PoolTogether Community Podcast: Permissionless Edition

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. This is a very special edition of the PoolTogether Community Podcast where I come to you from the expo center at Permissionless in West Palm Beach, Florida. This was a harebrained scheme that I cooked up. I was just walking around in a Hawaiian shirt, handing out POAPs and no one would talk to me. So I thought, you know what, I'm going to put a microphone in my hand and talk to some people. And I did. And fun moments ensued. I really enjoyed making this podcast. I hope to do it at more events, more conferences. If you see me with, if you see Hot Mike with a mic, Walking around, flag me, call me over. I'm always looking for somebody to talk to. And this podcast does not disappoint. I got some alpha in here. I had, I accosted someone playing pinball and I got some swag. So much about this podcast. Give it a listen. Let me know what you think on the twits, on the tweets. So first up, I talked to Tiffany from Ledger. This is my first interview in the expo. And so I was very nervous. I was just getting the jitters out. And so I didn't even intro it. I just hit record and we just start talking. So here's Tiffany from Ledger.

Oh my God. But actually, uh, something fun, uh, would that be that, uh, yeah, I, I thought I was actually speaking well English, but now that I, I am, my French accent is actually too strong. It's, uh, it has been very, uh, hard for me at the beginning, but now I feel like everyone is more, more and more understanding me. So personally, this event is helping me improve my English, which is a good thing.

That's awesome. But no one's like, your English is bad. You're just, you're just realizing like them not understanding you or something?

Yeah, at the beginning it's like, you know, see, people are super nice and then I'm saying something and they're like, yeah, what? So I'm like, but, but it's so nice because it's like also people are, it's, it's funny because actually people didn't know that Ledger was a French brand initially. So I think it's Uh, it's nice also to be here, connect with the community, because, um, we made a lot of events in Europe, so it's obviously you have a lot of Americans. But here, I'm— it's, it's, it's super interesting to speak with local people as well. And to be completely honest with you, I was a bit skeptical at the beginning of coming to Palm Beach because I really compared this with Miami, and it's such a different vibe, so much chiller. Cool people, super nice people, very interesting crowd. And I don't know, like it's been, it's been a super event so far. Super nice.

So, so you were nervous about Miami because you've been to Miami or, and you're like,

yeah, exactly. I was nervous because I really thought Miami and Palm Beach was gonna be the same. But to be honest, I feel it's super different.

Okay. So you like the chill vibes here compared to Miami, which is more like just over the top.

Yeah, I don't know. I feel it's more honest in a way, like transparent. People are more chill than— less bling-bling in a way. And I'm really not judging Miami right now because Miami, it's a great city, but it's just, I don't know.

Yeah, no, it's like polos and khakis and like sundresses and stuff, whereas Miami is just over the top. Like, yeah. What's the difference between European crypto conferences and This in the United States. Is this your first one in the U.S.?

Well, funny fact, but the ceilings are so much higher here. So Blockworks didn't notice me because I would have done something like taller. So that's a good feedback. I'll let them know. No, for sure. No, seriously speaking, you know, into the Web3 crowd and like crypto and stuff, people are just being very nice, and it's a natural. Natural environment and healthy environment. So this is always super enjoyable. But yeah, different. It's like, I mean, here in the US everything is much more bigger. Uh, the conferences, I mean, it's been wow, it's been huge. The, the audience is incredible and is always, you know, sitting there. They're on point. They're very— I don't know, it's a, it's a good audience. I feel compared to the European, where the conferences are much more smaller. Here it's a bigger audience. But no, yeah, I mean, so far so good.

Well, I didn't even realize. Now I'm looking at all the height of all the signage everywhere. And yeah, you guys, that's right. MetaMask flies stuff in from the ceiling. The ceilings are like 30 feet, I don't know, like 3 stories tall at least. Bancor is second place as far as height goes. And then Ledger's with everybody else. That's right. So you're selling, you're actually, I could pick up a Ledger right now, a Nano X Nano S Plus. But this is not the reason for the booth, right? You're here to just like establish a presence, let everybody know you're here. But have you been selling them?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, we've been. So at the beginning, it was like, you know, we know that the crowd, most of them are actually Ledger users. But because we launched the Nano S Plus just 2 months ago, I thought it was just the best occasion, you know, to get them here. And because everyone knows the delivery time can be sometimes struggling and you have a lot of delays. So I think like if you can get them here on site, it's even better in terms of like user experience.

That's awesome. Yeah, you can just pick it up right here. And then I asked about diamond encrusting services, like to bling it out. Like if I wanted to ice out my Ledger, but that you guys don't offer that. I wanted to like make it— have you heard about that? So Gunna, who's a rapper, had like a— that was my joke, but it didn't, it didn't, it didn't work. Okay, cool. Cool. Well, Tiffany from Ledger, thank you so much for talking to me.

Of course, my pleasure. Thanks.

