Michael Kong - DeFi & The Blockchain - Why Scalability Is Key To Future Ecosystem Growth

Full transcript: Michael Kong on London Real

2:45 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose, My guest today is Michael Kong, the technologist, entrepreneur and blockchain developer. You are the CEO of Phantom, a high speed layer. 1 solution with a unique consensus mechanism that offers strong security and long-term scalability. Over the past 18 months, Phantom has seen a massive wave of adoption from D5 applications, resulting in a diverse and thriving ecosystem. You were an early adopter of Bitcoin and in 2018 launched Token Capital Management, which helped Phantom raise 40 million dollars in their ICO.

3:16 Ultimately, you believe that scalability is the key to ensuring the continued growth of decentralized finance and will fuel mainstream adoption in the coming year. Michael, Welcome to London Real Thanks mate, yeah, Really appreciate to be on the show and thanks for the opportunity. Yeah, look, it’s my pleasure, Michael, Super excited about talking all things phantom again. You guys have had quite a year. Massive adoption.

3:40 Top 30 Market cap. You know, people really appreciate the technology, they’re using it. Lots of exciting DAPPs and decentralized finance pieces. We have our own defy academy. So literally, I’ve got my students, you know, asking me the question every day, which is, When do I have to stop paying gas?

3:58 We’re going to get to that at some point, Michael, but first of all, maybe we just start a little bit with your journey. I mean, you’ve had a crazy journey, you’ve kind of been there and done that, you know, you obviously were part of that. ICO Back in 2018, 40 million dollars for Phantom. Later you replace the CEO, and now the last 12 months you guys are blowing up, what’s that been like for you? Personally?

4:21 Those four years, it probably is more like 40 years. What are some of the highlights and low lights? Yeah, so that’s sort of a great question. I mean, kind of my background is like I grew up in Sydney and I studied finance and I T at University. Sydney and I actually managed to get quite a lot of blockchain experience at the University of Sydney.

4:41 Studying with a professor that we’re closely working with to do with, like analyzing virtual machine instructions and essentially like finding bugs in smart contracts. And so, you know, before I started working on Phantom, I was working for a software development company called Blockade. And which is growing up going to be quite a big company now. They worked on like a few big projects, most notably like Synthetic Network Token, or, as it was known back in 2017, it was called HaVen. So that’s one of the big projects that they’ve worked on before.

5:15 And, you know, I, I. I later started a fund, you know, as you mentioned, and then with Phantom, there was, you know, a lot of ups and downs. So obviously, like the project started to get, like a lot of like, hype back in 2018, kind of like on the tail end of the ICO boom, the ICO boom were all these like initial coin offerings that people were creating. A lot of these projects and all of them were, you know, not very good. Some of them, you know, turned out to be actually like pretty good projects in the end.

5:43 But it was, you know, a lot of like, I guess, like, like, like, fast money in that environment, and so, like. Phantom kind of. Did a nice skill on the tail end of that and ended up getting like a lot of hype and traction, which was exciting. However, the problem was that the original team, you know, was telling us today, had, you know, technology that was already built. That was already in testing mode.

6:04 And that was going to be, you know, vastly superior technology to Ethereum because they could confirm transactions faster and more cheaper than, say, Ethereum. And so that got us really excited that this could actually be like a major platform. However, it kind of turned out that, you know, they didn’t really have anything, to be honest. Now we’re just like making stuff up, to put it, to put it bluntly. And so that, obviously, you know, caused a big formula for us.

6:29 And so thinking, You know, what, what do we do now? And then? You know, I, I do have to say that, like Andre, Cronier is quite famous in space. He was working with Phantom right from the beginning. He kind of convinced me that, you know, we can still try and actually like, fulfill the original vision about having this fast, scalable consensus.

6:46 And he had a lot of ideas around it. So we kind of had to build a new team and got pretty lucky in terms of we got some really good hires that are still with us from the early days to now kind of help us build this new technology, and so we’re able to eventually launch. Like, you know, fast, scalable consensus, as was like, per the original vision towards the end of 2019. And so I think a lot of people were kind of surprised because they kind of saw Phantom was like a bad project. You know, just one of these, just one of these other ICOs that took place and that would be forgotten.

7:19 And so in 2018 2019, most people thought that, you know, we were dead or we didn’t really exist. So at the end of 2019, I think quite a few people were kind of surprised that, you know, we kind of launched the technology in the end. And then so in 2020, you know. We started getting a little bit more traction and started improving on the technology and in 2021 is when things really took off. I think one, because, you know, the market capitalization over for overall for cryptos went up, so it was a lot of hyper on cryptos again.

7:49 I mean, two was that the Ethereum gas fees were getting prohibitively expensive, so people were looking at alternative platforms to use, such as Phantom and others. And I think number three, there were like a couple of really good projects that launched on Phantom Like. These, like decentralized exchanges called Spooky Swap and Spirit Swap, they had a great user interface. And so that kind of helped us get a lot of traction where we started getting. Like the positive feedback loop where, you know, we had great initial ecosystem projects that attracted more developers attract the more users to kind of get to the position where we are now.

8:24 So that’s really been the high more recently, and it’s been, you know, really great to see. Going through kind of like a tougher period to a period where it’s now looking a lot better than it was before. It’s an incredible turnaround story and like you said, spooky swap spirit swap Waka Reaper, liquid driver Esther. You got a lot of, I guess you described as almost these fork daps. You know, these versions of maybe some other successful Daps now on Phantom, that’s really giving you this amazing tailwind.

8:51 Michael, How old are you? I’m 28 now, you’re 28. How do you keep the faith in those tough years of, like, 18, 19, you know? Now it looks obvious, you know, your overnight success, but during those years that must have been very challenging, like, How do you make it through those times? Yeah, so obviously it was like a tough period of time, and, you know, you know, I’m gonna be honest.

9:18 Like there were like a number of times where I felt like I just wanted to like, Leave right? Because things were like, pretty bad and things were just very difficult. But for, like, you know, like some reason, I think it’s because I generally don’t like to be a quitter. I generally like to, you know, try and fight hard. So that’s kind of why, like, I suck around.

9:38 And also, you know, just in terms of, like blockchains overall, the reason I kind of got into blockchains to begin with is, in my opinion. When you’re when you’re like working on blockchains, you’re basically like you’re betting against like government like irresponsibility. So you’re betting against, like government monetary policy, whether just a base in the currency you’re betting against. You know, government fiscal policy where they’re just spending a whole bunch of money to buy people’s votes. And so blockchain is like the alternative kind of system to that, because all based on voluntarism is based on building like new applications that are kind of like separate from like government institutions.

10:22 Where it’s, it’s the people that really control those applications. They’re like peer-to-peer applications, right? And so for me, that’s always been like the primary driver. Why I’m interested have been interested in blockchain technology, so for me, I’ve kind of seen the adoption over time. And so I believe that, you know, blockchain is a kind of like in a in a secular bull market.

10:42 Where, like, even though there’s like peaks and troughs in terms of, like, hypes and, you know, and like, bear markers, etc. The trend is clearly up and that’s because the adoption is occurring. And I think a lot of people were kind of surprised to hear that. In 2018, Ethereum actually had more users than it had in 2017, even though the market capitalization was obviously lower in 2018. And that’s because the adoption has been has kept increasing over time as the technology has improved.

11:07 And therefore, in the end, you know, blockchains have become are going to become much, much, much bigger than they are currently. And so that’s also been a motivating factor that I think in the long term. This is a real technology that’s here to stay. And I definitely like, Want to be a part of it? So that’s also part of the motivation that kept me going and that I can kind of see in the long run, how, like you know, blockchains can be used for everyday purposes and in particular.

11:31 You know how a phantom could be used for everyday purposes, and that’s the position where I want Phantom to be. So those were kind of like motivating factors that just kept me going, so I didn’t. You know, I, I, you know, I, I didn’t leave in the end, obviously, yeah, I mean, I guess ultimately this is about freedom, and you probably saw, Well, maybe if I don’t get phantom to work, then people won’t have an alternative than their Fiat currency. That they were, you know, born with or living within their country and all the choices the government makes. And like you said fiscal and monetary policy, and I guess that’ll give you that extra little bit of fight, won’t it?

12:10 In the morning when you’re thinking, Maybe this is something that could change the world? Yeah, exactly, I mean, you know. Like cryptocurrencies, blockchains are kind of the antithesis of government control because with government control, they have full control over, you know, the currency via central banking. You know, they can print the currency to infinity, and that’s why there’s kind of like this Joker going around like, Hey, guys, I identified this like, you know, scam coin, it’s, you know it. It could be like printed to infinity.

12:39 There’s only one node, no one has control over it, except for that one. Node You know, it’s government enforce. Oh, wait, that’s like, you know, Fiat currencies, right? And that’s. That’s a good way to describe it.

12:50 Because the big, the biggest, the biggest issue, the biggest political issue. In my opinion, you know, it’s not like climate change, it’s not about your like you have, like civil rights or anything like that. What it is about is about money, it’s about what kind of money do you want to use, do you want, do you want to use money? That’s government enforced, that’s controlled? You know, that’s not controlled by individuals where you’re forced to use that currency and it can be debased.

13:16 I mean, currencies have been debates for thousands of years. You go back to Roman times, you can go back to the Bible Republic, you know, it’s the same story. And simply by printing more currency, it doesn’t create wealth, you know what creates wealth is goods and services and fulfilling, you know, the needs of, you know, consumers that’s what it comes down to. There’s no, there’s no much magic wand where you can just print like a trillion dollars, and therefore, like everyone’s like, has a trillion dollars more in wealth. Like maybe on paper they do, but in terms of actual goods and services, they don’t.

13:45 And so for cryptocurrencies, you know, a lot of people may find about how there’s a thousand coins, two thousand coins, whatever. And you know, there’s a lot of like, maybe not high quality stuff out there, and that’s fine. That’s just a free market, you know, people will kind of gravitate. People will vote with their transactions as to what change they want to use and what currency they want to use. And so people will naturally gravitate towards the money that’s that has the most value in their mind.

14:10 I mean, I think that’s what’s like, says Law is all about. And so that’s really like a more free market, like voluntarist approach to, you know, to money, to, to, to people’s interactions with one another. Yeah, you make some great points. We had Jeff Booth on the show a couple months ago who wrote an entire book about deflation. And he said, What you just said, Michael, he talked about, yeah, the Roman Empire, Vermont Republic and basically every single government ultimately fails because of, you know, printing money.

14:40 And it ends up in a war, or taking the back of the wealth from the from the from the rich. But it always ends, and once you see that cycle in a long enough perspective, you start to look at crypto a little more. We have Michael Saylor here, he’s got seven billion dollars of Bitcoin, I think, and he. He started to see that paradigm when the Fed started printing money in March 2020, and he thought, Wait a second. I run a public company, I have money in my treasurer.

15:08 Am I being the most fiscally responsible C.E.O. holding it in dollars, or should I hold it in gold, or should I hold it in Bitcoin? And it was great to see his observations. I guess last thing I’ll say, Dan Held OG Bitcoiner was on here and he said, You know, Brian, you’ve talked about freedom of speech. We spent all of 2020 fighting for freedom of speech against some of the social platforms. Then we went and ran for office and kind of had to fight for free and fair elections.

15:34 But, as Dan said, without financial freedom, maybe you have no other freedoms. Maybe the other ones don’t matter, you know, because if they can control you with the money, like you said, then maybe the, you know, the climate change and the civil rights, and the rest comes second, and it probably does. If you think about it, that’s it, that’s exactly right. I mean, I mean, the central banks, they’re the ones that determine the value of the money that you hold right? So, you know, they’re the ones that determine how much you pay for your mortgage, how much your wages go up, how much you pay at the grocery store.

16:08 And basically, you know, when you, when you take all those different factors into aggregate, I would say that’s total control. I mean, if someone has control over all those facets of your life or that economic control over you, then you know, if they have full economic control over you, they have full control over your social life, they have full control over everything and that’s the problem. That’s a problem with Fiat currencies. This is the fundamental problem that people like really need to know, like, understand and know about. You look for history, no Fiat currency has survived continuously, only like only real, like voluntarist.

16:43 Currencies like gold and silver have existed for a long time or nowadays, like Bitcoin and other currencies. That people gravitate towards out of their own freedom, not via government enforcement or coercion that have their own freedom. That’s the sort of money that’s going to last in the long run, and that’s the sort of money that keeps this value over time. And so, you know, people just need to, like, really understand that the big problem is central banking. That’s what fuels, you know, so many, like bad things, so much government control, so many wars, so much debt, you know, because governments don’t like paying, like paying things.

17:23 Honestly, right, yeah, because if they increase taxes, that’s pretty unpopular. If they come back on spending, that’s politically unpopular, so what do they do? You know, they just like print money, right? But printing money is just another form of deficit financing, except the government is just taking away your purchasing power and redistributing it. And so, you know, it is a big cause of wealth inequality.

17:42 Actually, yeah, because the people, because when the government prints money, the money has to go somewhere and it comes into. Like stocks, we all say cryptocurrencies, and so here are the people that own those assets the most. Well, by definition, it’s wealthier people, you know, you’re the people that own the least amount of those assets. Well, by definition, it’s poorer people, and so you’ve kind of seen like they got wider between, you know, the very rich and people who are poor, you know, people who are poor, they have their money and their wages basically just devalued. Whereas like, if you’re wealthier and you own those assets in advance, you know, your wealth on paper has gone up a lot.

18:18 And you’ve kind of seen that in, you know, the richest people in the world. Their welfare has exploded the most during the pandemic years, more than they have in the history of any point in time. And that’s because it’s the government just simply printed money. And so the result is no surprise in my opinion. Yeah, I mean, Fiat currency is kind of a rigged game.

