PoolTogether Community Podcast #4: blakeburrito of EPNS

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There we go.

Okay, welcome to episode four of the Pull Together Community Podcast. So this week we have someone who's who was very instrumental in building the Pull Together community on on Discord and is now EPNS. And so we'll learn a lot about his both his time in Pull Together and EPNS. Um, and look, we're going to touch many things, some, some other interesting points and, uh, themes for 2022 and so on. Um, just before, every podcast is not financial advice. Um, please of course do your own research, and crypto and digital assets are unregulated and, uh, risky, and you could lose some or all of your investment. So with that being said, uh, let's go over to Blake. Blake Burrito, uh, welcome to the show.

Hey guys, thanks for having me. Super glad to be here. I love my, my PoolTogether family. Um, I, I, I was around Web3 and did some other things before, but, uh, my involvement with PoolTogether is, is what I am kind of claiming as my, my first real big success the way I see it. So I always will have a warm place in my heart for, for the community because of that. And yeah, like I said, glad to be here. Love what you guys are doing.

Yeah, yeah. Well, actually, let's start with that. Can you give us a bit of background as to your involvement with PoolTogether and the community and how it all started and what you did and your memories of that?

Yeah, sure. So Just kind of quick background on me prior to pandemic. I was 8 to 5 office job for years with the same company, and then bam, pandemic. Oh, your position no longer exists. So I was able to, you know, kind of stay home with everyone and get those stimmys and kind of make my hobby take up even more of my time, right? So soon enough full-time effort is in Web3 and start working with different DAOs. Early last year was PoolTogether airdrop, which was kind of the impetus for the community kind of congregating on Discord. Next came community calls, and from that, collaboration. True organic collaboration between the community members, which we started working on the grants proposal back in March of last year. By May, we had a live program and was working with it live for 6 months thereafter. So obviously had my hand in a few other initiatives, but those were grants specifically was my main contribution to the community.

Yeah. So, yeah, tell us a bit about the grants committee because I understand that's something quite unique, isn't it, in Web3 at the moment? And can you tell us how that came about and what kind of, what was the impetus and the difference it's made and also, you know, what, how unique it actually is in Web3 at the moment?

Yeah, for sure. So to speak to the importance of grants, we can take it kind of higher level past grants specifically to how people operate within a DAO, right? At the end of the day, a DAO a Web3 project, a protocol, whatever, it's still very similar to traditional companies, Web2 companies, anything else you can think of that you interact with today. You still need marketing people, you still need creative, you still need this, that, and the other thing. The challenge with a decentralized structure is, well, manifold, but one of those is people who want to fill those roles don't often have a clear way to do so. And I don't— I'm not speaking about any role specifically here. Really, I'm talking about just in general, any kind of contribution to a project that requires time, talent, and effort. on behalf of that contributor has some kind of benefit, or at least impact, right, to the, to the project, and they need to be compensated for that impact, right? Because it's not— it may be a solo effort or a small team effort, but it's an overall benefit. So when it came to PoolTogether, bringing it back down to ground level and pool grants, That was our challenge, is people wanted to do certain things, did not have a clear way to be able to present that to the community, pitch it, get it funded, etc. And that's what Grants was all about. As far as our project, our program, and what we put together, we started out with the With the mindset that whether this is someone looking for, you know, $5 for something that takes 1 minute or $100,000, it's gonna take several months. Everyone should have access and access commensurate to the effort that they put in on the backend, right? So that 5-minute person They should spend seconds applying versus, right, the flip side of that. But yeah, obviously we— that's how we put, and that was the mindset of the proposal process, which from start to finish, writing the proposal to actually voting and having it live, was March, April, and most of May. So a good 3 months to get that done. A couple things that we did differently. Well, first, right, always take advantage of the people who blazed a path before you, right? So we largely just copied what Aave Grants did and adapted it in a few ways.

Yeah.

