects or things like that. I, I do think it makes a lot of sense, um, just in the sense of sort of like first editions. I think NFTs, like, if I could buy the first edition of a song that an artist mints and says, like, hey, this is my first edition of this new song, I can see why that's super compelling to own for an artist that I really like. And so I do think that makes a lot of sense. I also think there's probably a lot of applications where if you can start tracking people playing a song, And then be able to distribute royalties on-chain. That could be a great application. So I think I would agree with Oops for sure that there's a lot of opportunity there, but it's not something I personally am actively involved in.

Okay, let's get— let's cut to the chase. Tell us about the Bored Ape Yacht Club.

The Bored Ape Yacht Club. So this is, this is my— one of my biggest financial losses. I have a lot of financial losses I can tell you about. Which is, okay, one thing I wanna say too, just at the outset, is like, I promise you, everyone is about 1/10 as rich as you think they are. Like, there's sort of a little bit of, there can be a toxic culture around crypto of people talking about having a lot of money or making a good investment. And there's a huge signal-to-noise thing. And so I guess I'm just saying this to like, Yeah. encourage people, you know, don't compare yourself, et cetera. And I like to share stories of, like, of, you know, how I've just missed out on a lot of financial gains to sort of help people understand that. But anyway, so my Bored Ape story is that Bored Apes, for those of you who don't know, are a very popular NFT. I don't even know what the floor of them is right now in terms of US dollars, like what the cheapest one is. It's probably like $250,000, I think.

$68,000, I think it's $68,000 ETH. I think

that's, that's the cheapest one.

I think so. Last time, maybe someone can just double-check that for me. But yeah.

Okay, so quick math, that's like $260,000. So I, um, I was actually given a Bored Ape, and I got married in July of this year, or last year, and I needed to pay for my wedding, and the Bored Ape had gone up to 1.8 ETH. It was worth 1.8 ETH, which I was like that's a lot of money. If I sell the Bored Ape at 1.8 ETH, that will help pay for my wedding. So I sold it, and that was in the middle of July. And then for those of you who recall, the end of July, the beginning of August is right when everything sort of took off. And yeah, so now if I had held that ape, it's probably worth $350,000, but I didn't. I sold it to pay for my wedding. Anyways, that's probably one of my biggest financial losses. I'm sure there's a lot of others, but I don't take the time to calculate them all.

Do you have any learnings or lessons from that, or do you think it was just like, you know, it helped you and so that was good? Or is there anything that you're taking away from that, or is it just one of those things?

Well, I think the first thing I take away is just like, you're, you're, you're not gonna, you're not gonna win them all. You're not gonna get everything right. And like, don't stress out about it. Like, that's, that's the, that's my biggest takeaway is in an industry where there's lots of different things that are going up or going down in really large ways, you just have to let go and be like, I'm gonna miss big opportunities. I'm going to hopefully get some opportunities. Mm-hmm. I'm not going to stress out about the ones I miss. So I think that's the biggest lesson for me. I mean, sure, in hindsight, I should have held it, but who knows? Maybe the probability of it having gone from 1.8 ETH down to 0.5 ETH could also just as easily have happened, right? So I don't necessarily look back on it and say, man, I really made a big mistake. I just sort of look at it and say, Um, that was just an opportunity I missed. But like, I, I, I don't know. I, I don't, I don't, I guess I don't, um, yeah, I don't want to share that. Sorry. Someone said the moral of the story. Moral of the story.

We've got some feedback there from the

community.

So you've got, you've got love in exchange is one. Uh, yeah. The wedding was a better return on investment. Another one, moral of the story is don't get married. You've got different, different views there.

No, it was worth it. It was, it was worth it. I mean, you know, I will say that I am happy. I think if I hadn't sold it, if I had sold it for just for not a specific reason, I think I probably would be beating myself up a bit more. But like, because I sold it for a specific reason to help pay for this wedding, I think that makes it more okay in my, in my mind.