18:38 And the thing is, it’s the most difficult to explain to the poor people because they see that. Check that stimulus check, they see that check from the government. They’re thinking, I really need that, give me more of that, because they’re in this kind of red zone mentality of kind of, you know, almost, you know, basically panic and anxiety that you’ve actually convinced them it’s the right thing to do, even though it’s hurting them. The worst long term and the only good news about this conversation before anybody wants to go jump off a bridge. Is that thanks to crypto, you have this parallel financial system that you’re literally getting to observe alongside of Fiat.

19:14 I mean, when I started broadcasting back in 2011, we didn’t have that when Max Kaiser came on in 2013, we still didn’t see that parallel system. I mean, now, Michael, I’d say a lot of people are starting to see that, and they’re like, Okay, now, this isn’t just talk. You literally have a parallel system that’s showing you an example of deflation in the future. Go figure in prices of Bitcoin right of all these other options, so it’s kind of exciting. That being said, what do we have one or two percent of the adoption in the world?

19:41 We have a lot of education to go, but I feel I feel like more people are understanding this every day. Yeah, yeah, like, like cryptocurrencies and bitcoins have definitely grown, you know, tremendously over the past few years. But it’s still a tiny fraction of, you know, the total value in the world. And only a tiny fraction of people have actually like, engaged in like blockchain systems and kind of like seeing the benefits of it. So, you know, it’s all very much early days, but I’m quite optimistic about it.

20:09 Because the technology will become a lot better, become faster, more scalable, more secure and over time, you know, the adoption will increase accordingly. You know, a big limiting factor is like, you know, is a technology that’s true. There are a lot of things to be worked on there, but I think these are problems that can be solved over time. And so I think people will adopt blockchain technology just as much as adopted the Internet in my opinion. And that’s and that’s just like, and that’s just like, great to see.

20:36 I think, yeah, and it’s great to almost have the Internet as an example of maybe what we’re going through. Because people can kind of understand that. You know, they remember the first experience of the Internet was email, which wasn’t, you know, it was great, but it wasn’t really the full dimensions of it. They remember the learning process, they remember the bull markets, the bear markets. So it’s a nice potential parallel to what’s going on here to explain to people.

20:57 We’ve obviously had this mass adoption of technology via the Internet and mobile, and now perhaps it’s coming with, you know, exchanging value. Peer<Unk>to<Unk>peer. I worked in the banking sector for 15 years. Michael and people don’t understand how much of their life is a financial transaction that’s literally controlled by someone else. And either the bank takes a massive part or the government controls it.

21:20 And once they see that, I feel like we’ll get to the next level. But like you said, it’s early days and that’s why we’re talking about this here. Michael, I want to ask you about Phantom, but I want to start off by. Maybe asking you about a common complaint that I get from my students and now my students, you know, I. I teach them in the D5 Academy.

21:39 It’s like four weeks and I basically just get them through all the D5 protocols so they start off. Sometimes not even having a cold or hot wallet. Then they’re on Uniswap, then they’re on, you know, Ave, then they’re trying to. I’m trying to get them to use these dexes, so they learn by doing in small size. Just so they have the experience and they realize, Okay, it’s a little, it’s a little different, but I just did it and it worked.

22:04 The biggest complaint I get Michael is the gas fees, and I always tell them, Guess what the good news is it’s a free market. We got tons of layer One solutions coming with some super smart people. When I look at this space and you look at the top 30 market caps in there, there’s, you know, among those eight to ten solid layer. One plays that are gonna change the game. But right now people have to pay the gas.

22:30 And you’ve even said that Ethereum’s gonna get slower, and I think you’re right, maybe speak about this common complaint. We see. They say Ethereum is a victim of its own success. Obviously, because of it. We saw massive innovation in D5 summer 2020 2021, but now it seems like people really are thirsting for a layer.

22:53 One solution your thoughts on gas, Ethereum, etc. Yeah, yeah, so I mean, like, like gas fees function, it’s pricey, like a pricing mechanism for like network demand, right? So like on the supply side, you’ve got like the network throughput, or like, how many transactions can network like handle within like a given period of time? You know, like, like, for example, like within like a given second or two, and on the other side of that, you’re on the demand side. You’ve got how many people want to submit transactions and the complexity of transactions over there, like the same period of time, right?

23:26 So you got like supply. Demand curves and kind of the gas price is like, you know, the price of which, like, you know, these two curves intersect, right? So it’s very, very like simple, kind of like supply and demand economics. Because that being said, like, obviously, like, you know how you make the network more scalable allows you to increase on the supply side. It allows you to be able to have more throughput such that, you know, when there’s an increased demand.

23:52 The gas price doesn’t go up, or, you know, it like, stays the same, right, right? So like, kind of. The first thing to point out, you know, is that, like Phantom’s, gas fees are like a fraction of. They are on Ethereum. Like they’re like 1,100 or sometimes like even one.

24:05 Two hundredths of the total gas price will theorem. And that’s even when you know The Phantom is doing similar, if not on, on a few occasions, more transactions than Ethereum network. So that so that in itself just tells you the network is not more scalable. Because if you can do the same number of transactions or more than another network and your fees are a fraction of it. That means that you know your network is able to process more transactions in a more scalable manner.

24:30 That being said, you know what we’re currently working on, which is why I kind of said earlier on in the conversation. You know, the technology is not quite there yet is, you know, we still need to work on more scalability, more scalable solutions. And you know, what’s going to happen imminently with Phantom is that we have this, this technology, coming out, that kind of like it, like prunes or compresses the amount of data you need to store in order to process transactions by maybe by, like, 80 to 90 percent. And so that should allow us to kind of like. Increase the gas per second for the network, so increase the network throughput for the system.

25:04 Hopefully by, like a factor of, like, two to three times, right? And so if we have that increase in network throughput by that amount, then all other things being equal. The gas price should be lowered for given amount of transactions, so I think the gas price over time will progressively get lower. As you know, as the network becomes more scalable. So, you know, the first thing I want to kind of point out is that, yeah, there are gas fees.

25:28 There will always be gas fees because there has to be a way of incentivizing the validators to process your transactions. So just like when you go to a store and you pay like with Visa or MasterCard, or you do any sorts of payments, you know, those payment companies don’t exist, and they’re not worth, you know, tens of millions of dollars because they’re like giving a service for free. They get compensated. Whether it’s coming from the purchaser or the merchant, you know, they’re getting a share of the transaction fees, so it’s kind of the same thing with blockchain technologies. However, the more scalable we make it and the more adoption we get, you know, the more the fee.

26:05 The more the aggregate fees for the validators will increase, but the cost per user will decrease over time. So that’s what we’re really aiming for at the moment. And so we’ve got some like technology improvements that are coming imminently, maybe in like, a month or two and more longer term. We’ve got other ideas that we’re working on, like sharding and other things that will, hopefully, you know, make the system more scalable. And you know why?

26:29 I’m kind of like, really, really optimistic about the demand of blockchains going up. A lot higher is that you kind of have seen on Ethereum. You know, as you mentioned, like a victim of its own success, I think that’s quite true. So, you know, I think a lot more people would be using Ethereum if the gas prices were a lot lower. But the reason why the gas prices are that high is was immense demand to use Ethereum and use all the applications on Ethereum.

26:51 But the system isn’t that scalable, and so the fees have to adjust higher, you know, and they are kind of working on a few technology solutions. But we’re not really sure if they’re going to be able to work in the end or how long they’re going to take. And even then, I think the technology has eliminated how much he it can scale up because they process transactions in what’s known as a synchronous manner. In other words, you know, they process transactions one at a time and they get mined into a block. Whereas for Phantom.

27:20 And what really makes the Phantom technology different from, say, Ethereum, is that you process transactions as they enter into the network. It’s what’s known as asynchronous technologies. In other words, as soon as the transaction gets entered into the network, it gets passed around and validated by the network. There’s no waiting for the next block to be mined. There’s no queuing of transactions or anything like that, and that’s kind of the different technology that makes it.

27:41 That makes Phantom a lot faster and cheaper than it currently is, compared to say, like Ethereum. Yeah, you have a great way of explaining asynchronous V versus synchronous Michael, I’ve heard you say it. It’s almost like waiting for a train to come, I think, and then having to get on the train. Maybe you can explain it better than me because I think it’s an important point. But the first time I actually understand it was by listening to you, explain it.

28:05 So what is your analogy to maybe waiting for a train versus maybe leaving right away and asynchronous technology? Yeah, I think kind of using analogies is a great way to kind of explain the difference. And, you know, help people kind of understand, like how one system can be faster than the other. Because, you know, there’s a lot of technical aspects to like how, like the phantom underlying technology works. But we want to like, kind of Keep it.

28:30 You know, I like kind of like, make it as straightforward as possible for people to understand. So, you know, using a train analogy, say you have like a system like Ethereum. Well, say that you’re like a person, your transaction. So you enter the train station and you have to join a single line queue. So the person ahead of you is someone who has even like, paid a bit more money to win the queue ahead of you.

28:53 Or, you know, they just happen to, like, be entered. They just haven’t come to the train station a bit earlier than you, right? And so it’s a single line. It’s one person after the other, there’s a person in front of you, there’s a person behind you, etc. And you have to wait.

29:08 Say, like, 15 seconds for your train to arrive, so know after 15 seconds. The trains arrives on average and sometimes it can be a bit shorter than that. Sometimes it’s going to be longer. That’s a bit unpredictable, but on average, like, say, 15 seconds, right? And then the train arrives, which is basically the equivalent of your block that gets mined right.

29:24 And so you know, one transaction at a time goes enters into that block, and maybe you know, the. The train carriage is four right and the train carriage is four. That’s too bad. You have to wait for the next block to arrive and another 15 seconds. And so, you know, you could be waiting more than just like one block.

29:44 But the fastest that you can get process is, you know, you enter into the next blocks against mine, right? And so you enter into that block. And then you’re off your way to be confirmed by the network. And then not only that. But then you have to wait for your like five or six other like trains to arrive and to.

30:06 And to basically like, like, come after you in order to make sure that you really do arrive at the other station in the end. Because it’s based on this principle, the longest chain rule that you can’t just rely on like you’ve been included. In one block, you have to make sure that other blocks come after you as well. So it’s like, Yeah, you know, you enter into the train, you arrive at another station, but you can’t get out quite yet. You have to wait for, like five or six other trains to also arrive behind you before you can make sure you can get off the station.

30:35 Which sounds a bit crooked, right, but that you can see that kind of makes the process a bit slow. We were saying asynchronous technology on Like with Phantom. It’s like as soon as you enter a train station, there’s a train that automatically arrives just for you. And the other team would arrive around the same time that you arrive right, that is, you go straight into the train and then he gets screaming straight to the station. And there’s no waiting for other blocks or other transactions to arrive.

31:02 As soon as you enter the train station, you can get out and then you’re part of the network now, right? In other words, it’s kind of like a train on demand, there’s no waiting for blocks to be mined or anything like that. Blocks automatically get generated depending on network demand, so the more networks to man. There is at a particular point in time. The more blocks and the increase in the frequency of blocks that get produced by the network.

31:22 So I don’t know if I can exactly explain that analogy world, but, you know, in that sort of analogy, obviously, when you’re not waiting in a queue and you’re automatically going to a train, it’s a lot faster than you have to wait in the queue. Where you might not even get not be able to get into the next train because it gets forward. So, you know, with one system and when you get processed automatically, I hope people can kind of understand that. That would make things a lot faster. And so that is essentially what how the Phantom technology works and what makes it very different from, say, Ethereum.

31:53 That’s really the core of it. Yeah, I think that’s a great analogy. I take the tube here in London and I’m on the Northern Line, so sometimes I walk in and I gotta wait. Sometimes three, four, five, six minutes for a train. When things were busy in London, sometimes you would get there and there would be 200 people in the station.

32:11 Michael And you’d have to wait for multiple trains to come before you could get in the train. And then sometimes when you’re in the train, they tell you can’t get to the next station because there’s another train ahead of you and you have to wait. I mean, this is kind of the old school London Tube network, which, by the way I love, it’s an amazing piece of technology. The first subway system in the world. Thank you very much, but you know, actually, I know exactly what you’re talking about with asynchronous, because that’s me as a passenger.

32:36 What I would love Michael is the Phantom Tube network where I could go down to the station. And there’s the Brian Rose train. That takes me right to my stop every single time, right when I walk in. And maybe I’m the only one on the train, but, yeah, I’ll sit next to other people. That’s cool.

32:51 As long as it’s moving, you know, that’s fine, so I think that’s an amazing analogy and analogies are important. Michael I mean, I’ve got this saying it takes a village, you know, to raise a child, it wasn’t my saying. But I think it takes a village to raise somebody in crypto. And sometimes they need Michael Saylor to say Bitcoin is digital property. And then Bing.

33:15 I’ll never forget him saying that. Or maybe Rahul Paul says something about NFTs. I think, Michael, you’re the guy to explain asynchronous to people, and I think people probably just understood that. It’s a great analogy to understand, especially when people hear about blocks and they can see that things are slow on Ethereum. Look, obviously, you’re fake, focused on Phantom and the tech that you’re doing there.

33:36 I’d love to talk more about it. What do you think will happen to Ethereum in the next year or two? You know, what will it move to? 20, is it so big? It will be difficult.

33:46 What do you think will happen? I think you’re going to look at the history of, like Ethereum developments, you know, first of all, like everyone really, really is like a great platform. I mean, it was like the first smart contract platform out there, you know, it wasn’t now like six or seven years ago. They were the first ones to design like a like a virtual machine, like a smart contract processing engine. That allows you to, you know, write smart contracts and execute them and have all these sort of peer-to-peer applications like Define entities et Cetera.

