Boxer  0:00  

Welcome to the Weekly Wizard. I've brought a new fresh guest with me. And he's a ancient Dune forger. He's been there since before the dawn of time. And yeah, please introduce yourself.

Elias  0:14  

Hello, everybody. I am Elias. By day, I'm a protocol specialist at Coinbase Cloud. And by night, I am a Dune warrior and an angel investor. I contribute to Web3 protocols and different things. So yeah, longtime user of Dune, meme appreciator of all things, Dune lore, and excited to be here.

Boxer  0:49  

Yeah, it's great to have you on. I'm excited for this conversation. So, one thing immediately comes to mind. I always read your Twitter profile. I'm the protocol specialist that you get for Coinbase. What does that entail?

Elias  1:03  

So, my team is basically tasked with being the subject matter experts in all things — Layer 1, Layer 2, and so on. So, Coinbase Cloud is basically what evolved from the acquisition of bison trails from Coinbase, which happened back in already a year ago, February 2021. 

So, I joined the team in the summer of 2020. Bison Trails is basically an infrastructure provider for Web3 protocols. We have a platform on which people can come and run their own nodes in a noncustodial manner. 

So, we run validators across many networks. We are (I think) the biggest provider by amount of stake that we power on our platform. So about 30 billion or so. 

And then we have a whole suite of products that we keep developing, and our focus is increasingly there, which is around data access, read/write boundaries, APIs, all kinds, and so on. 

So, as you can imagine, we have a large surface to interface with the protocol layer of things. And we are effectively the conduits of context between the protocol, their communities, the developer teams, and so on. 

And in the company, or product teams, or customers, and so on. So, we sit right in the middle. It's a fun job. Can't complain, really?

Boxer  2:26  

Yeah, seems like you must be involved across the whole blockchain space, then it's not just EVM focus, but rather, you're basically every chain that is out there. Yeah.

Elias  2:38  

That's exactly right. And we don't spend a ton of time thinking about the application protocol layer. So, smart contract systems that are built on top of Jamesville. We spend our free time researching that stuff, playing with that stuff, kind of helping build that stuff as well. 

And it does inform our view of the infrastructure layer, kind of like top down, right? Because every infrastructure layer is different, what kind of unique things are…what sort of limitations does each one have? 

And how does that translate on the protocol layer? But principally, we look at what you see on your screen when you're interacting with Web3? So yeah, it's a pretty expansive set of responsibilities. 

And the scope is pretty big. And it's really interesting because we get to…there's not that many places like that in the industry, right? Like when you actually get to look at the whole thing. 

And I must tell you, we're growing. The industry is growing very fast. And it's becoming increasingly harder to actually keep track of everything. So, if you're interested in working with us, drop me or my partner, Victor a note. We need help, please.

Boxer  4:05  

Search for talent. This is eating up. So, what can I take from that? But like you said, you're not interested in the application layer. 

But to some extent, the application layer informs. There's a free markets thing going on there, where the app teams will choose the chains that have the best infrastructure or that are the most interesting to them. 

So, they do some data analysis. How do you actually…because there's so many blockchains out there now? How do we actually inform you about what you would want to look into?

Elias  4:48  

Yeah, it's a great question. It's almost like asking a venture person, how do you source deals? Like you'll never know. You’ll never get an answer because that's the magic juju. 

But it's a snowball effect. And you're kind of like in a trajectory and then you gather things. 

And suddenly you have stuff that you do, and people that you know, and things that you look at that are your sources of information. They end up being pretty good, but they're not from the start, at least, in my case. 

They haven't been explicit. Like I'm gonna go and do this. I'm gonna go to that. A lot of where I've ended up has been a product of things that I've been interested in over time, and I've kind of let my interest and gut guide me toward things including Dune, right? But we'll get to that in a bit. 

So, how do I look at data for sure? Like Dune. Dune is principally application layer data, but you can also go and look at what the polygon chain is doing and how it's behaving and how adoption is by various metrics…

Is that TVL? Is that users? Is it transactions? Cluster transactions do all kinds of cool things and say how much activity is potentially MeV related and how much node and how much that impacts the chain’s block space. 

But dude, wasn't it always like that, right? Dude wasn't it always the conduit to be able to get these answers? I see that you guys launched Solana today. Congratulations. This is massive. I have so many questions. I can't wait to to actually start

Boxer  6:43  

…paying for me.

Elias  6:47  

So, Florian says this because I've been bugging him on Discord for a very long time. And initially, I think my questions were pretty stupid. But over time, they got a little bit more sophisticated. And so Florian is like, oh my God, not this guy again.

Boxer  7:08  

I think this time we can learn together. Yeah. Solana data is very new for me as well. So, it seems like I have to become a protocol specialist as well. I have to be able to juggle with the data of multiple data structures now. So, it's getting harder, but we'll all get there. 

So, you've been a big deal user. Why are we actually doing all of this? Like, why? Why does blockchain data matter? There's so many great dashboards in June, and you can look at them and but what is the actual like…how do you use it in your life to inform decisions? Or to make decisions inside of your organization's?

Elias  7:58  

Before we go into that specifically it's not this demo logical, but there's an essence into what do you need and all of that stuff? And it's like, dude, is this the conduit of truth, right? Like blockchain data a human can read and make any sort of elicit any meaningful conclusions from looking at that data, right? 

But blockchains are powerful because they minimize the trust necessary in order for multiple parties to sort of operate on that. And thereby, they become really interesting sort of platforms for the exchange of all kinds of things. 

And then, in the aggregate, they spell the data that these blockchains print. It can say a lot of interesting things about how humans behave, right? The more we get everything running on a blockchain, a ton of the world's transactions, a ton of the world's commerce and so on. 

And that's why I'm here for more. The more we get there, the more the truth of what's happening on these chains becomes increasingly important. And so Dune is this incredibly amazing tool that helps you take the truth or some part of the truth in some small subset of the whole world that's operating on a blockchain and actually give it some sort of meaning is number going up or is number going down. 

And in its most fundamental, that's the truth, you know. But as far as your earlier question, how do I use it for work? Well, I will be using it more now that there's more chains on Dune because, historically, Dune was very Ethereum-focused. 

It's been amazing to see you guys grow into different ecosystems and so on because, as we discussed before, my job has a lot to do with Layer 1s, all kinds of Layer 1s. And that data is actually hard to access. So, now that Dune has Solana data, I'm gonna be all over it. 

But other than that, Ethereum has been the hotbed for activity for the last two years. Ever since DeFi summer things started getting crazier and crazier. 

And Dune has been traditionally a great resource for me to…I have this question, right, about a trend that we see in the industry. And I got to figure out what's actually happening, right, and the whole thing, I think, for me started with Bitcoin on Ethereum, which was during the DeFi summer. WC was growing, but actually, how much and what's going on? 

