Is This Layer-1 the Future of Web3?

25:57At the same time, we were trying to figure out, well, we need to support thousands of transactions per second at sub-second latency. And so thinking about this, of course, we created the technology. And of course, today it lives on as Aptos. So we're happy to go into that too in detail. But that's a little bit of the story. Okay. So you spin out of Facebook and you use Move to create Aptos. What's the idea? I mean, it's a big, brave move to go and set up, but I guess you've done it already within Facebook itself. But, you know, it's a competitive landscape and you brought something different. Talk me through the strategy, the vision of what you were setting out to achieve, and then we can talk about where you are today.

26:42I mean, if you kind of tie in all kind of the L1s and L2s today, you barely have a million monthly active users. And so if you believe that blockchain technology will be used in a more ubiquitous way, it'll sit in the back end, just like the Internet sits on the back end when you're on a Zoom call and having a conversation with someone. Then, you know, we need this technology to be able to scale. And so, you know, as we spoke with other parties that were interested, whether it was investors or potential partners, you know, it was amazing to find someone like Chris Dixon and A16Z aligned on that vision where you do need this.

27:19You need serious technology. You need serious engineers. You need a serious group of people that think about things in a way that's different than, you know, the current status as it was within the Web3 or the blockchain landscape. And so people were very excited to partner with us. You know, how often is it you find, you know, PhDs with, you know, cryptography experience and consensus mechanisms and high performance systems and folks with backgrounds like BlackRock and RBC and these financial institutions that can solve these problems, not just talk about them in theory. And so we did end up raising$200 million for our first round, which gave us a lot of confidence that the market believed in us and believed in the technology.

28:04Again, it was three and a half years in the making before we even spun out. So it was visible and apparent that it would make its way out. But we're very fortunate to have an amazing group of engineers on our team, business people, marketing people that take going to market very, very seriously. And so when we spun out, we were able to bring an amazing group of talent to Aptos. We launched four test nets last year and mainnet. Each one of those test nets were processing thousands of transactions per second. We were iterating on each one of those test nets. And Raul, you've been in the space. You see how slow and how hard it is to upgrade these protocols.

28:47It takes years. And so we wanted to take a very different perspective of we want this technology to constantly evolve. And so we ended up raising another$200 million because people saw the test nets go live. And we're like, wow, there's something special here. And so altogether, you're right, we ended up raising a good amount of money. But that money was put to use in hiring some of the best talent in the world and also bringing an amazing community around us to bring this project to life. And so, you know, Aptos is live. You can use it. We did some testing the other day. There's over 13 ,000 transactions that can be run today.

29:26We have amazing partners like Google and Coinbase and other large companies and amazing, you know, girls in hoodies and garages that are building products across the world. So, you know, it's been an absolute pleasure. Hey, everyone, we're gonna take another quick break and hear a word from our partners. We'll be right back to the Real Vision Crypto Daily Briefing.

29:52So you've solved a technology problem. You've got a fast scalable chain. The next part is, okay, great. How do we get past those million people into the 1 billion people? How are you thinking about that? Where is the big unlocks you? You know, I'm thinking of everything from ticketing through to obviously a lot of people are looking at gaming. I think tickets are probably an enormous one. Derivatives. It's another massive market for this. Stuff like that. Where are you thinking and how are you approaching the big pockets of opportunity to grow this space? It's a great question, right? Like, how do you tell the world, hey, there's this new technology called the Internet?

30:30What industries do you think it's applicable to? I mean, all of them. And so, you know, where do you start becomes a very interesting problem to solve. And, you know, luckily, again, we're not the first ones to market now. You know, other blockchains have been out. And so we've seen the market validate some use cases. I think derivatives and DeFi has been a great industry to pay attention to our industry vertical. But we focus our efforts within four categories. The first one is gaming. Excuse me. The second one is social media. The third is media and entertainment. and the fourth is finance. And so when we look at gaming, to your point, we see digital assets have existed way before Web3 has come along.

31:12People have actually traded usernames in gray markets because they want to get a competitive edge. And so what are they trading? They're trading their digital assets, but they're really just selling their username and password. So how do we bring that to light? And this is a problem not only we were interested in solving, but also a lot of game developers and publishers and studios. And so, and gamers are absolutely interested in this as well, right? They want to be able to own assets in Fortnite and share them with each other. How cool would it be if I roll? I would love to meet you one day, but maybe I never do, right?

