Odd Lots - Eva Beylin on eGirl Capital, The Graph, and Building Web3

Episode Date: February 3, 2022

Obviously, there's been a tremendous amount of volatility in crypto lately. But what has been the effect on people who are deeply involved in the space? On this episode, we speak with Eva Beylin, who knows crypto as both an investor and a builder. As an investor, she's part of the amorphous investment collective known as eGirl Capital, which features numerous crypto anons who only know each other by their avatars. On the building side, she's the director of The Graph Foundation, which is aiming to be the Google of the blockchain. She talks to us about both projects and what things look like in this current moment.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Thanks for listening to Odd Lots. Follow the show on Amazon Music for more future episodes or just ask, Alexa, play the Odd Lots podcast on Amazon Music. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Wisenthal. And I'm Tracy Allo. So Tracy, I guess it's kind of a cliche. Like every time we do a crypto episode, we're like, oh, crypto markets have been pretty volatile lately. But actually right now they have been extremely volatile. And it's not just a, it's not. just a cliche right now. Yeah, people are talking about crypto winter, so I guess a redux of what we saw back in 2018, where we had the big fall, and then it took a very, very long time for people to get excited and interested in crypto again. But that said, I do feel like this period of time is,

it feels a little bit different because even though the spot prices of a bunch of different things are falling, it seems like there is still a ton of money flooding into the space. And maybe that'll change eventually, but for the time being, it feels like there's still a lot of interest. Yeah, I think that's 100% true. It also feels like there's, you know, 2018, 2019, it felt like it was the only thing that people really talked about with crypto was the price. And I still think like the price of the coins is still like the part that captures people's attention the most. But I guess there is this idea of like, okay, like there's some new web 3.0. Web 3 that's getting built out and it's being built towards something.

And I don't think anyone is that great at describing what it's going to look like or what this new version of the Internet is. But I think it's sufficiently captured people's imagination enough that even if the price were to stay depressed, people want to keep building it out and turning it into something a little bit more tangible beyond speculation. Well, this is one of the remarkable things about crypto, I feel like. It's almost like every time you turn around, there's a new use. case that gets invented. And you're right, it is weird to think that a few years ago, we weren't

talking about Web 3.0. We weren't talking about Defi at all. We were just talking about Bitcoin mostly as a unit of payment, maybe an inflation hedge, digital gold, that sort of thing. And already in the space of a few years, the narrative changes so quickly. The narrative changes super fast. I sometimes go back and forth whether that's a good sign or whether It's just like, oh, here's our new thing because the last thing didn't materialize. But nonetheless, it's ongoing. You know, you mentioned in the beginning, and I think this is really key, is that, yes, there is this decline in prices that we've seen.

But on the flip side, it feels like there's an intense amount of investment in building and money pouring into, like, creating new things. And so I really want to explore this tension more by talking about, like, what's really going on between the price and then, you know, the sort of like actual activity in the space, because they really are two different things. Yeah, absolutely. Let's do it. Okay, I am very excited. Oh, wait, there's one more thing I want to say. You know what one thing that's really weird about talking about crypto is? You're going to have to narrow it down. One weird thing about talking about crypto. There are many weird things. There's one more thing, which is that so many

of the best people in this space are pseudonymous. Like, I don't know who they are. There's like all like these incredible, like, experts that I've learned a ton from over the years. And I literally have no idea who they are. And unlike tradfai, like pseudonymous teams, pseudonymous founders, pseudonymous investors, people who are just an avatar, you know, maybe a frog, maybe an anime character, maybe something like that can be like these really important voices to listen to of the space. Yeah, it's always interesting when you're getting really good crypto information from like a digital picture of an ape or something like that. Yeah, a drawing of a monkey.

Yeah. Exactly right. All right. Well, today we are not going to be speaking to a frog, but we are going to be speaking to maybe a colleague of them. I am very excited. We are going to speaking to Eva Baylon. She is the director at the Graf Foundation.

And she is an e-girl at E-Girl Capital, an amorphous crypto investment collective, whose members include various handles that people might see at crypto Twitter like at Loomdart and at Degenn Spartan and at CryptoCat VC. I'm just looking at their website and Eva, who is not pseudonymous.

So Eva, thank you very much for coming on Odd Lots. Thank you so much for having me. Excited to chat. So, wait, first of all, I used to be in some Discord that was like the E-Girl Capital Discord. And now I'm not in it anymore. Did I get kicked out?

or did it disappear? Like, what happened? Oh, no, I'm not sure. Maybe we should talk to our resident discord owner of the cat in the hazmat suit. But we did have a public chat that was just sort of for our community to come around, share information. All right. Well, somehow I'm not in it, but the cat is at CL 207. But more seriously, like, what is E-Girl capital? Yeah, so first we started off as just, you know, a few anons. And we quickly realized that the scope that we were covering in our interests, you know, we could do some damage. We could either start to invest or start to get more involved in the way we were already involved in Web3, which, you know, as you mentioned, I'm director of the foundation at the graph.