Nice meeting you. Goodbye. All right, I'm here with Michael from Bancor, and, and I'm walking by and I'm like, dude, those are some sick vans, half cabs. And then I talked to Michael, and Michael, what's on your calf, bro?

Uh, there is a Bancor Network tattoo on it.

I mean, we talk about employee loyalty in this industry, and you've like tattooized yourself.

And the funny part is, I'm not employed by Bancor.

Then what's your role, Michael? Who even are you right now?

I'm a Bancorian. I'm a community contributor and a diehard Bancor fiend for life.

That's awesome. Okay, so how do you contribute to the community, the Bancor community?

Well, I'm here right now sharing the good word, spreading the word on how great B3 is and the launch of our exciting product.

That's awesome. And I want to point out, now listen, I was talking to Ledger and they were upset because they didn't know how tall the ceiling would be. And so they're like, oh, in the US, everything's like tall and huge and stuff. You get second place for the highest booth. MetaMask has flown stuff from the ceiling, but Bancor gets, I mean, it's at least 2 stories high with these visuals. So I want to congratulate you on your booth design.

Thank you. Thank you. It's a very nice looking booth we have here.

I love that. I love that. Hey, what are the kind of conversations you're having? Do you have anything that's memorable that you talked about? Is this your first crypto conference?

No. So this is my 4th in the last 6 weeks, I think.

Oh my gosh. Are you exhausted?

A little bit, but it's all in good fun.

It is fun, right? It's the last day, so we're cool. We're homestretch here. But yeah, how does Permissionless differ from the other conferences that you might have been to?

Definitely. So Permissionless, we have a lot of great questions here. So we're not a bunch of Bitcoin maxis here. At Bitcoin Miami, not to dog on anything, but we did hear a lot of Oh, you can't talk about Bitcoin or anything besides Bitcoin. So couldn't talk about having your Bitcoin wrapped and staking it on Bancor Network. They missed out on that. But for perspective, the DeFi community is very well-educated versus the other conferences, less educated, more beginner information.

Pretty one-sided, at least with the Bitcoin stuff.

100% one-sided Bitcoin maxis.

It's just so annoying.

It's a big bubble. Just stake it on Bancor. You'll be safe. Thank me later.

That's right. I love it. I love it. Well, Michael, thanks for your time. Appreciate it, man.

Thank you. Have a great day.

Okay. Hey, I'm here with Alex, who's with MetaMask and ConsenSys. Alex, how is Permissionless going compared to the other crypto conferences that you may have attended?

Ooh, that's a good question. I was at Paris last month. So I think equally amazing conferences, really good buzz, lots of good, great to see people, the ecosystem and faces behind all the logos and applications that we use every day. So I think super, super good place.

Yeah, so I've only been to ETH Denver. That was my first one and that was in February. And now I'm here and I'm like, there's so many more like blazers and like suits here. Have you noticed?

I haven't noticed suits, but either way, we, we don't discriminate. We're all in here together to build Web3. We want to build a community with everyone. So.

Did I say that in a pejorative way? Yeah. Also, there's been these Palm Beach parties. Have you gone to any parties afterwards and stuff?

Yes, I have been. Yeah. Pretty, uh, pretty great. Pretty crazy. Wild, wild place.

Do you have a memorable one? One that like sticks out?

Ooh.

Well, it was one that I didn't go to actually. So I was, uh, tried to go to the Ripple party last night. And that was on a, on a boat, but wasn't on the guest list, so didn't get to go in. But wish I could, wish I could have got in.

Lots of yacht parties. And so I actually grew up here. And so Palm Beach, there was like all these parties at hotels like Breakers and all this stuff. And I was just like, oh, I can't go to these because I only have t-shirts. Like, I just in my head, I had to be fancy. But I ended up going to one and everybody was in t-shirts. And I was just like, so, so anyways, well, I'm sorry about the party that you missed. But I wanted to congratulate you on MetaMask. The MetaMask booth is actually using the full space. Ledger was jealous. They wanted to build like a tower, but MetaMask is like flying stuff in through the ceiling. So I think you get the most gargantuan booth award. How has it been talking to people and like what kind of conversations are you having?

Yeah, amazing. I think it's great to meet all of our users and understand how they use MetaMask, what they like. Get some feedback as well, and then just introducing, um, kind of more of what's in store as well.

So I'm noticing like with, uh, Coinbase had an announcement and Robinhood had an announcement, and what I'm getting the vibe is, is that everybody's just gonna pay my mainnet fees now. Is that— is that— is MetaMask gonna do that too?

Um, mainnet fees?

Yeah, isn't like Coinbase, they're doing the thing where like you can, with Coinbase app, you don't even need wallet, you can interact with mainnet. And they're paying, they're going to like, because they can batch everything. I might just be making this up and dreaming dreams. And so maybe I just gave you a product idea where MetaMask can pay all fees on mainnet now.