31:45Maybe we just get to hang out in a gaming environment. But I want to share things with you. We like hanging out. You want to share things with me. And so how do you make that come to life? How do you make that ownership be real? You can only do it on a blockchain. And you can only do it on a blockchain with high throughput and low latency, right? You don't want to wait for 15 seconds. You don't want to pay high gas fees. You don't want to have to leave the game, go into a Chrome plugin. And so all these experiences have to come to life with just amazing technology, which is the thing that we pay attention to, the best user experience.

32:17And gaming has been a phenomenal use case. We have real games that are coming to life within the next 12 months, over 20 games, which is really cool to see. But they're enabling all these things, things like proof of play, randomization that's online. so you can on chain so you can see, you know, it's fair gameplay, you know, someone isn't really cheating behind the scenes here. And so as the gaming industry continues to grow and evolve, we're very excited to be the layer one of choice for a lot of these games. And so that's been a major industry for us. The second is social media. Actually, sorry, media and entertainment.

32:52I'll talk about that one. You know, to your point, you want millions of people to use these things. My first job, funny enough, was working at a movie theater. I used to sell and collect tickets. And we'll get into ticketing too and clean the floors. But sadly, once you leave the movie theater, your experience kind of goes away until maybe one day the movie makes it to your home. And even that's evolved today. And so how do you continue that fan experience and engagement beyond the screen or the home theater? you want to be able to have digital assets that might be collectibles, that might be proof of authenticity and also proof of attendance.

33:31And you can kind of take that with you across a bunch of different platforms. We don't talk about this in theory of something coming in the future. We announced a partnership with NBCUniversal. Actually, we didn't even announce just the partnership. We actually just announced the game with a movie called Renfield, Nicolas Cage, a U.S. national treasure. and he has this Dracula movie where you can squash bugs within a game and you can earn a digital asset that represents a relic. It's all Dracula themed and you own that digital asset. But in order to play that game, you just enter your phone number.

34:08You don't need a massive alphanumeric key. You own an asset that you can claim through a digital wallet, just like you would logging into any digital wallet that you use today, PayPal or Cash App. You can take that digital asset with you and exchange it for popcorn, theoretically. You can show it off to your friends and exchange it with them. And, you know, Fandango also is excited about this because they understand where that engagement could extend beyond just buying that ticket and take it elsewhere. So, you know, folks like NBC and folks like Vandango really understand the power of this technology's ability to, you know, create a better experience for the user.

34:50But again, you can only do it with all that technology just sitting on the back end and no one really knows it's happening. And so, you know, we're doing that today and we're looking to scale that across a bunch of different Hollywood studios and movies to come. So we're excited about that. You mentioned ticketing. And so ticketing is very interesting because it's unbelievable to just get a piece of paper or a digital screenshot of an event. Why can't – like if the two of us went to a concert and we really enjoyed hanging out at a, I don't know, a Cayman Island reggae fest. I'm just making – I don't know if reggae is the choice of music there.

35:22But we really like the playlist of the DJ. And now I want to go to my Spotify account and I want to listen to that playlist. I want to relive that. Why can't I scan my ticket and do that? That seems like such a low-hanging fruit, right? Spotify should be thinking about this and other streaming companies should be thinking about this. Some of them are, by the way, and we're excited to be chatting with them. But the ticket should extend across a bunch of different platforms because it is your proof of attendance. And so we're really excited to partner with a company called Kid Labs. It's KYD. Keep your distribution.

35:56And so all these folks are solving these problems, taking ticketing beyond just the physical event or even just the virtual event and extending that across a bunch of different platforms. So can you go from a venue to a digital platform or vice versa and share these experiences in more powerful ways? And even if you want to sell your ticket, maybe that's okay, right? Like you have a ticket that's worth a lot of money and you can't make it to the Taylor Swift concert. That's okay. you want to sell your ticket to Mo because Mo loves Taylor Swift and you know their scarcity so maybe you can sell that ticket and make some money off of it.

36:33Well without StubHub taking 50 % of it. Bingo and maybe Taylor Swift gets that money or the artist that that jet is is the one that's actually benefiting or putting doing the work benefits from that and so these models are just so powerful. I've also been thinking through hotel rooms and airline tickets. These are things where we've all missed hotel rooms we've had to pay for, airline flights. If there's a free market clearing mechanism, which is an NFT ticket, I can just say, I can't come to New York next week. I've got a room available at anybody who wants it. Now, at least I can get some money back.

