Ep: 221 - LIVE from Solana Breakpoint, Day 3. Feat. Amanda Young (BitRobot), Abhay Kumar (Helium), Emmett Hollyer (Solana Mobile), Amy Boudreau (0x), Mashal Waqar (Octant), Austin Hurwitz (Neuko)

[00:00]. [00:03] One, two. Okay, we're rolling. Live, baby. We're rolling. Here we are. Hello. I am having a really hard time to do this with all these. We're in a booth, and there's a full booth over here, but that's okay. People are watching us. We need to know. [00:19] No, I can't. I cannot. Okay. [00:22] Oh my god, okay. Hi! [00:24] Hello, Natasha. I'm Natasha Hoskins. I'm Blake Finucane. And we're Boys Club. [00:29] Welcome to Breakpoint Day... Three. [00:32] We are at the end of... [00:34] the conference clearly i am um things are firing you're breaking point yeah yeah yeah um but we're super happy i think like genuinely overall super energized even delirious but having a truly a fantastic time we are in abu dhabi with at the solana breakpoint conference for those who don't know what that is solana is a blockchain and they do a yearly flagship conference that is [00:58] super high fidelity and it's called Breakpoint.

And this year it's in Abu Dhabi. So the girls or the boys have just been hanging in the Mideast. [01:07] We actually had Middle Eastern food last time. Yeah. Last night. [01:11] And... [01:12] Okay. No, you can't do that. You thought it was okay. I thought it was like not that amazing. I will say this. I love Middle Eastern food. So do I. It was fine. No, no, the food, it's, I mean, I love Middle Eastern food too. I might even say it's my favorite cuisine. Oh my God. Nonetheless, I thought the food itself, like the restaurant was just fine.

Blow it up. What's the name of it? I will say, pick the restaurant. No, but I was so, it was so nice to have someone to pick the restaurant and have, and you reserved it. Anyway, whatever. It's fine. Do you want to ask [01:42] THE END OF THE DAY. [01:42] Do you want me to? I'll do it. Boys Club is a media company. We do podcasts, we do newsletters, we do events, we do a ton of stuff on social. We talk about [01:53] Crypto, AI, compute, robotics. Now we talk about robotics.

It's really fun. It's really fun stuff. We talk about internet culture. We have a newsletter on Wednesday. We have a newsletter on Friday. We do a live stream weekly. We're busy boys. And I will just say that you're not going to get the... [02:09] takes that boys club has anywhere else sorry sorry my opinion sorry from the canadian and it's true and i want to thank zero x they are our partners for this live stream here and they are wonderful partners we talk a lot about them in this episode and it was really fun so that was great we have a robot coming on i cannot i couldn't keep my shit together okay what gender is he he okay okay so we [02:39] the patriarchy of me but nonetheless i think it's a he as well it's tiny yeah yeah well it was a genderless child and i will say we are supposed to be filming this as the intro i'm so sorry but i couldn't do it i couldn't hold it together she broke the fourth wall the third wall or whatever wall we are breaking maybe all of them it's broken so yes we have already in fact met them um but we're filming as if we haven't so that is the beauty of editing thank you kate for that

[03:09] - Um... [03:10] Joe Jonas. Yes. Okay. So let me just give the audience context. So essentially on the first day, we had to set up the entire suite, lights, camera, action, the whole thing. Chords, cables. [03:24] All of it. So Natasha was like, I want to talk about Joe Jonas. And I was like, amazing. I love the Jonas Brothers because we needed something to talk about, like something like fun and light. [03:35] It wasn't like, Natasha was like, let's talk about Joe Jonas on the podcast. What are some bits?

Yeah, what are some bits of what came up? So I was like, OK, amazing. And I immediately at breakfast jumped into my takes on Joe Jonas and asking her questions about it. However, she was like, we have to wait for today. [03:51] This is three days later, and I have continued to bring up, we need to talk about Joe Jonas. So it started with you saying, Joe Jonas, now it's me. So please go. I'm just going to say quick things, because I can literally hear Dina texting me. I can hear her texting me saying, I'm cutting the Joe Jonas bit.

Dina, please. Okay, the concept of talking about Joe Jonas at Solana Breakpoint, I can't not try to do. So here's what it is. I'm not a Jonas Brothers fan. Make one of us. I don't know a song. [04:17] I was left out of that completely. - Sure. That's a shame. - And it was because I felt [04:23] I was too cool for it, and I can say that that's stupid now. But I didn't know it. We live and we learn. Then... [04:29] I see Joe Jonas in Dime Square all the time.

He's around and people will be like, oh my God, that's Joe Jonas. And I have no muscle for that. I don't know. I don't care about that. That's not in my business. And you have also mentioned to me he's always solo. I haven't seen him with anybody. I love that. He's on a city bike. Yes. Anyway, whatever. [04:46] Then when you travel to the far, you spend a lot of time on your phone. Okay. And one of the things that went viral while I was on the plane was that he was trying to parallel park in the Lower East Side in Chinatown.

And it took him six minutes and someone recorded it. And that's awful, but funny. And it went viral. And then he had some really funny responses to it. So a friend of mine sent me that because they were like, this is funny. Yep. [05:11] That got me down a Joe Jonas rabbit hole on a plane. It's a deep one. You know what? I'm bulkhead in economy, and I'm looking at Joe Jonas videos. Yeah, yeah, yeah, as one does. And... [05:22] Then the algorithm was like, huge Joe Jonas fan. And now if you go to my explore tab, it's only Joe Jonas.

