March 1, 2024 • 23 mins
This week on The Index, host Alex Kahaya welcomes entrepreneur Alex Pisarevski, Co-founder of the Epic Web3 conference. Join us as we explore how Alex is shaping a future where developers and founders come together, sharing insights and driving innovations at the forefront of the decentralized future.
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to the Index Podcast hosted by Alex Cahaya.
Plug in as we explore newfrontiers with founders,
developers and investors,building the next wave of the
internet.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Hey everybody and welcome to the Index.
I'm your host, alex Cahaya, andtoday I'm excited to welcome
Alex Pizarrefski, founder ofEpic Land 3.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Yeah, you hit it right.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
A global hub for web-free founders to learn,
build and raise funds.
Welcome to the show.
Thanks for taking the time.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Yeah, absolutely.
Thanks for having me.
You even pronounced my surnamecorrectly, that's great.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Where are you from?
What's the ethnicity?
Speaker 3 (01:01):
I'm from Russia initially.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Okay, okay.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
That's not super Russian surname, but still.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Why don't you start with filling me in on your
background and sort of how yougot to doing what you're doing
today?
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Yeah, sure.
So my career as an entrepreneurstarts in Russia.
Back in 2013, when I foundedthe mobile app marketing agency.
It went rather well.
Then we created Epic Growth,which started as a conference
for product managers and growthmarketers and evolved into an
(01:33):
educational platform with onlinesubscriptions and kind of a
Netflix for product managers.
It started as a site projectbut eventually became a
full-time job.
It was a local Russian business, but we always wanted to do
something global, to dosomething at least for Europe or
US, for a bigger world.
We made some first attempts tobuild something global and then,
(01:56):
as you might know, two yearsago, Russia invaded Ukraine and
we decided that it's certainlytime to move on.
We ended up selling our Russianbusiness.
We moved to Lisbon togetherwith my co-founder and launched
Epic Web3.
We just loved Web3 industry andthought what we can do for this
(02:16):
industry.
Our background was in events,so we decided to start events
business and it turned out to begood.
So that's here we are doingevents for Web3 builders.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Thanks for sharing your story.
I think it's important thatyou're safe and living in a
country where you can be safeand work productively.
So I understand that I'veactually heard of a bunch of
Russian nationals moving toLisbon to find a better
environment.
So there seems to be acommunity there.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
To be honest, there are now Russians all over the
world, as well as guys fromBelarus and from Ukraine.
From this part of the world,People are moving to different
countries in Europe, Asia, US aswell.
So yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Help me understand what these events are like.
What kind of people are comingto them?
What are they about?
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Yeah, right now we focus on side events to be
conferences.
When we started, we made ourfirst standalone conference, but
soon we realized that it ishard to gather people in one
place, at least when you aredeveloping a brand.
It's much easier and moreproductive to make side events,
(03:25):
especially given that cryptoindustry is super convenient
environment for making sideevents.
So I don't know, I think losttoken 2049 in Singapore had like
more than 400 side events.
It's crazy.
It looks like we find a way todo it good.
We gather mainly developers,builders, technical founders.
It's more like an educationalformat with workshops, talks,
(03:49):
some panels, networking sessions, so like one-on-one speed
networking sessions.
You can think of it as a meetupnear a bigger conference.
And, yeah, we found that peoplelike this format.
They like to come to our events, so it goes rather well so far.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
What drove you to do this?
I know that you guys are goodat events.
That makes a lot of sense, butwhat's the why that drives you
to be in Web 3?
And why are you so passionateabout doing this?
Speaker 3 (04:17):
These are two questions why events and why Web
3?
So the shortest answer would beit just turned out to be like
this I mean, who died deeper?
So I've always been kind of acommunity person.
Even when I started MobileAdvertising Agency, it was about
community.
I loved talking at theconferences.
(04:39):
I loved building the communityaround I don't know around
myself, around the brand.
It was a mobile app marketingcommunity at times, but I
realized that I'm not.
I'm not doing a mobile agency.
I'm not about the actually ads,I'm about community.
I realized that I like makingevents.
My co-founder, oli, she's evenmore hands-on in events
(05:00):
organizing, so she loves it.
We just realized that that'swhat we like to do.
Of course, there is some dreamof building some I don't know
SaaS product or some technicalthing which is super scalable
and you can make I don't knowunicorn from it.
Of course, it's hard to build aunicorn from event company, but
(05:21):
we just said true to ourselvesso we like it.
That's probably why we are inevents, why we are in VEP3,
that's another story.
We have been always lookinginto this industry.
I don't know when in 2017, whenit was an ICO boom, I had a
strong FOMO that I'm missingsomething big.
(05:43):
But I didn't know how to how tostart something in blockchain
industry.
Then we just thought that, okay, so we don't understand
anything in VEP3, but we knowhow to do events.
So let's start here and seewhere it goes.