37:13They'll trade at a discount, benefits a bunch of other people, or it may trade at a premium because I've got some around the football World Cup final and I've got hotel rooms. So very efficient capital allocation. Sounds like we need to get on the phone with Brian at Airbnb or Marriott. I think it sounds like a great idea. Yeah, and we've seen that Argentinian airline just start this as well. That's right. All their tickets are NFTs, right? So that's super cool. And so these concepts seem so foreign. And Raul, I think you bring up an excellent point. Loyalty programs have existed for a very, very long time.

37:50People trade loyalty points as well, by the way. And so, you know, why do things like NFTs feel so foreign and distant or digital versions of these systems feel so distant? We should, you know, I think we have an opportunity to create clear communications around these use cases. And so, you know, it's not only about the technology to your point, but showcasing these experiences and doing it today, I think is really valuable. So yeah, I think ticketing would be exciting. I think just kind of very quickly on the other use cases, we talked a little bit about stable coins and finance. We talked about DeFi has been an amazing emerging technology or industry vertical.

38:32And so without having intermediaries, but still providing risk, KYC solutions are possible today. And so you can know who you're transacting with in a pseudonymous way and have some comfort in DeFi trading pools without all the various overhead of the existing capital markets or financial system. And so we're excited about things coming to life there. But these projects that are building in the community on top of Aptos, they're taking advantage of things like parallel transaction processing on our protocol. So you can move much faster. Transaction can move much faster and execute much faster on Aptos than they can on any other protocol out there today.

39:12And again, that's been verified by Masari. We're the fastest live network in market today. And so we've learned a lot of lessons from all the other protocols of the past. And so it's been just so cool to see access to financial systems really open up in a powerful way. And this is actually something we think many parties around the world should be excited about, whether you're a regulator or just an individual trying to get access to a system, I think we could all get behind financial inclusivity or universal basic equity. I'm loving that. The other thing that I think needs the fastest solve, and it might be the biggest unlock of all, is digital ID.

39:56And I've been bleating on about this for a while because I saw this AI thing coming. And I'm like, we are not ready for this. And we're so not ready going into a US election. We have no understanding of who is real and who is not. In a world where we all use our NFTs as PFPs, you don't know who the hell anybody is because the platforms aren't set up to actually prove your NFT. It's just an image right now. It's still just a JPEG for us. But with AI becoming part of social media, the issue is of content and authentication of content, which is hard because you can't put the video file on chain because we're just not technologically ready there to do it at scale yet.

40:38So somehow we have to watermark and validate. I don't know, how are you thinking through ID? Because I mean, I've been speaking to everybody from Google to Meta to LinkedIn to Amazon to everybody saying, guys, you need to sort this out fast because we can break the whole fabric of society if we're not careful. man i mean it's it's been unbelievable to see um the power of ai really get unleashed over you know the last uh quarter um or in q1 of 2023 um and it feels jarring and it certainly could feel scary because it to your point you don't know um you know what you're getting what is this output right even if you enter something into chat gpt like what did it take into consideration Right.

41:23It's hard to trace that down today. And so if you think about these large language learning models, right, you need to understand, you know, how trusted is the source going into these models? Is it verified? Is it coming to your point from authenticated parties? And so even that, I think, as a starting point is extremely valuable. And I think you can't put large volumes of data yet on chain. And although we are thinking about interesting storage models, and that's something to come in the future. But, you know, if you do have some kind of identity component to that piece of input, that can be very meaningful, right?

42:04Like the difference between model A and model B could be, I don't know what's in this versus this has the green check or a blue check because it has verified input. And who do you think would be willing to pay for that? Probably a lot of people, right? I mean, people are using ChatGPT at work, right, across the world. And so these verified models and identity become front and center when you're thinking about the concerns around AI. And so I don't know if it's happening too fast or we need to slow down, but we certainly need to think about the AI landscape with Web3 at the focus. Identity is a critical component of that.

42:43You know, anyone can go out and now create content. And how do you know if that's coming from your president or, you know, some AI generated output, right? And so you need, you can't, it's so damn good. And we should be very proud that it's so good. Like, we've have come a long way as technologists, as a society, but it's scary because, you know, so you have to figure out how to verify that. And you need to be able to do that very quickly because, you know, content, as you and I know, can spread like wildfire in places like Twitter or on YouTube or wherever. And so, you know, we need verification to be part of these products and digital identity be baked in to these products.

