Ep: 219 - LIVE from Solana Breakpoint, Day 1. Feat. Austin Federa (DoubleZero), Caitlin Cook (Moonwalk Fitness), Trevor McFedries, Robinson Burkey (Wormhole), Maya Caddle (Solana Foundation), Ran Goldi (Fireblocks)

[00:00] I'm Natasha Hoskins. [00:01] I'm Lake Newham. [00:02] And we are here live at Solana's Breakpoint. [00:07] in Abu Dhabi, 2025. Oh, yeah. We heard about it this morning quite a bit. Thank you so much to Zero X for powering this live stream and this trip for us. Good morning. We're going to... [00:21] We have some amazing guests today. We're going to talk to a bunch of great people. [00:24] And we're here at the arena. There we are. Okay. That's it. Gorgeous. [00:33] Thank you. [00:34] That'll do it. We should clip that. It's just friends coming together for a high five. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. Okay. Hi, Blake. Hello, Natasha. As we said, [00:47] I hate the ums. I've got to stop saying um. She counted the other day. She did. It was. She counted. I was beside her. I was beside her. And you know what? I appreciate it. [00:56] I felt bad for both of you. Yeah. For different reasons. Okay. I'm Natasha Hoskins. I'm Blake Finucane. And this is Voice Club Live. [01:04] Question first. Uh-huh. What is Boys Club? Okay. Okay. [01:08] Boys Club is a media company. [01:10] We have podcasts, we have newsletters, [01:13] We do events. We do a ton of stuff on social. [01:16] And you should go to boysclub.vip. [01:19] If you haven't been, you have been. [01:21] Every day almost. Every hour even. It's a Google Doc and we know that so you don't need to hit me up to tell me that it's Google Doc. It's intentional. It's art. You should subscribe to the newsletters. They're very funny. We do a newsletter on Wednesday and an internet culture newsletter on Friday. And we are here at Solana Breakpoint.

[01:39] interviewing a ton of very smart people around their projects, around what they're learning in Solana, [01:46] In Solana. Yeah, yeah. They're in Solana. Yeah, they are. They're in and of Solana. Solana inside you, I think, is something I've heard people say. I will also say, really, when I think of our lineup and who we're speaking to, [02:01] it will give you the best idea of actually what is happening, excuse the term in the ecosystem, but genuinely, um, I, [02:10] what's being built, the different directions, infrastructure to B2B, to consumer, everything. Talk to you about them. And we'll be here for three days, so we'll continue to sort of give you [02:20] insight into what people are caring about and talking about what the booths look like, what the formats of the talks are and Sort of give you a play-by-play if you're not in the room So good thing and they probably won't be there because they'll be watching us exactly exactly right so there are a few things that I just want to do quickly and then give us a [02:42] is kate kate's giving a note oh look up look up look up okay not down maybe not down um i do have to look down for the next few things because i do have two some notes to read people yes absolutely thank you i mean companies so there are wonderful partners that we work with that allow us to be here without them we literally couldn't so first i want to thank polygon [03:07] who they're our ride or die. We love them. Big shout out to our sponsors.

[03:12] If you've touched crypto in any way, chances you've already used Polygon. It's the chain. [03:16] quietly powering a bunch of stuff that actually works, that people actually use, like Stripe's crypto payments, betting on PolyMarkets, prediction market, and a bunch more. [03:25] So we love them. [03:27] Thank you so much, Polygon. Thanks, Polygon. They're so great. [03:31] That's one partner. Perfect. And you know what? We have one more. So we do have one. All ears. We do have one more. We would not be here at Breakpoint and in Abu Dhabi in the Middle East together hanging out UAE, UAE, if it were not for zero X. [03:47] zero X [03:48] is a great partner. Let's talk about swapping. Let's when you're building token swaps, you want tech. You can really trust. That's why you should use zero X. [03:57] They've been experts in the game since 2017. Their swap API makes it simple and they've solved all the hard stuff like liquidity aggregation, routing, and all the behind the scenes complexity. You don't need to trust the boys about it. ZeroX power swaps from some of the biggest apps in the space including Coinbase's Dex trading product, Phantom, Backpack, and hundreds more. And it's not only the best price, ZeroX leads in execution quality delivering speed so you can trade any token even the very newly [04:26] launched ones near instantly. [04:28] Zero X, world-class swaps built by experts. - Wow. I mean, if I'm not swapping with them, what am I doing? So. - Truly. Also, can you believe I got, I don't think I've ever gotten through an ad read without fucking it up. - It was gorgeous. - Thank you. - I was, I was, [04:41] I think it's genuinely because I love that team and I think they're building excellent APIs for builders.

[04:47] And for the boys. [04:50] Okay, that's sort of some of the housekeeping. I want to get a sense from you. What is [04:57] Your take on Breakpoint thus far. What are you feeling? Feel the check-in. Yeah, totally. How big it is. How like... 6,000 people here. So there you go. 75 product announcements. 100 countries. 100 countries. Okay, so like the actual... And I did it on camera, the high five. I'm not a high fiver. You're really quite a bit. I've never been. I'm sorry, I'm a big high fiver. Which, that's how much I love you. So yeah, the actual scale execution. This is like... Fidelity. [05:27] - Fidelity, like big conference, extremely serious. [05:32] we've probably seen like a hundred people like behind the scenes working on it. Oh my gosh, at least [05:37] At minimum, guys. Minimum. So yeah, just like, whoa, this is serious. Like we're talking like world level in terms of like excellence and execution. I agree. Yeah. My take is... What's your take, Natasha? Thank you. Leading question. So I was in Argentina earlier this month for a [05:57] Connect. Exactly. Thank you. And I would say that my experience of DevConnect, it's beautiful. It's a community coming together. [06:10] and excellent conference. [06:13] really high fidelity as well, but it's sort of like crunchy compared to this. There's no crunch. And I mean that in the best way here.

[06:22] No crunch. Can't find the granola anywhere. And I love Ethereum, and I want the price to continue. Listen, it's all love. It's all love. It's all love. But sometimes I'm walking around this conference, and I'm sort of like, these might be my people. And I have described, which is a crazy-ass thing. I can't wait to hear more about that. I have heard it described as missionaries. [06:42] versus mercenaries, that Ethereum builders, Ethereum community are missionaries. Yeah, yeah. And Solana are mercenaries. [06:52] And there's like a capitalism that runs pretty deep into every conversation I have here. And also being in Abu Dhabi, it feels moneyed in a way that's really interesting. So I just-- [07:06] appealing to me [07:08] It's appealing to me. Capitalism is appealing. It's the end thought. I don't know that I want that clipped. Sure. Well, oh. But, yep, it is. It is. Beautiful. Beautiful. And I like people who are building businesses, and there seems to be a real eye for that. As a business builder yourself. As a business builder. You can recognize it's real. Yeah, I totally get that. So I'm just going to list some of the people that we are having today. And... [07:31] Austin Fridera, he's from Double Zero. [07:35] Caitlin Cook. [07:36] from Moonwalk, Trevor McFadries, who's doing something new. Can't we talk to him? - Well, we'll find out. [07:41] Maya Cattle [07:43] I hope that's how you pronounce it. We'll find out. We'll find out. Ran Goldie [07:47] Robbins and Berkey. We got a great list today. The gang's all here. The gang is all here. So stick around.

