Driving Real-World Adoption: Opportunities for Web3 Entrepreneurs with Michal Moneta

00:02 - Narrator (Announcement)

Welcome to the Blockchain Startup Show with Harrison Wright, a podcast dedicated to dauntless blockchain leaders building our new decentralized future. You'll hear stories, successes, trials and tribulations as we channel into the lives of high-performing leaders in crypto and Web3. Whether you're currently a Web3 founder or leader, or you one day aspire to to be, you'll gain crucial knowledge and insights to accelerate your learning curve, handle this industry's greatest challenges and make the impact you've always dreamed of hello everyone.

00:33 - Harrison Wright (Host)

This is harrison wright. Welcome again to another episode of the blockchain startup show. I'm very excited to welcome today's special guest, mihael manetta. Mihael is leader and chief strategy officer of Onchain, a Web3 Insights platform focused on finding and evaluating real-world use cases of blockchain. A couple of reasons I'm really excited to have Mihal here today. One we go way back. I think we've known each other about three years now and it's had a very impressive rise through the industry. We're going to talk about that a little later. The kind of opportunity that's seemingly only available in crypto, not so much in traditional industries. It's an awesome story. But also we're really at that inflection point, I think, where real world use cases and adoption becoming a critical talking point. I know I'm getting a little impatient hey, where's the use cases? And I'm not the only one. It's a bit of a thing in a zeitgeist. So I think the timing is excellent. Michal, welcome, it's great to have you.

01:24 - Michal Moneta (Guest)

Yeah, hello, hello, and yeah, you are definitely not the first one. That's why we basically established the whole thing with Onchain to finally find this real-world use case of blockchain that we are all looking for 100%.

01:41 - Harrison Wright (Host)

Do you want to tell us, before we dive into other topics, what's the, what's the kind of 50,000 foot view? Overview of the Onchain Foundation.

01:49 - Michal Moneta (Guest)

Yeah, so basically the Onchain Foundation is a three headed not a monster, but an entity consisting of three heads, but basically these three heads are working towards the same goal. So we have this idealistic vision of bringing people on chain, as we call it, and each entity under Onchain Foundation basically does it in a different way. We have LISC, which is an OG blockchain generally like the one from 2016-2017, that right now transformed into being a layer two, basically solution for Ethereum, which is, I would say, focused on onboarding people on chain through valuable apps and providing a useful and efficient infrastructure for people who would like to build something. We have PaaS app, which is the second entity. It's something that is currently in the beta stage and it will be a portal basically for people not just for developers, but for users to get into Web3 in general in an easy and seamless way, because we know how tricky it is, also on a UX level. So PaaS is basically focused on addressing this very big issue when it comes to the adoption. And there is us.

02:58

So on-chain, on-chain under on-chain foundation. That's how we designed it and basically we are a research arm of the entire foundation and we are transforming into being decentralized, so we will be this kind of web insights marketplace, but right now we are more of a web research we don't like the word institute, so let's call it a platform or something like this and we are fully focused on, in this case, not developing apps or providing infrastructure, but providing a kind of an inspiration for Entrepreneurs and founders in a way that they can understand where blockchain really fits. So we don't have 100 DeFi app built somewhere because of the fact that we need more apps and that's it. We are trying to look for use cases of blockchain that also bring this real-world benefit and we we know how tricky it is, but definitely there was a need on the market to establish this kind of entity that focuses specifically on that. So we try to onboard people on chain actually to inspire entrepreneurs, inspire founders to build this kind of solutions that can eventually bring people on chain.

04:01 - Harrison Wright (Host)

So yeah, and I'm the leader of this third head of the whole thing- I've never heard anyone use the phrase I'm the leader of this third head, of the whole, of the whole thing. I I've never heard anyone use the phrase I'm a leader of the third head before, but I like it.

04:11 - Michal Moneta (Guest)

I'm here for it.

04:12 - Harrison Wright (Host)

Yeah, that's how it is when you have a live recorder yeah, indeed, so am I right in saying the main focus here is not on supporting existing crypto founders but in supporting people to come and build businesses which have a crypto element but serve more of a traditional audience?

04:30 - Michal Moneta (Guest)

exactly. Or people who would like to build something in web3 specifically, but they don't know what exactly and they don't want to follow the same path as 100 founders before them, but would like to build something a little bit more meaningful, something that goes beyond crypto, that goes beyond speculation or the casino stuff that we are witnessing right now. So we are here to support them in finding this kind of use case.

04:55 - Harrison Wright (Host)

But I thought we really needed a 77th EVM layer too.

04:58 - Michal Moneta (Guest)

Yeah, and you are not the only one I would say, but unfortunately it's not us who should decide, definitely, about this kind of stuff, but users outside of this web free bubble. Apparently they don't need it at all, and that's the struggle here.

05:13 - Harrison Wright (Host)

Yeah, a hundred percent. Um, I was being a little bit sarcastic. I hope it came across. So it's a British thing. Sometimes it gets lost with international translation.

05:22 - Michal Moneta (Guest)

Yeah, but yeah, it was very noticeable yeah.

05:28 - Harrison Wright (Host)

Hey, there's tons of stuff I want to dive into here, but I'd love to if we just go back in time a little bit. How did you end up here? I mean, it's only a couple of years ago that you were working as a content marketer, right? And suddenly you're running the foundation. It's pretty awesome.

05:37 - Michal Moneta (Guest)

Yeah, basically it's based on what you said about the fact that these things can happen only in the web-free world, more or less because it's been three years since I joined the whole space and, as you mentioned, basically I was a content manager head of content, however you may call it in a purely, I would say, non-web-free company. We did some kind of marketing-related education, which was cool, but I tried to look for something different cool, but I tried to look for something different and basically getting into web3 because I was already in 2021, fascinated by the whole thing was one of the options that I had, but it was the most unlikely one. I mean, I wasn't convinced that it's possible to get into web3, but apparently the market that was back then, like in 2021, and the fact that it was either the end of the bull market or the start of the next phase, with all the other things, actually helped because there was a lot of money flowing around and projects were incentivized more or less, or more willing to onboard new people to the space in the form of their employees. And apparently my skill set, with this content marketing background some SEO expertise it fits well. I'm in Lisk at the time and that's why I got into the whole thing as a marketing manager, but then, moving on, I switched to being a content lead.

06:49

So going back to my roots also in Web3, but later it turned out that the main thing that I would like to do in Web3 and the main thing that I can be good at when it comes to Web3 is research. And during the time I was at Lisk, at Lightcurve because that was the company behind Lisk we decided to do something different, I mean in terms of pivoting the company, pivoting the foundation that was behind us, and creating a research institute or a think tank as we used to call it back then, was one of the things. And I decided yeah, that's the opportunity for me, so I need to convince people that research can be sold. It also can be valuable for us, but also can be valuable for the entire space. And we started with a small team. It turned out that the work was so nice I mean from our side, it was possible to become one of these heads under the foundation and later we decided basically to transform it into a separate company, separate entity.

07:42

So that's how I ended up here as this chief strategy officer, slash leader of Onchain. But, yeah, super proud of myself in this case because, as I mentioned, it's possible in Web3 and it's not only me doing that but super proud of the fact that a lot of people followed, I mean from Lightcurve and Lisk. A lot of people joined me in this journey and basically right now we are are or either we are the leadership team of the whole entity or basically we are still working together on the things that fascinate us and super proud that it's still working well.

08:12

However, obviously let's see where it goes in a few years. It's a volatile space. It's been a journey for for these last three years basically, so I can't even imagine what comes next in the next three years, but in general it was fun, it was enjoyable. And some bad moments as well, but generally the trend was always upwards, but it's possible only in Web3. I can't imagine myself going through the corporate ladder in any company, from being a manager to a C-level person Probably not possible outside of Web3.