And here we are.
We already know a little bitmore about the industry, but
still we are not those technicalfounders who create blockchain
(06:05):
protocols or I don't knowdifficult ZK algorithms or
something like this.
We are more of the sort ofcommunity building, helping
people to meet each other and tolearn.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
So, yeah, I'd argue that that might be even the most
important part.
We've seen it throughouthistory.
I think we've seen a lot oftimes that great marketing and
great community building canbeat great products.
Sometimes you can have like,not as good of a product, but if
you have the best, strongestcommunity, you can win.
The future of the internet isall about community.
It's something I think we'veseen a lot.
(06:38):
There's this guy, axshadebd, onTwitter who is the founder of
Superteam.
You might have seen Superteamfor the salon ecosystem, but
they focus on building communityand I've seen him talking about
how we're going to see and weare already seeing, you know,
billion-dollar communities popup that are decentralized but
they might have like agovernance token or they have an
(07:00):
NFT associated with them insomewhat of a brand, and I think
I would be curious how youthink about that, how you think
about community building in thecontext of Web3 and projects
trying to be successful in thisspace.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Community is definitely the native thing for
Web3.
Web3 is all about community andwe also thought a lot about how
we should use Web3 technologiestokens, I don't know NFT or
something like this in buildingour own community.
To be honest, right now we aremore like a Web2 business.
(07:35):
I mean, I don't know Web2.5.
We can call it.
We use PohlApps for ourattendees, something like this.
We accept payments in crypto,but not too much.
I think the strongest use casesof crypto in community are
still not there.
What we see in NFT communities,in communities around tokens,
(08:00):
so far, it's more, I would say,speculative things than real
utility.
The potential is great.
I'm super bullish on this andthe idea itself to start making
business from community to shareequity in the early stage.
It's super, super cool and Ithink we will see more use cases
(08:22):
yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
I think probably the best example of this, though
working, is Bonk.
Bonk on Solana is a meme coin.
It's like the Solana meme cointhat really kicked off a lot of
some of the growth in theecosystem this past.
Like six months the team therehas been building all through
the bear.
Like I think Bonk launchedduring the bear market.
They built actual, realproducts.
Like yes, there's a meme coinand it's fun and it gets some
(08:46):
like viral attention that way,but there's a real community and
a lot of different teams thatare building actual products in
that ecosystem that have utility.
Like it's kind of funny butthey have this product called
the Pooper Scooper and youconnect your wallet to it and it
like will sell all your othermeme coins.
If you look at my wallet, I'vegot probably a hundred different
meme coins that are worth likea penny each.
It's like maybe $200 worth ofmeme coins and you kind of want
(09:10):
to clean that up.
So you use the Pooper Scooperand it automatically sells those
meme coins and buys Bonk.
That's just one example of atool, but the user experience
for it was really, reallyimpressive and I would call that
utility.
It's an interesting dynamicwhere, like, it actually made
you buy the Bonk.
They have several products Like.
I don't know which ones theyare.
You could probably go to theirwebsite and find them out, but I
know that they're making moneyand it's like an actual business
(09:31):
.
It's a crypto native businesswhere these projects are
actually making significant likein the millions revenue off of
that the people who areinteracting with that token.
That is honestly the firstexample that I know of.
I'm not really I've neverreally been involved in or in
that community really heavily orin any other meme coin like
Doge or anything like that, somaybe they have products too.
(09:52):
I do agree with you thatthey're like few and far between
, for sure.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
I like this example and, yeah, this is definitely a
nice case.
I would say it's still a littlebit round money, the incentive
is still earning money and Iwould say the whole crypto is
still in the stage of earningmoney.
Most of crypto users are herefor this.
I totally believe that we willsee I don't know normies coming
(10:21):
to crypto, not just to earn 10xon the meme coin or something
like this or on the airdrop, butbecause it's I don't know
convenient or because there issome new utility of blockchain
technology or something likethis.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
So I noticed from your website you guys have some
pretty notable speakers at yourevents and I'm curious who are
some of your favorite speakersthat have come to your events
and what things have theyinspired you about?
Like, what are some things thatthey've said that were
inspiring to you?
Speaker 3 (10:51):
I think our best event in terms of the lineup of
the speakers lineup was in Paris, near East DC, last year.
It was a layer two day and wehad a panel with co-founders of
many different layer twos.
We had Arbitrum, we had ZK Sync, we had Fuel, polygon, tyco.
(11:14):
I think that was probably myfavorite so far.
That's true, we had a lot ofspeakers.
As a last technical person, Ilike more business talks.
I don't like the deep divetechnical workshops.
I see that among our audiencethere are enough people who are
actually listening to workshopsand learning how to build, on
(11:35):
top of the one protocol, anotherprotocol Regarding the exact
topics or something like this.