[07:53] Yeah, keep streaming. And we're gonna fuck around and find out. Absolutely we will. [08:01] Austin Federa, co-founder of Double Zero. Thank you so much for being here. We're super excited to talk with you. So my experience of you online is that you... No, it's positive. I was going to say, we all know you in the best way. [08:16] That you... [08:18] were like the guy at Solana for a long time, four years across the foundation and labs doing strategy, and then started double zero a year ago. Is that correct? [08:28] I have about 14 months. - Okay, 14 months. - Who's counting? - Yeah, not him. - No. - And I've done a lot of reading on Double Zero. I feel the thing that has been revealed to me in that is that I have [08:40] some understanding of a lack of understanding of how the internet just works. - We all do. - Okay, okay, great. So I'd love to just start with, can you do Explain It Like I'm Five on 00? - Sure, so 00 is actually, at the high level, it's incredibly simple. [08:59] instead of validators and RPCs and all these blockchain things communicating over the public internet, they communicate over a parallel, separate system. [09:08] And that parallel separate system is much faster than the public internet. It's the same type of thing that Wall Street's been using for 20 years, and all the cloud providers, and Facebook, and Instagram. [09:20] everyone else uses to move data around, [09:23] But because all of those other systems are run by, they're one party companies, right? It's like Facebook is the only person with admin keys to the Facebook fiber network. Okay. They've never been suitable for blockchain before.

[09:37] And so double zero's main thing, apart from all the benefits that it provides from a networking perspective, is it's run by multiple independent contributors, just like a blockchain is. [09:46] And so we have 15 contributors on the network. And because of that, we have things like censorship resistance and checks and balances. And there's no one person that can turn it off. [09:55] Okay, go ahead. [09:58] With you being, as Natasha mentioned, the man at Solana, for lack of a better term-- - Capital M. - Capital M. - There's a lot of men at Solana. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. True, true. I've seen most of them here. Literally all the men in the world seem to be at this conference. [10:14] You left the Solana Foundation to build this. [10:19] Clearly, you felt like there was a need. Clearly, you felt like you saw something in the market. [10:24] Why leave? It seemed like you really had it made there. Yeah, I mean look, Solana is incredible. The Solana Foundation is an incredible place to work. I mean just [10:32] There's literally no other... [10:35] crypto project that could pull off a conference like Breakpoint year after year after year. And each one truly is bigger and better than the last, right? It's like the iPhone of crypto. Quote that. Yeah, there we go. Clip it. [10:49] But as Solana evolves and matures, [10:52] the opportunities are just different, right? There's a lot more work to be done now that's like, [10:57] maturing of the technology, figuring out what the next road map, sorry, it's a lot of things that like [11:02] There's really good people to do. [11:04] And so I felt like this was actually a time where if I wanted to go be a founder and go build something I found very compelling,

[11:10] this was like an okay time to step away. Like 2023, early 2024, [11:15] would have been hard, right? We were coming out of bear market and FTX and all that. There's an incredible group of people, both at Salon Foundation, at Labs, at Anza, and in the rest of the community now that have really taken up the mantle of advancing this network. And so [11:29] The idea for double zero has actually been in my head since 2022. [11:33] Interesting. [11:34] And it was this idea that eventually we're going to run up to bottlenecks of the public internet. And Toley and I were talking about this back in 2022, and some of the original ideas were really dumb, like, [11:43] going out and buying every validator, like a 10 gigabit connection into the internet and all this stuff that like [11:49] You know, you can throw money at a problem, but like, unless you really are under, are addressing the underlying layer, you're always going to keep throwing money at the problem. Um, and so a lot of this work came out of the work with the fire dancer team when they were like, we're building a validator client that can do a million transactions per second. [12:05] And then you'd sort of like go get drinks with them. And they're like, but it'll never run on the public internet. [12:09] It's like, well, what do you mean by that? [12:12] The validator client can do it, but the public internet can't support that level of data transmission or the latency you need. [12:20] without going to like, you know, [12:22] 200 validators or 50 validators and shrinking the set and [12:26] Other networks have made that trade-off, but that wasn't really in the cards for Solana. [12:30] Um, yeah. So when you say the public internet, what do you mean by that? Okay. So, uh, imagine a series of tubes. Okay. Um, this is the classic move to describe the internet. But really what it is, is like the internet isn't some mythical magical place. It's a bunch of networks that have all been cross connected to one another. And so the beauty and magic of the internet is you can sit here in Abu Dhabi and connect to a server in Singapore and connect to a server in like rural Peru. Right. And like that all works.

[13:00] It's incredible. Yeah, the downside of the internet is that is not built for performance. It's built for cost optimization Okay [13:08] And so if you need performance above what the public internet can support, which we'll get into kind of why that is in a second, [13:14] you have no other option other than to go your own fiber network. [13:18] And that's a very expensive endeavor. And again, it historically meant one company or one operator in charge of the thing. Okay. So the problem with the public internet, if you think about it is [13:27] Like... [13:28] Maybe kind of all started like a very kind of [13:31] again, deceptively complicated answer, but like, why did it take us 15 years to figure out how to stream the Super Bowl? [13:37] Mm-hmm. [13:38] Okay. Yeah. Right. A question I always wanted to ask. So thank you for that. The Olympics, any large live sporting event, you sort of are like, [13:46] Why is this suck? Why do I need a cable to watch this thing? Yeah. And the reason is, is every single person watching it at that moment [13:54] they're an additional tax on the system. Like if you're listening to FM radio or satellite TV or something like that, you're just tuning in and like pulling magic out of the air. [14:03] And you can have a million people listening to the radio or one person listening to the radio. It's the same job for the tower. That's not the case with the internet. Each new connection, you have to serve them custom data. [14:15] Okay, that makes sense. Even if it's the same data [14:17] 100 million times. And so in blockchain, if you think about it, oh, the event just kicked off. We're live. We're in a box, everyone. Yes. So when the event, when like an event kicks off, like a block is produced on Solana, it's got to get out to 4,000 different places.

[14:34] - Okay. - And so it's the same data that's got to get to those 4,000 places. [14:38] But each validator then has to have 4,000 times the bandwidth of the data they're producing. [14:44] got it and so it's just a multiplication problem and so there's a limit to how much data you can throw over the public internet before you start to drop packets data arrives out of order and so it's just a very messy complicated system it's like driving through a bunch of county roads as opposed to taking the highway okay and and [15:03] I know you mentioned there was an announcement or a number that I saw that 00 serves 37% of Salona activity. [15:11] Maybe that's a good example as to how it's actually like you're applying it right now. And is it only crypto based? Like you're only focused on crypto networks for this or? So yeah, so we're at 40% of Salona now. Okay, we've increased. 50% of the validators. Wow. Wow. So it's 40% of the stake, 50% of the actual physical server. [15:29] - Okay. - Which is really awesome to see. - Yeah. - And the short answer is no, the network actually can be used for anything. - Interesting. - We decided to do, this is like the classic, like, totally thing, is like build as low level as possible, as generic as possible, so you can get the ultimate performance. And then the whole idea is like, it's the same thing we did with Metaplex. It's like smarter people than us will come along and build [15:51] things on top of this fundamental technology. I don't want to get prescriptive about how people use it. And so Solana happens to be [15:58] like the perfect blockchain for this [16:00] because if you kind of plot like on one axis the number of nodes and the other axis of the graph this is the worst thing to do on a show just draw a graph with your hands but but there's video so yeah there you go number of nodes and transactions per second as long as like here

[16:14] And no one else is anywhere close to it. There are networks that have similar numbers of transactions per second, but they have many fewer nodes. And that is what makes Solana such a good fit for 00. And so, you know, again, in classic Tully fashion, if you do the hard thing first, everything else is easy. So we figured out we might as well start with the hardest network. [16:32] And so when you were at Salon, and you said you've been thinking about this for a few years before you made the jump. [16:38] Was that coming out of like your own experience of seeing where there were [16:44] going to be stoppers for [16:47] this technology. Is that sort of where it came from? Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like, it's like, you know, the whole thing about, oh, NASDAQ on chain, internet capital markets. [16:54] If we really want internet capital markets [16:57] to be possible [16:58] We can't actually have internet capital markets over the public internet. [17:02] especially if you want them to compete with traditional markets. And no traditional market runs on the public internet. [17:07] Every single traditional market runs on [17:10] extremely fast fiber or even technology is much faster than fiber. Okay. And that's where kind of all the money is made. Yeah. If you are slower than you're, it's sort of like in trading, [17:21] It's great to be smarter than your competitor, but if you can be smarter or faster, you should always pick faster. [17:26] Okay. Another clip. [17:28] There it is. Okay, and then how much of the-- so something that I've related you guys to is sort of, [17:34] what [17:35] NVIDIA is for AI. [17:38] you guys are very flattering comparison. I'm gassing you up. Um, but how much of this is hardware? Is it any, any, it's all hard, right? Yeah. So, um,

