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Web3 Talks: Stories & Tips from the Builders

Web3 Talks: Stories & Tips from the Builders

By Mac Budkowski

Web3 Talks is a web3 podcast where founders of top crypto projects share the backstage perspective of their work and the lessons they learned along the way. Join 1,500+ web3 founders, devs & operators who subscribe to Web3 Talks. Hosted by Mac Budkowski.
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#26: BORED, Co-Founder @ Bored Box | Building a blockchain gaming community by curating NFT assets from top games and helping people discover the coolest web3 games

Web3 Talks: Stories & Tips from the BuildersAug 16, 2022

00:00
48:38
#48: Henri Stern, Co-Founder & CEO @ Privy | How they built a tool that brings web2-caliber UX to web3 products

#48: Henri Stern, Co-Founder & CEO @ Privy | How they built a tool that brings web2-caliber UX to web3 products

Henri is an ex-research scientist at Protocol Labs. He Co-Founded Privy, which provides web3 projects such as Friend.tech, t2 & Shibuya with seamless onboarding & embedded wallets.


In this episode, we dive into the early MVPs of Privy, learn how it works under the hood, how they managed to design such as smooth UX & more.


***


If you like high-quality crypto content, check out the project I co-founded: kiwinews.xyz


***


TIMESTAMPS:


00:00 A few words of intro

01:56: Why Henri started working on Privy

06:02 The early days of Privy

11:37 How have they built their MVP

13:15 Why did they make a pivot despite having an interest in their product

15:41 Which features helped them to tip the scales

22:34 How Privy works under the hood

34:04 Most wallets were built with L1s in mind

37:23 How do embedded wallets work

48:24 What would happen with wallets if Privy went out of business

50:36 How do they acquire their users

53:24 What kind of metrics do they follow

57:59 How does the world look like if Privy fulfilled its mission

1:04:25 Where people can learn more about Privy



Oct 27, 202301:09:08
#47: Anjali Young, Co-Founder & CCO @ Collab.Land | How they built a community management tool used by over 50,000 communities

#47: Anjali Young, Co-Founder & CCO @ Collab.Land | How they built a community management tool used by over 50,000 communities

Collab.Land is a tool for managing web3 communities and bridging them to Discord and Telegram. It has already been used by 50k+ communities and 8M+ wallets. Today we’re talking with Anjali Young, Co-Founder & CCO of Collab.Land, who shares their project’s story. *** Follow Web3 Talks on Twitter: https://twitter.com/web3talks/ Check kiwinews - a portal with news & content for web3 builders co-founded by Mac: https://kiwinews.xyz/ Reach out to Mac if you want to reach European devs: mac at web3talks.xyz *** TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 Teaser about Collab.Land's app marketplace

00:56 Intro

02:41 Abridge's first product, pivots & Collab.Land as a hackathon idea

06:48 Early days of Collab.Land during the COVID pandemic

12:07 How did they "sell" Collab.Land to communities

15:50 Cooperation with Axie Infinity

17:54 How they transitioned from a crypto-native tool to a mass-market tool

28:27 How they designed the marketplace and what kind of Collab.Land apps are already out there

35:51 What's their plan if Farcaster or Lens get more popular

40:07 Why they created their token, how they designed its airdrop and what's the utility

49:47 Biggest surprises when building Collab.Land

57:27 Where people can learn more about Collab.Land

Aug 24, 202301:00:34
Support Web3 Talks via Gitcoin grant + info about the new episode
Aug 22, 202300:40
We are back (+ why there were no episodes for some time)
Aug 07, 202303:45
#46: Tim Boeckmann, Co-Founder & CEO @ Mailchain | How they built a privacy-first web3 e-mail protocol that lets you communicate between different blockchains

#46: Tim Boeckmann, Co-Founder & CEO @ Mailchain | How they built a privacy-first web3 e-mail protocol that lets you communicate between different blockchains

Mailchain is basically a web3 email. It provides a web app that lets you send your emails as if you used Gmail or Hotmail. But you send your emails via your wallet, ENS, Lens profile, and other identities you may use. Thanks to that and end-to-end encryption, your emails are 100% private.

Today we’re talking with Tim Boeckmann, Co-Founder & CEO of Mailchain, who shares their project’s story.


***

Follow Web3 Talks on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/web3talks/

Get 15% off your EpicWeb3 conference tickets by using the WEB3TALKS code:
https://www.epicweb3.com/

***


TIMESTAMPS:

1:46 Origins of Mailchain

6:01 Why they didn’t decide to put emails on chain

7:56 How Mailchain works

11:51 How the first versions of Mailchain looked like

14:56 How they acquired their first users across NFT artists and collectors?

19:09 How is Mailchain different from XMTP?

25:20 How do they decide which protocols to integrate

28:14 How do they acquire new users now?

30:16 What’s the process for integrating a new partner?

31:59 How do they want to prevent SPAM?

36:02 What’s enclave computing?

38:07 How do they plan to prepare for a scale of billions of users?

41:39 How do they plan to monetize Mailchain?

44:25 What metrics do they follow?

48:28 Why it might be hard to connect your Mailchain email to Gmail

51:08 How would the world of communications look if Mailchain became a household name

56:05 What would Tim build if he wasn’t building Mailchain

1:00:00 Guests ideas

May 01, 202301:02:35
#45: Dee Goens, Co-Founder & COO @ Zora | How they built one of the top NFT platforms used by Coinbase, Gucci, Grimes & thousands of creators

#45: Dee Goens, Co-Founder & COO @ Zora | How they built one of the top NFT platforms used by Coinbase, Gucci, Grimes & thousands of creators

Zora is one of the most popular web3 tools, used by the biggest creators in the NFT space. What were its early days? How they acquired their first users? How have they organized the Base campaign that generated 700,000+ mints?

This and much more in our conversation with Dee Goens, Co-Founder & COO @ Zora.


***

Follow Web3 Talks on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/web3talks/

Get 15% off your EpicWeb3 conference tickets by using the WEB3TALKS code:
https://www.epicweb3.com/

Mint free episode NFT (pls share your e-mail address so we can let you know when it gets utility!): https://web3talks.xyz/nfts/

***


TIMESTAMPS:

0:58 Who is Dee Goens, why they started building Zora with Jacob and Tyson and what was the first Zora MVP

05:50 What were the hardest trade-offs at an early stage?

7:18 How they solved their dilemma between staying 100% on-chain and taking care of good UX?

10:46 How Zora acquired their first users?

14:42 How many people work at Zora now?

16:10 How they organized their teams?

18:26 Why they decided to work on a marketplace, NounsDAO builder & API?

20:48 How did they set up a Base campaign that generated 700,000+ mints?

26:01 How does their cooperation with brands look?

33:19 Are they planning Zora Academy for NFT creators?

34:27 Why they invested in Zine, which is a pretty old school content tactic?

40:42 How does Zora acquire new collectors and artists?

47:51 How they want the creator’s life to look in 2030?

54:07 Why they changed their fee structure from 5% for primary sales to a flat fee?

56:58 Mint market share, number of collectors, and other metrics Zora follows

58:32 What would Dee build if he wasn’t building Zora?

1:00:00 What would he fix with his web3 magic wand?

1:02:15 Where can people learn more about Zora?

Apr 19, 202301:05:53
#44: Matt Galligan, Co-Founder & President @ XMTP | Building a web3 native messaging protocol that lets apps integrate DMs, alerts, and announcements

#44: Matt Galligan, Co-Founder & President @ XMTP | Building a web3 native messaging protocol that lets apps integrate DMs, alerts, and announcements

XMTP is one of the leading web3 messaging protocols. What were the early days of this project? What web3 native features they developed How they built a developer community around their protocol? How did they start handling DMs on Lens? This and much more in our conversation with Matt Galligan, Co-Founder & President @ XMTP.


***

Follow Web3 Talks on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/web3talks/

Get 15% off your EpicWeb3 conference tickets by using the WEB3TALKS code:
https://www.epicweb3.com/

Mint free episode NFT (pls share your e-mail address so we can let you know when it gets utility!): https://web3talks.xyz/nfts/

***
TIMESTAMPS:
01:48 Why they built XMTP
07:45 What were the early days of XMTP?
10:11 How they acquired their first users?
15:00 How XMTP built a partnership with Lenster?
17:07 How does XMTP work?
20:08 What were the hardest tradeoffs in the early days?
25:57 What web3-native features does XMTP have?
32:29 What’s conditional deliverability?
35:29 What are the most interesting apps built on top of XMTP?
40:03 Why most wallets still haven’t integrated DMs?
43:17 Let’s say it’s 2030 - how does web3 messaging look?
48:47 Most important metrics and factors for XMTP?
50:15 How do they track developers’ happiness?
50:52 Biggest surprises when building XMTP?
52:57 What would Matt fix about web3 with his magic wand?
54:24 What would Matt build if he wasn’t building XMTP?
57:07 Where you can learn more about XMTP

Apr 14, 202359:19
#43: Julien Genestoux, Founder & CEO @ Unlock Protocol | From the first NFT memberships tool in 2018 to a protocol that’s being used by hundreds of projects for ticketing, token-gating & subscription

#43: Julien Genestoux, Founder & CEO @ Unlock Protocol | From the first NFT memberships tool in 2018 to a protocol that’s being used by hundreds of projects for ticketing, token-gating & subscription

Julien has been building tools for membership NFTs since 2018, long before the NFT boom. What were the early days of the NFT market? How dogfooding helped them to acquire their first users? How they organized ticketing with Unlock for EthCC? What they've learned from running a DAO program?