Yeah, thanks for the suggestion. We've actually got some of the guys from there. Speak to them. They're all here.

Got it. Got it. Well, Alex, thanks so much. Appreciate it. Nice meeting you.

Yeah, nice to meet you too.

So I'm here with Steven from Aave and Lens, right? You got a Lens hat on. You got a couple of things going for you. Yeah. Steven. And can you tell me the story behind the ghost with the Aave ghost thing? Because it's so dang cute. Who would have thought ghosts could be— I guess Casper is a friendly ghost, but this one looks better. It's like a Pac-Man ghost kind of thing. So what's the story behind the ghost?

Yeah, so the ghost— Aave means ghost in Finnish, and our CEO Stani is from Finland. So that's how we got ghosts. I think part of it too is just kind of friendly branding, trying to be approachable. And, you know, DeFi is for everybody. We don't want to be you know, intimidating or too serious. So, um, yeah, having the friendly ghost, uh, it kind of is inviting. Come use, uh, our, our protocol.

And I get that Scandinavian, like the Finnish vibe, you know, that, that, that design aesthetic. Because let's be real, Aave and Lens have— you, you have the best swag, I think.

Wow.

Like it's the most desired. When I saw the totes, which I don't see anymore, which I'm sad about, I, I'm shedding a tear. Um, but the Those aren't there anymore because people want them. So what's your favorite piece of Aave or Lens swag that you have?

All right, I'll go with our Permissionless hat that we had this week. It's a butter yellow hat with a little cute ghost chilling next to a palm tree. I mean, that's just fire merch. Shout out to our designers. Yeah, I'll pick that one.

And you said you're out of those, right?

Yes, we are out. We're out of everything. We showed up with just a ton of swag, and I can't believe we went through all of it.

And you realize this is a podcast. You're not allowed to lie on this podcast. Like, I know that you've got some stuff hidden somewhere.

I really don't think that we do.

Okay. No, no, that's fine.

People in my hotel room.

Exactly. See, I knew it. I knew it. But I'm wearing this Hawaiian purple shirt, and people ask me for the shirt like they want this shirt off my back. And I'm like, well, you don't want it because it's got like, it's got like, it's got words on it and whatever, and you're not going to want it. But apparently, so I'm letting you know, I'm giving you that merch tip for Ave. Not that you need it, but like maybe explore some Ave Hawaiian shirts in the future, right? I think that would be fire.

I personally like that. I think you're onto something there.

Okay, so if I see you around and you go back to your hotel room and you get that butter hat and you see me with the Hawaiian shirt, maybe we could do a little swap. It's fine. Do you have any like interesting conversations that you've had at Permissionless? Because I've only been to East Denver in February and then this, and two totally different vibes. East Denver is such a builder-focused thing, and I feel like this is more VC kind of focused and like more kind of like normie focused maybe. Yeah. So did you have— yeah, what was an interesting conversation that comes to mind?

Yeah, maybe one interesting conversation around stablecoins given the events that have occurred recently is Just as an industry, like trying to differentiate these, you know, what we're calling stablecoins, whether they're, you know, asset-backed stablecoins like USDC or collateral-backed stablecoins or algo-backed stablecoins and like clarifying the risks that are associated with those things. I think that's an important part for our ecosystem to move forward. So yeah, I thought that was pretty interesting. Maybe a bit more serious.

I love that. Anytime I'm at these things, I feel like every conversation is potentially— because everybody's hiring, it's like a potential job interview. Is that true? Or do I just think that the world revolves around me and every time I talk to people, I'm like interviewing for a job?

No, Web3 is hiring big still. There's open roles pretty much everywhere, especially on the dev side. So yeah, people probably are recruiting you.

That's right. Okay, well, I'm not a dev, so they're not. Let's be real. Marketing people, you know, marketing is important. It's important. Well, Steven, thank you so much for the time. This is very fun. And I will, I will, for my next time I'm at a conference, I'm gonna go to the Aave booth immediately to get whatever fire merch there is. And I'll see you around.

That sounds great. Yeah. You can't wait till the last minute, man. You gotta get there early.

I know. This is the story of my life. Last minute. Okay. All right. So I'm here at a Terminator 2 Judgment Day pinball machine, and I'm here with Nicholas, uh, from Nansen. And, uh, Nicholas, uh, are you okay? Wow. You just drained, but you get a ball save. That's fine. Niklas, are you a pinball pro? You good?

No, it's my first time, but I'm excited.

This is the first time you've ever played pinball?

Yeah, on the other machine there, but I'm a 10-minute master.

Well, see, listen, noobs, when they first play pinball, they use both paddles at the same time, but you're not doing that. You're using left paddle, right paddle. So you fooled me. You fooled me. Except for that was not a good ball.

I'm a natural, I think.

You are. I think so. I think so. Now, the thing about pinball is It's actually 10 games in one. You have to complete 10 modes, uh, or whatever in this Terminator thing, and then you get to the final mode. Did you know that?