[17:50] The 00 network is like comprised of these physical switches. Okay. They're high performance networking switches, but we didn't make them. They're like a commonly used thing in the networking space. [18:00] We have custom software running on it, which sort of helps manage all the blockchain stuff. [18:04] But this is like physical cables under the ocean floor and going on top of mountains and stuff. We don't have the full cable, we have a tiny little slice of it. [18:13] but it's dedicated. Okay, and it really is the difference between like [18:16] You know, like the analogies break down, but it's like a private, having your own private plane versus like relying on the routes, the airlines fly. Yeah. Right. Like you can leave whenever you want. You can go direct. [18:26] Like, it's all of this, like, you know, just optionality. [18:29] And so what that means is [18:31] If you look at the flash crash that happened on October 10th, [18:35] The public internet really, you could watch it on the metrics, the public internet suffered just from the crypto crash. A thousand percent. Yeah. And so the double zero network, no impact. [18:45] -Wow. Incredible. [18:48] I'm so impressed and don't wish this work upon anyone. OK. It's really quite fun. OK, I love that. It seems like-- Sounds like a good founder. Yeah, I was going to say, that's exactly what I want to hear. Totally. From the person leading me. No question. OK, we're running up on time. So last question here. Just what's your hottest take on-- I know we're just getting started at Brickpoint, but you've been here for a few days. Yeah. I'm curious what your hottest take is or a trend that you're seeing. [19:14] Sort of just a tidbit for folks at home who are wondering what's going on here on the ground. Let's see.

[19:20] You know, I think the last few days have been like very technical. It's been like core dev meeting, like MEV day and block zero. So that's where my, my head is. [19:28] um i think one of the the biggest things that [19:31] crypto in general is trying to figure out at the moment is [19:34] are validators, like opinionated actors that have the right to build a block. [19:39] or are they basically just like [19:43] verifying data that comes in and attesting to its correctness. [19:46] Like, are they curators of transactions or are they just doing hotdog, not hotdog? [19:51] Yeah. Right. And that's sort of that's a big debate whether, you know, Ethereum sort of went the direction of the validator should not have control about what goes into the block. [20:01] it's made block building extremely low profit on Ethereum too. And we see there's like one block builder on Ethereum now. [20:08] Salon is kind of somewhere in between, right? And this, but this is going to be a really big conversation and debate over the next few months. [20:13] Cool. [20:14] Great. Austin, thank you so much. Thank you for coming on. Thanks for having me. [20:19] . [20:23] Caitlin Cook, you're at Moonwalk. We're so excited to have you. Thanks for having me. So we have a lot of things that we want to talk to you about today. First of all, Dead Kate Bounce is an incredible handle. Thank you. That's where we're going to start. Absolute standout. Okay. So before we get into it, what is Moonwalk? Moonwalk is basically solving for one of the biggest issues in fitness, which is accountability. Think of New Year's resolutions every single year. People set a goal and a couple of weeks later,

[20:53] essentially looking at health and wellness and thinking what is the easiest change that anyone can make to improve physical and mental health. And that's really moving more daily. We used to walk probably 16, 17,000 steps a day. And now we're all at our desk. We're in a car, we get our groceries delivered. So we're really not moving as much anymore. Moonwalk is really gamifying daily movement goals. So essentially you download the app on iOS or Android or on the secret salon adapt store. You can join a variety of games when you're on there. You essentially [21:23] or an Apple Watch, or you can track directly from your phone. [21:26] And there are a variety of different games to choose from that have [21:30] a daily step goal. They last a certain number of days and there's an entry deposit. If one thing crypto has done well, it's financial incentives. So you put money on the line and if you do what you say you're going to do or hold yourself accountable, you get all of your money back at the end of the game. [21:43] if you miss the daily step goal one or several times, you lose part of your deposit to a prize pool that's split amongst winners. Oh, fun. So it's game of accountability and getting people to move a little bit more because especially in this space, in these days, we could use it a lot. This, I feel like this, [21:58] idea and your execution is so boys club coded like we are really fiends we always like to walk it's an app for the girlies when we get it out of the crypto realm with all the guys yes um [22:09] Is your first target audience [22:12] crypto people, Solana users, where are you kind of seeing the adoption? So right now, and our team comes from working in the Solana space, I would say something that's super unique to working in crypto and Solana specifically, that's been really beneficial is...

[22:27] you have a test audience. You have an audience of testers that are open to early stage, potentially janky experiences. They'll give feedback. They're invested. They're interested. So we had a really good group of users early on that helped us get the app up and running and improve pretty quickly. That's hard to find everywhere else. So we really wanted to lean into that. Right now, the community is mostly Solana and crypto or crypto adjacent, I would say, people who are a little bit more savvy. The end goal has always been... [22:56] How do we make this an app that is approachable? Think like a Polymarket Calci type vibe of that's where we want to go. It's not there yet, I would say, if anyone downloads it. But the direction is going to be how do we use a crypto powered app to create a really cool and unique experience that people want to use and that's simple to use. Yeah. So we want to appeal to a mainstream audience. We're just kind of taking it face by face and wanted to start with the crypto audience as kind of the first audience. But it's definitely not the last. And we want to expand beyond that. Yeah, that makes sense. [23:26] tweet last night that said work from home is great except that I got 17 steps today I was like this is um so moonwalk can use this okay so is there there's a prize pool so let's say I say I want to take 10,000 steps a day I'm gonna do I get to choose how much I'm staking so there are you can either make a game yourself and pick whatever criteria you want the start date how long it is what the daily step goal is how much you're putting on the line okay or you can just choose from all of the ones that community members have made that our team makes on a regular basis so [23:56] bit of variety depending on what you want. We've had games, you know, we have users all over the world, right? So what's enough to hold yourself accountable means different things to different people. So we have games as low as one USDC. The biggest game we've ever had, I think, was 100 soul per person. Oh my God! That was obviously a wild game. Did people...

[24:13] Did anyone? Yes, it was five people. And I think the daily step goal was 30,000 steps, which is like 15 miles. Oh my gosh. It was extreme. It was more of a challenge. I would not recommend that people just do that. Did they all reach it? No. A couple of people missed one or two days. So there was a really, really hefty prize pool. Some people were cleaning up with at least like 10 soul extra than when they started. Oh my gosh. That's incredible. I want to bring that back. We need more degenerate games. Totally. We've been lacking that with the market the way [24:43] mechanism? [24:44] Not beyond like the yield is just generated from other players. So rather than what you've seen with like a lot of Yield to Earn, Yield to Earn, Walk to Earn apps in the past or Move to Earn. [24:55] It's not really dependent on like token and some sort of yield generator type of situation. It's more strictly based off of activity of other players. And that doesn't matter what token you're using as the entry deposit. It doesn't matter how many players are in the game. It acts the same if there's two people in a game or 2,000. So it's more sustainable. You're not seeing a lot of the crazy yields that you saw back in the day during like the move to Earnmania. But I think that's good. It's something that's actually sustainable and you can explain to people easily. And I think kind of will sustain a bit more. [25:25] options to kind of build it out a bit more, especially in crypto. You know, people want to see the crazy returns for everything and they have a really high expectation for that. So, [25:34] Um, nothing's out of the question for like what we could do in the future. We just wanted to keep it really simple to start. That makes sense. And okay. I have to ask how easy is it to cheat and inflate your steps? Um, you know, work, work smarter, not harder. I don't know. Um, people will do anything not to exercise. It's crazy. So Hey, not, not me. Um, so yeah. How do you deal with that particular if there's like money on the line? Yeah. And, and it's,