This and more in our conversation with Julien Genestoux, Founder & CEO @ Unlock Protocol.


***

Follow Web3 Talks on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/web3talks/

Get 15% off your EpicWeb3 conference tickets by using the WEB3TALKS code:
https://www.epicweb3.com/

Mint free episode NFT (pls share your e-mail address so we can let you know when it gets utility!): https://web3talks.xyz/nfts/


***

TIMESTAMPS


0:59 Who is Julien Genestoux and what does Unlock Protocol do


3:21 Julien's experience with RSS & Medium


5:42 Early Unlock MVPs


7:56 How does NFT expiration work?


9:13 How they've been educating people about NFTs since 2018


14:37 How Unlock acquired their first users?


16:32 How they came up with the idea of rebranding NFTs


17:48 What's their process of coming up with UX-friendly solutions like wallet-less airdrops


21:56 Message from OrangeDAO


23:17 How their ticketing partnership with EthCC worked


27:55 Why crypto subscriptions aren't widely adopted yet


32:34 How they transformed part of their operations into a DAO


38:24 What have they learned from running a Grants program


43:02 How they managed their token's value dropping during the bear market


45:58 What kind of metrics do they follow


47:49 How they world of memberships would look like if Unlock succeeded


49:49 Biggest surprises when building Unlock


52:12 What would he build if he wasn't building Unlock


53:42 Where you can learn more about Unlock


53:56 Guests ideas

Apr 04, 202354:59
#42: Stefan George, Co-Founder & CTO @ Gnosis | The OG team, which created Safe & CowSwap and has been building on Ethereum since 2014, working on the #2 most decentralized chain in the space

#42: Stefan George, Co-Founder & CTO @ Gnosis | The OG team, which created Safe & CowSwap and has been building on Ethereum since 2014, working on the #2 most decentralized chain in the space

Stefan George is one of the most OG builders in the space. How was it building on Ethereum in 2014? Why they pivoted from their initial idea? How an ICO inspired them to build Safe? Why it later transformed into a DAO? How Gnosis Chain became the #2 most decentralized chain in the space? And why you used it without even knowing it?

This and more in our conversation with Stefan George, Co-Founder & CTO of Gnosis.


***

Follow Web3 Talks on Twitter: https://twitter.com/web3talks/


Meet Stefan at the EpicWeb3 conference and get 15% off your tickets by using the WEB3TALKS code:
https://www.epicweb3.com/


Mint free episode NFT (pls share your e-mail address so we can let you know when it gets utility!): https://web3talks.xyz/nfts/


***

TIMESTAMPS

0:38 What’s Gnosis and how Stefan started working on it

3:28 Why it was hard to build on Ethereum in 2014 and how sharing the office with Ethereum Foundation helped them to keep up with the chain's development

5:18 Why they pivoted from building prediction markets and how multi-sig got designed to help with managing funds from ICOs

9:40 What was Safe’s MVP, and how have they been taking care of the UX to make it usable for as many people as possible

12:55 First users who haven’t even contacted the Gnosis team before they started their product

14:25 Why have they spun off such a popular product as Safe to a SafeDAO and how did it look

19:51 Why have they decided to bet on their own chain, and how does Gnosis Chain work

25:08 How Gnosis Chain got to 140k validators and became the #2 most decentralized chain in the space

28:00 What’s the geographical mix of the Gnosis Chain ecosystem

29:04 Three great apps DeFi that have been built on Gnosis Chain

36:00 Which of these apps can you use today

40:01 What are the most important metrics for the Gnosis Chain project

42:38 What zk & privacy capabilities they’re working on

47:06 What surprised Stefan the most during these 10+ years of building in crypto?

50:33 What would Stefan George build if the wasn’t building Gnosis

53:20 What would Stefan fix with his web3 magic wand?

57:48 What are Stefan’s favorite web3 projects?

1:00:00 Where can you learn more about Gnosis?

1:01:38 Stefan’s guests' ideas

Mar 27, 202301:04:44
Genesis Talk - Open Edition
Mar 01, 202301:38
#40: Alex Salnikov, Co-Founder & CSO @ Rarible | From a napkin MVP in 2019 to one of the leading community-centric NFT marketplaces & protocols

#40: Alex Salnikov, Co-Founder & CSO @ Rarible | From a napkin MVP in 2019 to one of the leading community-centric NFT marketplaces & protocols

Alex has been building Rarible since 2019, when most people haven't even heard about NFTs. What were the industry's early days? Why slick design helped them to acquire the first users? How did issuing a token change how they operate (and why they weren't ready for that)? How do they plan to compete in a market dominated by OpenSea, Blur & LooksRare? Relax and listen to our in-depth conversation.

***

If you want to buy tickets for the EpicWeb3 conference in Lisbon, check out: https://www.epicweb3.com/ and use the WEB3TALKS promo code to get a 15% discount.

***

Follow the pod:
https://twitter.com/web3talks

Follow Alex & Mac:
https://twitter.com/insider0x
https://twitter.com/MacBudkowski

***

0:40 EpicWeb3 promo code

1:48 What's Rarible and what role they plan in the NFT space

2:46 How trading experiences & building exchange products inspired Alex to start Rarible with his Co-Founders in 2019

7:47 What were the early days of Rarible & how being specific helped them to design the first MVP - NFT form

10:42 How having a slick website & curating the best content helped them to acquire their first users back when NFTs were much less popular

14:00 Why from November 2019 to Summer 2020, growing Rarible was a smooth sailing

16:10 How NFT & DeFi summer resulted in 30X volume growth in 3 months

17:50 How issuing a $RARI token opened the company to a community and why they were not ready to operate that way

20:14 How they reorganized their community-centric operations in 3 iterations to focus and work more efficiently

23:34 How they plan to compete in an NFT market dominated by OpenSea, LooksRare & Blur

28:47 How Rarible acquires NFT marketplace users

29:47 Why Rarible is a strong promoter of creators' royalties

33:42 What metrics do they follow in trading & protocol businesses

34:55 How communities provide liquidity to their own NFT marketplaces

36:33 What are Alex’s favorite NFT collections

38:24 Why the web3 UX might be a feature, not a bug

41:57 Why having to learn something new can be fun!

42:52 Why would Alex build social apps if he wasn’t buildwasn'trible

46:33 Why Alex would fix coordination

47:20 Where to learn more about Rarible

48:05 Guests ideas from Alex

Feb 24, 202350:30
#39: Ayush Ranjan, Co-Founder & CEO @ Huddle01 | From a hackathon idea to the leading web3 audio & video communication toolkit

#39: Ayush Ranjan, Co-Founder & CEO @ Huddle01 | From a hackathon idea to the leading web3 audio & video communication toolkit

Huddle01 quickly became the leading web3 audio/video communication toolkit. How it all started? What helped them acquire 16k+ users? Why they're so excited about Stage 3 of their development plans? Ayush Ranjan, Co-Founder & CEO of Huddle01, shares a deep backstage perspective of their company.


***

If you want to buy tickets for the EpicWeb3 conference in Lisbon, check out: https://www.epicweb3.com/ and use the WEB3TALKS promo code to get a 15% discount.

***

Follow the pod:
https://twitter.com/web3talks

Follow Ayush & Mac:
https://twitter.com/ranjan3118
https://twitter.com/MacBudkowski


TIMESTAMPS:

00:38 Special announcement & promo code

2:13 What is Huddle01, what problems does it solve, and how it started thanks to a hackathon

6:58 Why the name "Huddle01"?

7:40 Why they wanted to target the education market, and why they pivoted to a crypto-native audience

9:28 How login via MetaMask & NFT avatars helped them to acquire their first users

12:50 How token-gated meetings helped them to accelerate growth

14:10 How Pudgy Penguins use Huddle01

15:29 What was the process for developing Android & iOS apps & why was the UX challenging

18:10 How long has it taken to build web & mobile apps, and what was the process

20:01 Why they started with a Huddle01 app and now expand to SDK that helps to integrate audio/video chat in other apps and the upcoming Real-Time Communications protocol

25:10 Why is documentation the cornerstone of DevRels, and what's their approach to hackathons, rewarding devs & building micro-communities 

28:00 Why it's important to promote your own tech team among developers instead of giving the job to marketers

29:30 Why "minutes spent on meetings "is their most important metric, and what other things do they track

34:22 How Huddle01 Real-Time Communications Protocol can replace AWS & Google Cloud

39:05 Since Zoom is already facing strong competition from Google & Microsoft, how is Huddle01 planning to compete in the long run

42:40 What surprised Ayush the most during the development of Huddle01

45:45 What 4 layers of web3 projects would Ayush consider if he wasn't building Huddle01?