Let me think I wasn't ready forthis question, sorry.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
No more.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Let me think, maybe I'll remember something and come
back to it.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Okay, yeah, I was just curious if there was
anything that stuck out.
So are you guys doing anythingaround ETH Denver?
I know that that's coming up.
What's happening there for you?
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Yeah, sure.
So with Denver, it is probablyone of them, one of the main
crypto events in the industry.
There are I don't know five,six major Conferences all over
the world.
If Denver is among them, we arehosting a Infra it's infra day
on the 1st of March.
It will be our classic half dayevent, one day event with a
(12:24):
rather Good agenda, I would say,talking about infrastructure,
about I don't know blockchainswhen you say infrastructure,
what do you mean, like servers,or what kind of infrastructure
are we talking about?
No more like layer ones, layertools, protocols I don't know
interoperability protocols orsomething like this.
So deaf protocol, deafprotocols, deaf tools, something
(12:46):
like this.
So I mean not B2C DeFi apps,but the infralayer of blockchain
.
We'll have Celestia, polygon,other companies, remedy by
Hexens, who is co-host.
They're building a platform forsecurity.
Security is definitely one ofthe Topics we cover a lot.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
I have been working in the Salon ecosystem mostly
for the past couple of years,but you've, denver was my
favorite one, back starting inlike 2016 through probably 2020,
end of 2020 that I used to lookforward to every year.
It was just super wholesome,like they always.
They had this like book thatthey made bees for buffa corn.
That was a kid's book that Ithat my kids still have, but
actually I need to get anothercopy because they destroyed it
(13:29):
recently.
I've got I've got young kids athome, but yeah, I remember the
governor of Colorado getting upand reading bees for buffa corn
to a bunch of Kindergartenerswho were sitting on stage.
One time I think it was maybethe second year that I went and
I just thought that was great.
You know, it was really funfamily friendly event to go to
and also like a lot of alpha,like I remember meeting like the
(13:51):
super rare team there and whenthey were just like two guys,
two or three people.
I haven't been in a coupleyears, like I said, but you
would just bump into peopleeverything from you know the
three-person startup that endedup becoming a pretty big,
successful company all the wayto, like you know, the talent
would be like walking around oryou could run into the Zcash
guys would be there at sometimes, you know, you would just run
into a bunch of different folksthat I think.
(14:13):
I think a lot of people realizethat this industry is actually
very accessible, like if youshow up and you're a decent
person like you could talk toalmost anybody that works in
this space pretty quickly ifyou're just willing to show up
and network.
That's what I like about it.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
I agree.
I agree, and events is probablythe the easiest way to do this,
because when, when everybody isonline on Twitter, people hide
often hiding behind the PFPs orsomething and remain, and maybe,
if not, anonymous, but usuallydon't show their face.
But in the in-person events,everything is different.
Everybody's super open, superWell-coming and, yeah, when I
(14:52):
when I started to dive into thisindustry, I was also impressed
how, how welcoming it is.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
So, yeah, I can agree a lot of people don't realize
that it's pretty easy to getinvolved in this industry, like
if you're just willing to put insome work, it's not that hard.
You just got to figure outdifferent ways you can.
You can add value in.
Community.
Organizing is one Really simpleway to do it right.
Like figure out how to getpeople together around a
(15:19):
specific topic or cause andpeople will notice you and then
you'll eventually like I've seentons of people get hired that
way for jobs, and everybody hasthis perspective that this is
such a highly technical industryso you've got to be technical
to be a part of it.
And yeah, it's true it'stechnical and you probably, in
certain roles, need to have sometechnical capabilities.
But there are also just a lotof roles and things you can do
(15:40):
that are completelynon-technical.
What do you think is the bestway for people who want to get
involved, that are non-technicalkind of like you and want to
get involved in and find a rolein this space?
Like you're pretty connected toa lot of projects.
Is that something you guys helpwith, like finding talent for
these projects ever?
Just, I guess that's twoquestions, but yeah, I'll let
you answer one of them.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
We are not yet helping with that.
Probably we should do it orwe'll do it in the future, I
don't know making some, at leastsome job boards or something.
That's true that the industryis rather technical and even
though I have a technicaleducation I graduated from one
(16:22):
of the top technicaluniversities in Russia it's
still hard for me to realize allthe things which is going on.
When I host a podcast, my ownpodcast, and invite guests, I
make a long research trying tounderstand what the protocol is
doing is actually doing.
Yeah, I can totally agree thatthere are a lot of jobs in
(16:43):
marketing and communitymanagement and event
organization, in sales business,for sure, I would say crypto
projects usually often lack thisbusiness expertise because they
are made by developers fordevelopers and it's really
important for crypto nativeprojects to have somebody from
(17:06):
maybe traditional web twocompanies.
So the main point here is to begenuinely interested in the
industry, to have some coinsyourself, to use wallets, to be
curious about new tech whenforecaster is booming, be there
and everything.