[26:02] Of course, in this space too, people will exploit whatever system you set up, right? Yeah, totally. The early days we used as a really good test environment to see how people would try to manipulate. We've seen people post on Twitter. I run the Twitter account still. So people would tag Moonwalk and be like, oh, got my steps in today. It says 100,000 steps. Surely you did not. Right, right, right. What's your routine? I can't believe it. But back in the step-in days, they had factories in countries where it was just shaking phones all day. Whoa. Wow. So it's always evolving. [26:32] about is the idea of, and I'm not sure how we'll implement this yet, but the idea of like a verified user. So not everyone has like a fitness watch that can actually check your pulse in alignment with the number of steps you're getting, but you can look at the way that the steps are dispersed too, right? So if you're getting... [26:47] like, [26:49] some irrational number of steps in like over like a one to five minute period. That's obviously not realistic, right? So you can look at sort of the timestamps of the activity to start, but I want to bring it into like ideally this is a game that you play with your friends. Yeah, and people that there's inherent trust there and it would be super lame to like cheat in a game with your friends, right? People that you know, that's not the behavior that you see when you're playing against people you don't know in this space, of course, so we need to account for it. [27:13] But the idea of a verified user where maybe [27:16] you're verified if you wear a device that can check your pulse. And that adds another layer of credibility of if you're getting [27:22] a certain amount of activity in and a certain amount of time and you're going a certain pace, you should be able to track like heart rate spikes with that as well. So there's a lot that we can add in and we're always thinking about it, but for like kind of the baseline things, Apple health, Google fit, for example, they have the ability to add manual steps in. You don't count any of those. So those don't count automatically. That was an easy one to get out of the way. I don't know in what situation you'd ever want to manually add steps to your Apple health, I guess, but I've done that. You have done it. Okay. I genuinely don't know.

[27:52] I have a big, I'm like really proud of my steps. Um, no, I, um, in the winter I'll go, I try to get 10 to 15,000 steps every day. And so if I, in, when it's freezing, I'll go down to my gym and I'll walk on the treadmill and like read or make calls or whatever. And then I'll take those steps and put them in my phone. If you're, if you're having your arms up or something, if you're not wearing a watch, like it's not going to track. So that would make sense. I get it for the glory. Like keep the street going and keep your data accurate. Truly for the glory, [28:22] It's the end of your recap where you can see, like, you move this much this year. You move more than normal. Yes. Okay, are you guys seeing sort of any interesting... [28:31] like patterns in the data are you seeing like trends with the user like it's really interesting to have this very distinct user set that's like very crypto native and it's sort of a test pool around how they move and what they do so I'm curious if you're seeing anything that's been surprising to you yeah I mean I mean a couple of different things one I [28:51] We have the most powerful stat I think I've seen just in terms of if this as a game format works for what we want it to be, which is not farming or just trying to make money. It's habit formation, which is really hard. So that's why we have this accountability set up because it takes a long time for an action to become a habit that becomes a lifestyle. [29:09] That's always the goal, right? But then you add in the gamification and people come to the app for different reasons. Yeah. The percentage of people who join a first game and then go on to join a second, which as a consumer app and kind of like user retention early on is like almost 50%. Wow. So it's super high. Obviously, we have like a bit...

[29:27] of a more tight-knit community. And I feel like there's probably more of a likelihood with the crowd that we have that they would come back versus like a regular retail user. But that's super powerful. Adherence and games, so actually achieving your step goals is [29:40] I don't have like the specific data point on that off the top of my head, but that's also very high. And then anecdotally, because I'm always on [29:46] like socials and everything just terminally online, to balance out the walking, obviously. [29:56] to underestimate something like walking and moonwalk doesn't just have to be walking at steps. So you could run, walk, whatever you want to do. But a lot of people walk and everyone seems to think that it's way too simple of the thing to be, you know, good for you and actually make a difference. But it's sort of like a snowball effect. So we get a lot of stories of like, Oh, I started moving more. And then I realized I used to like working out. So I got back to lifting a bit. I started doing other exercises I used to do back in the day. I feel better. I sleep better. I think better. My work is better. It's amazing. A walk can heal almost anything. [30:26] Like I've never felt worse after a walk. Like I would say that, especially in this space. Like these days people just keep arguing on the timeline. They need to log off and walk for a bit and then come back. And I think we'd see way less arguing. These people don't go outside. So totally. Um, okay. We're almost out of time here. So I'd love just what's been a take that you have from break point, a trend that you're seeing. I know we're early here, but curious if you've seen anything that's been surprising to you. Um, nothing yet specifically at the venue just cause day one, but yeah, I mean, I'm [30:53] From the agenda, I'm, I mean, I'm on bias, obviously, but more of a focus on consumer and like bridging the gap versus these extremely obscure products that maybe are just like solving for problems that don't exist or that people don't care about. I feel like there's way more realistic expectations for like what people want to see and what they'll use. And then, of course, my favorite, which is the revenue meta, otherwise known as running a business that can sustain itself. Oh, my goodness.

[31:23] to sew in right now making money who would have thought who would have thought okay one last thing and then we'll let you go but you i saw a very cool activation that you guys are doing downstairs there's like a leg day area that's like a gym yeah in the conference center yeah so we're trying to encourage people and remind them that we need to like balance out the the mental and all of the work and all of the scrolling online with you know physical exercise so there's a whole wellness area at the conference whether it's like a mindfulness station or there's like a pull up [31:53] contest we're doing a pull-up contest okay love yeah and we're giving away like an apple watch and garmin watch every day and then we want game credits to everyone that joins that um we have a body composition scan over there for anyone who wants to see that maybe you know i did it this morning i was a little scared to do that one but i did try it this morning um but yeah there's a whole area of the conference this year it's the first time they've done it um so excited to be involved in that and bring the healthy vibes that i think this space is needed you're doing god's [32:23] you for that. Caitlin, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much. Thanks guys. [32:27] *music* [32:30] Trevor McFrederys, friend of the pod. True. Friend of the club. Friend of the club. Truly. Former founder of BRUD, FWB, amongst many other things. You're working on something new. Yeah. I couldn't find the name of it anywhere. Yeah. I even looked on LinkedIn. Wow. And let me tell you, it wasn't there. It's not there. Yeah. So happy to have you on. Thank you. There's a lot I want to talk about. I read your Twitter article.

[32:57] crazy move to publish direct to twitter yeah i'm a ex publisher yeah cool that's something they really are happy that you just said shout out elon send them elon books um okay tell me what's up what are you working on um so yeah i i sold bread in 2021 um swore i would never do the startup thing again and it's kind of been joking the mental illness persists and i just kind of kept waking [33:27] called Copiopoa. Nicole, who was at me with Brad, and I have started together. Copiopoa is this cactus that I love because it does this wonderful and kind of brilliant, brutal thing where it will kill off part of itself to survive in hostile climates. And it felt like a pretty apt metaphor for being a creative person in 2025. You got to sacrifice some dogmas and really think about what it means and what it takes to survive in this moment. And the idea of building Copiopoa was [33:57] this moment, this ever trying moment. And so [34:00] We built a product called reach.social, which is really this kind of like a bounty marketplace for creating content. People can take this clip, and they probably will, and get paid to clip it and post it all over the Internet. It's effectively a public good. We take zero fee. We just felt like in a moment where it's easier than ever to build things because of robotics and automation, distribution is the hard part. So can we build a tool? And that was kind of us getting our Solana sea legs. Okay. [34:24] Built it on Solana. It's built on Solana. It is. And we're now building a product called Runner, which is kind of what I alluded to in that article. At least some of the thinking that I've been doing over the last few months.