The structure of the team, We looked at existing grant structures and teams, and what we found is that it was often the same people that were, that were developing the protocol. If not, then it was leads and, and founding members of other protocols that were expected to, to vote on these grants and And review them, et cetera. So we went with a different approach and made it a community-led— because it was a community-led effort, it should be community-managed thereafter, right? So every member was pulled directly from, from the community. Most of us were instrumental in writing the Dank proposal itself, right? So involvement from top to bottom. And yeah, I think it had tremendous value throughout. You know, we can get into the differences and the nuances, but ultimately having dedicated people was the big difference, and I'm glad we did go that way.

So,

yeah.

What's been some of the highlights for you from the grants committee in terms of the outcome for the protocol? Or how it's helped the protocol?

Sure. Um, well, one thing that I think is super obvious and I love seeing is the, the groups that have spun off from it, right? So, uh, the treasury management group, the, uh, upcoming social, um, and marketing groups, uh, and the treasury group, for example, they came to us Looking for a grant to begin with, and we told him from the from the beginning, and Gabor was instrumental in this. So shout out to him on his work with with Lama Lama community. But yeah, we recognized that it was something that was going to have to go that way. We turned them in that direction, and they were kind of disappointed to begin with because they had this. great idea and they wanted to get it funded and started working on it. But just like the proposal for the grant itself taking 3 months, that took more time. And ultimately we got a great result from it, right? So that, and to be honest, I think we were probably a little bit, not necessarily unprepared, but not aware of the positive— well, the amount of responses we'd get. For the first—

Right.

For the first almost 2 months, almost 2 months, we had about a grant, a proposal coming in a day. I think our first 90 days or so, we had close to 80 or 70-something, and it's stayed steady since then. So that's a testament to the quality of the proposals that we've gotten and the people behind them, I mean, because they invite new people, they spread their word, and it's been for the most part organic, right? We've done no marketing for it and just used the assets that we've built from the program that we built to extend our reach. But yeah, big things are You know, really it was the first within PoolTogether anyways, the first community-led initiative from start to finish that is live. And then obviously the responses that we've gotten. And I was glad to see that those responses and those proposals, they really were everything small dollar, everything you think of, like people just, you know, asking for money straight up, to like OmniAnalytics and others that are real deep reports and time intensive. So those would be the 2 biggest things.

Okay, that's great. Okay, so then, so you're now working at EP&S. So first of all, can you tell us what is EP&S and What is the purpose or the mission of this protocol initiative?

Absolutely. Mission is real simple. Web3 notifications for all. I don't know about you guys, but as a user, one of my biggest challenges has always been how do I follow This contract. How do I know if this token is doing this or this protocol is is doing that, or if my transactions have have cleared? There's no simple solution for for Web three notifications outside of out of what we're doing at EPNS. So it's Ethereum Push Notification Service. Maybe some alpha, but Ethereum will soon be a misnomer because we will be cross-chain. But real simple, let's use PoolTogether, for example. I want to know when a drawing happens, if I win, etc. And that's exactly what EPNS delivers with a notification channel. It's all— and just for clarity, I've been with them now 4 weeks. I'm the VP of governance. So my focus has been largely what I did with PoolTogether, the forums and the proposals and the processes of how we can make that governance process thrive and all that entails. So the protocol itself, It is. Well, obviously everyone knows I'm not a coder. It's not ever going to be my strong suit, but they just went— we just went mainnet just yesterday. Oh, for people who know EPNS, and I think people are usually pretty aware of it because they've been around a while, they've been on testnet up until now. So huge day for us yesterday. And the Discord was popping, popping, new users, new users. So it was great to see. And it's an exciting project to be with because the real light bulb moment that I had with one of my teammates, Japh, over with EPNS, was when he compared it to Apple iOS notifications. Whether you're aware or not, every app on the App Store integrates with Apple's own, I think they call it Lightning Notifications maybe. And it totally standardizes and is uniform notifications and different interactions, right, with the apps that we use every day. And that's exactly what EPNS will be. It's an infrastructure protocol and one that Soon enough, um, the, the front-facing side of it will be less and less because it's— it will be just part of every protocol's, um, working ecosystem.