So, yeah, I would say genuineinterest is the key here.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
We're getting closer to the top of the show here and
I always kind of ask this butwhat have I not asked you that
you wanted to talk about, thatwe didn't get to.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
I noticed that in the description of your poll there
is a thing that you are alsotalking about AI.
I haven't seen an episode thereabout it.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
We have more coming up.
We started the show and it wasreally focused on just Web3, as
defined as blockchain technologyand crypto, but I've since kind
of changed my thesis there.
I really feel like Web3 isabout the future of the internet
, and I believe that the peoplewho are building the future of
the internet are worth knowing,and so I like to tell their
stories.
And for me, that's blockchaintechnology, it's crypto use
(18:07):
cases, it's AI, ai and virtualreality.
I think that those are thethings that are composing to
make up the future of theinternet, and we have a bunch of
different episodes coming soonthat are going to be more AI
focused, and I think I have oneAI and VR episode that we're
going to record this year, butwe're pretty booked out.
We're booked out through maybeend of April, so far recording
(18:31):
once a week.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
That's why I asked it , because we also followed this
trend that looks like we cannotignore it.
The whole last year we werestronger Web3 believers but
finally we gave up and made anAI summit.
We started with online.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Oh, I saw you had the founder of Huggingface on
that's cool, not the founder,unfortunately.
Somebody from there.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Yeah, yeah, we had a kind of chief evangelist or
something like this.
We had a guy from Metaslam, asecond.
Yeah, we had a bunch of coolspeakers there.
So far it's online because weare more focused on educational
content there and the industriesa lot different from WebT.
We're still researching it.
(19:15):
I decided that probably worthmentioning that.
Yeah, and also there are a lotof potential use cases of web3
plus AI.
Vitalik writes articles aboutthat, a lot of narratives about
that.
I think there will be aroundsix different events in Denver
dedicated to AI plus web3.
So I am Super bullish on that.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
I am too.
I think that there's a lot ofreally interesting things on the
compute side that alreadyexists.
You've got a cash network,you've got render network,
you've got a bunch of differentones that are sort of like
aggregating GPUs from variousplaces, and then you've got you
know, things like alio andvarious ZKP Technologies coming
(19:59):
out.
Actually, I had a really goodshow with Jake Berkman, the
co-founder and CEO of coinfund.
He recorded with us recently,so that would be coming out in a
couple weeks when we talk aboutthis a lot.
There's definitely still a lotof things that need to be done
to make AI work in the contextof decentralization, like a
fully decentralized AI stack,technology stack, especially on,
(20:21):
like, the privacy front,privacy and security.
I think there's just so muchhappening so fast, like and it's
funny this company at the CEO Iconnected with him on Twitter
million million network, nillNillion dot com.
Like a year ago, maybe six orseven months ago, I can't
remember I meant to read theirwhite paper, but then you know,
(20:43):
life kind of like my work andeverything kind of took over and
I just didn't get to it.
And then I recently came backacross it last week and I
actually read it.
They built a new technologythat's similar to multi-party
computation.
So MPC wallets, for example,are a technology that allow you
to have a wallet but just likelog in with your Facebook
account or Twitter account andStill have it be self-custody,
(21:03):
which is super important.
What million network is buildingis called NPC.
It's not blockchain technology.
It's basically like adecentralized compute layer
where you can do things likemachine learning and AI without
each node having to know whatdata is on the node and it stays
encrypted the entire time andthere's like a ton of
(21:26):
game-changing use cases that arepossible if what they're
building works.
And I haven't had time yet to.
I'm getting a few people I knowwho are way more technical than
I am to read that white paper,but from what I've read in the
paper, I'm pretty excited aboutit.
It's probably Right now.
It's my top like three thingthat I'm like most excited about
in our in our industry iswhat's in that paper, and I
(21:47):
don't know when they'relaunching or anything like that,
but if they're listening or ifanyone who's listening knows
them, I would love to have themon the show.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
Yeah, I think they will come.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Yeah, I hope so.
Again, if you're listening, goto nillioncom and just take a
look at the white paper.
Hit me up on Twitter if youhave thoughts about it, but it
seems pretty, pretty cool, nice.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Well, hey, thanks so much for being on the show, Alex
.
It's been good to get to knowyou and, yeah, how can people
find out more about you?
Speaker 3 (22:09):
I don't know.
Follow me on Twitter, it's AlexPI HQ.
That's it, and come to ourevents.
See you in Denver, then inLondon, then in Seoul, then in
Dubai.
So yeah, pretty much a lot, ofa lot of events.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
I love trotting events organizing.
I do not envy you that's.
That's a lot of work and supertiring.
So thanks for what you do.
Thanks for being on the show.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Thanks for having me, alex.
My pleasure to be with you.
Okay, bye.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
You just listened to the index podcast with your host
, alex Kahaya.