08:41 - Harrison Wright (Host)

You know, I think some people I'm not saying this is super common, but I have definitely seen it be the case sometimes where people they don't appreciate just how enormous the scope of the opportunity is. Here I've been recruiting I feel really old saying this, but I've been recruiting over 15 years now. I got started in 2007 or 2009, depending on how you define it. I say that because I got my very first recruiting job in 2007 and got fired three months later and then I was a telemarketer for two years before I got into recruitment again and then stuck with it. But you know that's another story for another day.

09:10

The industry that I was in back then was industrial automation. Probably most people listening don't really know anything about what industrial automation is. It still exists today. Today people tend to refer to it as industry 4.0 or robotics. It's the set of things that run automation in factories. So back when I was in the space, your typical product would be something like the company would sell light curtains. If you're working in a factory, you stick your hand in a machine, the light curtain will detect your hand and shut the machine off so you don't lose your hand One of many things that would make. Now it's going more and more towards automation, so I haven't kept up with the space so much lately, but your IoT came out of that and then I think you're rapidly getting to a space of fully automated production and things like that. But the reason I bring that up is that industry back when I was working in it in 2009 to 12, the average age this was true in the UK anyway back then, the average age of someone working in the industry anyway, back then the average age of someone working in the industry was 54, which is crazy if you think about it, isn't it? I think I can count the number of people who are 54 in crypto on that I've spoken to on probably the fingers of one hand that they exist, but they are few.

10:16

The scope of the opportunity was nothing, even saying I mean the industry wouldn't change from one year to the next. You had the same four big companies that that dominated. There was no such thing as startup. There was no VC ecosystem there nothing. There were some mid-sized companies. Usually they were playing second fiddle. The big companies are such a capital-intensive industry to get into and I specifically used to recruit technical salespeople.

10:38

So back when, can you believe, there used to be a job function for field salespeople. Salespeople that would literally get in their car and visit multiple customers a day and they'd schedule their week on the road. That's not even a job anymore in most industries, I think, and that all changed in just a few years with the internet and Zoom and everything else. But yeah, you would start in sales, you would have what they would call an inside sales position and you'd basically just book an appointment, sort of in customer service, and the idea was you progress to a field sales position. That was the only way to progress in sales.

11:07

It was a traveling job, but the structure of any typical company you might have in a UK entity which was kind of the sales office of the main HQ, which is usually in Germany because that industry is centered around Germany. You might have four to 12 outside salespeople and again a number of inside salespeople. Then you'd have one sales manager, sales director and so on. So if you wanted to progress your career once you had that outside sales position, the only progression from there was to become the sales manager or go further up the chain. There's one of those jobs for every dozen salespeople. People would do essentially the same job at various companies for 20 years before they might get the opportunity to move up. And even if you got the most senior sales director position in the UK industrial automation industry wouldn't pay what an entry to mid-level Rust developer earns in crypto. It's a totally different world. I think we should be very thankful for the opportunity that we have here.

12:03 - Michal Moneta (Guest)

Yeah, and it also depends because probably for some people, the model that you presented is preferable. I mean staying in one, I would say, area of expertise, staying in one company for quite some years. Obviously, moving through this corporate ladder or company ladder is possible, but not, I would say, promised. Let's call it this way. For some people it's fine. Here in crypto, in Web3 world, it's not only about growing fast, it's also about changing this area of expertise whenever there is a need, because in my case, I joined as a marketeer.

12:35

Right now, it's not like I have a lot to do with marketing. To be honest, I still have this kind of mindset, which is super helpful when it's not like I'm doing marketing stuff on a daily basis and it's been only three years, so for some people it may be super incentivizing, like for me. I like this kind of volatility. At the same time.

12:53

If I had right now to go elsewhere, like from web3 to something a little bit more traditional because here it's not only about new industry but it's also about this money that is basically super volatile and it's underneath the whole thing if I had to move from here to another industry, yeah, I would say that I would need a moment actually to get used to this kind of stable environment and the fact that it's not always changing on a weekly basis. I'm not talking that crypto is super unique in this way and probably there are some volatile industries, but if I had to pick the most volatile one, yeah, it's definitely Web3. So it will be tricky to get outside of this space. Hopefully it won't happen very shortly, obviously, but if there is this kind of, I would say, need to do so, I will definitely need a moment like this Special transition period to get used to some kind of, I would say, completely different ways of working.

13:49 - Harrison Wright (Host)

Yeah, I can totally see that. I don't want to dive too deep into the philosophy side of things because we could easily do that for the entire time, which is not the purpose of the show. But just indulge me a little bit. If you think about the conditions of the world of work and business, they're adaptive to what you might think of as the meta conditions of the age. So people just kind of take it for granted oh it used to be. You go to university and you learn a qualification which qualifies you to do a certain job, and then you go and get that job and now it works this way.

14:19

Oftentimes people don't think well, what is the first principle's reason why these things are occurring? If you think about something I talk about a lot is the industrial information age transition, which I probably mentioned this on multiple podcast episodes. Now, if you haven't read the sovereign individual, go and read it fascinating book. But the industrial age is characterized by how they define an age, really a product of mainly two things. One is the application of physical force in defining the society and how is the wealth created? So in industrial age, wealth is created through physical production processes primarily, and the situation that creates is you need large headcounts, large workforces. You throw bodies at things. That then creates a physical company that has many thousands of employees and plants and physical production processes in a particular jurisdiction. So how that then affects the use of force is it enables, say the government to, hey, we're going to tax you 90%, as they did in some places a few decades ago. There's nothing you can do about it, because if you want to make money, if you want to have a successful business, you have to be here. You can either be in the USA or Western Europe or you can go and be poor, but that is your choice. That's the only choice that's available to you. So people put up with it and you see that also in you know. That creates going more sort of meta philosophical here. It creates like mass democracies, mass armies, huge nations.

15:41

Actually, for most of history it was more normal for people to live in city states and small regional groupings and organizations are smaller, like back in the 19th century. Most people were self-employed. People now take it for granted, or they did until recently, that life is you go to college and then you work for a big company for 30 years. That's not normal, that's a 20th century aberration. It wasn't like that before and it's not normal. That's a 20th century aberration. It wasn't like that before and it's not going to be like that in the future either. So where I'm going with this is this whole idea of hey, you have to. Prevailing attitude until recently was you have to earn your stripes, you put in your 20 years and then you'll get an opportunity to you know, to come and join the big boys. Maybe that is adaptive in a world where companies are built around sheer headcount. It's adaptive in a world where companies are built around sheer headcount and most you know.

16:24

I think one of the reasons people have hated work so much is industrial era work is kind of soul destroying. If there's a process that someone else defined, you come in, you operate the process, even if it's a white collar job. You're kind of just doing the same thing over and over again for 40 years. There's the alienation aspect of it that people talk about. That I think has some validity to it. And then eventually, hey, maybe you get to be the manager, right, but today things change so quickly the conditions are completely different. If you learn to do your profession in 1960, the chances are it wouldn't change much by the year 2000. You could do exactly the same thing for 40 years and you'd be successful.

17:00

I've had to reinvent how I do recruiting and run my business at least twice in 10 years. That's how fast everything changes now, and you see, this adaptation to wealth is no longer tied to a physical location. So this is why we have tax wars and tax battles and tax havens. Now Money is in your head. If you don't like the regime, you can just pick up and go somewhere else, which I've done. I know many people in crypto do that as well.

17:26

The speed of technological change that the internet has brought means that the job changes from one year to the next. I mean, I'll give you an example. Back when I used to recruit for industrial age companies, it was the most common way of looking at is this person going to be successful? Okay, what success have they had doing the same job in the past? If we were recruiting a technical salesperson for one chain manufacturer, we'd look at a technical salesperson from another chain manufacturer. What's their track record? Is their track record good? Probably yes, yes, they're going to be successful in the next job.