And how do you feel about that? I'm just like, I don't need this. It's like, he seems wonderful. That's none of my business, exactly. [05:34] i mean i will say i'm a big fan and you know what i'll just say one more thing before we wrap it and this gets cut anyway which is that i do think joe jonas would love this conference cut thank you for listening for the last three days it's been a pleasure and an honor and blake [05:53] No other person I would want to hear more.

My honor and privilege and pleasure and I'm so thankful. [06:00] Cut. [06:02] *music* [06:05] Hi, Blake. Hello. Hello. So well. Okay. We've made it to day three. We've made it to day three. We have a great episode today. Some really great guests. I want to share some amazing announcements that are coming out of Solana. They have been announcement after announcement after announcement. [06:25] Yes, they happen. Announcement forward, announcement heavy, all of it, all at once. Oh, announcement forward. Yeah. And I think the theme that I'm seeing from, obviously, there's a ton of announcements that are happening for...

[06:39] Builders here, teams that are maybe... [06:43] smaller, newer that are launching tokens or launching new products or launching new features. But one of the things that I'm really seeing is just... [06:51] genuine institutional adoption announcements with JPMorgan, with State Street, huge asset managers, trillions of dollars that of assets being managed by these, um, [07:03] by someone like State Street that are now thinking about tokenization and doing it with Solana, which is a wild thing to see. Yeah. And I feel like just bringing massive amounts of non quote unquote tokenized money on chain.

Yeah. It only kind of like brings forward and makes the promise real of like a tokenized. [07:25] faster tokenized Wall Street. Like as in Solana's like ultimate goal. Like this is actually what's happening. And to bring it full circle, the first guest we had, Austin Federa... [07:37] That's true. Was talking about what is required from a literal infrastructure, um, [07:45] What's the word? [07:47] Like the literal like internet provider, quote unquote. Internet that goes under the ocean. Oh, fiber cables. Fiber, like literally what the fiber is required to operate at the speed that would need to be better than the current tools that Wall Street is using for them to actually adopt crypto and use it.

[08:17] lot of work to be done that I'm not even thinking about and that I don't even really the concept of I don't have truly like what is the internet couldn't tell you exactly but someone like him who's seeing like okay we talk endlessly in this industry about adoption adoption adoption like and the the layers of what's required what I'm confronted by is there is a tremendous amount that is actually required for that to happen and yeah [08:46] it's sort of happening. Like it's early, but it's kind of happening. Yeah.

And I feel like in general, the last two days of conversations, that's kind of come to light in terms of like, okay, yeah, you can have all the demand and all the users in the world, which of course we're working on that side too. But if you don't have the architectural throughput to allow it, it absolutely does not work. Absolutely. And Solana is... [09:10] actually handling that exactly so totally uh okay before we get into some of the interviews that we are going to have i want to thank a few folks let's do it so first of all polygon [09:23] Do we love them?

We obsessed. Obsessed. So we're shouting them out here. Thank you, Polygon, for being the sponsor of many things Boys Club related, but also this live stream. If you've touched crypto in any way, chances are you've already used Polygon. It's the chain quietly powering a bunch of stuff that people actually use, that actually works, like Stripes, crypto payments, betting on Polymarkets, prediction markets, and a bunch of other stuff. Honestly, really related to what we were talking about before. How are we getting people actually [09:53] both for Boys Club and for this industry.

And just a cool move to be working with Boys Club, if I do say so myself. Absolutely. We're live streaming and we're polygoning. And then next, ZeroX. We're going to have Amy Boudreaux on the pod today. She leads product marketing at ZeroX and will talk to us about all things API and what they're up to. But when you're building token swaps, you want tech you can really trust. That's why you should use ZeroX. They've been experts in the game since... [10:23] 2017. You know it, baby. Their swap API makes it simple and they've solved all the hard stuff like liquidity, aggregation, routing, and all the behind the scenes complexity.

You don't need to trust just the boys. Zero X power swaps from some of the biggest apps in the space, including Coinbase's Dex trading product. We talked about that with her today. Phantom, Backpack, and hundreds more. And it's not just about the best price. Zero X leads in execution quality, delivering speed, [10:53] ones nearly instantly. Zero X world class swaps built by the experts. We love to hear it. We love to hear it. So should we get into it? Let's go. Let's go. [11:07] Amanda Young, COO of BitRobot. Thank you so much for being here.

No, thanks for having us. So who's this? So this is a booster K1, a booster being a Chinese robotic manufacturer. [11:20] And this is their smallest model. - Okay, and does this one have a name or no? [11:25] I had no name. Do any of them have names? Do they have identities? Um, yeah, no. Oh my gosh. Um, okay. So [11:36] You guys have, in my opinion, won the conference. Like you're doing an incredible activation downstairs. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? And then obviously I want to talk more about what you guys are up to, why you have these robots, what sort of the larger vision behind BitRobot is.

But talk a little bit about your activation here. UFB is what you're calling it, right? Yeah. So Ultimate Fighting Bots, UFB, we spun off a team that's working on that. It's a humanoid fighting league. [12:06] They got covered in Ashley Vance, Washington Post, New York Times. And so they're creating this meter and entertainment franchise, putting on full shows. And so we wanted to bring like a smaller version of that to Breakpoint. And so we've been having different Solana investors, creators, founders battle it out at our arena. Wow. So fun. Go ahead.

And Raj... [12:28] Co-founder of Solana actually shouted you guys out on the stream last yesterday. He was the winner of his battle with Toli as he reported to us. Maybe you could talk about so these are autonomous robots, but then you can also control them. What's that relationship? [12:44] Yeah, so they're being tele-operated, so piloted via a game controller for those fights. And, you know, this one here right now has been piloted. They have some moves, though, that have been implemented. So, like, this one has a dancing move. The ones that are fighting have fighting moves.