Okay, so like for, for, um, for I guess the every everyday person, everyday person, or I don't know, um, just Web3 user, how can— what could they do with EPNS now? How could they use it? So rather than being a protocol developer developing a solution, how can this normal everyday crypto or Web3 user use EPNS and what would they use it for?

Absolutely. Great question. And let me tell you, so it's EPNS and You just go directly to the dApp, and within the dApp, there are different channels. There's a PoolTogether channel, there's an EPNS and a snapshot, et cetera. If I opt into the snapshot channel, for example, we offer a few different platforms. We have an iOS app, Play Store app, and a browser extension. Um, if I log into the dApp and opt into any of these channels, if I have the iOS app loaded on my phone, I will get notifications exactly like I get them for any other app in my phone. Every time the channels that I follow with my address on Snapshot, I will be notified of a new proposal. to those channels. Same with the browser extension. You open— you have Chrome opened up and a new proposal comes, a snapshot, I get a notification there through the EPNS browser extension. So it's as simple and straightforward as that. I don't mean to overcomplicate it and overplay it because it really is one of the most basic services that It's surprising that we still are having to address it in a lot of ways, right? Because it's such an unserved portion of Web3. One more quick example, if I may. If I am staking on— or I have a position, sorry, a borrow position on AAVE, And that position is in danger of being liquidated, I can get notified through the opting in of the Aave channel on the EPNS app as well. So I don't know if you guys ever had a position liquid— liquefied, but I have, and it sucked to see that go through just on my Etherscan. I pulled up my Etherscan later in the day and was like, Hey, what's this? And yeah, so sinking feeling that I don't want anyone to ever share if you can avoid it. And the way to do that obviously is by getting notified that it's a potentiality, right? You're in danger of it happening, right? Just like you log into any borrowing dApp now, it'll tell you the health score. Um, you should be notified of that. And that's what EPNS would do.

Is that available now, like, unlike Aave and Compound already, or is that coming, this kind of liquidation?

It is live on Aave. Uh, Compound will be coming. Um, but yes, it is.

Okay. That's done. That's, that's, that's fantastic. Um, any other sort of applications you can think of, like in terms of Which stand out?

Uh, yeah, so, um, big focus of mine, obviously governance. Um, when— and Discourse does have an answer for this somewhat, they're kind of clunky about it, but, uh, new proposals posted to Discourse channels, um, within governance forums, same thing, uh, notified for that as well as obviously the votes for Snapshot, as well as like we just worked with DXDAO. They launched their governance just within the last couple weeks and we set up a notification channel for them. So I think it's dxd.vote if I'm not mistaken. They did a custom forum rather than a discourse and we set up a custom channel for them for their users to get notifications on that forum. So yeah, governance would be a big one for me because— and I think I probably lose a lot of people within Web3 because I don't know what the Venn diagram of Web3 users and people interested in US politics really is. But Biden, President Biden had a huge speech on voting rights and Talked about democracy a lot yesterday, and it's absolutely true that democracies are only healthy with healthy voting procedures, healthy voter turnout and interest and involvement. And that absolutely speaks true to the Web3 community as well. And instead of the health of countries and states, It's the health of protocols that every listener here is involved in one or many, and it's what we all care about, the way to keep them thriving and innovating and healthy. If it's a DAO that protocol wants to be, right? And that's what we all strive for. It's all about governance. You have to vote. You have to delegate your votes. You have to utilize your voting power because those tokens in your wallet, those are more than just liquid assets. They have more than just material wealth. They have utility past obviously their worth. And often that utility is tied directly and largely, if not solely, To its voting power.

Okay. Um, okay. In terms of, um, okay, we have a question here. So what would be a huge win for EPNS? So, for example, Pete's stories of people depositing $75 and winning thousands or thousands of dollars. What's the EPNS version of that? If you, if you can, you can think of something.