34:15 And, you know, there’s a lot of technical limitations with, you know, the smart contractions they build, but they actually built one that like kind of works, right, like people can use it. However, you know, scalability has been a big, big issue and they’ve kind of looked through like the history of Ethereum. They have a history of, you know, like talking about scalability solutions, and sometimes they don’t like, necessarily work out that well. I mean, I remember like in 2016,<Unk>17 people were talking about a different layer, two solutions back then, and they were. I’m often referring to.

34:47 I had a two main, two main layer, two projects, they were rated network and they were plasma network. And so I don’t know if a lot of people would like, Remember these. But they were supposed to be like a way of scaling like Ethereum long term. Because Radar Network was going to be like, kind of like a lightning network, kind of like how Lightning Network works for Bitcoin and Plasma Network was going to be like another layer, too kind of like a side chain. And so that was talked about a lot.

35:13 But you don’t really hear about it at the moment. Because I, I don’t think that it seems like the technologies didn’t really work on me, right? So when there’s a lot of talk about, like if 20 to if 20, and charting and different kind of raw ups you know, with, like, layer. Two robs, there’s three. Like.

35:29 There could be a lot of benefit there, but it could also be like quite a lot of disadvantages there. Like, for example, with optimistic rollouts, you can, you know you can’t just like bridge your assets, you know, from like one rob back to the original chain, like, instantly, you’re gonna wait like a certain number of days. Which is a limiting factor. And that’s because there’s security implications that people can swap between. You know, the different roles, the swap between the main chain and the robs like very frequently.

35:54 And so there’s a lot of technology problems there, so, you know, we’ll see what happens. But I, I don’t think the technology is gonna be ready in the year two. I think it could take, you know, probably at least a few years, maybe five years, and, yeah, it could make the network more scalable. But in the end, I think there’s so much demand to use smart contracts and blockchain technology. Then I still think Ethereum won’t be scalable enough to kind of handle like the big load, which is kind of why.

36:18 I think in the future you’re not going to have, you know, just like one chain dominating your like. Like all the like smart contract transactions, you’re gonna have like a few chains, maybe like four or five. And I definitely want Phantom to be part of that. And to like, be the leader in that and kind of like, have better technology than our competitors. And I think the future is gonna be multi-chain.

36:37 Because that’s kind of what we have right now. You know, we have people that can swap between different chains very easily, you know, for example, like on Metamask or other tools, you just click on the drop down, you can switch between the different chains. I mean, that’s going to continue in the future, because that’s what we have right now. And, you know, people kind of switch between chains, depending on the opportunities that exist across different chains. And so you’re going to see that, you know, say we’re like Ethereum with Phantom with other chains, and so that’s kind of like how I kind of see the future happening when it comes to the different layer ones that are out there.

37:09 Yeah, I mean, strangely enough, I talked to a lot of layer one CEOs, and they all say, Kind of what? You just said, Michael, that in the long term, there’ll probably be maybe a handful of layer ones that make it, maybe each one serving. Maybe a specific ecosystem that you know, for whatever reason, they would have attracted. Obviously you guys are making some serious headway and defy, and that’s what a lot of people think, you know, strange enough, I was talking to Justin, son of Tron, and Justin said, You know what, Ethereum does proof of work right now? Just let them do that they solve that problem, let them keep doing that and let us worry about the proof of stake solutions, he said, also transferring from proof of work to proof of stake.

37:50 It’s not obvious they can do it successfully, and there’s a lot riding on that protocol. You agree with him in that sense, or what do you think, Yeah, Yeah, I think that’s an interesting take. I. I do agree that, you know, it is going to be hard for them to transition from proof of work to for a sake, you know, there’s kind of like a lot of technical reasons why that’s the case. Which is why, at the moment it is kind of like a hybrid approach, right, so you can state your Ethereum.

38:15 It’s like, you know, you need like, 32, I think 32. If you know to run like a validator node, so that’s like the proof of stake aspect of it. But obviously there’s still miners there that are the. The ones that are still have like that are still are the ones that are ultimately confirming the transactions. In the end, shall we say, and kind of proof of stake right now is secondary.

38:35 But, you know, I don’t. I understand why they’re moving to proof of stake, you know, because there’s a lot of arguments in favor, of proof, of stake. You know, it’s much more energy efficient that it’s that’s complicated. It requires like less like computational like hardwood, like the higher the hardware requirements a lot less. And, you know, in some senses, in some sense, it can also increase decentralization.

38:58 Because, you know, you know something that a lot of people in Bitcoin and Ethereum criticize people’s sake about, is the owner. It’s somehow like, more centralized because, you know, one token, one vote. Well, here’s who owns the most tokens. You know, it’s usually not evenly distributed. There’s a few people that own a lot of tokens, and many people earn like, not, not as many tokens and aggregate.

39:18 Well, you, you could kind of make the same argument about proof of work systems, right? You feel like proof of work is heavily centralized, and that because, and that’s because it comes down to economy as a scale. And that’s why you kind of always see, like a tendency towards centralization, whether it’s peripheral work or proof of state. Whatever, like, like proving or consensus-based algorithm. And that’s because, you know, as the economy is a scale, it’s cheaper if you have a lot of money.

39:43 If you can run at scale with a lot of machines in the same data center, your fixed costs go down. Your variable cost can obviously go down as well, for example, your bulk buying machines. And so you do have, like a lot of centralization and proof of work on Bitcoin and Ethereum. And in my opinion, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because there’s a lot of incentives for these big players to also confirm transactions. Kind of in an honest manner because if they, you know, start, you know, like degrading the network, you know, obviously they could lose a lot of money and they’ve invested a lot of money in the hardware.

40:14 So there’s an economic incentive for them to behave correctly. Well, I mean, there’s the same kind of logical approval stake. You know, if you own a law of the network and you start like devaluing the network, you start manipulating the network. Then, you know, people lose faith in the network, there will be less users in the network. And so you know, the tokens that you earn will probably go down in value as well.

40:32 And so you lose money overall. So, yeah, there are a lot of economic incentives. There’s all game theory as like having actors in the Ecosystem act honestly and that to me is what makes like blockchain. So great, right? It’s like all voluntary.

40:46 It’s all people coming together, and it’s kind of like an economic system where you kind of want to incentivize. You know, good actors where they get rewarded, they make money and they have to, you know, provide a service which is confirming transactions. You know, for the users out there and then there’s also like the Developers Award, the build applications that generate users it generates, you know, income from themselves, it generates income from the network. So it’s kind of like a win<Unk>win for everybody. And that’s why, like blockchain, technologies are so interesting.

41:15 I mean, for example, you’ve got like D5, where you know, if you have a smart contract application that’s coded correctly, you know it’s fully transparent. There’s no third party risk there, there’s no counterparty risk there. There’s no chance of like, you know, like a broker stealing your money or a broker using your client funds that you’ve deposited, you know, and prop trading with it, which, you know, we’ve seen a lot of, and it’s a terrible problem with a smart contract. That’s, you know, transparent that anybody can interact with. You know exactly what’s happening with your money and you have full control over it at all points in time.

41:49 And so your smart contract is basically your middleman. Except it’s trans, except it’s transparent, and if it’s Pro is programmed correctly, it does exactly what it’s programmed to do. It doesn’t. There’s no human involvement there, there’s no nefarious activity there. It’s just a computer program that runs secured by the network.

42:06 And that, to me, is what makes the technology kind of brilliant. Yeah, it’s the free market, and it’s ultimately the consumer wins. Michael I gotta confess. I was that middleman on Wall Street and the City of London for 15 years. That’s how I got my job, you know?

42:19 I was a market maker trader in the mid 90s in fixed income derivatives markets. So I literally was that middleman, and with each one of these trades that I put on, I could, you know, take a big spread. And we had a lot of derivative transactions, we were pricing things off balance sheet transactions. And then when I was in London, I was a credit derivatives broker. So I was doing, you know, big institutional deals between Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan.

42:44 And I was also the middleman, which mean I can’t. I controlled the information flow and we made a lot of money. Let’s just say that when I looked at Defy, I thought, Wow, this is these guys and girls are doing the same thing we were doing. But it’s a computer program, it’s decentralized, you don’t have to have a balance sheet, you don’t have to be approved by the Federal Reserve, you don’t have to have 20,000 employees. You know, look at some of these protocols you’re talking about.

43:10 Even the way Uniswap started and Ave. We had Stanley in here from Kulichev, you know, it started 10 people, 20 people coding, putting something out there. And if people use it like you said, everyone can see the transparency. And that’s why we jumped into this market because it just it’s so exciting. And again, ultimately, I think the end user wins.

43:33 Yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, as we talked about, you know, the transparency, but also it’s a lot more efficient, so it’s a computer program. You know that, for example, like with unit swap executes the trades, you know, from once from one currency to another, it can happen like from anywhere in the world. Somebody just needs to have an Internet connection, just needs to have a modem, just needs to have like a wallet installed. And, you know, you can interact with all these C5 protocols, lending and borrowing, you know, swapping from one currency to another, so it’s very, very efficient.

44:00 I mean, like, you know, the number of people say, like, like, Are they? Or uni swap? You know, obviously they have like, you know, developers. But the team size is like a fraction, you know of them, you know, the team size and say, traditional finance. And so that’s sort of like the economies of scale that you see like D5 applications.

44:19 Because if you can build something that’s programmable because then it’s ordered, it’s all automated. The swaps are automated. It’s all based on maths. The language and bringing is all automated. It’s all based on maps, it’s all users just interact, interacting with one another voluntary, so you know that the fees can be can be captured, you know, by the developers and there are savings that can be given to the users as well.

44:39 You know, in addition to like the security of the smart contract and the guarantee that they still have full control over their funds. So there’s a lot of benefits to D5, which is why, you know, I don’t think D5, you know, it’s something that’s just going to disappear. It’s not something that it is just like, full of hype, it’s something that’s real. Which is why, you know, from the beginnings of D5, you know, early 2020 to where it is now, it still continued to grow over time. You know, and say, contrast to say, like during the 1718 period where we had a lot of I.C.O.s, right?

45:10 I mean, you know, if we just had a lot of speculation, a lot of I.C.O.s, and obviously like, you know, there’s a lot of attraction there and then. And then he just kind of died, right? So there’s a big Boomerang boss there. There’s all based on speculation for D5. You know, there’s always speculation, any new protocols and stuff, which is fine because the market kind of finds its equilibrium.

45:29 But over time, you can see for more than two years our DFI’s existed and it’s continued to grow. And that tells me that, you know, it’s not just like, you know, it’s not just like a like, a temporary phenomena phenomenon or anything like that. It’s a real technology. It’s built on fundamentally core principles that are solid. And so it’s going to continue to grow over time and you’re going to see more and more people use it.

45:51 And you’re going to see more and more kind of D5 applications being used and sort of the D5 applications you see on Ethereum. There’s there are sort of applications that you see on Phantom as well. Except it’s just more efficient because you process transactions faster, more cheaply. Which in the end, is what matters. You know, the user experience you know users care about.

46:09 How long does it take to confirm my transaction, what’s the cost of the transaction and is network secure? Can I rely on the network, you know, pro, to be able to process my transactions? And that’s what it really all comes down to. In the end. Yeah, it’s really well, said the user.

46:23 Experience is King. I think Google did a study when they when they first started with their search platform and they did like an A B test with their users. And one search was faster than the other, and people commented that they liked it better, but they didn’t say because it was faster. They just said, Oh, it gives me better results. It does this, but they were the exact same.

46:43 You probably know this, but it was the speed that they liked and the reliability that actually built that user base, right? And it sounds like you’re doing something similar with Phantom. Yeah, I mean, like, as I kind of like, talk to the team as a whole, I, you know, I, I. I like to say, like publicly, as one with and with the team as well, that everything we do. You know, when it comes to like technology improvements, when it comes to like the marketing, the P.R.

47:11 When it comes to, you know, helping people develop a normal application of Phantom. In the end, it’s all about user experience. It’s all about those three points that I kind of mentioned, because in the end, you know, as a good friend of mine told me, You know, you’re developing technology for technology safe, then you just have a research project. It’s just a science project, and that’s fine if you’re just interested in doing research. But if you actually want to run a business, the first thing you have to care about is the user experience and what the user wants.

47:37 And the technology has to be geared towards the user experience and what they want. Because if you just develop technology for the sake of it, you’re not really going to get anywhere. And so for us, all the technology improvements, it’s all about the user experience in the end. And so, you know, having better technology, whether it’s on the core, you know, it’s on the consensus side of things. Whether it’s on the smart contract, execution, engine side of things, whether it’s about having better API services and better servers.

48:04 It’s all geared towards having the better user experience, because if you don’t have that good user experience, you’re not going to get the users. And what is our aim on the Phantom platform is to get as many users as possible. And to get as much graph as possible is to have as much real<Unk>World impact as possible. And so that’s sort of sort of the overall arching goal of phantom and kind of like, What my job is really all about. Yeah, I hope all entrepreneurs are listening around the world, especially blockchain entrepreneurs, because you’re right.

48:32 And we’ve all been at university and we know what a research project looks like. We know what the grad students look like, they’re off doing some research, but it’s very different than the real world. It’s not building a business, it’s not a user experience. Let me get your thoughts, and I gotta curious what you think about this, Michael, because you talked about efficiencies. First of all, when I looked at Defy, it was on May 8th.

48:52 I just lost the race to be the next mayor of London and I needed to find something else to do all right. We’d still been broadcasting with London Real, but I was like, I want to take this in a new direction. I looked at defy, I looked at total value locked. I looked at compound the summer ave. and I was like, This is what I’m going to do for the next 10 years. It didn’t take me too long because I had been in finance and I could see the numbers.