If you enjoyed this episode,please subscribe to the show on
Apple, spotify or your favoritestreaming platform.
New episodes are availableevery Friday.
Thanks for tuning in.
Welcome to the Index Podcast hosted by Alex Cahaya.
Plug in as we explore newfrontiers with founders,
developers and investors,building the next wave of the
internet.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Hey everybody and welcome to the Index.
I'm your host, alex Cahaya, andtoday I'm excited to welcome
Alex Pizarrefski, founder ofEpic Land 3.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Yeah, you hit it right.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
A global hub for web-free founders to learn,
build and raise funds.
Welcome to the show.
Thanks for taking the time.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Yeah, absolutely.
Thanks for having me.
You even pronounced my surnamecorrectly, that's great.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Where are you from?
What's the ethnicity?
Speaker 3 (01:01):
I'm from Russia initially.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Okay, okay.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
That's not super Russian surname, but still.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Why don't you start with filling me in on your
background and sort of how yougot to doing what you're doing
today?
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Yeah, sure.
So my career as an entrepreneurstarts in Russia.
Back in 2013, when I foundedthe mobile app marketing agency.
It went rather well.
Then we created Epic Growth,which started as a conference
for product managers and growthmarketers and evolved into an
(01:33):
educational platform with onlinesubscriptions and kind of a
Netflix for product managers.
It started as a site projectbut eventually became a
full-time job.
It was a local Russian business, but we always wanted to do
something global, to dosomething at least for Europe or
US, for a bigger world.
We made some first attempts tobuild something global and then,
(01:56):
as you might know, two yearsago, Russia invaded Ukraine and
we decided that it's certainlytime to move on.
We ended up selling our Russianbusiness.
We moved to Lisbon togetherwith my co-founder and launched
Epic Web3.
We just loved Web3 industry andthought what we can do for this
(02:16):
industry.
Our background was in events,so we decided to start events
business and it turned out to begood.
So that's here we are doingevents for Web3 builders.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Thanks for sharing your story.
I think it's important thatyou're safe and living in a
country where you can be safeand work productively.
So I understand that I'veactually heard of a bunch of
Russian nationals moving toLisbon to find a better
environment.
So there seems to be acommunity there.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
To be honest, there are now Russians all over the
world, as well as guys fromBelarus and from Ukraine.
From this part of the world,People are moving to different
countries in Europe, Asia, US aswell.
So yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Help me understand what these events are like.
What kind of people are comingto them?
What are they about?
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Yeah, right now we focus on side events to be
conferences.
When we started, we made ourfirst standalone conference, but
soon we realized that it ishard to gather people in one
place, at least when you aredeveloping a brand.
It's much easier and moreproductive to make side events,
(03:25):
especially given that cryptoindustry is super convenient
environment for making sideevents.
So I don't know, I think losttoken 2049 in Singapore had like
more than 400 side events.
It's crazy.
It looks like we find a way todo it good.
We gather mainly developers,builders, technical founders.
It's more like an educationalformat with workshops, talks,
(03:49):
some panels, networking sessions, so like one-on-one speed
networking sessions.
You can think of it as a meetupnear a bigger conference.
And, yeah, we found that peoplelike this format.
They like to come to our events, so it goes rather well so far.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
What drove you to do this?
I know that you guys are goodat events.
That makes a lot of sense, butwhat's the why that drives you
to be in Web 3?
And why are you so passionateabout doing this?
Speaker 3 (04:17):
These are two questions why events and why Web
3?
So the shortest answer would beit just turned out to be like
this I mean, who died deeper?
So I've always been kind of acommunity person.
Even when I started MobileAdvertising Agency, it was about
community.
I loved talking at theconferences.
(04:39):
I loved building the communityaround I don't know around
myself, around the brand.
It was a mobile app marketingcommunity at times, but I
realized that I'm not.
I'm not doing a mobile agency.
I'm not about the actually ads,I'm about community.
I realized that I like makingevents.
My co-founder, oli, she's evenmore hands-on in events
(05:00):
organizing, so she loves it.
We just realized that that'swhat we like to do.
Of course, there is some dreamof building some I don't know
SaaS product or some technicalthing which is super scalable
and you can make I don't knowunicorn from it.
Of course, it's hard to build aunicorn from event company, but
(05:21):
we just said true to ourselvesso we like it.
That's probably why we are inevents, why we are in VEP3,
that's another story.
We have been always lookinginto this industry.
I don't know when in 2017, whenit was an ICO boom, I had a
strong FOMO that I'm missingsomething big.
(05:43):
But I didn't know how to how tostart something in blockchain
industry.
Then we just thought that, okay, so we don't understand
anything in VEP3, but we knowhow to do events.
So let's start here and seewhere it goes.
And here we are.
We already know a little bitmore about the industry, but
still we are not those technicalfounders who create blockchain
(06:05):
protocols or I don't knowdifficult ZK algorithms or
something like this.