Yeah. Okay. But then moving on to other NFTs. What were some of the other projects that you, you know, have or hold or anything, you know, that you're able to share or willing to share?

Yeah, well, to be honest, I don't own that many NFTs. So I recently bought the MFers because I thought just— I know it's a cliché, but I like the art. I just think they look cool. So I bought some of those and those were really cheap. They were like—

Which one was that?

It's the MFer. It's like M-F-E-R. It's like the sort of cartoon character drawings. They're just sort of fun. And let me see, maybe I can pull one in the chat here for people.

But, um, I'll put it in the show notes so everyone can see.

Yeah, yeah, put in the show notes. So I did, I did recently buy those. Other than that, um, yeah, I have— I haven't bought a lot of NFTs, you know. And I did, I did help start PleasureDAO, which is a large NFT, um, like I said, NFT collection group. But that was really— it was not a premeditated thing. It was super coincidental. I just— there was a specific NFT. I knew it was going to sell for more than I could afford, and so I wanted to get a group of people together to buy it together. And yeah, the floor, Tim, the floor on those MFers has gone up a lot. But so I am involved in NFTs, but I'm actually not— I wouldn't consider myself like an NFT person. Like, I very much consider myself a DeFi person. So I don't— I'm not an expert. I'm not a huge expert on NFTs. I don't trade them. I don't flip them other than the Bored Ape, which I was given, and then I made a really bad trade on. So clearly no one should be listening to me about NFTs.

That's fine. Okay, then let's talk about other projects that's interesting to you. So yeah, just anything else that interests you in whatever Aspects of blockchain or crypto?

Yeah, I mean, the thing that, that has been most useful to me lately has been the bridges. So I've been using like Hop Protocol a lot. Um, I think those are, those are really well done. I, I think going into 2022, I think a big theme is going to be wallets, actually. Like, I think with the Zapper wallet coming out, I think that's going to be a really big deal. I think Coinbase already has a wallet. I think they're probably going to keep working on improving that and improving the integrations. So that's definitely a space I'm sort of paying attention to, is the wallet space. Obviously, Rainbow Wallet's been doing a lot. What else I'm thinking about that have been used recently that's fun? Using these other non-Ethereum blockchains is a lot of fun just because it's cheap to use. It's really sad to think about how expensive Ethereum has become because it just wasn't— it didn't used to be that way. And it's sad for me to think about people who are new to the space who are coming and want to learn and want to try these things and they're not able to. And yeah, so I also think the crowdfunding stuff like the JuiceBox, obviously you saw that with ConstitutionDAO. JuiceBox is a tool that's used for crowdfunding. It's essentially like a Kickstarter. I think that's, um, that also is like a really interesting space, sort of like how do you help people raise money and then deploy that money to do interesting things?

Yeah, no, I think that's, that sounds, yeah, pretty interesting because a lot of people I think are trying to, um, set up DAOs, aren't they, for all kinds of different things. X Games, I heard about someone wanted to buy that, and I think a soccer team, someone was trying to buy that as well. Yeah, in England, so it's kind of big. Um, okay, are there any other, uh, sort of areas, uh, sort of outside of DeFi, NFTs, you know, that also interest you or that you'd like to explore more?

Uh, man, I— not that I have any, I think, enough knowledge to talk about, you know. I, I've been Yeah, I've been so focused on sort of the DeFi space specifically that I'm sure there's a lot of really cool stuff going on, but I'm just not able to keep up with it all.

Yeah, no problem. Okay, well, let's talk about your best and worst investments then. Can you— obviously, we know about Bored Ape Yacht Club, but what else have you— can you tell us?

Yeah, Bored Ape Yacht Club was my worst investment for sure. I think my best investment actually was Unisocks. Okay, so tell us

a little bit more.