49:14 Those numbers were no joke and it was it was really happening and it was, it was just getting started. What I’m seeing in D5 is this evolution to where it started off. Michael, where Defy, copied typical financial protocols and built them on the blockchain. But now, because we see massive efficiencies and speed, it’s almost like we’re creating new methods of finance that we could never see in the traditional world because those efficiencies weren’t there. We see this with even tokens in a capital structure we see.

49:49 I mean, I had Arthur Breitman from Tezos on here last week, and he said, Brian. When I pitched Tezos to Wall Street in 2016, I couldn’t raise one million dollars. Nobody would give it to me 18 months later, he said. I raised 232 million dollars, and I said, Oh, had the business plan changed, had the protocol changed, he said. No, I was like, Oh, so what changed?

50:11 The capital markets changed, and that empowered them to go on their own crazy journey. But it gave them a capital to build something that probably never would have been built. Fast forward to defy you, give people something super efficient. Those DAPPs are gonna probably build something that’s never been built, and I’m, I’m curious what you think here, Michael, We’re seeing some new D5 apps come out with, like some fascinating things going on last comment I’ll make before I get your thoughts when I looked at, for example, on compound in the D5 summer, you know, giving away tokens for people that use the protocol. You know, when I worked on Wall Street, I had brokers right and they would bring me deals and bring me business.

50:49 A broker never called me up and said, Guess what? If you do more business with me, I’ll give you equity in my brokerage company. You know, like tokens they would have never been heard of, they would give me a steak dinner. I got tickets to the Knicks game on the floor, sometimes in front of Madonna. That was good, but I never got ownership of a protocol.

51:07 So we’re already seeing some amazing developments and I think much more is coming things we probably can’t even imagine because of the efficiencies you’re creating. What are your thoughts on that? Michael Yeah, for sure. I mean, like one of the applications that you kind of see in D5, which we, which you can’t really see in traditional finance, was that. Too many friction points are like the order compounders, right?

51:30 So these are smart contracts where you know you, you like, you participate in a protocol like, say, like a lending and borrowing protocol. And then when you generate like your income, like via like tokens or whatever it might be, you know. If you manually want to reinvest and compound your returns, know you have to take out the money that you’ve earned and you have to like, restake it and continuously do that on a manual basis, and you know, that takes up time, it’s a bit slow. So what does all the compounders do? Is that you, you, you deposit your, or you give permission to these smart contracts that automatically do that for you.

52:05 So and they do it as such frequency that it becomes really efficient. So, for example, on the Phantom Network, we have a few auto compounders that literally like recompound your investments. I think like every like 10 or 15 minutes, or even more frequently than that. And for in the real world, you know, you can’t really, really do that, you know, for example, you generate like an income, you know, divided by like a dividend or whatever like you have to like manually like, reinvest it. Or like the frequency of, like, the returns that you get.

52:35 You know, it’s like, maybe, like, every six months, or maybe like every quarterly. And so if you want to compound in the traditional finance world, there’s a lot of friction points, there’s a lot of brokerage points. It just takes a lot of time and it’s not possible to do like the sort of auto compounding like we have, for example, like with D5. And so that’s like a really, really powerful feature of D5. You know, that basically just makes things more efficient.

52:57 Minimizes, costs, saves time for the individual user, and, you know, just allows them to compound like wealth more efficiently. And there’s also like a few other applications, you know that I haven’t really seen take off, which are kind of like D5 related. I haven’t really seen takeoff on phantom offer chains. And that’s, for example, like ideas are like group based insurance, which is something that I haven’t heard people talk a lot about. And it’s the whole idea of, you know, with an insurance company, you have like a middleman, right?

53:24 So you have like the people who pay the premiums you have, for example, the big insurance company that, like does all the work and it’s very bureaucratic, has a lot of employees. And you know, they, they take a larger the premiums and then they do payouts. And the problem with that kind of model is that there’s kind of a bit of a moral hazard. What are some of like problems? One is that it’s kind of inefficient because you have this big like middle man.

53:45 That consumes a lot of resources. And in terms of, like, you know, everyone’s seeing the number of employees and the systems that they have. But also when people want to make claims for insurance. They’re kind of incentivized to claim a lot more than what necessarily they might need to do. And so there’s a lot of like overclaiming insurance.

54:03 I’ve I. I’ve heard and seen stories in Australia, in the U.S. in the UK. And just like so many different scenarios, whether it’s like car insurance or home insurance or anything like that, you know, there’s always incentive to over claim because you always want to get as much money as possible. And the person you’re working with, like, you know, the mechanic or whoever it might be. They also want to maximize the return for themselves, and so they’re always incentivized to overclaim.

54:26 However, if you kind of like, have a group-based insurance model where it’s peer<Unk>to<Unk>peer, where people, collectively your friends and your family deposit money into an insurance pool. and they’re the ones that kind of like. Validate your claim, whether it’s legitimate or not, at books we can have like a jury system and people get paid for validating people’s plans. You know, then you’re much more incentivized to claim only what is necessary to claim and only claim something that you really want to claim. And not something that’s kind of frivolous, right or not, not really worth claiming, because you’re held a lot more accountable to your friends and your family, you know, and so a lot of that.

54:57 This functionality can be coded into smart contracts. We can have, you know, a lot of these like systems in place to kind of replicate what you have in big insurance companies. But you don’t have the big overheads you don’t have the moral hazard of, like, overclaiming your account. Everyone’s accountable to each other and the poor. You know, you’re less incentivized to kind of like, You know, screw over your friends and your family because there’s a disincentive to do that.

55:19 And so you’re more incentive, to be honest, and therefore people’s premiums because of the efficiencies and the more honest system, people’s premiums go down on average. So that’s kind of like, theoretically in my head, kind of like what I think is a great use case for blockchain technology, but something we haven’t really seen take off. But it’s definitely something that you can that can work in blockchain technologies that you wouldn’t really be able to replicate in a traditional system. You know, because how do you get that level of transparency where it’s very difficult? Because if someone’s running like a centralized third<Unk>party app, you know, you kind of have to trust the information there.

55:49 You have to trust the system. And so it’s not as reliable as say, like having it on a blockchain system or having that functionality built into smart contracts. So that’s kind of like a like an idea that I kind of had that I kind of like to see happen in the blockchain world. Yeah, I hope someone’s listening. And we’ve heard a lot of great visions and ideas about insurance on the blockchain.

56:10 But like you said, we haven’t seen it really executed yet. There’s a couple versions, but I hope someone really runs with that. Maybe that’s something we’ll see, I don’t know, maybe next year we’ll just have to see. But yeah, tremendous, tremendous inefficiencies that can be taken out of the system and with the blockchain. You know, it’s a great way to quantify an event and make sure that it’s real and it’s triggered.

56:32 So, yeah, that’s super exciting stuff. Michael, I want to ask you about the other Layer One solutions, because you’re here, and I’ve been fortunate enough to speak with. I wouldn’t call them your competitors because they don’t call each other competitors your peers. Let’s just say that in layer One because there’s some amazing work being done. And again, I think we’re all winners because of the hard work that you guys have been doing for the past three, four years.

56:56 But I still want to ask who’s right, because everyone has a new consensus mechanism. Everyone is trying to bring these new efficiencies and I’m trying to find out you know who’s going to win or who’s right. And so how would I explain the difference between you know what you’re doing at Phantom versus what I had? Mance Harman from Hedera Hashcraft here last Friday, I talked to Sylvia McCally of Al Grant, I talked to Goonsyr of AVAX, I talked to Justin Sunatron. All of you are layer One solutions trying to provide more efficiency, which is amazing.

57:32 Each one of these people super smart, also very deep into computer science, algorithms and finance. What happens as far as who wins, can everyone win and what makes you different from the others? Yeah, so, so that’s a great question. I mean, if, in terms of, like, you is like, point guard, like, right in the end, I mean, I guess what it, what it really comes down to is, you know, what system is the most efficient and the most secure, right? Because it’s all about, like the user experience, it’s all about, you know, how do we maximize, you know, transaction throughput How do we minimize transaction confirmation times?

58:10 How do I minimize fees and how do we maximize security? And you know, the answer is, you know, but I, I don’t know. Like, ultimately, what is the quantum code like best blockchain technology, the most scalable and most secure in the end? Because a lot of this space, you know, is very, very new, and there’s a lot of innovations taking place, right? And then people have taken like a variety of different approaches to like different degrees.

58:33 And so I’m not sure exactly you know what like style of technology will work in the end. But in my mind, I think it’s kind of clear that you need to have a system that’s like, first of all, like asynchronous in terms of processing transactions like we talked about earlier because to me. Logically, that leads to or automatically like, much, much higher transaction throughput and much lighter, much lower transaction confirmation times. However, the big difficulty of that sort of technology was How do we get? How do you get that final ordering of transactions across all your nodes?

59:05 Because one of the key properties of making a blockchain secure is that across all the nodes or order participants in the network, the Ledger has to be exactly the same. It can’t be like 9999 the same, it can’t be 9999, nine percent the same. It has to be exactly a hundred. And so that’s what we spend a lot of time developing. And that’s that was the biggest challenge for us in the network.

59:27 Actually, not having the network, not as having network Asynchronous actually wasn’t that difficult. What is difficult is having that audio transactions in the end, right? And so, you know, I think asynchronous technologies are very important in that, you know, there’s talk about, you know, having like multiple chains like executing different like types of transactions. Like, for example, you might have one chain that executes like smart contracts, and you might you might have another chain that kind of executes, you know, just account or account transfers like non<Unk>Smart contract transactions, which has a lot of advantages and also disadvantages. But in the end, you know, we’ll kind of see what like really works in the end.

1:00:04 But I think super long term, like the way that you get blockchains to scale. You know, from a few million users to like a billion users, or as big as the Internet is, you have to be able to what’s known as horizontally scale. In other words, you have to have a technology that can keep scaling as users increase. That won’t have like a certain limit, because right now we have a limit in terms of scalability because of what’s known as a blockchain trilemma. And it’s sort of like a trade-off between these three factors where you can only really maximize two of them.

1:00:31 And that’s like availability, speed and decentralization, right? And so what we mean by that is that, you know, for example, even network that’s really, really fast and available. Maybe it’s not gonna be that decentralized, right? And like a simple example of that, is like a single database, right? Like, really, really fast.

1:00:51 You know it can be available, but it’s, you know, it’s obviously not decentralized. And so you always have these like cradles to take base. And that’s because, fundamentally, the biggest problem with blockchain technology is that when you replicate, when you, when you have a consistent ledger across, like, like any number of nodes and for phantom units, there’s 55 or 56 validating nodes. You have to replicate the transaction on every single node. And so obviously, like when you have to replicate the transaction on 56 computers, it’s slower than if you replicate the transaction on a single computer.

1:01:23 And so if you can find a network, if you can find a solution such as sharding, that can kind of break up the processing across. You know, just a few computers, and so on many computers, and they sort of like, Bring the shots together into like a single chain. And you have a lot of like proofs and a lot of like algorithms that kind of like. Verify that your the transaction, then the data is true. Then you can scale the network infinitely because it means that you can always break up the network.

1:01:51 The transactions into more and more chunks to like the AMP degree. So in my opinion, the only long-term solution, theoretically to my understanding, is going to be some form of sharding. Some form of bring up these the network into like, multiple parts and bringing it together, because that’s how you kind of solve the blockchain trailer. Because if you don’t solve the blockchain trailer in the end, you’re never going to get. You know, to scalability levels on the same path, say the Internet.

1:02:17 Yeah, that’s what kind of makes you unique. Michael, You’re you always seem to be thinking scalability, and even though you guys are, you know. 1, 200th of the gas of Ethereum. You’re thinking it’s got to be faster, it’s got to be faster. And you’re thinking that billion users, which means it’s got to be a thousand times, ten thousand times faster and cheaper.

1:02:36 Otherwise you, you’re thinking, What’s the ultimate point? because it will never get to where it needs to be. Is that something is that the monkey that’s always on your back is that what keeps you awake every night? Yeah, exactly, I mean, you know, right now, say with the Phantom Network, we’ve got a few hundred thousand like a couple hundred thousand users, like on a daily basis, right? Which is nice, which is some growth. But obviously, like a few hundred thousand users is off, you know, 10 million, it’s not 100 million, it’s not a billion users.

1:03:04 And so if we want to get to that, millions of users, or even like a billion users. The network has to be a lot more scalable than it currently is. You know, and you’re not going to get there if you’re still within the blockchain traveler. TRILEMMA I mean you, you may get, Yeah, I’ve increased performance. And you may be able to like optimize the trade-off in this blockchain translator.

1:03:24 But you’re ultimately still going to reach limits of some kind. Because you still have the fundamental problem of having to replicate a lot of the transactions on multiple computers. So if you can find a way of avoiding that sort of system, or having a clever way where you still maintain security, you still maintain decentralization. But you can kind of divide up the network across different computers. Then it definitely allows you to get a much more scalable network that can handle those, like millions of users, where we want to be.

1:03:51 In the end, because, you know, I, I don’t want, you know, phantom or blockchain technology. Just to be like a niche in the corner that a few weirdos use that, you know, it’s just kind of seen as like an interesting phenomenon, but it’s not scalable enough to ever get that big. But it’s just sort of just like, you know, like thing, that kind of exists in the corner as the rest award continues. I want, you know, blockchains to be part of the future and I think it will be part of the future. I think these technology problems can be solved.

1:04:17 It’s just a matter of time. It’s just a matter of putting a lot of hard work into it and, you know, the different approaches by different projects. And we’ll kind of see what wins in the end. And in my opinion, like I’m not really dogmatic as to like, Okay? Our technology has to be a certain style or anything like that, you know, because that’s the way I like it.