And so, yeah, they're being mostly, I would say, tele-operated, though, around the venue. Got it. Can we get a dance move from our guy here? Yeah. Oh. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. He's ready to go. [13:14] Thank you. [13:14] *laughs* [13:15] Oh! [13:18] Oh my god. Oh! [13:21] Thank you. [13:23] I can't! Oh my gosh! Wow! Oh, oh, oh! [13:30] *laughter* *laughter* They're so- OH MY GOD! *laughter* Oh my gosh! [13:38] Thank you. [13:38] Why can't I-- I don't know what's my problem, but I can't actually handle it. [13:46] Oh, oh, oh.

Send her B. OK, so this is the dance. This is the dance functionality. There's something really funny and sort of like unserious about that. But you guys are-- what's the purpose behind the robots? [14:01] We heard a little bit from Raj yesterday about it, but I'd love to hear from you what the... [14:05] larger vision is for what you guys are doing. Yeah, so we're building a protocol on Solana for open robotics research and development. [14:12] And so these robots are being used for data collection. And then we're also doing different types of data collection.

There's three types that are needed for robotics. There's video. So we have an iPhone app as well as something called the RoboCab, which is like a wearable cap that people can wear to collect egocentric video. We're creating a game in simulations, a simulation being an area. And then teleoperation. So teleoperating, you can tell every humanoids, but you can also teleoperate like different types of arms, different types of robotic embodiments. [14:40] And [14:41] Is this related to, okay, it's a data play in the sense, are you getting rewarded for... [14:48] tokenizing data maybe you could there's the the elements of the tokenization and and how that's being organized yeah [14:56] - Yep, so we're structured as an ecosystem of subnets.

[15:00] You can think of each subnet as a market. It could be focused on producing data of a certain kind. For example, the Seesaw app is producing egocentric video data and people are being incentivized to upload video, the app puts a video data set. [15:15] And so we're working with a bunch of teams as well as incubating ourselves these different subnets and primarily focus on data collection to start. But it can be broader. Like you could think how do you evaluate a model in the real world? How do you contribute to model training?

And so we see our ecosystem being the world's largest robotic network. Okay. Is this then in relation to AI? Yeah. [15:37] At all in terms of like the data sets being trained for robotics slash AI? So I would say we're primarily focused on robotics. So verifiable robotic work is like how we're, the output that is coming out of each of our subnets. But, you know, it's broader. So like video is being used and like... [15:57] um in general there's a trend right now in training robotics called cross embodiment so using all these different types of data to train robots um so there's the ai element but there's also like the physical element got it yeah and so [16:09] You guys are working in partnership with a company that is building these robots.

And then you're building like the software and tokenization and data collection, you [16:19] that's the protocol that you're working on. Exactly. Am I understanding it correctly? Yeah. So it's essentially a coordination layer. So on Solana, we're aggregating these different resources, incentivizing them and doing the payouts. And then we're partnering with a number of robotics manufacturers. We also do have like a team in our development studio. They manufacture low cost robotic embodiments. And so they manufacture their own like wearable cap, for example, for egocentric video, as well as a sidewalk robot for navigation data.

But yeah, [16:49] partnering with third party groups to create humanoids and other types of autonomous robots? [16:55] Um, guy. [16:56] is he's watching and he's collecting data. [17:01] - So I would say right now at the conference, it's more of an entertainment. - Okay, okay, okay, okay. - But we are using, so this one is a booster. [17:11] uh, K1, but we are using other, other humanoids for data collection. Okay. And are you, [17:17] What's [17:18] an end state here? Is it like, okay, they're collecting all of this data and then they're going to be surgeons or they're going to work around the home and like a humanoid robot that's domestic.

Like where do you see this going? Yep. So I think we're, we're seeing an interest is general purpose, physical AI. So it's like any robot, they can do any task. Um, and so there's, I think initially some of the bigger robotics companies are focused on home use cases. Some [17:48] all of this and how do we get to kind of [17:50] like the chat GPT moment in robotics. - Okay, cool. - Fascinating. - And for you personally, how did you get [17:57] into robotics? Yeah. So my background is in the crypto space.

So I was on an adventure and then I [18:06] I knew that the team and was quite excited about what they were building. Um, and so came on, uh, earlier this year, uh, to help on the operations side. So I'm, I would say I'm learning a lot about robotics for the past few months. Wow. It's amazing. It's so interesting. Um, okay. Well, Amanda, thank you for coming on the show. So cool. Incredible. Really interesting stuff. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for having me. [18:28]. [18:31] Abai Kumar, head of protocol at Helium.

Thank you so much for being here. We're so excited to have you. We were at Helium House on Wednesday. Amazing. Incredible event. That's all him. Great job. Great job. Off stage. Giving props where props are due. Yeah, just really thoughtfully produced a lot of really exciting announcements from you guys. [18:53] Obviously, we love Helium. We know a lot about it. It's a really exciting project. But for the listener, can you give a 101 on what you're working on? For sure. So Helium is a new way of creating wireless networks and building a new kind of telco.

We believe that the right way to do this is to give people the opportunity to deploy their own radios, their own hardware, and serve themselves and their customers, their community. So that's fundamentally what the Helium network is. And then on top of that, we built a carrier that actually uses this network. [19:23] Well, you know, we wanted to use our own network, of course. We wanted to be able to offer people cheaper, better access to connectivity wherever they are. We started in the United States and we're going to continue to expand.