And are people excited about this product? Or are they not? And the number’s going up? Or is it going down? And so at the time, I didn't really know SQL that well. But it was such a burning question that I had to figure it out.

And it was bugging Fredrik, then I was bugging you. And I learned the hard way. But it's been immensely helpful tracking other things like liquid staking on Ethereum. And the distribution of stake among protocols — who the depositors are, how they're distributed, and so on. 

That tells you real things about who is participating in this market, how they're participating, and then, you can make some smart assumptions about what their motives are and so on. And that's kind of like the game of uncovering the truth. And it's super fun.

Boxer  12:12  

I see. So basically, you're looking at a certain subset of the market, and then you're trying to build a dashboard on that specific topic. And then you try to get a clearer picture of that sector of the industry. 

And you can easily do that on your own. Yeah, that's what we do. That's what we offer you. So you're saying it tells you something about the psychology of the market or something like the psychology of the participants. 

So, what I'm wondering is how much of the data that is on that is on-chain can actually be taken at face value. For example, we have this great dashboard from Richard Chen, which shows DeFi users over time. 

And there's a number there now, and I think it has crossed. I am blanking. I don't know. It's 1,000,006 million. Yeah. So, how much of that is actual wallets? And how much of that is actual users or just people with multiple wallets?

Elias  13:19  

The number is 4.4 million. That's great. Congrats, DeFi. So, yeah, there's a lot of subjectivity in in blockchain data, right. But in there, just to some extent, there will always be subjectivity because different people have different views, different people look at different things, and so on.

We can talk a little bit about that later, but there is subjectivity is also a spectrum, right. And so it starts from basically deciphering the very base thing that you're looking for and actually having something on the screen or on a table or something that you can interpret.

And then it's iterating upon that, right, like with every iteration. You can like remove a little bit of subjectivity and in the quest of that because subjective things are so by merit of the fact that a bunch of people have different views on it like people collaborating to dispel that subjectivity or at least minimize it. 

That’s a really interesting sort of direction we could go that I haven't actually seen being explored yet so much. Who was it that was triggered by the community figures on Richard’s dashboard? 

Boxer  14:56  

I don't know anymore. 

Elias  14:57  

But there's a really interesting…at Twitter…side narrative of someone that is really pissed off using those cumulative figures, but the beauty of doing that is you can also fork that career. 

And if you have a different view, or if you want to see it displayed differently, you can just fork all the work that Richard has done in like aggregating addresses and combing through like logs because he does. This guy's fucking insane. 

But you can take all that work that Richard has done and then you can just change the view, right of how it's being displayed and look at it on a day-by-day basis. You can do it on a weekly basis. You can do it noncumulative. You can do all kinds of interesting things.

Boxer  15:49  

Yeah, I think what we as a platform could really….what could really be improved is that we kind of find a way that I could just make a PR to reach us dashboard, or we just start assembling a lot of different Sequel views. 

And then, if I'm not okay with how Richard pulls this particular data for this particular protocol and nine like 297, then I can just go in there and be like, hey, maybe we should change this from some over to like group by whatever. 

So, I think because then we could basically start building a Wikipedia-style source of truth. And yeah, I'm like we are. We're launching a few initiatives to make such things happen. 

BecauseI think that's a really interesting thing that's happening on Dune where we are collaborating, but Frederick has these great blog posts about siloed data and hedge funds. And on Dune, we are all in the same silo. 

But what I start to recognize is we are starting to build our own silos within the big silo. And I think we need to try to surface the collective information that we all like when to collectivise the information more we need to make it even more peer.

Elias  17:06  

Yeah, 100%. Give more outlet for creativity, right? And just uncover more of the truth. So, I don't know. I've caught myself wondering what if there was an easy way to look at area under the curve, for example, and do it right, which is a fairly complex calculation. 

I don't know if you can even do it in SQL, but you have a curve, for example, but the area under the curve could actually tell you something about what's going on. 

And these are some more complex metrics that are not really easy to deploy on doing at the moment. You can do the basic stuff, but then it's also like there's fatigue, right, of working on complex stuff on doing because I worked on the bridge, away dashboard, which is basically a collection of all the bridges that I could track at some given point in time. 

And then now I have a backlog that I need to update, but basically tracking all their activity, and there's some 25 different bridges there. And each one needs a different treatment to actually reflect the reality. 

The reality is ether scan, basically. That's what you need to benchmark on. That's your source of truth. And so, in order to build that dashboard, and then also build multiple permutations, you have different useful screens on there, it takes a lot of time, right? 

Each bridge needs its own treatment, and then put them all together, and then you end up with something like 800 lines of, of SQL, right? Yeah. I'm not the tydeus writer of SQL, either. So, the onus is also on me. 

But to go the extra mile and find rates of change or things like area under the curve or you're out of willpower by that point. You're like, well, this is good enough.

Why should I? I'm tired. I'm ready to start doing else. If these things were a little bit easier, I think we would be able to uncover even more of the truth.

Boxer  19:42  

Yeah, I guess collective intelligence is really the key word here. Like me being able to go into your dashboard and be like, hey, abs has done all of this great work. And now, let me extend on this. 

Because, if I now like, 100% for your dashboard, and then make my own version but based on your queries, then it's a bit of like, Is he okay with this? 

Is this, I don't know, infringing on his queries or something, even though on Dune I think everything's fair game if you put a query out there and you don't make it private. Then if iit gets forked, and somebody else uses it, it's totally fine. 

But in an optimal world, I could just make a PR or basically start some kind of collaboration on your dashboard. Then it would just be coauthored by a couple of users.

Elias  20:32  

SO rewards attribution is the most complicated part in that endeavor, I think because the way I see it, there are two Dune users, right? There are the public users who are stunting for stars, like myself. 

And there's this whole like other shadowy Dune cabal that work in private, right, and their stars — the equivalent of their stars — is alpha, right? So, people work in like super secret dashboards and so on to uncover user behaviors and patterns that they can leverage to trade better or make better decisions and so on. 

So, the second group of users, at least in this slicing, is irrelevant. The first group of users, so the star sensitive users, that's the rewards at the moment, right? And maybe it's a currency in and of itself because it has some sort of like power. It's like a mini dopamine hit when you're like, yeah, for sure. 

Seeing your work get adopted and people appreciate it's a great reward. And so, once you have that PR functionality, the question becomes who gets those? How did the stars get distributed? Is it half stars? Is it double stars is square root stars? 

What's the actual number? So, I'm curious to hear if you actually have any thoughts? Along those lines? How do you do attribution of the payload effectively?

Boxer  22:29  

I think the star system is beautiful. Because it is so simple. Because it just like we don't like…there is no Smiley's whatever. It's just like…either you like this or don't like this. And you can't even download something. 