46:53 What are his favorite projects?

49:15 What would he fix with his web3 magic wand

49:48 Where people can learn more about Huddle01

Feb 17, 202352:54
#38: Colin Armstrong, Founder @ Paragraph | How they combined web2 & web3 features to create a Substack alternative that’s already used by over 5k creators

#38: Colin Armstrong, Founder @ Paragraph | How they combined web2 & web3 features to create a Substack alternative that’s already used by over 5k creators

Colin Armstrong has been in crypto since 2011 and has spent years working at Coinbase and Google. He built Paragraph to create a more neutral and web3-friendly alternative to Substack. The project has already amassed 5k+ creators and 100k+ subscribers, and Colin shares how they made it happen.

>>> Never miss an episode and check how Paragraph works in practice by subscribing to our newsletter: https://paragraph.xyz/@kanfa <<<


TIMESTAMP:

0:38 How to make sure you get info about the new web3 talks episodes

1:27 Why Paragraph is a great example of web2.5 Substack

2:22 How Colin’s experience at mining Bitcoin in 2011, building decentralized Kickstarter in 2014, working at Coinbase with the founder of Litecoin, spending 5 years at Google, and being dissatisfied with Substack led him to build Paragraph

13:37 What were the most interesting Paragraph use cases Colin has seen so far

16:24 How do they manage to ship features so fast, and why waitlist doesn’t make sense in most products

19:40 How do they decide what to include on their roadmap

21:12 Why they’ve been integrating with web3 social and how it works in practice

23:17 How they acquired their first 10 users via cold outreach on Twitter, and why they didn’t implement any crypto functionalities in v1

25:16 What they’ve been doing to acquire 5k+ users and how they used the market situation to their advantage

28:40 How do they measure success in their product and why just looking at the number of writers or readers wouldn’t work

30:34 What do they do to protect newsletters from landing in the spam box

33:09 What are their plans for integrating wallets and why is infra not ready for it yet

36:43How does wallets x Paragraph x Farcaster integration work technically and why do they use Searchcaster

39:20 How a developer built a streaming payment with Superfluid on top of Paragraph without needing any permission

40:51 How getting developers to build on top of their APIs was easier than he thought

44:13 Why choosing the right feature set for their niche was so hard and why web3 UX & e-mail limitations led to design challenges

47:10 What would Colin build if he wasn’t building Paragraph

50:00 Why would he get rid of airdrop hunters and speculators with his web3 magic wand and add new useful dapps with great UX

52:33 Colin’s favorite web3 projects (spoiler alert: he mentions Farcaster)

56:00 Where can you learn more about Paragraph

57:01 What other builders would be a great fit for the podcast

Jan 24, 202359:08
#37: Olly Wilson, Co-Founder @ SimpleHash | Building a multichain NFT API that’s used by projects such as Phantom & Rainbow

#37: Olly Wilson, Co-Founder @ SimpleHash | Building a multichain NFT API that’s used by projects such as Phantom & Rainbow

SimpleHash is one of the most powerful NFT APIs in the space. It's being used by wallets, portfolio trackers & web3 games. Olly Wilson came to the pod to share the backstage perspective of their ultra fast growth.


Timestamps:

0:38

What is SimpleHash

1:39

How their Co-Founder got tired of building back-end infra for an NFT project and decided to start SimpleHash

2:47

Why is indexing NFTs across many chains so hard?

5:25

How being in YC helped them to acquire first users

6:22

Why they ditched the idea of an NFT search tool

7:10

What's their process for supporting and integrating new chains

9:34

Why do they go very deep into NFT data and specialize to compete with other NFT APIs

11:40

How do they solve the corrupted media problems in NFTs

12:37

How they designed the NFT Spam Score to protect wallets from unsolicited and scammy airdrops

15:11

What are their most important metrics?

16:20

Why is everyone on their team involved in customer support, and how do they decide what features to implement?

19:20

Why Olly likes the OG NFT projects

20:50

Olly's thoughts on utility NFTs

21:55

Why joining YC was worth it

23:35

What growth & tech challenges do they see on the horizon?

24:49

How do they take care of their business's infra side, and why is 850M indexed NFTs still a small dataset?

26:00

What would he build if he weren't building SimpleHash?

26:20

Why removing the scams would be the target of his magic wand?

27:00

Why Ethereum Merge is the most mind-blowing project that Olly has seen

28:26

Why he likes the crypto twitter's dark humor

29:20

Where to find out more about SimpleHash

Jan 16, 202332:02
#36: Gilbert Leung, Co-Founder @ 0xFrens | From working in Google to building a tool that leverages the strengths of web3 to develop deeper connections in online communities

#36: Gilbert Leung, Co-Founder @ 0xFrens | From working in Google to building a tool that leverages the strengths of web3 to develop deeper connections in online communities

0xFrens is a matchmaking tool used by web3 communities such as: Developer DAO, Jericho & Skylab. Gilbert - Co-Founder of the project - spent almost a decade at Google, then started his social podcasting startup, and in 2022, he started working on 0xFrens with the rest of the AGMI team.


0:37 What’s 0xFrens, and how it helps communities to build relationships between members

1:40 How talking with communities & DAOs inspired them to start 0xFrens

4:30 What has Gilbert been doing at Google for almost ten years & what was his previous social podcasting startup about

5:25 How 0xFrens plays into web3 strengths, what was their MVP, and why they pivoted

7:17 What insights from users surprised them, and how they iterated based on this information

9:05 Why online coffee chats can be awkward and how 0xFrens addresses that

12:15 How they acquired their first users and how they do it (and why “web3 lunch club” wasn’t a good idea)

14:35 What metrics do they follow to track product engagement, and why does choosing the right community to work with matter the most

17:54 How Kudos might become important for building a reputation in a community

22:08 Which lessons from Google & previous startup are the most useful

25:30 Why the biggest growth & tech challenges on the horizon are related to web2 users

27:10 Why solving reputation-related challenges is omnipresent both in web2  and web3

28:08 Why it’s so hard to face market feedback and make decisions based on the data

31:45 Why would Gilbert build onboarding-related tools if he wasn’t building 0xFrens

33:08 Why would he fix seed phrases with his web3 magic wand

34:57 Why web3 ecosystem is so mind-blowing

38:24 What made him smile while using 0xFrens

39:33 Where you can learn more about 0xFrens

40:31 Guests ideas

Dec 21, 202241:59
#35: Josef, Co-Founder @ PWN | How a bank denying him a mortgage inspired them to build a P2P lending platform where you can use any token as collateral

#35: Josef, Co-Founder @ PWN | How a bank denying him a mortgage inspired them to build a P2P lending platform where you can use any token as collateral

PWN is a decentralized pawnshop where you can use any tokens as collateral. But it’s just the beginning. Their ultimate goal is to provide crypto loans for decades so that you will never need to sell your crypto. I spoke with Josef, PWN’s Co-Founder, who shared their story, challenges & growth strategies.

TIMESTAMPS:

0:38 PWN as a decentralized pawnshop

1:35 How not being able to get a mortgage & risk of DeFi liquidations inspired Josef to start PWN

9:30 Why they decided to give more protection to borrowers by not baking up loan liquidations from the start

13:43 How do they plan to implement filtering to protect the tool from SPAM offers while still keeping the platform open

17:31 How they designed their smart contract to support ERC20, ERC721 & ERC1155 tokens

19:16 Why it’s so hard to develop everything in a crypto-native manner, and they decided to make some shortcuts at this stage

21:10 How they acquired their first users and how they expanded from the friends & family stage by breaking the “stay focused” rule and cooperating with other communities

25:30 How will their tech let GameFi players borrow money on their in-game assets and still use them in the game

27:08 How they let you borrow money to buy NFT assets in a mortgage-like manner

29:19 Most interesting collaterals on PWN - Nation3 DAO, Aavegotchis & Beeple’s $250k art piece

31:40 Trade-offs: openness vs. niche, utilizing third parties vs. decentralized operations

32:50 Why would Josef stay at EF if he wasn’t building PWN

33:30 Why MakerDAO blew his mind

35:20 Why would he make all grifters disappear with his web3 magic wand

37:55 Where should people go to learn more about PWN

39:00 Guests ideas

Dec 12, 202240:50
#34: Evgeny Yurtaev, Co-Founder & CEO @ Zerion | How building in DeFi since 2016 led to launching a wallet that generated 80k+ active users in less than 6 months

#34: Evgeny Yurtaev, Co-Founder & CEO @ Zerion | How building in DeFi since 2016 led to launching a wallet that generated 80k+ active users in less than 6 months

Zerion is one of the OG crypto companies, operating since 2016. It started as a tool to do fundraising through token sales.  Then it transformed into a DeFi exploration tool where you could track & invest in different assets. Then it expanded into NFTs & other web3 assets. And a few months ago, they also joined the wallet space and already got 80k+ users.