1:04:33 It’s more like, Okay, what is the thing that achieves speed, scalability, security? And if it’s not, if it’s another technology that’s entirely different from phantoms, I would want phantom to kind of use that other technology. Because in the end, what matters to me is that user experience. I don’t really care. Necessarily as like the style of the technology.

1:04:51 Or what sort of algorithms, as long as the algorithms just kind of like, achieve that user experience, aim in the end, and that’s what we’re really aiming for here. And time is a real factor because you got to keep pace with these other layer ones and you guys can’t afford. You can’t drop off because then you lose long-term relevance, so there’s a real pressure to make sure you keep developing and keep growing. because in this space you can’t really be out of the game for probably even months. Is it?

1:05:20 Am I right? Yeah, Yeah, exactly right? I mean, it’s a race, you know, it’s a competition, you know, it’s a race. In terms of adoption, it’s a race in terms of getting better technology out there. So, you know, some of our layer ones, which I would say, you know, are somewhat competitive because we’re all competing.

1:05:36 You know, to be number one to be the most used chain. But in other respects, wars are not competitors. Because we have that multi-chain future. That’s coming about where, where, like multiple, where like users tend to use multiple chains. They don’t just use Phantom, they don’t just say use avalanche or Solana or Algorand, or just Ethereum, they tend to use multiple chains.

1:05:55 And I think that’s what we’re seeing right now, and that’s what we’re going to continue to keep seeing in the future. So in that respect, we’re not competitors. We’re kind of like, all in it together, right? Here’s a particular phrase. But at the same time, you know, like we all want to be number one.

1:06:10 And so it is a race in terms of technology. And that’s why I’m really focused on hiring more people to work on. You know, consensus problems to work on a better, smart contract execution engine to work on ideas that are like kind of harder, like sharding. And so a big focus of the foundation is improving and building that underlying technology. And so that is probably like the number one goal in my head at the moment.

1:06:34 You mentioned Solana. Does user experience Trump decentralization? Because we saw massive growth in Solana? And you have to admit their user experience is pretty amazing, and it’s probably why a lot of people are using it. For NFTs and other things, the criticism they get is obviously maybe the centralization.

1:06:51 The network’s gone down a little bit, but that doesn’t seem to stop it from getting masses of user adoption. Obviously, you’re obsessed with user experience, just your thoughts on what they’re doing, what you can learn from them or the criticisms. Yeah, I mean, you know, the number of like their one, you know, like projects out there that really, really are not like that. Decentralized, to be honest, right, and Celine is one of them. That’s not really that decentralized now.

1:07:17 To be fair to them, you know that they said that they’re working on improving the technology and they’re working about, you know, improving decentralization. So being able to, you know, you know, having them, you know, have a lot more like nodes on the network. So they become, like, more decentralized. So they are like they said that they’re working on that, to be fair to them. But right now, yeah, it is quite centralized because it’s just a few people running nodes.

1:07:41 Okay? And they also had a lot of network problems for some reason with it or the other where they continuously go down. Particularly the network gets used a lot. So to me, there are a number of like, you know, like, like big problems that they need to solve. But you know why they’re still getting adoption well, you mentioned before, like, I think, because they’re like centralized, their transactions are quite lower.

1:08:02 They also have like enormous backing by big players in the space, and they have like enormous like amounts of funds. So they can, like kind of like, incentivize people to join their work with applications in the network and kind of grow because it’s quite hard to develop applications on science at the moment. And I know they’re having like EBM integration. But right now you have to, you know, build like smart contracts in what’s known as A RUS programming language and the ROS programming language is a much more difficult. I would say it’s more solid, but it’s more difficult programming language to use and say solidity, which is what a lot of developers are familiar with.

1:08:35 So one of the reasons we are at Phantom decided to integrate. You know, with the same smart contract, smart, same smart contract engine as a Ethereum is because we wanted to get as user adoption as much as possible. And even though the smart contract execution engine isn’t that efficient? And even though the solidity programming language that smart conscious that developers affiliate with Is not a very good language, a lot of problems with it. It is a language that a lot of developers are familiar with and so kind of our pitch to developers is, you know, if you’re building on Ethereum, why not want to build a phantom as well, you know, and you can kind of see to yourself the benefits of, you know, faster, cheaper transactions of the asynchronous technology, and you have like, a better user experience.

1:09:18 And hey, if you want to keep developing on Ethereum, you know you can build your app on a theorem and get traction with firm. But you can also come to Phantom, you know, without that much effort. Redeploy your application on Phantom and also take advantage of the users and the applications in the Phantom Ecosystem. So that’s kind of like our pitch to users. But yeah, you know, there are like some problems that, like, you know, Phantom, has, you know, some technology problems.

1:09:42 I would say that, you know, our network is quite stable because we’ve only had like one incident of the network going down. Which was like an edge case a bit of a year ago, in February 2021, and the network went down for like 12 hours. But since then we had never had any network issues before or after. So the network it, you know, it’s very scalable, it’s very usable. And even though some transaction fees do kind of spike up over time, we are working on, you know, technology improvements to kind of increase the level of scalability.

1:10:13 Like, as I mentioned before, you know, being able to reduce the dollar size of validators, it’s known as SNAP sync. So that’s coming out already in this pre-release. That should make the network a lot more scalable than it currently is at the moment, and so we’ll just keep improving over time. And as I mentioned before, you know, blockchain technology is they’re not quite there yet in terms of the technology. They’re not quite there yet in terms of scalability and usability.

1:10:37 But I think we’re on the right path and I think adoption is going to increase over time. Which is why I’m very, very bullish on blockchain technology over the long term. Yeah, and congrats for keeping that network up since then. I know that’s no easy thing for all of you to keep those things going. I want to get your thoughts, Michael on NFTS, because it’s something that obviously has really exploded the last 12, 18 months, let’s be honest, probably beyond anyone’s expectations.

1:11:04 And even when Stanley Kulchev was in here in the studio, we talked not mostly, but a lot about NFTs. He had 2,000 on his phone. He was showing them to me. And it’s something that now people are calling the Gateway drug to crypto. A couple elasticides and I tell the story way too much.

1:11:20 But when I gave my 17 year old daughter an NFT, I was the coolest dad in the world for like, a week. And that’s very hard to do for a teenager. We just launched our first NFT and we did 100 unique pieces. It was actually to commemorate an episode we did recently. A big live stream.

1:11:34 It was a hundred kind of documentary style photographs behind the scenes, and we baked in a piece of video from the episode into the NFT. And I’m telling you, Michael, these things move like hotcakes. Every famous guest I’ve ever had on the show all wanted one. A couple of them needed to understand how to get a Metamask wallet, but these things went so fast. They’re all gone.

1:11:56 And it surprised me how this really engaged some people that never owned an NFT before. And so again, it’s our, our toe. Dip into this, this space, that whole collection, you can see it, it’s on open C Dot Io Forward Slash London Real. But my videos are now baked into the blockchain, which means they can never be censored or deleted or banned. So even if you don’t own it, you can go watch this content forever and again.

1:12:22 As a broadcaster, I feel like this is a new form of media and we’ve been blocked and banned in deep platforms and censored before. So I know what it’s like to be, that guy anyways your thoughts. Michael on NFTS and anything. I just said, Yeah, I mean, I. I think NFT is one of the really big growth areas, you know, along with DFI, that we’re currently seeing for blockchain technologies.

1:12:44 And I think we’re going to continue seeing in the long run as well. I mean, as you mentioned, like there are benefits of entity technology, so one thing is like this the censorship resistant because you can create an NFT. That kind of points to a file on a decentralized file sharing platform such as like IPFS, which is known as an interfamily planetary file exchange. And so you can kind of like, Prove your ownership of that file on IPFS, which you don’t necessarily have done before. Because you have that NFT, it kind of like, points to it, and now you know, it was the first one to be.

1:13:15 Minted was minted when your file was uploaded, and so you can prove like ownership there. Yeah, full auditability, so it kind of like helps solve like a lot of IP issues around, like digital artwork and digital pieces. Because some people have kind of like criticized entities, I’ve always asked the question, Well, you know, don’t NFTS, like, actually make it easier to kind of like, violate people’s IPs? Because you can entertain something and claim that you’re the first one to do it. Et cetera was the final one.

1:13:44 I’ve existed for a while, and in my opinion, it actually like helps people like keep ownership of their property, because if they’re the ones that you know, like, upload an image, they can make an entity of it, and they can always point that original people who uploaded the image. And when you transfer ownership, when you sell the NFT or sell the image wise from one person to another, you know, the person that has the energy in the water can prove that they actually own it, that they own the wallet that owns the end of T. And, you know, you can kind of prove the whole history of, like you owned it in the past and that, you know, the transfer really did take place. And so you have all these efficiencies that you that you have, because the ledger is like a full order trail, right?

1:14:24 So that’s why you have a lot of efficiencies and security with D5 was the same thing with NFTs as well. And so, you know, there’s a lot of issues with D platforming. There’s a lot of issues like What’s going on with the controversy with Spotify, and there’s a lot of censorship that’s going on. Even though supposedly all these platforms, you know, they came to be, you know, like, like, Neutral and that, oh, we’re just a technology provider and all that. Yeah, they do immense censorship, probably because they’re pressured by the government, so, you know, they kind of act as publishers, but they pretend to be, you know, like, just like a tech platform, right?

1:14:57 So, you know, D platform is a big issue, and I think, you know, it’s like, terrible what’s going on? Because it’s about creative speech, it’s about having different opinions. You know, it’s not necessarily about like, Okay, do we have this guy on the platform that we fully agree with who’s like, No, no, we have the guy on the platform, not necessarily because we agree with him, but because we want to have lively debate. We want to hear and see different opinions and let the audience, you know, kind of get to their own conclusions. Well, with NFTs, you can make that a lot easier because now you can share this file anywhere you want.

1:15:29 You know, from IPFS and they can go to the original source file there, they can download it, they can watch it. And it’s totally censorship resistant because nobody can shut down, you know? A blockchain network shut down, Ethereum shut down IPFS. It’s just not practical because of the amount of decentralization and security breaking into the network, and so with entities, you know, you’re seeing it now. Like as a space level, a form of artwork where people you know can create entities, they can create generative artwork.

1:15:57 And, you know, there’s a whole history of like ownership behind it, there’s a whole like status symbol behind it. There’s a whole appreciation of the artwork that’s uploaded in digital form, and that’s the same thing with art in real life, so a lot of people make fun of entities. Oh, can’t you just like, Save the JPEG, can’t you just duplicate it? You know, it’s all a bit of a joke. Or, in my opinion, Yeah, I mean, you can like, you know, just like copy and paste the JPEG just like you can copy and paste, you know different artworks or imitate different artworks that already exist.

1:16:25 But the reason why you know that really isn’t a problem is because, like with anything in life, you know, you have a lot of like artworks, or a lot of like entities, or additional assets. They don’t have a lot of value, but you have some digital assets that have a lot of value. And where does that value come from? Well, like artworks, it comes from like the history, the artist behind it, the history of the item itself, the status symbol about it, the uniqueness as about like its history. And was it part of the original collection?

1:16:54 Et cetera? And so, you know, like to me, like, that’s what entities are at, is like, base level, right? There’s no difference from a status symbol. It’s no different from a collector’s item, it’s no different from, you know, rare items or anything like that. It’s just like another form of it.

1:17:07 But it’s actually even more powerful than that, because you can add a lot of programmable functionality into entities where they can now be used. You know, like, as part of games at different universes, you can use them. You know you can even like now, lend and borrow with entities you can create take, you know, categorize positions, I guess, NFT. So you see that kind of version between D5 and NFTs. So there’s a lot more functionality you can have in entities because they are like a digital item.

1:17:34 I suppose something that’s more physical in the real world where you can’t have that sort of programmable functionality or sort of additional items. That not on the blockchain where you can’t have that sort of programmable functionality where you’re able to. You know, take that artwork or take that digital item and put it into different games or different metaverses. It’s already possible unless you actually have the blockchain technology to be able to do that. Yeah, and like you said, these NFTs are evolving, you’re getting access, future air drops, great parties.

1:18:02 If you’re a board APe owner, you’re getting all sorts of things, and like you said, you can now finance them. I mean, Stanley was here in our studio. And he said, Brian, you know, right now we’re the, you know, biggest lending platform for, you know, crypto, he said. But we want to finance NFTS in the future, and that becomes exciting. And even if it’s a loan to value ratio of 30 or 40, it’s still at least you can get some financing.

1:18:26 Which would be very hard in the traditional art world, and you mentioned copying things. You know, the Mona Lisa is a painting that my mom took me to go see in the Louvre when I was, I think, 15 years old. I was kicking and screaming the whole way. I didn’t want to go, I didn’t want to wait in line. And she’s actually, she’s actually, she’s actually quite tiny, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen her.

1:18:45 It’s really small, and there’s some artists in California who can paint a copy of it for like, 300. And apparently you can’t tell the difference, so it’s basically like, Right, clicking on that. But it nobody’s going to put that in their living room and say, This is the Mona Lisa. Everyone’s going to say, No, it’s a copy, and now you’re trying to punk me, and this is ridiculous. And so, like you said, in the art world, we know there’s provenance, there’s story, there’s proof of ownership that gives real value to these pieces.

1:19:15 I don’t know what the Mona Lisa is worth, but it’s probably hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. If Justin Sun gets in the bidding, he’ll probably pay a billion for it. Shout out to Justin, who now is one of my NFTs too. But anyways so that the point you’re saying is that there is real value and real use cases for these NFTs. It’s not just some funny phenomenon, with some crypto billionaires on some digitized punks.

