Ryan Wyatt - Polygon Studios CEO, EP 15

What do Nike, Starbucks, reddit, and AAA gaming studio 12am have in common?

They all use Polygon to build in web3.

Polygon Studios CEO Ryan Wyatt joined Brian Friel to discuss crypto's mainstream adoption and the future of web3 gaming on Episode 15 of The Zeitgeist.

Show Notes:

01:36 -  Background / How he started working at Polygon?

05:09  - Why Polygon and web 3.0 gaming?

11:29 - Partnerships

16:58 - The state of web 3.0 gaming today

20:28 The future of web 3.0 gaming
22:29 How will wallets evolve in the space

24:35 -  A builder he admires

Full Transcript:

Brian (00:06):

Hey everyone, and welcome to the Zeitgeist, the show where we highlight the founders, developers, and designers who are pushing the Web 3.0 space forward. I'm Brian Friel, developer relationship fan, and I'm thrilled to announce my guest, Ryan Wyatt, the CEO of Polygon Studios. Polygon is a platform for scaling and building decentralized blockchain apps on Ethereum. Polygon Studios specifically is the business team working to help advance the Polygon ecosystem across its various products. Ryan, welcome to the show.

Ryan (00:35):

Dude, you've got a perfect podcast voice. Let me tell you, man.

Brian (00:39):

Thank you. It's a good thing no one can see my face. It's a voice for podcasting, but we'll keep it at that.

Ryan (00:44):

Yeah, that's fair. That's all that matters. That's all that matters. Thanks for having me.

Brian (00:48):

Yeah. Hey, we're really excited. By the time that this episode's live, the announcement will be out that Phantom and Polygon are joining forces and bringing the Phantom experience to the EVM ecosystem. We couldn't be more thrilled to be working with you guys.

Ryan (01:01):

Yeah, we're super excited. Long time coming. Glad the day has finally arrived. We can share it with everybody. You can't see it, but I'm wearing my Phantom shirt, so I'm fully celebrating the moment.

Brian (01:12):

I love it. And we definitely got some more of those Phantom shirts in stock. We can be giving it out to all the Polygon community.

Ryan (01:19):

That's right, man.

Brian (01:19):

Getting the merch going.

Ryan (01:20):

Send them my way.

Brian (01:20):

Hey, well, you know, you have a really interesting background. I really want to dig into that before we get started on everything that's in what we can be teaming up together across Polygon and Phantom. But for the uninitiated, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you became to be working at Polygon?

Ryan (01:36):

Yeah, so my whole background was really in the creator economy all the way back to my days in college. So I played games competitively. I commentated tournaments for Major League Gaming. I ran the online tournament infrastructure for Major League Gaming, 2008, 2009. Ultimately went to Machinima, which was a really early gaming company on YouTube, and then went to YouTube to start the gaming vertical where I was the head of gaming for almost eight years at YouTube. And gaming is the second largest vertical for YouTube. It's got 350 million logged in users. It generates billions of dollars for the platform. So a really fun time that I had of 12, 13, 14 years in the creator economy. Last year in 2021, I really started getting into angel investing of Web 3.0 projects. And the way that I actually got connected into Web 3.0 projects was just really game developers that I really believed in that had a high degree of talent that were going over and they were making at the time, calling blockchain based games.

(02:33):

And I just became very enamored and fascinated with the concept of what can you do when you really own your digital items and how big of a business that's becoming. And so as I spent more time in that space while still at YouTube, I got really excited about what can I do to jump in full time. And I came to Polygon and I thought I really like Polygon for a couple key reasons. First and foremost, I was already sold on Ethereum where that was going to be a base layer for developers and users, and not to say that other alt ones don't have a place in the world. Ethereum had kind of already checked that box that they'd been able to gravitate a lot of users and developers. And clearly there was this conundrum that existed at Ethereum of the inability to let it scale.

(03:12):

And so I started focusing on protocols and companies that were really looking at this idea of how do you scale Ethereum? And landed on Polygon because I had liked their ZK tech acquisitions that they had done. They spent about a billion dollars acquiring three different ZK companies. I looked at that as like, okay, that's a real scaling L2 future for this platform.