What inspired them to start? Why they made so many pivots? And why they're confident that they can compete in a hard wallet space? I spoke with Evgeny, Zerion's Co-Founder, who shared the backstage perspective of the last 6 years of running Zerion.


TIMESTAMPS:

0:38 What’s Zerion and why they pivoted a lot since 2016

2:20 Evgeny experience at Google, with chatbots and with a crypto trading app that got 1M+ downloads

3:59 Why meeting Vitalik inspired them to start Zerion

6:10 How they started as a smart contract developers’ team

7:10 Why the 2019 bear market prompted them to pivot to build a token tracking aggregator

8:30 How a blog post about fundraising inspired them to go to San Francisco to earn funding and get the first users

10:33 Why they entered the aggregators & wallets space, and why are these markets less crowded than Mac thinks

14:05 Why there are so few wallets on the market and why the timing is so important

16:45 Which use cases do they cover with their wallet

19:05 How they designed the wallet so it’s useful both for beginners and more advanced users (Web3 Citizens)

20:52 What was the hardest part about making the wallet multi-chain

21:47 How they want to battle MetaMask and why web3 helps them to do it

25:22 What web3-native marketing tactics such as NFT collections and community-building let them acquire tens of thousands of users

28:32 How does their NFT collection that changes based on your wallet activity work

30:45 Why on-chain information can be a goldmine for marketers

33:42 The vision behind their API, why it’s been used by Rainbow Wallet and StakeDAO, and why having it centralized might be okay

36:05 Why wallet can become an e-mail on steroids

38:19 Why open architecture of web3 makes it better for users

39:35 Why building the wallet was the hardest decision Evgeny had to make while running Zerion

40:45 What would Evgeny build if he wasn’t building Zerion

41:25 Why would he fix privacy with his magic web3 wand

42:25 Which web3 projects he found interesting

45:40 Where to learn more about Zerion

46:30 Ideas for other web3 builders

Dec 01, 202248:26
#33: Ivan Liljeqvist, Co-Founder @ Moralis | From 0 to 90+ employees in less than 2 years - how they've grown web3 infra business

#33: Ivan Liljeqvist, Co-Founder @ Moralis | From 0 to 90+ employees in less than 2 years - how they've grown web3 infra business

Moralis joined a pretty crowded web3 infra market in 2020, and it's already become an important player serving projects such as MetaMask and Polygon. How did they do it? I talk with Ivan, Moralis Co-Founder, who shares the backstage perspective of their last 2 years.

If you don't want to miss our episodes, subscribe to our Substack and get an e-mail whenever the new episode comes out: https://web3talks.substack.com/


TIMESTAMPS:

0:38 Who is Ivan & Moralis, and what got him interested in blockchain

3:52 How their web2 experience inspired them to start Moralis

4:40 Why they entered a crowded infrastructure space with many already established players such as Alchemy, Infura & QuickNode

7:25 Why it’s hard to bootstrap infrastructure business and how they leveraged their online education platform to grow it

9:29 How not thinking too much helped them to start and grow

11:29 How their SDK & APIs help developers to better understand on-chain events

14:51 Why their onboarding process has quite a lot of friction

17:50 How they build strong relations with developers via free education, hackathons & Discord

20:27 How their YouTube channel & hackathon helped to acquire their first users

21:30 How they managed to grow the 100% remote company from 0 to 90+ people in 2 years

24:44 How being upfront about their way of working helped them to recruit the right people

27:08 Why cutting down features was hard and what they learned on the way

28:44 How do they decide what to include in their SDKs

29:48 What does he think about centralization risks by using centralized infrastructure

34:03 Why team building was the biggest lesson he learned from running Moralis

37:45 What would he fix about web3 with the magic wand

39:40 What has been the most interesting project he has seen

42:26 Why craziness of the crypto industry makes Ivan laugh

44:14 Where to learn more about Moralis

44:32 Guest ideas

Nov 22, 202247:24
Mac Budkowski, Host @ Web3 Talks | How to explain what your web3 product does and convince users to try it [Builder’s Guide]
Nov 13, 202203:17
#32: Dan Romero, Co-Founder @ Farcaster | How two Coinbase early employees designed one of the most thriving web3 social networks: product decisions,tech trade-offs & community building tactics

#32: Dan Romero, Co-Founder @ Farcaster | How two Coinbase early employees designed one of the most thriving web3 social networks: product decisions,tech trade-offs & community building tactics

Dan Romero was employee #20 at Coinbase. After helping to build the company for 5 years, he left Coinbase in 2019 to build an alternative to Twitter with his Coinbase colleague, Varun Srinivasan. This idea transformed into Farcaster - a web3 social network that has become a go-to place for the crypto community in the last few months. 

TIMESTAMPS:

00:38 What is Farcaster

1:20 How Dan Romero became employee #20 at Coinbase and what he learned about crypto, and why he left in 2019

4:32 Why RSS lost and how Farcaster started as RSS+

6:56 Farcaster as a Twitter for crypto people, sufficient decentralized social network, why it’s great for users and developers, and what are parallels to crypto exchanges

12:23 What’s so unique about their user onboarding process, and which parts have been inspired by Coinbase

19:00 How permissionless building inspired the community to build a bot to make onboarding greater

20:25 Why they went for slow growth… just like Facebook

22:44 Why are they more interested in Daily Active Users than sign-up growth

26:29 Special moments that Farcaster delivers and how they designed the app to facilitate them

30:00 Why they don’t have quote tweets

34:15 What apps have already been built on top of Farcaster

37:00 Why developers should be able to create new social experiences

38:39 History of pseudonymous co-creators of the US Constitution

40:00 Why does the growing amount of data inspire people to build apps on top of Farcaster

42:45 How web3 social makes it much easier to start a new social app

45:52 How does Farcaster works technically, and how it’s similar to Domain Name System

51:11 Why they gathered FC developers on Telegram instead of Discord

52:45 What’s the 6 months plan for Farcaster, and what’s their 3 years vision

55:50 How switching clients would help people to “build their own Facebook”

58:24 Where people can learn more about Farcaster

Oct 25, 202259:33
#31: Ouriel Ohayon, Co-Founder @ ZenGo | How they built an MPC wallet to get rid of seed phrases and what they did to acquire over 700k users

#31: Ouriel Ohayon, Co-Founder @ ZenGo | How they built an MPC wallet to get rid of seed phrases and what they did to acquire over 700k users

ZenGo has been the pioneer in MPC research and the most popular consumer MPC wallet in the world. Ouriel shares the backstage perspective of their early days, acquiring the first users, their product strategy, ClearSign wallet firewall, and marketing activities that led to over 700k users (which is a lot for a wallet!).


Follow the pod:
https://twitter.com/web3talks

Follow Ouriel & Mac:
https://twitter.com/OurielOhayon
https://twitter.com/MacBudkowski


0:37 Who’s Ouriel Ohayon and why ZenGo is special

1:03 How Ouriel transformed from a crypto skeptic to a crypto optimist by listening to a podcast episode in 2016

3:10 Ouriel’s story when he didn’t like any wallets on the market and decided to design his own

5:10 How they researched different options and learned they couldn’t get rid of private keys so started researching MPC (Multi Party Computation) and became one of the world’s leaders in that space

10:25 How does MPC work, why it’s different from a traditional wallet security, what trade-offs does it make and why it’s being used by Coinbase, Fireblocks & American banks

18:04 What would happen when ZenGo’s servers go down and how they protect the company from this kind of events

19:53 What’s the difference between MPC and Account Abstraction

23:38 Why Mac would recommend ZenGo to his father

25:13 How have they acquired their first wallet users by marketing cryptopgrahy before they started marketing the wallet and how do they promote it now

30:15 How do they take care of the user’s security & UX

32:46 How do they make money and what are their plans for new services

35:55 How does their ClearSign wallet firewall protects the users from attacks

44:10 Why Mac believes we can solve crypto security

45:10 Why Ouriel thinks of crypto as an early car industry and the story about Elon Musk’s driving McLaren F1 with Peter Thiel

51:15 What were some dead-end streets that they explored

56:06 Why would Ouriel fix gas with his web3 magic wand

59:22 What could be solved in the web3 mobile experience

1:02:40 What made Ouriel smile

1:04:50 Where people can learn more about ZenGo

1:06:09 Guest idea

Oct 18, 202201:08:56
#30: Leighton, Co-Founder @ PoolTogether | The story behind the OG DeFi protocol which has distributed over $5 million to depositors as a reward for saving money

#30: Leighton, Co-Founder @ PoolTogether | The story behind the OG DeFi protocol which has distributed over $5 million to depositors as a reward for saving money

If you don't want to miss our episodes, subscribe to our Substack and get an e-mail whenever the new one comes out: https://web3talks.substack.com/

PoolTogether is known as the #1 DeFi protocol that encourages saving. Depositors participate in a lottery-like process where their deposited money can win prizes. But contrary to a lottery - even if they don't win, they keep their money. The luckiest winner ever deposited $73 and won over $43k, reaching a 589X return.