1:19:37 It’s really showing us. Maybe a reflection of humanity and how we, how we value things, how we like. The social proof of valuing things. How we appreciate the blockchain verification, it’s a It’s a pretty exciting space and to see what goes on in the future. I honestly think it’s more of a reflection of who we are as people, and I think it’s going to get super exciting.

1:20:02 Do you think there’ll be NFT platforms that plug into Phantom going forward, or is it just kind of like you provide the user experience and see what happens? Yeah, we already see, like a number of entity platforms on Phantom. And, you know, to be honest, the energy growth from Phantom hasn’t been as strong as they are D5 growth, and that’s for like a number of reasons. Because, you know, originally, Phantom was known as like a D5 chain, the first application of Phantom or D5. And we had a lot of traction, you know, in protocols moving from Ethereum to phantom to, you know, to basically do the same sort of actions that they have on inferior, and they have, like, faster and cheaper consensus.

1:20:38 And of course we have, you know, like Andre. Cronier is very well known in the space, you know, developing, developing default applications and Phantom. So there’s been a lot of traction there, but on the NFT side, yeah, we haven’t seen as much as, say, the overlay ones out there like, certainly compared to like, say, salon or Avalanche. However, we are starting to see like a very up ticking growth actually this year. So, you know, we have like a few entity platforms, like paint Swaps, Zoo Coin.

1:21:04 I think there’s also like NFT Key as well, which is a great user interface. And they’re starting to get more and more sales and more and more traction on their platforms. Now they’re still quite small. Can I just say something like Open Seat? But definitely there’s.

1:21:16 There’s growth reflected there and of course, and we also have, like a metaverse called the 8<Unk>bit Metaverse. So it’s kind of like an A.P. representation of the world. So, like 8,<Unk>bit graphics are kind of like old-school graphics. People are buying like real estate and other assets in there, and they’re kind of like increasing value. And there’s more and more users there.

1:21:34 So, you know, we have had, like, quite a few like energy launches of Phantom, as involved with chains. We’ve had people sending generative artworks and sending like digital items that you use in games, etc. like you’ve seen on other chains. So, you know, definitely we’ve seen organic growth there, but I would like to see a lot more than that. And so what we’re doing at the foundation is, you know, not just working on, you know, a better platform, better technology, which benefits like all applications on the network, but also starting to invest in some NFT projects or gaming projects on Phantom. And also, you know, having like an incentive program also geared towards increasing user adoption on the entity side.

1:22:11 And so we’re also on the application level, like trying to support many NFT launches and developments on Phantom, for sure. So that’s what I think is also a big growth area that’s here to stay. Because, like with D5, there are fundamental like principal and the fundamental benefits that exist for entities. And so because we have that fundamental we have, we have those fundamental benefits. It means that, you know, even if there’s like, a lot of speculation and like, you know, big market cycles.

1:22:40 Still with energies. On the whole, the growth area is clearly, in my opinion, going to be up. And there’s going to be more and more people using NFTS. Because there are a lot of benefits of creating and using entities for a variety of different reasons. Yeah, and shout out to any NFT developers watching We will give you Michael’s contact information at the end.

1:22:58 And so I hope they do reach out and just continue with these developments. Because, like you said, it’s something fundamental that’s not going anywhere you mentioned. Metaverse Michael, What do you see? As the future of the metaverse, people are calling 2022 the year of the metaverse. I’ve been super fortunate to talk to Yatsu of Enemoka Brands, and we’ve got the Sandbox founder coming up in Decentraland.

1:23:20 And I’m learning more about the metaverse. We have a London Real Ventures platform, we just invested in a metaverse company. And I’ve learned a lot. I’m 50, I haven’t game since. I was a kid and had Atari and Nintendo and I used to play Frogger and Donkey Kong.

1:23:35 But I, I did, force myself to go play. Axey Infiniti A few months ago, I found it fascinating, interesting, defy, related, expensive. But I could see what they were doing. What do you think is the future of the metaverse and how is Phantom involved? Yeah, so I think the verse is like, it’s one of these like casual terms.

1:23:56 And I’m not really like a huge fan of casual terms. But like to me, you know, what the metaverse is basically just like, you know, for another, like digital world, like a role-playing world, where you can take ownership in it, right? You know whether it’s like owning additional items in there, you know, owning real estate earning, like whatever like is represented in that digital world. That, to me, is what really is like the metaverse. And people being able to like interact with one another in that sort of ecosystem.

1:24:25 And also having it being integrated with, you know, a variety of different like, you know, like a virtual reality technologies. Where it’s kind of like another world that’s kind of parallel to like our world, that we kind of live in. That, to me, is like, What the metaverse is and a lot of people have gone. Have heard about the term metaverse now because of Facebook renaming his company to Meta. And, you know, Mark Zuckerberg, then a whole presentation about the metaverse and how he’s gonna be the future and all that.

1:24:49 You know. I think that, you know, metaverses will take off, but I think it’s appear to be metaverses that I’m really interested in, so you know, the problem with, like a big company, you know, having his own metaverse is that again? You have this like censorship, right? You know, you have people who you’ll get, you know, pornography right, your people, you know, you’ll get censored, use. You know, characters may disappear your things in the world, you know, in the middle, verse may disappear, and you don’t really have control over yourself or your digital islands in that space.

1:25:19 Yeah, and that’s why I kind of see like a metaverse is controlled by like a centralized party, or like or like a single entity. You know, to me, it’s kind of like The Matrix, right? So, yeah, people live in The Matrix. It’s kind of like a metaverse, but, you know, like you can always be taken over by like an Asian Smith. Right like the machines are the ones that control the metaverse in the end.

1:25:39 Well, if you have like a peer<Unk>to<Unk>peer metaverse, it’s not like that at all, right? It’s individual. The individuals themselves that have ownership of the digital items in that space, they interact with one another in a peer-to,-peer manner. They kind of do, you know, transactions? One-to-one, you know, it’s all voluntary.

1:25:54 There’s no risk of your items waking up one day and you’re banned. Or, you know, you’re on like university or, you know, you do your digital items, your house, you know something gets repossessed in the middle verse you have, like, not, none of that like taking place. And so I think the metaverse is a big growth area, just like D5. That’s going to continue over time because you can also gamify the metaverse. So, for example, like you can have, you know, you can have like items that kind of like appear in the real world.

1:26:23 Like using. Like augmented reality, they can cannot connect to the miniverse. You know, things like Pokemon Go. You can integrate into a metaverse, so there are different like gaming applications within the metaverse, but also outside the metaverse. That you can kind of like.

1:26:36 Connect into it, where everything just kind of lives there. And there’s a lot of commerce and exchange that takes place in digital forms, so it’s kind of a huge growth area. In my opinion, I don’t know how it’s going to be get big in 2022, but I think it’s something that’s here to stay. And as the blockchain technologies get better, I think you’ll get more and more higher quality metaverses coming out as well, as well as high quality games too. Yeah, I think we need to keep it open, super important for people to realize that and not a close metaverse.

1:27:06 So open means, you know, P can go peer to peer, and it’s not controlled by a central entity. They did a study and showed that if Facebook just changed your news feed a little bit, they could literally make you more angry or more depressed. Imagine them doing that in VR, right? Imagine them doing that. All they have to do is have maybe a car honking a horn in a distance.

1:27:25 Imagine what they can do. So like you said it can be dangerous and again, you hinted a little bit about censorship. Michael and I’d love to just get some of your thoughts on that. I’m a black belt and being censored, because on April 20th, sorry. On April 6, 2020, we conducted the second largest live stream, YouTube Live stream in the world 65,000 concurrent viewers.

1:27:47 The top live stream was the president of the United States doing a coronavirus briefing? And 30 minutes after my episode finished, which would have gone on to been watched probably 40 million times. It would have been one of the most watched videos video podcast in history. It was deleted and banned on YouTube and I had been nine years publishing these conversations. Michael And it never happened to me before until I interviewed this man on my show.

1:28:12 His name is David Ike, and I don’t agree with everything he says, but I believe he has the right to say it. So we can have a conversation around it in the open and people can have an opinion. But yeah, I didn’t realize that YouTube disagreed, and it followed by me being de-platformed and banned by LinkedIn, Facebook, Dropbox. Well, I didn’t know they were actually watching my videos, but they took me out. PayPal, PayPal, you know, yeah, I mean, PayPal banned me.

1:28:41 The regulator in the UK came after us. It was a real struggle. We ended up creating our own platform, getting our own live streaming technology, and we. We had them back on and we kept putting these out. Became one of the most watched live streams of a human conversation in history that we can find.

1:28:59 But my point is that we really fought that battle with censorship strangely enough. Michael I had the same man on 10 days ago and we streamed. He talked about the same controversial stuff and they didn’t censor me this time. And we put it into an NFT, so now no one can ever touch it, but now it’s the same conversation. Two years later, when I first did it, I was told I couldn’t put it up, and now I’m told it’s okay to put up.

1:29:25 Which just goes to show you that it was probably never about the conversation, it was probably about something else. What are your thoughts on this? Obviously, we’re seeing what’s happening with Spotify. Joe Rogan I was actually on Joe Rogan Show in 2013. He inspired this podcast, and so it’s great to see what he’s doing.

1:29:44 If he was still on YouTube, some of those interviews I think would have been taken down. Spotify is making a stand. What do you think about what’s going on? Yeah, yeah, you know, like tech censorship, it’s definitely a big problem. And, you know, as we kind of well, as I kind of talked about like, a bit earlier.

1:30:02 You know, the problem with, like the laws at the moment, is that, you know, the, the, the these are these please these platforms, you know the reason why, you know? They can’t get in trouble for comments that people make on the platforms, why they can’t be sued for like defamation. Or, yeah, hate speech. Whatever that means or whatever it might be. It’s because they say, Well, you know, we’re just neutral, right?

1:30:24 We just say these technology providers, we just build the technology, we’re just developers, we just release the technology. And you know, anyone can use it and say whatever they want. In reality, that’s not the case, because, you know, these are. These are centralized third parties where a lot of people you know, let’s just say plainly, you know they have. They’re from like the People’s Party of California.

1:30:45 They have, you know, very strong, you know, left-leaning ideologies, whether you’d agree with it or not. And so, even if it might not necessarily be the people at the top down directing the censorship. Definitely people who are making these individual decisions because they’re all made, you know, they’re not. They might buy a machine in the end. They’re all made by a lot of people who kind of look over a lot of content and decide, Okay, does this violate what we interpret to be like, you know, the community standards, right?

1:31:13 So called. And so when a lot of these people have particular views, it’s no surprise that the biases come in there and they start centering people within their own life. You know, they’re not, they’re not censoring conservative speech, they don’t like they start centering libertarian speech they don’t like when they start centering. Anything that kind of goes across, you know, kind of like, disagrees with, like the, you know, traditional narrative, whether it’s like, actually, right or wrong in the end, the point is, is that, you know, they contradict, you know, your traditional narrative or traditional sciences that people take, then they get censored, and so this is a really big problem. This is why I think blockchain technologies are good because they’re censorship resistant in many ways.

1:31:52 So, like you mentioned, when the entities putting your content out there, nobody can stop that from being shared on IPFS et cetera, and you’re starting to see. Also, some alternative social media platforms come out there and, you know, some of them are getting traction. And I think that’s kind of what we’re going to see. You know, in a free market, you know, we’re going to have more platforms out there. That people move to where they don’t get on, censored, where they have much more freedom of speech.

1:32:15 And that’s sort of like the direction. I think it’s going there, and I think blockchain will play a role in that in that. You know, there’ll be some applications, social media applications that run on the blockchain. Where their tweets are there, they’re all entities, they’re war on the record. Nobody can remove them and they and they have like a full water trail.

1:32:28 So everybody can see what everybody has said from the beginning of time. And, you know, things are just going to disappear from the chain because it’s technically like, not possible to do that. And so that’s kind of the future we’re going to be seeing. And it’s kind of interesting about deep platforming, you know, because there are a lot, a lot of different YouTube channels that I watch. You know, on subjects that you wouldn’t really think that controversial, like standard history, narratives or shows, you know even about, like, cooking or something.

1:32:55 And, you know, all these people, I’ve seen them constantly say these big YouTubers that, you know, we need to fight YouTube demonetization. I’m like, Wait a second, why are they getting demonetized? Like? I understand if somebody is saying something that goes to traditional narrative and they censor it because, you know, they don’t like the particular speech. But when they’re centering something that, in my opinion, like I don’t think anybody like, disagrees with.

1:33:15 They’re very like they’re not like political, like political speech. They still get censored and they get their monetized and their videos. These revenues, and so a lot of those YouTubers are also creating these alternative platforms. And so it’s very interesting how, like there’s censorship, not just in terms of political speech, but in terms of like, I don’t know topics that, in my opinion, don’t really have anything to do with politics or much to do with politics. And it’s, and it’s quite strange, yeah, so there is a big backlash against democratization.

1:33:41 There’s a big backlash against censorship. And I think that’s going to drive the growth and adoption of our platforms and compete against these sort of platforms that are coming out of California. So that’s why I think kind of the direction is going. Yeah, I really appreciate your thoughts, Michael, and I’m from California, all right, so like, I know what it’s like out there, I’m from the West Coast and I, you know. And again, I appreciate everyone’s views.

1:34:02 But to have a small group of people projecting their political views on platforms that serve billions, it’s just not right. And again, censorship is not right in any form. And let’s talk about YouTube I’ve been. I went down to the YouTube headquarters seven or eight years, I was a partner on the YouTube platform. And, yeah, they use not only the monetization, but even the views and the, you know, the search and the shadow banning they use against you.