And in its simplicity, it's very beautiful. But I think, we definitely need to think about things like this if we ever start to get like combined attribution or something like that. 

So I've not really thought about it. And there's a way where we could maybe monetarily incentivize people and say hey, this dashboard is a public good. Like the bridge dashboard, you're built. 

I think that's a huge public good. I think it's so useful for so many people in this space. And maybe we set up a good coin for this dashboard specifically and then we can have a font for that specific dashboard. 

And if somebody makes great additions, then we are like, hey, this PR to this dashboard is probably worth like 2k or something. Yeah, then we get into this problem of micromanagement. 

And then there's probably an avenue where we kind of go hey, there's a few people working on this. And it's kind of decentralized. And we actually don't take care of this. 

There's a few very interesting methods or ideas that are floating around in my head around doing something like this. But basically, I think, these public good dashboards are used by multiple teams and basically cover an entire sector. 

So, that's also the NFT dashboards, which we based on NFT traits, and the decks traits dashboard. It’s a huge like asset for uniswap. The lending dashboard is a huge asset for others or components.

They probably want to know like, hey, how are our metrics stacking up against….yeah, and if we find ways to incentivize those protocols to pay into a contributor pools to basically…hey, there's a data team that's covering all decentralized lending platforms and not just one because there's huge synergies to be had there as well. 

So, I think that’s some kind of solution that would make the most sense. And then its stylists are like stars. They’re very nice but in the end, if you get cited in a scientific paper or you get money, there's a clear history of the PRC you wouldn't make, right? 

So, then it's like, if you like ever apply for a job, you can say, hey, I helped manage this decentralized lending as a decentralized lending dashboard. 

For over a year, here are my contributions and the following people have reviewed and merged my PRs. And that would be a way bigger cloud than a few stars on Dune, I guess.

Elias  25:13  

Yeah, yeah, pretty sick actually. But you're making a really great point about the public good dashboards and the project dashboards. And even if Dune doesn't have those systems, Dune could develop them down the line. 

To me, it's pretty amazing that people have actually taken the time and care to create those dashboards. And I'm not patting myself on the back.

Boxer  25:39  

Doing great. You're a good, good citizen.

Elias  25:44  

But it's really curiosity, right? And I think, who was it? Like, I think Dolby had a really, really great tweet the other day, which is really about most of the power users of Dune are very curious people. 

Right? They're mostly driven by curiosity. And for anyone that's interested in learning how to work with Dune, and so on, the number one thing and I think that was that was Dobby speed, but I've caught myself saying it over years. 

Probably now, the most important thing is to have great questions right in your head, and the questions that are so burning that you can't like…you just have to find the answer. 

Right. And that's the perfect sort of vehicle for you to get learning and get better at using Dune.

Boxer  26:41  

Yeah, yeah, he was so, “Why you can do it anyhow?”

Elias  26:46  

Greg, I have never heard that before. But this is a great greeting.

Boxer  26:51  

Yeah, I think the background is not too good. But let's leave it at that. I think that's what I noticed. When I train you, when new people come into our community, I can usually tell within 20 messages that we've exchanged, is this guy going to make it? 

Or is he not going to make it because there are certain types of questions and certain ways of raising questions and just you feel the spirit of people who are like, hey, I actually really want to know this. And I'm really interested in getting to this data point. 

And then you can pick up the sequel and Etherscan. The passion has to be there in some kind of sense.

Elias  27:29  

Yeah, 100%. Hey, by the way, I always want to ask you this, but I never got to ask you. So, you've been hanging out in the Dune discord herding cats for what seems like a pretty long time now. 

Have you ever gotten any abuse users coming in and demanding stuff or being super rude or anything like that?

Boxer  27:57  

A few times? No, not really, all right. And it is really. It's pretty good. And we're all like very much focused on hey, this is our product. This is the data. There's some fun, and we have a lot of memes, and all these great Discord emojis, they really add like a lot of color to the Discord, but I think in general it's very technical. 

So, people are a bit my mad when I was telling people like Coin Gecko prices soon forever. And then like Coin Gecko prices didn't come, but it was mostly like I don't know you. Just like they're a bit sad I wasn't there earlier. In general, our community's super nice and super competent and just general, they want to get shit done right? 

You don't come into Dune court to ask like, why not moon and why don't desks do something because first of all, our desks are doing a lot. And second of  all, I’m not having a total takes out of takes order. Not a lot of noise out of the system. 

I can see ways where it's like I've talked about these public goods and trying to get people to coordinate and stuff and the talking is like…it can be used as a like mechanism to coordinate people very well. 

So, it's may be that there's a universe where Dune has a token, and it works even better but there's also a lot of noise introduced into the system, and maybe I would actually just start a second Discord which would be Dune, like Donald, you….Just put the moonboys in there.

Elias  29:33  

It was the inverse of a token gated discord or everybody that has a Dune token cannot get into the Dune days. Oh my god, that's an idea that I was toying around with. Dune community down, so I'm like, at some point, I think it was scrolling Twitter yesterday as I do. 

I saw someone actually tweet that, and they were like anybody interested in doing a Dune Dow, like an analyst Dow or whatever. And I thought that was pretty fun because we've got to have a token in everything.

Boxer  30:16  

I mean, I mean, it does make sense. There's huge synergy effects if you're not working at all, but rather with a few other people. They can audit your work. You can work together. You can split up by different sectors. 

There’s a lot of reasons for people to start building dowels on top, just for being Dune analysts and learning together and succeeding together. I think that is what eventually will happen. 

Probably a lot of different dials like work as groups on Dune. So, I, kind of like you. I would hire you if you were like a big Corp. You hire like a bunch of consultants to take care of like a certain part of your business. 

And maybe it will be like I see it today…already did…people hire people specifically to do Dune stuff because it's very important to the organization. But maybe there's just a shortage of Dune wizards in general, which is very true. 

So, if you're watching this, and you don't know how to Dune, and want to have a job, learn Dune. Yeah, but maybe the need is there for the organization. But they don't need a full-time position. 

If you get the dashboard running once, then what do you do with this Dune guy? Is he just gonna get snacks for the office? Or what's this?

I mean, you can always serve as more data. I don't know. If he's working for others, for example, he could start contributing to this lending protocol like dashboards. But yeah, I don't know. 

I very much see that happening that different dials will actually work on Dune and maybe there will be a Dune community like officially endorsed Dune community dollar at some point. But I don't know what project I must think about that. I don't have a particular opinion about that. So, I'm not too sure what will happen.

Elias  32:00  

No one knows exactly. Have they been on the podcast? Are you planning to bring them on the podcast?

Boxer  32:09  

Yeah, yeah, I do plan on it, and I don't have a guest for next week yet. So, they might happen. But we will have to see. I don't know how long they are in America for so that would be nice. If I would actually have them in my timezone.