[19:35] And I will just say, I feel like obviously the new excuse the term meta or the theme that's really emerging from this conference is deep in and obviously it's been bubbling for a while. [19:46] you guys genuinely invented that category. Truly. It's like you guys were the first. Can you maybe talk about the relationship between the actual hardware and then the tokenization? What [20:01] how that's interacting for sure yeah so a helium deployer puts a piece of hardware up what they're doing is they're saying here come use my network come use our network because i'll get paid for it and so it's deep in in general is about incentive alignment right you don't need to trust that there's this network or there's a subscriber who might pay me someday later it's the network is sort of encoding these rules right if there's a phone that connects to me i will get paid for [20:31] I don't need to trust that, you know, that AT&T subscriber paid AT&T, that AT&T paid Helium, that Helium is going to pay me.

Like none of that like value chain needs to be verified. It's sort of baked into the protocol. And that's that's really where the token comes into play. Every time a phone connects, some amount of H&T gets burned. The network is being paid. And so therefore the hotspot deployer is getting paid as well. So cool. And so when you talk about the device, let's just bring it to life a little bit. I'm in New York City. [21:01] I have a device in my apartment. [21:04] Like I think of it sort of as like a Wi-Fi router.

Yeah. Okay. So from a technology perspective, it is Wi-Fi, right? Which is confusing to people, right? Because it's like, well, what do you mean it's just a Wi-Fi router? Like I thought cellular towers are these like giant radios that are twice the size of me that are plopped onto the side of buildings. And that is true. The sort of what that's called the macro network. And the macro network is that. But those kinds of radios don't serve all parts of the world and sort of all parts of cities. Like you live in New York.

[21:34] canyons in New York. I grew up in New York. So this is what I had to deal with. Right. Like you like step out of the subway somewhere downtown and you're just like, [21:41] surrounded by buildings. Truly, literally when there was like a period of time, I live in Williamsburg. There was a period of time where the block that I lived on right outside of McCarran Park had no service and it drove me crazy. I was just like, we're, it was like 2023. I was like, what are we doing here?

Right. So yeah, it's exactly. And so nowadays in New York, as you come out of the subway, a lot of the subway stations right outside used to have pay phones. [22:11] That's what I saw growing up. Yeah. What happened in the last several years, obviously pay funds aren't a thing anymore, but all those locations are now these silver ad towers. Yes. Yes. [22:20] They'll every one of those is a helium hotspot. Oh my gosh. Are you for real? And so this is like one of our largest cities in the world.

Oh my gosh. That's so cool. And the density is great for us because what it, you know, as you come out of the subway, what is the first thing you're going to do? Hey, which way am I going? Yeah. Who was I not texting and that I need to get back into touch with? Where am I, where am I headed? Like that's, so having the connectivity as soon as you come out of the subway is exactly what we, you know, we were able to do through a partner. So that wasn't us going and deploying hardware.

Yeah. It wasn't us like, you know, [22:49] paying the city for the space or anything like that. There was already someone that was deploying hardware that was able to retrofit it with a software change on their end to support the network. And the reason they're incentivized to do that. Absolutely. So they get paid every time there's data that flows over that network. And that is a way for businesses like this, the company's called LinkNYC, there's a way for LinkNYC to have an additional revenue stream for the hardware that they're already deploying.

Wow, that's really cool. And as a non-New Yorker, non-American here, [23:19] you are going global. That's been the big announcement. You're expanding internationally. Maybe you can talk through that. You announced a big partnership first in Brazil. Um, [23:32] And then, you know, where are we going after Brazil? I want to get it. That's the thing. Like I have literally been following you guys for so long as a Canadian. [23:41] Sure, you can buy the token, but you want to participate. So... [23:46] Tell me more where and how can Canada? So yeah, so I'll start.

Yeah, sorry. Go ahead. No, I'm jumping in Natasha. I'm jumping in for something so dumb. Like it's painful. But are you familiar with the meme come to Brazil? [24:03] Yes. Okay. I'm like, you guys really did it. You came to Brazil first. You did it. Anyway, sorry. Go ahead. No worries. So we announced actually Mexico first. This is a while back. And we're sort of in the final integration, like technical integration stages of that. And so it's like, I think they're literally meeting day to day right now to try to make sure that this can launch.

I know our goal was to try to get it done this year. [24:27] May still happen. It is coming close to the holiday, so maybe not. There's technical holiday freezes often because people don't want to be on call over Christmas Eve usually. But if we don't get it done this year, it'll be done very, very soon after. So we're at that last mile. And then, yes, we announced Brazil. The way we're doing that is with a deployer, someone like Lincoln YC, who already has 40,000 sites deployed. [24:57] I'm sorry? - Is that Mambo?

- That's Mambo. - Okay. - That's right. And so they already have 40,000 sites deployed, and those sites are like captive portal sites. So like when you go to a hotel or to an airport, you know, you like select the wifi, you have to put in your name and email and maybe your phone number or something like that, and then you get access. [25:15] That is the traditional way that Wi-Fi is deployed indoors and, you know, as accessed indoors. And what we believe is that your phone has everything you need.

[25:24] Your phone has effectively an identity. It has a SIM on it. And that SIM should be all it takes to connect to a network. And that is the Helium way of connecting. It's you walk in and you just automatically connect. Mamba wants to do that for any of the carrier customers in Brazil. So they're already starting to work with a couple of different, some of the local carriers to enable this for all of them. [25:46] Do you have to get buy-in from like, you don't need to get buy-in from an AT&T, from a Rogers in Canada, whatever it is.