We are more of the sort ofcommunity building, helping
people to meet each other and tolearn.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
So, yeah, I'd argue that that might be even the most
important part.
We've seen it throughouthistory.
I think we've seen a lot oftimes that great marketing and
great community building canbeat great products.
Sometimes you can have like,not as good of a product, but if
you have the best, strongestcommunity, you can win.
The future of the internet isall about community.
It's something I think we'veseen a lot.
(06:38):
There's this guy, axshadebd, onTwitter who is the founder of
Superteam.
You might have seen Superteamfor the salon ecosystem, but
they focus on building communityand I've seen him talking about
how we're going to see and weare already seeing, you know,
billion-dollar communities popup that are decentralized but
they might have like agovernance token or they have an
(07:00):
NFT associated with them insomewhat of a brand, and I think
I would be curious how youthink about that, how you think
about community building in thecontext of Web3 and projects
trying to be successful in thisspace.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Community is definitely the native thing for
Web3.
Web3 is all about community andwe also thought a lot about how
we should use Web3 technologiestokens, I don't know NFT or
something like this in buildingour own community.
To be honest, right now we aremore like a Web2 business.
(07:35):
I mean, I don't know Web2.5.
We can call it.
We use PohlApps for ourattendees, something like this.
We accept payments in crypto,but not too much.
I think the strongest use casesof crypto in community are
still not there.
What we see in NFT communities,in communities around tokens,
(08:00):
so far, it's more, I would say,speculative things than real
utility.
The potential is great.
I'm super bullish on this andthe idea itself to start making
business from community to shareequity in the early stage.
It's super, super cool and Ithink we will see more use cases
(08:22):
yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
I think probably the best example of this, though
working, is Bonk.
Bonk on Solana is a meme coin.
It's like the Solana meme cointhat really kicked off a lot of
some of the growth in theecosystem this past.
Like six months the team therehas been building all through
the bear.
Like I think Bonk launchedduring the bear market.
They built actual, realproducts.
Like yes, there's a meme coinand it's fun and it gets some
(08:46):
like viral attention that way,but there's a real community and
a lot of different teams thatare building actual products in
that ecosystem that have utility.
Like it's kind of funny butthey have this product called
the Pooper Scooper and youconnect your wallet to it and it
like will sell all your othermeme coins.
If you look at my wallet, I'vegot probably a hundred different
meme coins that are worth likea penny each.
It's like maybe $200 worth ofmeme coins and you kind of want
(09:10):
to clean that up.
So you use the Pooper Scooperand it automatically sells those
meme coins and buys Bonk.
That's just one example of atool, but the user experience
for it was really, reallyimpressive and I would call that
utility.
It's an interesting dynamicwhere, like, it actually made
you buy the Bonk.
They have several products Like.
I don't know which ones theyare.
You could probably go to theirwebsite and find them out, but I
know that they're making moneyand it's like an actual business
(09:31):
.
It's a crypto native businesswhere these projects are
actually making significant likein the millions revenue off of
that the people who areinteracting with that token.
That is honestly the firstexample that I know of.
I'm not really I've neverreally been involved in or in
that community really heavily orin any other meme coin like
Doge or anything like that, somaybe they have products too.
(09:52):
I do agree with you thatthey're like few and far between
, for sure.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
I like this example and, yeah, this is definitely a
nice case.
I would say it's still a littlebit round money, the incentive
is still earning money and Iwould say the whole crypto is
still in the stage of earningmoney.
Most of crypto users are herefor this.
I totally believe that we willsee I don't know normies coming
(10:21):
to crypto, not just to earn 10xon the meme coin or something
like this or on the airdrop, butbecause it's I don't know
convenient or because there issome new utility of blockchain
technology or something likethis.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
So I noticed from your website you guys have some
pretty notable speakers at yourevents and I'm curious who are
some of your favorite speakersthat have come to your events
and what things have theyinspired you about?
Like, what are some things thatthey've said that were
inspiring to you?
Speaker 3 (10:51):
I think our best event in terms of the lineup of
the speakers lineup was in Paris, near East DC, last year.
It was a layer two day and wehad a panel with co-founders of
many different layer twos.
We had Arbitrum, we had ZK Sync, we had Fuel, polygon, tyco.
(11:14):
I think that was probably myfavorite so far.
That's true, we had a lot ofspeakers.
As a last technical person, Ilike more business talks.
I don't like the deep divetechnical workshops.
I see that among our audiencethere are enough people who are
actually listening to workshopsand learning how to build, on
(11:35):
top of the one protocol, anotherprotocol Regarding the exact
topics or something like this.
Let me think I wasn't ready forthis question, sorry.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
No more.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
Let me think, maybe I'll remember something and come
back to it.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Okay, yeah, I was just curious if there was
anything that stuck out.
So are you guys doing anythingaround ETH Denver?
I know that that's coming up.
