E65: WazirX Founder: I built the Largest Crypto Exchange in India!

30:16So I think it's about being, at least if you're talking about cares, giving them that ability to start thinking analytically at every point in their life so that they can always change their decisions. I think that's more important. Now, coming back to, you know, hiring, honestly, when I started, I told you about young, you know, people who just out of college and you can choose. But usually what happens is we emphasize a lot more on your experience rather than you know what you studied so in our startups when we're hiring we really don't look at degree i don't even remember the last time where i discussed degrees it's usually you know what's your achievement and we are in a world where today even 20 22 year olds can show a lot of achievements you know they it used to be maybe in my time you know 10 15 years ago the only thing used to be a degree but i think uh today i've seen kids um you know without degrees or they're not even engineers.

31:18They've probably done something, some other, you know, higher education. But they've created so many things. They've either, they have their own blogs and they've become podcasters or they run their own YouTube channels or they've created a small apps during their time, you know, in the free time, even though they don't have an engineering background. So we've seen quite a variety of, you know, I would say skill sets today in youngsters. So today I think it's easier to just look at the person in higher in terms of what have they done versus what have they studied. Absolutely. There is a lot of opportunities everywhere and there's a lot of people who want to start businesses, right?

32:03But they're scared or maybe they just want to find an excuse to not start, right? And so something that's really compelling in your story is how you started your first company, which is not the, I'd say, not the most classic way of starting a company. You did it besides working a full-time job to manage your risk. You told me I waited to make tons of money before going full-time into my first company. But obviously, doing two things at the same time is not a walk in the park. So what are the sacrifices that are required to build a successful company while working a full-time job? Yeah, I think for me, I remember a time when I think I hardly slept because I had a nine-to-five job, but it was not just a job.

32:58It took me about, I think, an hour and a half to reach my job. So I had to leave early morning and travel an hour and a half to reach my job. and then you know nine to five becomes nine to seven really quickly in any of your jobs so when you say nine to five you can't really you know just stop working at five it's usually five six or seven p.m and then by 8 30 you know nine ish I used to come back home quickly have my dinner and then start working on my product so it used to be like after nine nine thirty p.m I used to start working you know maybe I used to get three four hours or you know five hours of sleep and then And the next day, the same routine.

33:37I still have my weekends because in the weekend, I used to get a lot of time to continue building my startup. So, yeah, I think I did that for about a year after I launched my startup. But to be honest, I also did that three years before that. So I think I've done a routine like this for four years because while I launched my product as a side project in 2010, I'd been trying a variety of things before that, you know, a lot of small little things. In fact, the first thing I started was as a blogger. I started writing a blog, a technology blog to solve people's tech problems. And that got some traction.

34:23And, you know, that also used to be the same routine, come back from work, you know, sit and write blog posts. and this was 2007, 2008. Blogs were like... It's the blog, it was the thing, right? The blogging era, everyone. And I remember reading articles from bloggers saying, hey, this is my monthly income. You know, I made so much money from AdSense. I know, and I made so much money from referral. So I used to see that and be very, you know, motivated that I should have my blog. So about, I think two years I did my own blog. I think the highest I earned from that business was about$1 ,000 or$1 ,500 a month, which is not bad for, you know, considering I was in India and I was 23 or 24, 22, 23.

35:08It was good. But I always knew that this is not, you know, the path for me because while I was doing it, I did not see that as like a, you know, a business I want to grow because I was more interested in actually coding and building stuff rather than writing content. You know, I like reading content. I think it's very hard to create content personally. I would rather code. You know, that's my way of writing content. Create more products. So in 2010, I launched my first, you know, side project that went viral. It was a social media management app. And it was also just pure, I think, luck, I would say, that it went viral.

35:51Why? is because I made that app and this was for Twitter and it was a very simple feature. You could unfollow people that you were following if they did not follow you back. So it was just a very simple feature and I made it for myself because I was following, I remember, about 5 ,000 people and Twitter had an upper limit. You could not follow more than 5 ,000 people unless they were following you. So I hit my limit and I had about 1 ,000 people following me. So there were about 4 ,000 people I needed to unfollow. And I tried doing manually and I realized this was not going to, you know, get done.

36:29So I built a program and it worked well. And I thought, let's also launch this as a product. And I sent an email to TechCrunch. And I still remember this was, I think, 2 a.m. in the night. I immediately got a response from one of the writers at TechCrunch saying, no, I got a response from Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch, saying, I tried this, but there's a bug in the program. And I was excited, the fact that he even tried and, you know, he pointed, I said, I'll fix it. And the next thing I know, he posted about that on TechCrunch. And immediately, I think the first day I got 5 ,000 or 7 ,000 people who came on the website.

37:12So that's when I realized that what I built was needed by others as well. And I quickly started then building more into that. It eventually became a social media management product. But the initial days were like, because it was such a simple feature, I did not know whether this would be eventually a good product or whether this was just a fad. So I decided not to quit my job, you know, in the excitement that something took off. I was cautious I said I'll continue to work and continue to build this now three months into building this it had reached about I think 80 or 100 ,000 users and I had a new problem which was I was paying more for server charges than I was making money I think so you know while that seemed successful for two to three months I realized that success is making me poorer right now So I needed a way to pay my server charges.