I had no idea. I have no idea what all of this means.

See, this is— I'm a pinball consultant for Nansen now. I'm letting you know how to— yeah, you're not— yeah, that's hard. That's hard. It's fun. It's fun. Hey, so while you're playing, uh, Nicholas, can you tell me about, uh, like, how has permissionless been for Nansen?

Wishlist has been great for Nelson. So I think we are one of these sponsors. So we have like a big booth and actually there's been great feedback and it made me even more bullish on our company being here and seeing that people love our product.

People really love your product. I love your product. It's out of my price range, right? There's, do you have like a budget option?

Yeah, there's a completely free version. That you can use right now. Yeah.

Yeah. So the free version, and then what's the next level?

The next level is the standard product where you get like all of the dashboards and you can set up alerts and stuff like that. Then the next one is where you also get research. And the final top tier is where you also get to be part of like a curated community of like whales and funds and private investors where we have like AMAs with Early stage projects, we have whitelists, we have warm calls, all these things.

So you're doing really well. You just got 3 million points. That's awesome. So while I'm— yes, you did. But can I be like a leech that's on a whale? You know, like those, like the ones that kind of chill out and they suction to whales and they get to benefit from the protection of the whale. But Nansen-wise, I guess, isn't that like sharing passwords or something with Netflix? But Nansen doesn't allow that either.

Like we don't specifically protect against it. I guess like, If a friend of yours has an account and you have the password and you don't tell me, there's not much I can do about it.

Niklas, I would never do that to you. I would never do that to you.

Am I stuck? Am I getting off?

You did get stuck. So the thing about pinball is also you want to push the machine. So pinball is made to be shaken, but then there's a tilt. You want to push it forward. Yeah, just, yeah, yeah, like that. Uh-huh. Oh, that was too much, but that was good. Okay. Yeah. So that's fine. And then it keeps going. But that's the beautiful thing about pinball is it's digital, but it's not. So you can mess up, it gets stuck, but you're supposed to, to be a good pinball player, you're supposed to jostle the machine just enough.

Oh, wow. It's like crypto markets.

It's like crypto markets. That's— are you talking about market manipulation? Is that what

you're talking about?

Maybe. Well, Nicholas, you're such a good sport. You're playing pinball for the first time, and then you get some weirdo with a microphone walking up to you. And, uh, but, but I think this was really well, and I think your game has improved already. So thanks for talking to me, Nicholas.

My consultant, thank you very much.

Cheers. Okay, so I'm not interviewing somebody right now, but I cannot believe this. Ave came up to me, and as I'm interviewing Nicholas from Nansen on the pinball machine, they give me the hat. I got the yellow butter, the butter yellow Ave hat, and they gave me socks. So I knew persistence would get me the The hookup. I'm so excited. The, the, the liner notes of this podcast will have pictures of my, of my swag scores. All right. I'm here with, uh, I should ask, uh, Keoni.

Keoni.

Keoni. Yeah. Okay. And, and listen, Keoni was, is just like taking pro photos for people, like commissionless. Are you gonna, you gotta charge, right? You gotta, you gotta make it. Listen to that.

No, no, no. Of course not. It's all just about the connections that you make here. at the conference and just meeting new people and taking their photos so you remember who they are. That's really all that matters, you know.

So you're walking around, you're talking to people, and you're connecting, and then you take their photo so you can remember who you talked to. And are you— so you're with Espresso, and can you tell me about that?

Yeah, of course. So Espresso, basically we provide crypto alerts. You can think about DeFi, NFTs, GameFi, hopefully in the near future. Pretty soon, actually. So we do data automation for developers and also crypto enthusiasts and crypto degens or traders, just anyone really in the space. Right now we're on Ethereum, but we're scaling to Avalanche pretty soon. So that's super cool. And other blockchains. So that's some exciting things coming.

Nice. And I learned with Avalanche, everything is a-something. So it's like AVAX or Ava Labs. And I'm like, oh, I want to say, yeah, Avalanche. Yeah, exactly. So what's— Keoni, what's your role with Espresso?

So I am the marketing manager of Espresso.

Just marketing. Marketers unite, right? Can you tell me about your, like, your background with marketing and how you got into Web3?

I first started creatively in creative direction, and I started my own photography and videography business. So this is where my camera comes into play. But this was to kind of like put myself through college and kind of give me the opportunities and the connections that I needed at the time. So once I graduated from that, I left and I was really interested in DeFi. So I started in DeFi with Ridge Mutual, which is like a DeFi risk coverage app, and moved on to DeepFit. And then I moved on to Espresso, which is now another startup. And I don't know, just something about the startup environment just kind of gets me going. I'm kind of like, it just gets me excited.

And then when it gets to like a certain level, you're like, boring. And then you go to a new place, right?