Elias  32:25  

I would actually love to see a podcast with Matt's right and on Earth like early Dune stories and about the technical stuff and the back end and so on. They're both great. The Dune forefathers. The first settlers of Iraqis.

Boxer  32:49  

The founding fathers actually.

Elias  32:53  

So fun. What's your stuff? Yeah, but it’s a great community. Truly, it feels like there's never raucous and community outrage or any of that.  

This is why I asked you the question before. Have you ever gotten abused and so on? Because I mean, people are angry. There are a bunch of people that are angry. 

And every time I scroll through the Dune dashboard, and I ask questions, people are super collaborative. If you're not available, and someone knows the answer, they will, type in the answer, right? 

And it's so great to see that just grow organically, right? Just the product attracting like a certain type of…because as far as I'm concerned, all of Dune’s growth so far has been organic, right? 

There haven’t been any big marketing campaigns or sales teams or anything like that, right? It's just curious people and  projects that are building on Ethereum, and they're after all these different chains just working on Dune. It's just a great tool to get the information that you need and then sharing it on Twitter and then more people trickle in. 

But it's really something that the community is the way it is without having kind of any sort of extra incentives effort sales efforts, blah blah, blah, the whole shebang. So yeah…

Boxer  34:24  

Well, I guess it's just that we don't offer monetary incentives directly from us but a lot of people are earning legit money working on you. 

And a lot of people, I think, if you apply somewhere today, and you're like, hey, I'm a Dune wizard with 1,000 stars, then if the company or hiring manager at least kind of knows the blockchain space then he's like, holy shit, this guy must know his stuff. 

So, I think when people are using IDs…when NFT is you got to print NFTs for wizards. 

Elias  34:56  

Is that more than 1000 stars? How many of them are there? Actually? I wonder?

Boxer  35:07  

I can't really comment on this. But so one. There's something in the pipeline, I think,

Elias  35:13  

Oh, wow. There's about there's about 15. It would be nice actually, if there was like, Hey, you made it to 1000 years in NFT?

Boxer  35:27  

Yeah. Yeah, that would be cool. I think, yeah, we'll think about it. I'll tell my bro scheme. Yeah, let's get back into the structure of podcasting. So, you have this great threat on your predictions for 2022. 

And I thought maybe we can take a few of those predictions and see how they look like Rudy. I've been on the past two months, but I've looked for those who we can actually look at the data. 

So, I think you can share your screen. And then the first prediction that I found interesting, and that you actually need to explain to me a bit, as is the sixth one, which is as validators, they start to capture MeV and fees demand for validator slots, rocket, and the activation queue. It gets maxed out. And then you're saying legal finance will probably win big here. 

And liquid staking in general will be a big, big thing. So, first of all, I didn't know that the activation queue can get maxed out. Can you drop a couple of words on what that exactly means?

Elias  36:37  

So, I could be wrong about my numbers. But apparently, every year, there is the maximum number of ETH units that can onboard onto the beacon chain is about 10 or 11 million ETH. 

Right, so about 10 or 11% of the total supply of ETH can actually get staking. And that's basically a lot it into validator slots. However much ETH that is is divided by 32. That's how many validator slots you have. 

So, you can then, if that's true…that also means the beacon chain is basically a plot of land with finite real estate that is growing, but it's growing in a predictable fashion. And it can't grow infinitely, right? It has like, very specific boundaries, which define or limit its potential growth. 

And so my thinking there is that okay, that's the case. We have a finite plot of land. And suddenly, once the merge happens, validators at the moment, they only earn inflationary rewards. 

And they're playing a game of I saw this, it's this time, we are here on the map, and so on. Everybody puts those votes of where we are in space and time in the blockchain context and then commits them and someone like packages them together and makes consensus, right? And works toward finalizing the chain. 

And so once the merge happens, then the execution layer will come on top of the beacon chain. Things will get a lot more interesting, right, because then validators will start capturing fees and start observing different things and reporting different things and then have transaction ordering, rights and so on. 

And, therefore being a validator rule becoming double or triple more interesting and valuable than it is today. Right? And plus, a big part of the earth effort will have been de-risked because now your posts merge, right? 

And will the merge happen? There's a lot of people in the theorem community that believe it will, including myself, but there's a bunch of people outside and especially people that are not very close to the problem that are like well, will it ever happen? 

Yes, it will, if you are listening, but you have a risk reduction. And then at the same time, you have an increasing in the utility that you can enjoy by being a validator. So, that to me says that demand will double or triple right for these plots of land. 

And therefore, we just talked about the fact that there isn't infinite space, right. And so, in every major city in the world, in its like growth phases, there's always less space than there is demand for space. Rent prices and house prices go through the roof. 

That mechanism is not available in in the beacon chain because it’s a fixed price that you need to pay to actually buy a place to rent the place. 

It's really not right and by renting a place the way I sometimes look at the whole liquid staking category is that it's almost like you're renting space on the beacon chain, right? You buy a seat, and then someone else has deployed that validator, but you have rights to all sort of economic residual benefits that trickled down from that validator that's deployed. 

So effectively, if you want to get exposure to that higher utility, getting one of those liquid staking tokens is the only way that's available to do that. Or if you're less sophisticated, it's only if demand will increase, and it will the space is capped. 

And if you really want to get in there it is the only way. Right. And so that's my rationale now, in thinking that, these liquid staking derivatives will benefit disproportionately AP and post merge, and they will start trading at a premium to stick teeth.

Boxer  41:02  

Yeah, yeah. Interesting analogy with the with the cities. So basically, there's no city. It's an island. There's no more plots; you can't build higher. 

So, it’s somewhere there has to be a premium? And because there's no rent, yeah, okay. Yeah, interesting. Can we actually take a look at the dashboard? I can share my screen as well…

Elias  41:27  

We can take a look at the dashboard. If you want to share your screen, go ahead and share your screen. Because I've got you on.

Boxer  41:40  

Correct. 

Elias  41:43  

Let's go to…Goddamnit errors. Your query took too long to execute that. That's no bueno. 

Boxer  41:54  

These are here. So yeah, well, little is really…it's not even close. Lleader is dominating this market? Entirely. Yeah. Do you have any insights as to why that is just because leader was first to market? Or is there like some special properties that the leader has?

Elias  42:16  

Well, with a lot of these efforts, it's a lot about time to market. It's a lot about legitimacy. Right? And LIDAR was really fast to get to market. And also, they did an amazing job at getting multiple stakeholders like capital, validator, operators, and so on. 

They got everybody, a lot of people that matter to get involved, in the Dow and the whole effort, right. And that's really powerful. Because that helps drive integrations that drives trust and brand awareness on the consumer end. 