(03:35):

And I thought I could come in given that I worked at a platform like YouTube, saw a lot of verticals, saw what it's like to scale a company, and knew Web 3.0 and Web 2.0 really. Well, I thought I was in a unique position to come into the company and help out. And so I joined Polygon Studios in January of this year. I lead our whole business team. So if you can think of Polygon as there's a product and engineering team that's focusing on ID and our different ZK solutions, our POS chain, avail, our super nets, a lot of work going into our product efforts across the board over there. Everything else kind of sits under my camp of everything from BD to partnerships to marketing, finance, legal, compliance, a lot of these different other business areas. And so it's been an awesome opportunity. I've really enjoyed being here and Polygon had such a tremendous year. It's been fun to be on the ride, that's for sure.

Brian (04:24):

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I think Polygon is a bit of a meme that you guys have the most legendary BD team in the Web 3.0 space.

Ryan (04:31):

I love that meme too. I won't lie to you.

Brian (04:33):

Yeah, I want to get into all that and what you guys have cooking over at Polygon, but just to quickly go back a little bit on your background, you mentioned you were the head of gaming at YouTube, and that's at a time when it really wasn't popular opinion that it would be a popular thing to watch people play video games on the internet. I think you were very early to that movement and now you see that movement potentially heading to the blockchain space, you know, mentioned that your interest in Polygon really peaked from seeing game developers move over. For you, what was the aha moment for you that made you leave a job like YouTube to come into the Web 3.0 space?

Ryan (05:08):

Yeah, no, I love the question. I think the funny thing too is, so, taking a step back at the first part of hey, you know, you got involved before the creator economy was even a thing. And the reason I got involved was I really was such a gamer and it was fun to watch gaming highlights and clips from other cool moments in games. And what got me into it was simply, I think there's other people like me that might enjoy this, other gamers that are watching these videos and stuff. And so it started just with something as innocent and simple as that and kind of kept building off of it. Okay, how do you introduce this to more people? What barriers do you break down in order to get it into more people's hands and so forth? And so some of it you control, some of it you don't.

(05:54):

So a good example was really where you started to see scaling of more gaming videos being uploaded was when the Dazzle capture card came out, it was like a 50 or $60 capture card you plugged into your Xbox or PlayStation very simply captured to a hard drive. You had this raw footage output that you could just clip up and then upload, right? Then also software got better with Final Cut and Premier and all these different things. And so you started to see a lot of these things happen that other companies were contributing to and really what you don't ever sit there. And at the time I was never like, oh, some of the biggest celebrities in the world one day are going to be people that upload videos on YouTube. You don't start with such an insane point of view that I wouldn't have believed it at the time.

(06:38):

You didn't need to sell this huge idea and you just believe, hey, there's people that are interested in it and this is going to keep getting bigger as more people progress. I say all of that because clearly the outcome was, again, 350 million logged-in people watch gaming video on YouTube every day. Some of the biggest celebrities in the world now come from YouTube. Mr. Beast was uploading gaming videos, Dream, all these different people, right? And so I saw a bunch of similarities in Web 3.0. I love this idea of decentralization. I really did believe that, hey, there is a power dynamic that negatively impacts users. You see it in gaming, a lot of this is anchored around gaming and that as people are spending more money on digital goods, there's going to be this desire and push for more genuine ownership over it. So I started to see something where I was like, hey, this is interesting to me and I think it will be interesting to other people.

(07:27):

And now I also saw a lot of capital in the space, and by that I mean there is so many different people focusing on so many different problems like Phantom with the wallet, us with a protocol, Magic Eden who we just partnered with on the marketplace. You saw all these great talented people contributing their part in advancing the overall ecosystem. And so I had this perspective of, well, the creator economy took about 15, 16 years to really hit its stride in a meaningful way. I think that Web 3.0, if you think about where we're at, can really cut that timeline in half because of the type of people, the capital and resources that are in this space. And I felt that there was already a really good product market fit as far as people wanting this. And so for me, it actually was a really easy jump.