You don't need to get buy-in from the big cell phone providers. [25:58] in order to deploy the networks? - To deploy the networks, you don't need buy-in. So the thing that you're deploying is a Wi-Fi hotspot. Wi-Fi is freely deployable. The same reason that you can deploy it in your home [26:11] Same reason you can deploy it in a business. You're allowed to deploy it anywhere. There are obviously some country restrictions on how strong these radios can be, but they're all reasonable. They're all like, you know, don't cause cancer and don't kill birds in the air kind of restrictions.

They're completely reasonable restrictions. And when you buy a commodity Wi-Fi hardware from like Amazon or Best Buy or whatever, you're buying sort of standard Wi-Fi gear. And that's the kind of gear that we're talking about here. [26:41] end. Um, and, uh, and, and that's, and that's what you're able to do. So yes, you could, you could technically deploy a helium mobile hotspot in Canada today. Unfortunately, there are no subscribers there right now. So it's, it's going to be hard for you to earn anything for it. Yeah. That's, that's the problem, but you can certainly use it for yourself.

[26:58] If you wanted to, or you could offer it to anybody else. I know one of our community members, he has a deployment in Berlin, I think. Of course. And he's, and you know, he gets to use it himself. He like signed up for a free Helium mobile plan when he was in the US once and he's still using it. [27:18] And that just, he loves the network and he cares about it. So he wants to do it. He's a builder, right? He wants to do this on his own. So that's, so yes, you could certainly do that.

Otherwise, if you're not in a country right now, you can buy H&T. But the other thing that we also announced this week was the waitlist. So if you go to com slash waitlist, [27:36] Give us your details. Tell us where you want us to deploy next or where we should be talking. Perhaps I've already done that. How many times? Good question. You're right. You're right. One's never enough. Find all the VPNs. Connect many times. Hello. Nice. Okay. So... [27:54] What I'm hearing from this, and I think is similar to a lot of crypto projects, is there's a flywheel that when it's working is beautiful and everybody's winning.

And I'm sure as someone who's building and has been building in this space for a long time, when it's not working, I'm sure it's like absolute hell. And I'm wondering what the most challenging components have been for you along sort of this. Like you have the network, you have consumers, you have people who are deploying the hotspots or the... [28:19] hotspots okay so yeah where's the biggest challenge been i mean i think you know we've been around at it for many years we've had everything from like covid causing supply chain failures um i remember many many years ago there was a fire in a uh a particular piece of hardware uh the the factory for it which completely crushed wow all radio and all like certain like [28:49] We've dealt with all this kind of thing.

We've had boats being delayed. We've had all sorts of stuff through the years. Certainly through the-- so when we first launched the mobile network, we tried to use a technology called CBRS, which [29:04] You know, at the face of it was a really good idea. It was another one of these like open spectrums, or mostly open spectrums, that anyone can deploy. It was a community band radio, right? And so it made sense. Like, let's invest in something that was something, you know, kind of familiar to us already. [29:19] and didn't require you to buy billions of dollars of Spectrum grants.

And so we went down this road, but ultimately it was a UX problem. That UX problem, really what happened is when your phone was trying to connect to these radios and kind of going back and forth between, let's say, T-Mobile's towers and these CBRS towers, it just wasn't working. It wasn't a good UX. It drained your battery. These are the kinds of things that you learn as you build. And then you have to pivot. [29:49] pivoting to the thing that makes the most sense. And I guess, you know, [29:55] deep in as I mentioned at the beginning is kind of the emerging theme I hear more and more people talking about it with you guys being the leaders the inventors of the category my words so just you know [30:09] Um [30:10] Where do you see it going in terms of are you thinking through messaging, fitting into trends like, OK, this is going to be a new moment for us because everyone's caring about it again?

How are you thinking about the larger positioning in the theme of Deepin for Helium? I think the category has the opportunity to bring. [30:32] more consumers to crypto without knowing that it's crypto, right? Like we've seen this now, there's 2 million phones connected to the network every single day. Incredible. I heard 2.1. [30:44] I'm being modest, I guess. I'm being modest, I guess. Thank you. My words. But I think that's what we need more of. We need more consumerization of the things that we can build in crypto and [30:57] physical infrastructure is a great way to do it, you know, to sort of introduce more people.

[31:02] connectivity, energy, like these are places and compute, like these are places where we're really seeing more people build. I think the biggest piece of advice that I've given founders that have sort of asked me questions like, what do you do when you have this idea? It's find your first buyer of the product, right? For us, the buyer of the product is us. Like we want to use, we want connectivity on our phones. Who is the buyer of that energy product or that, you know, [31:26] compute product and make sure you get to that as fast as possible because you want to have, you know, I think revenue generating protocols are the ones that will like stand the test of time.

Abey, thank you so much for being here. We love what you're building and have learned so much. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate this. [31:40]. [31:44] Merry Christmas, Holly. Yeah, happy Holly-er days. Yeah. You've never heard that. I just came up with that right now. You're welcome. Okay, Emmett Hollier, GM of Solana Mobile. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. So I want to, you're our last interview of the conference here. Sure. He's counting. No, not me, certainly not. I am curious how you're feeling. You are here, we're also coming to the end of the conference for you.