And so, they've done an amazing job, and they continue to do an amazing job in that department. Will think it will stay that way forever, I don't know, right? 

But it is a pretty, pretty significant lead that they have established and if the Bitcoin wrapped Bitcoin on Ethereum for example, market is anything to go by as an analogy of an older market. That also has very similar properties. It could very well end up being that way. 

Right? So, you see that? Yeah, HVDC started competing at some point, but they never really managed to get meaningful traction and WB DC is still like 80% of that market. 

And a large part of that is that the more you are the product with the highest liquidity with the most mindshare and so the more integrations you actually are able to achieve and the more integrations we're able to achieve the more useful your specific product is as opposed to any of your competitors products. 

Boxer  44:07  

Very much like network effect in terms of liquidity 100 because if like SM stake DS Ste…whatever it is…that has the most liquidity. It actually becomes attractive to the bigger players as well. 

And then there's a smaller on Bridgeway actually. Yeah, it just gets really attractive because there's so much liquidity. Yeah, interesting. So, have you set up the uniswap v3 range which is a buffer like usual pic?

Elias  44:43  

Maybe not. I can neither confirm nor deny.

Boxer  44:49  

It just came to mind that I would be like…maybe you'll be the only one the first time this has happened.

Elias  44:55  

Maybe, I haven't. Hold on, dude. 

Boxer  45:01  

Yeah, yeah. Interesting. Interesting to hear why you were making this thesis. So, I don't know. I'm not sharing my screen, but I like it.

Elias  45:14  

I like it. We got some like visual.

Boxer  45:18  

So, stablecoins get 2.5 trillion market cap. I think this is a bit harder to track on Dune. But we still have some insight into this.

Elias  45:27  

Okay, let's go. Let's go and look at what's happening on a theorem then.

Boxer  45:32  

Oh, there's actually…is this other data providers? I don't know about them. So good.

Elias  45:44  

So, it looks like we're doing okay. Yeah. 

Boxer  45:47  

Yeah, it looks like the stablecoin market is really growing so well that it has tripled since last year. So, tripled in one year from now? Pretty much. And then you would expect… 

Yeah, it's only on Ethereum. So like, this data is really…this data is really lacking but if this doubles, then probably the entire crypto market cap of stablecoins will be above 0.5 trillion. 

So, it seems like your prediction is becoming true. What do you think about stablecoins in general? How do you think stablecoins will be…? Are they going to stay a DeFi thing? Or are there some real world applications that are going to use stablecoins?

Elias  46:36  

Both? I think my prediction is based on that both will happen, right? So, we're seeing a demand for block space like EVM block space and other types of block space just go through the roof. The tendermint ecosystem. There's real stuff happening there with the IBC and so on. 

So, that's coming to…it's potentially even beyond a critical mass at this point, right? And it's getting to the point where it's going to have real utility finding a home in that ecosystem in Polka Dot. The same for Solana, the same for the whole like HTML tools, the same for users coming in. 

So, stablecoins are actually a pretty great proxy to measure adoption in the space overall, right? Like institutional adoption and liquidity of Bitcoin when I started out in the industry as an analyst in a crypto fund called D Central Park capital. 

We were, at that point, looking at how tether grows quite a lot and one of my first tweets that got a lot of engagement on Twitter when I started posting was how tether grows together. Bitcoin grows together with tether, right? There's no conspiracy there. 

More liquidity makes that product more valuable, and it's a flywheel. More users come in liquidity gaps that get created. More stablecoins get printed. More stablecoins get printed, the products in the space overall have deeper liquidity and more utility. And iit becomes more valuable. 

So more users come in, and then again, the liquidity gaps show and then it keeps the flywheel turning. With all of these new ecosystems, in order for them to become useful, they will need a ton of stablecoin. Whether it's going to be incentivized or not incentivized. 

We will see, I think it will be a mix of both, but there's also algorithmic stablecoins. There are synthetic stablecoins. There are all kinds of stablecoins now. So, you have new environments that need that liquidity. 

You have new technologies for producing a stablecoin stable asset or whatnot, and you have more penetration of stablecoins and rails for transactions not purely off-chain world. I forget, but I was reading something more recently about well. 

I look at Tara for example. I think that was it like Tara is now going to be the terror community fund which is like a Dow to interface. It's mandated to grow basically terror, right? They brokered a sponsorship deal with the Washington Nationals which is like a popular baseball team in the States for something like 25 or 40 million. 

I forget which of the two days, and they are going to make USD spendable in the the stadiums premises, so you'll buy hot dogs with with stablecoins, right? Which is pretty fascinating. I mean, that tells you something about where the world is going. 

And I'm pretty sure to that, for merchants as well, if you get over the interface problems. These solutions are a lot more cost effective and potentially even better UX, right? 

Imagine if you're a merchant, for example. You're collecting USD, I mean, you got to do your payments at the end of at the end of the month. But in the meantime, you could have a urine API plugged in, right? While your income and revenue sit in that checking account or whatever it is, it also earns interest at the same time. 

And you can do that almost in an al a carte fashion. So yeah, really fascinating stuff. I think we have lot to see there. But I'm pretty bullish regardless of market conditions that stablecoins will continue to grow. 

Like also, one thing about stablecoins is that very rarely, in the history, at least, the more recent history of the industry, even like in 2019 when the market was choppy as hell. You didn't really see liquidity stablecoin liquidity being withdrawn from the market. It just stays, right? Because then, it's that flywheel that we're talking about before. So exciting stuff.

Boxer  51:31  

Yeah. Yeah, once the Bitcoins entered the system or once any month, any money really enters the system, it's very sticky. It hardly leaves anymore. 

Elias  51:42  

I think that's also true for non-fungible humans. I haven't been able to unstick myself from this.

Boxer  51:54  

That took a while. Yes, I don't think anyone who works in the industry now…maybe they become a kindergarten teacher or something just because it's too stressful. But they won't switch back to Google or Meter or whatever the prospects of working at those companies. 

Like once you've seen the other side and you've worked in crypto and everything, everyone is really excited and just loves their job. Really. There's no going back.

Elias  52:22  

It is too much fun. Too much fun.

Boxer  52:25  

Yeah, definitely. I mean, look at us. We're working like a content creator. I just wanted to comment that stablecoins being accepted in the premises of a stadium that very much sounds like a 27 bull market like headline. 

Elias  52:55  

It’s like, hey, we're gonna make this thing. Yeah, it's a very weird, we're gonna put it in stadiums. And you're like, cool, maybe you'll do it. But yeah, props to these guys. They've done great work.

Boxer  53:11  

Yeah, yeah. It is. It is a cool integration. I think the recent news of Canada freezing bank accounts associated with these like truckers…whatever side of the political spectrum you stand on. 

