Web3 Talks: Stories & Tips from the Builders

ZenGo has been the pioneer in MPC research and the most popular consumer MPC wallet in the world. Ouriel shares the backstage perspective of their early days, acquiring the first users, their product strategy, ClearSign wallet firewall, and marketing activities that led to over 700k users (which is a lot for a wallet!). Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/web3talks Follow Ouriel & Mac: https://twitter.com/OurielOhayon https://twitter.com/MacBudkowski 0:37 Who’s Ouriel Ohayon and why ZenGo is special 1:03 How Ouriel transformed from a crypto skeptic to a crypto optimist by listening to a podcast episode in 2016 3:10 Ouriel’s story when he didn’t like any wallets on the market and decided to design his own 5:10 How they researched different options and learned they couldn’t get rid of private keys so started researching MPC (Multi Party Computation) and became one of the world’s leaders in that space 10:25 How does MPC work, why it’s different from a traditional wallet security, what trade-offs does it make and why it’s being used by Coinbase, Fireblocks & American banks 18:04 What would happen when ZenGo’s servers go down and how they protect the company from this kind of events 19:53 What’s the difference between MPC and Account Abstraction 23:38 Why Mac would recommend ZenGo to his father 25:13 How have they acquired their first wallet users by marketing cryptopgrahy before they started marketing the wallet and how do they promote it now 30:15 How do they take care of the user’s security & UX 32:46 How do they make money and what are their plans for new services 35:55 How does their ClearSign wallet firewall protects the users from attacks 44:10 Why Mac believes we can solve crypto security 45:10 Why Ouriel thinks of crypto as an early car industry and the story about Elon Musk’s driving McLaren F1 with Peter Thiel 51:15 What were some dead-end streets that they explored 56:06 Why would Ouriel fix gas with his web3 magic wand 59:22 What could be solved in the web3 mobile experience 1:02:40 What made Ouriel smile 1:04:50 Where people can learn more about ZenGo 1:06:09 Guest idea

If you don't want to miss our episodes, subscribe to our Substack and get an e-mail whenever the new one comes out: https://web3talks.substack.com/ PoolTogether is known as the #1 DeFi protocol that encourages saving. Depositors participate in a lottery-like process where their deposited money can win prizes. But contrary to a lottery - even if they don't win, they keep their money. The luckiest winner ever deposited $73 and won over $43k, reaching a 589X return. How it's possible? How Leighton came up with the idea? How was PoolTogether built, how they got it secured, and how they dealt with the lawsuit?  Here's episode #30: 0:50 What is PoolTogether, and how it encourages saving 2:00 How PoolTogether started as the result of Leighton's research on TradFi tools that make people more wealthy 3:45 How blockchain makes the premium bonds model more transparent and scalable 5:40 How PoolTogether works technically: non-custodial design, integrations with yield sources, random numbers generation, price tiering contracts 9:19 How have they acquired the first users in May 2019? 12:10 Mitigating security risks via reducing attack surface area, no oracle dependencies, non-custodial design, internal testing, bug bounties, investing over $1M in third-party auditors 15:15 How have they educated the market about PoolTogether? 16:56 The story behind Poolies that raised over $1.5M for combating the lawsuit 24:11 At what stage is the lawsuit right now 26:00 What needs to happen for PoolTogether to reach a truly global adoption 21:30 How do they take care of the community 32:03 Why crowdfunding on the blockchain might be a killer app 34:22 What Leighton would fix with his web3 magic wand 36:35 Why MakerDAO & Gearbox blew his mind 38:42 Why was Uniswap airdrop such a magical moment for Leighton 41:20 Where people can learn more about PoolTogether 42:18 Leighton's guest ideas

If you don't want to miss our episodes, subscribe to our Substack and get an e-mail whenever the new one comes out: https://web3talks.substack.com/ LearnWeb3 in 9 months became one of the most popular places to become a web3 developer for free. In this episode, Haardik tells me about its beginnings, crazy growth, building a 50k+ members community & more. Timestamps: 1:15 How Haardik feels running a 50k+ students course & how it all started 2:15 Does the bear market impact people’s interest in learning web3 development 3:24 How LearnWeb3 started in December 2021 as a way to help a friend learn web3 development 7:40 How they acquired their first users via Haardik’s Indian developer community friends & Kacie’s Twitter followers 10:20 What’s the difference between LearnWeb3 & other coding courses 14:59 How LearnWeb3DAO covers the whole path from beginner to finding a job as a developer 16:30 How their “no stupid questions” attitude & leading with an example helped to build a strong community 19:20 Activities that their community takes 22:03 Why hackathons are harder to organize than most people think 23:42 Why it was hard to integrate quizzes 28:17 Why, after working out Twitter, they started to add more events & other social media platforms 33:18 Why they wouldn’t change too much if they went back in time and started LW3 again 34:32 The reason they haven’t become a DAO yet 38:00 Why if Haardik had a magic wand, he would fix the web3 identity problem 42:36 The story when Haardik interviewed 5 North Korean hackers 51:22 Why he loves old-school projects such as Uniswap, Aave & Gitcoin 52:46 Where you can learn more about LearnWeb3 53:21 His guests' ideas