[34:54] company. Yeah, I think, you know, the thing that I was kind of wrestling with is the group chats that I'm in with folks like you that used to talk about prestige television and art fairs and new albums now talk about Fed rate cuts. Totally. And you're like, what the fuck happened here? What changed? And then you start. Those people are now at Solana Breakpoint. They're all here. The gang's all here. Totally. And like you start squinting and you're like, wait, that's pretty radical. Why would a bunch of people that were effectively artists or creative people be talking about Fed rate cuts? Yeah. And you squint and you're like, well, this is effectively the same [35:24] that had opinions and thoughts about the future and expressed those beliefs traditionally in like media or digital media of our generation. And now they're expressing those beliefs through positions in different markets. And I think the outcomes to me are more efficient and oftentimes more validating and that you can be like right visibly. All my friends who've held Bitcoin since $1,000, whatever, it's cool they're rich. It's cooler that they're right. Yeah. And I think that that's a lot of the things that like my peers who were in the creative industries would feel validated about. [35:54] and I'm taking kind of a musical form that's part of my heritage and I'm bringing it to the masses and everything's insane and then it works. And it's very validating as a creative person. And so I don't think, while it feels quite dissonant, I think it makes a lot of sense that my peers who identify as creatives are also really good traders as these new markets have emerged that allow cultural intuition to be this financial skill. Yeah. No, I mean, it makes a ton of sense. And what I was struck by when I was reading your article is basically like you set it up by saying that [36:23] creative people no longer can just be producing their creative act. They have to do all of this marketing around it in order to have a market that exists around their product. And that means that inherently there is a market that is built around their thing and that they are good traders. And that as there's new tools that have come up, prediction markets being one of them is like, you can actually bet on the thing that you want.

[36:51] have some conviction around. And so [36:55] I'm curious if the thing that you're working on is basically like a studio that's building tools for sort of that space. [37:01] problem or opportunity is that a way to look at it so holistically the studio is thinking about all these problems right and i think you know one of the things you're kind of alluding to is this idea that i actually think the skills that you have as a talented artist is better aligned with being a trader yeah that is with being a marketer and that's like the core tension cool right is it like effectively to be an artist now most of your time is marketing yeah you know when i'm in when i have a dj duo of my fiancee cost off and we're making music music is about five percent of the [37:31] And then when I'm trading, it's effectively just me having a belief, putting on an order, and not having to be concerned about finding reach for that counterparty, whatever it is. There are efficient marketplaces to do those things. And then I can, again, be verifiably right on shame, which I think is net new and novel. Yeah. And in terms of, obviously, a lot of emerging artists, they don't necessarily have the capital or cash to bet or to wager and take those cultural positions that might... [37:59] have financial upside so how do you navigate kind of that side of yeah i mean so i think what's fun about like the emergence of tools on on chain is that every day i go on you know deck screener and i'll look at trades happening in in attention markets and you'll see six dollars turned into 45 yeah right and that was the thing i mean i think like a lot of kind of old crypto idealists the idea of the these kind of like launch pads was a bit repulsive at first and

[38:29] Like, this is exactly what I dreamed of. This is people, these are whole economies on chains. There are people bag working, working on behalf of these tokens, doing marketing, whatever it takes. And they're turning six bucks into $45 and they're able to buy Chipotle and live. Like, that to me is really radical. It's a kid who grew up on the internet trying to make money. It's brilliant. It's really special. And the flip side of that is, you know, when we release a song as soft, Apple Music and Spotify all expect new photos. They expect, like, a Pubsist to drive a thing. [38:59] to maybe make $12 in streaming. And so while it sounds ridiculous to be like, hey, I'm going to use my cultural intuition to like wager six bucks to make 45, I think it's more ridiculous to expect someone to spend a thousand to $5,000 to put a strike on a streaming service and make, you know, 10 to 15 bucks and hope one day you get a show or a brand deal. Yeah, totally. Okay, so while you're at... [39:22] in Abu Dhabi? I'm in Abu Dhabi because I'm building on Solana and I've gotten closer with a lot of the Solana folks and the Solana team and I wanted to be here kind of with the people. And we're showing folks, you know, some of the early iterations of Runner and what we're up to, but more importantly, like we built this great community and so much of the joy that I've gotten out of this whole crypto thing is hanging out with people like you in arenas in Abu Dhabi. Yeah, specifically. Why Solana? Why did you choose Solana? I mean, for a lot of [39:52] I obviously love Ethereum and I'm kind of a multi-chain brother. Ah, cross-chain. Cross-chain, absolutely. Beautiful. Beautiful. But I thought the product we were building was built for Solana. When I would go and talk to people that were, you know, kind of a newer generation of creative people who were playing around on chain, I'd be like, "Yeah, so what do you use?" "You use Ethereum or Solana?" And they'd be like, "I use like Phantom."

[40:16] And you'd be like, oh. Oh, interesting. Wow. And so it's like, well, then the user interface is effectively like the experience. Yeah. And Solana is a first class citizen. And also, it felt like the tooling and the people that were supporting the system were at a place now where we could do some things we want to do. And we get the resources we need to win. And so it's been a lot of fun. And we were with Raj and Tola. I've known Raj for a long time. Shout out to Chad Team 6. And it felt good to finally take a shot at building on this thing and learning a lot. And it's been a lot of fun. Cool. [40:46] I am always really excited about things that you're building. And I think that you have just a really unique perspective. [40:52] Where can people... [40:54] Stay up to date with what you're up to. Yeah, so the easiest way is runner rodeo. You can go to Twitter or x.com Forward slash Twitter's runner rodeo. It's interchangeable, right? I'm a multi X descriptor cross X Twitter user as well That's easiest place. Tali and Atali retweeted it last night, which is very kind of him We got some cool stuff coming and then obviously you could follow your favorite X publisher. Yeah, absolutely [41:24] at them. At what.cd on crypto twitter.com. I love it. Trevor, thank you for being here. Thank you as always. [41:34] *music* [41:37] Robinson Berkey, co-founder of Wormhole, friend of the pod at this point. Friend of the pod, yeah. I told you this before you walked in. [41:45] I don't have any questions prepared for you. I have a question prepared for you guys. Oh no. Okay, let's hear it. Yeah, um,

[41:52] So is it fair to say Boys Club is kind of was born more in like an Ethereum aligned type environment? Ah, getting controversial. [42:02] I'm just curious now that you're... [42:04] Solana Breakpoint, it's the flagship Solana conference, it's huge this year. [42:09] This might be one of the biggest crypto stage setups I've ever seen. Yep. How does it feel being at a Solana event? Do you feel welcome? Are you enjoying it? Okay. I am loving it. We talked a little bit about this at the beginning. I, so my first break point was last year at Singapore, in Singapore. Okay. Boys club was that one? No, it was just me. I just went to like get a lay of the land. Turbulence and all, just flying for 18 hours. [42:39] And... [42:40] Anyway, then coming here, the fidelity of the conference is unmatched. And we have been to literally every crypto conference that's ever existed, it feels like. And this is so high fidelity and so well done. And [42:52] I [42:54] What I like about it is [42:56] I think actually you might have told me this, that Ethereum is like missionaries and Solana's mercenaries. And you can really feel that. And there's something about it that I really like because there's a real... [43:07] Like... [43:08] moneyed aspect to it that's like very honest. It's like this is why we're here. [43:14] And they're passionate about it, and it's genuine, and they're building really cool things. [43:19] But they're also really pragmatic about it being an opportunity. And I...