It's like, I think stablecoin adoption could grow through like topics like these as well. Where it's not your keys, not your money. That is like, by default, the case for bank. And nobody can take away my dye, which are in my bank account. If I go protesting, I don't care if they freeze my bank account. Like, it's negative anyways, whatever.

Elias  53:49  

Definitely. So, I'm not a big reader of the Financial Times. But I chanced upon an article from June 2021 or July 2021 and so on. And I forget the author's name, but people should look for it and go read it. 

Hhe was making some predictions about how things are gonna go as the COVID recovery goes, and his sort of thesis was that governments love the special powers that they've gotten.

Because of COVID, right, in the name of protecting people and all, they have a ton of special powers now. They're not really going to give them up. So, one of the predictions he was making under that sort of context was that governments will actually start censoring transactions in the financial system. Much like what we're seeing now in Canada, right. 

So, it will be a battlefield in the coming year, two years, three years, who knows? But we are, I think, much further along. If you've been in this industry for like a while, it’s a tie. 

Things happen super fast, but you're only looking at a smaller slice because you're boundedly rational. Some of us are Giga brains, not me. I know a few people. But things move incredibly fast. 

And like exponential growth, it’s really hard to grasp, right? And so looking back and under, trying to understand where we're at right now, we are mainstream, right? There's this saying, first they laugh at you, then they like something you, then they fight you, and then you win. 

And we're definitely at the “then they fight you” stage, right? Which means that we're not that early. There's still so much stuff that we need to build to make this even more useful and valuable and exciting and fun and fair. 

And all these are the things that we might be working toward. Other people are playing their time scamming other people…like God knows why. But still. We were not that early. And so I think we will win in the end. But it will just be chopping chops.

Boxer  56:16  

Yeah, it's an ongoing development. You can't…I can't really tell what's gonna happen. But crypto is here to stay in whatever shape or form that will transpire. 

And how far the regulators can reach into the space…that is yet to be decided. And we'll have to see how all these petals are like petals? I don't know how the industry will manage to stay afloat? 

Yeah. Now, we're political. Running back. Let's just get everything in your predictions. So, you predicted 100 million users by Interfere. And I am very interested in how we've looked at the…or you've looked at the DeFi users and DeFi dashboard just earlier. And then, we were like, at 4.4 million or something. So, how do we get to 100 million users by end of year? 

Elias  57:17  

So, a little bird told me that at the end of 2021, in December, Metamask had like Glock something. Like 25 million unique addresses, right? So, let's assume that you can make some smart assumptions again, right? 

But let's assume that it's half of that. So, I don't necessarily think that's going to happen this year. But in the next couple of years, I think wallet infrastructure is getting better. 

We talked about this demand for block space increasing. There's infrastructure work happening to be able to service that demand. There's new types of applications being developed and so on. 

There's financial worlds in a blockchain context is growing. So, I think it's very likely that we'll get there, and also if I'm right about every prediction that I make, then people are going to think that I am a fucking clairvoyant. 

Boxer  58:16  

I actually said the strengths of coins go up. Staking is good. So you can just go back into the year and be like, hey, I'm actually like…

Oh, god. I think that was the last thesis that I want to pick into.

Elias  58:46  

So, I am bullish. I'm bullish on everything though. Right. Sometimes people come up to me, especially people that don't work in the industry. And there's been a bunch of time on the metaverse, but they're…well, crypto is full of scams. 

Do you see this scam? Do you see this stuff? Blah, blah, blah. It's usually negative stuff. And, I'm not paying enough attention to that. Right? Because again, I have limited time, and my attention span is finite and so on. 

And, I think that the best thing I can do for me to be healthy and productive and to help this ecosystem move forward in any way I can is to just focus on the good stuff. And maybe that's a blind spot that I have sometimes, right? 

Because I'm always super optimistic, and I'm like, up up, up, we're gonna go up up up. But being more pragmatic, who knows…? Maybe this year it's gonna be a lot of infrastructure work this year. Maybe there's bigger gaps than we think. 

We can fill quickly enough, so we'll see but I'm here for a while. I don't think I'm going anywhere if it's up to me to decide. 

So, I think over a longer time period, we're gonna see even more great things happening in this little space of ours.

Boxer  1:00:16  

Yeah, it's hard to be bearish or think of negative things that can…there's a lot of negative things that can happen. Everything can go to shit. But if you work in the space and you see what kind of people are getting recruited...what kind of people you get to interact with on a day-to-day basis…

The smartest people from all over the world, who are like in their 25 to like 35-40 range where they are the most productive in their lives. And they are all coming to crypto. 

And there's no…if you bet against this…you're betting against that collective human intelligence, basically. Yeah. And it's just very hard if the regulators and the states and whatever don't royally fuck us. 

But even then, the underlying technology is so strong. Even if they regulate that, let them regulate the NFT market or something, it's still the essence of having like digital ownership of non-fungible assets that will still be there. 

Like even if it's regulated or whatever, there's few little things that can really…for DeFi it's a bit harder because banking rules. And banking regulations have been tough historically. 

But in general, there will always be loopholes. We will always find a way to make this work. And even if it is being government compliant in the end, maybe there's no more urine, which is a bundle of bunch of unknown deaths. But I don't hope that. 

I hope that we continue to have this trend of being free and open and free to do whatever you want. And yeah, there's a very hard case to make to bet against all of these smart people. 

Elias  1:01:54  

Yeah. 100%. And as far as the regulator work and all that goes, I think to some extent, it's a sign of the times. There's a greater force at play here. And it's basically…this is the next five, six years…it’s the boomer swan song, right? 

Boomers will for good, for better or worse, they will not really be around anymore. Like not in positions of power, not because they will be way past their prime, right? And new generations will start having a lot more of a say in how this world is being run. 

And so I think there's this really interesting theory called Strauss Generational theory or something like that. It's fairly US focused. But it basically talks about how the world moves in 80-year cycles, and there's four archetypes in one generation. 

One follows the next and the archetypes are almost sequential at least. That's how they present it. I don't think it's very contentious. 

There's a lot of criticisms in the fact that it's not peer review. And it's almost like astrology. But it is actually interesting to think about, right, like generational sort of changes and the change of guards and so on. 

So, I want to be pretty bullish on how I will manage this eventually, even if the short term is a little bit turbulent, right? Like nothing is irreversible. And a lot of this, the way I understand it, and it's also my personal story and how I got into this space and kind of got stuck here. In a good way stuck here. I was looking at things outside in the world as it were. 

And I wasn't impressed. I was actually pretty disappointed by like institutions, power structures, all these things. And so, when I was younger, I always thought, like, hey, maybe you can change it from the inside. 

That's the way to change it. And then you grew a little bit older, and you realize that, the Insight is never going to change, right? Because mature institutions and organizations are at that stage because they have done something right. 