1:34:28 So if you’re a YouTuber, yeah, and a lot. I know a lot of YouTubers and they rely on YouTube for their income or a chunk of it, which I think is actually a mistake. But they do, which means if they make a video that then doesn’t get searched, they get your. You get your first notification of maybe you shouldn’t talk about that. Okay, you want to keep talking about that, then you get the next notification of, Okay, we’re not going to monetize that video.

1:34:54 And then if you don’t get the if you don’t get it then. And I’m a really hard learner, so I didn’t get it. Then they pull your monetization, which is what they did to us. Four months later, they pulled all of our monetization, took me out of the partner program. I mean, over the course of the next few years probably cost us millions and millions of dollars.

1:35:11 And we were just like, Well, whatever, we’re just going to keep going. But I understand that 99 of YouTubers would have tapped out a few a few stages back because they do it. And then what you end up doing is you self-censor. So every time you go to say those buzzwords, or you think, like you said, a historical narrative isn’t being whatever you said, then you don’t say it. And then we live in a world where no one says their real opinions, and that gets scary.

1:35:38 So, yeah, yeah, I mean, I’ve seen some of these YouTube channels like, for example, like there. It is like YouTube channels that kind of talk about, like how certain processes work right? Like, for example, like, you know, it could be like anything like how, like the airplane industry works or how like, shipping works. And that sort of thing. And this is like totally non-controversial subjects.

1:36:00 They’re just stating facts about like how these processes work, right? Yeah, sometimes even those videos get demonetized. And so I, I know, like of one YouTube channel where they say, Oh, we’re making this video on a certain topic. But hey, if you want to like, see part three, you want to see part four. If you want to see like these other topics that are like that are similar to, like the video that I’ve just made.

1:36:23 You need to go to this other channel because YouTube is likely to be monetize it. Even though I’m saying, like, pretty much the same stuff as, like the original topic that I put on YouTube, and so to me, that’s like, very strange. It’s like, You know, why is it like? The same content gets censored and sometimes doesn’t get censored? And I think the fundamental problem with like these sort of like centralized platforms, is that, you know, it’s all legal for them to do it.

1:36:49 Because in terms of service, it’s like, you know, we determine what’s on the platform, we determine what’s sensible, we determine what like, violates or doesn’t violate community standards. And if you look at those terms, you can’t help but think, Well, wait a second. Isn’t that a publisher, isn’t that what a publisher does? It’s not what editorial people do, which is fine, but they should just be honest about it. But of course they’re not honest because, you know, that incurs liability and a lot more responsibility.

1:37:14 So what they’re doing said is they, you know, obviously like lobbying staff, the government and say, Hey, you know, keep us being a neutral platform, keep saying that we’re a neutral platform. Keep the laws as they are, so we don’t have any of the liability. But we still have all this power over being able to editorize people and demonetize people and decide what content we want on our platform and what we don’t want. Because it’s, you know, sometimes they’ll argue, Oh well, it’s about like we can’t have a legal content on that. You know, I’d be like, Okay, you know, like, fair enough, like, if it’s something like, really illegal, I understand why you need to remove it.

1:37:44 You know, it’s against the law, but, you know, a lot of this stuff isn’t illegal. You know, there’s freedom of speech, you know, like in the U.S. right? We can say stuff that’s very controversial. You know, freedom of speech exists, not because we can talk about the weather or what it’s like today. But we can talk about very controversial subjects and some of the talks that people, that’s one of the things that people might say people might 100 percent disagree with it might, you know, even say it’s vile, right?

1:38:09 But the whole point is that people are legally allowed to say that because, you know, that’s how we kind of have debates and get differences. Opinion and kind of like, hopefully, you know, improve, like how we think about things in the long run, right? And so YouTube and Facebook and other like platforms, yeah, they sense a lot of their content, someone sometimes just outright. Sometimes you mention more subtly, like with the search results or the number of views that it gets, you know. But in the end, you know, like, like, that’s sort of like political speech, it’s not illegal, and all this other content that even doesn’t have anything to do with politics.

1:38:42 It’s not illegal, but they still censor it, so it’s not about, you know, legal or legal content, because, yeah, they censor illegal content. But it also sends a lot of content, which is perfectly legal and perfectly fine to say, like, for example, like David, like I. I disagree with a lot where David says, but he’s not saying anything that’s illegal to my knowledge, right? Or, you know, at least like in America. But he still gets censored.

1:39:02 Yeah, exactly. I mean, I had a calm conversation with a man who was 68 years old at the time. David In my studio, we didn’t call for violence, political overthrow or anything like that, and yet it was still banned. I will be coming out with a documentary film that talks about everything that happened behind the scenes. You know, we were given multiple strikes.

1:39:22 They pulled all of his videos off the platform. They threatened me over and over again for weeks and months and again. Not only was it 9 000 videos, it was my whole life was on YouTube, like nine years of my life. My digital footprint was going to be just erased, and you could talk about that from an even an ethical standpoint. But yeah, now that happened, and again, they then they demonetized us and they really tried to shut us down.

1:39:47 I’ll be honest with you, Michael, 10 days ago, 11 days ago, when we had David back, I decided to stream on YouTube. A lot of people told me it was a bad idea. I thought we could have been taken off midstream, I thought we could have lost our whole platform. Because I was literally told 18 months ago that if I did something like this, they would take us out strangely enough. Michael, they let the whole thing stream.

1:40:08 They’ve left it on there and I’ve been publishing clips and they’ve left them up there. And now, just for the record, if anybody watches this later and my, those clips aren’t up there, YouTube’s taking them down. And I guess what I’m saying here, Michael, is this is that I think that maybe things are changing. And I think they’re watching what’s happening with Spotify and Rogan, and they’re having people say, Wait a second, this isn’t okay, we it’s not okay for you to make these decisions without us knowing it. And I think, honestly, what I we just did 12 days ago is almost a test case because they haven’t touched it.

1:40:42 And I streamed the whole three and a half hours and David went. He went way off the reservation like he always does, and enough to where I’m uncomfortable, I’m like, David, that’s crazy, but I just let him say it, and I let other people decide because I’m telling you. I’ve had a lot of crazy people over the 10 years on my show. And sometimes I end up agreeing with him a few years later. So this is a test case.

1:41:03 I would say, I hope this content stays up and maybe we’re, maybe we’re getting better. I would say it’s nice to see Spotify leaving the Rogan stuff up and to see at least people appreciate that. Maybe this content should be up there. But again, ultimately, we did this NFT release, and I put 19 pieces of the David Ike interview into the NFTS. I had to put it at 540p to get it under 100 megs, but I literally minted all these myself.

1:41:30 On Sunday, I was listening to David like over and over again as I put them on OpenC. And so this is the first time we ever tried this. But right now, a big chunk of that interview is now on the blockchain and other people can not only own it, but watch it forever. And I think this maybe could be a new form of media. Maybe it will at least keep somebody in check.

1:41:49 I mean, if YouTube knows that, there’s a version over here on the blockchain that they removed and people can see them, then maybe they’ll be checked. Because when they took all my content from YouTube, sometimes some people didn’t even believe me, they’re like, Brian, come on and I. I couldn’t explain my point of view because it was just censored, so I think we’re making some progress. And Michael I, I appreciate your outspoken views about that. I think it’s really important, yeah, it’s really good what like Spotify is doing.

1:42:17 And maybe we are starting to turn that direction where, you know, maybe there will be like, less tech censorship. I mean, it’s like, very early days to say, yeah, but I hope that’s the case. Because, you know, in terms of, like the technology, like what Facebook and YouTube have, you know? They do have like, very, very good platforms that have got a lot of traction and clearly like one out of the market. And they’re like, very convenient and easy to use.

1:42:38 And so, you know, I think it would benefit them commercially if they were not, you know, demonetizing or censoring as much as they are right now, and maybe things will kind of change in the future. I’m not really sure, but I do like what you know, I do, like what Spotify is doing. I think they’re taking the right approach and, you know, we’ll kind of see what the outcome is. Is there? Because it’s not about like whether you agree with the guy or not, necessarily, in my opinion, it’s about like, you know, having like the different views out there.

1:43:04 And sometimes, even if you’re very, you know, conventional or left-wing, or you kind of like, trust the government a lot. It’s like, Well, you know, there’s a history of governments, you know, getting things wrong, right? You know, even like, very recently. And you know, even if you do believe in the government, what do you want to like? Kind of like, have you know, engage in critical thinking, kind of thing?

1:43:22 Okay, what about different views? I can’t challenge the government, you know, maybe they could be right, maybe they could actually be right in some cases, right? And so that to me, is why, you know, freedom of speech is very important and why, you know, you know, do D platform is a problem, and also why, you know, in some ways I’m kind of optimistic about. Like, you know, there’s different alternative platforms coming out there, you know, there’s entities, and, you know, maybe like, for purely commercial reasons. These big tech companies kind of realize that now they’ve been challenged and they’ve come maybe a bit too far.

1:43:54 And maybe they’ll take a step back because they don’t want to lose. You know, a whole bunch of users, they don’t want to lose viewers and content creators such as yourself going on other platforms. Where, you know, now it’s those platforms that are kind of generating the revenues compared to them, so we’ll kind of see what happens in the end. I’m not entirely sure, to be honest, yeah, and I’m not sure either, and I’m not saying the battle is won by any means. Because, again, a lot of this shadow banning happens and people don’t even know it’s happening, so we’ll see.

1:44:20 It’s good to see Spotify making that effort, although Spotify did remove my audio podcast of David Ike in 2020. Just saying, But if you guys have kind of gone the other way, it’s nice to see. I mean, ultimately, Michael, we might be saying the same thing. I mean, ultimately, what’s that saying? Absolute power corrupts, absolutely.

1:44:36 Maybe it’s a centralization issue, and maybe if you decentralize something, then by definition, you’ll make it censorship resistance. Maybe whenever you centralize something and give any entity more power, this stuff might happen anyways. So again, another great argument for the blockchain, and it looks like, you know, we’re making some positive efforts. But let’s see lastly, that point you made you really want controversial voices out in the open. Because we’ve seen with the dark Web when you, when you put them in the dark web and put them in a corner.

1:45:06 Sometimes they can actually become, you know, bigger and be magnified because they’re not being tested in a public forum. And sometimes that can live exactly to dangerous events. You know where a group of people, all you know, are thinking the same thing, but they’re not allowed to talk about it. And so it becomes out of control. So there’s a real argument for just Aaron the Dirty Laundry.

1:45:27 Get it out there and again admit that we’ve been wrong in the past, governments have been wrong. And when I look at David and again, I don’t agree with everything, David said. But if you look at what he was saying on the episode, we got banned. I mean, at the time for him to say that. And I can’t believe I’m gonna say this right now, and I’m not gonna get taken off a platform.

1:45:46 But for him to say at the time that the virus might have been created in the lab and Wuhan was absolutely like, No way you could say that anywhere and get banned, and then what? 14 months later, the President of the United States is saying it’s possible and we’re going to look into it. So it’s just amazing how you know, I always, I always say, Let the man speak, you know, let’s hear his ideas, let’s debate it. Let’s admit that we’re never always right. The governments are wrong, let’s keep the free dialogue going and let’s try to do that going forward.

1:46:15 I think that’s right. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, it’s not like, you know, crazy people or people like already out there that are making this argument about free speech. You know, these people like, like actors like John Cleese and Ron Atkinson, you know, John Case in particular, you know, he’s kind of like left-leaning, you know, he’s supported by the Liberal Democrats. I believe like in the UK, which is a lift-leading party, so, you know, for them, it’s about we have, like, sunlight is the best disinfectant right? Like.

1:46:38 We want people to say controversial things. We want people to say, things that we disagree with because we want to be able to challenge them. And sometimes, you know, they may actually be right and sometimes they may be wrong, but that’s fine. That’s what it’s all about. It’s all about talking about ideas and coming up and not.

1:46:52 You’ve been like, Oh, I’m taking offense and therefore it should be bad, or my feelings have been heard or anything like that. It’s all about, Let’s have a debate, let’s have a discussion about things, people that you disagree with. It’s very important that you do that, you know, so you kind of like refine your own arguments, or you kind of like. Figure out what you think is the truth, and you can come up with your own conclusions. So to me, this should totally not be a controversial opinion in and of itself.

1:47:17 And to me, it’s a little bit surprising that it kind of is. But I guess it’s that mentality of like control, and like, you’re not having hurt feelings and that sort of thing, right? Yeah, again, we could probably talk for a whole another hour about this new evolution of, you know, the victim mentality. Which is probably where a lot of this is rooted in hurting people’s feelings. And it’s funny, you know, after we were challenged on freedom of speech, I started really looking into what that means.

1:47:43 And, Michael, you make a great point. I had a guest on my platform who said, You know what? Even if you have to debate someone an argument, it actually helps you clarify that position in your mind. So if you walk around thinking, Okay, the world is this, the world is this world is this? And no one ever asks you why you think that, then you don’t even know why you think that.

1:48:03 But when you hear a controversial voice, maybe for the first time you have to debate them. Or really think about it in your mind. And then you actually crystallize what you think or what you don’t think. So actually, someone telling you something that you might file, vile or offended is a great way to find out. If you really believe that way.

1:48:19 And maybe you do, and again, there’s you can take this to the next level. You mentioned John Cleese. I had John Cleese on my show in 2020, but I couldn’t stream him on YouTube because I was being censored. So I had to stream them on my digital freedom platform instead, isn’t that ridiculous? So I’m having John Cleese, one of the great actors, you know, great producers, great comedians of our time.

1:48:41 And I can’t talk to him on my normal platforms, so my episode with John is on the Digital Freedom Platform. It was amazing by the way he’s in the Caribbean like you. He had a bird like a parrot walking around in the back. He actually started the show with no shirt on and he put a shirt on, but he was amazing. But he was controversial at the time because he had said a few things and we were pretty sure he was going to get banned on YouTube.