38:06And that's how I introduced the payment method. And I said, if you want to use more of this, please pay me. And within the next three months, it started paying me more than my day job. And more as in, I was making more in a month through this side projects than I was making in a year on my day job. So that's where I had reached. And that sort of gave me the confidence that, you know, okay, there's something great in this. I can quit. You said I got lucky. Do you believe in luck? Absolutely. But, you know, I wouldn't be lucky if I wasn't really working hard. Of course. But it is because what if I had sent that email a little early or a little late?

38:50And I don't know, but back in the day, getting a response, getting TechCrunch to even look at your email was almost impossible considering the amount of inbounds they used to get. So I think it was just pure luck or maybe something different, but not hard work. It's not like I sent 500 emails and then they responded. Just send one email and I got a response. And they found a bug and they still decided to write about it. It has to be luck, right? What's your message to a 24-years-old engineering graduate who's been working for two years in a corporate, is bored as fuck and wants to start a company?

39:35I don't think boredom is the reason you should start a company. I was never bored in my job, by the way, and I was really good at it. And in fact, I think I was one of the best whenever I worked, and I always gave my best. You should start a company because I think, you know, if you see a problem and you think there is no solution no one's building it or why is someone not solving it? I think that's the best reason to start a company. If you start for boredom, I'll tell you there are enough boring times in a startup founder's life. In fact, there are more boring times and I'll tell you what the definition of boring.

40:15Let's say for me, I love coding, but finance was boring for me. And in my job, I've never had to do finance, but once I started up, I had to do finance. I had to do you know I had to write content like I said I escaped I wanted to write code but I had to write content to bring people to it I had to pitch to investors that's the most boring job by the way pitching to investors and trying to raise money is the most boring job according to me so yeah and and slowly and today I don't quote so in a way you know my my first love is coding but I hardly do that so if you think about boredom and if you start I don't think it'll take you to far.

40:55You need to think about problems and you need to truly believe that this problem has to be solved and then work towards it. I think that's the way to really succeed as a startup founder. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's kind of, it sounds so simple. Yeah. But it's the way to go. Hey, there is a problem and I'm trying to find the solution to that. I'm not trying to be cool. Yeah. Actually, because entrepreneurship is not that cool. Yeah, it is. I'm not like, It's just, hey, like there's an issue and if no one else does it, I kind of have to take that responsibility because no one else is doing it, right?

41:30So you spent six years building your first startup, Crowdfire. Actually, even I could say almost nine, ten years, right? Because you said you started three years before trying different things. Yeah, I started in 2010. But no. But before that, you said like three years doing blog. Yeah, I mean. So essentially to get to getting lucky, right? And then actually scaling the company, it's almost, let's say, eight, nine years. Yes. Which is close to the classic 10 years overnight success, right? Right, right. That everybody talks about. Oh, man, overnight success, overnight success. You scale the company to 20 million users.

42:11What does it take to scale a company to tens of millions of users? It takes a lot of time. I mean, it takes a lot of things. But it starts with a few things. I think the first most important thing is you build something people need. It sounds very simple, but it's very, very hard. It's the hardest thing. The hardest thing is actually to find what people need. Nothing is harder than that. Once you've found what people need, and like I said, in that, I think I got lucky in that also. I just found what I needed. That was my first startup. I needed it. Genuine problem. I could not follow more people thanks to Twitter's arbitrary rules back then so I found a problem but it just happened that many people had that problem in fact 20 million people over time so that was good so do that but once you found a problem that you should solve I think you should be ready for a lot of hardships along the way It's never going to be smooth.

43:19And be able to overcome those hardships. It starts with the first is finding that initial team, the hardest. Unless you raise$10,$20 million on day one, maybe it's easier. But usually that's not the case. So it'll be very hard to find that initial team members. Then from there, learning the tricks of the trade in terms of most founders, come with just one skill set. Like I entered with just an engineering skill set. But if you think about a company, and I think it takes time to understand that a company is a lot like, you know, working out. If you're going to focus only on one, it's like, you know, would you only do exercise for your arms and forget the rest of your body?

44:07And unfortunately, a lot of times I've seen entrepreneurs fail is because they focus only on one thing. They're like, I'm a coder, I'm only going to code. I'm going to not do anything. And, you know, unfortunately on the internet, there have been all these, you know, fancy things like if you build, they will come. One of the biggest lies that the internet has ever taught people is if you build, they will come. They'll never come. You need to learn how to distribute, you know. You need to learn how to attract people to your product. And those are other parts of your body that you have to work on.

44:34You need to learn finances also. That's why sometimes you hear about, you know, one bad thing and the startups go bankrupt. Why? Because they've not thought about their finances. you need to learn how to raise money as well because without money all your strategies are useless you know you'll have the best of ideas but you don't have money you need to hire great leaders along with you because a single leader company you are not well for a week or you want to go out on vacation then your company is not going to succeed so i think that's a lot of these things that along the way as a founder you should you know inculcate in you and all of those things I think eventually lead to success.