Yeah, so for those who aren't aware, Unisocks is a token that represents ownership of a pair of socks that was created by Uniswap, the protocol, the Uniswap Labs, the company behind the protocol. And yeah, Unisocks are sort of a— to me, they're sort of like a very much like a kind of like a DeFi OG thing to own. Because they've been around for a long time. And they've been around for a long time. Sorry, I'm getting distracted with the chat, but they've been around for a long time. And Uniswap is obviously the largest DeFi protocol. And so I bought the Unisocks shortly or a bit after the UNI token was launched. And at the time, they were like $3,000, which was obviously a ton of money, but I had gotten the airdrop from Uniswap. And so I thought, hey, I got this airdrop, so why don't I use it to buy Unisocks? And so I did that. And after I did that, they went up a lot in value. And so that was my best— I think that was my best ever investment, was the Unisocks. But again, this is what's so funny. That was not a premeditated develop a thesis and sort of like, it was very much just like, hey, this is cool, I'm going to buy it. I don't really care if it goes to zero. I got this Uni airdrop, so I'll just use these tokens to buy this. So I guess it's kind of funny how that works. But I think that was my best investment. My worst, I think, was the selling of the Bored Ape, although I've definitely sold a lot of Ethereum at like $300, which if I had kept, I would probably have a lot more, or I definitely have a lot more money.

Yeah. So the UniSocks, people in the chat are saying that they've redeemed them. So you actually get a— so what does that mean? So you actually get a pair of socks?

Well, so yeah, so it's a token. It's a token. And then you can at any time redeem the token to get the pair of the physical socks sent to you. And so, you know, and when this launched, they were like $20. Okay.

All right.

So when I bought them at $3,000, that was like really high, but they went way higher. So, so it became not as high. But, but yeah, the Unisocks, the Hacky Sack, someone's asking about the Hacky Sack. That, that's a similar concept, but that was done by Gitcoin. Same concept though.

Okay. Is it true it's $88,000 now? Unisocks? Or have I got the wrong one?

No, that's it. Yeah.

Wow.

Wow. I sold mine.

Okay. Okay. Um, okay, that's, that's great. So, um, right, I'm trying to look at some questions. So, okay, let's have some fun questions now. Uh, which, which, who would be your favorite celebrity to onboard into crypto?

Ooh, that's a good question. My favorite celebrity to onboard? Man, I mean, these aren't celebrities, but I would love to onboard more politicians. It's really— I authentically believe if everyone understood the technology, they would be for it. they would believe in it. And I really— so that makes me really passionate about helping people understand why this is important, why this matters, and why this can really help a lot of people. And so I would love to have the chance to onboard some of these politicians who are really anti-crypto, because I think if you could sit them down and explain it to them, they wouldn't be anti-crypto anymore. And so, um, yeah, I want to onboard the feds. No, uh, yeah, so I guess that's, that's maybe not the best answer, but In terms of prominent people, you know, I'd love to get like Joe Biden download the wallet and like set him up on like a few different things so he could like really understand it. Um, I think that would be awesome.

And so how— so, so I am, I'm planning to, uh, onboard some, some of my colleagues, uh, at work on into, uh, crypto. So I mean, how— so how would you do that, you know, bearing in mind It's almost impossible to do with Ethereum. So what would be the approach you would take to, let's say Joe Biden said, okay, I'll give you a couple of hours. What would be the process or which protocols or whatever would you use? Because of course, apart from Ethereum.

Yeah, I would use Polygon as a network and I would use either probably Coinbase Wallet or Rainbow Wallet as the wallet. And then so I'd get them to download the wallet. I would set the wallet network to Polygon, and then I would just initially send them like $10 or $20 because it's not about the amount of money, it's just about using it. And I would send them some money and then I would say, hey, go deposit into Aave, deposit into PoolTogether, borrow against your deposit on Aave, try all these different things out, go to Uniswap and make a swap. Just try them. That's the whole thing. It's like you just have to try this stuff. So I wouldn't say— I wouldn't be concerned. And then once you try it, I think people then will naturally add more money because they'll be like, oh, this is really cool. I want to put more money to pool together, so I'm going to deposit more. But yeah, that would be my path to do it.