18:00

It was mostly as simple as that, but today you can't necessarily predict someone's future success from past success, because what worked last year doesn't work today. So there's this constant. It's like with schooling and you know for the longest time, like school and universities hey, memorize these things rote learning, that doesn't work anymore. So people are moving away from universities and I think within our lifetime the concept of the university as it exists today is not going to exist anymore. That's another thing.

18:24

Not to ramble too much, but in industrial people used to ask me about qualifications all the time. One of the most important things I'd find out, you know, when we were talking to candidates in industrial automation do you have the electrical engineering degree or certificate or whatever? Literally no one has ever asked me about someone's academic qualifications in crypto in five years, not ever. No one cares um outside of maybe investment banking, vcs and so on. For you know various reasons. But the skill is no longer, you know, seniority, tenure and experience not guarantee expertise anymore. Yeah, now you can be really good at what you're doing.

18:59

Tomorrow some new technological inventions say ai can change the calculus. If you don't adapt to that calculus, you will cease to be effective. Some 19 year old guy will come in and found a new company and win. And I think, just to pull this full circle back to what you were saying, it completely changes the calculus around how to reward people and how to promote people and what drives success. If we were to approach things today, hey, you have to earn your stripes for five or 10 years before we will give you a chance to move up. I mean, those companies would die because it's not necessarily the most tenured people who have the best ideas and the best approaches anymore. We have to reward direct merit and you see that in the opportunity that's available.

19:38 - Michal Moneta (Guest)

Yeah, definitely. I mean looking at it from two perspectives, I would say, because we also went through quite maybe three in total, because I went through recruitment processes in the past. I do this kind of things, obviously not as professionally as you, but obviously we try to hire some people to the company. At the same time, I'm also working at the university, where this topic of actually how this kind of thing spending three years at the university or five years really prepares these young people like younger than me a little bit actually to go to the, to the job market. It's tough for me to convince them working here and and basically seeing it from different perspectives convince these people at the university that yeah, once you finish, I would say this particular subject, this and this particular thing, yeah, it will give you a better chance. I mean no way. I mean obviously it's, it's obvious and it's cliche, but it's still in the head of these people, because we did also some kind of research at the universities, not for on-chain but for the university itself and for many people still, this diploma, this certificate, it's still important because they believe that it will give them the opportunity to get a better role as an entry or do something different because of the fact that they earned and as great, or at least have, diplomas. Obviously we both know, especially in the industry that we are working in, it's not the case. And the same thing with the experience.

21:01

Even when I looked at CVs of people that were applying to us different, multiple positions I mean from partnerships manager through researchers and completely different ones like full-stack developers obviously we looked into their experience and checked, but definitely not how long they worked, especially since some of them were completely from outside the industry.

21:23

I had to indicate one thing which is important and is related to this tenure. It's basically the fact that people maybe worked in Web3 for a longer time. Maybe that would be a little bit more convincing, but the scope of experience actually it didn't, uh, matter that much. What matters obviously were their practical skills, and it's difficult to assess it based on the cv. Um, right now we are moving into a proper recruitment podcast, basically, but you are the expert here. But definitely the thing that convinced us to hire a specific person was either a project, something that we discussed with them on a practical level, definitely not the number of years that they spent, and also I don't think they expected from us that we will offer them a better position or a higher salary because of the fact that they have more experience generally as a person in the workplace than other people.

22:12

I don't think this kind of mindset was there, because in Web3 it doesn't work this way. Basically it's based on the merit. And now me going into full circle here. Basically I had this nice opportunity recently to promote some people into higher positions, which is always super, I would say, rewarding also for me that, yeah, you see it in these people that they are ready and, to be honest, there was a correlation between how long we worked with each other, probably a little bit longer than the case of other people, but it was not super one-to-one correlation here. It was just based on the merits, not the fact that they worked for three months longer with me than other people, and everyone, I would say, acknowledged that and saw it in the same way.

22:54

So definitely I was not even thinking about their experience in Web3 specifically. Even One person basically got into Web3 along with me and one person got into Web3 one year after I got into that. So it was completely out of the picture when it comes to the number of years. But the number of the things that they provided to the company again cliche, but not cliche for the world outside of Web3, the number of the things that they provided to the company again cliche, but not cliche for the world outside of Web3, the number of these things actually did the job and make these kind of decisions as no-brainers. But I don't think that this mindset is as ubiquitous as in Web3. In other industries I don't think it works this way.

23:35 - Harrison Wright (Host)

I think that's very true. You see, the trends of how people work in crypto are about five years ahead of other industries and they do follow. Like with remote working, lots of industries work from home. Now Crypto always work from home and you have the collaboration tools and things like that. It's an interesting trend.

23:52 - Michal Moneta (Guest)

Yeah, definitely and obviously when it comes to the opportunities provided by that. Maybe that's what's made crypto as powerful, especially in the beginning, when it comes to it being super promising for other people yet or not anymore because of the state of the market, but generally there are a lot of people who would love to go into this space, not specifically as developers, but I have a friend who is a finance expert and he would like to get into Web3 somewhere there in this kind of field. Unfortunately, there is not enough room for him, but he would love to get there. Also because of the fact that it's so easy in Web3 to work remotely and it's so natural for the companies there to work remotely, and for any person from Poland, I mean, it's a huge opportunity because obviously we have a job market here and it's nice to work there, but you can't compare it with, obviously, switzerland or US in terms of the earnings and the benefits that go with it. So it's a huge opportunity, especially when it comes to the market like ours.

24:59

But also looking at India it's obvious, and generally Asian markets and, as you mentioned, we were ahead of these things and that's what makes Web3 also so appealing to young people or general newcomers. But coming back to the topic of age, we also have older people in the company, like way older than me, way older than the age that you mentioned as a 54, which is also super cool that this kind of obviously it's about their mindset and it's not so easy for everyone actually at this age and it's a stereotype, but probably backed by something at this age to make this kind of switch and get into the space that is so volatile compared to the other industries. But it's great to see this kind of people working there as well and being excited about this kind of opportunity Because, again, crypto is completely different. I mean, web3 is completely different when it comes to the way you work and maybe that's what makes it appealing not only for youngsters but also for more experienced people.

25:54

In this case, and again in the case of this specific person, the fact that she or he has 30 years experience whether it was advantage or disadvantage for some recruiters when it comes to Web3, to be honest, I'm not sure. So definitely the case of age, the case of tenure, shouldn't, I would say, be considered first. We hired this person because she wrote very, very well and now she manages very, very well. But definitely, if you looked only at her CV, you would think that it's not an appropriate person for a web-free company, and it turned out to be completely the opposite.

26:26 - Harrison Wright (Host)

So yeah, yeah, I don't want to go to, because the point of this episode was not to talk about recruiting, but I just want to quickly say on that yeah, I think sometimes, oh no, it's a completely wrong way to think about it.

26:42

Oh no, that person's too old to work here. It's such a ridiculous thing to say. I think the important thing is that people used to use experience level as a proxy for competence. Experience level as a proxy for competence and it was never 100% accurate, but it was accurate enough for the conditions at the time that people could afford to be lazy and considering it like that and it would work out most of the time. But today you can't use experience as a proxy for competence because the conditions change so quickly. But it doesn't mean that experience isn't valuable, and I've definitely seen many cases where someone would say 30 years experience brings a perspective and a level of wisdom to a situation that an exclusively younger team wouldn't have. Experience becomes a secondary factor compared to a lot of other things now, versus the primary factor that it used to be. That's how I see it.

27:29 - Michal Moneta (Guest)

Yeah, and this primary factor can even be the mindset.

27:32

You either have a status quo mindset and the change mindset and, um, I don't know the exact statistics but, yeah, likely the majority of people have the status quo mindset. Definitely, uh, especially since our brains are, I would say, run this way, that the status quo is the safer option, also when it comes to the work, obviously, because there are huge risks associated with the change in our working careers. So, looking at people, when it comes to going beyond this age and experience, definitely the case of assessing their mindset, which is obviously super tricky to assess during one hour conversation or whatever but it's critical to have at least understanding where this particular person can go, whether it's the status quo or basically the change mindset, because it can, it can help, I would say, turn around all the things very quickly. If they don't have specific skills, maybe they can gain them very quickly, maybe they will be at least willing to gain them. But if they don't have this kind of change mindset, yeah, no matter how big experience you have, nothing to do here, I would say, especially in this industry.