(08:11):

I had no issue leaving. I did awesome. I loved my job at YouTube, running gaming YouTube was so fun. Great people love Susan, our CEO. Really enjoyed who I worked with. But even saying all that, it was actually really easy to come make the jump here because I was like, oh, this is going to be so fun over the next decade, there's going to be so many different learning opportunities, things to build. There's this blank canvas of creativity and yeah, it's littered with a bunch of issues. That was no different than YouTube in these early days with people uploading porn or videos that had copyright or music. You're dealing with a bunch of abuse factors in crypto right now. We're seeing it play out, but that's okay. It's a lot of what you expect in first movers and early adopters of a new product. And so I'm really optimistic about how this stuff shakes out and what the future looks like and how even on a personal level I can contribute to shaping that in some way.

Brian (09:01):

Yeah, no, I agree. There's nothing quite working on the frontier attack. It's really exciting.

Ryan (09:07):

Frontier indeed it is. Yes. We're reminded of that every two months at this rate.

Brian (09:13):

Absolutely. So let's turn a little bit to Polygon specifically. And you mentioned that you just jumped in with two feet into this space. What is it about Polygon that piqued your interest and why do you think it's particularly well suited for this movement into Web 3.0 gaming?

Ryan (09:29):

So going back to Ethereum, I was betting on Ethereum, so I was like, I want to be associated with a protocol that's focused on scaling Ethereum. And so there's some great companies, Immutables out there and so forth. I just really liked Polygon because I love the founders, so I got to spend some time with Sandeep. I mean these guys have the heart and spirit, JD, Milo, Onarog. It's really inspirational. I kind of like an underdog story too. And if you think about even where YouTube was relative to Twitch and some of these other things in the gaming category, we had to overcome some of these battles to stay being the largest video platform. Facebook, Mixer with Microsoft, it was just fun to kind of compete. And so I just really like the heart that they had of one, they were really well intended about how much they believed in the future of decentralization and polygons' role in it.

(10:20):

And two, that passion, you can't recreate that stuff. And so I just very easily gravitated towards them. I also, again, well capitalized the product and engineering team, brilliant people on the ZK side. We have some of the best engineers, mathematicians, PhDs when it relates to cryptography and ZK work in the world on Polygon. So it was, it shot up. I don't think we're an underdog anymore, obviously I think we've arrived, right? We have all this great talent across the organization. We've got a really clear vision of what we think it's going to look like. And so it's just fun. It's just fun to be on a team when you work with people that are really talented, it makes you want to work harder, it makes you get excited to get up every day to work. And so we've just got one of those teams and organizations and I love it.

Brian (11:13):

That's awesome. So you have a great team that you guys have here at Polygon. We mentioned a little bit earlier that you guys are at the legendary BD team in the Web 3.0 space. Let's talk a little bit about some of those partnerships that you guys have landed recently. What partnerships are you particularly excited about?

Ryan (11:29):

Well, I mean honestly, selfishly, the Magic Eden and Phantom partnerships are pretty fun. Seeing these, a great marketplace, a great wallet go multichain is so good for the space. I think multi chain is a good thing for the space. Oftentimes too, I say it's just like we're so small and so early to be super competitive. And so I think multi chain is just a great way for all companies to look. Even games and things that are building on Polygon. So that's been really fun. We've also had a lot on the gaming side this past year. We partnered with Tilting Point, we partnered with Midnight Society, which is Dr. Disrespect’s game. I mean obviously we had just a heyday on the enterprise side. We had Nike and Starbucks and Reddit and Meta. I mean, honestly, that list gets crazy. Super proud of all the team's work there.

(12:19):

DeFi, we had a really fun year too. I really feel good about what we've done with DeFi, Robinhood, who was a really exciting announcement. So there's just been great momentum. The teams really, it's a mix of Web 2.0 background folks from big tech with Web 3.0 native gurus, and they just really work well as far as learning from each other. It doesn't come without its hiccups, but it really has been a great collaborative effort. So we've just had a lot of fun partnerships this year. It's great to be able to announce Phantom as we come to the end too as well. I think that's going to be exciting as we go into the new year, especially with all the projects we announced and so many of them we haven't even launched yet. If you think about Starbucks and some of these other ones, we haven't even debuted them yet. So 23 is going to be a fun year. I'm really excited. I know people right now are pessimistic bears because that's the season when the highs are high, they're really high and the lows, they're really low. I'm kind of pretty excited going into 2023 with all this momentum we have. Then our ZK tech coming out, we're going to be able to do a bunch more and the DeFi space with our ZK tech as well. Vibes are high on IM my man.