No, that's not, that's not the, that's not it at all. No. Uh, the other projects, I respect them so much, but it gets to the point where it's like, there's so many opportunities in this field, in this industry. Like, I, I wanna be able to touch different people and just kind of like, not just scrape like the scope of one thing, but like multiple things. You know, the future is, The future is DeFi, crypto, NFTs, and GameFi. The Web3 is the next big thing. So I want to be able to be a part of that movement as much as possible.

Okay. So I'm going to ask you to help me with a project because I have a project tonight. I'm giving a talk to people in West Palm Beach. I grew up here and I'm talking to like entrepreneurs and like artists and creatives about how can crypto be good for a city? How can it like improve society or something? So do you have any tips for me or any things I should tell them? Now, the audience is going to be like normies. It's going to be people who are trying to like get passive income, and then it's going to be people who are like really care about the city and they're like, crypto is just financial. It's just get rich quick. It's not. So I'm trying to convince those people, no, no, no, I think it can actually help.

It's not get rich quick. The get rich quick schemes are— it affects like 1% of the 1%. Okay, that's the big thing.

Nice.

Yeah, that's the way I see it. What we're in it for right now is the technology. And if you ask, if you walk around right now, the average human being here, they're not the 1%, right? They're in it for the technology and the amount of opportunities that they're given in their lives, the way things have changed for them. That's why you just need to speak to people. You need to connect because it really does impact a lot of people. in different ways. Like, for me, let's give a personal example. Like, for me, I came from like a creative background. I have no idea anything about like crypto or anything at the time. Of course, I was investing personally, but it was more of a risky gambling situation, right? So once I learned more about it, it just opened up so many doors. And honestly, like, I couldn't see myself like as a minority woman in Web3 in like— This atmosphere right now with like 98% men. Like, that's, that's crazy to me. And to watch how this technology has evolved even in the past year and a half to 2 years, you know, it's been, it's been crazy. So to me, like, it's all about the technology. It's all about being a part of it. It's all about growing. And if you honestly, this is the way I say it, but like, you don't know what it is about it until you're like in it. So like, get in it, you know? You want to be a part of it. Like, no one was in favor of the internet back then, but here we are.

So is this your— this is not your first crypto conference because you've been in the startup land and stuff, but how does Permissionless compare to the other crypto conferences that you've been to?

Ooh, I like this question. So like, I always tell people, you know, the Bitcoin conference in Miami— I live in Miami, so the Bitcoin conference in Miami was amazing, but it's huge and it's packed and it's like there's so many things happening all at once and you just You want something that's like where you can talk to people. Look at you and me. I mean, I just talked to so many projects in like one day. There was no pressure. There was no like 15 million events going on all the time. So to me, I like the vibes here. Also, for some reason, Miami brings a lot of crypto bros, a lot of crypto bros down there. And Miami culture is just a lot different. I think West Palm Beach is a little bit better. But I think it's also about like the way they marketed and promoted this, you know, the cultural event of the year. That's— it's beautiful. Yeah, I like it. It's more chill, it's more laid back, and I don't know, I just appreciate it a lot more. I think I just don't feel the pressure.

Well, thanks, Keoni, for spending time. Keoni from Espresso, hustling, just hustling, killing the game out here. And I'm going to give you a POAP. Thanks. Okay, bye. So I'm here with Austin from CyberConnect, and Austin and I have been like, we're buddies now. Like, we've like hung out and gone to like parties and stuff. So Austin, let's act like we just met each other and tell me, tell me about CyberConnect. I would love to know why you're even here.

Absolutely, Tim. So basically what CyberConnect is, is we've created an infrastructure layer. So we create this universal data layer for social connections. So what dApps can do is they can actually come to CyberConnect and they can integrate with our protocol. We provide an easy plug-and-play option for them to integrate a social layer. And when they integrate our social layer, what the users can do is they can actually find each other on applications. So We, at the moment, we support a follow function so people can find each other on an application. They can follow each other and become friends with each other. And now what the user can do with their followers is they can actually port them from application to application within our ecosystem. And so users now own their social connections. And for the developers, what we do is we provide this composable data layer for them to construct personalized social experiences. So with these social connections, we explain ourselves as a decentralized social graph protocol. This social graph is essentially, you can imagine what you would typically experience when you see a network or, you know, it's basically an address book of all these social connections between individuals, between wallet addresses. And with this universal composable data layer, they can basically take these things. And let's say, for example, if they wanted to integrate a feed onto their platform, they could pull on-chain data about the NFTs that somebody owns, and integrate with the social data layer. And so let's say, for example, Tim and I, we both owned—

That's me. That's me. I'm

Tim. That is Tim right there. If Tim and I both owned the same, one of the NFTs in an NFT collection, then what we could do is we could recommend for us to follow each other because we're part of the same community or vice versa. If Tim and I were friends and Tim owned a really cool NFT in this NFT collection, we could recommend that NFT collection to Tim's friend, which would be myself. So really it's just a matter of the developers, however they see the social data, the social data points connecting with on-chain data and off-chain data. We do support Web2 platforms as well, Twitter, OpenSea, Rarible, NFTScan, Foundation, Context, and a few others. So however you see that social data network interacting with the, with on-chain data that you can build a personalized user experience.