28:35 - Harrison Wright (Host)

Exactly. Couldn't have said it better myself. So with that, let's talk about adoption. Very, very broad, open question to start here, but where are we now when it comes to real-world adoption?

28:51 - Michal Moneta (Guest)

and what do you see as lacking? Oh yeah, where to start? It's good that we still have some time because, yeah, broad topic, I mean, we can start with the general primitives of Web3 or blockchain as technology, and we can clearly see that they are not appealing to the masses. So, starting, for example, with the transparency of blockchain and the fact that whatever you put there is basically immutable the heart and soul of the whole technology, it may be appealing to us looking at supply chain integrations of blockchain, because that's where it has a value, but for people outside of Web3, not familiar with the blockchain technology, the fact that everything is transparent and, specifically, the fact that it's immutable, it's not something that encourages them to go into this space. It's quite the opposite. I mean it's very tricky for people to understand that they can revert the current state because they are used to something completely different. Even if you are making a bank transfer, you can either stop it or reverse it if needed. I mean, depending on the bank, depending on the conditions, depending on the type of transfer but usually it's not immutable.

29:54

On blockchain, everything is immutable, and even ourselves here at Onchain, because right now we are launching an NFT collection and also some collectibles from the platform. We had to mint them, basically before actually doing something. They were created out of the articles and reports that we've had and it came to our mind, basically, that we are talking about this kind of stuff and we are writing about it and we are using it even on a daily basis, but right now we had to check all the articles, all the reports, 100% before minting them, because we understood that, yeah, right now it will be immutable and we are a web-free based company in general, web-free research. It should be obvious for us and it should be super natural. However, in our heads it still served as a small hurdle, like wait, maybe there will be a chance to revert it. No, it won't be. So, basically, even ourselves, we had to test it using our skills, our mindset, whether we are so aligned with the crypto primitives and whether we can go this way. Obviously, we've done this, not a problem. But again, for us here working in the space, it was not so natural.

30:56

So what about people from outside? And even looking at the positive primitives of blockchain, like decentralization or the ownership factor, the research shows that basically, it's not something that is super appealing to people. I mean, people sometimes subconsciously understand that decentralization is better than super centralized entities, that local government usually makes better decisions than the central government, and so on and so forth, but it's not the value that they will fight for. I mean, it's not the most important thing for them. The same thing with the ownership I mean what blockchain brings and the whole technology built on this technology, like NFTs, for example, the whole technology builds on this technology, like nfts, for example. It brings this digital ownership over over something. But again, for people, this kind of ownership, of course they value it and it's a cultural thing as well.

31:44

We'll get into that into detail, but generally it's not something that, again, they see as a super important value. That would convince them to use web free based solutions compared to the web, to ones, because right now they will own the post that they published on Twitter, whereas in Web2 they don't own it. It doesn't matter that much. I mean, they are used to the current state when it comes to Web2 applications specifically. So that's the problem that the main primitives of Web3 actually are not as appealing and as relevant to people to bring the adoption only based on them. So that's the first factor. The second factor is obviously the whole uncertainty around the whole space, and right now I'm not looking even at a specific user, but as a person that would like to build something, because it's also a podcast for founders. But generally we are also targeting founders and entrepreneurs for on-chain.

32:37

And basically, the problem is that for many people that are not used to this web climate, web atmosphere, it can be too volatile and too uncertain to build something. Because if we have these four-year cycles in general, where we have this one year or a few quarters when everything is good and the rest of the time when we are either sliding down or there is a concern of where are we heading, actually, for a person that would like to build something not use or invest, because you can always cash out, but build something that will still be there after these two or three years yeah, it's super tricky and I can understand people who are not so inclined to go into this industry because of the fact that they will have struggles after two or three years when they finally actually build the solution that they wanted. Maybe the market won't be there, maybe the point of the cycle will be very bad.

33:26

So, this kind of uncertainty, not even related to the regulatory thing, because it's important as well, but this market uncertainty, which is natural for many industries, but specific for crypto very, very much. Yeah, I think it also stops this adoption on a founder or entrepreneurial level, I would say, but the main factor, I would say that there is a lack of adoption, however tautological it may sound, because the problem, especially from the founder's perspective or from the entrepreneur perspective, is that they don't see this kind of real-world use cases or valuable use cases of blockchain. They see the technology, they know that there are multiple crypto apps built on that and they may even understand it, but when it comes to the real world aspect, they are not aware of this, because it's not like this kind of valuable use cases that go beyond crypto that they don't exist. They are still there, but the awareness about them it's non-existent.

34:29

When I tell people about blockchain in general, something rings well, but nothing special. When I tell them about crypto, ah yeah, crypto, oh my god. Obviously it's not a positive attitude to the whole thing, but generally people don't understand that blockchain and web3 can mean something different than crypto and that it can basically help people not to become richer because of the fact that they invested into something, what's pumped, but that maybe they have some real world struggles that they would like to address with crypto.

34:59

And even if we look, um, at the countries, where do you think, um, that the crypto adoption is the highest? If you could pick a few countries, what would it be?

35:09 - Harrison Wright (Host)

argentina, venezuela, brazil yeah, places with unstable currencies, exactly, and very high inflation and the reason why crypto is there is obviously, for example, we have stable coins, which Brazil places with unstable currencies, exactly, and very high inflation.

35:16 - Michal Moneta (Guest)

And the reason why crypto is there is obviously.

35:18

For example, we have stable coins, which, by their name, they are stable and they are super accessible for this kind of people.

35:24

So there is, even if it's crypto, because obviously, yeah, stablecoin is also a cryptocurrency and it's this kind of use case. Still, there is a real world problem addressed, for example, savings and this kind of stuff, like having their assets stored somewhere in a way that it's not affected by their domestic government or the inflation itself. So there is that world use case. But to go beyond that, to go beyond something more valuable, especially when it comes to emerging markets, there is no awareness about even RWA space, like the things that Goldfinch does or some kind of agriculture startups that are super much benefiting because they implement blockchain due to the oracles, due to the loans run through Goldfinch, as I mentioned, but there is no awareness. So if an entrepreneur or a usual user, they don't see this kind of use cases and, at the same time, they are distracted from Web3 because of the bad image around crypto. That's what hinders the adoption the most. So that's the main struggle that these real-world use cases are not visible enough.

36:27 - Harrison Wright (Host)

Yeah, so here's a follow-on question for you. What do you think is going to be the better way of addressing this adoption gap? Is it convincing entrepreneurs from wider space to build Web3 products, or is it convincing existing people in crypto to build things that have a more real world potential? Or is it a bit of both?

36:50 - Michal Moneta (Guest)

Yeah, the easiest answer would be a bit of both, obviously, and we could end, could end there, but definitely if we had to go into one direction.

36:58

It's tricky to onboard people into the space in general, no matter if it's a user or entrepreneur, because of the reasons that I mentioned. So definitely a more efficient approach would be to convince existing, I would say, people to maybe not build something more meaningful, because sometimes these apps even if you look at DeFi, it can be super powerful also from people outside of Web3. It's just used by people outside of Web3 because that's the only use case of many Web3 apps or DeFi apps specifically that people are aware of. But if we showed actually to people from outside of Web3, they can either use RWAs in this case and maybe have a safer collateral and save credit, maybe they can have some kind of minor investment opportunities. Maybe showing to the people existing Deepin apps Deepin is a super interesting niche on the site that they can benefit from driving their car or even providing a wireless network, or a computing power from their existing smartphone or a MacBook and earn money from that.

