Open transcript
So last week was Ethereum DEF CON and it was crazy. It opened my eyes to everything that's going on in the development world. And I can say it completely changed the way I view my investments in crypto and what things are going forward. And something that I sensed and I felt here was that they are preparing not for the multi-billion dollars, but the multi-trillion dollars to flow into crypto and the services that they are going to provide. On top of this, I was getting the most of the narratives. That's most important because if you look at the plays of narratives, right? Like say for example, the RWA play. Well, that narrative sent mantra down from simply 50 cents to more than $3 right now. That is how crazy a narrative can play. So this video, I'm focusing on gathering what narratives there are that are popular in this space and on top what other people are thinking about in terms of narratives. So yeah, lots of interviews packed in here, lots of insight. You really need to pay attention, especially to the end because we're dropping some mad alpha there. And of course, everything covered here is my personal opinion, not financial advice. Let's get started. All right. So we're here with Hikaru, one of my good best friends. Hi, what's up guys? From the human and the machine. That's right. How's it going, man? Oh, dude, it's so crazy. So Bangkok, how many events this year? More than 900. That's insane. That's more than like token token for in Singapore. That's insane. Oh, so it's even more. But the traffic's worse. Yeah, it's really bad. Yeah. People are happier. Yeah, that's the thing. It's, you know, Bitcoin all-time highs, right? Like the vibrant energy, like you can just see it in everyone's faces. Nice. Exactly, exactly. It's different, you know? Yeah, and I feel like everyone wants to figure out what's going on. I feel like there's a feeling of like, okay, we want to know what the best step is because we want to get the 100x. That is absolutely true. So it's like now that we know it's, you know, bull market confirmed, people are like, okay, what's next? What token should I buy? What do I need to build? So I think that's like the main themes here. One narrative that I believe is going to be taking off in a massive way is the Bitcoin ecosystem narrative. At the end of the day, the market cap of Bitcoin is $1.8 trillion. This still dwarfs everything else out there. And there's not much DeFi and other sort of development on Bitcoin. So why not enable that? So Rootstock's been doing exact that. They're a sidechain for Bitcoin. They have Ethereum virtual machine compatible side contracts. And then now you can start doing DeFi on both Bitcoin and Ethereum. They're launching their new ecosystem. So this is where it gets actually quite exciting. So now that the contracts are available, now that there's developers ongoing there, teamwork between chains and of course, building more projects is really key. So in the next part, Ron will talk about some opportunities that there are on Rootstock. Now, out of all the Bitcoin DeFi ecosystem, now is actually the best time to be positioning for Rootstock. Because just this month, they launched the Bitcoin Genesis countdown, where you can interact with many different projects that have partnered with Rootstock. And the prize pool for this campaign is $100,000. Now, at the time of this recording, we have 42 days left until the end of this campaign. And if you want to get started, all of the quests are tracked on Galaxy. So if you click start the first quest now, it'll take you to Rootstock's Galaxy. And you can see these are all of the tasks that you can complete. If you scroll down in the Rootstock website, you can see these are everyday tasks that you can interact with, such as Rubik, OpenOcean, Elk Finance, and Merkle even. This is a good platform for you to yield farm as well. And they're all tracked on Galaxy. As you can see, if I click Rubik, it'll take you to Rubik's Galaxy. So completing these tasks are going to be very crucial in developing your on-chain footprint that will contribute to earning that $100,000 prize pool. Now, there are a lot of quests here, which means you need to interact with many different protocols. And if you're afraid of gas fees, don't worry, because Rootstock has a very, very low gas fee, considering that they are the OG sidechain for Bitcoin. So the average transaction fee at the time of this recording peaks at 0.00008 RBTC, which is roughly 75 cents. And there you have it. That's how you interact with the Rootstock ecosystem. Very, very time sensitive. 