Bankless - Superfluid with Francesco Renzi | ETHDenver 2023 Interview #2

Starting point is 00:00:12 We're here at the Interop Summit series. Coming up next is Fran from Superfluid. What is Superfluid? It does streaming payments. And Fran has got some interesting takes about who and where streaming payments is getting adopted in the Web3 landscape. Small disclaimer here, Ryan and I are investors in Superfluid. But first, before we get into that conversation with Fran from Superfluid, a moment to talk about these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. Cracken is our strategic sponsor for 2023.

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Starting point is 00:02:55 Dot app. Now let's get into the interview. Bagless Nation, we are here still at the Interoperability Summit, hosted by Axelar, and I'm here with Fran, the CEO and co-founder of Superfluid. What's up, Fran? Hey, yeah, it's great. There's a lot going on. Denver is even busier than I've seen it last year.

Starting point is 00:03:10 So yeah, so were you here at ETHember last year? Yeah, it's my fourth time. Fourth time. Yeah. That's all of the times. Yeah, probably. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right. There's not many people I've seen also have been there all of the times. East Denver last year, fun fact, bankless nation, 13,000 people.

Starting point is 00:03:26 I think we've counted 18,000 people here this year in a bear market. That's insane. Build market. Excuse me. How dare I? Fran, speaking of build market, what's your building? So Superfluid is a decentralized, protocol that allows you to stream money.

Starting point is 00:03:42 So using Superfluid, you can basically make one transaction on chain, which initiates a recurring payment that happens every second. So you can use this for all sorts of different things, from payroll to to token vesting, and also a use case we're very excited about, which is subscriptions, and subscriptions

Starting point is 00:03:58 in games. So that's something we've launched recently, seeing a lot of success with. Okay, subscriptions and games. First off, how does this work? Streaming payments? Like, technically, how does that work? So technically, Basically, Superfluid has its own token standard, which is an extension to the RC20. And that token standard enables streaming the same way a normal token has transfer.

Starting point is 00:04:18 So you can do token dot transfer or token dot stream, right? And streaming is basically moving money every second from one account to another. And when you build it in your game, it allows you to do things like receive rewards every second or, for example, pay a fee every second to get access to a particular part of the game, right? And I think people who go down the crypto rabbit hole, they kind of get that pitch of you could pay per byte of internet access or you could have your payroll per paid to you per second. This is that technology that unlocks that. That is exactly it. So the world that we imagine in a future is everybody's getting their payroll every second.

Starting point is 00:04:54 They're paying their subscriptions every second. They're paying their rent every second. They're getting their dividends every second. Everything is streaming around fluidly on chain. Okay. And unlocking capital, all of that cool stuff. Where are you seeing adoption of superfluid? What's getting picked up on the moves?

Starting point is 00:05:09 So that's the tricky thing, right? Adoption is really hard. There's not that many users in Web Free. And building an economy based on streams is going to take a long time, right? Objectively, it's hard. But when you build a game, you can design your in-game economy from scratch, right? And you can design that in-game economy to use this capital efficiency, to use this, you know, this coolness of streaming from the ground up.

Starting point is 00:05:32 And that's where we're seeing a lot of adoption now. We integrated with a game called Planet IX a couple of weeks ago, and they got 25,000 users in a matter of two days. Wow. Oh, this is a crypto game. Got 25,000 users in two days. That's a crypto game, yes. And how is it a crypto game leveraging superfluid?

Starting point is 00:05:48 So basically, it's a strategy game. You have a base, and the basic is free. But if you want to expand your base, you have to rent extra land. And to rent that land, you have to stream their token, right? So you stream the token to the contract, it gives you access to the land. and you basically got better yields and you grow faster in the game. So it's a bit of play to earn. So you're making a bet that rather than trying to deconstruct parts of the economy that already exists,

Starting point is 00:06:15 you'd rather inject superfluid into new economies that are being born right in this day and age. Exactly, exactly. But obviously, it's a stepping stone, right? But if you look at gaming historically, it's been where adoption happens, right? It's gaming and porn, right? Porn we maybe don't want to get into. We'll save that one for a later day. Exactly, exactly.