Brian (13:27):

I love it. That's great. You mentioned a ton there that hits across a bunch of different sectors. When you talk to these teams, especially, I'm curious, the ones who maybe aren't as Web 3.0 native, are there any commonalities between all them about what they're particularly excited about or maybe some specific areas that they think are most fruitful for growth in the Web 3.0 space?

Ryan (13:46):

It varies so much from each one. Think about a Magic Eden or a Phantom opportunity versus a Starbucks versus Meta. I do think a lot of folks are really interested in these ideas of these decentralized, let's say peer-to-peer networks, if you will, in layman's kind of Web 2.0 terms and kind of what you can do with it. So yeah, I think from that perspective, there's a lot of intrigue and appetite in the space. I would say it's not necessarily a growth vector for them. I think it's a lot of it is, hey, this is really interesting, new tech, what can we do? How do we participate in it? How do we learn in it? How do we trial? How do we try projects in it? And then there's varying degrees. I mean if you look at Instagram, they went really in, you mint on Polygon. You can sell directly from Instagram as they build on that. That's a really just valuable tool from a creator product feature set.

(14:37):

And people don't really need to worry about the Polygon aspect. I mean, it's fun if you're in the space, Polygon, but at the end of the day, it's like it's a great product feature they unlocked via Polygon, Reddit and what they're doing with Starbucks Odyssey. And basically they're going to allow this rewards program to be on chain, and the NFT part will be really passive as it should be with users that are going to use it. Same with Reddit, digital collectibles. So I just think you're really hitting a stride in how people are figuring it out. And there's going to be learning and iterative work here for all of them. But yeah, I think everybody's looking for something different when they come to the table. And I feel like what we have that's pretty unique is a bunch of people that can look at all these different perspectives from institutions, to finance, to big tech, to DeFi, to being a NFT, degen trader, all these different users that matter in our communities that matter. We've got good representation of it internally.

Brian (15:32):

Yeah, no, that's great. And it's great to see so much enthusiasm from these orgs actually putting their money where their mouth is and learning by doing and shipping and iterating, doing all that. It's a really cool time to see. Just a couple years ago that would've been basically unheard of in the crypto space. So it's really awesome to see that changing.

Ryan (15:48):

It's fun that crypto's ... look, dude, I would never call myself a crypto native. I didn't read a Bitcoin white paper and it changed my life back in the day. So you are seeing this new wave of people. This is good for the space. People that come in-

Brian (16:02):

Totally.

Ryan (16:03):

That got really interested in some of the ethos of Web 3.0 that is entering the space. And so this is why I feel good about these cycles that we'll have of people coming in. And it will be an ebb and flow. We'll have these big breakthroughs. We'll have moments we've been going through the past couple months on pulling back, and that's a natural part of the course that we're on. And I think what you continue to see with each stride will be more talent, more innovation, more use cases, more people each time.

Brian (16:29):

Yeah, no, I agree. And each new wave of users has their own perspective. As you said, it's no longer the hardcore cyberpunks and crypto maxes coming in, and that's how the space grows. It's really exciting to see. Totally. I want to bring it back just a little bit to gaming in particular too. Given your background, everything. We talked about how excited you were moving into the Web 3.0 space from head of gaming at YouTube. Talk a little bit about how you see the state of gaming, Web 3.0 gaming today and how that might change in the coming years.

Ryan (16:58):

So if you think about Web 3.0, the first version of it was, they were rudimentary Ponzi-esque type games. Some games I don't think operated with malice. I think some did, right? No doubt. I think that it was a great learning experience of what can you do with all these different things? You have a token, you've got decentralization, you've got ownership. You're trying to balance game mechanics. You're just doing a lot. Making a game is really difficult. You start adding all these different elements, it becomes very complex. So I'm pretty empathetic to, let's call it generation one of Web 3.0 games, none of them, which would be anything that I'd be interested in playing. I think Axie even playing that was like, okay, at least it's like there's something here. But these are all kind of base level games. A lot of great talent though coming from that space as far as generation one Web 3.0 games as far as learning and iterating.

