Mariano Conti | Layer Zero

welcome to layer zero layer zero is a podcast of unscripted conversations with the people that make up the ethereum community crypto is built by code but it's composed by people and each individual member of the community has their own story to tell cypherpunks understood that the code they write impacts the people that use it and layer 0 focuses on the people behind the code because ethereum is people all the way down and it always has been today we're talking with mariano conte who is one of my best friends in this

space absolutely and is one of the most foundational builders i would say he worked at the maker foundation working on basically all aspects of the maker dial contracts but he got actually into ethereum before ethereum was even a thing so he was one of the first people to live a bankless life if you will and uh started receiving money for his code uh in bitcoin uh and that's how he got introduced into the whole bitcoin space and a lot of people know

mariano's story it's he it's his story so every time he goes on to a podcast and anyone ever asks like hey mariano how'd you get into crypto he tells the story uh but as soon as mariano and i are done having reflections about the current state of crypto in 2021 i start at that point in the story uh where he got into crypto but then i start going backwards not forwards uh and which is something new that i haven't heard before out of mariana's background uh and then of course we finished right where we left off uh back around to the current state of crypto in 2021 but this time with a different angle i hope you

guys enjoy the conversation with mario and ocanti but before we get there a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make this show possible bankless is proud to be supported by uniswap uniswap is a new paradigm in asset exchange infrastructure instead of a cumbersome order book system where trades are matched with other humans uniswap is an autonomous piece of software on ethereum which is what ryan and i call a money robot no human counterparties or centralized intermediaries just autonomous code on ethereum input the

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hey mariana how's it going hey david it's been a long time yeah it's been a long time since i've seen you in that particular room yeah yeah i've been missing this one it's uh it's weird after a year and a half of seeing myself talking to others with this background uh then i spent what like more than three months uh away yeah away from home away from argentina so where where el everywhere in the

world did you go before you came back home to argentina uh i did the us a lot um road trip from miami to san francisco uh went to see france in seattle went back to miami uh did a little stop somewhere in the u.s for something then i think at the paris mexico uh punta mita which is like a nice place in mexico it's a a beach resort

then what else then miami again then denver then new york then a fourth time miami and then back to buenos aires yeah uh you know it was uh it was weird i we were just traveling with my girlfriend and miami was the original destination and we had the return tickets there so uh it was like our our hub in the us and uh oh my god yeah i left at a different time that my

girlfriend so miami became our our yeah like our center in the us even though it's the place probably that i uh you know traveled the least inside i just stayed in the hotel the whole time but yeah it was interesting interesting months out of all of these travels that you've done recently how much of it was crypto specific or crypto travels and how much of it was like just like mariano exploring the world uh i think it was almost half was crypto or a little bit less than

half so the original idea was just to do the the road trip right to rent a car and drive it from miami to to san francisco and we did that and on the on the road i met a few crypto friends but that wasn't you know uh the the main idea for the road trip so in a couple of places i don't know in vegas i went to see a meme at his uh uh you know lair [Laughter]

i saw i think i saw hudson and the johnny from element in dallas uh but they were like sporadic you know the main idea was was traveling uh and but then after yeah uh you know hcc in paris that was entirely crypto m-con in uh denver and then you know mainnet and the doge party in new york that was 100 crypto mexico i was

supposed to see uh the some somebody from the crypto community there but in the end i you know i spent most of the time with family and i couldn't uh see anybody and then i felt bad because uh i got a lot of messages when i said that i was gonna be in mexico from the you know the crypto community there which was very impressive and i lived there for a long time so it's like it's my second home and it was like oh i don't know i felt weird people were

saying oh mariano is coming to uh to mexico city it's like they wanted to organize things and and take me out for coffee or beer or tacos or whatever and they were like oh you don't have a car you're staying for a month i'll loan you a car like do you need an apartment um yeah it was felt like really good mexicans are incredible yeah i want to circle back to that but over overall i want to ask you yeah you've been in crypto since like 2013 or 2014

when you first started playing around with with bitcoin before there was really a big community right uh late 2014 late 2014 so like yeah now now that we are on the other side of kovid how has like crypto in real life changed or how is it different or new now that like the crypto community is hanging out with it with each other post 2020 right like we had everyone the whole entire society all of the world got locked down right we all have to go into hiding and now not only is society