45:10Persistence is the most important though, but in the right direction. Because I've seen people persist, you know, at most like a, it's a dead end and they still want to persist. So having a better understanding of, you know, your path. So you can persist if your car is moving forward, but if you're hitting against a wall, there's no point of persisting. So even understanding that is important. So where is the trade-off? Because on one side, you have Steve Jobs who says that he's convinced that you know what separates 90 % of the people who are successful from those who are failing is purely persistence and perseverance.

45:51And then you have some other views who say actually being persistent is not good because you could very easily kind of be lying to yourself and be in denial and end up failing. Right. So what's the answer? Self-awareness? Yeah. See, awareness is the most important thing. And it's not just about startup success, but just personal success. In general, if you're not self-aware, you cannot really go too far. Because you're then going in the direction that you're being sent by anyone and everyone in the world. You read an article and suddenly like, yes, let's do this. You see a tweet and you're like, yes, let's do this.

46:31So being self-aware is very important. but also I think being more at least what's worked for me is being more mission driven rather than being driven by a product or your start. Have a mission that this is what you want to achieve. And it could be your personal mission or your company's mission, whatever. But if you're aware of that, what happens is everything else becomes secondary. And then you're able to pivot if you need. You're able to change things. You're able to, you know, take a beating in one area of your product, but, you know, change something and succeed somewhere else. So I think that mission, vision, you know, those are very important things for a founder.

47:15Makes a lot of sense, actually. So it's, I find the problem that a lot of people have. I define a mission around it to solve this problem. And then everything I do is sort of tools to get to solving this problem. Absolutely. But I'm going to try to find what works best, right? And it could mean doing something completely different than what I'm doing. As long as the mission and the goal is clear, then the rest is secondary. It makes a lot of sense. You said you used something called ETC strategy, which helped you scale to millions of users. What is ETC strategy? And how did you use it to build a mega startup?

47:53Yeah, I came up with this for my first startup. and you know E stands for ego T stands for temptation and C for curiosity the idea is that you know if you want to attract people to your product you need to tap into at least one of these in your attempts all of these is the best like if you can have ego temptation and curiosity all baked into your go-to-market strategy that's like the best but even one of them is you know enough and I can give you some real world examples not just my product but everywhere else I don't know if you remember but when gmail came for example they did not open up the access to everyone they said only if you had an invite code could you access gmail and that was I think one of the smarter marketing because whoever had a Gmail invite code, you know, it was sort of pride for them to invite their friends.

48:58And it's worked in many other startups, I think even recent, which is, hey, I have an invite code if you want. And, you know, that's more like suddenly your customers have become your marketeers. They're going and telling their friends, you know, there's this cool product, but only I can get you in. So that's sort of an ego that they, you know, get because of something like that. So that's worked really well in, you know, history. It's been used by Fintechs, Monzo, Revolut. It's used a lot in crypto with this cause. It's always, yeah. It's not going to change. It's always going to be there. It's going to come in different forms.

49:30But you need to understand what the B is. It's all ego. So now once you understand that, then you'll start thinking about marketing and how do I bring in ego for our customers? And then that's a smart approach to do. The second temptation is the easiest. And most people use it. And so much in Web3. Airdrop. the biggest temptation ever you know give an airdrop and everyone wants to come free money yeah free money uh so temptation is uh the other aspect of um you know um go to market strategy for any product that you can come curiosity curiosity um is uh tricky but you know it works really well if done right for example uh social networks had who viewed your profile kind of thing LinkedIn had you know the same thing and they used it for converting you to paid customers absolutely so that's what you mean curiosity is not necessarily showing who but saying hey if you pay more you could see who right right okay so that's a third aspect and if you can combine all three beautiful if not use one or two of them but yeah you start with this as a framework rather than saying oh I want a million users what do I do you know instead of that say that how do I use ego in my product then a million forget million you'll get 10 million users if you can really do it right but how do I bring in temptation in my whole product journey or curiosity I think these are three I've added a few over time I think but these have been the three that have been really you know helped me right from my first startup yeah so that's the etc framework that I employ.

51:12You said, hey, at some point, but too many users and the cost of the servers was too much, right? So you had to start charging people. And you said that you started charging people monthly, right, doing these monthly payments, which, 2010, right? Yeah, in 2010, I think I first started with a yearly. Yearly, okay. And then I moved to monthly. Which today seems normal. Yeah. But it wasn't back then. Tell me about the kind of creative moment that made you invent this kind of new way of charging users and ultimately growing your company. Because, I mean, the entire software of the service business model and the crazy valuations of businesses is all based on are you able to build this monthly recurring revenue from customers who pay every month.