What's the vibe check? [32:14] but like super charged. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of like when you're up all night, but you want to keep going super manic. Yeah. No, it's great. It's like once a year we get everybody in one place and it's, [32:23] the most exciting three or four days. You just kinda got to power through it. So it's been great. - And you have a booth, you've been on the floor, you've been in the trenches. So what have been your kind of takeaways from actually talking to people, [32:37] showing them what's happening with the phone which we'll obviously get into but what are your main takeaways there well uh we've had like a consistent line of 150 people at our booth oh my gosh i don't know if you guys have been down there we've been i've been up here i've been this is your view i haven't seen a thing okay all right well if this is the last interview i would encourage you to go check it we have um like a big vending machine where people are spinning a wheel and winning phones okay and it's been like 150 people whoa at any given moment okay so that's [33:07] it's cool because for a lot of people who are in line they already have a phone and they just want another um i know so selfish um but the truth is you know for a lot of users who come to a conference like this like that's our core audience those people get it right i don't have to explain right why we built this whereas sometimes you know in other contexts i have to be like hey crypto yeah you could download coinbase to your phone but if you want to do more than that it gets really hard really quickly yeah you don't have to explain that here so people come up to you naturally and [33:37] my funds more secure, it's so easy to use, it feels like Apple Pay.

So that's super validating because otherwise I have to spend a lot of time explaining. Totally, totally. And are you getting feedback on what some of the favorite apps people are excited about? Yeah, yeah. A lot of gamers, tons of gamers. Yeah, I know, right? Lots of trading, tons of trading. You know, I think the people out here like, [33:59] Absolutely love trading. That's how a lot of people got into crypto, especially Solana. Yeah, and so I [34:04] you know, a year or two ago, trading apps all looked and felt the same.

Yeah. And in like just a year's time now, [34:09] Everything is different. It's like there's some that are more game oriented. There are some that are more socially oriented. So it's kind of the spectrum of trading apps have like really taken off. Yeah. And I know that you were on the pod in September. So there was lots of updates then. Where, I guess, since that time, have you seen adoption been growing? Is it all in still... [34:30] on the crypto side? Are you wanting to expand? Where are you at? Yeah.

On that. So, well, I think one of the big changes since I was on the pod in September is there's no more Echo, which is like, this is very nice. Yeah. No, no, no. We had, we had really bad audio issues. It was really atrocious. It's really, we've come along. It was, it was like a bottom moment. We've truly, we've come a long way. You were such a trooper. We did it. I've learned and grow. When you first said that, I was like, is Echo a previous phone? And then I was like, Oh, no, literally Echo.

I was just hearing myself the whole time I was talking. [35:00] but in terms of substance [35:01] since September, the thing that's real is people are spending money. Like that sounds stupid. Who doesn't love money? The whole reason developers are building apps for our platform, like it's not worth it if you're not going to monetize it. But we're seeing real users spending real money. Like we've shipped, you know, 150,000 phones. That is crazy. In four months, those people have spent like $[redacted address]. Yes, like real money. Okay, clip that. Wait, are you for real?

100%. Oh my God. [35:31] 50 apps have launched. Yeah. People are putting real... There's some whales who have lots of money on these phones. Wow. Wow. And there's people who are spending lots of money. Okay. That's absolutely wild. Whoa. And they're spending money in trading prediction market games, all those things. All the things you can imagine. Staking, swapping, lending, trading, all this stuff. [35:51] Lots of money. - Okay, so if you're looking for product market fit, it seems like you found it. - Yeah. - And I think the argument would be, okay, people, crypto whales or people who hold, [36:03] crypto really in any [36:05] amount, but probably people who are holding a lot are and making it easier for them to move that money around in a native way is you're seeing that people are actually doing that.

Yeah. And like, look, a lot of people, their exposure to crypto is they download Coinbase and they like buy some Bitcoin, buy some Sol, buy some ETH. And for a lot of people, that's plenty. Yeah. But as you guys know, like 90% of the interesting stuff happening in crypto is one level beyond that. Yeah. And so [36:35] browser tab and that solves a lot of needs but it's not native, it's not seamless. [36:40] you know, [36:41] I don't think Apple, if they were going to build a crypto first product, they'd be like, it's simple.

You just like embed a browser in another app. And you got to remember which one you're going to go to. That's where all the issues begin. Yeah, yeah. But like it's because of their economics and the way they've built their store and Google equivalent that has really prevented like actual native apps from taking off. Right. Totally. And so for a lot of our users, it's like an aha moment. They download, you know, they get the app, they download our wallet, they go to the Dapp store and then all of a sudden there's just like.

[37:07] lots and lots of apps that are native and it like feels native and it's a 10x UX improvement. Yeah. So yeah, it's been very real. And you see this as a. Oh, bring him in. Oh, we're live. Let's go. He brings gifts for us. I love it. Okay. Ask your question and then we'll, we'll, I'm sorry. Okay. Okay. Um, okay. My question was, um, [37:36] Sorry, I forgot the words. I blame myself. I blame myself. Just to live demo, we have iPhone and we have Solana phone. Do you see these as you're bringing two or you see perfect scenario, I only have one phone?

Yeah, so it depends on the user. So [37:52] I can't like undo the social suicide of green bubbles. I was going to ask you about that. I was literally going to ask you about that. I was like, ooh. So, but, but, but the thing that's important is of the 150,000 we've sold, like 15% of those are in the US. Oh, where are most people buying them? Everywhere else, Asia, Europe. And so that's from a usage perspective, those users, primary phone, no question. They're already using Android. They don't use iMessage. They use WhatsApp.

They use all the messaging apps. [38:22] networking effects that come with not having an iPhone. Certainly in the US, I know a lot of people who trade a lot and they think of their seeker as like their trading machine that they bring with them. But for everybody else, it's like, if you really care about crypto and you're already familiar with Android as an ecosystem, it's like, oh, cool. I get a really good Android device and it does crypto stuff. It's not about compromise. Yeah. That's such a, like a North American focused question that I was just guilty of asking.