See, I knew all that. I just wanted you to say it. And then, uh, listen, this is your first conference, right? This is your first crypto conference?

First, uh, first ever crypto conference. I, I left JPMorgan Chase and, uh, came straight into the crypto space. Been up here for a little over a month now, and it's the greatest decision I ever made.

I love that. I love that. And they placed you in the corner looking at the wall. So how— what are the— as a booth operator, what is your— what is your strategy to like get people's attention? What's your spiel? Do you have anything that new, any tricks of the trade that you've learned this week?

So unfortunately we got placed in the corner, a deep dark corner of permissionless, but fortunately there's enough people here to get some traction. And so basically you just gotta make eye contact, stare 'em down, they get interested and they come over and start reading about it. They get super confused and you have to just explain to them what, what you're doing.

See, that's, I'm glad eye contact works for you. 'Cause when I make eye contact with people, they kind of like, they get creeped out, but that's great. No, I understand. We understand, you know.

This fancy shirt that you're wearing right now, I'd be a little scared too.

It's a purple Hawaiian shirt with big writing on the back. And people want this shirt, actually. Like, that's what I found out is like, apparently Hawaiian shirts have not— that market has not been tapped in crypto. And so there's a big need. A lot of people have all this swag and apparently rubber ducks is one that everybody wants. And then this shirt. But I can't— I'm not allowed to give away this shirt. I should, though. But, but it's anyway. So do you have any swag? Do you have any swag that you're giving?

Actually, we ran out of swag, unfortunately.

What was it? What am I missing out on?

You missed out on a shirt, you missed out on a hat, and you missed out on the stickers. Actually, the stickers were bad quality. We got them from a bad batch, but next time we'll have better ones.

Have you had like a conversation that stood out to you? Like, okay, all right, that was actually, we've been in this dark corner, we've been here spending our time at this conference, but like I actually had a good interaction. It's obviously this one, but what's your second best interaction?

Well, obviously, of course, I have to say this one. Second best is also at the party that we had. But the third best, this one, this one guy actually came up to me and he is part of this company called Next League. They're doing Web2, you know, basically they interact with like NASCAR, a lot of the soccer teams and everything. And he's really interested in potentially integrating with us and some other Web3 companies in the social identity landscape to build out a potential Web3 landscape for these, like NASCAR, another Web2 platform. So it'd be really cool to see how we could actually pull more users from Web2 into it in this way. So I don't know. I don't know where it's going to go, but I'm really excited about it.

That's awesome. And now listen, you had your laptop open and I creeped and I saw your screensaver. So who's the golden retriever?

That golden retriever, his name is Zeus. Family dog. And He is he's the most beautiful. I'm biased, but he is the most beautiful golden retriever in the world. He's he's been part of the family. He's actually nine or ten years old now, and he still looks like a puppy.

Crazy. Yeah, I mean, it was multiple pictures of Zeus, and I was like, okay, Austin's got a soft spot for this puppy. It's so good. Well, Austin, thanks so much for for letting me ask you some questions. It was great hanging out with you this week, and I'm sure we'll we'll hear more from you soon.

Absolutely. Well, you have a good one, Tim. Take care.

Okay, I'm not real. I'm just hitting stop on the recording. I'm going to stay and talk with them, but okay, bye. See, it's the magic of the internet. All right, I am here with Alejandro from Waves, the Waves ecosystem. Alejandro, listen, I felt a certain simpatico with Waves because being from PoolTogether, we love pool accoutrement and you have pool floaties and such around here. So props to that. How has it been at Permissionless so far?

Actually, we got our party canceled by the police last night. So it's so funny because it's Permissionless and we threw a party in a huge house in West Palm Beach and the police came. So it's like, yes, so it's been permissionless.

You didn't have permission apparently, and you got shut down. Does that— but isn't that like street cred? Like you had a party shut down at Permissionless. I hope it was shut down toward the end and not the beginning.

It was at 12, not that late, but it was fine.

Okay. All right. Well, can you give me just a— I would love like a quick, your pitch on Waves because it's very interesting. I love the booth and because of the Pull Together connection, you got like little rubber duckies with QR codes on them. So cute. So cute. So yeah, can you give me the Waves pitch?

We're a blockchain layer 1 and we're a platform. We have like metaverse, gaming, NFTs. Trading stablecoins, doing a lot.

Great. And so is this your first crypto conference in the US or like? Yeah. So how is it? How does this conference compare to other conferences that you've been to? Permissionless won't hear you, so you can trash talk them if you want.

It's really cold air conditioner. A lot of men.

So are you saying that the crypto conferences you go to are not a lot of men?

Well, I just threw the Tulum Crypto Fest last weekend and it was a bit different.