52:05Right, right. But yeah, and I didn't even know the term. It's very common today, MRR and ARR, monthly recurring revenue and annual recurring revenue. But back in the day, it was just need. So I don't think it was so much of a design for me. I first put a payment, you know, actually, I started with a one time. I made a payment page and said, one time you can pay$5. And in a month, I think I got maybe a thousand, I think maybe 100, 200, 300 people. So it would be one-off forever? Yeah, one-off forever. That's how I started. But quickly I realized in this, I would have to keep finding new customers forever.

52:46So I said, no, this may not work. Let me do yearly. But there was also the fear because see, when you start with something like that and then suddenly I thought I should do it yearly and I was afraid that would people go for it or not. But that's a good test actually. Yeah. It's a good test. Right. So I tried it. And, you know, surprisingly, the number of people who are signing up for the paid plan did not reduce. You know, so I mean, one fine day I just switched it. And the number of people who signed up yesterday for a forever plan, the same number of people are in fact a little more signed up for the yearly plan because the product was growing as well.

53:23So that, you know, told me that, okay, I can experiment more. And within a few weeks, I introduced a monthly plan. And again, it didn't change. Of course, at that point, I was like, I'm not going to go below a month. Month was good enough. So that's how I did. But yeah, today it comes naturally. SaaS is known when you're launching a product, you know, you do it on a monthly basis. And yearly, you will give a discount or something. But it's always a monthly. But back in those days, there were no playbooks around, you know, all of these things. I just were experimenting. Everyone was experimenting.

53:57So you're growing this company, scaling to over 20 million users. And then in 2017, you tried to buy Bitcoin during the crazy bull run, right? Right. And you said you tried to buy Bitcoin, but it took you a week. Yeah. So you realize there is a huge opportunity to build a crypto exchange in India to help people buy. Again, you're solving your own problem. Hey, I needed one week to buy Bitcoin. Probably other people will want to buy Bitcoin or other cryptos. And because it takes that much time, this is an opportunity. And then within four years you built, you spent four years building the largest crypto exchange in India, Wasiur X.

54:37The first question is, how do you leave a successful business with 20 million users that you could scale maybe to 100 million to start a new one from scratch? Yeah, I think you don't have to make that choice, honestly. you know if you want to build a new business and you have an existing business i think it's just depends on your ability to scale. if you learn to scale yourself you can do it or if you want to because the one thing it requires is a lot of energy it's not so much of the time time is something that you can manage the energy is the thing that you know it's not always easy to manage do you want to explain what it what you mean by energy to me like when you build something new there is a lot of brainstorming that goes i mean on one side you have a well oil company the other side everything needs to be rebuilt that's what you mean right no i just mean maybe i should use a better term ambition okay it's just the want the you know is it in you do you want to um you know run multiple companies i think if you truly want to you can do it but sometimes you feel better as an individual if you're just focused on just one entity uh and do everything around and there are enough examples of successes in both of these varieties.

56:02Maybe more common with one company only and a little more uncommon in the multiple enterprise space, but it's doable. So for me, I think I've always known that I wanted to do more, you know, in terms of varieties of products that may not always make sense for the same company to do. And I don't want to be, you know, brought down or held back because of that. So I was very clear that if I ever get an opportunity, which is interesting and exciting, I'll do it. Having said that, for my first company, while it was growing rapidly, in 2017, Twitter and Instagram and Facebook, they started changing the terms of their platform, by the way.

56:49So I had to sort of pivot the company from being consumer driven to more business driven. And after that, it was not so much about the number of people I was signing up. It was more about how many businesses. And that's something that, you know, I did not truly enjoy. I'm a consumer guy. I love building products where millions of people will use it. I think that gives me even more ambition. You know, I can grow my ambition. And I try to focus on things where I'm able to grow my ambition. So I didn't, it's not like I always grew up with, you know, great ambition or something. But I think my ambition has been increasing and growing.

57:24And I love that. so yeah so i that was one of the other reason why i thought that i should build another product which can be consumer driven and it just happened that i was in crypto and and also this whole fact that companies like instagram and twitter can you know ask you to change things overnight and you have to you have no choice like even i think five days ago i because that company is still operating crowdfire is still working and we still have customers but b2b five days ago i think we got an email where again Facebook was cutting off the APIs for Facebook groups. So now third party products that are using Facebook's APIs they can't use Facebook group products in their apps.

58:07So this is what every, I would say, social media, large social media product has been doing. And this is what every centralized entity will ever do. Because when you start building something on top of them and you start making a good amount of revenue, for the internal revenue team of the centralized entity it's like hey there's 50 million dollars or 100 million dollars being made by these set of products that are using our api why don't we capture that money so what do you do you cut off that access and you build it on your own so so this has always been the problem that i realized in 2017 when this happened to me that um you know you can't rely on a centralized ecosystem to build products and it's not just apis you build on the app store and the play store they can change the games anytime every time you know there's a new uh launch by apple or google hundreds of products die by the way we don't realize that you know we have to go and find those i remember you know when apple launched their news uh this thing there used to be flipboard or one of the product which was very popular as a news site and suddenly apple news really sort of you know killed the product because they have an unfair advantage now they can distributed to all their customers and no one's going to download you.