As a North American resident, that's [38:52] Are you going to continue with this model of Seeker? Are you developing a new model? Like what does the next year look like for you? - So we still have these. So if anybody's listening and hasn't bought one, we've still got them. - There you go. - It's still on com. And we're of course giving them away downstairs. But, [39:07] Right now, our sites are actually set on other hardware partners. Oh, cool. So like this has been a labor of love and it's taken years off of my life.

I'm sure. I would love to not have to ship more hardware, but I do still want to solve the same problems. Right. And so, you know, kind of the point I was making earlier about how North American people kind of love their iPhones. Everyone else uses Android. All the tech that we've built can just port to other Android devices. So right now, I'm spending a lot of my time with people who sell other Android devices and saying, hey, look. [39:37] your users are going to start using crypto if they're not already.

So you have one of two options. You can watch them do it. You can let them go to the Google Play Store and download a Neobank or like some basic crypto app and you're just totally out of the loop. Or you can build something that's great. You can build something that helps them self-custody in a way that's secure. You can give them like a native system-wide signing experience. You can give them access to dApps. So like, what do you want to do here? And a lot of OEMs are kind of seeing the light.

So we're going to spend a lot of time kind of taking this tech and bringing it to other phones and [40:07] our distribution as opposed to trying to sell phones one by one. Okay. That makes a ton of sense. Um, [40:11] OK, and adoption is going great. [40:15] Part of the booth experience is that you are looking for builders. You're wanting builders to build apps that are native to Seeker. Yeah, totally. So we've got like, we've had like 225, 230 apps launched so far. I know it's real apps, but it's a mix, right?

So there's some apps. It's like apps you already know that maybe you can get in Google play, but we make, they bring a slightly different version to Seeker, but there's also lots of teams who just like need their first 10,000, 20,000, 50,000 users. And so they launch exclusively with us. [40:45] bootstrap of people who spend a lot of money, who really care about crypto. It's kind of like a product launchpad, right? Yeah, absolutely. So here, in terms of being at the booth, it's like kind of the best of both worlds, right?

Meet with the existing ecosystem teams and say, hey, [40:57] we've got these users, like you should bring some exclusives our way. But for new teams, it's like, hey, are you looking for those first users? Like, let us help you. That makes a ton of sense. Okay. Last question here. [41:08] You have a choice. [41:09] Draft tweet. [41:10] or show minute. Friend of the pod. Only friend of the pod. I showed last time we didn't do a ton of draft tweets. So let me like it's real time. Unboxing. I think we unbox.

Okay. I think we unbox. Let's do an unbox. [41:26] I love it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you should do it on the side, maybe? [41:30] how many girls does it make to open there we go wow it's so sleek it's so sleek [41:39] Man, you know what I think when I see this? What? I'm just like, man, you had to do like every, like the box. It was so fun. I was just going to say like the whole like design of this is beautiful. It was super fun. Do you have cases too?

Oh, yeah, we've got cases. I'll get you some cases. We'll do a, we'll do a. Peel, do the peel. Do the peel. Oh my gosh, I love a peel. ASMR. Let's go. Oh, okay. [42:02] *thud* [42:03] Oh my gosh. This is like so beautiful. It's really beautiful. It's like legit. And very light. It's really nice. I have to say when I was exposed to, when I was exposed to the idea, the concept of. The concept of the seeker. Yeah, the concept of the seeker. I was like. [42:26] I hate to say it, but I was like, it's going to be so budget.

Like, that was my feeling. And then I seen it and I'm like, it's gorgeous. Yeah. Thank you. It's great. This is like having your baby called beautiful. This is just the best. Which you could be lying to me, but I'll take it. No, I'm not. I wouldn't. You don't lie on this stream. Draft tweet. Let's go. Why do draft tweets not sync across devices? This is such nonsense. Oh, it's so annoying. I have another phone up there. Hey, Asia, can you grab? I have a phone on the... [42:51] I think that one has some, yeah, the one with the Apple logo on the back of it.

That one? There it is. That one? If we've heard of that. I think that should have some draft picks. No, it's really annoying. Also, I will tell you, it doesn't sync across desktop. Someone called Nikita. So, I know. I did see someone actually add him in the comments one time and being like, what is going on here? This hurts me, then I have to pull this off. If it's not on there, you know what? We'll have you on again. I think I've got some. Okay, okay, okay. [43:15] Um, the draft tweet concept came from, um, [43:18] the fact that Dina and I [43:20] sometimes don't have the courage to say what we think should be said.

Or dare I say tweet and then tweet what's been said. So you actually have to say. Exactly. Oh my gosh. That's so true. This actually takes more effort. Okay. All right. They are. I do have some. Real time. He's saying them. Okay. Let's see. [43:39] Okay. These have nothing to do with crypto. Even better. Even better. Exactly. My first Wordle guess every morning is Hater, just to make sure I don't forget the people that I have to prove wrong. Also, it has very good letters. Kate loves it. As a Wordle user, it seemed that hit.

Okay. Okay. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Good. Okay. Give us one more. Okay. [43:59] This one's very relevant today. My biggest fear, being a full season behind on how wide my pants are supposed to be. [44:07] That's a great one. Season ahead. That's a great one. Oh, man, that was great. Okay, what a good note to end on. Emmett, thank you for coming on. Always a pleasure. Always, always, always. Thanks, guys. [44:17]. [44:20] Amy Boudreaux, you do product marketing at Zero X. We're so happy to have you on the show.