Sure. Um, now that we are live and people can take advantage of more of the channels that we do have set up already for people to use, I would love to start seeing people just exactly like I said, uh, screenshotting their notification that they are in danger of their, uh, positions getting, um, getting liquidated or their proposals that they've been working on for, for months finally passing and that transaction going through, stuff like that. Now, long term, I would love to see, and I think that we will soon see MetaMask notifications. Everyone's Favorite hated maybe wallet that we all use. Yeah, it needs some notifications, and I think we're going to be able to deliver it to it. So I definitely, like I said, protocol is not, and it's not what I was hired to do at EPNS either. But I am the representative of the company here today. So you got my word for it anyways. But Um,

yeah,

yeah, we will be delivering that.

No, absolutely. Okay, um, let's just talk— let's just move— let's just talk a little bit wider in Web3 crypto, just get your views and stuff. What do you see as the main trends going into 2022? So, so what, what, what do you expect to happen in this space, and any things that you're particularly looking out for, or potentially could see happening this year?

Sure. I mean, I think the, in my mind, kind of the pinnacle, really next huge step would be to see one of these big Web2 companies make that transition and whatever that looks like. Hopefully it's like a tokenification and airdrop to the users, right? But Discord, Twitter, and the rest, that claim to and cater to these communities, put your money where your mouth is, right? I mean, it's really that simple. Will it happen? I mean, I don't know. I think your guess is as good as mine. I'm not overly hopeful, but that's what I would be excited for and really looking for. Past that, maybe I'm not the most philosophical guy, but governance has been my focus and what I'm passionate about and what I've tried to build within Web3. Every user, it seems we were all hobbyists, right? We all got into Bitcoin or whatever, and then like, oh, Shit, I can make a job out of this and make some money at it. So we're all just kind of trying to find our way. But most importantly, people have to blaze their own paths within this new space because if you don't create your lane, I mean, no one's going to pave it for you, right? One of my first bosses and mentors, my uncle, would always tell me that, Blake, I promise you, no one is getting up this morning and thinking to themselves, what can I do for Blake today? Right? What can I— how can I make Blake's life easier? That's on you. So in the same way, when I came into Web3 as a non-technical user, as a non-coder, I did my best to understand the smart contract side of things. Definitely, Etherscan was something that I focused on and wanted to learn, and it has been the most useful tool along my journey to really understand and get up to speed, right? So I can talk about some of these things. But even if that isn't part of your forte and you still want to get into DAO work, there are opportunities for absolutely every type of contributor. Like I said at the beginning, DAOs are just like traditional companies, right? They still need HR, they still need accountants, and they still need, you know, office people. So Even if you're not a coder, even if you're not a token holder even, right? You just are interested. There's still a place for you within Web3 and the DAO space. I'm going to bring it back to politics one more time if I can. Biden was talking about how democracies change and evolve. 100 years ago, women couldn't vote. And in 1965, or up until '65, African Americans largely couldn't vote. So in the same way, if we want Web3 and DAO work to be part of the future in a big way, right? If we want it to evolve, it does have to Constantly innovate. Badger was one of the first projects that I really got into. One thing that I learned from them early on in my experience was their constant innovation and never resting on what you have and always looking to, for good or bad, for good or bad, follow the next thing. Right? If we stumble, we get up and we try again. Right? You hit, you get back to every other euphemism for that. But it's absolutely true. Teddy Roosevelt, one of my favorite quotes, get action, be sane, do things. Just try, right? Within the DAO space, there's no one that's going to tell us no or how to do it a certain way. And we'll get it wrong a lot. But as long as we, we just get it right a few times, that's all it takes.

So, okay,

that was kind of an abstract answer for you. Sorry about that.

Well, just talking about practical, so you If there is— if there are people listening to this who aren't that technical and you mentioned Etherscan, what specifically, what should they be learning on Etherscan and how, how, how can they go about learning that?