37:58

That would be great, and actually these apps already exist. So it's not about convincing people to build more. It's about bringing the awareness of this kind of use cases, so that Deepin apps are not being used only by web people who would like to earn some tokens and later sell them or basically benefit from the fact that there is a hype around Deepin. It's about showing to the people outside of this space that this kind of apps exist and they can benefit from them very, very much, because I believe that Deepin specifically DeFi is one thing, but Deepin specifically is a great real-world opportunity because it's based on sharing economy, because it's based on the things that we usually do. It's based on the things that we already own and can benefit from them.

38:42

But definitely people outside of Web3 are not fully aware that these kind of things exist, and even if I tell my girlfriend about this whole crypto stuff and about this blockchain, she's bored, she's not interested.

38:50

She would like to change the topic into the TV show that we watch together. But when I told her about Deepin, she said, oh, that's how we should start. Basically, that's what you should mention to me in the first place. So it's something that is unique for blockchain. I'm talking about Deepin as a niche and the products that come out of it, and at the same time, it can bring this kind of outside of crypto adoption into the whole world because of the fact that it can and should be used by people outside of Web3. But again, it's about switching the focus from other crypto investors to actually invest in existing Debian tokens, switching this focus to people who can actually earn these tokens by contributing to a specific infrastructure that stands behind the Debian project, whether it's driving a car, as I mentioned, or providing Wi-Fi network or providing computer storage. But again, it's a matter of changing the focus, also when it comes to the existing founders, so they don't target crypto users only, but they go beyond that.

39:49 - Harrison Wright (Host)

You know, I wonder if it's a bit like. Think of cloud, for example. There was a point in time where cloud was this new industry. Oh, we're building cloud cloud, this cloud, that. Yeah, how many software as a service subscriptions do you have now?

40:02

You know I forget that it's not that long ago, but you know, when I worked at recruitment company in you know, around 2010 or so, we had a physical server in the office. Whoever left the office at the end of the day would take the tape out for the backup, take it home, put the new tape in. So if the office burnt down, we always had a tape backup of the CRM and everything else. We had physical cabinets in the office full of resumes and job. Everything was on paper and filed right. So the cloud is actually quite new. But now you just take it for granted that you load up your browser and all your apps work in a browser. Nobody says, hey, this is part of the cloud industry. Which cloud company are you working with? It's just a part of the background, part of the scenery. It happens to use cloud technology as part of what it does. No one calls software as a service a cloud company, even if that's what it is. Maybe that's the future for crypto as well. It's just part of the scenery.

40:51 - Michal Moneta (Guest)

That's how it should work Definitely's not there yet. When it comes to the cloud, the good thing about the cloud is that it can work in the background, no matter what. You have to log in, you have to install something and that's it. With blockchain-based apps, unfortunately, you have to interact with them and the UX of these apps is usually very, very poor. So that's the problem. But generally, we should go into the direction where this blockchain thing is weighing the background. It's there. It provides you with specific benefits, like, for example, you earn tokens based on that, but you don't have to actually understand that. It's a blockchain where these tokens are stored, or decentralized network that is facilitating this whole thing.

41:33

There is a great thing that Sweatcoin did, and it's like a blueprint, like they started as a non-web company let's call them a web2 company. They onboarded 120 million users into their app. They became one of the most popular fitness apps in the world, and then they decided that maybe it's time to implement something web-free oriented and they offered a solution. If you want, you can start your web journey inside the app that you are already using and you understand where your tokens basically, where your points that you earn basically will be transformed into the sweat tokens that you can use later to purchase some kind of stuff in the app that you can speculate on, that you can sell and so on and so forth, but there was no mention of blockchain. There was no mention of the fact that you are forced to do that. Basically, a portion of users and as far as I remember it was the majority of users had the decision on their plates that they can either go with the app that they are using and they like already or basically, they are doing something different, whereas, obviously, when it comes to purely Web3 apps, it's the other way around. We start with the web solution and basically we try to onboard people from outside Web3 into this app and obviously, for these people, it's completely it's very difficult to understand.

42:43

You have to sign the message why you have this kind of wallet. What is it about? What is this string of text with numbers that I need to click to sign something? What am I signing? What is it? Will it drain my drain, my usual wallet? Yeah, it's this kind of things and we can't avoid it in web3, however, if we integrate it seamlessly into something that already exists and doesn't work in a web3-ish way, that's when the ux is there and basically we can then start adopting people.

43:09

But basically sweatcoin is a unique example. I would put telegram here as well. But to be honest, when it comes to blockchain application or integration into Telegram, obviously there are a lot of people using it, but it's not like they are using it to. Some of them are using it for money transfers, but usually it's transformed into this whole industry of these tap-to-earn apps like the hamster things that again you can speculate on and earn money based on the number of times when you tapped your screen. I don't think that's the blockchain use case that we wanted to witness in general and I don't think that's something that Telegram had in mind when they decided to integrate TON into their ecosystem. But if we had to indicate one nice example, definitely Sweatcoin can be presented as a blueprint here, like onboarding people from web two into web three in a seamless way.

44:02 - Harrison Wright (Host)

I think it's a really great point and I think maybe a good counter example is games. Now, I like games. I think most people who work in crypto probably like games, which is why Discord has become a standard to the industry. I like crypto, but I have no desire to play any of the. I have zero interest in having crypto in my games in the way that it currently exists, and you've seen there's so much money and time and hype gone into GameFi. What has it actually produced? And I think the problem is people are approaching it from the wrong direction.

44:36

The value of the consumer product is in how the consumer values it, which seems obvious when you put it that way, but the appropriate starting point is here hey, what is the experience we can provide to the user? That's the number one thing that makes a game successful. When you look at, you have these big publishers like EA and someone to cannibalize all the games and turn off all their customers. Well, it's because people that don't understand games and people that like games that are making the decisions about how to build games. Ironically, the companies that actually put the user first tend to succeed, even if it might not seem like the most business-savvy decision, Like you're. In Poland, CD Projekt Red has been a great example of that Lesser lately, but for a long time. People loved them for exactly that reason and they got rewarded with great success.

45:21

No one is sitting there thinking, hey, I'd love to have some Web3 tokens in my game. But the problem I see with a lot of distance. I've never personally worked with a GameFi project, but from a distance. What I see is a lot of people are looking at this the wrong way around. They're looking at, hey, how can I build a Web3 game? I want to build tokens and I want to make a game around it. But that's the wrong question, because who are they building it for? They're building it for their personal interest or their financial goals. They're not building it for the user. I can see a future where Web3 gaming is a legitimate thing. Maybe there's some sort of in-game economy that's tied to a blockchain element that allows you to earn real money for you. It's just again, part of the background. It's not the defining feature of the game. People wouldn't even call it a Web3 game. It wouldn't even occur to them. It's just an online game that has an economy, happens to be on Web3 rails in the background.

46:12 - Michal Moneta (Guest)

Yeah, I mean Web3 game is a great example and a very unfortunate case at the same time, because even if you look at Axie Infinity, I mean 2021 and the whole hype and this whole nice use case, basically, where people from Philippines were able to earn a living because of the fact that they played play to earn games. And in this case, the experience didn't matter, because in this case, the experience was it was more about the real life experience thanks to the fact that they played this game, however stupid it may be, but obviously got adopted, not only people from Philippines specifically, or people from emerging and fronting markets, but it got adopted by Web3Space, which was very hungry for returns at the time. And both ends all these metaverse lands related projects evolved into something really not sure if it's a word in English caricatural, something like this, like completely opposite to the idea, because from the app that provided people in need of money in general the opportunity to earn this money through gaming, it evolved into this kind of virtual world where you had to pay $1 million for a piece of digital land that you owned. It was in the form of an NFT, but at the same time, same as other nfts from this period. Actually, it turns out not to be the best investment opportunity compared to physical lands, for example, and specifically when it comes to this, this metaverse thing, roblox is a great example because right now, I posted recently on twitter that it has more revenues not income, because they struggle on this side very much but as for the revenues, they have more revenues than three other biggest gaming studios combined. So there are a lot of people playing this game, a lot of people interacting, and I said on Twitter I wrote on Twitter that basically it's one of the biggest missed opportunities for metaverse in general.