Okay. Yeah, that's good. So we'll Can someone please reach out to the White House so we can set it up? Maybe we can do that live, live stream. Okay, I've got— so last week, uh, well, actually today, uh, yeah, so last week's podcast we had Chris Kay talking about Cardano and he was kind of quite bearish on, on it. What's your view on Cardano as a protocol in the future? Do you think it's, it's, it's gonna sort of be strong as Ethereum or not? Take off. What's your view?

I don't have a view on it because I really honestly haven't— I've never used it. I don't know that much about it. I mean, I know it's a, you know, I know it's the token is highly valued, but I've never used it. I really don't know that much about it. So I don't think I could have an educated opinion on that.

Okay. No, that's fine. Okay. Right. So what else, uh, um, let's have a look. What else have you got, um, sort of what else do you think, are you thinking about 2022 in terms of other major either trends or things in DeFi or other, basically anything else you think which is going to be interesting going forwards?

Yeah, I, I think, I think the biggest trend is going to be, um, I think it's going to be a big year for consumer adoption. I think the wallets, like I mentioned before, again, I think the Zapper wallet is going to be like a big piece of that. Like Coinbase making it easier to interact with DeFi. I think a lot of people are going to actually start using these protocols this year. So I think a lot of stuff has been built and I think this is going to be a year, a lot more of like scaling. And yeah, so that's sort of what I think thematically. This year is gonna be about. And, you know, I look back, so I'll age myself a little bit here, but like in 20— or sorry, like 2006, I was using Facebook and I loved Facebook. I was on it all the time. All my friends were on it. And at this point, like Facebook was only available to like college and high school. Like you had to be in college or high school to use Facebook. And at that time it was sort of like unfathomable to me to ever imagine that like 10 years later my grandma would be on Facebook, but she is. And I think, I think we're at the same place with crypto. I think that we're, we're all using it now and we're like, well, we're using it, it's great, but like, you know, our parents are never going to use it, our grandparents are never going to use it, it's never going to get mass adoption. But I actually think it will. I think it's going to— I think the way that, um, people have adapted to using Facebook and Instagram, people are going to adapt to using crypto. And so, um, Yeah, I think it's going to be a year that we're surprised with, um, how many people want to learn about it and want to, want to use this stuff.

So how, how, what is the process we need to build to scale to, you know, to a wider audience? Um, because it's still— because I mean, a lot of my, my colleagues who are pretty young, a lot of them pretty young, they never— most of them have never used crypto. They've never Some of them might have almost tried, but they're still not really necessarily, even amongst people you'd think would be more open to it, still not widely used. What do you think is needed, or why do you think 2022 will be the year that we do get to much wider adoption?

Yeah. So I think there's two, there's two ways we get to much wider adoption. One is that crypto gets integrated with the existing financial system. And then the other is that crypto gets easier to access. So on the first point, I think we're going to see more things where, like actually Coinbase rolled out recently, where if you have a Coinbase account, you can deposit DAI into the Compound protocol without, without needing to worry about gas or anything like that, right? And so that's, that's, that's, that's, that's going to get a ton of people using DeFi without needing to, you know, in a much simpler way. And so I think we're going to see a lot more of that stuff where it's like, hey, if you have, you know, you know, if you're using a neobank, if you're using like, um, you know, you can, you can like, you know, what I obviously, what I want to be working on is like, if, if there's a neobank, you can deposit into PoolTogether via your neobank account, right? So that's like crypto getting more integrated into the financial system. So I think we'll see a lot of that in 2022. But then the other piece of it is like crypto just getting easier to use. And that's where like the Zapper wallet comes in. And that's where like Polygon and Avalanche and these L2s, like that's where those come in too. And so I think for that to grow, like for that to grow, we just need to make it easier to get started. Like, pool— like, for example, PoolTogether, it's amazing to use if you, if you have money on Polygon, but it's really hard to use if you are starting from scratch, starting from zero. But I think, I think what will happen in 2022 is it will get a lot easier to start from zero and get into these protocols than it is right now. And so that's what I think will drive a lot of that growth, is basically just making it simpler to get started.