What's happening there for you?
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Yeah, sure.
So with Denver, it is probablyone of them, one of the main
crypto events in the industry.
There are I don't know five,six major Conferences all over
the world.
If Denver is among them, we arehosting a Infra it's infra day
on the 1st of March.
It will be our classic half dayevent, one day event with a
(12:24):
rather Good agenda, I would say,talking about infrastructure,
about I don't know blockchainswhen you say infrastructure,
what do you mean, like servers,or what kind of infrastructure
are we talking about?
No more like layer ones, layertools, protocols I don't know
interoperability protocols orsomething like this.
So deaf protocol, deafprotocols, deaf tools, something
(12:46):
like this.
So I mean not B2C DeFi apps,but the infralayer of blockchain
.
We'll have Celestia, polygon,other companies, remedy by
Hexens, who is co-host.
They're building a platform forsecurity.
Security is definitely one ofthe Topics we cover a lot.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
I have been working in the Salon ecosystem mostly
for the past couple of years,but you've, denver was my
favorite one, back starting inlike 2016 through probably 2020,
end of 2020 that I used to lookforward to every year.
It was just super wholesome,like they always.
They had this like book thatthey made bees for buffa corn.
That was a kid's book that Ithat my kids still have, but
actually I need to get anothercopy because they destroyed it
(13:29):
recently.
I've got I've got young kids athome, but yeah, I remember the
governor of Colorado getting upand reading bees for buffa corn
to a bunch of Kindergartenerswho were sitting on stage.
One time I think it was maybethe second year that I went and
I just thought that was great.
You know, it was really funfamily friendly event to go to
and also like a lot of alpha,like I remember meeting like the
(13:51):
super rare team there and whenthey were just like two guys,
two or three people.
I haven't been in a coupleyears, like I said, but you
would just bump into peopleeverything from you know the
three-person startup that endedup becoming a pretty big,
successful company all the wayto, like you know, the talent
would be like walking around oryou could run into the Zcash
guys would be there at sometimes, you know, you would just run
into a bunch of different folksthat I think.
(14:13):
I think a lot of people realizethat this industry is actually
very accessible, like if youshow up and you're a decent
person like you could talk toalmost anybody that works in
this space pretty quickly ifyou're just willing to show up
and network.
That's what I like about it.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
I agree.
I agree, and events is probablythe the easiest way to do this,
because when, when everybody isonline on Twitter, people hide
often hiding behind the PFPs orsomething and remain, and maybe,
if not, anonymous, but usuallydon't show their face.
But in the in-person events,everything is different.
Everybody's super open, superWell-coming and, yeah, when I
(14:52):
when I started to dive into thisindustry, I was also impressed
how, how welcoming it is.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
So, yeah, I can agree a lot of people don't realize
that it's pretty easy to getinvolved in this industry, like
if you're just willing to put insome work, it's not that hard.
You just got to figure outdifferent ways you can.
You can add value in.
Community.
Organizing is one Really simpleway to do it right.
Like figure out how to getpeople together around a
(15:19):
specific topic or cause andpeople will notice you and then
you'll eventually like I've seentons of people get hired that
way for jobs, and everybody hasthis perspective that this is
such a highly technical industryso you've got to be technical
to be a part of it.
And yeah, it's true it'stechnical and you probably, in
certain roles, need to have sometechnical capabilities.
But there are also just a lotof roles and things you can do
(15:40):
that are completelynon-technical.
What do you think is the bestway for people who want to get
involved, that are non-technicalkind of like you and want to
get involved in and find a rolein this space?
Like you're pretty connected toa lot of projects.
Is that something you guys helpwith, like finding talent for
these projects ever?
Just, I guess that's twoquestions, but yeah, I'll let
you answer one of them.
Speaker 3 (16:02):
We are not yet helping with that.
Probably we should do it orwe'll do it in the future, I
don't know making some, at leastsome job boards or something.
That's true that the industryis rather technical and even
though I have a technicaleducation I graduated from one
(16:22):
of the top technicaluniversities in Russia it's
still hard for me to realize allthe things which is going on.
When I host a podcast, my ownpodcast, and invite guests, I
make a long research trying tounderstand what the protocol is
doing is actually doing.
Yeah, I can totally agree thatthere are a lot of jobs in
(16:43):
marketing and communitymanagement and event
organization, in sales business,for sure, I would say crypto
projects usually often lack thisbusiness expertise because they
are made by developers fordevelopers and it's really
important for crypto nativeprojects to have somebody from
(17:06):
maybe traditional web twocompanies.
So the main point here is to begenuinely interested in the
industry, to have some coinsyourself, to use wallets, to be
curious about new tech whenforecaster is booming, be there
and everything.
So, yeah, I would say genuineinterest is the key here.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
We're getting closer to the top of the show here and
I always kind of ask this butwhat have I not asked you that
you wanted to talk about, thatwe didn't get to.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
I noticed that in the description of your poll there
is a thing that you are alsotalking about AI.