How it's possible? How Leighton came up with the idea? How was PoolTogether built, how they got it secured, and how they dealt with the lawsuit? 


Here's episode #30:

0:50 What is PoolTogether, and how it encourages saving

2:00 How PoolTogether started as the result of Leighton's research on TradFi tools that make people more wealthy

3:45 How blockchain makes the premium bonds model more transparent and scalable

5:40 How PoolTogether works technically: non-custodial design, integrations with yield sources, random numbers generation, price tiering contracts

9:19 How have they acquired the first users in May 2019?

12:10 Mitigating security risks via reducing attack surface area, no oracle dependencies, non-custodial design, internal testing, bug bounties, investing over $1M in third-party auditors

15:15 How have they educated the market about PoolTogether?

16:56 The story behind Poolies that raised over $1.5M for combating the lawsuit

24:11 At what stage is the lawsuit right now

26:00 What needs to happen for PoolTogether to reach a truly global adoption

21:30 How do they take care of the community

32:03 Why crowdfunding on the blockchain might be a killer app

34:22 What Leighton would fix with his web3 magic wand

36:35 Why MakerDAO & Gearbox blew his mind

38:42 Why was Uniswap airdrop such a magical moment for Leighton

41:20 Where people can learn more about PoolTogether

42:18 Leighton's guest ideas

Oct 10, 202244:09
#29: Haardik, Co-Founder @ LearnWeb3 | From teaching a friend about web3 development to a developers community with over 50k students

#29: Haardik, Co-Founder @ LearnWeb3 | From teaching a friend about web3 development to a developers community with over 50k students

If you don't want to miss our episodes, subscribe to our Substack and get an e-mail whenever the new one comes out: https://web3talks.substack.com/

LearnWeb3 in 9 months became one of the most popular places to become a web3 developer for free. In this episode, Haardik tells me about its beginnings, crazy growth, building a 50k+ members community & more.

Timestamps:

1:15 How Haardik feels running a 50k+ students course & how it all started

2:15 Does the bear market impact people’s interest in learning web3 development

3:24 How LearnWeb3 started in December 2021 as a way to help a friend learn web3 development

7:40 How they acquired their first users via Haardik’s Indian developer community friends & Kacie’s Twitter followers

10:20 What’s the difference between LearnWeb3 & other coding courses

14:59 How LearnWeb3DAO covers the whole path from beginner to finding a job as a developer

16:30 How their “no stupid questions” attitude & leading with an example helped to build a strong community

19:20 Activities that their community takes

22:03 Why hackathons are harder to organize than most people think

23:42 Why it was hard to integrate quizzes

28:17 Why, after working out Twitter, they started to add more events & other social media platforms

33:18 Why they wouldn’t change too much if they went back in time and started LW3 again

34:32 The reason they haven’t become a DAO yet

38:00 Why if Haardik had a magic wand, he would fix the web3 identity problem

42:36 The story when Haardik interviewed 5 North Korean hackers

51:22 Why he loves old-school projects such as Uniswap, Aave & Gitcoin

52:46 Where you can learn more about LearnWeb3

53:21 His guests' ideas

Sep 28, 202256:08
Quick message to all our listeners about Gitcoin Grant

Quick message to all our listeners about Gitcoin Grant

We are currently raising a Gitcoin Grant. If you'd like to support the podcast, please Like/Retweet/Donate via our link:

https://twitter.com/web3talks/status/1566864677983981569?s=20&t=hWEVjqQBvkrvfyF0-mkjWw

Sep 21, 202200:58
#28: Pedro Gomes, Co-Founder @ WalletConnect | From wallet improvement idea back in 2018 to one of the most omnipresent web3 communications protocols

#28: Pedro Gomes, Co-Founder @ WalletConnect | From wallet improvement idea back in 2018 to one of the most omnipresent web3 communications protocols

If you don't want to miss our episodes, subscribe to our Substack and get an e-mail whenever the new one comes out: https://web3talks.substack.com/

WalletConnect is one of the most omnipresent protocols in the web3 space. It’s used by Uniswap, OpenSea, Instagram & 450+ other apps. Today we welcome Pedro Gomes, Co-Founder of WalletConnect, who tells us about the protocol’s history, presence, and future.


1:27 How Pedro ended up in crypto thanks to his fintech experience

3:47 Why MetaMask was revolutionary and how Pedro got inspired to bet on the mobile experience

6:37 How have WalletConnect acquired its first users in 2018 & why was it both easier and harder than starting today

8:25 Why making WalletConnect a neutral brand was so important

9:59 What’s WalletConnect’s product design process?

14:18 How they decided to work on new WalletConnect features and why balancing security & convenience has been so challenging

20:25 How the way they set up WalletConnect let them acquire partners such as Instagram without a business development department

22:17 How Pedro needed to find a common denominator for WalletConnect to build a community around it

24:15 Why transforming WalletConnect into a venture let them speed up the development process & how they built new amazing features in WalletConnect v2

28:50 What’s WalletConnect plan for making money

30:18 What features do wallets miss

32:39 Why Pedro finds cross-chain projects amazing

36:37 His most pleasant web3 memories

38:02 Where to follow WalletConnect

38:40 Pedro’s ideas for guests

Sep 19, 202241:03
#27: realfakepicnic & sockdrawermoney, Co-Founders @ Code4rena | Managing a DAO that runs smart contract audit contests for projects such as OpenSea, ENS, Lens, NounsDAO & SushiSwap

#27: realfakepicnic & sockdrawermoney, Co-Founders @ Code4rena | Managing a DAO that runs smart contract audit contests for projects such as OpenSea, ENS, Lens, NounsDAO & SushiSwap

Code4rena is a project that disrupts the way web3 companies do smart contract audits. Their community-driven approach made them so well-known in the space that OpenSea ran a $1,000,000 security audit contest on their platform. How does their project work? How it started? And how do they grow it? Two out of five Code4rena Co-Founders came to the pod to answer all these questions.


Follow the pod:

https://twitter.com/web3talks


Follow Sock, Picnic & Mac:

https://twitter.com/sockdrawermoney

https://twitter.com/realfakepicnic

https://twitter.com/MacBudkowski



TIMESTAMPS:

1:55 How Sock & Picnic got into crypto from decentralization & security audit backgrounds

9:35 How is web3 security different than web1 & web2 security, and how does Code4rena help to tackle web3-specific challenges

17:14 How Sock got into Code4rena very early

19:40 How does their security audit contest mechanism makes it easy to get great auditors on board & what are the characteristics of the top auditors

25:23 How the community chooses the judges for the contests

27:45 How they arranged their DAO to work efficiently and not get lost in the chaos

35:34 How have they been acquiring their clients

37:00 Story of their OpenSea $1,000,000 security audit contest

39:04 Do they permit hackers to work on security audits

42:15 Why decentralized security audits might be less vulnerable to exploits than traditional ones

45:44 How they've been balancing their two-sided market

50:39 What would they fix about web3 with their magic wand

53:50 Most mind-blowing web3 projects they've seen

58:43 The funniest things that happened to them

1:02:30 Their guests' ideas

1:06:35 Where you can learn more about code4rena

Aug 24, 202201:08:11
#26: BORED, Co-Founder @ Bored Box | Building a blockchain gaming community by curating NFT assets from top games and helping people discover the coolest web3 games

#26: BORED, Co-Founder @ Bored Box | Building a blockchain gaming community by curating NFT assets from top games and helping people discover the coolest web3 games

We welcome Twitter anon legend - Bored Elon Musk - who shares his blockchain/web3 gaming expertise and gives a backstage perspective on his new project - BoredBox.