(17:50):

And that's not super uncommon if you look at some of the early gatcha games and what mobile first offered up and some of the pay games that mobile ad were pretty atrocious as well. And so mobile went through a very kind of similar era of how do you iterate on these things? How do you improve? And so Web 3.0 games now, it's like you're starting to see some really good. One, it's like if you think about really great games take years to make. So you could have been last year been like, I'm going to make a Web 3.0 game and I have this really good studio and I've got a great background. And you're not seeing that game next year. You're seeing it in like 2024. So it's going to take a while and it's not going to happen fast in gaming. You're going to keep seeing new things come out in Web 3.0 gaming that will continue to pique people's interest and be like, okay, that's cool.

(18:41):

Or oh, what they just did with memberships and NFT, that's cool. Or what they just did with governance, that's cool. And games are just going to keep getting better and better and better. It'll be beyond just digital marketplaces and things that you own items in and all of that. So anyway, I say all that is, I think really the reality of where games are, where you start to see mass adoption of Web 3.0 games is years away. I think I feel very confident Web 3.0 gaming will be a pretty sizable subsection of games revenue in 2026, 27, and then you'll just keep seeing it go up to the right over time as far as users revenue, how many wallets, all of this. So yeah, I'm excited. I say it in a little more tempered way because it's more of a long term bet. We've been placing a lot of them now though.

(19:25):

You got to place those bets now. Those trees take a long time to grow. They're really impactful when they do, but you have to plant these seeds now. So we spent a lot of time this past year investing in different gaming projects out of our ecosystem fund, partnering with really large game developers, some of which we haven't even announced yet. So yeah, we've got some cool stuff that's coming up. And I definitely think things that's going to show what gen two of Gaming and Web 3.0 looks like. Again, I think where you see a meaningful breakthrough is more likely in this gen three era in four years or so.

Brian (19:59):

Yeah, for sure. No, it takes a lot of cycles to make something that's kind of a generational game like that. You know, mentioned some of these early investments, planting the seeds on this. If you had a crystal ball and you looked out, do you see that most of the games people are playing three, five years out from now? Are these being made from the existing AAA game studios that are coming into Web 3.0? Is it these web one game developers who are more crypto native iterating and finding something special? Is it some sort of blended between the two of them? What do you think there?

Ryan (20:29):

It's probably a blend. I actually think of more of it a regional thing. I think APAC game developers, largely in APAC will be the ones Web 3.0 native or Web 2.0 will be the ones that really do really interesting things in Web 3.0 gaming that will then spew towards the West. And so I think of it more as a geo-specific thing than anything else.

(20:50):

I do think you will have a massive Web 3.0 game hit the equivalent of Minecraft. The thing about Web 2.0 gaming is it wouldn't be incredibly difficult to pivot when they need to. And then when they do pivot, they would be very successful. So if you could imagine a world, just take any AAA game that is a platform, a Valorant, a Call of Duty, any of these different ones that are allowing people to buy cosmetics and skins, and people are spending boatloads of money doing that, they could very easily start to think about how do you flip on something where there's governance, how do you, true ownership, scarcity of items, and even just put membership passes, stuff like that where they could play in a very low level way of playing in Web 3.0 versus there's going to be other games where people are going to go off and create all kind of different mods and versions of it and communities around it and could start from it being a PFP NFT project that evolves like a Board Apes-esque kind of path.

(21:51):

And so I think it's going to show itself in a lot of different ways. But generally speaking, if I had to make a bet, I would say game developers largely in Asia will set the tone for how Web 3.0 gaming will look in a couple years.

Brian (22:04):

That's pretty exciting. I'm very interested to see what comes out of that region. And just to bring it back, one thing that I, selfishly here at Phantom were curious about is how do you see the role of wallets evolving in this space? Wallets right now touch a lot of different aspects of Web 3.0. I think the gaming space is relatively unexplored right now. Is there anything in your mind that you're particularly excited to see about from wallets and from Phantom in particular as it relates to this?