[43:26] really like that. So I'm enjoying it. What about you, Blake? Yeah, I mean, I'm like a theory I'm through and through. That's like how I [43:34] came up, so it's a really interesting place to be. And like, there's like an existential kind of [43:41] question, I would say. Um... [43:45] It certainly is so... Like, I... I mean, we can cut... I know we're... Yeah. I mean, hey... [43:58] You can see what centralization really does. Okay, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. In a way that it really works. I mean, I don't also probably want to say this, but we're in the UAE, and, like, look at what a... [44:11] um, kindly a non-democracy can create and, and, and move so quickly and advance so quickly. And so like, if we're looking like, um, full stack, like government government to here, you're like, Oh, it's very, very clear how quickly, um, things can move when there's very few decision makers, um, in a different type of way. So I don't know how I feel about that, but I'm noticing that that's what's happening. I mean, even with the, [44:41] opening, um, [44:42] opening presentation here, which I thought was really cool, was talking about practicality. [44:47] Some of the fastest growing companies right now, uh, from a revenue perspective, are crypto companies. And a lot of them are built on Solana. I think the, the counter to that, a lot of people will be like, well, there are a lot of gambling focus, blah, blah, blah. But like,

[45:00] Nonetheless, a lot of these companies are growing very fast. People want to use them and they're built on Solana. And so I think that's a testament to the very practical nature of like, let's bring on real companies, real businesses, not things that, you know, social fight game five things that could be down the line, which I believe they will, but. [45:18] you know, it might take a little bit. Yeah, totally. And... [45:21] Oh, go ahead. So how many breakpoints have you been to? [45:25] uh this all but the first oh my gosh you were such a solana bro so so fun fact about wormhole is wormhole got its start connecting solana and ethereum okay so what a metaphor for this conversation yeah so so the first two chains we ever connected were solana ethereum we were very much so a part of solana's birth i guess you can say and at the time no no well the first solana [45:55] Solana... [45:56] and wormhole or that's huge whoa where uh it was in uh i think it was in chicago okay i thought you're just really it was on the internet yeah well there's also like some lore a video of totally presenting wormholes architecture [46:11] on the internet, on YouTube. Whoa, okay. He was like, this is how it works to send assets to Solana, which was pretty cool. Because at the time, Solana was an island, right? It had no way. Ethereum was the main thing that was getting used, and there was no way to get liquidity over. So that's how we got our start. Yeah. [46:27] Can you tell me, I'm from Vancouver, so Layer Zero is everywhere there, and I've worked with them. How, maybe super naive question, how are you guys different than Layer Zero? Yeah, I would say the way to think about Interop is it's very much so consolidated from interop.

[46:47] 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, [46:49] players to... [46:51] It's not like blockchains where there's a lot of blockchains. It benefits everyone to have less and less and less. So now I would say the market is really consolidated to layer zero wormhole. In ways, Chainlink is also getting into our core business, but it's largely like us two. The main differences, I would say, are two things. Number one is distribution. So we both have... [47:12] different apps built on top of us. Same mental model as like Ethereum and Solana. What applications that are doing well are built on top of you? For instance, [47:20] We have a full Oracle companies like Pith built on top of us. We do really well in the institutional space. So BlackRock uses us to shuttle assets around. But the technical difference is, [47:31] like our stack is very similar, but I think a lot of people would say wormholes more of a decentralized stack. Got it. Okay. The way in which we send messages between chains is [47:43] core of what we both do, uh, are the way in which we send a message or a way it's verified as much more decentralized than, than a layer zero. And to be intellectually honest, uh, [47:52] Where that benefits layer zero is that they can connect to more chains faster. 100%. We were just exactly having this conversation where for us, we are connected to fewer chains, but the more meaningful ones. Got it. And fun fact, like there's a lot of blockchains, but... [48:09] there's really only like 10 doing 97% of volume. So connecting to X, Y, and Z long tail chain,

[48:18] while we hope that does well, you know, the data shows that it's becoming increasingly harder to kind of get into that group of chains that are performing well. Yeah. Are you like, [48:29] Calling up these every one of these chains and being like come work with wormhole. Is that what's going on classic BD? [48:38] No matter what you should always be closing but no I think for us so wormholes at this network effects point where chains are [48:45] Come to us. It flexed. Nice. [48:51] Assets need to choose who to adopt. That's where I'm calling them up and saying, hey, BlackRock, hey, Hamilton Lane, hey, new stablecoin. [49:01] Use wormhole. That's where we're kind of like in the trenches fighting each other. Chains, though, will come to both protocols. But like wormhole in particular, they'll come to us. Like, for instance, monad, monad, monad. [49:14] We've been working with them almost since inception because we have a deep integration with them where their native bridge. It's like one of the most important things have day one. You want to be able to like turn on liquidity day one. So it's very much so kind of a come to us thing, but we are out there. [49:29] calling these asset issuers saying, Hey, please, please use dinner with me. Yeah. Yeah. Would you like to enter the wormhole? Um, okay. Uh, last question. What is your hottest take from breakpoint so far? I know we're like two hours in. Oh, two hours. Okay. I usually have to like digest and like figure all this out. Um, or just like a observation. Hmm. My, uh,

[49:56] My main observation is, and I try to not always be a bull, what is happening here and what is happening, like the adoption we're seeing, the companies that are using Solana, all these companies building on Solana are top, like coming out of YC, top fastest growing companies. Like cryptos finally has like these businesses that are actually making money. And yes, again, we can argue like gambling, whatever it's for. But yeah. [50:26] It's so... [50:27] not associated with price, like we've, the price, the market where we're at is just, [50:32] Not really, and this isn't necessarily a hot take, but just an observation, not really like taking the partnership announcements, things that crypto used to have like, oh, these big partners are now using this. That's just not being reflected in the price. I mean, we're we had a rate cut and we're seeing crypto go down. So so I think that that is an interesting place to be. I was also listening to Ralph Paul. I don't want to say his name name wrong, but nailed it. Yeah. Yeah. [51:02] or somewhere around here that the four-year cycle is now dead uh and he had some a lot of slides and reasoning for for why um but i just think we're at a weird time in the market where i'm i'm seeing all these all these announcements like the stuff that solana's coming out with i'm like this is just absolutely the future but the price is just you know not reflecting that so not a hot take necessarily but an observation and um

[51:26] I kind of miss the days where a big announcement happens. The price goes up. How else is it going to go? So yeah. Okay, interesting. Well, Robbie, thanks for coming on. Thank you so much. See you next time. Yeah, see you next time. [51:43] We have Maya Cattle here with us today. You're doing payments at the Solana Foundation. Yeah. Thank you for being here. No, I'm really excited to be here. We're so excited to have you. Okay, so there's... [51:55] A lot that we could say about Solana. [51:57] it's the first thing that comes to mind is not payments. So I am curious about what you're working on, what your perspective is, and we can maybe start there. [52:07] Sure, I mean, you're right. Listen, Solana has been very strong on numerous different things. Payments isn't usually the thing that people first think of, at least not within crypto native circles. But there is a different narrative outside of that, right? So what I spend a lot of my time doing is working with traditional payments companies, things the likes of a Western Union who publicly announced that. [52:29] They're doing everything on Solana or Zepp's who owns World Remit and SendWave. Same thing. I spend my time with them, talking to them about, OK, this is what stablecoin enabled payments looks like. This is how you can leverage the world of crypto to achieve ABC goals. And that's kind of where I sit and what I do. So it's working with these traditional companies and bringing them on chain. Yeah. [52:52] Are you mostly focused on stablecoins and stablecoin integrations on Solana? First question. Second question, are you mostly focused on kind of institutional adoption versus consumer adoption? So I'll start with the second question. Love that. So a bit of both, right? So I think it also depends on how you define institutional.