I haven't seen an episode thereabout it.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
We have more coming up.
We started the show and it wasreally focused on just Web3, as
defined as blockchain technologyand crypto, but I've since kind
of changed my thesis there.
I really feel like Web3 isabout the future of the internet
, and I believe that the peoplewho are building the future of
the internet are worth knowing,and so I like to tell their
stories.
And for me, that's blockchaintechnology, it's crypto use
(18:07):
cases, it's AI, ai and virtualreality.
I think that those are thethings that are composing to
make up the future of theinternet, and we have a bunch of
different episodes coming soonthat are going to be more AI
focused, and I think I have oneAI and VR episode that we're
going to record this year, butwe're pretty booked out.
We're booked out through maybeend of April, so far recording
(18:31):
once a week.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
That's why I asked it , because we also followed this
trend that looks like we cannotignore it.
The whole last year we werestronger Web3 believers but
finally we gave up and made anAI summit.
We started with online.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
Oh, I saw you had the founder of Huggingface on
that's cool, not the founder,unfortunately.
Somebody from there.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
Yeah, yeah, we had a kind of chief evangelist or
something like this.
We had a guy from Metaslam, asecond.
Yeah, we had a bunch of coolspeakers there.
So far it's online because weare more focused on educational
content there and the industriesa lot different from WebT.
We're still researching it.
(19:15):
I decided that probably worthmentioning that.
Yeah, and also there are a lotof potential use cases of web3
plus AI.
Vitalik writes articles aboutthat, a lot of narratives about
that.
I think there will be aroundsix different events in Denver
dedicated to AI plus web3.
So I am Super bullish on that.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
I am too.
I think that there's a lot ofreally interesting things on the
compute side that alreadyexists.
You've got a cash network,you've got render network,
you've got a bunch of differentones that are sort of like
aggregating GPUs from variousplaces, and then you've got you
know, things like alio andvarious ZKP Technologies coming
(19:59):
out.
Actually, I had a really goodshow with Jake Berkman, the
co-founder and CEO of coinfund.
He recorded with us recently,so that would be coming out in a
couple weeks when we talk aboutthis a lot.
There's definitely still a lotof things that need to be done
to make AI work in the contextof decentralization, like a
fully decentralized AI stack,technology stack, especially on,
(20:21):
like, the privacy front,privacy and security.
I think there's just so muchhappening so fast, like and it's
funny this company at the CEO Iconnected with him on Twitter
million million network, nillNillion dot com.
Like a year ago, maybe six orseven months ago, I can't
remember I meant to read theirwhite paper, but then you know,
(20:43):
life kind of like my work andeverything kind of took over and
I just didn't get to it.
And then I recently came backacross it last week and I
actually read it.
They built a new technologythat's similar to multi-party
computation.
So MPC wallets, for example,are a technology that allow you
to have a wallet but just likelog in with your Facebook
account or Twitter account andStill have it be self-custody,
(21:03):
which is super important.
What million network is buildingis called NPC.
It's not blockchain technology.
It's basically like adecentralized compute layer
where you can do things likemachine learning and AI without
each node having to know whatdata is on the node and it stays
encrypted the entire time andthere's like a ton of
(21:26):
game-changing use cases that arepossible if what they're
building works.
And I haven't had time yet to.
I'm getting a few people I knowwho are way more technical than
I am to read that white paper,but from what I've read in the
paper, I'm pretty excited aboutit.
It's probably Right now.
It's my top like three thingthat I'm like most excited about
in our in our industry iswhat's in that paper, and I
(21:47):
don't know when they'relaunching or anything like that,
but if they're listening or ifanyone who's listening knows
them, I would love to have themon the show.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
Yeah, I think they will come.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Yeah, I hope so.
Again, if you're listening, goto nillioncom and just take a
look at the white paper.
Hit me up on Twitter if youhave thoughts about it, but it
seems pretty, pretty cool, nice.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (22:03):
Well, hey, thanks so much for being on the show, Alex
.
It's been good to get to knowyou and, yeah, how can people
find out more about you?
Speaker 3 (22:09):
I don't know.
Follow me on Twitter, it's AlexPI HQ.
That's it, and come to ourevents.
See you in Denver, then inLondon, then in Seoul, then in
Dubai.
So yeah, pretty much a lot, ofa lot of events.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
I love trotting events organizing.
I do not envy you that's.
That's a lot of work and supertiring.
So thanks for what you do.
Thanks for being on the show.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Thanks for having me, alex.
My pleasure to be with you.
Okay, bye.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
You just listened to the index podcast with your host
, alex Kahaya.
If you enjoyed this episode,please subscribe to the show on
Apple, spotify or your favoritestreaming platform.
New episodes are availableevery Friday.
Thanks for tuning in.
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