ROLLUP: 1st In-Person WRU | Permissionless 2022 | Web3 Social | Staking & Wallet Wars

Uh so all the haters, all the doubters, I am a real person. Can you confirm that for me, David?

Bankless Nation, happy third week of May. It's not just the third week of May. This is the best week of May. David, what time is it, man?

It's to the Friday Bankless Weekly Roll Up, Ryan, and it feels a little different for some reason this week. What's going on? Why is this different?

Well, all of the uh rumors of me being a deep fake have dissipated suddenly because we now have proof of existence. Uh so all the haters, all the doubters, I am a real person. Can you confirm that for me, David?

Yeah, no, it actually he does have matter. He does have physical matter. I can actually feel his face.

There's no battery in the back of the head, I promise guys. But look, man, it's been so much fun. This is the first roll-up David and I have ever done in person. And uh we met for the first time on Monday.

There's a lot of firsts going on this week.

This is like a crypto story because people are blown away. In fact, like I think 50% of the people we talk to don't actually believe that this is the first time we met. They they thought this was a s sort of a PR event because we've done God, how many episodes have we done of Bankless before meeting?

Like over three somewhere in the three to four hundred range. Yeah. Yeah. Uh huh. But hours and hours and hours.

But

and I feel like I I like I feel like I've known you already and uh it was just this this funny thing. We didn't meet in COVID, and now it's an opportunity to meet, and we sort of delayed it, made a meme out of it. But uh it was really cool. So

The ball rolling, yeah.

Yeah, uh guys, stay tuned to the end, and there's actually, I think, some footage of us actually meeting for the first time. It's just it's just kind of fun. And uh this was permissionless, David. So if people aren't permu familiar with permissionless, what's this conference? What are we gonna be talking about today?

Yeah, this is permissionless week and Mel Permissionless has uh broken my brain about how a conference can go down. It's a very, very crypto frontier, uh, but also very, very conferency. Uh and so yeah, the the Blockworks absolutely killed it with it with the curation and the uh and the back end. Uh I think we killed it with some of the content and some of the talks. Definitely this has been like it's a first year conference, and it's insane for a first year conference to go so well. Uh so already looking forward to permissionless 2023.

Let me just tell you like uh for a first year conference, permissionless doesn't deserve to be this good. Like it's like it like shouldn't be allowed. And it's uh well, look, it's the best crypto conference I've ever been to, David.

That's really saying something, Ryan.

Um man, but we got so much to cover for you, and I think part of this episode is to update you on all of the announcements that happened at Permissionless because it seems like Permissionless has become a shelling point for announcements. So, number one, we got the birth of Web3 Social. Okay, the Lens protocol release. David was on stage with a live demo. He created his first lens wallet, which is like a decentralized identity protocol, social media, and I'm calling it, man. I saw it this week. It's the first time I've actually gotten super bullish on Web3 Social. So we're talking about that. What else are we covering, David?

Oh gosh, there were so many wallet announcements. One out of Robin Hood. Robinhood getting into the self-custodial wallet game. We actually had a podcast recording with Vlad, the CEO from Robinhood, all about those details. That episode came out earlier this week, but we'll also talk about some of those details as well. Coinbase had a secret announcement which they revealed on stage here at Permissionless. Uh Lido competition coming for out of Coinbase in a partnership with other people in the staking community. What else is there?

Oh, you know, there's not just the Robin Hood wallet, Coinbase actually announced a really cool wallet that I want to tell you about. Someone demoed this to me yesterday and so did Ledger. So this is also Wallet Week, in addition to it being the birth of Web3 social media week. So guys, we are gonna take you through this. Of course, David, we do the weekly roll-up every Friday. So if you want to catch this again, you gotta make sure you like and subscribe. Rate and review. Okay, so if you're listening to the podcast, give us a review. Five stars, help us jack up to the top of the charts. And also, if you are looking on YouTube, make sure you hit that subscribe button, send this to a friend, because we're doing this every Friday, right? Talk market, David. What's happening with Bitcoin price?

Uh we actually had a green week, right?

What?

Yeah.

Why

Yeah, uh we started the week at 29,000. We are currently at 29,800 on Bitcoin, so above uh up almost three percent this week. So uh bloodbath last week, but new normal this week. Uh

that's not getting that's not a change. Let's not get carried away. Uh this is uh could also be the dead cat bounce week. Who knows? Yeah. Uh those who have been throughout 2018, and we know that it's a bloodbath followed by uh just a long, long steady end of nothing, and sometimes another bloodpath follows. I don't know, that's what 2018 was. Who knows what this has in store for us this year, though.

Do you know what's funny is uh a lot of the talks I've heard, I've heard the the bear word being mentioned, right? It's like everyone assumes we're entering the bear market. Uh do you do you believe that? Because I feel like there's so much bullish building news in this podcast that we're gonna cover, and yet at the same time prices are down, and so there's this bear sentiment.