42 days left if you want to make the most out of Bitcoin, DeFi, airdrop farming, as well as yield farming for some of these projects. Back to you, Mike. I'm here with Darren, the co-founder of NoPay. How's it going, Darren? Yeah, it's been really good, man. Yeah. And you're really excited, right? This is like the, I guess, the best timing, the right place at the right time. Oh, I think the energy completely shifted, right? As soon as obviously the market turned. I think the buzz in Bangkok here is amazing. I think we've got everyone here in Bangkok from globally, essentially, in the industry. And what's NoPay doing? So what are you guys doing so far? Yeah. So we're an AI infrastructure. We're building real-time data retrieval technology to really help companies retrieve real-time data to accelerate AI training. Okay. Okay. Okay. So, you know, all right. So this is a lot to unpack, actually, in one sentence. Okay. So kind of like a big picture, you're helping companies with AI training. How does this help? How does everything fit together? Yeah. So one of the biggest problems with AI right now is that high-quality data is really hard to retrieve, right? So we've built the infrastructure to allow all of our users participate, right, in the data retrieval process. Oh. So just more people retrieving the data and getting the community involved, which is the power of kind of where, how to decentralize network, right? Yeah. Exactly right. So all of our users run a node, and that allows us to essentially scrape public data. We bring that in-house and make the data really useful for AI companies, right? And we do that in real-time. Right. And how can the public, you know, help or, you know, how can the community help you guys? Yeah. So all you got to do is go to notepay.ai, run a node. It's in the form of a Chrome browser extension, and let it run automatically. And then essentially, you'll be able to contribute and earn with our ecosystem. Awesome. So just look for opportunities there, guys. That's amazing. Yeah. So right now, we have over a million users on the network, over 180 countries. So come join us. Awesome. Awesome. I'll see you around. I hope this conference goes off for you. Thanks so much. Thank you. So we're here with Miguel from StakeEase. Oh my God. This is a very exciting DevCon, isn't it? It is, man. It's been crazy, yeah? This last few days. It's unbelievable, right? I think it's like we just came out of a long slumber. Man, coming to DevCon is exactly at 90K Bitcoin. It's like, you couldn't time it better. Exactly. And I think the interesting thing is now everyone's interested in crypto. Yeah, I agree. I don't know about you, but I'm starting to receive messages from friends and staff asking me, which coins should I buy? Should I invest with Bitcoin? Should I go with this? Exactly. And they're all jealous of us now, right? That's the difference. Like, all of a sudden, they're like, oh my God, I should have listened to you. Oh my God. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I guess a lot of Devs are here, a lot of communities are here. What do you find the vibe of the conference so far? I think it's one of the best conferences I've been lately. The energy is back. You can see that everyone's pumped again. All that depression that we've been having for the last couple of years, it's kind of gone. People are ready to party and make money. More develop. I see people developing. I actually do see people with their laptops now. Just like, instead of partying, let's pop a laptop and let's try some code. Yeah, but things go hand in hand, right? If you've got the energy, if you've got the attitude, if you're happy, you want to build things. If everyone's depressed around you, it's harder. Exactly. So what do you guys do at Steakies? Yeah, so we've built a risk-taking index. So basically, we consolidate different LRTs under one token. So when you risk-take with us, you're getting a basket of different LRTs, like EtherFi, Renzo, Swell, Kelp. So you have a diversified risk-taking portfolio automatically. And then what I think is interesting about us is that we put the LRTs into DeFi strategies. So we put in balance pools, curve pools. These strategies, they adjust depending on which one is giving better yields. And that goes directly 100% to the basics. So that goes everything for the users. And it's actually really quite interesting because, I mean, our channel, we started with mining. And back in the day, to earn EVE, you've got to mine, right? Now to earn EVE, you've got to stake. But now to earn EVE, you've got to restake. And to earn EVE, you've got to restake and put those into a basket of currencies and then put it in a balancer pool. It's a different ecosystem. And it's a much more vibrant ecosystem. Yeah, things have changed, right? Things keep evolving. They keep changing. And I think with