1:49:03 So again, a great example. I want to finish by talking about the Caribbean because you’re down there. I believe in the Bahamas but used to be in Australia. Can you talk about the move because I’m here in a three-piece suit? It’s freezing in England and you’re over there, clearly enjoying a very warm day.

1:49:21 Why, why make the move, Michael And what? What is it like there, you know? I kind of made the move here for a few reasons. And one of them is that, you know, in Australia we’ve had like, a lot of issues around Corbin. It is even the case now where we can’t go to the western side of Australia, Western Australia, for almost two years now.

1:49:41 And they’re just kept like pushing back, you know, when they’re gonna open up, you know, that part of the country. So in like Western Australia, there’s not people from entering not just from around the world, but from the rest of the country as well. So now we have. We still have these internal borders, which is just, in my opinion, crazy, and we have a lot of issues around. You know, like testing now before they’re like long testing queues, so everybody’s getting tested for everything, you know.

1:50:05 Hundreds of thousands of tests have been done on a daily basis. And, you know, the healthcare industry is just making absolute fortune off of it. You know, even like the ABC, which is this like Australian Broadcasting Corporation, just kind of like national broadcasting. It’s kind of like the BBC, like you guys have in the UK, even like some of their presenters. And came out and said, You know, we have so much testing there.

1:50:28 And the amount of money that’s been given to these testing companies are, quote, rivers of gold. And that’s really what it is. And to me, you know, I think that’s just like, appalling, you know, we’ve done everything that we were told to do, right? We got vaccinated, 90 plus percent of people vaccinated, we have near Omicron, which is 50 to 75 percent less severe in terms of disease. And this is something that, like a lot of the scientists, agree on, actually, so this is not a controversial opinion.

1:50:53 This is not like one scientist saying it’s majority of scientists saying it. And yet, you know, we still have one of these restrictions and still have all this testing. And so there’s no idea. But, you know, one, actually, we’re gonna get to a point of normalcy. That’s something that, you know, people haven’t really asked the governments in, you know, in Australia.

1:51:11 Because, like the UK, the media doesn’t really like to ask questions that are, you know, a little bit uncomfortable for the politicians, usually. And one of the questions is, Well, okay, so what metrics, what standards you’re going to use to go back to normalcy, where we can have the life that we once had back in 2019. And if you can’t answer that question, then you don’t really have like a solid plan, right? And you’re just kind of like, you know, really negatively affecting people’s lives like these. These water bans have been like, absolutely atrocious.

1:51:38 Like, I know people who couldn’t go overseas to see their dying relatives, even though they had to sign a declaration. And fill out all these forms and all this paperwork, saying that they can support themselves. And that, yes, I’m really related to my mother. Yes, here’s my birth certificate. Yes, he’s a doctor certificate.

1:51:54 Here’s a picture of her in the hospital and order. And the government still said, No, you can’t travel overseas because you might bring the virus back in. Which doesn’t make sense. Because helping you bring a virus into a country when you’re leaving the country, it makes no sense, you know. And before you enter Australia anyway, well, in the past, you know, first of all, you had to find a flight, which there weren’t many flights.

1:52:13 And then second of all, you had to get tested. Before you left, you had to get tested when you arrived and then you had to go into 14 days of protocol. Quarantine where we had to get tested. I think two to three times in hotel quarantine before you could leave and go into the community. So we already had these protest protections been on preventing people to leave.

1:52:28 And, you know, I’m just like, kind of like, like, kind of afraid that there might be like future restrictions. You know, when there’s like new variants out there, there’s a lot of politics out there, politics of fear, you know, that the government has to do something, but not necessarily. That’s the best outcome. And then the whole, like, spend a whole bunch of money to kind of like, deal with the virus. And so for me, I wanted to kind of be out of that environment.

1:52:52 And in the Bahamas, you know, it is a bit more free here, it’s a bit more open, fresher. There are fewer people around you. You’re not really going to get clovered here. It’s very easy to travel to the states, to travel to London, to travel to other parts of the world. And they’re very, like, very much like, open here in comparison to say, like, that’s really.

1:53:09 And even though on the east coast of Australia, it’s quite open nowadays, you know you’re still likely to get covered and if you get covered, why I covered in December in Abu Dhabi, right, yeah. And to me, you know, being like fully vaccinated or doubly vaccinated. To me, it was like, not even worse than getting cold. For one day I was a bit sick and for the rest of the days, my time in hotel quarantine, I was perfectly fine. But like you know, still, like, the problem there is that, you know, if you test positive, you have to do that hotel quarantine or you’ve got to quality in your own place for 10 days.

1:53:37 It is quite restrictive on your life. So I didn’t want to, you know, go to a place where I could test positive. Not because I’m afraid of the symptoms of the virus per se, because I’m perfectly fine. But more so about, like the government, the restrictions, that government pace upon you, right? And so in a place like the Bahamas.

1:53:54 I’m not that likely to kind of like test positive. And so that I’m more likely just to be able to go on my life and be able to travel for work. So I’ve been in travel for work in Australia for almost two years, which kind of had a bit of an impact. But now I can kind of travel to work, go to conferences, present, go and meet. People, meet a variety of different people, basically like live in the whole world, rather than, just, like, live in Australia.

1:54:15 So that’s a big reason why I moved. And also I love the beach, I love swimming, I love, you know? The outdoors is kind of like my kind of environment as well, so that’s those are the reasons I kind of moved. Yeah, well, good for you, you know, if enough people vote with their feet, you know, you would hope that governments listen. It’s been really hard to watch Australia, you know, David Ike talked about it when he was here.

1:54:36 I’ve got a lot of friends in Australia. We have a huge London Real community in Australia that’s been watching our videos on fitness and mindset and meditation and breathing for a decade. My defy academy literally is almost like 20 people from down under a lot of times, and they’re up at four in the morning. When I do my live calls and they’re, they’re, they’re really it’s a big crypto adoption down there. Super smart people open,-minded people, so it’s really hard to watch the way that government’s reacted.

1:55:05 A friend of mine, John Wayne Parr, famous boxer, Thai boxer. I follow him and he’s down there. I think in Sydney or Melbourne, maybe Melbourne and I remember he had a fight and he tracked his hotel quarantine. He was in this hotel for 14 days. He was like he was, he was like he had his 14 desserts lined up.

1:55:23 At one point he was, he was literally going out of his mind in there making crazy videos, and I was just. I was like, Wow, I didn’t realize that it was literally 14 day quarantine, and so again, I. I just send in a lot of love to all of our people down there. I hope that enough people push back to where some of this. These measures are relaxed.

1:55:45 But like you said, you can’t be sure that, and it’s not necessarily gonna get better. The censorship, some of these things, it might get worse, so ultimately, yeah, you have to vote with your feet, so I’m glad you moved. It makes total sense, hopefully the Government’s listening and we’ll get some feedback on this. Michael, want to get your final thoughts and then you know your big challenges for 2022 and 2023? You know, just for Phantom and the space, and as a CEO, so, yeah, just your thoughts, yeah, so there are a lot of challenges, a lot of technical challenges to do with.

1:56:24 Like the consensus technology to do with like the smart contract execution engine that we want to solve. So there are like some problems that we’ve identified and created. Solutions for that can increase scalability by quite a lot. And I kind of talked about a little bit briefly, and, you know, I won’t go into technical details. But they’re making like being able to execute smart contracts faster, more securely.

1:56:44 They’re about, you know, you know, being able to like, minimize like the size of the data on chain. Which is a big issue about improving performance on the consensus of being able to confirm transactions faster in a shorter period of time. So a lot of technology improvements that we have on the roadmap and there’s always like endless work there. And a big challenge in mind as well is also being able to hire the right developers because it’s quite high. It’s quite hard to hire the right developers.

1:57:07 Because these are kind of like niche technologies that are required of expertise. That a lot of people don’t have a lot of expertise in. And so it’s always hard to find good developers in general. And it’s harder to find developers where they need to have like a niche skill set. So that’s a big challenge for us in terms of other challenges.

1:57:24 You know, it’s about kind of like maintaining the growth that we have at the moment and making sure the network is stable, stable. So, as I mentioned before, you know, I want to see a lot more like, like NFT growth from the platform. I want to see, like more energy transactions happen, I want to see more gamings and meta verses. And on the D5 side, you know, I’m hoping that people, you know, maintain the kind of growth in the applications they have there. And also maybe deploy a few kind of device applications that we haven’t really seen on like Phantom before, like, we have lending of warrant protocols with these, like decentralized exchange protocols, but we don’t have a few other protocols.

1:57:57 That allow you to like, like, like, add more functionality converting, like what’s on Ethereum? So that’s kind of like what’s on the road map at the moment. But I think we’re in a very like, solid position. You know, no matter how the market goes, I think we’re on the right track. I mean, the strategy we’ve had from the beginning, which is building from the bottom up.

1:58:15 Focusing on the technology for solving those user scalability and user experience problems. And then helping people on board in the fandom and kind of spreading the message like on your podcast and others, or your platform and others. You know about the phantom technology, about who we are, about the benefits of it, you know, that’s all that’s all kind of like the strategy that we have, and that’s the strategy that we had from the very beginning. And that’s the strategy that we’re just going to keep executing better at a faster pace. Because now we have a few more resources.

1:58:40 So that’s really what the plan is. It’s not a very complicated strategy. Well, it’s impressive what you’ve done. Michael, I’d say you’re one of Phantom’s greatest assets, so appreciate you for being you. This is clearly your best media appearance ever, so I’m hoping that people can really see what you’re all about, you know, and again, your vision makes a big difference.

1:59:01 You know, it shows in the protocol. They always say what? The customer experience is a lagging indicator of the company culture. I think that’s what Zappos founder said. I forgot his name, he left us recently, and so I can see you’re.

1:59:17 You’re driven to give that faster technology, that better technology, that better user experience. And that must be why you’re growing for anybody out there that wants to work for you. Develop on Phantom or just follow as a consumer or retail person, or get that phantom wallet. What’s the best way for them to do that? Next steps, websites, etc.

1:59:38 So the best resource to go to is the Official Founder Foundation website. So that’s phantomfoundation. And on there you kind of see links to all sorts of different pages and websites. So, for example, you see the social media links where you can follow us on Twitter, we just add Phantom FDN, you can follow us on, you can join our discord. You can join like our Telegram groups like announcement groups, etc.

2:00:02 And like a variety of different like discussion community groups, there’s links there for a careers page, which is fact like Phantom Dot Foundation careers. So we’re some job openings there, not just like technology jobs, you know, hiring developers but also jobs related to like research, social media management and a few other positions that we’ve got coming up as well. And there’s like technical documentations there. For developers that want to build applications on developer, there’s a description of the underlying technology at like a high level. And also, like, very much more technical documentation on how, like the consensus, actually works and how the transactions get processed.

2:00:40 So they the site that which has links to all of that content, is like Phantom Foundation. So I would say your listeners should go there and you’ll be able to see a lot of information about Phantom there. Yeah, it’s actually a great website, there’s a lot of information on there. So I would say, Definitely go there, start, and then, you know, get the wallet and go into the whole experience. Michael, just wanna say thank you, I appreciate everything you’re doing.

2:01:04 I appreciate that you’ve been in this for a long time, fighting the good fight when it wasn’t always the most popular thing to do. I’ve had a lot of conversations with people like you that really pushed through the bear. Markets pushed through in an industry where people thought it was all a scam right in 2018. And then you’re having this success this overnight success, which always makes people laugh. So, yeah, amazing work.

2:01:28 You guys are obviously really top 30 market cap protocols now and you’re in a great position. So, yeah, Michael, wishing you all the best with Phantom and like, Thanks for the insights and thanks for being, you know, really open, honest and transparent. I think people really feel that about you, and it’s you don’t see that everywhere, so really appreciate Michael Thanks. I really appreciate the opportunity and I just want, like, last thing I wanted to say is, Yeah, Phantom hasn’t really been like an overnight success. I mean, like, Yeah, we’ve got a lot of traction very recently.

2:02:00 But that’s a combination of a lot of hard work by a lot of individuals, in particular the developers who actually built the online technology. They’re the ones that have like, a really tough job and but are really smart and solve those problems. And so it’s been the communication of, like, a few years of hard work that’s kind of led to. this is to see to the success now. So we’re always kind of thinking long term to kind of continue having that success, you know, over a much longer period of time than just a few years.

2:02:28 Yeah, no, really, Well said. That’s my. That’s my terrible sense of British humor when I say overnight success. Because, you know, so many people, so many people on the show, like people think they’re overnight successes, but there are no overnight successes. The people that usually are successful have been putting in the work for years and again, even years before the ICO.

2:02:47 For all of your people and all the technology, you know for us, I mean, this work. I’ve been doing this now over 10 years. And yet some people think we, you know, we just got here, so it’s all good, we’ll keep pushing forward. Oh, so sorry, I got it. Yeah, it’s funny. I say this.

2:03:04 I said this to a couple of your competitors in layer one. And they kind of laughed out loud. Because, you know, they all know that you guys were doing the work in the bear market. So, Michael, please come to London. Let’s do this in the studio next time you can travel pretty easily, but be great to have you in the studio.

2:03:20 And again, thank you so much. I really appreciate the conversation. Yeah, for sure, I’ll let you know when I’m around it. I really appreciate the opportunity as well. Yeah, it’s been great.

2:03:29 Yeah, it was fantastic stuff. All right, everybody go. The Phantom Foundation website’s amazing. It’s got all your links go work for this man, develop on there and obviously get your wallet and get on this protocol. Stay with me or Michael, but we’ll see everybody else next time on London Real.

2:03:42 Thank you so much, take care bye you.