Yeah, because this is the challenge that I've faced, because So Ubs told us a couple of weeks ago about Banano and how he, and I think also Chark and many other members of the community started. And Ubs was telling us how he's onboarded many, almost everyone, friends, family, just using Banano. So I wanted to do the same. Yeah. But the only thing is that with Banano, which is like a kind of, I'm not sure which Blockchain is from, but it says yeah, it's kind of yeah. I'm not yeah, it's pretty easy to use and very very warm community. But the thing is the wallet that they had, you couldn't connect it with a with with you can't use it on like I couldn't show people how to use Uniswap or stuff like that. So then I said okay, I've got to use MetaMask, and then I wanted to buy Polygon, but then yeah, didn't want to bridge it from from Ethereum because it's so expensive, and then.

Right.

Then I thought, okay, where can I buy? Then I bought, but then I think it was on Gemini, but that's on Ethereum. And so then I ended up going to Binance and then it's happened now twice, 2 or 3 times. Just when I want to withdraw, it said, uh, we suspended withdrawals on the Polygon network and then you'd have to take it to BSC and then change, you know. Oof. So like, um, I've still got a, I've got like a week and a half to get that. The Matic that I bought on Binance onto the onto the MetaMask before I before I onboard onboard these these these new people. So that's a real hassle. Of course, it'll be easy with Ethereum. Yeah. So so that that's the challenge that I've got. I mean, do do you think that's going to get easier in 2022? Well, for example, with Polygon or Yeah,

I mean, like you said, the challenges are very real. There's so much like what you just outlined where it's so annoying. It's like, oh my gosh, you have to have MATIC tokens on Polygon. You can't have MATIC tokens on Ethereum. So those challenges are real, but I do think the trajectory is going very much in the right direction. If we look at— again, if we rewind 12 months, Polygon pretty much didn't exist. It existed, but there was nothing was on it and there was no one using it. And so there's just been so much progress made in the last 12 months, and I think we'll see it again the same in the next 12 months. And so I do think there's some really good teams working specifically on this question of like, how do you make it as simple as possible to get into crypto, to get started? And so that's why I'm, I'm pretty bullish on consumer adoption.

Okay, so, um, yeah, uh, and what else do you think could also in 2022 sort of excite, I guess, the wider world? So not just everyone who's in crypto now, but, uh, you know, maybe expand the interest. Are there any other things that you're seeing, any trends or specific types of, uh, assets or anything which you think might also encourage adoption?

Well, yeah, I mean, the first thing I'd say is It's so hard to predict these things. Early in 2021, everyone was talking about DeFi. That was the only thing, early 2021. Yeah. And then middle of 2021, everyone burned out on DeFi. And then all of a sudden, it seemed like out of nowhere, everyone started talking about NFTs. And so I do think the NFT narrative has burned out. And so I do think there'll be a new narrative soon. I don't know what it will be. But I think it'll just come out of nowhere.

That's what we wanted to know from you was what's coming next, which we don't know about.

Yeah. It's hard to predict, but I do think one narrative that you might see that might get more attention is this— I think people got really excited about the ConstitutionDAO, this idea of pooling money. It's like crowdfunding 2.0. People always loved Kickstarter and all that, and this is like the new thing. new version of it. And so I could see that getting some, in terms of getting broad attention outside of, um, outside of people already in crypto. But at a high level, what I'd say is it's very hard to predict. And if you predict it, you usually end up being wrong.

