Web3 Talks: Stories & Tips from the Builders

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/ HopExchange is the leading bridge between Ethereum & L2s. Chris shares the story behind the project, how they designed their airdrop and why they decided to give the community so much power. Timestamps: 1:39 How Chris ended up in crypto and why Ethereum inspired him to build 3:20 The story behind the HopExchange: Auditing, DeFi Summer, and bet on L2 8:29 How they acquired their first users: timing, whitepaper & Twitter 10:07 What they've done to acquire Liquidity Providers 12:01 Methods to separate real users' signals from the aidroppers' noise 14:55 How they tracked down airdrop farmers 18:10 How do they care take of the community as there are only 4 full-time HopProtocol team members 19:54 Why they trusted their community to give them full power over the protocol for the next year 22:40 How they organized their airdrop to make it go smoothly 25:42 Why it's great to have the top DeFi founders such as Kane from Synthetix, Stani from Aave & Stefan from Gnosis on the cap table 27:35 What's the plan for the next few months for the HopExchange 29:20 Why MEV, CowSwap & NounsDAO blew his mind 33:50 Story of Rotate - their community's Sherlock Holmes - who took down Sybil attackers 35:55 Where to learn more about the Hop 36:23 His guests' ideas

Just like ENS lets people link their wallet addresses to .eth domains, IDrIss lets people link their wallet addresses to their phone numbers, e-mails & Twitter handles. But it's only the tip of the iceberg! Timestamps: 1:35 How they ended in crypto space 3:50 What’s the story & vision behind IDRiss 7:30 Five things that make them different from Ethereum Name Service 13:21 What happens when someone hacks your e-mail address or Twitter account linked to your wallet via IDriss 14:29 How they acquired their first users and what worked well 20:32 Our thoughts on professional airdrop farmers 25:20 How they build the community - “Discord is a room full of people” 30:15 The product design which helps to learn more about the users than typical web3 products 31:30 Taking care of the community by making decisions together 32:50 Where they want IDRiss to evolve 37:55 Dead-end streets & hard lessons they learned on the way 39:30 Most mind-blowing web3 project they’ve seen so far - Gnosis Safe & EmpireDAO 41:40 The funniest thing that happened to them so far in web3 space 43:34 Where you can learn more about the project 44:20 Ideas for the next guests

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/ How Auston Bunsen sold his TV for 2.5 BTC? Why did 2017 ICOs inspire them to start QuickNode? How he accidentally made Vitalik think that he broke Etheruem Virtual Machine? And why QuickNode doesn’t care about the bear market? This - and much more - has been shared in our Ep. 20. PS: QuickNode shared a promo code with our community! First 20 listeners who use promo code MAC3 will get 3 months of QuickNode for free!

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/ DeFi Safety helps investors understand the risks of DeFi projects. Rex tells us about i.a. the company's founding story, review process, and the way they get new clients & employees.  1:30 How Rex learned about Ethereum via Reddit & got involved thanks to a hackathon 4:30 Differences between his corporate experiences and web3 7:05 How DeFi Safety started and why they share their reports for free 9:10 The help they got from Gitcoin 10:35 Thoughts on LUNA crash 12:15 Most common safety issues in protocols 16:03 How retail users can protect themselves from problematic protocols 19:17 How does their review process look like, who requests them and how does it help to improve projects’ safety 23:14 Creating guidelines for the users & protocols in a different way than SEC might have done it 25:00 How do they acquire their clients and who do they target 28:30 Why DeFi’s transparency & their auditing process makes it much harder to obscure financial details in an Enron-like fashion 31:58 How do they recruit people in such a challenging job market 33:50 Why they don’t plan to become a DAO 35:15 Why Curve & Yearn are among the most mind-blowing web3 projects he has seen 36:24 How their report on Shibaswap & the response from the Shiba Army made them laugh 37:43 Where can you learn more about DeFi Safety 38:45 His guests' 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/ How EPNS solved the chicken-egg growth problem and acquired their first 44k users? What were the biggest tech challenges & dead-end streets so far and how EPNS tackled them? And what strange outfit have people worn for a VIP crypto dinner?  This, and much more, has been covered by Harsh Rajat, Founder of EPNS in this episode. Timestamps: 1:20 How he got to web3 and how he used the bot that helped him trading 3:23 What’s the vision behind EPNS, his experiences in mobile development, and the difference between web2 & web3 notifications 12:08 Why they ditched (for now) the idea of rewarding people for reading notifications 13:10 How they acquired their first users & partners and solved the chicken-egg problem 16:06 How the Ethereum community helped their product 17:45 How they’ve acquired their 44k users and how do they do it today 19:55 What kind of project can you build on EPNS 22:25 How being a protocol helps to protect EPNS from hackers 25:08 The biggest technological challenges they’ve faced so far 27:54 What were the dead-end streets that have they tried before 30:35 How does PUSH token work 33:10 What’s EPNS’ way of progressively decentralizing to avoid chaos 37:00 Most mind-blowing web3 project 41:12 Funniest thing that happened to Harsh (the VIP dinner story) 43:00 Other builders that could be a good fit for a podcast

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/ x0r is an NFT artist, coder & member of the investing team @ a16z. He shares: how to really learn how blockchains work? Why did he let devs find out the seed phrase of one of his wallets? What lessons had he drawn from his NFT drops? And how his perspective on crypto has been impacted by being a magician? 

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/ Why becoming a DAO contributor is so hard, and what can DAOs do about it? How to make web3 hiring more meritocratic? And how to test your product with big DAOs such as Bankless, Aave & Olympus and build it with them, not for them? In this Episode, Ayyan Rahman, Co-Founder of Gateway, tells us how they help DAOs to solve these problems & why they plan to build a web3 LinkedIn.

How has an idea in a New Orleans meetup turned into a product supporting the financial operations of over 120 crypto businesses? Why do they use web2 acquisition strategies? And how did they get the support of one of the world's biggest CPA organizations? This - and much more - has been covered in this episode. Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/web3talks Follow Gild & Mac: https://twitter.com/giltotherescue https://twitter.com/MacBudkowski

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/ 01:20 What is MemeDAO 1:55 How Raj got into web3 via crypto trading & Atomic treated it as an experiment despite his initial skepticism 04:54 How Raj found that there’s not enough supply of memes in the web3 space & created the first vision of MemeDAO in a day 7:30 What it takes to become a Meme Lord 8:20 How do they protect the community’s vibe against political & cringe content 12:15 How do they help to recognize meme lords & monetize their work 17:39 How they recruit & scale their DAO 23:30 Their NFT-related plans 25:46 How do they get & deliver meme-making deals for projects such as Polygon, Graph & Coinbase 28:45 How much does it cost to get a meme from MemeDAO, and how do they control the quality 34:35 What exactly do they do to grow their community & how to build the community from the ground up 42:45 The plan to become a top-of-mind meme supplier 45:05 Where to find more info about MemeDAO 46:00 Most mind-blowing web3 projects they’ve seen 47:13 The funniest things that happened to them in the web3 space 48:11 Their idea for the next guests PS: If you'd like to discuss Web3, join our Web3 Talks community on twitter.com/web3talks. You will find the link in the pinned tweet.

In Ep.13 Yawn Rong, STEPN Co-Founder tells us: - What they’ve learned from Axie Infinity’s mistakes, - Why you SHOULDN’T hype your project too much, - How history inspired the design of sustainable tokenomics, - What tactic made their Discord grow, and much much more. 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/ If you'd like to discuss Web3, join our Web3 Talks community on twitter.com/web3talks. You will find the link in the pinned tweet.