And then, at that point of maturity, they become a lot more inflexible. And so the only way to meaningfully affect change is to build alternatives. And I think this is what we're doing here to some extent. 

So, it's a powerful motive. And I do hope that people that enter this ecosystem now or have been around for like six months, a year, and so on. I really hope that they think about that stuff as well a bit except for the pumps and dumps. Just buy stuff that you like, hold them for a long time, you'll do fine. 

But really have like a chance to to make something better here, I think. So. Let's go. I suppose…

Boxer  1:05:27  

iI's fucking go. Yeah, it just one thing that came to mind is like, in scientific circles, I think they say science advances one funeral at a time. Yeah, because you can't detect the…there's like one professor who's really established in this field? 

And as long as he's around, there's no changing his theories. So, as soon as he's dead, there's a bunch of young undergrads who will come in and be like, hey, this is actually true. 

Can we change this? So yeah, very interesting topics to think about. And yeah, I hope that the newcomers into the space really pick up the culture that you try to explain of like, hey, we’re actually trying to…we're disappointed in the world how it is. And that's just like…let's make this better. 

Elias  1:06:21  

Another interesting point, right? Because you're seeing a little bit called a culture clash at the tail end of 21 and the beginning of 22 and so on. There's a bunch of new people that are maybe…I don't know.

If we look at the numbers, since we are here for that, right, we're here for the data. If you look at the data, I think you’ll like it took this space. Maybe 10 years to grow to like X number of users, right, and participants and so on.I think maybe 2021, and maybe a little bit before that, that probably doubled. 

And that's what exponential growth looks like. It takes 10 years to get to 10 million, and then it takes one year to get to 20 million. And so that has some major interesting ripple effects on the culture right of what this space represents — what the norms are, how people behave, and you see that kind of manifests on like Twitter outrage, and canceled culture making. It's first steps into this Web3 playground and so on. 

So, I really hope that we can all rise above it and live and let live and just be content working on cool stuff. Which is in and of itself a huge privilege. Right? I think people forget that there are a ton of others having a much worse time. So, outrage culture is that it's all like…we all have a common enemy. 

Boxer  1:07:59  

And that non-progress in the world, yeah, exact space. We would like…the world would be a better place if we had…I was working at a treasury of a German big car manufacturer. 

And I worked there, and they already had some kind of crypto knowledge, and I just sat there and was like, if we were just said to save your coins, guys, this project would have been over. 

It was new Treasury finding software. And it was a three-year project cost, fucking millions and millions of dollars. I was like, yeah, let's just give them a wallet. I said, with some staples. Yeah, that's what we were fighting against. 

We can make the whole…we can make so many things so much more efficient and level the playing field and unlock a lot of ways like this. There are a million things we can think about that blockchain systems can improve but not everything needs a blockchain as well. 

That's also something to something to think about. So yeah, I think this was a very good conversation. And we have had Thomas collect questions from the chat during the podcast. So, I hope there are some questions in there. I will get Thomas into here. Hello, Thomas.

Thomas  1:09:19  

You hear me? Yes. Awesome. Yeah. Awesome conversation. Thanks for that really interesting. So yeah, yeah, we've had a few pretty good questions. I'll kick them off — one from Kliff runner. He said his question is how to monetize the unique thinking and coding skills yet still remain true to the community.

Elias  1:09:44  

How to monetize smart contract coding skills that like not scan people, basically right? Yeah…

Thomas  1:09:52  

I didn't know if he means that or if he means Dune’s skills specifically.

Elias  1:09:58  

Yeah, I don't know if I think in general, like the litmus test has to be don't scam people. The other litmus test is what you're going to offer to the world make more people better off than it will people worse off and the ideal scenario is where you make no one worse off and some people at least better off, right? 

So, that's the Pareto principle. So, I guess this can translate on to Dune as well. But doing these by design is not harmful, right? It's by design that it doesn't allow for because it's about information curation, information creation, and information consumption. 

And there is no spin that you can put on a story that can make the story or the facts alternative facts or malicious or anything like that. It's just the facts. And that's a really powerful thing. So as far as doing goes, just hack away. Awesome.

Boxer  1:11:14  

So, I think you'll always have the burden of…you have to contextualize your data. If we're just looking at OPC. And looks were trading volume at the moment. I like somebody totally not familiar. It hasn't been on crypto Twitter or knows the Dune interface. 

And it's just on a dashboard, which shows NFT secondary volume, then you'll be like, holy shit. It looks where it's absolutely stomping Open Sea into the ground. But then, if you think for a second, then you're like, hey, why is there actually like…why is there suddenly 500 million more daily trading volume? 

And maybe there's an additional salary that goes on here. So, you could come to that conclusion on your own because you’re like, this has to be some weird thing that's happening. 

But yeah, I think you have to contextualize your data properly. I think that's always something you have to keep in mind. Who was it?

Elias  1:12:11  

Who did the dashboard? Dobby? Yeah, shout out to Toby. Great work.

Thomas  1:12:16  

Yeah. Yeah. As someone who was kind of new to it myself, I really appreciated people who properly added explainers on the dashboards. Alright, so next question. 

He's keen to find out how much time a full-time Web3 analyst spends on surfacing data, writing out analysis creating decks and/or learning new things. What does a typical analyst day look like? And that's from Peter the rock?

Elias  1:12:45  

Yeah, I don't like days. That's a unit of measurement. Because like weeks, weeks are probably better in my life, at least. How long does it take? My whole waking time. 

I kid, but I also don't kid like. I think about that stuff, even when I'm like trying to relax, which is unhealthy to some extent, but it also leads to some interesting findings. So on balance, it works. And then what does it entail? 

It entails talking to a bunch of people. It entails writing a lot. It entails looking at data and hacking things away. It entails just looking at the wall and thinking about things. Listening to podcasts like this one and shouting out to everybody that's listening. Yeah, it’s a bunch of things. 

And it's typical, in a way, because being able to find truth and insights and so on. It's actually creative work to some extent, right? There is no formula, it's part science, like, maximize the quality of the inputs. 

And that's where the science lies, right. Doing proper analysis and what Boxer was talking about before we're gonna contextualize and your data and all that, then the synthesis process is a very creative thing. 

And creative work is also unstructured to some extent, right? You have to sometimes just do nothing. And let it simmer for a bit. Let all those high-quality inputs simmer down. And then you get the epiphany moment. 

So they're, as far as I'm concerned, the way I've experienced it. There is no formula right? And we're all different, like that's the that's the way I work, but someone else might have a completely different process and produce even greater outcomes than than I or anybody else. 

So yeah, just listen to your gut and take some time to reflect on what you've done and what the outcomes were and then revisit what you need to revisit double down on the things that worked and keep going.