48:03

I mean missed opportunities. It's something that should actually give an additional thought to people working on web3 games that roblox, still up to this date, decided not to go web3 in any way like either this in-game economy, ownership owners over something, or whatever, because they don't see a need, even though it's perfectly poised to be a web free based app with this whole virtual world that basically resembles this mythical metaverse that everyone was hyped about in 2022, but they decided not to go. Obviously, they found their uh teases that maybe there will be something, maybe some nfts, but people don't need it. I mean, and coming back to the first thing I mentioned when we started to discuss adoption and this ownership thing, because many times people working for GameFi they try to convince that Web3 is very much needed, not only because this in-game economy, which makes sense like this payment rails based on blockchain it makes sense fully but they also convinced that the reason why we should go Web3 with gaming is the fact that people will be able to own these assets. But again, who cares? I mean, you have this kind of marketplaces on Steam and obviously there is also this counter-argument that Steam can steal these assets, shut down and go away with it. But it didn't happen and likely it won't happen and it's not the case. I mean maybe in the case of very small games that would like to shut down. It's completely improbable in this case. So, again, this main benefit, this main advantage of Web3 games over non-Web3 games, actually it's not relevant for people who would like to play this game.

49:41

So I'm still looking into Web3, gaming in general and gamefi as something that can bring this adoption, because that was very easy.

49:51

It seemed like something very easy, like a big portal, all the players and we have a lot of gamers all around the world, but they will get into web3 because of, maybe, nfts, because of the earning opportunities, because of something different, and, yeah, that's how we will gain the adoption, but unfortunately it didn't happen because of the fact that these benefits of Web3, they didn't seem to be as appealing as in-game experience, which is basically non-existent in many Web3 games.

50:18

So, yeah, the biggest problem with Web3 games so the lack of nice gaming experience obviously turns out to be super relevant, and it's obvious it should be this way, and the biggest advantage of Web3 games, which is the ownership or this in-game economy, turns out not to be relevant at all, and that's the problem with GameFi in general.

50:38

So I'm not convinced, to be honest, that it can succeed in the future, which would be very unfortunate because it started on a very positive note and for a person and for a representative of an entity that looks into this real world aspects of blockchain, axie is a perfect use case, but unfortunately, after three months, this real world use case transformed into something completely different, and I also had some AXS coins I think that's how they were called and I haven't played the game, so obviously I was also one of these guys that decided not to play it at all and I didn't even know at the time how it performs. What is it about? But I had some coins and I speculated on them and sold them at some point. So, yeah, I was also on this bad side, and I'm pretty sure that the majority of users actually were on this side as well. So that was the big problem, and it's unfortunate that it didn't succeed. That's what I wanted to say.

51:35 - Harrison Wright (Host)

I think there's a huge lesson for founders here. Let me give you a thought and then something else. So to tie this also back to what you were saying earlier about adoption and what people think is useful Classic case in point hey, it's like X, but decentralized. How many times have I heard the pitch now? To be fair, more a while ago. It's like Uber, but on blockchain. That matters, and I think I care about privacy and decentralization or at least I think I do but I still use Gmail and G Suite.

52:03

Why aren't I using ProtonMail for all my email? Well, protonmail doesn't have the same functionality that G Suite does. My business runs on G Suite. Theoretically, I'd love to get away from G Suite and Google, but the functionality of the thing is more important. So I still use G Suite. Pretty sure, if you were to do a survey of what people use for their emails and what crypto companies' email servers run on, it would mostly be G Suite or maybe Outlook. It's not ProtonMail. So the functionality is primary. The actual use case is primary to the philosophy for most people most of the time, even people that work in the industry, let alone the mass consumer.

52:40

Now, something else I wanted to bring up, which I think ties in here. This is going to seem like completely out of left field. There's a fantastic book for anyone in marketing, branding, positioning or that includes founders, of course called the Challenger Customer, and one of the. I won't go into what the book's about, but the Challenger has a great case study in it. There's a company called DentSply that makes dental instruments and in this case study, what happens is they manufacture these amazing new set of dental instruments. Supposedly, I'm not a dentist, but most dental instruments are very unwieldy they have cords on them, they're very uncomfortable to work with, et cetera, et cetera. So here's our great new dental instruments. They're cordless, ergonomic, lightweight, really easy to use. They sent their salespeople out into the world to talk to dentists to sell these great new dental instruments, and the salespeople reported back. They were all having the same conversation, which was hey, let me tell you, let me show you a great new dental instruments that are best in the world.

53:35

Invariably, the dentist would turn around say yeah, they, these are great dental instruments, these are the best dental instruments in the world, but my problem is I don't need new dental instruments. Oh, okay, what now? So they thought they had a hole in one kind of like the GameFi thing, I think, or so many things people build in crypto, only it turns out they don't care about that. So what they did this is the genius of it they spent a lot of time and money on research and what they discovered was that one of the biggest, most challenging problems for dental practices in the world was sick leave from dental assistants. So there's a huge sickness epidemic among dental assistants, which of course, costs the practice time, money, disruptions, et cetera. And what they eventually realized was that this was actually linked to the problems of bad dental instruments, because they would get RSI, carpal tunnel fatigue, all these things. It seems like a minor thing, but you hold this thing for eight to 10 hours a day. It's like masseuses often get cubital tunnel syndrome, where they get nerve damage and things like that. My thing is all the time, so similar thing.

54:38

So they went back, they retooled their entire sales process, sent their reps in to talk to dentists again, but this time, instead of talking about, hey, here's our great dental insurance, hey, I want to talk to you about the impact of absences from dental assistants on your practice. Is this a problem you struggle with? This is what our research is telling us, and then it would go through the problems, the implications of the problems and the costs. So would you be motivated to solve this problem? Yes, I would. Well, let me tell you we actually have a solution for this very problem and of course, their new dental instruments are flying off the shelves and it just goes to show. I think probably the foundational mistake that founders and businesses of all kinds make is not building for the. They build the thing that they think is important and sell it for the reasons they think is important. They don't consider what the customer actually considers important, which is often a very different thing.

55:27 - Michal Moneta (Guest)

Just solving that mistake alone we probably see a completely different industry today and for the person with this marketing mindset, it sounds like a verse in the Bible, like start with the problem, start with the customer, start with the product market fit. But with Web3, it's a little bit trickier. And I read one nice report by Messari not only one, they have quite a lot, but there was one where they actually there was this ongoing infrastructure versus app debate, like what, where should we focus? I mean, whether we should build more apps or more efficient infrastructure and what they stated there is that basically, you have two options when it comes to building an app or whatever, that you can either build a decentralized version of something that exists, something that was already there, or you can build something that hasn't been possible without introducing blockchain. I mean, that hasn't been possible without introducing blockchain and that hasn't been possible before.

56:27

And this first in this first category, we have all these decentralized twitters. We have all these decentralized facebooks, which can be appealing, unfortunately, for for short term, and we are basically working on the report on decentralized social media and I can't tell you already what defining will be, but it's not like it will be a super positive outlook for a decentralized social media space, there will be a need to find a common ground. But in this other category, where we are building something that was not possible before blockchain, that's where we need to actually focus on this product market thing, because maybe or maybe that's how it should work. Basically, blockchain should address the need or the challenge that is there. Bitcoin did that. We didn't have this kind of digital store of value. It's the most obvious use case for blockchain the earliest one, but the most working one. Definitely Stablecoins when it comes to easy transfers between people and also a little bit more decentralized version of money, but it's also stable when it comes to the value of this money.