Follow the pod:

https://twitter.com/web3talks

Follow BORED & Mac:

https://twitter.com/BoredElonMusk

https://twitter.com/MacBudkowski


TIMESTAMPS:

2:38 How Hyperloop inspired him to start a Bored Elon Musk account

4:41 How money transfers & running an anon account got him into crypto

7:35 What BoredBox is and how it was inspired by old-school gaming experiences

11:20 What’s the BoredBox business model

13:05 What’s their process that helped to protect their product from NFT flippers

17:00 How game NFTs are similar to gaming experiences from the 90s and today

18:15 How choosing the right segment of gamers helped them acquire users despite the bear market

23:15 How do they curate the right games

25:58 Why so many blockchain gaming models are not sustainable

29:24 How is blockchain gaming evolving

31:30 What’s the most significant difference between regular gaming and blockchain gaming

34:10 Why making your NFT assets like a magic sword usable in multiple games makes more sense than it seems to

36:37 How NFTs unlock new gaming business models

38:39 What are the biggest mistakes and coolest things in web3 gaming

40:28 How games have been onboarding people to new technologies

41:50 What one thing would he fix in web3

44:00 Most mind-blowing web3 projects he has seen

46:51 Where people can learn more about BoredBox

47:35 Ideas for the guests


Aug 16, 202248:38
#25: Seb Audet, Co-Founder @ Zapper.fi | How Zapper evolved from a DeFi degens' product into a web3 exploration tool with over 1 million users

#25: Seb Audet, Co-Founder @ Zapper.fi | How Zapper evolved from a DeFi degens' product into a web3 exploration tool with over 1 million users

Zapper is one of the most popular crypto apps. And on Thursday, they published the v2, which transformed Zapper from a portfolio tracker into a web3 exploration tool. I talk with Seb about their early days, management & growth tactics, v2, and... art.


Follow the pod:

https://twitter.com/web3talks


Follow Seb & Mac:

https://twitter.com/sebaudet26

https://twitter.com/MacBudkowski


1:57 How Seb got disillusioned with finance and started building, which led him to Ethereum, DeFi, and the idea of Zapper

4:25 First days of Zapper and integrations with Uniswap and Synthetix

6:04 How hard it was to query information on-chain

7:13 How Seb came up with the idea of Zapper v2 and why they bet on it

10:54 Zapper as a social media for investors and a better exploration tool than Etherscan

14:27 What’s the process behind Zapper’s slick design

17:18 How they organized Zapper to ship fast

20:20 Why they don’t have QAs in Zapper

21:57 How have they chosen the market to build on

24:55 How networks effects helped them to grow

26:05 How they decided which protocol to integrate and what helped them grow the most

28:20 What NFT and DAO-related user acquisition strategies do they use right now

31:42 Why Seb thinks founders and DeFi protocols focus too much on marketing

33:33 Biggest fuckups they had

35:45 How does Zapper make money

37:58 What would Seb fix about crypto and web3

40:30 Why web3 builders develop a thick skin

41:42 How a metaverse billboard and generative arts inspire him

47:00 What was the most fun web3 thing that happened to Seb

48:20 Crypto Twitter making the Internet fun again

50:23 Where people can find more info about Zapper

51:00 Guest idea - Founder of Interface

52:30 How I found $500 in my Zapper account

Jul 23, 202253:27
#24: Anton Bernstein, Co-Founder @ Pocket Worlds | How they built and grew Metaverse apps with over 3 Million Monthly Active Users

#24: Anton Bernstein, Co-Founder @ Pocket Worlds | How they built and grew Metaverse apps with over 3 Million Monthly Active Users

If you're a Metaverse skeptic, this episode might change your mind. I talked with Anton, whose apps have built metaverse since 2016, so long before this word became popular. And they make $30M/year. How it's possible? Check out the episode!


Follow the pod:

https://twitter.com/web3talks


Follow Anton & Mac:

https://twitter.com/antonber

https://twitter.com/MacBudkowski



0:37 Intro

1:27 Quick history of Pocketworlds and HighRise

2:30 How did Anton get into web3, and why did they add web3 to their web2 app making $100M/yr in transaction volume

5:10 How Mac got hooked to HighRise

5:55 Who’s the typical user of Highrise and Everskies apps, and why do they use them?

8:04 Why avatar chats and Second Life didn’t take off and why people might get into metaverse now

11:15 Monoculture vs. Subcultures in the Metaverse

13:08 Why focusing on subcultures might work

14:19 Why their first two apps didn’t work out, and how did they use paid acquisition to get the first HighRise users

17:00 Why their retention curve goes against common knowledge

19:37 How they learned who was the 5% of the most engaged users and why 10% of their employees are former users

21:10 Why web3 is a good fit for their users and how they convinced them

21:35 How they sold out their NFT collection in 30 seconds by making millions of $ and becoming top5 collections on Immutable X despite the UX hurdles

23:40 How Mac realized that Metaverse makes sense

27:20 Metaverse is like Burning Man - focused on self-expression and interactions where you can be who you want to be

29:30 Two methods of letting users generate the content in Highrise and Everskies

32:55 How Anton’s friend makes millions of $ a year by making content in Second Life

34:30 How they want to let people earn revenue and why he’s more interested in this world than Axie Inifity’s model

35:15 How do they make their $30M revenue/year, and how it’s going to change with web3

37:40 Is Anton scared about risking their current business model during the transition

39:46 Hardest things about running a consumer app

42:45 Why they didn’t give up despite the two failed projects

43:45 What would Anton fix about web3

46:16 The most mind-blowing projects Anton has seen

48:00 His experience during Axie Infinity summer

49:29 How would he fix Axie Infinity to make it more sustainable

51:05 People spending time vs. spending money on the games

54:27 Guests ideas - people from Immutable X & MiniRoyal FPS game on Solana

55:30 Why it’s hard to transition to a sustainable model for STEPN

56:30 Where people can learn more about PocketWorlds

Jul 18, 202258:24
#23: Dennison Bertram, Co-Founder @ Tally.xyz | Lessons on DAOs from the Co-Founder of the DAO governance tool used by Uniswap, Compound & PoolTogether

#23: Dennison Bertram, Co-Founder @ Tally.xyz | Lessons on DAOs from the Co-Founder of the DAO governance tool used by Uniswap, Compound & PoolTogether

Dennison has been in crypto for over 10 years. He has been heavily involved in DAOs before most people even heard about them. In this episode, he shares lessons from seeing 100s of these organizations.


Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/web3talks  

Follow Dennison & Mac: 

https://twitter.com/DennisonBertram

https://twitter.com/MacBudkowski


TIMESTAMPS:

1:00 How Dennison got into crypto in 2011, why he got hooked, and what he built

4:40 Why he focused on governance and built Tally: From Magic Internet Money to Magic Internet Society

7:51 What does Tally actually do, and how they’re different from Snapshot

15:15 How communities use Tally

17:30 What convinced their first users to use Tally

20:02 How they’ve been promoting Tally among the users

22:10 When it doesn’t make sense to build a DAO

27:10 What are the most effective DAOs out there

31:40 Governance models that worked in Tally and DAOs + when it makes sense to start a DAO

39:21 Biggest challenges for DAOs

44:05 Why he wants legal clarity for crypto

45:32 Why Ethereum, Uniswap, and DAOs blew his mind

47:57 Why he found NFTs’ success so funny

50:34 Guests ideas

51:40 Where can you learn more about Tally

Jul 04, 202252:38
#22: Chris Whinfrey, Founder @ Hop Protocol | A bridge that moved over $2.4B worth of tokens between Ethereum & L2s to improve the blockchains' UX

#22: Chris Whinfrey, Founder @ Hop Protocol | A bridge that moved over $2.4B worth of tokens between Ethereum & L2s to improve the blockchains' UX

If you don't want to miss our episodes, subscribe to our Substack and get an e-mail whenever the new one comes out: https://web3talks.substack.com/

HopExchange is the leading bridge between Ethereum & L2s. Chris shares the story behind the project, how they designed their airdrop and why they decided to give the community so much power.


Timestamps:
1:39 How Chris ended up in crypto and why Ethereum inspired him to build

3:20 The story behind the HopExchange: Auditing, DeFi Summer, and bet on L2

8:29 How they acquired their first users: timing, whitepaper & Twitter

10:07 What they've done to acquire Liquidity Providers

12:01 Methods to separate real users' signals from the aidroppers' noise

14:55 How they tracked down airdrop farmers

18:10 How do they care take of the community as there are only 4 full-time HopProtocol team members

19:54 Why they trusted their community to give them full power over the protocol for the next year

22:40 How they organized their airdrop to make it go smoothly

25:42 Why it's great to have the top DeFi founders such as Kane from Synthetix, Stani from Aave & Stefan from Gnosis on the cap table

27:35 What's the plan for the next few months for the HopExchange

29:20 Why MEV, CowSwap & NounsDAO blew his mind

33:50 Story of Rotate - their community's Sherlock Holmes - who took down Sybil attackers

35:55 Where to learn more about the Hop

36:23 His guests' ideas

Jun 22, 202238:11
#21: Geoist & Levertz, Founders @ IDRiss | Decentralized address book to onboard the next billion users to crypto

#21: Geoist & Levertz, Founders @ IDRiss | Decentralized address book to onboard the next billion users to crypto

Just like ENS lets people link their wallet addresses to .eth domains, IDrIss lets people link their wallet addresses to their phone numbers, e-mails & Twitter handles. But it's only the tip of the iceberg!