We've got a few members who are leaders of projects, so Scoopy Trooples as CEO of Alchemics. We've got another guy named DevOps who leads saddle finance. We've got a few traders, a few security engineers. So we realized that with this breadth of experience, we actually had something very unique to offer that wasn't consistent with typical investment funds in Web 2 or in Wall Street, and not even consistent with Web 3, where we don't have any LPs, and we operate quite independently. So even every deal, not every member participates in, and we actually only agree to take on an E-Girl deal if we're all kind of in consensus.

So, I mean, I have a bunch of questions already, but maybe just to begin with, could you maybe describe your membership a little bit more? And I guess who are the types of people that would join something like E-Girl Capital versus is going down the route of traditional crypto investment. And what is it that they get out of this particular organization versus, again, more traditional forms of investment? And I guess my overarching question is also, how do you actually decide what to invest in and coordinate, given that you're dealing with a group of disparate people, some of whom, as Joe pointed out in the intro, are pseudonymous? Yeah. So to answer your first question, you know, the way we came together

was, again, very kind of organic. And a lot of us have full-time jobs that are different. So, you know, I have a full-time job as a builder. Others, you know, might be trading or running other investments full-time. And so for us, it was like, how can we come together in this way that is organic? We don't have some quota or some expectations from LPs, but still provide value. And so for us, that it's much more of a choice. We aren't sort of behold into any expectations.

And even our investments, you know, aren't, again, meeting some kind of quota per year. So we've been around for about a year now, and we've made $2 million, about $2 million worth of investments across 10 different projects. And really our priority is to invest in critical, decentralized primitives of Web3. And kind of, you know, the metaverse meets defy. So a lot of our projects, you know, are actually NFT-based, something like YATs or, you know, investing in actually art or UNISOX, as you know, might have seen. We strongly believe in Beblin goods and the ability that, you know, for goods represent. presenting early defy like UNISOX, you know, are likely to increase in value long term. But we're also investing in a lot of really critical protocols that are going to fundamentally change

technology and innovation. So things like Connects, which is a layer two protocol that connects, literally connects between different layer twos on Ethereum or Radical, which is sort of a GitHub replacement, a way to have open source code collaboration. So really, we are motivated by what are the best projects, what would make the most impact and what's most aligned with Web 3. I just want to ask about the coordination portion of it. Like, how do you actually go about identifying and evaluating potential investments?

Yeah, so all of us are in different sub-communities. So typically, you know, there might be one or two members of E-Girl that are kind of leading that deal. Maybe it was, you know, a project they'd already been working with or got connected with. And then we'll start doing our own internal due diligence. I'm excited to say we now have a few interns. We didn't have that a year ago. But they often will help us do research, whether

that's looking at on-chain metrics, maybe comparing against other projects. And again, because we're so deep in the space, a lot of us have expertise, whether it's, you know, security or smart contracts or business that we can kind of bring to each deal. But I wouldn't say it's, you know, quite the most traditional due diligence process as hedge funds that you're used to seeing. Is there a pooled capital element of it? Like, is there a pot that you and these fellow, your fellow members have put money into? And I'm just curious, like, are they anonymous to you as well? most of them? So first question, we don't have a pot, although we have been considering growing into a Dow formally on chain, where right now the way we behave is per deal. So, you know, we kind of bring it

to the group. Anyone who wants to participate, you know, gets a cut or, you know, depending on kind of the breakdown or interest. And we typically will, you know, bring it on as an e-girl deal if there's enough interest from the group. If there isn't enough interest, you know, again, we have our own statures in the community. So often someone will do an angel investment or, maybe even go work with the project directly. What was your second question again? To what degree, like, do you mostly know your colleagues as anon's, or have you, like, are there some that you still don't know who they are?

Oh, no, they're fully anon to me. I've met a few of them in person. I know, you know, a few of their first names, but otherwise, you know, I don't know very much about them. And that's kind of the beauty of it, you know. Part of the Web 3 in CryptoVision is how do we actually utilize pseudonymity in a more productive way. So, you know, DJs have been doing this for years. You know, almost every DJ has their own alias or alter ego. And they get to then create that sub-community or sub-brand. And so similarly,

with crypto, you know, you can participate in a protocol, in a sort of gig economy style. And why do you need that to be tied to your, you know, birth identity when actually you can start to create your own alter ego on chain that might be associated with, you know, a cat or a monkey? And maybe you're only, you know, participating in this one protocol. And then maybe you're only, you know, you know, you have another identity for a different one. I'm thinking about David Solomon and DJ Soul. Sorry. He might be an E-Girl.