Okay, wow, I gotta look that up. That's awesome. Okay, cool, cool. Um, and then, uh, what, what are the questions that you're getting? Or are you having any like sort of interesting conversations or, uh, collaborations? Or are you here just to kind of like pitch the Layer 1 and try to get, build user base?

I mean, we came with Waves to activate the space as to put presence on the map. It's mostly big in Europe. Well, this is the first time here in the States. So we threw this party last night. We have the booth and we're doing a party tonight as well. You're invited. And yeah, it's just like getting our name in here. We're doing Consensus in Austin and then NFT NYC. So a lot happening and I'm impressed how people love rubber ducks. It's something so simple that in conference are looking for something different and I can't believe they see rubber ducks as something special.

Yeah, people love the rubber ducks and they love this purple. I'm wearing a purple Hawaiian shirt and they want the free shirt, but then on the back it has this like website and everything. It's like we tend to, you know, and then they're like, oh, never mind or whatever. But we also have beach towels, which are popular. But so is this party the second party because the first one got canceled or you already, you were gonna throw 2 You

know how is the crypto world, that you can always find sponsor the day of the event. So we're putting together some sponsors and just throwing a last one.

I'm looking forward to that Waves pull together collab in the future, maybe like the end of 2022, 2023. I can dream dreams. So, well, Alejandro, thanks so much for your time. Appreciate it. Love the hat too. It's a great hat. So I am sitting on the floor With the Cryptex team here, uh, we have our very own Brendan from PoolTogether. How you doing?

Hey, how's it going, Tim? I'm doing good.

How has per— I mean, we're legit sitting on the floor like children, like big adult babies. And, uh, and we're talking, it really is nice. And I, and, uh, we were talking about the, the potentially you guys didn't want to pay the $10,000 for the extra padding on the booth.

Yeah. You know, we'd rather spend it on this giant LED screen that we have here.

It, it's very bright. Like, it's very, it's beautiful. It's, um, uh, there's weeping statues right now we're looking at. It's very neon. This is great. What is this? What are we looking at?

These are all our launch videos. So CryptEx goes hard. Anytime we make an announcement, we have someone, uh, make these dope theatrical videos for us. So we're attracting people with this screen like mosquitoes to light. So it's working well.

That's right. Those bloodsuckers. And then like, is there any like soundtrack? What's the soundtrack? Ooh, there's like an arcade machine here. Is it like, is that the vibe of the music or is it something else? Pretty much spot on.

All the music we have is done in-house too. We have a really big, a really good in-house creative team that produces all the music and edits it and everything.

Oh, so do you do the music or?

Joe and I, Joe and I do most of the music.

What's your name?

My name is James Oliva.

James with CryptEx. And what, and you lead the creative team? You're part of the creative team? You do creative things?

I wouldn't necessarily say I lead the creative team, but it's really just Joe, our buddy Cullen, Uh, and myself. And, you know, we know that we're gonna have a big launch, so Joe and I will kind of throw some music together. Then, uh, Cullen starts fleshing out the vibe. I mean, this one, this one is like, uh, heavy distorted electronic guitars, the Gemini release video. But the last one we just did was, um, post-Rocky, and we got the current drummer of the Rolling Stones to play on it. Steve Jordan.

Steve mother-effing Jordan. That's awesome. Oh my gosh. That's great. What's the next campaign? Can you give us some, some alpha? Like we're going, we got death metal now. Next, I think next we're going to do some like Enya, Orinoco Flow, maybe.

That's crazy.

That's crazy.

That is crazy, crazy shit. We haven't, we haven't solidified exactly which direction, but last night we were all sitting around the table and Joe was like, man, I don't know why. I'm just feeling Enya. And he starts playing some Enya. That's crazy.

And then you all just started rocking back and forth. Sail away, sail away, sail away.

Next week, it was, it was, it was the humming. And you could see I'm not, I'm not

lying.

It is. I'm looking at Joe's phone. It's the humming by Enya is top track right here. Joe, what are you— your shirt is just off the chain right now. You got like a— you have an iced out chain and you've got— can you tell me about your shirt?

Yeah. So this was actually picked out by a friend of mine. Shout out to her. She has a really good fashion sense. So she kind of hooked me up with it a couple months back and I just rocked it. Yeah.

Yeah. It looks like when I first looked at it, I thought it was like a leather jacket kind of vibe or something. It has like this texture, but it's like, yeah.

It's just like a silk of some sort.

I'm laying on the floor now feeling Joe's shirt and it And it is, it is very silky. That's great. Have people asked you for that as like, because I'm wearing this purple Hawaiian shirt and people are like, give me a shirt, bro. Give me a shirt. I'm like, I can't, I can't. But do people ask, is that the swag next time?