43:24And we think Web3 is likely one of the only solutions out there in market. And so how cool would it be to see that your LinkedIn posts, although AI generated, are verified output or even verified input. They're coming from the real Raul, right? It's not some botted content or some AI generated content. And that's something we're working on behind a little bit more of a closed effort just because we're in beta or in alpha right now and we're not ready to share things. But there are large companies that we're working with to solve these problems today. You can extend that, by the way, to not just video content, but also imagine all the input.

44:07If your Excel spreadsheet is taking an input and creating models, and you've seen those demos that Microsoft has shared, I mean, we need that data and that input to be verified. You don't want there to be incorrect information going into your financial model, and then you go out and make a financial decision where millions of dollars could be at risk. And so there's a very large market out there and propensity to pay. And we think solving for verified identity and AI together is going to be a massive focus point for Aptos and for the space in 2023. So final question, when your outreach team are talking to corporations, financial players, gaming is more obvious.

44:56how far are these people in their knowledge i mean i've i've built a co-founder another business called science magic studios where we uh helping large corporations with large cultural communities create tokenized ecosystems for loyalty and other things whether that's car companies or sports teams and all of that stuff so it's all in the same lines but i just want to hear how you think these corporations and others, how far they are in understanding what this is. Yeah, it's, I mean, we've luckily have come a long way since Bitcoin and Ethereum. It's been a decade. And so I think a lot of companies have become quite sophisticated.

45:39I mean, you have Goldman Sachs talk about their digital asset management platform and do it very openly. And And we think that's incredibly powerful to see because they understand what this technology could do. And so instead of being scared about it, I think people have learned, you know, digital disruption is very real and happens incredibly quick. And so instead of being disrupted or waiting, I think folks are building. And so we're, you know, we're excited because we can't keep up with the demand for Aptos right now, given, you know, we're not only the fastest blockchain, but the most reliable blockchain.

46:14You know, not being, you know, paying attention to very real SLAs, again, coming back from our meta and Facebook days, you know, you can't afford for Facebook to go down, you can't afford for Visa to go down and Aptos should not go down either. And so, you know, that's not the world that we believe in. And so, you know, a lot of our large enterprise partners that we're working with understand that and have been building with us. And folks see what we do with NBC and others, and they're running to us. And so we can't keep up with the demand, to your point. It's actually really hard. We're trying to grow our partnerships and BD team as fast as we can.

46:52But, you know, the other interesting thing is it's all kind of open, right? Like, you don't need to really talk to us. You know, you want to go tokenize Cayman Island properties. You can do it yourself. And so, of course, we love it when people reach out to us, and we actually really like being helpful. So we're kind of shoulder to shoulder with our developers. In fact, as I'm sitting here in my office, one of the Korean gaming companies that's building on top of us is actually hanging out with us. They visited us from Seoul, and we're building with them. You're invited to come as well. I'd love to host you here in Palo Alto.

47:25Not as sunny as Cayman Islands, of course. But the interesting thing, and maybe a little controversial is, maybe we don't care if enterprises build on top of us or not. And that's kind of okay, too, because, you know, would you have gone to Blockbuster and said, hey, you should put DVDs in an envelope and ship them around the world? Hey, you should really think about putting all your content on a database and think about streaming? maybe, but Blockbuster might be a little stubborn. And we all see what that stubbornness has where that's led them. But you have new companies that are very, very nimble.

48:07They're more bold. They're entrepreneurs. They're willing to take on big, big markets and be challenges to Goliath. And so that is very exciting and exhilarating for us too, right? You've seen obviously Netflix is an example of that, Hulu, many others across all these different industries. You've seen Airbnb come and disrupt the way hotels have worked, change the way business models even operate. And so we're excited about new entrants in this space. One of those examples, by the way, is a very cool company called Chingari. We didn't talk about social media, and maybe I'll touch on this, but you can go out there and have conversations with Twitter and all these other social media companies, but there are other social media products out there in market today.

48:58Chingari started off in India. They incorporated 15 different languages. How cool is that? They're now across 15 different countries and have users globally, 45 million monthly active users, actually. And they thought, well, yes, it's great to pay our creators, but how cool would it be if we had a creator economy built natively into the application and they have the GARI token that does that? They were building on another protocol in the past that just didn't allow them to scale. They were able to get 2 million of their 45 million users on chain until that protocol really started to struggle to keep up with that demand for that social media product.