59:22You know, even music affected Spotify to a large extent. Same with Google also. So I think that is what pushed me towards decentralization. Absolutely. Because in decentralization, even the founder of the blockchain can't really tell you what you can and cannot do. That's the beauty of decentralization. So it's something you understood in 2017 when you discovered Bitcoin. It's not only, hey, there's a bull run, I want to buy Bitcoin because it's going up, but it is also the ethos side of saying, hey, I want to contribute to this ecosystem and have more people having access to this decentralized mechanism.

59:58And I'm going to do that first by doing what I do best, which is consumer application, essentially, to help people buy. Because that's a problem that I have when I try to buy Bitcoin, right? Right. But I discovered Bitcoin very early, though. so in fact I think in in 2010 you know 10 is when I I think I've even tried running a bitcoin node but it was just that because I used to love anything new I've always tried anything any new product any new technology I've always tried especially because I used to write a lot of blog posts and all but yeah I never thought of it much I tried it and then in 2012 I also remember there were so many wallets that were coming up new wallets in 2012 for bitcoin i tried them but it's always been on and off but in 2017 when because i always wondered ultimately what was the use of this you know honestly i did not find the need for it but in 2017 i realized from at least from a core philosophical point of view why decentralization was needed and and just happened to be that there was a bull run at the same time.

1:01:06So I went deeper. It was not an overnight thing. I think it took me seven, eight months to decide that, you know, I really want to do something here. Because there was a lot of push and pull internally also, you know, you're already building, you know, you're right. And that was my first time when I was really transitioning from one company to now, can I have two companies? So that took a long time. I, in fact, I went to San Francisco and I spent six months there in 2017, figuring out, you know, whether I should really, because I was at that point in my time when I had to really clear my mind and think.

1:01:43And in India, I was working with my entire team and it was going to be very hard for me to disconnect myself and think whether I should do it. So that's where I actually went to San Francisco, spent six months. And that's where I took the call that, you know, maybe I should try this, a new paradigm, a new ecosystem, but cannot be controlled. So let's do this. And that's how I came back. And then I was trying to find what to build. And then I was like, let's go to the basics, solve your own problem. That's how the exchange came about. Take me down the journey of starting the largest India crypto exchange from scratch and turning it into a business that generates hundreds of millions per year.

1:02:26Yeah, it's been a crazy ride for us. It's been five years now. I launched it in 2018. I actually announced it in, I think, Jan 2018. And if you remember... The top of the bull run. Yes, it is the top of the bull run. Obviously. And everyone was like, nothing's going to stop us. Crypto, I think everyone thought we've made it. and this is how crypto will continue to grow. And it was my first time also where I was objectively trying to build something. So when we announced it, I think within a week, we had about 40 ,000 or 50 ,000 people sign up. And this was not a product. This was just a sign up page.

1:03:14So a pre-sign up. And we got 50, 60 ,000 people. The reason why I did a pre-sign up page, by the way, there's a backstory to that is there were already seven, eight exchanges in India. Sure, you know, it was difficult to buy. They were slow and, you know, all those problems existed. But I wanted to be 100 % sure that if I'm going to build a solution, there has to be a need for it. Comes back to that, right? Find a problem. So I thought the best way to do that is just announce that you'll build an exchange. It'll solve all of your problems. It'll have these features and stuff. And see if people sign up.

1:03:50Because if that pre-sign up did not work, I don't think, I may have pivoted, thought of something else. But to my surprise, within a week, 40 ,000 plus people signed up. And that gave me the indication that yes, this is again not an isolated problem, which only you're facing. But the rest of the country also wants the solution. Then we started building this. And in March, we launched it. 8th of March, 2018. And the bear market had started. You know, Bitcoin was going down. The moods were going down. And by the time we launched, we had over 100 ,000 people who had pre-signed up. But I think less than 1 ,000 people came on the exchange on the day one of those pre-signers.

1:04:381 ,000 or 2 ,000 people. Because crypto was now seen as will it survive or not. So, but for us, I think while we were building the exchange and there was this bull run and then there was a bear market. I was very clear on why I was doing it. And I'm still on that mission, by the way, which is my personal mission. If you look at the internet, for example, if I could go back in time and I could choose a mission that would personally satisfy me, it would be that I would get everyone on the internet. Because I've seen magic happen because of people getting access to internet. I'm also a prime example of that.

1:05:25If I had no internet, I don't think I would be an entrepreneur. That email would have never happened. Nothing would have ever taken off. So I personally believe that if I was to go back into 1995, maybe, and I was an entrepreneur, my only mission would have been get people on the internet and do everything you can. And that's the kind of mission I have now, is get everyone into the decentralized ecosystem. That's my personal mission. and you know i want to make sure i'm responsible for a large number of people to get into this ecosystem what they do after that is actually you know it's not my concern i want to bring them in that's why i started the exchange because that was the entry point you know it's it's an on-ramp for a reason you come in you experience what crypto is sure it's centralized you know that's not you have to go forward in your journey but at least I'm the guy who's helping you on board.