Timestamps:

1:35 How they ended in crypto space

3:50 What’s the story & vision behind IDRiss

7:30 Five things that make them different from Ethereum Name Service

13:21 What happens when someone hacks your e-mail address or Twitter account linked to your wallet via IDriss

14:29 How they acquired their first users and what worked well

20:32 Our thoughts on professional airdrop farmers

25:20 How they build the community - “Discord is a room full of people”

30:15 The product design which helps to learn more about the users than typical web3 products

31:30 Taking care of the community by making decisions together

32:50 Where they want IDRiss to evolve

37:55 Dead-end streets & hard lessons they learned on the way

39:30 Most mind-blowing web3 project they’ve seen so far - Gnosis Safe & EmpireDAO

41:40 The funniest thing that happened to them so far in web3 space

43:34 Where you can learn more about the project

44:20 Ideas for the next guests

Jun 16, 202246:14
#20: Auston Bunsen, Co-Founder @ QuickNode | Building blockchain infrastructure that operates at the scale of Google Search

#20: Auston Bunsen, Co-Founder @ QuickNode | Building blockchain infrastructure that operates at the scale of Google Search

If you don't want to miss our episodes, subscribe to our Substack and get an e-mail whenever the new one comes out: https://web3talks.substack.com/

How Auston Bunsen sold his TV for 2.5 BTC? Why did 2017 ICOs inspire them to start QuickNode? How he accidentally made Vitalik think that he broke Etheruem Virtual Machine? And why QuickNode doesn’t care about the bear market?

This - and much more - has been shared in our Ep. 20.

PS: QuickNode shared a promo code with our community! First 20 listeners who use promo code MAC3 will get 3 months of QuickNode for free!

Jun 02, 202228:03
#19: Rex Hygate, Founder @ DeFi Safety | Adding transparency to DeFi security practices by a company that already reviewed 200+ DeFi projects

#19: Rex Hygate, Founder @ DeFi Safety | Adding transparency to DeFi security practices by a company that already reviewed 200+ DeFi projects

If you don't want to miss our episodes, subscribe to our Substack and get an e-mail whenever the new one comes out: https://web3talks.substack.com/

DeFi Safety helps investors understand the risks of DeFi projects. Rex tells us about i.a. the company's founding story, review process, and the way they get new clients & employees. 


1:30 How Rex learned about Ethereum via Reddit & got involved thanks to a hackathon

4:30 Differences between his corporate experiences and web3

7:05 How DeFi Safety started and why they share their reports for free

9:10 The help they got from Gitcoin

10:35 Thoughts on LUNA crash

12:15 Most common safety issues in protocols

16:03 How retail users can protect themselves from problematic protocols

19:17 How does their review process look like, who requests them and how does it help to improve projects’ safety

23:14 Creating guidelines for the users & protocols in a different way than SEC might have done it

25:00 How do they acquire their clients and who do they target

28:30 Why DeFi’s transparency & their auditing process makes it much harder to obscure financial details in an Enron-like fashion

31:58 How do they recruit people in such a challenging job market

33:50 Why they don’t plan to become a DAO

35:15 Why Curve & Yearn are among the most mind-blowing web3 projects he has seen

36:24 How their report on Shibaswap & the response from the Shiba Army made them laugh

37:43 Where can you learn more about DeFi Safety

38:45 His guests' ideas

May 16, 202240:22
#18: Harsh Rajat, Founder @ EPNS | Building a multichain web3 communication protocol that’s pushing notifications for ENS, Uniswap, dYdX, Coindesk, Snapshot & more

#18: Harsh Rajat, Founder @ EPNS | Building a multichain web3 communication protocol that’s pushing notifications for ENS, Uniswap, dYdX, Coindesk, Snapshot & more

If you don't want to miss our episodes, subscribe to our Substack and get an e-mail whenever the new one comes out: https://web3talks.substack.com/

How EPNS solved the chicken-egg growth problem and acquired their first 44k users? What were the biggest tech challenges & dead-end streets so far and how EPNS tackled them? And what strange outfit have people worn for a VIP crypto dinner? 


This, and much more, has been covered by Harsh Rajat, Founder of EPNS in this episode.


Timestamps:

1:20 How he got to web3 and how he used the bot that helped him trading

3:23 What’s the vision behind EPNS, his experiences in mobile development, and the difference between web2 & web3 notifications

12:08 Why they ditched (for now) the idea of rewarding people for reading notifications

13:10 How they acquired their first users & partners and solved the chicken-egg problem

16:06 How the Ethereum community helped their product

17:45 How they’ve acquired their 44k users and how do they do it today

19:55 What kind of project can you build on EPNS

22:25 How being a protocol helps to protect EPNS from hackers

25:08 The biggest technological challenges they’ve faced so far

27:54 What were the dead-end streets that have they tried before

30:35 How does PUSH token work

33:10 What’s EPNS’ way of progressively decentralizing to avoid chaos

37:00 Most mind-blowing web3 project

41:12 Funniest thing that happened to Harsh (the VIP dinner story)

43:00 Other builders that could be a good fit for a podcast


May 08, 202245:40
#17: x0r, Founder @ MEV Army | Teaching people about the tech side of crypto through an NFT-gated community

#17: x0r, Founder @ MEV Army | Teaching people about the tech side of crypto through an NFT-gated community

If you don't want to miss our episodes, subscribe to our Substack and get an e-mail whenever the new one comes out: https://web3talks.substack.com/

x0r is an NFT artist, coder & member of the investing team @ a16z. He shares: how to really learn how blockchains work? Why did he let devs find out the seed phrase of one of his wallets? What lessons had he drawn from his NFT drops? And how his perspective on crypto has been impacted by being a magician? 

May 02, 202248:40
#16: Ayyan Rahman, Co-Founder @ Gateway | Helping contributors onboard to DAOs & preparing for the Future of Work

#16: Ayyan Rahman, Co-Founder @ Gateway | Helping contributors onboard to DAOs & preparing for the Future of Work

If you don't want to miss our episodes, subscribe to our Substack and get an e-mail whenever the new one comes out: https://web3talks.substack.com/

Why becoming a DAO contributor is so hard, and what can DAOs do about it? How to make web3 hiring more meritocratic? And how to test your product with big DAOs such as Bankless, Aave & Olympus and build it with them, not for them?

In this Episode, Ayyan Rahman, Co-Founder of Gateway, tells us how they help DAOs to solve these problems & why they plan to build a web3 LinkedIn.

Apr 18, 202251:55
#15: Gil Hildebrand, Founder @ Gilded | Helping crypto businesses to accept payments, pay team members, and deliver on financial reporting requirements

#15: Gil Hildebrand, Founder @ Gilded | Helping crypto businesses to accept payments, pay team members, and deliver on financial reporting requirements

How has an idea in a New Orleans meetup turned into a product supporting the financial operations of over 120 crypto businesses? Why do they use web2 acquisition strategies? And how did they get the support of one of the world's biggest CPA organizations? This - and much more - has been covered in this episode.


Follow the pod:

https://twitter.com/web3talks


Follow Gild & Mac:

https://twitter.com/giltotherescue

https://twitter.com/MacBudkowski

Apr 11, 202244:37
#14: Raj & Atomic, Meme Lords @ Meme DAO | Behind the scenes of a DAO that makes memes for projects such as Polygon, Graph & Coinbase

#14: Raj & Atomic, Meme Lords @ Meme DAO | Behind the scenes of a DAO that makes memes for projects such as Polygon, Graph & Coinbase

If you don't want to miss our episodes, subscribe to our Substack and get an e-mail whenever the new one comes out: https://web3talks.substack.com/


01:20 What is MemeDAO

1:55 How Raj got into web3 via crypto trading & Atomic treated it as an experiment despite his initial skepticism

04:54 How Raj found that there’s not enough supply of memes in the web3 space & created the first vision of MemeDAO in a day

7:30 What it takes to become a Meme Lord

8:20 How do they protect the community’s vibe against political & cringe content

12:15 How do they help to recognize meme lords & monetize their work

17:39 How they recruit & scale their DAO

23:30 Their NFT-related plans

25:46 How do they get & deliver meme-making deals for projects such as Polygon, Graph & Coinbase

28:45 How much does it cost to get a meme from MemeDAO, and how do they control the quality

34:35 What exactly do they do to grow their community & how to build the community from the ground up

42:45 The plan to become a top-of-mind meme supplier

45:05 Where to find more info about MemeDAO

46:00 Most mind-blowing web3 projects they’ve seen

47:13 The funniest things that happened to them in the web3 space

48:11 Their idea for the next guests


PS: If you'd like to discuss Web3, join our Web3 Talks community on twitter.com/web3talks. You will find the link in the pinned tweet.

Mar 30, 202251:03
#13: Yawn Rong, Co-Founder @ STEPN | How they build & grow one of the most successful GameFi apps that 
pay people for walking & running

#13: Yawn Rong, Co-Founder @ STEPN | How they build & grow one of the most successful GameFi apps that 
pay people for walking & running


In Ep.13 Yawn Rong, STEPN Co-Founder tells us:

- What they’ve learned from Axie Infinity’s mistakes,

- Why you SHOULDN’T hype your project too much,

- How history inspired the design of sustainable tokenomics,

- What tactic made their Discord grow,

and much much more.