Yeah, the the bear market is definitely getting memed into existence at this point. So I think uh the community is using the bear market word more and more and more. Uh I'm doing it as well. So I guess that means bear market. Um but I would say the bear market vibes at permissionless are totally absent. Uh yes. We have a lot of permissionless talk to get to, so we'll we'll keep on hinting at it. But like no one really feels like we're in a bear market, uh at least in only in the prices. The only thing about the bear market is the prices.

And who cares? Those are numbers on a screen. If you're holding who cares, I don't care about pricing, right, David?

No, we're we're not here for the money. We're not here for the money.

Uh ETH price, tell us about that.

Yeah, ETH price started the week at 1950. Uh we're up like 1% up to uh 1980, kind of flat on the week. Uh who knows what'll be by the time this uh podcast comes out though.

I'll take it, I'll take it. How about the ratio? That's been uh down a little bit.

Down a little bit on the ratio. We lost about one to two percent. Uh not too much there. Uh, but uh in bear markets, ETH does go down versus BTC. It's been holding up up until last week, where it took a nosedive. Uh, but since then we're kind of about at the same, more or less.

Okay, so it's it's not telling us anything specific. We're just we're up, we're down, we're a bit crabbing out, and uh total crypto market cap. Are we still above a trillion?

Uh yeah, we're still above a trillion. Uh 1.3 trillion. It's basically flat on the week. So total crypto value market cap, no change there in seven days.

Do you want to zoom out, just take a quick look at uh macro, at what's going on here? So uh re read this tweet out for us.

Uh $35 trillion in global market value erased since the beginning of the year. That's 14% of all global wealth, including the 1 billion that we lost in crypto. For reference, 2008 was a 19% decline. So those are like comparable numbers. That's kind of crazy, actually.

2008 felt so much worse.

Right.

And we're like within the ballpark, and maybe this goes to nineteen percent, that's only like five percent more. Uh and this would be like a twenty twenty two would be like a two thousand eight level event in market decline. It's incredible.

Absolutely crazy. People that were sitting on cash in 2008, those people did well. Yeah. Those people did

Um guys, we have so much to cover. Uh so much we're gonna talk about some events at Permissionless, some things that happened again, the birth of Web3 Social. David, what else are we talking about, man?

Oh my god, there's so much. Uh an insane number of wallet releases. We tease them at the beginning. Uh like I said, a brand new liquid staking competitor. And at the end we also have like a little photo gallery for people who are FOMOing about permissionless. Uh we got you. Yeah. We got you. Stick around to the end. We got some photos.

Absolutely, guys. We're gonna get to all of those things, but before we do, we don't want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible. Alright, guys, we are back. And just a reminder, you might hear some noise in the background. That's because we are recording at the permissionless conference. All right. And so a lot of the uh news events and important things that are happening in crypto are being announced here on the floor at permissionless. And the first is this I just got done this morning from watching David on the main stage with Stani from Ave, but also the lens protocol. And I feel like I was in the audience and I feel like I just saw the birth of Web3 Social. Okay. And just some history. Um, you know, we're talking about Web3 Social back in 2017. You know, there's this project called PeePeth. They tried to put Twitter for Ethereum, all transactions on chain. Like it sounded really cool. It's just like we were not ready for that. And so I've been somewhat bearish since then on Web3 Social. Like, no, first we got to do the money use cases in DeFi, and then we'll come after Twitter and Facebook. But no longer. Like, I actually see things that are being built. Could you take us through what you demoed this morning with Stani?

Yeah, if you are into Twitter, crypto Twitter, if you're addicted to crypto Twitter like me and Ryan, uh this might be for you. Uh it feels very much like Twitter. It feels a lot like a Facebook profile. Uh and so I was actually given the chance to mint my own lens profile on stage. I now have trustlessdate.lens. Uh so that's pretty cool. Uh and if you if you uh you can actually if you are whitelisted, you can go and uh mint your profile as well. This is on Polygon. Uh and Lensster is a app that is built on top of Lens. So Lens being the protocol, Lens Stir being the uh the uh social media platform on top of the protocol. Uh and it looks and feels a little bit like both like Facebook, uh a lot like Twitter. Uh when you follow someone, you actually sign a message. You don't have to broadcast a transaction. The only thing that you actually make a transaction for is minting your profile. Uh you your profile is an NFT on Polygon. Uh and then when you follow people, you sign verifiable message to say, I indeed follow this person. And that is how we build out social graphs. Uh and so people are minting their lens profiles. If you signed that early message saying, hey, I should own this tweet, uh, this happened a number of months ago.

you have the whitelist capabilities to go admit your profile and so I set up my my put my Crypto Punk as my profile picture. Uh I followed Stani. I I what is it called to do something on lens? Tweeting out what do you call tweeting on lens?

Uh, tweeting on Lens. And it's actually on Lens Stir. Are you talking about specifically?

Yeah, uh we need we need a verb for that. Sonny needs to come up with a verb for that. But I sent out a tweet, TBD for that future word. Okay. I send out a tweet saying just setting up my lens account at as Jack Dorsey did when he set it up his Twitter account way back when. Uh and yeah, so like Web3 Social is underway.