He might be an E-Girl. Yeah, who knows? Well, okay. So, again, this is one of those conversations that is just throwing up more and more questions, but two things. One, why E-Girl? And I guess it's a really stupid question. Are most of your members female, or was there a desire there to get more females on board

with crypto? And then secondly, what's the benefit of pseudonymity? Because when I think of crypto and Bitcoin, I always think, well, this is sort of a tension at the heart of crypto. On the one hand, it's transparent and traceable, and you can see all the transactions on a blockchain and things like that. But on the other hand, it's not necessarily tied to a single identity. And so you are able to do anonymous transactions. So I guess what I'm getting at is what's the benefit of preserving that pseudonymity of investors.

The meme of e-girl, I believe, came out of more anime and hentai culture. As I'm sure you've seen, you know, things like V-tubing, where people are literally creating cartoon images of their faces and then going on YouTube and, you know, doing a show, has become extremely popular or even streaming. And so we kind of tapped into this idea of, you know, anime and cartoon characters, you know, should also be taken seriously as much as suits. In a sense, we kind of present this anti-suit culture or anti-suit meme. And I really personally related to that because I used to be a management consultant in New York and being forced into sort of this box.

And it was very clear to me that Web 3 and Crypto are the antithesis of that, where you really can still be taken seriously for your bottom line or for, you know, the insightful tweets or whatever you might be investing in. You don't need to be wearing a suit. You could be wearing a hazmat suit. I guess on your second question. So the biggest misconception to me that I see is people think that pseudonymity or anonymity means that you don't have reputation when actually it's quite the opposite that if you want to be known and if you want to have a community or have a job, you have to make much more effort to develop that reputation than otherwise, you know, KYC people.

So, you know, I'm one of the only docs members and, you know, technically speaking, I've been developing my reputation since I was born. and, you know, that's Googleable, but anyone who chooses to take on a different personality is starting from scratch. And so there's this misconception that, you know, of course, maybe you can't always trust anons, maybe there's some degree of risk, but at the same time, they've taken on a significant amount of risk, too, that if they wanted to rebuild that identity or reputation, it would take much longer than for everyone else. This is Tom Keene, inviting you to join us for the Bloomberg Surveillance podcast. It's about making you smarter every business day.

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YouTube or anywhere else you listen. On the East Coast, listen at lunch. And on the West Coast, listen as soon as you wake up. That's the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast with Tom Keene, Paul Sweeney, and me, Alexis Christophorus. Subscribe today, wherever you get your podcasts. Bloomberg's Surveillance, Essential Listening, each and every business day. So I'm curious, you know, I'm looking at your portfolio on your website. I'm very amused by the UNISOX investment, for one thing.

That was, for those who don't remember, we had Mike Demeret on the podcast in December, and he was involved in that, which is basically buy an NFT that's associated with a literal pair of stocks. But some of these projects, like, I think there's like all they're like well-known, I guess you would call them doxed, or just sort of like established VC firms in them. And then the announcement will like, you know, it'll be like some name that you've heard of from Silicon Valley, E-Girl Capital is part of the round. Do legacy VCs, what do they think about being? part of a deal where you guys are listed on the round?

You know, I don't know. And to be honest, I don't really care. I think part of what we're trying to bring here is like we're a group of highly capable, you know, folks that have been in the space for between, you know, three to ten years. You know, some started early on in Bitcoin. And we're bringing a lot of value to the table that may be untraditional, but, you know, we're still here. We still were able to get a seat.

You know, the project believed in our value that we could bring to them. So I think it's really exciting. and it's breaking down that barrier that, you know, you don't have to be wearing suits. You don't even have to have an identity that's public really to do well. Can we talk a little bit about the graph, which is your day job? And I would love to get your summary of what exactly it does. But the other thing I want to ask you is it has to do with Ethereum. It's not like a Bitcoin-based application or protocol.