1:06:19So when the markets went down, I still believed in this, you know, decentralized ecosystem and the spirit of decentralization. So we continued. Which is the only way to survive. Yeah. You have the mission. If your goal is to make money, you're not going to stay for two years in the bear market, right? So, yeah. So we started that. And within a month, there was a banking ban in India. So while the bear market, if it was not enough to demotivate, you know someone to build within a week we could not have bank accounts and we were an uh exchange which you know allowed you to unwrap so so so we were now left without a bank account we were about six weeks old i think um and slowly we started seeing some of the other established start like exchanges shutting down or you know moving out of the country and stuff because you virtually can't operate if you don't have a bank account.

1:07:16But for us, I think our mission kept us going. And there were also, in jest, I usually say that we were already at ground zero. When you launch a startup, there's nothing you have to lose. So we were anyways at ground zero. So we decided we want to keep doing this. So what was the solution there? Just wait and hope that you have access to a bank account? Probably not. No, I think that's why the self-awareness part comes in that, you know, you could believe in that, but maybe then the exchange is not the way. If, you know, I would not suggest waiting would be a solution for a startup because that's default death.

1:07:55If you're not growing, you're dying as a startup. So we decided that, okay, we can't have a bank account, but individual people can have a bank account and they can transact between them. So we introduced peer-to-peer, P2P. We only custody the crypto and we lock it and you could do the transaction. You could send it from your personal bank account to the other person's bank account and then we'll release the crypto to you. Once the other person has acknowledged that they've received the money from you, then we'll release the crypto to you. And that's how we started attracting a lot of people. Now we innovated there.

1:08:27We didn't have a traditional regular P2P where you had to choose whom to buy from. This was more like an order book that we created. So you just had to put an order. but when it matches then we'll show you the bank account and you have to make the transfer and that really worked well because and this was the perfect thing about you know finding solutions to the problems that your users are facing and people out it and we quickly saw people sign up so so i i would say we made a bad situation into an opportunity for assets And this continued for about, I think, two years, where we were operating with the peer-to-peer model.

1:09:08And we almost reached, I think we were close to, or maybe we crossed a million users in those two years, just in this model. A million users. That shows how much people really wanted crypto. Yeah, a million or two million. I'm not exactly sure. And we were profited. so you know we didn't uh we anyways did not raise money i i invested initially you know because this was my second startup we never raised money uh but yeah we became profitable as well in that time period so we became profitable in the harshest of condition uh where you know you did not have a bank account your competitors were uh dropping off um and then the in 2020 magic happened, which is the Supreme Court of India overturned this bank.

1:10:00And that opened the floodgates because now we could have a bank account. And in March 2020, this happened. It was in March. Yes. And that's when Bitcoin started. Obviously, COVID crashed and then things went crazy from there, right? Yeah. So it was just perfect timing. And because we were in the ecosystem, and we were, you know, helping people on board to crypto, I think we became the beneficiaries of that massive number of people coming in. By the way, in this, something very important that happened in those two years when there was a banking ban was I launched a campaign called India Wants Crypto.

1:10:40And my objective was every day I'm going to tweet to our finance minister and, you know, to everyone in the ecosystem. about why we need to be involved in crypto as a nation. And this campaign, I ran it for over a thousand days, where every day I used to tweet. And I was just lucky that everyone from the community used to retweet it and share it. And it sort of became like a thing for the community. Everyone rallied around it. India wants crypto. and I think that was needed because you know at least in our growing years we've all been accustomed to markets that were made by someone else you know ecosystems that were made by someone else here crypto is a new ecosystem we're just lucky that we happen to be the first movers and then you need to learn from the early movers of the other ecosystem that exists You know, what were the early days like?

1:11:43And in the early days, you have to take initiative. And I decided that I needed to do this so that, you know, someone starts talking about the need for crypto in India. Why India should participate in this ecosystem. So that campaign really worked well for us in terms of building the ecosystem. And as a result, I think our exchange benefited. And from 2020 to 2022, we grew to over 15 million people on our exchange. We did over 40, 45 billion dollars in trading volume in 2021, made over hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. So it was crazy. But it was a result of so many years of really working hard on the product innovation, on bringing people together, ensuring that even the media, for example, I think most of them were not really interested in crypto so much or did not understand.

1:12:37And we made it our goal to help answer even the most basic of questions so that they also understand. And today, I think if you talk to people in the Indian media, they're well versed with crypto and the ecosystem. They understand it really well. But initially, back in those days, it was really hard for them. And I believe it was our role and responsibility to make it easy for them to understand crypto. This many times, you know, I see today where people like, you know, when someone asks a very basic question about crypto, they sort of start making fun of them. But if you do that, you are having an exclusive culture.