Florida, have anything to add?

Boxer  1:15:14  

Very solid answer.

Thomas  1:15:15  

Oh yeah, very comprehensive. Thank you. And then another one from Peter. The rock Web3 data is relatively new territory, what would you say is the best practice for ensuring that your queries are correct and accurate?

Elias  1:15:34  

Building in increments and referencing for the truth. That's Etherscan or any other block explorer…how frequently because the most interesting stuff take a little bit of work to do, right? 

Putting together different addresses data sets that require treatment, we talked about it a little bit earlier about how he went about building that Bridgeway dashboard. 

So, you have to take apart the components that make the hole. And as you build them, you have to cross reference for their validity, right. And that makes the whole thing more manageable. 

But it also like, because there's logic that builds upon logic, and so on, you got to secure the base and what you're building on. You’ve got to have a high degree of certainty, right? Is it 95%? Is it 99%? I don't know. But you have to have that certainty in order to build something that's together, and it works. And it works, hopefully, perpetually.

Boxer  1:16:40  

Yeah, maybe my take on that…like I agree that you. You build in increments. You always look like you go from the raw data. You don't build. You don't immediately like something. You always go from the raw data, then you actually check the raw data. 

If there are any extreme outliers in there, then you're like, hey, how can I work with these outliers? Are there any outliers, and then, I like to write macros, very modular, so that you can always check this part of the query correct. 

And then, you can move on and the next part is like…does this result actually makes sense? And oftentimes, you can check back with Etherscan, or you can use Nansen or the block or, there are a few other data providers that you can reference. 

And then if you have the result dataset, you can actually…. you start something with that and you have a data set that you can then work with then if you're confident in that base data set, then you can do all kinds of different things with that base data set but always build composable. 

Crows pretty much like a lot of macros….actually the same. The first few 100 lines are the same. And then like after that, I add complexity, but it's like getting the building blocks on top of each other. That's a really important principle.

Thomas  1:17:58  

Also, how much experience did you have with SQL when you started with Dune? That's from a 700 experience like Frederick Frederick…bless his soul.

Elias  1:18:13  

Only Fredrik was my teacher, basically, like I had. So, the way I got stuck with Dune was I did a little course for Sequel. I was just curious. I didn't have anywhere useful to apply that newly acquired knowledge, right? 

And it was just the basics that you get in a day or maybe two days. And then I met Frederick. And he's doing this thing, Sequel and Ethereum. Like, maybe you want to try it? 

I'm like, fuck yeah, I want to try it. I learned all these new skills. I got to deploy them somewhere. And then, it was a game of interesting questions, right? And in the beginning, it wasn't exactly easy or user-friendly and so on. 

But it just speaks how good the product is, even if it was janky as hell. You still wanted to find the answer because there was no other place where you could get the answer. 

So, you got to go through the motions of learning how to use the tool and that's the language that you express it in his Sequel to get to that answer. And if you are of a certain volition, you quickly find that's actually a very fun process to undertake.

Thomas  1:19:32  

And I have a follow up question of my own. Somebody said in the chat, that actually SQL is the easy part. And I've heard that a lot. And I wanted to ask you, if SQL is the easy part, then what's the hard part?

Elias  1:19:46  

Asking the right questions. That's the hard part. And it’s great to stick with it when it gets hard, right? Maybe you're answering the right question, but you don't have the patience to bump your head against the wall a few times. 

And oh, fuck, this doesn't work. It's not this…why does this…youknow? Like, I gotta go speak to Florida and figure out what's happening there? And he's like, well, here's the answer. 

But sometime Florida is like, fuck, I don't know. So, then you're both on this quest to find out how this thing happens. And it's just fun. You make friends in the process, if you see it. You see it that way. You're gonna have a great time.

Thomas  1:20:36  

Fantastic. And another one more question, how useful is machine learning? Or other data prediction models in Web3 data? That's given Malanga?

Elias  1:20:50  

Good question. We haven't seen many applications of it yet, at least in a permission-less environment, right? I guess there's a bunch of machine learning happening within firms like chain analysis, forensics, Blockchain analytics, and forensics companies. 

And I guess, that's useful a bunch. Although, I will lie. If I tell you that I know we're talking about machine learning, but I do know that except for if it's very small sort of time increments, like sub minute increments…at least for as long as I was fidgeting with that stuff. Machine learning can predict the price of Bitcoin. Or I did a very shitty job, but like…

Boxer  1:21:42  

I think nonsense also used machine learning to produce their labels. So, I think that is quite an interesting use case of basically looking at the history of the user. And then, they're not predicting stuff, but they're very good at making attributions to what they've actually done in the past. 

And is there a performance? I guess, if you have an index trade, label that is not a prediction, but it's an honorary title they give you. I don't know if, machine learning always has to be predicting the future. 

I guess you can also look backwards and analyze how to have these people performed? And maybe that's more of a case of like when in case and if statements? 

Yeah, I don't know how much of machine learning is involved in there. But either way, I think because the data is so public and so clear. 

And most of the times, it's pretty workable, there is a huge avenue for like people who utilize machine learning here to try and build models and do cool stuff in the space.

Elias  1:22:56  

Yeah. To add to that point, Facebook was going to build Libra DM and to create this perfect profile of users, the only thing that they were missing was financial data, financial transactions data, right. 

And so, I think they have a history of trying to do deals with banks and Visa and MasterCard and companies that have huge datasets of financial transactions, so they can take all this contextual information that they have about users, and then merge the datasets with the financial transactions. 

And that gives you the whole puzzle of you're trying to sell stuff to people, right? So, this is the inverse. We have all the financial data, right, and a social graph, but we have no clue what's happening with the accounts. Like who the accounts are in, what happens to the rest of the profile, etc. 

So, I think this is an even more interesting question. And that's when machine learning at least in that frame of reference is going to be incredibly powerful, right? 

Once you have some sort of ZIK powered anonymity, complete profiles with attributes and all that stuff, we can get to a much richer experience online than then we've been used to so far.

Thomas  1:24:19  

Great. That pretty much covers the questions we've had.

Elias  1:24:24  

Super Gosh, this was a breeze guys. This was great. We're clocking at 1 hour 24. Shout out to all the wizards. Go check the Solana datasets — just out dude. I was in Lisbon. 

At the theorem conference, people were like, who are you again? Oh, you're the Dune guy. 

Can you like…I'm not a paid shill for anyone. But for anyone that's wondering like, I just really liked the product and the guys that build it, so thank you for having me. This was great.

Boxer  1:25:14  

Yeah, thanks so much for coming on. It was wonderful, dude, Mark. Oh, seriously. I'll send you a form after the after. Yeah, thanks everyone for listening in. Tune in next week with a mystery guest. Yeah, see you next time. Bye bye.

‍