Starting point is 00:06:31 gaming, right? You can build unique experiences and people will adopt new behaviors, not because it's better for them, but just because it's fun, right? So you can introduce these behaviors and then, you know, when all of your in-game assets are streaming to you, you're going to ask your employer to stream your salary, right? And that is the next step, but that will take a bit longer. So a lot of people across the Web3 ecosystem are really hammering this idea that it's going to be gaming that really is the next big wave in crypto. And that's a really awesome narrative, it's harder to vet how true that is.

Starting point is 00:07:03 But as someone who is actually working with games and they're integrating superfluid to some respect, what's your vantage point? Where do you stand on the whole Web3 gaming is the new bull market? What are your attitudes there? I think it's very hard to deny.

Starting point is 00:07:19 Like, we've struggled to get users, we get a customer, there's streaming money, right? There's 15 people in a team, right? Fifteen people streaming salaries. And then we do one integration with one game and we get 25,000 unique users in two days, right? The scale is different. And the scale is different because the use case is lower friction. It's much easier to get into a game than to get a job at a web-free company, right? So there's a ton

Starting point is 00:07:45 of opportunities and all of those users onboarded for gaming. They learn to use Metamask. They learn what self-custody is. They learn how to use OpenCy. They learn how to use Uniswap. And guess what? that becomes their financial life, right? So all those users onboarded will stick around as long as these games are fun, they're engaging, and they have these engaging in-game economies, right? And you tell me, is there a better place to build an in-game economy than on-chain?

Starting point is 00:08:13 Right. Yeah, so you're a big plus one on Web3 gaming is the next ball market, not a meme. That's a real thing. Not a meme, not a meme. What's your attitude or belief that crypto mechanisms actually can make games more fun rather than getting in the way of UX and UI.

Starting point is 00:08:29 How do you think that that problem is going to get solved? Well, that's for the game designers in the room, right? I would argue it's another tool, right? But it's a tool that doesn't have competitors, right? In Web 2, you just can't do this stuff. The interoperability is a new thing that people have to learn, right? When you're building a game in Web 2, it's a World Guard, and you make all the rules.

Starting point is 00:08:50 In Web 3, you have composable assets. You don't make all the rules anymore, right? you literally can't know what will happen with the assets you create. And that is harder to reason about, but it's a massive opportunity. And whoever cracks it and manages to create games that are engaging, composable, you know, maybe other people can build games using the same assets. Whoever can crack that is going to have a massive success that can't be replicated in Web2. So you said the word interoperability, which will bring us back to the beginning of this interview

Starting point is 00:09:18 because we're at the Interop Summit here from hosted by Axelar. And how does superfluid work with other chains? You said it was an extension off of the ERC20 token. Does that keep you constraining you to the EVM world? Or how does superfluid work in the cross-chain ecosystem? So at the moment, we're deployed on eight different EVM networks. And we are planning to scale that to pretty much every EVM network. It's much easier for us to deploy there.

Starting point is 00:09:41 At the same time, somebody actually built for a hackathon, a proof of concept on Starknet, which was very good. And they now got a grant to finish that up. So we're very excited. Starknet is going to be our first non-EVM implementation. And I think long-term, Superfluid is going to be everywhere, right? It's a token standard. Tokens are everywhere. Superfluid has to be everywhere as well.

Starting point is 00:10:02 It's going to take a while. It's a lot of work, but it's worth it, right? If people have been peaked by this interview and they want to learn more, where should they go? So follow us on Twitter. That's Superfluid underscore HQ. Go to our website at superfluid.finance. Come to our Discord. That's Discord.

Starting point is 00:10:17 on superfluid.finance. And for any developers out there, a very interesting opportunity, we host a hackathon every month. It's called the Superfluid Wave Pool. Whatever you build on Superfluid, or even if you just make contents, you can submit it.

Starting point is 00:10:31 And we're doing prizes every month. There's different themes, different prizes, different co-sponsors, so a lot of opportunity to build with us and make that future we're talking about a reality. Amazing, Fran.

Starting point is 00:10:42 Thank you so much for walking me through it. Yeah, thank you. Cheers. Cheers.

Bankless - Superfluid with Francesco Renzi | ETHDenver 2023 Interview #2

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