[53:16] But it's both. So let's take Western Union. In reality, yes, they're a British company, but they are an institution, right? So they are also... [53:25] they like many other remittance companies are looking at the retail arm right it's not just pure [53:31] institutional we're using it for i don't know treasury whatever yeah so it's both and we are seeing both um i think some of the fastest adopters generally of crypto and its stable coin enabled payments are companies that there's two categories one that have a huge exposure to exotic currencies so these are non-g10 currencies um so they have a real need for stable coins real benefit and then [54:01] able to be be banks because of regulatory reasons um so these are the big household names giants that you probably know of um and they're now using this opportunity to become a [54:11] basically a bank in multiple jurisdictions and markets and to answer your first question um yes it is mainly stable coins at the moment however a couple of nuances firstly a lot of us are still thinking u.s dollar denominator stable coins that is largely the case but there's starting to be conversations about non-us dollar stable coins what does that look like how can i leverage that in my treasury i'm already having to go between u.s dollars and whatever other currency well the [54:41] that I view it as a bit of a top of funnel. If you're bringing your treasury on chain, you'll want to do more and more on chain as well. So it's just a starting point in many ways. Yeah. So I'm sure you're having a lot of conversations with these institutions. You're sort of explaining what the value proposition of crypto is generally, and then Solana more specifically. What is the most common pushback that you're getting?

[55:06] The most common pushback. [55:11] been necessarily pushback, but like question, where are they the most unclear on what the value prop is? I think sometimes they're concerned on a question and well, what is the biggest delta of leveraging? [55:24] um stable coins especially sometimes for treasury based use cases because if you're moving such a huge volume right the argument of it's [55:32] cheap. [55:33] Lesser, right? Because in reality, if I'm moving, I don't know, 100 million at a go, paying $40. Right. Can afford it. Yeah, it's a running error. Somehow I'll manage without losing sleep. Right, so... [55:45] That sometimes is a narrative and that's a narrative shift and just explain to them that actually it's not just about the affordability. It's more that if you're serving specific markets, you have to move money on a Thursday because Fridays or Saturdays, you can't move money. You need to have amount pre-funded in that market. You don't have to do that anymore, right? You can easily move money. And that means that you can keep more of your money in, I don't know, US dollars, earn income and interest on that in a way that you wouldn't be able to before. So there's that monetary gap and opportunity that opens up by using stable coins. [56:15] is not Solana specific pushback. That's just a general pushback. Typically the pushback is less about [56:21] us as a chain and more about crypto more broadly. Yeah. Yeah. [56:26] That makes sense. And I guess speaking of you as a chain. Yes. Yes. [56:30] Why would Western Union adopt Solana versus a different chain? What are the kind of differentiators?

[56:38] with stable coins working on chain in solana sure so there's a couple of reasons so one is if you're thinking from a retail perspective that's where fees do matter um so solana obviously has local fee markets and which means that our fees are not globally determined so to use an um analogy it's similar to uber surge pricing if some if there's a concert happening in new york and you're in london [57:08] local fee markets are structured. And that's really important for retail because every bit matters. And it's not just about local. It's not just about affordable or cheap fees. It's about predictably affordable. That's important. That's super interesting. Yeah. That makes a ton of sense. Yeah. [57:24] Okay, I want to shift gears a little bit into, you said you've been to one other breakpoint in 2022, right? Yes. Where was that? That was Lisbon. Okay. Okay. It was so great. This is an amazing city, like an amazing city. How has the conference changed? How Solana's ecosystem differed from 2022 to today? I mean, it's scaled significantly, right? It's so huge. And also, I think what's interesting is there's a different sort of player that's now come in to breakpoint, right? [57:54] to see bigger traditional payments companies come in bigger institutions these are household names where my mother who doesn't know crypto knows of these companies they're here at breakpoint they want to learn they want to engage with the ecosystem and so that is a huge shift and an excited shift and momentum um and so it's really the scale and the sort of ecosystem how our ecosystem has evolved we have always had and will continue to have a really rich defi ecosystem a

[58:24] startups that we want to continue to support but now we're also seeing the institutions and traditional players come and seeing that marriage between the two is beautiful to see yeah that's so great um and what i mean i know that it's we're we're very early in in breakpoint like this is the first day but uh what kind of themes are you seeing even looking at the speaker list what what are you kind of [58:47] metas dare I use the term that that are emerging or that you're excited about so there's obviously going to be a lot of new announcements that's what we've been hearing everyone's teasing the announcement yeah stay tuned um I'm not going to be the one to spill it seems like you know some but we get it we get it this is not going to be me if someone does it it's not me um no um so there's a lot of new exciting announcements so there's a lot to be said about um one internet capital [59:17] which is of course a key thesis at [59:19] Solana is really pushing and has been very active in, right? So that's fundamentally bringing new assets on chain. The ultimate goal is that IPO-ing happens on chain, right? And different steps towards that is bringing, for example, tokenized money market funds, credit, private credit on chain, et cetera. [59:39] And so there's a lot that's going to be wrapped up on that front with traditional players as well. Yeah. So now that's something obviously closer to what I do. Right. Because a lot of the big payments companies that I work with, right, they're bringing their treasury on chain. What are they going to do if they want to earn interest or yield? So they're going to invest in.

[1:00:00] a tokenized i don't know money market fund and tokenized t-bills etc because that's the way in which they get they get the name the interest that they would get off chain the layers kind of like once you start here top of funnel going down all the products after you get those big institutions on chain totally it's like uh putting their treasury on chain is like a gateway drug for them [1:00:30] - Yeah, crypto. - I'm not sure how like the big payments, but as we could do the CFR, I'm like, this is kind of your gateway. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - When you think about it. - Oh my gosh. Okay, one last question. We're almost out of time here. - Cool. - Why did you take this job? Like, what was your motivation? - I wanted to know that as well. - So they weren't hiring. [1:00:53] Wow, you created this job. You walked right in the door that was close. I literally I got connected. So I was really I would always go to, let's say, local super teams when I was based in London. So I'd go there's a super team co-working day in London every week. And so I'd go there, hang out with a lot of people. Someone I met, I was talking to them about salon and my ideas like, oh, I should connect you to someone I met with. [1:01:17] people from the solana foundation i was like listen you need to hire me because now this is what i love to hear like you need to hire me this is what needs to be done abc and then

[1:01:31] Usually, and I didn't realize this at the time, usually Solana Foundation can take sometimes [1:01:37] a few months to hire someone. My hiring process was two weeks. Like it was really accelerated. Um, and I had spoken to a number of different chains, right? I was, so before salon, I actually built a crypto business, right? Um, crypto payments business mainly focused on emerging markets, [1:01:53] - Cool. - And I had spent a period of time, as many people in crypto have, where they're like, do I wanna stay in crypto? Is this what I wanna continue doing? I realized I did. And then I started speaking to different chains, different players. [1:02:06] I spoke to a lot of different chains. And I started to realize a few things. One, when I was putting forward ideas of how the chain could grow, how they could think about BD, how they can think about payments, I kept cross-referring back to Solana and what they were doing. Two, every time I spoke to, pretty much every chain I spoke to was referencing, wanted to recreate something Solana did. And then three, I started to notice, and this was before the GDS Act, right? Before we saw the institutions really come in a meaningful way. [1:02:36] I started to notice a lot of the top tier talent who had spent decades in finance, in fintech, in banking. When they were launching their crypto company, they were doing it on Solana. Think of the likes of Cast, Sling Money. These are founders who are deeply experienced in finance, in banking, in neobank, in fintech. And they kept using Solana. And so I was like, I kind of sat back and I was like, why... [1:03:01] Why would I go anywhere else? Right. Why, why go the place where everyone, why, why not go where everyone wants to be? Totally. Why could not go for the best? And so here I am. Wow. I love it. Created your own job and they are lucky to have you. Maya, thank you so much. It was such a pleasure. I'm bullish on what you're doing. It was, it was so nice talking with you. Thank you so much, guys. I appreciate it.