So happy to be here. Boys Club fangirl from day one. Day one. Day one. She's really been there and here. Truly. [44:33] With us. With us. In the trenches. Yep. Yeah. At the highs and the lows, you've been there. Ups and downs. I feel like my claim to fame is that I... [44:42] helped create and also helped kill the dough. It's true. It's true. You were there for all of that, all of it. Yeah. All the life cycles of it, uh, which ended in a beautiful fashion of donating $200,000 to the Lower East Side Girls Club.

So couldn't have ended a better way. Exactly. Totally. So, okay. Uh, obviously zero X is the, [45:05] sponsoring this live stream here at breakpoint. We're so happy to be partnering with you guys. It's been so fun. And tell us a little bit about zero X. [45:13] what you're up to, what you're marketing. [45:16] Yeah, so Zero X has been around since 2017. [45:20] Up until last year, we really focused on the EVM side. So if I were to just break it down, what ZeroX allows you to do is turn... [45:30] any app into a trading platform and bed swaps in anything that you're building on chain.

[45:36] And over the past year, we've had two big projects that we're working on and [45:40] You know, we're here at Solana Breakpoint. We were at Solana Accelerate earlier this year, and we're seeing that [45:46] One community that we haven't really served yet is Solana. And so that's what we're currently building. Nice. And... [45:53] Why Solana next, like after EVM? Was it strictly like, this is where the users are, this is where the traders are? What was the strategy around that pivot or that, I guess, ad? Yeah, I think both of those things definitely factor in.

Our founders really have this vision that they've been building against since 2017 about wanting to help create a tokenized world where all value can flow freely. And I think that... [46:22] In moving towards that vision, we try to really stay laser focused on what it is that we do best, which is enabling trades, enabling swaps. And so for us, we really only want to build innovation. [46:35] in areas where there's a clear need. And I think it's been clear to us for a while that Solana is a community that we wanna support.

They're building great things there, but also it's a huge lift. [46:46] to go from EVM to SVM. We're basically having to rebuild from the ground up. [46:49] Yeah. So [46:52] We're here. You're about to launch an API for Solana. Is that correct? Yes. We are in alpha right now. Okay. Nice. And getting early developers to start using it, to start building on top of it. Have you seen anything from builders yet? What are some of the common things that people are asking if you've heard anything yet? Or it might be too early for that.

Yeah. [47:12] Yeah, so in the alpha phase right now, we just have a couple of key partners who are helping us test. [47:17] Our team is really committed to not putting out something into beta or even into GA until [47:23] we feel like we have a super strong product. - Yeah. - Right? No one needs another kind of like mediocre product anywhere in crypto. - True words have never been spoken. - So yeah, the team has a very high bar for excellence before we ship anything beyond the alpha phase. I would say that one thing that we're seeing that's really different between EVM and Solana is speed.

[47:46] Speed is the name of the game here. Yeah. And I think in general, one of the differences we've seen in the EVM community versus the SVM community is [47:55] in Solana, it feels like [47:58] the entire chain and ecosystem is built around one thing and one thing only. And it's creating this decentralized finance world. Whereas on the EVM side, there's so many different types of use cases where, you know, there's the DeFi side, there's also like the D-Pin side and Solana, it feels like everyone's going towards this one vision.

Right. [48:19] And because of that, there are very clear needs if you want to bring all the financial markets on chain and speed is one of them. [48:27] And [48:28] you have like the best booth like it's so so fun. Thank you. Really literally been [48:35] in the trenches at the conference, literally outside in like 30 degree or 90, 30 Celsius or whatever that is. Um, very, very hot. Um, what are you seeing in terms of kind of the vibes of the conference or kind of, um, people coming through, what are they most interested in?

Do they already know zero X? Like what, what are the responses to the activation and what are people asking you? [49:02]. [49:03] Yeah, I think that people are very excited. Yeah. And I think back on that theme of bringing financial markets on chain, people are really excited about RWAs. They're excited about tokenized equities. When it comes to zero X, I mean, [49:19] in some ways we do feel like we're starting a little bit from the ground up. Yeah. Um, our founders and like early zero X ends, some of them have already made the shift into the salon ecosystem.

So yeah, [49:31] I think there are some people who have been around since the beginning who know us, but we know that we really need to fight for that brand awareness and that brand value. We've not, we don't have that track record of success and trustedness that we do in EVM and we want to build that. [49:45] Yeah. Well, one of the things that's amazing about zero X is that your founders have been in the game for so long and have been really committed and laser focus, in my opinion, on building technology.

[49:57] zero X from seven, 10, 2017 until now. And that buys you like a lot of street cred in, in the IBM Ethereum community. And it's really interesting and in a totally different, in such a smaller way. Like I remember my break point last year walking around and Solana and talking to people. And I was like, I remember texting Dina and be like, man, like nobody in Solana has like, there's no respect on the boys club name here. Like it's really like different. And that's great. Like [50:27] like it's really refreshing because sometimes this industry feels so small and it feels like the same 200 people.

And then when you get out of that. [50:33] echo chamber. It's exciting actually, but I'm sure as a, as a brand that's building tools for builders, that's, and being a marketer there, you have to really think about like, okay, how are we going to gain that respect and show that we've been here for a long time? And I think a great way to do that is that the zero X mafia is incredible. And like, you guys have some all-star names that have come out of zero X from sort of the get.

So tell us a little bit about [51:03] Like, just to me, it's really interesting to see sort of the net of who you guys have, who has worked on Zero X. Yeah, it's incredible. I feel lucky to be part of this group. You're part of the mafia now. I am. I am. Yeah, I've been at Zero X for two and a half years now about. But yeah, I mean, I'm always... [51:22] shocked and like odd when I hear, when I meet new people, they're like, oh, I used to work at Zero X.

We had a couple of developers who stopped by the booth