like coming out of hiding and like redefining itself like crypto especially is is coming out of covid but also in extremely different contexts right like post defy summer post bitcoin and ether breaking all time highs post nfts becoming a global phenomenon so like for somebody that's been in the crypto in crypto society for a very long time what's it been like to do in real life crypto stuff all over the world for the past like year or so um first off

it was incredible you know going to paris and seeing people there after that was my first crypto conference after a year and a half um i know a lot of people went to uh bitcoin miami and which you know it wasn't an ethereum conference but i hear there were a lot of ethereum people and defy people there that uh you know kind of co-opted the city and some of the parties for me it was uh it was paris and it was incredible first you know seeing

friends after so long we're uh we're growing the community but you know there's a core that is still like it feels like a tiny one you know just like a group of friends uh who we were defining and creating d5 together uh a few years ago and feels like either we did our thing and and now we're doing something else or or continuing to do it and seeing everybody

in paris felt a little bit like that and then on the other hand noticing that actually the community had grown a lot and there were there were plenty of people who i had never met in person before because they had joined the you know in in defy summer maybe a bit later there was uh the entire nft community some of them people who we know from before that got into it but then also so many new players

and then maybe of course but i don't know why i even mentioned this but it always exists what we call tourists right people who got into this uh during the bull market and you know when we're back to a period of uh peace and quiet meaning that if it does happen right the prices end up dropping again and stay down for a large amount of time

these are the people who will say hey i'm out of here like i was only in it for [Laughter] but all in all i felt that it was still very much the community that i know and loved the the friends we made along the way and uh okay i'm gonna be completely honest from last time

can i say this almost everybody also that's og like got rich i mean let's not beta okay if transparent ledgers are transparent we know this exactly uh so many people do not have financial concerns anymore and this is this is an entirely real thing and and it did change a lot of us but i think like for the better it's um

and it's interesting because you talk to these people like we're all friends we've been through a lot together we've been through maybe one or two bear markets and we spent a lot of time building and we spent most of uh covet uh building i remember when the pandemic was starting i was in um i was in warsaw and black monday was uh black thursday was happening you know uh and

even though we knew that at that point defy was pretty much gonna survive instead of you know the drops in in 2018 and everything uh i know a lot of people that had a had a really tough time and then i would say 99 of uh dogs who who stood by and continue they're yeah they're very well off now and either if they're still continuing to build or not or they're doing other

things uh it's i don't know how to describe it it's yeah community of friends that we now have yet another thing in common and we can talk with each other about this kind of thing that you know essentially changes you in a way and but also frees you it's incredibly liberating you have all this space in your brain and you know this brain power that doesn't have to worry

you know about survival anymore right maybe it's like oh food and rent are taken care of so now we can move on to bigger and better things exactly it's like i'm done with this this part is i never have to worry again i mean hopefully right hopefully right you're not going yeah and it is great talking to two friends that are in that situation and also i see a lot of people becoming more creative uh more daring being able to

take more risks so i think this was just incredible for everybody you know a generation of builders of investors of believers that it paid off for them it is it is decently surreal when we go to these ethereum conferences bitcoin bitcoin conferences too but the ones i'm used to are the ethereum conferences and i look around and see everyone kind of just assumes that like everyone else is doing like

pretty well for themselves right like there's just this air of just like uh what's the word um abundance around and like i'm a little bit i i feel like i should be a little bit concerned because that feels very toppy right it feels like a top signal right it's like okay everyone around me is wealthy like damn that's got to be the top but also at the same time the whole point about crypto is that we supposedly have found ways to

fund this whole thing that's sustainable right kevin milwaukee calls this like regenerative finance right and so like i feel like we're in that uh like schroedinger's phase where like is this a top or is this a new paradigm like we don't actually know but yeah kind of like to your point like what you said like there are so many builders who suffered through the 2018-2019 bear market and built all the way through it that like well i mean of course they made a bunch of money when they come out the other side like they they're the ones when you suffer the pain of 18 and 19 like you get to suffer

the suffer the euphoria of 2020 and 2021 right and but when you look around i mean i agree that on the one hand you see people and i don't know dressed in prada and things like that but i still dress like [ __ ] but don't you also feel like like you know yeah but it is well deserved it's like okay i mean of course we think this yeah