[1:03:29] Ran Goldie. Yes. SVP of payments and network at Fireblocks. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. So you guys secure four trillion dollars in digital assets. That is insane. But tell us a little bit about Fireblocks. Just like, oh, explain it like I'm five. OK. For the listener. OK. I explain your five. That's I have one for this. Right. So imagine that you go to a bank and you're asking them, where are you keeping all your money? And they're [1:03:59] a safe and it's a very huge physical safe right and you'd like four keys to open it and whatever it's like a huge door. We make that for digital assets. Okay. Right. So we make those amazing safes. So if you are Robin Hood, [1:04:12] and you want to get your 50 million users with a wallet, and you want it to be super safe, you call Fireblocks. Okay. Your visa, you want to move money around the world, you want that money to move safely, you want it to be in safes, or... [1:04:24] You call Visa, but then you call Fireblocks. I was going to say, Visa calls you. Yes, they do. Okay, perfect. Comes into the next question, which is, I've used Fireblocks, Fireblocks user. I've always thought of it as a custodian, as someone who... [1:04:41] keeps everything safe versus as a payments provider versus as kind of off like that to me is your primary service and I've kind of been noticed noticing in [1:04:52] the language and the messaging that maybe you're moving into other things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe good catch. So thank you so much. Yeah. So you're very, very sharp. Uh, so we, we started and we were very lucky to start in 2018. Wow. In creating this. Yes. Cool. Was there even any money to store at that point? Like my money, right? We had like $10, right? But we had, we started as like this,

[1:05:18] you know, a place to create custodial vaults. And again, we are not, by the way, a custodian ourselves, right? We give our tech to custodians. We give our tech to exchanges, right? We're not in the flow of funds per se. And over time, like more and more different type of companies came in, right? So payment companies came in and it wasn't just like, okay, we want to store money. No, it's actually, we want to move money. And then people came in and said, actually, we want to tokenize, [1:05:48] And now, obviously, you know, DeFi came in. So now... [1:05:52] Fireblocks is yes across the board from orchestrating money movement to creating safe wallets to creating tokenization solutions and and the four trillion by the way that's five I didn't want to interrupt. Oh, it's actually why we talk. Right? But no, seriously. Five trillion that five trillion is it's interesting because [1:06:18] 2.2. [1:06:20] 2 trillion out of that is trading, right? And actually 2.8 is not trading, which is interesting because if we would go back, right, like seven years or something, it was all trading. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. - Right? Speculative trading, that's what it was. Right now, we have about, [1:06:35] I would say $1.2 trillion moving a year of stablecoin for payments. Okay. Right? Which is... [1:06:42] crazy by the way it's and by the way it's still a fraction of what it could be because if you think of global trade that's 250 trillion oh my god right we're not even one percent wow yeah right got it and it's yeah anyway so a lot interesting so what i'm hearing from you over the course of the history of fire blocks is this amazing ability to sort of move

[1:07:03] in your strengths, but where the market is headed. And I think that's necessary for crypto companies, because it's so nascent and we're building the road as we're driving down it. I'm curious if you have thoughts about where we're headed next, if there's things that you're seeing for both fireblocks, but an industry as a whole as well. Yeah. So look, I mean, I... [1:07:24] I really think about this whole thing as a financial upgrade to the world of our infrastructure. Right. It's an infrastructure upgrade. It's nothing more than, you know, we've been doing phone calls for the last hundred something years. Right. Since Graham Bell decided we're going to do this and we're still. [1:07:41] You know, picking up something, calling someone on the other side of the world. Now we can do it faster. We can do it cheaper. We can actually send a video message if we want. Technology improved, got us to do more stuff. I think it's the same with what we're doing here. We're still going to pay people. We're still going to move money between businesses, right? But now we're just going to do it faster, better, et cetera. So my view is... [1:08:01] that, you know, stable coins obviously right now are like all the raw. Totally. Right. You go on LinkedIn, stable coins are going to solve world poverty. And then, right. It's amazing. Like tomorrow or even today. It's already happening. Right. So I think that trend will only continue. And I think that if we look five years from now, ten years from now, probably all the banks will already adopt this digital asset type of rail. By the way, I don't know if it's going to be a stable coin. I think stable coins are, you know, I don't want to open this up right now. [1:08:31] think stable coins are dead. They don't even know it. Whoa. You opened it and we're diving in. Okay. No, I'm just saying it's a great form of how to digitize money. I'm not sure that the banks amongst

[1:08:46] this world really want to hold one for one reserve. I think their business model is not. Right. It's rehypopulation. Yeah. Right. So tokenized deposits in a way, I think is where it's going to go, but it doesn't matter. [1:08:57] I can't say I know for sure. What I'm saying is... [1:09:00] Stablecoin, tokenized deposit, whatever you want to call it, that would only continue to explode and take over the infrastructure. And I think that in five to ten years, we will be just a faster, better economy globally because of this. Yeah. That's what I think. I mean, okay. I mean, stablecoins are dead is what was said. [1:09:30] Thank you. [1:09:30] payments and network those are those are broad terms in terms of what you're overseeing yeah um so yeah what what are you most excited about yeah so i i think that okay let's zoom out for a second [1:09:43] Our space, digital assets, crypto, whatever, I got into this in 2016. And I think that the first wave was really like, let's call it hardcore crypto, crypto natives, crypto. [1:09:53] Crypto trading, crypto speculation. That was the biggest wave until, I think, 2020, 2021. Something like that. And then the second wave came in, which is stable coins and payments. That's the wave we're currently at, right? Right. [1:10:06] In 2025, unlike 24, by the way, we saw more incumbents than ever. MoneyGram, you know, the visas of the world, Stripe obviously buying in 24, Bridge and whatnot. So I think that's going to be 26 for us. I think 26 is really like more remittance companies, more incumbents coming in, doubling down. I think what's going to happen, and I think that's like a 27 kind of thing, 28, is the real world asset and tokenization aspect.

[1:10:36] tokenizing stocks and obviously BlackRock with Biddle already like a year or something ago. But [1:10:42] It's still at the edges. I think that will be 28, 27. Okay, cool. Okay, so I know the conference is just getting started. We're day one here. But what are trends you're seeing here at Breakpoint? What are projects you're excited about? Is there anything that's really stood out to you so far? Yes. So... [1:11:02] You want to ask something else? No, I'm like, you have an answer. You're confident. I'm like, yes. Everybody else so far today has been like, well, just early. And you're like, no, I got it. Glad you asked. I'm like, yeah, no, because I'm. Okay, so the reason I'm. [1:11:14] a big fan of Solana is first of all, obviously, the vibrant ecosystem that's happening here. [1:11:19] This conference is nothing like any other conference, honestly. And it's crazy. It's crazy. Thousands of people. It's crazy. What I am really looking forward to, and I've seen several companies already doing this, is focusing more on privacy. Now, I want to tell you how important this is because as these incumbents coming in right now, like I go and I talk to, I don't know, like a very large bank or a very large payments company. And I start telling them, you know, first question is obviously, oh, Goldie, well, can you please tell us what's a stable coin really? [1:11:49] Great. I tell them what it is. I tell them how it works. And then they're like, what do you mean everyone can see the transfers? They're like, no, thank you. Now we've been here for a decade. We don't care. This is how we're educated. This is how blockchain works. For them, it makes no sense. So what I saw actually downstairs is at least like three companies thinking about how to solve that. And I think that would be super interesting in 26. And Solana enables that through their native confidential transfers and programs.

[1:12:19] this cool um goldie thank you so much such a pleasure to have you learned so much yes thank you for having me [1:12:26] .