57:25

So it's not a volatile cryptocurrency, but it's not also a dollar which is governed by a central entity Obvious challenge, obvious use case and it hasn't been possible without blockchain. And right now we are looking for more like, for example, deepin is another option here. When it comes to Deepin, for example, you have unused resources and basically you are not incentivized enough to use them or to share them. Sharing economy was nice. I even wrote a paper, like my bachelor's degree was about sharing economy. It's a nice concept, but without clear incentives, it's tricky to implement it in practice and basically all the sharing economy was stolen by uber, airbnb and entities that decided to go professionally there instead of posting on booking or being a taxi driver. And again, deepin provides something different. It basically incentivizes people to, I would say, contribute to the sharing economy by sharing again your computing resources, by sharing your network resources and the Wi-Fi hotspot, by sharing the data that you are still collecting when you are driving a car, and so on and so forth. And that's another, I would say, unique use case for Web3 and blockchain that I can see, because, again, we likely don't need another decentralized version of something. I mean, we already tested it. We already have many options, especially in social media it's the most obvious example, but in other industries as well.

58:49

A lot of decentralized X, decentralized something, decentralized XYZ a lot of things like this, but clearly, the fact that these projects are run it's just an invention of the people behind them. It would be nice to decentralize this. It would be nice to decentralize this, but, to be honest, the problem is that people don't want it. So if we find something unique, if you find this unique need, unique challenge, and then we see that blockchain is the option to address it by decentralizing the payment network, by decentralizing the network behind the Deepin project yeah, that's how it should work, but unfortunately, when it comes to the latter category of use cases that haven't been possible before introducing blockchain, actually there are not many of them. And if I had to indicate a few, bitcoin, stable coins, I hope dip in, I hope also dsi, which is another promising niches, but it's based on my hopes. As for the things that were battle tested, unfortunately, bitcoin and stable coins would be the best picks there what about?

59:50 - Harrison Wright (Host)

see, I've got a question for you here. If you had to pick one thing, the fundamental value proposition of web3 is censorship and control proof infrastructure. Now, when you're building a consumer app, people might say they care about that. Their actions prove otherwise. But I don't think that necessarily means that we shouldn't be working towards building that censorship proof infrastructure. Even if the value proposition of the consumer is something else, right, it's not the fact that it's censorship or control proof that gets it adopted. So I'm going to say, firecaster, for example, I, I think, I think that I don't know if you have a different perspective, for people already use it. Doesn't matter if it's better, it's just not. You know, there has to be some. I think of Peter Thiel's zero to one.

01:00:51

The way LinkedIn is going to be supplanted is not by a LinkedIn competitor. It's going to be something that makes LinkedIn obsolete, same with Facebook. It's not that Facebook did not get sort of made almost irrelevant by a Facebook clone. You know the other social media platforms are materially different from it, and so I think that's how that happens. But surely it would be a good thing if, whatever the next generation of social media is that makes LinkedIn et cetera, obsolete would be decentralized because it solves so many problems that we have, while it could also be addressed to consumers through another avenue.

01:01:26 - Michal Moneta (Guest)

With Farcaster and Lens Protocol as as well, because these are two similar things. There is a big challenge for creators that it's being addressed by these apps because basically they are building a kind of an ecosystem of other apps that you can use. On forecaster, you will find warpcast, you will find other apps that resemble twitter, will find other apps that resemble Twitter, you will find apps that resemble TikTok a bit a lot of them like full ecosystems. And what is a struggle when it comes to centralized social media, if you would like to move your network from LinkedIn to Twitter because you would like to start doing something there, it's impossible. You can post something on LinkedIn that, yeah, feel free to join me on X, no reason why, but basically, yeah, you are posting it there and basically encourage people. It's not like you can move them easily because there is no social graph that connects. I would say both of these apps. In the case of Forecaster, in the case of Lens Protocol, social graph as a technology is something that underlines both of them. The problem with decentralized social media is that for creators, actually, it's super appealing and it's the obvious challenge that is being solved that you don't have to build your audience from scratch on LinkedIn, on Twitter and on Facebook separately, even using the same content. You don't have to do that. You can do it at once using the same group that you have on one app, because it's based on the social group and you can easily connect all these apps all together. So it's based on the social graph and you can easily connect all these apps all together. So it's being solved, definitely, and blockchain is the answer here.

01:02:51

However, for users and that's the problem actually it doesn't make a lot of difference. I mean, for a person that uses these apps not create content, but consume it Unfortunately, they don't have enough incentives to go there. Obviously, censorship proof aspect of the platform can be one, but right now, as far as I'm seeing some of the platforms that are moving into these directions, they are moving into something very, very edgy. Maybe the reason for it is that they need this kind of place to actually be edgy somewhere, because they can't be edgy on Facebook, but it doesn't incentivize more people to join, because for many people it will be too edgy, even for some that are not, I would say, aligned with the policy that Twitter or Facebook is pursuing. But what I was trying to say is that, basically the things that are addressed by Web3 and blockchain that are super important for creators.

01:03:45

When it comes to the central social media, they are again irrelevant for users and users won't have any incentivization to go to Warpcast or any app built on Lens Protocol instead of using Twitter or LinkedIn or Facebook at the same time, because the benefit, if the only benefit, is the fact that the creator has a simpler life and the fact that they are censorship resistant.

01:04:09

Probably it's not enough. Probably it's not enough, and the switching costs of moving from facebook to decentralized platform there are huge. They are huge because you won't find your mom or your friends on these platforms and basically they are all based on the network effects. So that's a tricky thing about this. So either these two spaces will merge a little bit or we will see small niche competitors for all of these platforms but again they will be a bit niche or actually the whole decentralized social media thing will be gone, because there is not enough, I would say, adoption potential here and that's the problem. But again, I'm talking about this before wrapping up the entire report, so maybe the outcome and the main finding will be different. But I was not super bullish, I would say after doing the research on this specific topic super interesting.

01:04:59 - Harrison Wright (Host)

Um, I can see a future where, you know, at some point there's going to be a new generation of social media platforms. Whatever that looks like, however ubiquitous it might be now, twitter is not going to be around for the next hundred years. That's just not how tech works these days. But maybe the next generation of social media platforms, it will be decentralized. That won't be the talking point, that won't be the value proposition of it. It'll just be like today you build on AWS or Google Cloud, tomorrow they'll build on blockchains. It's just how it is. And then it will become part of the landscape, part of the feature set by default. I could see that happening.

01:05:36 - Michal Moneta (Guest)

It should be this way, especially when it comes to the cloud, because basically, blockchain-based solutions for the cloud are way, way cheaper and that's the unfortunately, it's one of the main and the primary definitely advantage of this kind of solutions over centralized counterparts. But, yeah, definitely it should be going this way. But if we need to talk about this, we will go back to deep in and yeah, pretty sure we covered this topic already. But as for decentralized social media, the way it can operate is that maybe there is no this or that. It's not like they can function alongside. They can, but I don't think that this future is actually something that these decentralized social media platforms would like to see.

01:06:12

But what Web3 community can actually do and where the future may be, is this kind of Web3 integrations into existing platforms, and maybe Facebook is too centralized, but Twitter probably is a little bit more open when it comes to this kind of innovation. So, even if you look at the model that FriendTech had and right now a few other apps in this decentralized social media space have, where you can invest into an influencer, invest into a thought leader, someone that you follow, and basically either speculate on that or just support this person through this investment. Maybe that's something that can be introduced on this kind of platforms as well. I don't see a reason why Twitter shouldn't integrate this kind of things, especially since they are always communicating that they would like to be a little bit more much, that it's not Twitter paying this small revenues for creators, which is also cool that they share the ad revenue with creators, but maybe it should also be open to users so they can invest into their creators the same way as they do when it comes to patronite.