yeah but but yeah yeah at the same time like we we keep on talking about hey like new paradigm crypto is a new new fundamental asset class it's a new economic foundation at the end of the day it kind of makes sense that like everyone who would go to like the ethereum community conference which has been an ongoing conference ever since 2015 or 16 i think like well i mean it's the only way that this would ultimately happen right like the people bootstrapping the economy obviously get financially compensated

for that those actions yeah completely yeah yeah i'm i'm really happy that it happened and like i said this changes the dynamics a lot and in my opinion it it's gonna let a lot of people and a lot of teams you know build differently uh built with more conviction last bull market uh most of us

still didn't know a lot of things and right i i tend to put almost everybody in the same bag and i feel comfortable doing that because i've spoken and i'm friends with so many you know projects inside the ethereum that you know i can generalize of course there's outliers but when i say something in the general i feel confident that it mostly was that way uh a lot of projects they now know like

i'm an extreme ethereum boldheart but even i know that yeah we know where it is going but uh this is an asset class that in the end is still affected by macro by whatever you want to call it and it's not going to always behave the way we know that it should right so and a lot of projects didn't know this back then or didn't prepare for it so you know even the ethereum foundation was

right uh selling ether at the bottom and consensus to you know pay their engineers and pay people and a lot of projects did that and a lot of them were on the verge of of closing yeah a lot of them did close a lot of them did right and but also with that with that scarcity we got things like uh you know moloch down february 2019 in like depth of the of the bear market why because uh

you know i mean cassandra and a few others they decided hey we the community we're gonna take matters into our own hands and if we can we're gonna bootstrap a grand style and just like hand out uh money to projects to continue building and this was deep well little little remaining money that we had yeah yes yeah and they have said yes i'm in and consensus yes uh i'm in

and a few of us in the community that that i'm in pink were like yes we're in and out of that you know exploded a whole bunch of dials and the ecosystem as we know it now so i don't know um i think uh everything we need to make sure that whatever is happening that we make the best of it so i think we did so in the the bear market and i hope we do that in the bull market and

you know projects are now a little bit more diversified uh when they can uh but also extremely bullish when they can and yeah i mean i've never been more excited to be part of this community really and one thing that i think is significantly different from 2017 and why like when i juxtapose like is this the top or is this the nude paradigm points for the new paradigm side of things are the fact that like everything being

built here seems to be much more sustainable than in 2017 right in 2017 it was like spin up a website spin up a a white paper receive like 100 million dollars in funding we still have that sort of like ape tendency and things get overfunded very very quickly but it's on the backs of a much more real and sustainable like set of projects that are being funded right these aren't these are no longer ideas with the white paper anymore like maybe people are still aping in like 100 million dollars into some brand new

thing that just got spun up but that thing that just got spun up is something real right and so like the speculative energy is still there but like these projects that are coming out in 2021 are seemingly much more sustainable than anything we've ever seen in previous bull markets and so like and it's also really important like when we have while i think you and i look back upon like the 2018 2019 and we aren't the only ones and look back on it with nostalgia right like there's a lot of people it was like we all wanted the bear market to end

back then but now with like this maps with mania back then we also are all kind of wishing for simpler times to have this like bear market come back so we could all be quiet and like have a quiet kumbaya community but also at the same time having these builders like you uh and mean and like these leaders like eric connor who made it through the bear market can and then and then provably like did well for themselves after the fact i think that gives a lot of um conviction and a lot of like a lot of

people willing to take risks on to build these new things right to enable and inspire a new generation of builders so that like we went through the bear market so you don't have to right like yeah you you didn't come in when it was like the weirdest time ever to build something on an ethereum which was 2018 and 2019 but you you are here now and like look what look what building did for the people that came before you right uh and so like hopefully that was like the bear market to end all bear markets

uh and we there as a community of sustainable builders we can build things where that indicate to future peoples like hey even if you do build through a bear market you come out on the other side okay and like we've kind of now that we're building more sustainable things like you should be okay regardless i hope so i hope so and and yeah you know one of the things i do now uh you know as an angel investor and advisor is just i talk to projects and