Yeah, so for my fellow, um, non-technical, non-coding users out there, uh, everything within Web3 and what makes crypto special is the smart contract, right? Right? That's what is run on-chain. That's what the tokens are built off of the contract, right? Everything. So understanding how that works, what that is, how that relates to a wallet address and a token address. And I know that that can be hard to suss out when you're looking at numbers instead of Right, the words. So I don't have, you know, a clear path of exactly how I did it or how I would maybe even suggest other people to do it past just smart contract is where to start and that will lead you down every path that you need to take. I would even say that for newer users of Web3, Before it, I think all users kind of have a period where they're just, they get into everything. Oh, new project, new project. What's that? What's that? Before you start doing that and digging into all these exciting protocols and dApps, take it a step back. Just go back to Etherscan and PolygonScan and how that relates to RVScan, right? And Get a good grasp on that, because once you do, and once you understand how to read what's happening in that dApp, what's happening in that protocol on those platforms, it'll just make those dApp journeys that you're going to take that are super interesting even more insightful because you understand them, right? And then you're going to have a great idea about how it relates to something else, and you're going to make your own protocol because you understand how to. But really, with my understanding of smart contracts and how they work, I have written some Solidity, which is the programming language for smart contracts, and then some JavaScript and HTML. So Uh, it makes it much less daunting to get into actually using a programming language if you know, kind of write the language and the, and the, the dictionary, which in our case for smart contracts is Etherscan.

That was actually going to be my, my next question about learning Solidity. And, um, because obviously that can help. So would you recommend actually taking a formal, like, online course or, uh, anything like that, or just literally just looking around on Etherscan and hopefully trying to pick things up? Any suggestions, like, if you were going to do it again? So for someone new who's not technical, not— doesn't code, would you— what would be your thoughts how to start?

Yeah, so there's a couple repos, and repos are where the Solidity code lives on GitHub. Hello World. I can't remember what— yeah, we'll link to it in the podcast if possible. But Hello World is one. Yeah, put it in the show notes. Sure. It is one that a lot of people start with. And there are other chains like Flowchain, and it's on flow.org, Flow Protocol. They have a great one. That is a starting course. That is a— it's a walkthrough, right? So you're actually doing the coding, you're actually working in Solidity and just making a very, very simple contract that you can still interact with through a dApp. It goes all the way through that. I'm glad you asked that because I actually did spend a lot of time trying to decide whether I should go to a coding bootcamp. I know Brendan came from one and met other Web3 people that we worked with in grants through that bootcamp, and obviously has been super helpful to him in his journey, it seems. So the reason I didn't go that way, I'm 35. I have 2 kids and a wife and all that. So it is a big time commitment. You know, I think it's like 12 weeks for somehow like 8 or 12 hours a day. Some people are telling me in certain projects. So I may still, you know, I may still do that at some point because I would love to, you know, write a protocol someday and Without those tools, you know, obviously you need them. And just to be clear, I guess that's not an equivalent, right? It's not like 12 weeks of bootcamp versus, you know, playing around on Etherscan for 12 months is any kind of equivalent because past these simple walkthroughs like the Hello World and the others, There really is a lot to coding, which is probably a dumb statement, an understatement, but that you, yeah, you just, you need to be taught and you need to learn it and you need to be dedicated to it. However, for those like myself who don't have the time commitment to make to that at the moment, or are maybe less serious about the coding side of things and just want to be an accountant for a DAO, but still understand what's going on and how protocols work. I think a journey with Etherscan and diligent trying to understand the processes there within, or maybe even— there are— I'll make a couple shoutouts. Chris K, DeFi Donut, has a great learning course. Questbook has a learning course, and we funded several others through Pool Grants too. Rabbit Hole, for example. There are protocols out there that are aimed at educating people on the functionings of Web3, right? So there's tons of resources out there, right? All I can speak to is my journey. And I feel fortunate because even though I lost a great paying job and career, I did have— I took freaking 8, 9 months off before really sitting down and trying to look for my next thing. And I was able to do so. The stimmies were great, but it's not enough to pay a mortgage because of crypto, right? We all are usually turned on by crypto because of financial gain, right? Gains to the moon. But I feel fortunate that I had the time to really follow my hobby or follow my interest and make it into something. But for those who don't have tons of time and a worldwide pandemic to keep you inside for months on end, there's other resources too. So depending on your interest level, your sincerity, and your Your goals thereafter, there are different journeys that people can take. And just like our evolving governance procedures, it'll only get better, right? Because we don't have an excellent answer for any specific thing in Web3 yet, but we got lots of available answers for the different questions. So.