49:41And so they came across and reached out to us and we had some great conversations with the Chingari team. And now, you know, we're excited to bring 45 million users on chain in a way that they won't even know that they're using Aptos. I'm happy. I don't want people to know that they're using Aptos. I want them to be excited that they can reward creators and tip them and really create meaningful experiences. That's the most proud moment that Web3 can ever have. And so, you know, we don't talk about these things in a distance. This is actually happening right now, by the way, which is really cool to see.

50:15Last point that I'll make, you know, like we feel so proud of this technology. Like you and I would love to, you know, we're nerding out right now and probably can go on and on about how digital ownership really matters. But the fact is sometimes the user just, they don't care. And that's, we should be okay with that, right? Like when I'm using Zoom, I don't know if AWS is powering it or GCP is powering it. No, I don't know what web browser you're on. I don't care, you know? Yeah. yeah, I just love that I get to hang out with you. And that's all that matters. The technology just fades into the background.

50:44And so, you know, just like you don't care about which cloud server or services providing your experience, you shouldn't care about what's allowing you to own your digital assets. And that's the world that we want to be in for Web3 and just the digital future. And that's going to be a very exciting one for us to be on. It is. And there's the one final thing that needs to get solved to make it seamless is interoperability. Because people don't want to feel like, well, I can only use an Aptos wallet or a Solana wallet or a Bitcoin wallet. They just want to move their assets around and they don't care.

51:16Like we talked about, I don't know what internet you're on, what provider you're on. I don't know anything. The developers, they can decide what that is. But as an end user, I shouldn't care. And I don't want to have a bloody phantom wallet and a MetaMask wallet. It just doesn't make sense, right? Yeah. I mean, putting aside your preferences or anyone's preferences of Apple OS or Microsoft or Google OS or Linux, right? Like you just, again, want to have the best experience possible and you want there to be interoperability across those different platforms. And so, you know, we believe in the same.

51:51You know, we're excited about things like bridges that solve interoperability as best as they can today. But we believe there's, you know, more work to be done there. They continue to strengthen. and you see things like Wormhole and things like Pith as oracles solve these issues, there's more work to do. And we're excited about the work that the Jump team and the Wormhole team is doing in this space. But you're exactly right, right? Like if I have Bitcoin or if I have an NFT on Ethereum or if I have an NFT in some other protocol, I want to be able to take it wherever I want to go. If I want to supercharge it and put it on Aptos, I should be able to do that without even knowing I'm putting it on Aptos.

52:32I just want this application to be working seamlessly. And so, you know, we shouldn't think about things in a way that, you know, we want our protocol to be outward facing and customer touching. We want it to be done in a way that, again, it's just kind of ubiquitous and fades into the background. And so Aptos does that already today, right? Like if you have, I saw some cool NFTs flashing in the background there. if you wanted to bring you know a crypto punk or you know I don't know what collection that is right now that look that's very cool that's an MF oh wow that's nice that's nice yeah I mean if you want to bring your MF over to Aptos and into an Aptos application it should be a click of a button and you should be able to play a cool game with your MF that's it yeah Mo look fantastic conversation.

53:23We've gone everywhere from finance to real estate to being first generation immigrants and the whole thing. So look, super interesting, really excited what you guys are up to. You're at the forefront. Keep pushing, keep going. We'll get there in the end. I appreciate it. Thanks so much. It's a pleasure, Roll. I'm a big fan. And it's an honor to speak with you. Thank you so much for having me. No, it was great to speak to you. I always get slightly intimidated thinking, well, how do I know about the technology? But we're actually all excited about the same thing, but we come with different experiences and stuff.

53:55And that's why I think people find all these kind of conversations so rewarding because everyone brings part of the equation together and it becomes interesting. So listen, thank you. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. My key takeaways from talking to Mo is that, look, he's come from a similar background to me, although he's obviously smarter and a technologist as well. But seeing the finance side, he understands the core issues of the system that we currently have. But also, he has the vision to see what Web3 could become and how a system like Aptos can empower it. And I think it's having that limitless understanding of where we could go gives you an ability to move forwards further and faster.

54:42If we really want to get from the 300 million people who've interacted with crypto to multiple billion people, we've got to think big, and we've got to think at scale. And these new solutions are really helping, whether it's Solana, Aptos, Layer 2s, they're all piecing together part of the jigsaw puzzle that is incredibly important. And I think Aptos, much like the conversation with Polygon as well, shows that there's some people really, really moving this space forward. And it's amazing. What's up, revolutionaries? Thanks for tuning in to the Real Vision Daily Briefing. For more content like this, head over to realvision.com and get unfiltered access to the very best, brightest, and biggest names in finance.