And I guess I'm wondering, you know, excitement over Ethereum. seems to be one thing that a lot of the VCs share. So the institutional capital is much more excited over Ethereum and applications and defy-type stuff that you can build on that versus basic Bitcoin, which is seen as not being as well suited to those types of applications. So I guess my question is why Ethereum and not something else and doesn't mean that you sort of share something in common with VCs and institutional money. So the graph is a decentralized. protocol for organizing and retrieving on-chain data. And what that means is every application that you see that is running on a blockchain or queries smart contracts, they have to retrieve

that data from a blockchain somehow. And it's actually really difficult for developers to do that. They would have to run their own node. They would have to become experts in that blockchain. It's essentially a back-end job. And so what the graph does is we have a standardized layer or standardized API called a subgraph that allows developers to, you know, develop, you know, an organization style or figure out exactly what information they want from the blockchain and just, you know, play around with that subgraph. Meanwhile, the actual indexing and processing of that data goes on in the back end on a network of indexers. So we're really decentralizing the server or the backend of what otherwise would be, you know, a database, you know, indexing infrastructure

that is serving data to users. So we often like to call ourselves the Google of blockchains. So as Google is a search engine and also the back-end indexing of all of the Internet's data, currently the graph protocol is the indexing bit. And so we're trying to enable other applications like search engines and just DAPS in general to be able to retrieve that data as efficiently as possible. And why Ethereum? Ethereum.

So our ethos, as the graph has always been decentralized and, to enable the best security possible. We really believe you can't have a DAB if it's not decentralized, meaning all components are. And in our history of just assessing blockchains and, you know, having been around for a few years, Ethereum was the one that stayed true to that mission the strongest. You know, and we're even seeing that today in, you know,

what some people call Ethereum taking its time with a roadmap, others could see as actually Ethereum being very thoughtful with its roadmap to not do things too quickly. And, you know, you see other problems on newer chains. that, you know, Ethereum also experienced earlier on, but Ethereum is just added a more mature state. And, you know, our goal, although the graph network is built on Ethereum, our goal is actually to index all of the world's data, meaning any blockchain. So our hosted service currently supports 27 chains, including many of the layer twos on Ethereum, and soon all those chains

will also be supported on the network itself. And you mentioned that other layer ones, other chains have had issues we're recording this January 24th. And the last, last few days, Solana, one of the chains that we've talked about in the past, that is arguably an Ethereum competitor, has seen some pretty big delays and slowdown, so a lot of kinks still being worked out. You just raised at the graph $50 million. It was led by Tiger Global. What is the plan for this money and what do you need to build? Yeah, really glad you asked. So over the last year, we've been pioneering this new strategy that we call decentralized MNA. So we realized really early on that the mission of the graph was so ambitious, so vast, it couldn't be done by one team, and nor was that the goal.

Part of decentralization is also decentralizing the contributors. So over the last year, we've had four new teams join us full-time that specialize in anything from back-end infrastructure to cryptography to GraphQL APIs and bringing them in to act basically as full-time core developers on the protocol. So we aren't no longer, you know, one team that, you know, initially launched the protocol, we're five. And we raise this round basically to continue moving along this strategy. We have a goal of bringing on another three to five teams in the next two years. And that might be to help with the current roadmap elements, such as, you know, improving the efficiency of the infrastructure. We also are, you know, working and doubling down on cryptography to make sure that the data that is actually being, you know, queried by apps is verifiable. So we've got quite a complex roadmap.

app, and we're looking to use that $50 million as ammunition to basically continue building on our vision. So you've talked in the idea of like, oh, this is going to be the Google of blockchains and decentralized or making it easy for any dapp or decentralized application to query the chain. That sounds obviously very cool in theory. Can you give a little bit more, I guess, some concrete examples of what kind of apps or what specifically would be involved in? that like what are like I think this is where when people at least for me maybe I'm projecting but at least for me like I sort of get trading and how the automated market makers work and I sort of get like NFTs but still when I think about like well what is a web three

application what is it true like blockchain application can you talk a little bit about specifically how applications are using your infrastructure yeah so in my opinion a true DAP or a true web three app would be one that is open, permissionless, and decentralized, meaning that it would be very difficult or nearly impossible to take down. And users have the right to exit, meaning that the app or the platform itself isn't locking the user in, but because everything is on a blockchain and other protocols, they can swap their data and assets between those. So, you know, one really great example is EMS, Ethereum name service. So this is, you know, Ethereum domains. And this means that any application could essentially query data about your Ethereum name, Joe or Tracy,

and use that information on any website. So instead of using a Google magic link like we use today, we could use Ethereum name service. And that means that any application that wants to get data from your ENS name, so maybe that's your wallet and your activity, they could query a subgraph. So that's an ENS API. So any information on, you know, that's from the blockchain, whether it's trade volumes or pricing or assets, needs to be queried from a blocker. chain and subgraphs make it much easier since developers don't need to rebuild their own API. So, you know, anyone building on, let's say the Uniswap protocol can just use the exact same Uniswap API because it's open source.