Okay, uh, you mentioned a few times about potentially having your own protocol. So what if you could have a protocol of your own, whether you build it yourself or you work with others, what would that be? Or what do you think is either missing, or would you most be, be most interested in building?

That is a good question. Um, I don't have any specific projects that I'm working on, just to be clear. I don't have any secret project that I plan on releasing, but EPNS is my focus and will be for the foreseeable future. But if— That's a good question. Is there really— it is— is there anything missing within Web3 that I would want to address, right? There's one that was brought to light by Seb from Zapper over the last year, and that is financing for big purchases like a home. So mortgage servicing right now, I know that the conversation And I don't know if you guys— do you guys remember when Seb was talking about he couldn't get a mortgage because he's crypto?

Yeah.

Yeah. If you remember the conversation and the comments around it were, well, that's available. You just put up 100% or 150% upfront. And then yeah, you can borrow against that all you want. You know, no duh, guy, like, missing the point completely. In my opinion, uncollateralized asset lending is what it's called for those unaware of it. But it's someone saying that they will front you the money for an uncollateralized asset, right? A real property, a home, a car, a building, whatever, right? Anything that you don't have the money for upfront, and being able to offer that loan in a decentralized fashion. And there are a few that are trying to address that. I don't think any are doing so in a maybe truly decentralized fashion. It's more like a group of people pooling funds and then curating— Right. applications, right? Someone's saying, okay, I want this much, and then that group of people, which is a lending club, right? That's a— what do they call those banks? Um, like it's a small community bank. Credit union. Yeah, exactly. It's a— that's a credit union. Um, it's not— it's not a mortgage, right? And I'm not saying that Web3 has to offer something that is exactly a a mortgage, just decentralized, whatever that means. But there has to be some kind of answer, right? If, like I said, I'm 35, and thank goodness I got my mortgage when I did have a W-2. But for the last couple of years, I mean, as of right now, there's— you're not going to get a W-2 for working with the DAO. And I know that I'm just speaking to US users here, but I'm talking about tax reporting, which in the US is what we use to verify income and assets and get loans. So we have to address that if we want to seriously offer people careers and opportunities for advancement and employment within Web3. In the US anyways, and it might be different around the world, but really the secret, if there is any secret to prosperity and wealth, is property ownership. I mean, it just, as of right now, the American dream is owning a house because that guarantees you Past obviously the necessities of life, but you're not paying someone else's assets off. You're paying your own assets off. And those are the only 2 choices. You rent or you buy, right? Obviously, the latter is more attractive, but there's a reason why people don't. And it's because you have to have like 10% or 3% down of $100,000. And I think something like 50% of Americans don't have $400 in case of an emergency. So I think it's a glaring hole and one that past the immediate need offers so much more to Web3 operators and DAO operators past just a place to live. It, it, it's part of the employment and prosperity and, and working within, within the DAOs.

Yeah, I'm not— I think this is, this is a big, uh, potentially a big thing because, uh, many people who are doing well today in— if, if Seb from Zappa struggled, then many of the people who are still doing pretty well and maybe much better than a normal job, um, still may struggle to— so that's absolutely, absolutely right. Okay, let's just, um, move, change track a bit and just have maybe a bit, bit sort of, uh, see more about your journey. So in terms of crypto, let's go into crypto. What, what have been some of your biggest successes in a space?