Hmm. Yeah. Just on that point, um, this, I, I was very interested in, in sort of this kind of crowdfunding, lossless sort of crowdfunding.

Yeah.

Just like we have here, pull together, But I was on the Alchemix Christmas Eve fireside chat, which it's funny, their fireside chats go on for hours. I think that one was on like 4 or 5 hours, and I was desperate to stay on because they were giving these— so they had this 12 Days of Alchemixus. Well,

yeah,

Alchemixus Christmas. And they were giving these 12 NFTs, one for every day, and it depended on how involved you were with the community. I think I got about half of them. But anyway, I was sort of staying on there desperately because I just wanted the NFT, you know, that NFT, because you had to be on that call. I only found out later it was the first 100 people, which I didn't need to stay for like hours and hours. But anyway, there was an interesting— yeah, they're kind of crazy. The guy who runs them, I think he's like a Yeah, I think he's like, you know, one of the brains behind the, um, the, you know, the, the, the organ, the protocol. But he's like, so it's kind of, it's very different, shall we say, from pulled together because it goes on for hours. There's music, there's kind of craziness and stuff like that. But anyway, uh, there was, they did turn serious a little bit unexpectedly. And someone was talking about how using Alchemix, for example, everyone could pull together. So just in case you don't know, so Alchemix is like a protocol where you can deposit— I think at the moment it's just ETH and DAI. Yeah. And then you can borrow up to 50% of that using their own token and then exchange that for ETH or DAI, and then it repays itself. So in the same way that in PoolTogether the interest goes towards winning prizes, what they do is they take the interest from everything deposited to repay your loan. So you never actually have to repay the loan that you take out. But anyway, what someone was talking about was maybe getting people to pool in it. Yeah, in within the Alchemix, within, I guess the better, best way I can say it, Alchemix pool.

Yep.

Put together whatever DAI is and then use that at the end of the month or whatever, use the interest to, to, to, um, uh, you know, on some kind of charity or something like that. So I guess that's the kind of direction that I think I think you're talking about, but I kind of really like that idea of lossless, you know, lossless because basically Lips was talking about this a couple of weeks ago in terms of NFTs and yeah, so how artists could be funded in that way. But basically, you could just put put your money in, and you never have to you you you never have to put more money in. But every month, a person, an artist, charity, or something is being funded. So that's kind of Really interesting.

Yeah, no, I do think that's really interesting. And, you know, it's— this might be a good thing to end on because it does sort of circle back to PoolTogether. PoolTogether, at the end of the day, it's a protocol that facilitates the aggregation and distribution of interest in a no-loss way. That's what it is. And the fact that that interest is distributed randomly is just— that's just a parameter. Like, it can be random, it can be fixed, it can go to a nonprofit, it can go to a charity, it can go to an artist. It can go to all sorts of different things. But fundamentally, the protocol is just a way to securely and with no loss deposit money, aggregate the interest from all the deposits, and then distribute that interest however people want to distribute it. And so I've always thought there's a huge opportunity for PoolTogether around those applications. No-loss donations, no-loss funding, no-loss patronship for different things. So that's definitely something that I think, you know, it will happen. It's just, you know, you can't do everything at once. So that's sort of that.

Absolutely. Great. Well, yes, I think let's sort of wrap up there. Anything else you'd like to say as we start 2022? Any predictions you'd like to

make? I don't know. My predictions are always are always usually quite bad, honestly. I think, you know, the only thing that I can predict is that a year from now, I'm still going to be in the space. I'm still going to be working. I believe the people on this call will be, and we're going to be, you know, building technology that's going to help a lot of people. I don't know what prices are going to be. I don't know what's going to be the most popular trend in a year. But at the end of the day, we're doing really important work. And if you're listening and you want to get involved, Dive in. It's a— it's the— the water's warm and we're here to welcome you.

Great. Thank you very much. All right.

Yeah, thank you.