1:13:15But if you think about, you know, decentralization, it should be an inclusive culture where everyone in the world should be part of it, which means you'll always get the most basic question. And the questions may not always be what you like hearing. Like instead of someone asking you, what is crypto? Sometimes they might say crypto is a scam. but that does not mean that you know it uh you just start shutting off you need to start talking to them about the benefits so that's the approach we took we were like you know it doesn't matter you hate crypto it's okay but we can still have a conversation and that really worked well for us educating everyone yeah essentially so you start an exchange you don't raise any external money you grow it to 15 million users hundreds of millions of revenue but that's not enough for you because it's centralized right probably in your greater kind of scheme of what's my mission hey i can't stop at a centralized exchange no matter how successful it is because it doesn't it's just the first step towards decentralization right yeah no it's not so much about the centralization aspect it's more about uh my ambition has now grown to having more impact in more areas.

1:14:32With the exchange, I brought 15 million people and we'll continue to grow that. And we might bring maybe 20, 30 million people. The question is, how do I bring 100 million people online? You know, that's the question I ask myself. And at this rate, it'll take maybe, I don't know, 10 years. But how can I do that faster? How can I get to be saying that I was responsible for 100 million people to be part of Web3? So when I think about that, that's where I want to be involved in a lot more. And so that's one. The second is, it's also the journey, even for our exchange users. The next journey is decentralization.

1:15:19They go on-chain. On-chain, yeah. And that is where I found a new problem. You know, we had 15 million people, you know, were on the exchange. I think less than 5 % of the people have ever moved on chain, by the way. Which makes a lot of sense. It's too complicated. Yeah. It's weird, complicated. Expensive. You get hacked. It's expensive. Absolutely. See, I did not even have to tell you. There's so many problems. Right? So which means that is the problem. And at least, but same, my thing is I always want to know. So we started asking a lot of our customers and stuff. like you know what is stopping you and these are the answers that we got which i realized yes there's a problem uh which means there has to be a solution but it has to be a solution that really works uh which is find a decentralized uh you know or build a decentralized blockchain which can scale up based on the demand so that your fees will always be low and doesn't matter if five million people come five people come five million people come 50 million people come it will always be able to accommodate them.

1:16:23That was the need. And when I was running the exchange, I had met a guy in 2019. There was, I think, a year, year and a half after the exchange I started, who told me that he was building a software which was a blockchain software which would scale with demand. And I had loved the idea. but he was still at the idea stage and he's still implementing. So I stayed in touch with him. So when I started thinking about this problem in 2021, I went back to him to see where he was with this idea. And just the problem was essentially 2021, a lot of on-chain activity on Ethereum, NFTs, and then you'd realize every transaction costs like 100 bucks, which makes no sense, right?

1:17:18So that's the moment you say, I'm going to go back to this person. I mean, I stopped, I myself stopped it. Like, you know, I used to enjoy, you know, transferring on Ethereum and, you know, I mostly use Ethereum, honestly, and or Bitcoin. But yeah, I realized when the market was at the bull, I was not using it. You know. You can't. I mean, it makes no sense. Yeah, it's pricing me out. Yeah. You know, it's going to price everyone out. And the only reason you would use it is because if you're going to make$1 ,000 or$10 ,000 and the only way to make that money is because you have to pay$100 in transaction costs, then you do it.

1:17:52But not because you want to show your friend how decentralization works. You can't send him$1. So that was a problem that I saw and I realized that this has to be solved. So when I reached out back to this person I had met, I was surprised to see that he had achieved a lot of the things that we discussed back then in 2019. and so I got him and I'm talking about my co-founder at Shardium Omar he is based out of Dallas in Texas I got him to fly down to Dubai I told him let's catch up I wanted to understand whether he's still on the same mission and whether we align on our objectives because I saw this as an amazing solution this was a brand new blockchain built from scratch with only one objective can it scale That was the only thing that he wanted to build.

1:18:49So we met and I told him, you know, this is what I've been thinking. And, you know, our thoughts aligned. And in two days, you know, we decided that this is what we will do now. And that's how Shardium was launched. Before that, he was only going to build the software, by the way, and just open source it. He was not building it to launch a blockchain. He wanted anyone and everyone to, you know, just build their own chain using that software. but yeah we decided that we'll build the blockchain first and we launched it as a shardium and that's how shardium came into the picture and we are now two years into that yeah so what is shardium if you have to explain this to your mother it's a auto scaling blockchain it scales automatically so it's a blockchain that scales and that says cheap yeah if there is a lot of transaction on Yeah, so it's very simple.

1:19:42And it's done, if we want to go deeper, it's done a lot of these UX improvements, which actually are normal, but they're abnormal in the Web3 world. Simple example is, if you think about you as a customer, when was the last time you decided how much you will pay for a service or for a product?

1:20:10In my life in general? Yeah, in general. When was the last time you as a customer decided that this is how much I will pay? Yeah, every day, today. No, I mean in terms of, let's say,

1:20:27okay, I'll give a more specific question. When you buy a book, do you decide how much you will pay for it? No, you don't. Absolutely not. The price is set. Or when you buy an iPhone, do you decide? No, it's fucked. Yeah, but when you make a transaction, why do you have to decide how much to set as fees on the blockchain? Now, go to the Web2 world. Whenever you buy any service, the service will tell you upfront, this is how much it costs. Yeah, it's much easier. Most people don't want to have to choose. Yes, because choices are the biggest demotivators for consumers. Absolutely. So in our blockchain in Shardim, you don't have a fee market.