Sure. It's probably the same thing, and that's getting in and taking part in protocols early. I say it's the same thing because going back to, you know, people's journeys and what their interest is and education, Before that, or I mentioned the dApp journey, right? You find all these protocols and holy shit, look at all these different lendings and identities and domain, right? And you go down those rabbit holes. And that's, in my opinion, one of the funnest parts of Web3. Once it clicks and then, right, taking off. So, Oh my God, I just lost my train of thought.

Um, going a little bit, I don't know if you can do anything to make it clearer.

Let me get closer to my computer. Can you hear me?

Yeah, that's much better.

Okay, sorry, can you give me the question one more time? I totally lost my train of thought.

Yeah, so just what are your biggest, some of your biggest successes and failures within crypto?

Yes. Thank you. Sorry about that. Okay, so getting in early. Fun story. Last summer, Art Blocks, right? Everyone's familiar with Art Blocks. It's an NFT creator project, artblocks.io. I can't remember exactly when I got started in it, but it was definitely early. And they have curated projects, open, closed projects, and one open project was Crypto Venetians.

You're breaking up. Could you? We can't really hear you properly.

Oh, I was hearing him well. I'm not sure what was going on.

How about now? I took my AirPods off.

Okay, great. Yes, you're talking about Art Blocks.

Yep. So Art Blocks, and they have the different projects that you can, you know, if they're open, get into. And one of those was Crypto Venetians and Bright moments. It was kind of a weird one from what I remember, and did it early in the year. Come June, I got an email that okay now that you signed up for this open project, Crypto Venetians, you're ready to mint. Here's your time, and we'll see you in in Venice, in Venice Beach. I was like, you know, what is this again? And I looked it up. I'm like, I had no idea for the most part on the front end.

No, you keep breaking up, but I can't hear you.

Yeah, everything sounds fine, man. Maybe it's you.

Yeah, I was going to say you were breaking up too a little bit. Yeah. Okay. Am I good, guys?

Yeah, you're good.

Okay. But yeah, I got the email and I was excited to, you know, delve into Art Blocks and yes this, yes that. And come to find out, you know, it was a limited run of NFTs that you had to go live in person to mint. And my poking around got me a ticket. And so I bought a plane ticket to go to Venice Beach and my aunt lives in LA. So it all just worked out a few days later and— Yeah, it was a really cool experience, um, and I got to do it because I was, you know, just poking around different shit early on. Uh, now flip side of that, you know, obviously there's so many obvious downsides getting in and stuff early. Um, yes, I've been rugged. Yes, I've had my private keys stolen. And yes, uh, I've lost lots of money by putting stuff into maybe stuff I shouldn't have. So. It's all a journey, right? Um, and I, I definitely learned from those things. And, uh, come the next project, you know, I'll be a little bit smarter about how I go about it, but I'm still going to, um, you know, have that degen spirit and, um, you know, take some, take some plunges in some things that, that definitely aren't proven. Um, and I know that that is scary for several reasons within Web3 in the decentralized space. But, you know, the— that threat of loss of keys for me at the beginning was kind of like a vague thing that could happen, but I wasn't maybe totally clear on the ways people could do it. But you figure that out too. Right? And even if you stumble, you figure out how you can fix that. So for people who maybe were like me and do have that awareness that they should be, you know, not scared, but, you know, aware that it could happen and vigilant for it not, some clarity on how that could happen to you. It will give you a lot of confidence in how to protect yourself from it and not be so nervous about it, if that makes sense.

Okay. So I think— so we talked about NFTs, I think we covered that area. How can people get in early or find things early today? You know, are we too late for a lot of things? Or like someone's maybe either here or I guess it's my connection.