They can also fork it, rebuild it, maintain it if they want to. You know, the end goal being that all these subgraphs are public goods and they're even maintained by the community or a Dow itself. And that really enables much more, you know, innovation time, you know, maybe even cost savings for the team because they don't need to hire a full-time engineer to manage. that database, and it really enables composability. So many teams can collaborate on either the same API or, you know, the same protocol without having to do the same work again. So I really like that definition of right to exit because it jibes really nicely with the wallet

idea. We were talking with Mike Demeret about this, about how, you know, if you have a wallet, you know, say metamask or something, it's easy to port that onto something like rainbow. and you're not dependent on the platform in order to access your information and your data and your assets. So that makes a lot of sense to be. But one thing I'm wondering is, you know, you've mentioned decentralization a number of times in this conversation, and you've even talked about a decentralized way to invest in decentralization. Why is it so important beyond a better user experience? Because people talk about Web 3.0 as almost creating a business.

better world, right? It seems to have all these philosophical attachments and moral values attached to it. What is it about decentralization that makes it so important in your view and presumably so great? I think there's a few things that we're starting to see even play out in crypto. So one is censorship, you know, the very common use case. And we're starting to even see folks that just recently entered the NFT space realized that, oh, you know, if the NFT DAB isn't fully decentralized, meaning the API, the server, and where that NFT metadata is stored, then, you know, is that NFT really real? Can I have the right to exit that platform?

So, you know, that's one use case. The second would be, you know, servers get taken down all the time. Google goes down, Facebook goes down, and they've been around for decades. And when we think about scaling to a global network, you know, whether that's transactions or NFTs, you really want to make sure your app doesn't go down. So one really great anecdote for us was Constitution Dow. So I'm not sure if you heard of Constitution Dow, you know, millions of dollars collected from the community to come bid for the Constitution. And at its peak, you know, of excitement, its app went down because the API went down.

And so they actually transitioned to using a subgraph that was on the decentralized network to make sure that they could continue staying up during the auction. So that's a great example of we're already seeing that today, that, you know, things go down all the time. but furthermore, like, why would you want a DAP team to be the team also managing the node and doing all the complexities? So one thing the graph and other decentralized protocols allow for is unbundling of what were otherwise centralized services or tasks that were managed by the project team originally. But now we can actually completely fragment that. So whereas a team might have been the one that deployed the smart contracts, they might not be the team managing the UI. They also might not be the team managing the API. And that's fine because at the end of the day, we're all building on top of each other's.

open source tooling and protocols. So just on that note, I mean, this is something that people who are critical of the Web 3.0 idea will often go after this idea that you're just going to have people, you know, a community sort of maintaining these databases or being responsible for individual components of something that all fits together. And maybe they argue that, well, they don't have an actual self-interest in keeping these up to date in the same way that a company like a Google or a Facebook, even though, you know, you might think it's evil, at least it has a reason to kind of keep things going. So the decentralized

processes might not be as reliable as a more traditional or centralized process. I guess what's your response to that sort of criticism? Yeah, I definitely hear that centralized coordination has its efficiency gains. But the benefit of blockchains and cryptocurrency is, is that we have this new incentive system. So whereas maybe Google had to be the one managing their servers because they owned all their equity and they also owned the rights to their server, we now have a world where anyone can buy a token at any time,

a utility token. Anyone can use that token in the network. So in the graph's case, that would be staking as an indexer or a delegator. And you can then earn rewards from that network and the productivity and value that it creates for the world. So I actually think we're solving some scalability issues where typically the only people that really care about the product are the people inside the company. Often shareholders don't even care. But with tokens, you allow anyone to contribute and take ownership in the graph or whatever protocol it might be.

So we're seeing things like grantees come up with ideas of tooling or protocol improvements just because they've now bought in and feel they are a part of the community as well, even though maybe their full-time job is using their real name. and maybe on the web too. I want to talk more about, you know, censorship and the dangers of centralization. And, of course, one of the most obvious cases is Twitter. And people find themselves, their accounts are banned suddenly. And there's sort of this impulse to, like, you know, this is a worry. Like, people love Twitter. You're on Twitter.

The fellow e-girls are on Twitter. But, you know, one day Twitter could just take your account away. And it's sort of this poster child for. the sort of like the double-edged sword of Web 2. Yes, there's all these like cool platforms. We can share stuff. We can talk. But we really don't own anything and we can be cut off.

Do you foresee Web 3 DAPs rebuilding that in a decentralized way? Like, will there be a decentralized Twitter? Do you envision that like at some point in the next five years, you won't have to use Twitter, you won't have to use Discord or you won't have to use Telegram because there are new decentralized versions where you can share in community. without the need for a middleman company? I really do. And I think it's going to make building applications way more competitive because the

switching costs are much lower. So, you know, often the way banks and credit cards keep customers in is the switching costs are high. You can't reach the bank, whatever it might be. Here, it's as easy as just sending wallet or sending funds to another wallet or, you know, switching your name or your NFTs, you know, by just selling it in a marketplace. So it'll be a lot easier to build those apps, and we're already starting to see it with a DAP called Orbis recently came out. I know a DAP called Sent has been out for a while, but we'll probably see more iteration.