Yeah, what's really cool, and here's the distinction that I think if if you if you're not yet understanding the significance of this because you might shrug it off and be like, oh, we already have Twitter. Uh that that's cool. But the significance of this is what we're talking about doing is we are building on top of a protocol. Okay, so Lens is the protocol, it's decentralized, it's like self-sovereign identity. You own your own profile, okay? You you guys recall David and I were banned. Uh Bankless YouTube was banned last week, and that's because the social media platforms they control our profile, they control our followers, they control everyone who's subscribed to the pod. We don't have control over that, okay? But Lens is the base layer where the creator, where the individual has full self-sovereignty and control of their social media profile, all right? And the app that David is showing right now that you see on screen if you're on YouTube, is just one app that was built on top of this thing. So we're not talking about a new Twitter platform that has launched, we're talking about underneath the Twitter platform, an entirely new protocol and multiple different interfaces. We could have many different versions of a Twitter or something even better than a Twitter launched on top of this. And also, Astani was talking about like the ability to change up the algorithms. So a user being able to maybe I want to subscribe to something that's not so um like ad centric. Maybe I want to subscribe to an algo that that emphasizes public goods. Uh, talk about that a little bit because that is a paradigm shift as well.

Yeah, the idea is that you can have a drop down menu for your preferred algorithm. Maybe you woke up that mo some morning in a particular mood and you can select an algorithm to match your mood for that day.

Bullish today. Is there an algo for bullishness?

Only feed me bullish content. That is something that could be built. And the thing is, like, that can also be opened up to the developer community. And so what the algorithm is, is open source. And so algorithms are free to create and free to upload to your lens profile. That functionality is not yet live. But like, hey, maybe you're feeling particularly rageful one day and you just want to be angry. I don't know why. But the thing is, you have that power. Yeah. And you maybe you're euphoric. I want the euphoria algorithm today.

You know what you know what's crazy though? I do feel like that's the uh the default algorithm of social media is just like rage.

Yeah.

It's just like um and like and that's partially why uh Twitter's gotten so toxic and society has gotten so pop polarized. So I want an optimistic algorithm, right? That's not feeding me advertising. And uh David, you and Stani closed with this, which I thought was was super powerful, where you talked about um we are no longer living on Mark Zuckerberg's property. Okay, this is moving us from the era of feudalism where we had Web2 overlords controlling our property. We own no property in the social media world as individuals, okay? We are in freaking medieval times right now, and this completely changes that. Now we can be property owners of our own social media content. But seriously, Mark, do come on the podcast so we could talk more about how you can incorporate this protocol too.

Uh I did a fantastic panel with uh Christina Bellimitri from Lens Protocol as well as Evan McMullen from Disco who is one of the Disco is feeding data into Lens Protocol. Uh so if you want more on this content, uh I did a panel with them at cont uh permissionless. Uh so tap in for that one.

I can't wait because no one's gonna notice this during the bear market season. This is the time amazing things get built. Uh David, let's talk a little bit more about Wallet Week. Okay, so you teased this, the Robin Hood Wallet, self-custodial. Again, we had a podcast with uh Vlad Tenev, who is the CEO, co-founder of Robinhood, and they are doing something I didn't expect they would ever do. Okay, this is sort of a fintech company. They are they they haven't been all in in crypto. We've actually criticized Robin Hood in the past because it was the case prior to like late last year that you could only buy crypto within Robinhood, and then Robinhood would custody it. They didn't even let you withdraw your ETH or your Bitcoin to your own private key, not your keys, not your crypto. All right, so that is not a bankless path. And then they added the ability to withdraw, and now they are doing something even bigger. Talk about this, David. What is Robinhood launching?

Yeah, they released Robinhood 3, uh, which is a self-custodial crypto wallet multi-chain as well, uh, so that you can hold your own keys and that it's under the Robin Hood brand. So this is separate from the actual Robinhood app. This is a separate app uh and it's gonna they say it's gonna onboard people into layer twos, it's gonna have NFT functionality. Uh they have swap features. And I asked, I asked Flad, like, yo, how do the swap features happen? Is that via the the Robin Hood Exchange or is that via DeFi app? And he gave me the uh that's under wraps. Uh but uh he did leaks leak some uh some uh some tidbits of information. Uh so that podcast came out earlier this week. Uh so if you want to stay uh get into and download it on all things Robin Hood's Web3 app, uh watch a podcast

Look guys, this is part of our DeFi mullet thesis, as you know, and the thesis has always been FinTech in the front, DeFi in the back. And that is what's happening. Now Robinhood is is growing out their DeFi mullet. Look at this this line, David. Easy access to DeFi protocols to earn yield within Robinhood's wallet. So that's kind of cool. Beautiful. Um also did you did you cast catch this uh last week? Um oh this is a picture by the way of us us recording at permissionless setting up

to record.