Yes. So we actually, we brought like how many shirts here? Like a couple hundred? Yeah, a couple hundred shirts. Yeah. So the Cryptex Permissionless shirts, they went really fast. People really liked them. They got a lot of love on the internet. So we have really cool like designs and thankfully we're able to work with some really cool people to put all this stuff together.

That's awesome. Okay. So next, next time, next event, whatever that is, we're going to use the LED board again, right? We got these screens. We're going to have an Enya playing, right? Or an OkoFlow, some, some vibes. And then, uh, maybe like you could do the bouncing QR code or something, right? Like you could do that. Is that too—

Trick with that is the resolution. So there's, there's a lot with the QR codes you need. I mean, really, really accurate representation for the camera to pick it up. And this is going to round off. Like if you look at this wall, you can see the space between the pixels.

In order to get an LED wall that had a small enough space to where a QR code would work. I don't even know if there is an LED wall that goes. Yeah, right. Coinbase got it. Somebody here got it. We we had to go through so much trouble to get this LED wall, and like I I used to work in events. I've rented LED walls. It's not that hard, but this place just they didn't want to do it. They didn't want to do it, but finally they coalesced, and I'm super happy that they did because everyone seems to really enjoy. The, the bright visuals that we brought.

It's— I'm so sorry, I thought it was your LED wall, and I thought you're gonna take it panel by panel and put it into a duffel bag and take it on JetBlue and go home. But no, you had to like get per— you had to get Palm Beach County Convention Center to go get— you had to get special permission. So this is theirs. So this is where that $20,000 went to or whatever. You don't have to tell me, but yeah, just the fact that they did that. So

after this experience, we actually have debated Do we just buy one? Do we buy one and truck it around? We probably won't because it's super ineffective. But,

but the other thing, I mean, that's— they don't allow you to do that, right? You have to get like, if you want chairs, of course you could go to IKEA and get chairs, but no, they gotta be the conference-approved chairs. So I, I don't know.

Which are $450 apiece

per day.

Like that, that setup right there at Nansen, it's beautiful, but it was probably $50,000 just for the furniture and the, and the TVs, you know, maybe even more than that.

And I just interviewed some Nansen people. Um, and I, they were playing pinball. So while they were playing pinball, I interviewed them playing Terminator 2. The, the dude like improved his game. I gave him tips. I played pinball. I helped him. I helped him out. And I'm like, I'm like, hey, listen, you have a free product, but like, I know the next level is like pretty expensive. Uh, hook me up. And he's like, uh, do you want some socks? That was basically it. Yeah. So

anyway, they got to be real smart with the remainder of this trip. That's for sure.

That's right. So how has— last question, but how has CryptEx been at Permissionless? Have you had any great contacts, connects, anything? Has it been worth it?

Yeah, I mean, here we brought Mushroom Man out, our mascot. We had him wreaking havoc across this whole place, whether it was walking around the hallways, standing around, going to the bathroom, whatever it was, we had Mushroom Man around. And he— it's impossible to not see this thing when you're walking. So you catch a lot of smiles, a lot of people that are curious about it. And I think that was super cool. You know, nobody else had a mascot or anything like that walking around. So it was— yeah, yeah, it was pretty special. But I think here what was the best about Permissionless was you have a lot of institutional investors or funds that are here.

And for us, that's definitely the type of people that we want to get interested in TCAP.

and involved with. So say if you want institutional clientele, Permissionless is the place to be.

That's it. I noticed that vibe immediately when I walked up and I'm like, okay, this is not ETH Denver. This is not a Builder Center conference. There's so many suits. There's so many, you know, like pros or whatever, but also normies, like people who didn't know what was going on.

They were like, they were pretty casual. Like I didn't see any, you know, Patagonia vests or anything like that here. They, I think they went a little more casual than they usually do.

So that was cool.

That's good. I didn't want to go to any Palm Beach parties because I was scared I'd have to like dress up. And then I went to one. I'm like, oh, I don't need to dress up. It's like t-shirt and shorts. But where where is the mushroom head? Where is it? Is it like hidden somewhere?

The mushroom man might be making an appearance at one of the lectures today. Speaking, he will just be in attendance. But I know what's the name of the one you wanted to go to? Yeah, it's the it's the index the index one at the institutional one. I forget the exact name of it, but actually Cryptex, Bitwise, and Index Coop will be speaking. So we look forward to a good healthy debate. Yeah. So he wanted to come out and represent.

You know, he'll be there. Questions maybe. And definitely, uh, just want to say a big thank you to, uh, Blockworks and Jason and the whole team. Bankless, uh, wonderful, uh, conference. Learned a lot, met a lot of really cool people, and so far had a really great time. So shout out to them for putting this together.

Shout out to, uh, to PoolTogether for, uh, for making this happen and for being here with us and for, uh, powwowing with us here at the booth.

All right, keep me posted on the next creative campaign. I'm so pumped about that. All right. All right. And I'll get a picture of Mushroom Man, put it in the podcast description and stuff. So. All right. Thanks a lot, guys. 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.