01:07:15

But on patronite, obviously there is no speculative aspect of it and here we would be able to introduce it, which for many people is super appealing. Because when I did the research on meme coins, for example, it was astonishing for me how many people have so big problems with casino hazard in general and how many people are playing this kind of games outside of web3 I'm talking about sports betting which is probably less rational than crypto itself.

01:07:41

How many people have struggles with that? So there is clear incentive and reason why this kind of speculative aspects could be introduced into this kind of platforms. I'm not sure if it would be for the benefit of humanity, but definitely there is a market for that. But this kind of solutions could be integrated into existing platforms already, not making them decentralized fully, but making them a little bit more interesting from this web free perspective, which we see as something, um, usually very valuable to any, I would say, app that is existing at the moment.

01:08:11 - Harrison Wright (Host)

I think you completely nailed it there. There's one little thing I want to pick up on that you touched on earlier that I think is really important as well. You kind of mentioned it a little bit in passing, but you mentioned about switching costs and I actually think that's a really important point. It's one of the biggest go-to-market, or it's more broad than go-to-market. It's an entire foundational thing about a business. People miss this completely.

01:08:32

Sometimes I'll get sales outreach from recruitment CRM companies and occasionally I'll speak oh yeah, well, our CRM is better because of X, y and Z reason. Okay, I agree, but I'm not going to switch my CRM for that. There's a huge logistical. If I switch, there's oh, it's cheaper. I don't care that it's cheaper.

01:08:53

I've been using my CRM for five years. We have our whole SOPs and business processes built around our CRM Everything it can integrate with all the other things that we have. If I change my CRM, I don't even care if it's half the price or if it's 20% better. We need to change the structure of how we do everything. We need to migrate the data. I need to train people on it all over again.

01:09:14

I have to find new integrations, so some of this is custom Python stuff to integrate this with that in a way that is not natively available. For me to switch my CRM, it would have to be probably one to 200% better for that to be worth it, and oftentimes people think they've got this brilliant thing, oh hey, it's better than this and it's cheaper. But actually the hassle and time and so on of switching from one thing to another is far more important than the price or whatever the benefit is and things like that, and I think that's another one of those critical errors people make when they're designing companies and go to market strategies. They completely don't take that into account. This is better than that, so we'll be successful.

01:09:56 - Michal Moneta (Guest)

So it's not as simple as that it really isn't.

01:09:58

Yeah, definitely. I mean there is, I would say, natural inertia that we have as people, and it's natural, I would say it's nothing wrong with it, but we don't want to make a change for any reason, or for a small reason. It needs to be big, especially when it comes to things like software. I mean it's super, super tricky. But to add to that, when it comes to switching costs, because the switching costs from moving from Web2 into Web3, when it comes to any solution, they are huge. At the same time, switching costs from moving from one web three up to another, they are super, super low, which is great for users but at the same time makes it very tricky.

01:10:34

Now coming back to the target audience it will make it very tricky for challenging for a founder, for entrepreneur, because of the fact that the competition is very big and, at the same time, people can freely move from one app to another, because there is, of course, you can use uni swap, for example, but you can simply switch to sushi swap. Actually it's a good example where the vampire attack happens and that's why they are so similar. But in general, when it comes to the dexes especially right now when we have so many layer twos, for example, and the costs of using them are very similar, actually you can go here. You can go here. Sometimes it's about a habit. Maybe I use this app a little bit more frequently because I'm used to it more. That's fine. But generally you're switching costs when it comes to moving from one Web3 up to another. They are usually super, super low.

01:11:23

At the same time, switching costs, as I mentioned, from moving from Web2 to Web3, no matter what the niche, because if we look at you mentioned cloud and software. Obviously business can decide that they will right now use Akash instead of AWS or Azure, because Akash is 80% cheaper. At the same time, nothing against Akash, but it's probably a little bit trickier to implement it into an existing solution than using AWS, continuing to use AWS or Azure as we did for the last 10 years, for example. So switching costs of moving from one solution to another can be way higher, even if not in the monetary value, than the change of the costs because of the cheaper option that Akash offers. So that's the main thing, and the same thing when it comes to non-software stuff. Like we discussed, decentralized social media and huge switching costs from moving from Facebook into Warpcast because it will be more fun. Maybe I will earn some money based on the content, but at the same time, no one will be there. So again, coming back even to the sweat coins example, actually they make the switching costs non-existent.

01:12:32

They introduce web, obviously. Yeah, they did very tough thing, which is introduced a web to app that people use. It's not so easy as well. At the same time, they had the working up. Always they had this kind of web briefing in mind. But once they get the user base, once they battle-tested the app, that's when they actually introduced a web-free solution which people decided to use in the majority or in a significant portion, and in this case the switching costs were very minor because you had to make only one small decision. You still stick to the app that you used before. Basically, nothing big changed besides the app that you used before. Basically nothing big changed besides the fact that you had an opportunity to again either speculate on the value of the token instead of the points or purchase some kind of in-app ads, products from apps from ads and this kind of stuff that was implemented and purchasable through the tokens that you earned, and in this, obviously, the switching costs were very low because it was a seamless transition.

01:13:28

But not every app can do it the same way because, again, they build the user app first. But if I had advice for founders in a way that they should do that again, it will be a cliche, but you also mentioned it a couple of times. Let's start with the problem with the product market fit and the experience, and then decide whether blockchain integration is the the right thing, because maybe web free is not a solution to this particular problem and we don't need it at all.

01:13:54

But if we start with this problem, with this challenge, and then we discovered that, yeah, decentralizing this thing or providing people with a specific sense of ownership, it will do the job, then obviously blockchain will be the best answer. The thing is that, whether we have this kind of question and that's the thing that we should focus on first- I have found this conversation super valuable.

01:14:18 - Harrison Wright (Host)

I hope that it is as valuable to the audience as I think it's been. I'm imagining a founder either an existing founder who's thinking about pivoting or doing something slightly new, or someone who's thinking about building a crypto business that is not for existing crypto people but for a broader consumer base, and I think something that's absolutely critical about that is having the right theoretical underpinnings and understanding of the factors that are going to make that business successful. If we think about some of the things we've discussed here, such as what the user actually cares about, not what we think is cool, taking into account the switching costs, taking into account what's actually going to drive real adoption people bearing those things in mind before they embark on this sort of journey is going to be critical. Is there any last pieces of advice you'd have for such a founder, michal?

01:15:03 - Michal Moneta (Guest)

Yeah, but maybe it will pave the way for the second edition of our talk because it's a broad topic.

01:15:08

But besides this start of the journey, when it comes to building a product or finding the product market fit, addressing the challenge, considering the switching costs, there are two big areas that Web3 founders overlook very, very much, and one is a business model.

01:15:21

So deciding what exactly it is that we don't, I would say, rely on the token value appreciation or VC funding, and that's it. So that's the one thing, and the second thing is the approach to crossing the chasm. I'm pretty sure you know that concept, but it's about attracting not the mass market, but early mass market, let's call it after we build a product and find the right product market fit among the tech geeks, because in many, in the case of many, web3 projects, it's quite easy to get early adopted among a small group of people, like people who would like to speculate on a specific thing, or they are just embraced by the idea of something being decentralized but then going into the mass market. We discussed it in detail, but there are specific approaches to that. It needs to be defined earlier how we would like to approach this. And, yeah, crossing the chasm as a concept and also as a book, is something that I would definitely recommend. So these are the next two steps that we can cover, maybe sometime later, not to extend this one.

01:16:22 - Harrison Wright (Host)

I'm down for that. We'll have to do that sooner or later.

01:16:24 - Michal Moneta (Guest)

Yeah, definitely, Because without it the picture won't be complete. So definitely we need to do that.

01:16:32 - Harrison Wright (Host)

Well, hey, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on today. Thank you for taking the time, and actually I know you put a lot of time into prep for this as well, which does not go unnoticed. Really appreciate you sharing your expertise here. I think it's been really really valuable to everyone Tuning in Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.

01:16:51 - Michal Moneta (Guest)

Thanks a lot.