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If you don't want to miss our episodes, subscribe to our Substack and get an e-mail whenever the new one comes out: https://web3talks.substack.com/ WalletConnect is one of the most omnipresent protocols in the web3 space. It’s used by Uniswap, OpenSea, Instagram & 450+ other apps. Today we welcome Pedro Gomes, Co-Founder of WalletConnect, who tells us about the protocol’s history, presence, and future. 1:27 How Pedro ended up in crypto thanks to his fintech experience 3:47 Why MetaMask was revolutionary and how Pedro got inspired to bet on the mobile experience 6:37 How have WalletConnect acquired its first users in 2018 & why was it both easier and harder than starting today 8:25 Why making WalletConnect a neutral brand was so important 9:59 What’s WalletConnect’s product design process? 14:18 How they decided to work on new WalletConnect features and why balancing security & convenience has been so challenging 20:25 How the way they set up WalletConnect let them acquire partners such as Instagram without a business development department 22:17 How Pedro needed to find a common denominator for WalletConnect to build a community around it 24:15 Why transforming WalletConnect into a venture let them speed up the development process & how they built new amazing features in WalletConnect v2 28:50 What’s WalletConnect plan for making money 30:18 What features do wallets miss 32:39 Why Pedro finds cross-chain projects amazing 36:37 His most pleasant web3 memories 38:02 Where to follow WalletConnect 38:40 Pedro’s ideas for guests

Code4rena is a project that disrupts the way web3 companies do smart contract audits. Their community-driven approach made them so well-known in the space that OpenSea ran a $1,000,000 security audit contest on their platform. How does their project work? How it started? And how do they grow it? Two out of five Code4rena Co-Founders came to the pod to answer all these questions. Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/web3talks Follow Sock, Picnic & Mac: https://twitter.com/sockdrawermoney https://twitter.com/realfakepicnic https://twitter.com/MacBudkowski TIMESTAMPS: 1:55 How Sock & Picnic got into crypto from decentralization & security audit backgrounds 9:35 How is web3 security different than web1 & web2 security, and how does Code4rena help to tackle web3-specific challenges 17:14 How Sock got into Code4rena very early 19:40 How does their security audit contest mechanism makes it easy to get great auditors on board & what are the characteristics of the top auditors 25:23 How the community chooses the judges for the contests 27:45 How they arranged their DAO to work efficiently and not get lost in the chaos 35:34 How have they been acquiring their clients 37:00 Story of their OpenSea $1,000,000 security audit contest 39:04 Do they permit hackers to work on security audits 42:15 Why decentralized security audits might be less vulnerable to exploits than traditional ones 45:44 How they've been balancing their two-sided market 50:39 What would they fix about web3 with their magic wand 53:50 Most mind-blowing web3 projects they've seen 58:43 The funniest things that happened to them 1:02:30 Their guests' ideas 1:06:35 Where you can learn more about code4rena

We welcome Twitter anon legend - Bored Elon Musk - who shares his blockchain/web3 gaming expertise and gives a backstage perspective on his new project - BoredBox. Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/web3talks Follow BORED & Mac: https://twitter.com/BoredElonMusk https://twitter.com/MacBudkowski TIMESTAMPS: 2:38 How Hyperloop inspired him to start a Bored Elon Musk account 4:41 How money transfers & running an anon account got him into crypto 7:35 What BoredBox is and how it was inspired by old-school gaming experiences 11:20 What’s the BoredBox business model 13:05 What’s their process that helped to protect their product from NFT flippers 17:00 How game NFTs are similar to gaming experiences from the 90s and today 18:15 How choosing the right segment of gamers helped them acquire users despite the bear market 23:15 How do they curate the right games 25:58 Why so many blockchain gaming models are not sustainable 29:24 How is blockchain gaming evolving 31:30 What’s the most significant difference between regular gaming and blockchain gaming 34:10 Why making your NFT assets like a magic sword usable in multiple games makes more sense than it seems to 36:37 How NFTs unlock new gaming business models 38:39 What are the biggest mistakes and coolest things in web3 gaming 40:28 How games have been onboarding people to new technologies 41:50 What one thing would he fix in web3 44:00 Most mind-blowing web3 projects he has seen 46:51 Where people can learn more about BoredBox 47:35 Ideas for the guests