Yeah, no, I heard you. Too late or missed the boat, FOMO. Absolutely not. EPNS should be a testament to that alone, right? If you're not too late for Notifications. You're not too late for anything within Web3. The way that I went about it was largely connections that you make on crypto Twitter and Discord. And depending on where people are going to listen to this, it seems like users as far as social goes are in kind of 2 camps. Either you're a Telegram user or a Discord user, or anyways, that's been my experience. Web3 collaboration lives within Discord, whether we all like it or not. And I didn't to begin with. I was a Telegram user pushed up against Discord. But yeah, get in it, get familiar with it, and If you have to pick one, ditch the Telegram. But my preferences aside, places like debank.com, like Zapper, shout out again, Zerion, checking the Uniswap analytics and SushiSwap infos, right, and seeing Okay, what tokens are trending, right? Going to a place like DeFi Llama and okay, what are the top 50 DAOs by liquidity of their treasuries, right? Stuff like that. This places where in my prior career I worked for YP.com. Yeah, people still read the phone book too, believe it or not. We call them listing services, right? So like Yelp and, and Yahoo and Google, obviously businesses go there to get found and be found in these lists, right? A plumber list or whatever. There are also crypto domain lists and obviously yield farm lists and all these different kind of protocols are curated somewhere in a listing by someone. Once again, right, we have lots of answers to these different things within Web3. No one perfect answer yet. So there's lots of resources for that kind of stuff. You know, my best friends still ask me to this day, like, okay, all right, I'm ready now. Like, where do I start? I don't know. It depends on the user. For myself, it's poking around. I mean, I know that is not an elegant answer at all, but as of right now within Web3, finding the next big NFT drop or NFT that's minting or token that is Yeah, getting a ton of trade volume. That's how you do it, is you look for these listing services, or better yet, you go to Etherscan or any of these other smart contracting, smart contract tracking tools and reading it there. But yeah, really just poking around, making connections. from another community. I made a connection with a guy that I just talked to and he's now making a game on xDai. So, you know, stuff like that. A challenge there, in my experience, if I can share, would, would be keeping track of the connections that you make. So just like the connections in your phone that you add to your phone book, make sure you, you write down when you have a good conversation with someone or someone seems like someone, you know, that, you know, you want, you want to be literally just— you want to be friends with. Because, guys, one big thing about Web3 is behind each of our profile pictures and behind each of our contract addresses is a person. As much as we want to decentralize every aspect Of this space, at the end of the day, we're still working with people. So making that human connection is huge. We had, you know, kind of our kickoff for my EPNS Gov team on Monday. And guys, cameras on. Like, let's look at each other in the eye and realize, and maybe that's the the boomer in me talking because I'm the old man now. But You know, there's something to taking the numbers out of it and looking someone in the eye sometimes.

So well done. So I'm going to be ending it up here because Smart Investor has lost connection to his Wi-Fi. But this has been great, Blake. Really cool. Also really nice to see what you're working on. EP&S is going to be great. I'm really really excited for it. I was hanging out on the Twitter Space with you guys and DeFi Dad and stuff yesterday, and the information that was going out is really cool. I can actually see this being very useful. So that's, that's always exciting, right? Like, it's always exciting to see something that you're gonna use. Yeah. And it's also really nice to see that you guys are kind of like— what's the word I'm looking for? Like, you're a good group of people behind it. Like, I have faith that you guys are doing this for the right reasons too. So like, I also can tell that As you continue to build, like you'll be building something that I will want to use. Looking forward to that.

For sure. Appreciate it, man. Yeah, it's a great group of people that have been dedicated for a long time, and I'm glad to join them. So awesome. Thanks so much for having me, guys. It's been it's been enjoyable.

Yeah, thanks. And don't forget, you'll always be PT fam. You still are. Life.

Life. PT for life.

Yeah, but we love you. Thanks. Okay, I'm gonna end the recording and we will wrap it up here. One sec. We got a lot of channels. I keep losing them.

I don't know how you keep track of them as well as I don't.

I don't, but it's okay. We have fun with it.