What I'm personally excited for is to see the coupling of the actual actions on chain with our social platforms. So, you know, right now, most DOWs, they typically have a forum or some kind of social platform where they discuss the DOW proposals before it's actually put to a vote. And why is it that the voting and the forum discussion is disconnected? You know, one of the things I love about Bloomberg is that the reason it, you know, it kind of kicked off was because the messenger or the chat became so useful for traders to make settlements or OTC trades, whatever it might have been. And so I think we're going to see that same kind of thing happen where our social applications are going to start coinciding with maybe actual transactions, you know, maybe submitting trades. And, you know, across the board, we could see even the way we behave with each other. starting to change. You know, people already start to stock each other's E&S names to see what they're doing. So what else could there be? I'm going to ask another boomer feasibility question,

I guess. But I mean, a lot of the, a lot of the services online that people use now, like Twitter or Facebook, they're free. And the way those companies make money, you know, maybe with the exception of Twitter, but the way they're supposed to make money is through advertising and through gathering user data so that they can target these people with the most effective ads. And it's supposed to be the data, which is the valuable product here. You know, you get something for free in exchange for providing these companies reams and reams of data. When you move to decentralized applications, my understanding, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is a lot of that data is supposed to be more freely available, more open, more transparent, which I guess makes it

maybe less valuable to a company trying to do something with it, it's no longer proprietary. So I guess the question is, like, how does that wide, that wide open data or, you know, the way that decentralization will make data more accessible, more transparent, more widely available, how does that stack up with actually making money from decentralized services and transactions? Like, how are profits actually supposed to be created through this process? Yeah, that's a really good question. And to be honest, I don't have a clear answer because I would say a lot of the infrastructure to enable even the most simple like data analysis isn't quite there yet. You know, I can speak for the graph and our roadmap is still quite ambitious. You know, we'd like to be able to better support analytics for that use case you're talking about. But I foresee a lot of different kinds of monetization strategies. So kind of like I mentioned people participating in protocols, you know, that's revenue. So, you know, whether it's a fund or an individual staking, you know, tokens and then providing services. And those services could be anything from, you know, looking at images and curating which art is most interesting to actually

running hardware or, you know, maybe being a trader or a yield farmer. And that is a way to generate income. I think we'll also start to see a lot more innovation in the micropayment level. So whereas right now we're, you know, not very mature in how do we enable what we call meta-transactions, so kind of transactions embedded in the background. but I think what we might see in the future with oracles, you know, which is retrieving off-chain data and other tooling, the ability to charge or be charged for smaller interactions. And that gets charged directly to a wallet, and your wallet being, you know, something like your ENS name is now tied to your identity. Instead of the ad companies paying, you know, Twitter, the ad companies could, in theory, start paying users. And that could be micropayments or microtransactions that are sent directly to the user wallet.

Similarly, maybe instead of artists, you know, art being looked at and them never receiving any rewards, maybe artists start earning to their wallets based on impressions or microimpressions on Instagram. And so I think we're going to start seeing different kinds of monetization patterns arrive as the tech also becomes more mature. And that includes layer two. It includes things like the graph, storage, you know, things like RWeave IPFS, really seeing all those pieces come together to make that possible. On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm.

Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. So, Eva, one of the reasons, you know, one that I'm excited about having this conversation is you're really on both sides of the market. As part of the e-girl collective, you're an investor in various Web3 infrastructure and of the director at the graph, you're building stuff and raising money. So I want to start like, okay, obviously we've seen this pretty big volatility. And by volatility, I mean selling Ethereum has basically been cut in half since the middle of November. a lot of coins have done worse. So I want to just start with like a simple question, which is, have you seen when you're going out to market as an investor looking to buy into

projects, has the selling had any effect on sort of like private market valuations or deal pace or anything like that? I haven't seen it affect it. And I would be surprised if it does because the thesis with, you know, E-Girl and others is much more long-term, typically at least two years, often decades. And so we're really focused on what is the next thing we're building and how do we invest in in that team that's building it. I mean, when you see people talk about crypto winter on Twitter and, you know, there have been people who maybe panic, is it the right word, but certainly there's a sort of sense of unease amongst crypto investors at the moment, I think. Does it affect your investing behavior at all or does it affect the way you think about things? Does it lengthen the