Zapper is one of the most popular crypto apps. And on Thursday, they published the v2, which transformed Zapper from a portfolio tracker into a web3 exploration tool. I talk with Seb about their early days, management & growth tactics, v2, and... art. Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/web3talks Follow Seb & Mac: https://twitter.com/sebaudet26 https://twitter.com/MacBudkowski 1:57 How Seb got disillusioned with finance and started building, which led him to Ethereum, DeFi, and the idea of Zapper 4:25 First days of Zapper and integrations with Uniswap and Synthetix 6:04 How hard it was to query information on-chain 7:13 How Seb came up with the idea of Zapper v2 and why they bet on it 10:54 Zapper as a social media for investors and a better exploration tool than Etherscan 14:27 What’s the process behind Zapper’s slick design 17:18 How they organized Zapper to ship fast 20:20 Why they don’t have QAs in Zapper 21:57 How have they chosen the market to build on 24:55 How networks effects helped them to grow 26:05 How they decided which protocol to integrate and what helped them grow the most 28:20 What NFT and DAO-related user acquisition strategies do they use right now 31:42 Why Seb thinks founders and DeFi protocols focus too much on marketing 33:33 Biggest fuckups they had 35:45 How does Zapper make money 37:58 What would Seb fix about crypto and web3 40:30 Why web3 builders develop a thick skin 41:42 How a metaverse billboard and generative arts inspire him 47:00 What was the most fun web3 thing that happened to Seb 48:20 Crypto Twitter making the Internet fun again 50:23 Where people can find more info about Zapper 51:00 Guest idea - Founder of Interface 52:30 How I found $500 in my Zapper account

If you're a Metaverse skeptic, this episode might change your mind. I talked with Anton, whose apps have built metaverse since 2016, so long before this word became popular. And they make $30M/year. How it's possible? Check out the episode! Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/web3talks Follow Anton & Mac: https://twitter.com/antonber https://twitter.com/MacBudkowski 0:37 Intro 1:27 Quick history of Pocketworlds and HighRise 2:30 How did Anton get into web3, and why did they add web3 to their web2 app making $100M/yr in transaction volume 5:10 How Mac got hooked to HighRise 5:55 Who’s the typical user of Highrise and Everskies apps, and why do they use them? 8:04 Why avatar chats and Second Life didn’t take off and why people might get into metaverse now 11:15 Monoculture vs. Subcultures in the Metaverse 13:08 Why focusing on subcultures might work 14:19 Why their first two apps didn’t work out, and how did they use paid acquisition to get the first HighRise users 17:00 Why their retention curve goes against common knowledge 19:37 How they learned who was the 5% of the most engaged users and why 10% of their employees are former users 21:10 Why web3 is a good fit for their users and how they convinced them 21:35 How they sold out their NFT collection in 30 seconds by making millions of $ and becoming top5 collections on Immutable X despite the UX hurdles 23:40 How Mac realized that Metaverse makes sense 27:20 Metaverse is like Burning Man - focused on self-expression and interactions where you can be who you want to be 29:30 Two methods of letting users generate the content in Highrise and Everskies 32:55 How Anton’s friend makes millions of $ a year by making content in Second Life 34:30 How they want to let people earn revenue and why he’s more interested in this world than Axie Inifity’s model 35:15 How do they make their $30M revenue/year, and how it’s going to change with web3 <36:10 cut how they’re transitioning into web3> 37:40 Is Anton scared about risking their current business model during the transition 39:46 Hardest things about running a consumer app 42:45 Why they didn’t give up despite the two failed projects 43:45 What would Anton fix about web3 46:16 The most mind-blowing projects Anton has seen 48:00 His experience during Axie Infinity summer 49:29 How would he fix Axie Infinity to make it more sustainable 51:05 People spending time vs. spending money on the games 54:27 Guests ideas - people from Immutable X & MiniRoyal FPS game on Solana 55:30 Why it’s hard to transition to a sustainable model for STEPN 56:30 Where people can learn more about PocketWorlds

Dennison has been in crypto for over 10 years. He has been heavily involved in DAOs before most people even heard about them. In this episode, he shares lessons from seeing 100s of these organizations. Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/web3talks   Follow Dennison & Mac:  https://twitter.com/DennisonBertram https://twitter.com/MacBudkowski TIMESTAMPS: 1:00 How Dennison got into crypto in 2011, why he got hooked, and what he built 4:40 Why he focused on governance and built Tally: From Magic Internet Money to Magic Internet Society 7:51 What does Tally actually do, and how they’re different from Snapshot 15:15 How communities use Tally 17:30 What convinced their first users to use Tally 20:02 How they’ve been promoting Tally among the users 22:10 When it doesn’t make sense to build a DAO 27:10 What are the most effective DAOs out there 31:40 Governance models that worked in Tally and DAOs + when it makes sense to start a DAO 39:21 Biggest challenges for DAOs 44:05 Why he wants legal clarity for crypto 45:32 Why Ethereum, Uniswap, and DAOs blew his mind 47:57 Why he found NFTs’ success so funny 50:34 Guests ideas 51:40 Where can you learn more about Tally