i did this as well with the you know some young founders in right now during my travels you know in paris uh denver new york couple of other places um they asked for my advice and in the end we start talking about the old days you know 2018 2019 because that's what they end up enjoying the most it's like talking about how we built certain things and just so they make sure that

they don't make the same mistakes we did and this is something i i mentioned all the time it's when we were like i look now and it's gonna it's gonna get better there's uh proposals and everything but like maker governance right now uh there's delegation and something but it's just not very easy to use uh it is complicated uh but why is it right when we were building it i would i looked behind my shoulder and there was nothing there was nobody i could

hey uh can we talk about that like we were inventing everything right i didn't know who to base or what to base ourselves on so we just built something and yeah it wasn't the greatest thing but it was the first and then compound came and they uh they benefited from what we built and they built something so much better that now it's it's basically you know governor right alpha bravo and the comp token

they're the uh the standard i would say of governance uh on ethereum projects and others and now i like to think element uh they looked at what compound data now are coming up with maybe governance 3.0 or whatever and so that is what i like to just talking to projects and saying and that's what they get the most out of just like doing that talking about the things we built and then mistakes

we made so yeah i think and also i think when you if listeners tune in to like me and anthony suzanna we do a semi-regular live streams every friday now and then we ultimately end up just talking about the way things were right so we all we everyone who was went through 2018 2019 ultimately always ends up talking about it and i think it's actually important right because it offers like history lessons for so many of the newcomers that have come in 2020 and 2021 just so we it's important to i think

broadcast and advertise like hey what what it was like to be in crypto in 2018 and 2019 when literally the world just forgot about crypto and what they do remember was like the ico scams and not well and because that's basically the only thing there was to remember right um yeah also uh you know yeah back then and this is also why i think that now is a great time to build uh there is still like back then there was ico scams just a white paper and

nothing more and get a ton of funding right uh right now there are equivalents um i've been working on a script i'm probably never gonna release it but it uh i get an idea and the script uses the namecheap api to purchase a domain name uh change the dns to like a server that i have uh create a template for a smart contract for a

10 000 uh pfp nft drop set up like a standard website and then all i need to do is change the css a little bit and i mean what else can i automate uh create a discord create a twitter handle and you know in a day you can have a 10k nft drop and you probably earn a nice bit of change with that if you set it to

0.05 uh you can maybe make i don't know 500 east i know it's crazy and out of mostly automating things but that is that is the cynic in me that on the other hand yeah the the ico projects they were building and they were creating these camps but there was also nothing there there was a maker we were building but we hadn't released yet uh there were only like

five protocols out there and none of them would maintain it you know there was auger there was djing stills right i remember when talking to new people i always look back on like when i got into ethereum in 2017 in early i was like why why was i excited about ethereum i can't remember anything like ethereum itself was cool but there was nothing on ethereum to actually be excited about like if you wanted to go trade tokens you had to go to binance uh yeah i mean

i suggest you go you grab your oldest account just go to ether scan and and go to the transactions and like go through them like from oldest to newest and see see what i was up to yeah no you'd be surprised there's more there's probably more than you remember um i went through this because of uh the ydx and i had an account where i don't remember in the probably

2018 something uh i don't know interacting with dydx i need to double check but you know cryptokitties 2017 ether delta what was it yeah ether delta maybe 2016 even i don't know but like you said there was not a lot and now whatever you're building or whatever anybody's building that's new there's at least a foundation right you already have you know protocols for liquidity for

swapping you have stable coins stable coins have been one of the biggest factors to keep the money inside the blockchain right inside ethereum back then it was oh i i need to exit it's like you had to exit to a centralized exchange traded for what best you could do is owning tether on binance or tether right yeah it wasn't even on the ethereum blockchain it was on omni omni tether oh omni tether remember omni yes

remember it was a it was a big deal and then suddenly and suddenly it's all on ethereum here c20 yeah uh and now you can just if you trust the system right and if you like believe that usdc is not gonna uh rug you black yeah blacklist and if you believe that dai is gonna maintain the peg or luc or uh you wanna be in rye or you want to be in fracks or in um or in

any of the i don't know dozens of projects that now exist there's absolutely no reason to leave and i mostly don't uh you know leave ethereum the only bridge you know the only side chain i played with a little bit is polygon uh and now you know l2's uh arbitrarium abridged uh you know a few weeks to play with that