If you don't want to miss our episodes, subscribe to our Substack and get an e-mail whenever the new one comes out: https://web3talks.substack.com/

If you'd like to discuss Web3, join our Web3 Talks community on twitter.com/web3talks. You will find the link in the pinned tweet.

Mar 22, 202201:01:34
#12: Austin Griffith, Ethereum Builder & Educator | How to choose an Ethereum project to work on, ship it & promote it 
to the first users

#12: Austin Griffith, Ethereum Builder & Educator | How to choose an Ethereum project to work on, ship it & promote it 
to the first users

In this Episode Austin tells us:

- What mental models does he use to choose which products to work on,

- Where are the biggest gaps in web3 waiting to be filled with new great products,

- How to build an MVP in an hour,

- Where to promote your product,

and 100 other useful builder-oriented tips.

If you don't want to miss our episodes, subscribe to our Substack and get an e-mail whenever the new one comes out: https://web3talks.substack.com/

If you'd like to discuss Web3, join our Web3 Talks community on twitter.com/web3talks. You will find the link in the pinned tweet.

Mar 14, 202257:52
#11: Andre Serrano, Community Lead @ CityCoins | The story behind MiamiCoin & how it helps people invest in & co-create their favorite city

#11: Andre Serrano, Community Lead @ CityCoins | The story behind MiamiCoin & how it helps people invest in & co-create their favorite city

If you don't want to miss our episodes, subscribe to our Substack and get an e-mail whenever the new one comes out: https://web3talks.substack.com/

In this episode Andre Serrano tells us:

- Why CityCoins are not what most ppl think.

- How they let citizens earn, create apps & raise money for their city.

- How they've educated Mayor Francis Suarez & other gov. officials about MiamiCoin.


If you want to support Ukraine by sending them crypto directly, here are their official wallet addresses:
https://twitter.com/Ukraine/status/1497594592438497282

Mar 04, 202239:23
#10: Nik Kalyani, Founder & CEO @ Decentology | Helping web2 developers to build web3 dapps without the need to learn how to write smart contracts

#10: Nik Kalyani, Founder & CEO @ Decentology | Helping web2 developers to build web3 dapps without the need to learn how to write smart contracts

If you don't want to miss our episodes, subscribe to our Substack and get an e-mail whenever the new one comes out: https://web3talks.substack.com/

In this Episode Nik Kalyani tells us:

- What web3 can learn from web2 about composability;
- Why you don’t need to know Solidity or Rust to start building web3 dapps;
- How can we fix discoverability, monetization & security issues in web3,
- How they reach developers & build their community.


PS: Nik’s been organizing support for Ukrainian NFT artists. If you’d like to help them & collect some cool NFTs at the same time, please take a look at this list:
https://twitter.com/techbubble/status/1497215413737771008

PS2: And if you want to support Ukraine by sending them crypto directly, here are their official wallet addresses:
https://twitter.com/Ukraine/status/1497594592438497282



Feb 27, 202238:22
#9: Szymon Sypniewicz, Co-Founder & CEO @ Ramp Network | Building and growing a crypto payment platform that supports Axie Inifinity, Sorare & Aave

#9: Szymon Sypniewicz, Co-Founder & CEO @ Ramp Network | Building and growing a crypto payment platform that supports Axie Inifinity, Sorare & Aave

In this Episode Szymon Sypniewicz from RampNetwork tells us:
- About Ramp's obsession over UX,
- How they got partners such as Axie Infinity, SoRare, Polygon & Aave,
- How Ramp is not just a payments business, but also an identity business,
- How to manage a 40X growth.


If you don't want to miss our episodes, subscribe to our Substack and get an e-mail whenever the new one comes out: https://web3talks.substack.com/


Feb 14, 202242:45
#8: Mitchell Cuevas, Head of Growth @ Stacks | How Stacks gives Bitcoin new superpowers and what they’ve been doing to grow their ecosystem

#8: Mitchell Cuevas, Head of Growth @ Stacks | How Stacks gives Bitcoin new superpowers and what they’ve been doing to grow their ecosystem

In Ep. 8 Mitchell shares:

  • Why Stacks has chosen Bitcoin as a foundation,
  • Why they wanted SEC qualification,
  • How a variety of projects help their community to grow,
  • Info about a partnership with Codeacademy to provide chain-agnostic education,
  • How does Mintery - an NFT accelerator - work.

If you don't want to miss our episodes, subscribe to our Substack and get an e-mail whenever the new one comes out: https://web3talks.substack.com/




Feb 06, 202240:36
#7: Leon Erichsen, Builder Community Manager @ Gitcoin | How Gitcoin has been using crypto 
to connect developers and provide $50M+ to public good projects

#7: Leon Erichsen, Builder Community Manager @ Gitcoin | How Gitcoin has been using crypto 
to connect developers and provide $50M+ to public good projects

If you don't want to miss our episodes, subscribe to our Substack and get an e-mail whenever the new one comes out: https://web3talks.substack.com/


In this episode, Leon Erichsen from Gitcoin tells us:

- Why crypto connects people from both sides of the libertarian-socialist spectrum,

- How crypto helped Gitcoin to connect developers living in different parts of the world to build new open-source projects,

- How quadratic funding helps to make even 1$ count and fund projects that can do the most for the common good,

- Examples of non-crypto Gitcoin projects (incl. COVID emergency aid, biomedical research & private messaging projects),

- What fascinating technological & operational challenges have Gitcoin faced during its dynamic growth?

- Why it’s worth hanging out on Gitcoin’s Discord channel if you’re interested in building open source apps.

Jan 25, 202201:04:50
#6: Zakku, Co-Founder @ Coordinape | How DAO contributors get compensated and how it impacts the DAO culture

#6: Zakku, Co-Founder @ Coordinape | How DAO contributors get compensated and how it impacts the DAO culture

If you don't want to miss our episodes, subscribe to our Substack and get an e-mail whenever the new one comes out: https://web3talks.substack.com/


Zakku tells us:

- why DAOs decentralize their compensation systems,  

- when hard conversations about $ build stronger teams,  

- how proof-of-value can serve as your digital resume,  

- what are the similarities between DAO2DAO & B2B models.

Jan 19, 202246:18
#5: Chairman Ape, Founder @ Ludo Labs | Using NFTs to build a football community and connect fans with the world’s top football players

#5: Chairman Ape, Founder @ Ludo Labs | Using NFTs to build a football community and connect fans with the world’s top football players

If you don't want to miss our episodes, subscribe to our Substack and get an e-mail whenever the new one comes out: https://web3talks.substack.com/


In this Episode Chairman Ape shares:

- How they started a collaboration with players such as Paolo Dybala, Patrice Evra, and Miralem Pjanic,

- What was the story of promoting Ludo Labs via a community member & YouTube football influencer - Fiago,

- Pros and cons of utility NFTs,

- How did the process of designing NFT cards look like, and how did they overcome technical challenges along the way.


***


And if you like the podcast, join our Web3 Talks community:
https://discord.com/invite/sgghjTnX5Q

Dec 23, 202146:47
#4: Ivona Tau, 1/1 NFT Artist | NFT artist's work and everyday challenges

#4: Ivona Tau, 1/1 NFT Artist | NFT artist's work and everyday challenges

If you don't want to miss our episodes, subscribe to our Substack and get an e-mail whenever the new one comes out: https://web3talks.substack.com/

Ivona Tau, award-winning AI NFT artist whose works has been auctioned at Foundation and Sotheby's, tells us:

  • how she sold her first NFT and how she promotes her arts now, 
  • how does the creation of a 1/1 AI NFT look like, and how long does it take, 
  • how she got her art listed at Sotheby's,

and much more. 

And if you like the podcast join our Web3 Talks community:
https://discord.com/invite/sgghjTnX5Q


Dec 20, 202151:30
#3: Nitish Reddy, Founder @ Bip.so | Potential & challenges of DAO collaboration and the tool that can 
make it easier

#3: Nitish Reddy, Founder @ Bip.so | Potential & challenges of DAO collaboration and the tool that can 
make it easier

If you don't want to miss our episodes, subscribe to our Substack and get an e-mail whenever the new one comes out: https://web3talks.substack.com/

  • How Building in Public has helped Nitish's startup and inspired him to build Bip?
  • What are the best things from Git and the OpenSource community that has been implemented in Bip?
  • Why it's so hard to collaborate in DAOs with just Google Docs & Notion?
  • What are the reasons why DAOs might not be that eager to test new products?
  • How to take care of your community when your product is still in an early stage?
  • Why DAOs and the ability to build your "Contributions Portfolio" can change the recruitment processes even outside the Web3 world?

Join Web3 Talks Discord community:

https://discord.gg/sgghjTnX5Q

Dec 02, 202133:42