Ryan (22:30):

The user journeys are tough on wallets. Wallets bear the brunt of it. When you think about bridging and making entities really accessible and displayable all in a wallet, you know, have all these on ramps, it's just very digestible. It's clean. Maybe you start to have specific vertical specific features across DeFi gaming or music as you own these things. Like wallets can then go vertically deep, I think, which would be really interesting. But right now, so many of them are just dealing with this onboarding issue. It's complicated. It really is. It's not easy to set these things up for a lot of folks. So as wallets can go deep and then be really seamlessly integrated into all these different consumer experiences, which it's like, well, on its way, that is an already accelerated timeline. You guys have done great work there. This is what I would like to see for wallets.

(23:18):

I want it to be, my mom can set up a wallet and use it really easily and be like, oh yeah, I mean, here's how I add money to it. Here's how I buy an item. Here's where I can look at it in my inventory. Here's how I easily send it to Brian. That's like when we get there. And I think that's everyone's North Star. And so who's going to do it the best and who's going to do it fastest, I think is what we're going to find out. But look at, you guys have hit a really great narrative in the Solana ecosystem of having this very clean, simple, easy to use wallet. And so you've got a huge leg up already on that because that's what people are looking for and what is needed first.

Brian (23:56):

Yeah, no, I agree. We always saw that this was one of the bottlenecks in the space of getting things easier, getting it so easy a kindergartner could use it. So we're really excited to bring that to Polygon as well.

Ryan (24:06):

I love working with you guys because that's good for us. We want to make it easy to come on a polygon and use all these things and have no problem immediately setting up. And as we continue to onboard big games and different enterprise companies and so forth, this is going to be really important to do. So I think it'll be awesome.

Brian (24:23):

Yeah, I love it. Well, Ryan, this has been an awesome discussion. One closing question we always ask all our guests, and I want to hear your take on this, is who is a builder that you admire in the Web 3.0 ecosystem?

Ryan (24:35):

Man, I've plugged so many of them here. This is a tough one. Gosh. I'd say right now I think I'm going to go back to Midnight Society. It's a little bit of a curve ball, but the reason why is, that team has a bunch of ex Gears of War, Call of Duty developers that are really from prestigious game development. And they've been a builder that's focusing on how they introduce Web 3.0 to the masses, which I think is obviously, I'm personally fascinated by that. And the way that they've done kind of the membership pass and so forth with NFTs, all these anti NFT like, oh, I hate NFTs, blah, blah, blah. Gaming communities really served it up in a way for them to think about it differently. So I read it too, but sticking to this, and I think as we just touched on how we see gaming start to evolve, I look at them as going to be someone that's going to crack what Reddit started to do with the idea of owning out of a PFP NFT, right?

(25:37):

They're going to start doing this with gaming, with general gamers that don't really care about this crypto NFT, blockchain, or decentralization bit. They're not interested in that, but they'll be interested in this concept of having genuine ownership of items and memberships and so forth. And they're going to get introduced to it in a way that is different from an NFT perspective than they ever have. And so I like them as a builder because they're Web 3.0 builders, but they're targeting the crypto naive in a way that's really interesting. But honestly, dude, it's an impossible question. There's so many bad asses working in this space right now. This is why it's fun to be in it. So yeah, you guys and some others fall into that category for sure.

Brian (26:16):

Yeah, no, it's a bit of a selfish question too, so that we can get our next guest lined up for the podcast. I think Midnight Society would be a great guest there.

Ryan (26:24):

We got to get them out, man. I think. There it is. Yeah, I think they're really, really fascinating group to talk to and dive in about gaming.

Brian (26:31):

Awesome. And I know there's no shortage of people we could all list on this, but that's great to hear. Well, Ryan, this has been an awesome conversation. Really appreciate your time. Super excited to see what we can do together to push Web 3.0 forward. Where can people go to learn more about Polygon?

Ryan (26:45):

Yeah, I mean just polygon.technology, right? Honestly, that's probably the best. It's where our blog posts are and all of our updates you can follow then all of our socials that you're interested in. If you want to go deeper on our tech stack, whether you're a developer or just interested, we have all the engineering and technical documents that you would want to look into as well as social and what we've been up to, partner announcements. So I'd head there for all things Polygon.

Brian (27:10):

I love it. Thank you so much, Ryan Wyatt.

Ryan (27:13):

Take care, man. Thanks for having me, Brian.