timeline to make things come together or be viable or affect it in any way? Yeah, I'd say it probably affects us in how we think about our community. So anyone who was around during the last bear market remembers how brutal it was, you know, there were a lot of really challenging experiences, whether it was layoffs or lack of capital. And so that is the first thing I thought about was, you know, are we going to make it as a collective? You know, is everyone going to be okay? But the more controversial perspective I have is that, you know, bear markets are great. You know, as a builder, you know, the graph was built in a bear market. And most of the best projects and infrastructure today, whether it's layer twos or NFTs, you know, arrived during the bear market. And it gives

us time to actually make mistakes, iterate. And even as an investor, you know, you need that time for a project team to iterate to actually come up with something innovative. So I'm also excited, you know, if that is what's happening, if we're having a bit of a slowdown, to have projects, you know, maybe take that time, reassess whatever their roadmap is, and keep shipping. So the other part of this, and this was, you know, this may be true now in January, maybe it's probably true in November, is there's just an insane amount of like institutional money coming into the space. And last week, there was a report that Entresen Horowitz, which raised it, has a huge crypto fund, has been in the space for a long time.

There's a report that they're looking to raise like another four. and a half billion for another crypto fund. We'll see if that comes together. But is there really like, I mean, I guess there's questions like, is there capacity? Like right now, can money at that scale be put to use? Is there enough need for that much capital? Or if you have a good project as a builder, like, is it really like, all the options are on your side? Like, what is the, who has the power right now? And is there really a use for that much cash coming into the space? I would say there is, there is. You know, there's a lot of projects that continue to raise, whether it's, you know, their seed or pre-seed because they're just starting to out or, you know, maybe a series

B because we're a few years into their cycle. You know, there's a lot of opportunity to get involved depending on what the flavor is, you know, so some institutionals are more interested in defy, given it's more consistent with their, you know, typical finance exposure, and some are more interested in protocols. And I would say protocols are probably where there's more opportunity because they take longer to build. And so when an investor might be thinking about, you know, the roadmap of that team, you know, Ethereum took, what is it now, 2022. So about six years, almost six years just to really ship East 2.

You know, and, you know, maybe there were some inefficiencies, but really it's just hard problems. It's hard cryptographic problems that requires coordination between many different teams, often global. And so I think that's the best place that we could see more investment, you know, given that the roadmap is likely, you know, the next decade. I have a really tough question. And, you know, we talked about in the intro how there always seems to be a new use case for crypto. So, you know, we had method of payment and then we kind of moved into defy and then Web 3.0. What do you think is the next big crypto use case or perhaps what do you think is an underappreciated use case at the moment that people are going to be talking more about in the coming years? Yeah, I have two favorites here.

So, ENS, like I mentioned, Ethereum Name Services, as the universal login, I think, has been untapped. And, you know, watching them grow over the past year, grow into a Dow, you know, is really allowing them to flourish and sort of surpass the Web3 community. Everyone in Web3 is known about them. But the goal is really that that could be the killer app that gets Web2 people in because a universal login is something we can all relate to. You know, we all log into many apps and we all forget our passwords. The second is this cross-chain universe. So something we've seen at the graph is a lot more queries and usage of subgraphs that are more focused maybe on wrapped Bitcoin. So, you know, creating some kind of wrapped Bitcoin or a solution that enables access to Bitcoin on Ethereum or other chains.

And to me, that signifies a lot more interest from the Bitcoin community to actually get involved in defy and some of these new activities or markets. So whether that's investing in NFTs or maybe actually just doing some investing in utilities, Tocons, seeing that growth in wrapped Bitcoin and wrapped tokens signifies a much more mature smart contract ecosystem. So folks not only interested in the typical Bitcoin use case of, you know, hard money, but also seeing that there's a bigger world here and a lot more opportunity to get involved. Well, Eva, that was great. I've always wanted to learn more about the work that you do.

But I got to get back. I really miss, like, the morning saying GM in the E-Girl Discord. So I don't know what happened, but if it still exists, I really want to come back in. Okay, I will make sure you're invited back in. Tracy, do you also want to join? You know, I think, okay, I'll come in, but this is a lot of pressure because now I have to think what my avatar is and what my, I'm going to join on a pseudonymous basis as like an anime character. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I got to go choose my ape, so it's a lot of pressure.

Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, Eva, Bealin, thank you so much for coming out on Oddlott. Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure. Thank you, Eva. That was great. Take care. Tracy, I thought that conversation was really fun. I really don't know how you could look at like the website of E-Girl Capital

and see this investment collective of like all these cartoon characters. And part of their investments are like, like on their like portfolio page are a bunch of NFTs. And even if you think the whole thing is kind of nuts, like it seems pretty fun and cool. Yeah, I guess, I mean, I don't want to get too. profound about it, but maybe it's a really nice, like, due diligence test where if you saw a bunch of cartoon characters saying that they were investing in all this random stuff, you would be like, well, I have no idea if they're serious or not, because, you know, one is a frog and the other one is an ape and another is an anime character or whatever. But if you actually looked at what each

of them is doing and saying and understood whether or not what they were saying was making sense and whether or not they were making intelligent commentary on the space. I feel like that's actually probably a better method of due diligence than seeing like Mark Anderson is investing in whatever startup. And so it must be really good, which seems to be what a lot of people do nowadays. No, I totally agree. It's exactly right. Like if, you know, like I said in the beginning, a lot of the people over the last, you know,

we've been following this space for years, but a lot of the people who I've been following and really like must read their stuff. I have no idea who they are. They're completely undogged. They're pseudonymous, but like they've broken through. And in crypto specifically, I would say also, you know, I think, what was the term that even used, like anti-suit or something like that? Like, we're suits.

But this idea, like a lot of the people who I think like, frankly, speak the most nonsense and speak in total jargon are exactly like suits and people who like, it's like, I don't trust you. And so I do think, like, crypto, the whole world, like, sort of flips on its head where, where credibility comes from, where credibility is earned. Yeah. And actually, I mean, this has been a challenge for us on all thoughts because there have been anonymous people that we want to get on the show, especially to talk around NFTs. And it's hard for us to get them on because, you know, even if they don't want to docks themselves on the show, and it's a bit difficult for us to have totally anonymous people. but if they give us an audio recording, you know, unless we like try to disguise the voice, there's still a concern that they might docks themselves. But I don't know, maybe if anyone has any good ideas for getting around that, we would

be all ears. The other thing I want to say is, you know, we're talking about the difference between people who just like sort of babble in technical jargon. Yeah. Try to sound like they're knowledgeable versus people who are actually able to explain this stuff in a clear way. I thought Eva's definition of what, you know, Web 3.0 is, what true decentralization is, as this right to exit is a really simple and intuitive way of thinking about it.

Yeah, 100%. The idea of like that you could like, okay, you have this data or you have to use a cliche term that's coming back, like the so-called social graph and the idea that you could move it and the idea that not one company could control it and could be somewhere else is very powerful. I still feel like, you know, it's like, look, we're all like tweeting, Eva's tweeting, the other girls are tweeting. They're on Discord. Or sorry, discord, et cetera.

Like, there's still an incredible reliance on Web 2 tools. And I don't know, like, it's still really hard for me to like envision, like what the decentralized version of all this is going to be like. I get NFTs. I get like having a wallet with like showing your NFTs. But that's different than. like updating something that would be equivalent to a tweet or sending something, a message that would be the equivalent to an email. So I still like have some part of me that's like

has a hard time wrapping around like what the decentralized internet really looks like. But, you know, I don't get most of this stuff anyway. So I wouldn't necessarily hold that against them. Well, to me, the data is the is the important issue here and the thing that has the big question mark around it. Right. So if you have the right to exit, you have the right to take all this data with you and historically Web 2.0 has been run on proprietary data. That's how people make money. My question is like how does that transform into companies that are actually making profits? And okay, maybe you don't need everyone to be making a profit in the same way that Facebook and Google and whoever have traditionally been making profits. But it seems like you still have to have

some sort of monetization in order to incentivize people to come in and build this stuff. But I mean, On the other hand, it does seem like there are a lot of people who are interested in building it right now. And there's certainly a lot of money pouring into the space without that monetization question actually having been answered in detail. So maybe that's on its way. Who knows? And I certainly believe, Evo, when she says that even with the recent selling and so many coins basically being cut in half, that the sort of like impulse to build and invest is still going strong. It feels like I'm, I don't think we're going to have like an actual like crypto. or everyone sort of like forgets about crypto for three years in the way we did starting in 2018.

No, it does feel like there are so many people and so much money in the space. And it's almost its own belief system at this point that it's really hard for it to go away. Totally agree. All right. Shall we leave it there? Let's leave it there. Okay. This has been another episode of the All Thoughts podcast.

I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at Tracy Alloway. And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me on Twitter at the stall. follow our guest, Eva Baylon. She is at Eva Baylon. Follow our producer, Laura Carlson, at Laura M. Carlson. Follow the Bloomberg head of podcast, Francesca Levy, at Francesca Today, and check out all of our podcasts at Bloomberg under the handle at podcasts. Thanks for listening. April 29th and 30th, Bloomberg House arrives in Miami at the Formula One Grand Prix.

Set against one of the world's most electrifying sporting events, Bloomberg House brings business, investment and culture together, powered by Bloomberg journalism, real-time data, and forward-looking conversations. From onstage discussions to exclusive networking with global leaders, this is where ideas connect. Bloomberg House Miami, presenting sponsor, Coriant, supporting sponsor, Octa. Learn more at BloombergLive.com slash Bloomberg House Miami.