risk-taking, we're just at the very beginning. We're going to see in the next six months, nine months, tons of AVSs. There's more than 100 being built at the moment. So the yields are going to be quite high. But it also becomes a little bit complicated for the normal user, you know? Yeah, it's hard to understand. But I guess one thing I learned is that money matters a lot. Being able to have just like an indicator, we've got funds. That matters, right? True, true, true. Very true. So that's where we come in. We're trying to simplify the journey. How do you offer more security? Because, I mean, obviously, you said also it's very hard to understand what's going on. How do you make it easier right now? Yeah, so the way we make it easier is that first, all our transactions, all our platform is being built cross-chain. So you can restake from 15 different chains, one single-world interaction. You can use any ERC-20 token. And then it's all automatic. So we just restake with us. We take care of the rest. Instead of having to restake into EtherFi, into Renzo, and then go and check what can I do with these tokens. I go in Balancer Pools. I check Aave. I check Radiant. I check Curve. We do everything for you. You just restake with us. Press, you know, sign the transaction. And forget about it. Okay, so basically, if a user wants to play, they just come and check out Stakeys, and that's all good. You're good to go. Too easy. Let's check it out, guys. Check it out. All right. So we're here with Zach. So, Zach, we've seen each other many times, every conference. Yeah. And last time we saw each other was in Token. Correct. Yeah. So, yeah, right now we're in Defcon. Like, very different vibe. Let's turn it around. Shut it around. Shut it around. Okay, Token. Different vibe. Very different vibe. Lots of builders talking about how to build things. Very focused on creating the best code, the best implementation. So, for me, it's a breath of fresh air. I really love this conference. Yeah. How's everything going, though? How do you find the market so far? Yeah, the market is getting back. So, I think Defcon is, I don't know how they do it. Like, they chose the best time. So, the market is, like, really going up. Everyone is so hyped up. But most are developers. So, still very focused on coding. So, still very grounded. But very excited with 2025. It's going to be a crazy year. Yeah. I can see in your eyes, it's like, we were waiting for this. We were waiting, like, three, four years for this moment. Now, this is our moment to shine. Yeah, exactly. So, first, we have been building Pundi AI, allowing people to annotate AI data on our platform. So, this is a great year. And people are really looking at how to get into crypto and how to leverage crypto with AI. So, I think we are at a really nice spot. So, that narrative is really strong. So, you believe in that narrative? Yes. Yeah? Fully, yes. So, in terms of building, obviously, right now, I think the first consequence of the market is that it's getting expensive to send. So, how are you guys scaling? How are you guys tackling the scaling issue? Right. So, if you are talking about, like, technical scaling, I think there's a lot of Layer 2. So, one of the focus in this event is that how Ethereum can scale through Layer 2 via different technology, optimistic, ZK. So, for us as well, we want to be in the scaling environment so that our AI data platform is launched across different Layer 2s, through the Layer 2s onto Layer 1. So, Bayes, Ethereum. So, we are very much plugged into the developer ecosystem to use the technology advantage that we see today, the EIPs, to deliver the cheapest gas, the fastest implementation. So, very excited. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. I'm super excited. So, I hope to see you around. I hope to see some, like, really good kills. Like, you can just, like, I think you guys are killing it. So, I really feel like this is the time to just really kill it and make it happen. Yes. All right. Thank you, guys. Cheers. All right. So, Ethereum DEF CON was just super crazy. I think the key here is that this decides the future of the next two, three years for what's going to happen in crypto. If you actually follow the developments and follow what's going to happen, you'll know the projects that are due to 10, maybe even 100x. So, we covered some of the key narratives here. And I honestly believe that if you have the time, you should definitely check out one of these developer conferences. If not, I think the interviews provided a lot of insight for what is going on. And I hope you find that really, really insightful. So, guys, thank you guys so much for watching this video. I'll see you guys in the next one.