1:21:00It's a flat fee. You don't have to choose. It's a flat, tiny fee that everyone pays. The second is, you know, MEV, which we talk about. Why does it exist? It's because anyone can, you know, pay a higher fee and get that transaction before you. Again, unnatural. You know, you came first, you should be served first. You stay in a queue if, you know, tomorrow you go to a cafe and they say, you know, the guy behind you is going to pay double for the coffee. Would you be okay with that? as a consumer. Not really. Exactly. Then we should not be okay with that. So we have first come first serve. When you fire a transaction on Shardium, no one can overtake that.

1:21:46It's time spent. So that's how you do it. And these are things that already exist. This is not magic. This just exists. But unfortunately, in Web3, because we've been in that hyper experimentation mode, whether things will work or not, we've not had those finished consumer friendly products built yet so yeah i think these are some of the key you know ux things that we've gone to improve on shardium and yeah that's how it's different but end of the day we've chosen to use the evm and that's one of the mistakes i've seen a lot of newer blockchains that are trying to build scalability too which is they build their own virtual machine which means as a developer you have to now rebuild all of the products and the tools and everything for that and the ecosystem has broken that so you're never going to win so we decided to use the evm so that uh nobody has to rebuild for shardium you can just deploy what you've built on ethereum on shardium as well there's a lot of layer ones there are a lot of layer twos so some people might ask you i mean you kind of answered already but what do you tell someone who says, oh man, the world doesn't need another layer one.

1:23:00Yeah, see, I think if you think about the, I mean, there are so many ways to answer this, but the easiest answer is when I told you about layer one, you just started firing off all the issues that you see, right? So it's very easy. It's very obvious. the problems that exist. And if we say that you should not work on a problem because there are 100 solutions, we will never see innovation in this world. You should not work on a problem if you don't see that as a problem. You know, if it does not exist. And that's why many people make a mistake. Sometimes they want to create a problem. So don't create a problem.

1:23:48So when you think about L1s, I don't have to tell you the problems. You will tell me. You know, any customer, anyone who's used an L1 will tell me the problems, which means this is what I'm listening to. I'm not worried about, you know, there being 10 solutions. That could be a thousand solutions. But if I hear these problems and if I face those problems, that means there's no perfect solution yet. And someone has to solve that. And that's what we're trying to do. We don't believe, you know, we want to decide whether to build something or not based on how many solutions exist in the market. We should decide whether the problem is solved or not.

1:24:22And I think the problem is not solved. And we are trying to do that. We are trying to solve that problem. And we may not, especially in financial market, we may not be the one product that solves all. But we'll be part of the solution. So the approach is, again, extremely practical. Hey, we'll try to solve as many problems as possible. And then probably at some point, there's going to be a cross-chain world that take the best of breed, right? Right. And we want to be part of that because we have this approach that's extremely practical in taking feedback from people and also thinking what do people actually want or need.

1:25:00And the experience or the user experience is probably much closer to a web tool world than any of these kind of fancy new things that we're seeing that only nerds think are cool. But again, you understood, obviously, because you are pro at building applications for the masses is everything is about, you want as low friction as possible, right? How do I reduce my friction the maximum so that people just take this journey? And that's something that the Web3 world definitely struggles with. It's also because of, I would say, a lot of the entrepreneurs in Web3 are first-timers. And, you know, they're going to make mistakes, which is okay.

1:25:49but we can also build on our experiences and I think I'm lucky that I've built in Web2 and built a large product there to know what consumers want. For a lot of new entrepreneurs, it takes a few years and our ecosystem will mature. I think we'll go from Web3s, today's the state of Web3. Also, it's needed is, I would say, hyper-experiment without worrying about whether a problem exists or not. But that's great for innovation, by the way. It's just that I don't want to be in that part right now at this stage of my life. But I think we need those entrepreneurs as well. People who mindlessly just create things.

1:26:30Because that's when, you know, you'll actually get products that people did not know they wanted. The real innovation. Yes. That ended up being the mega successes. Exactly, exactly. So those things are needed. Yeah. You know, and usually when you're younger, you can take those risks. So you should. let these boring things for people with 20 years of experience do it you do the interesting part I love that but I know the chances of success are slim do you think you became more risk averse with success and time I think I see it the other way around it's less to do with risk, it's about how my mind thinks in terms of solving things I want to now be more practical about the problems I can see a problem then I don't want to unsee and try to think of you know I think maybe towards maybe a new journey I'll start thinking again I used to do that when I was younger yes I think in my journey right now I know that there are some problems that have to be solved first and then maybe later I can think about you know maybe this is a problem and let's solve it but today it's just so obvious there are so many problems I want to solve that first yeah So, Charity Home is a non-for-profit organization, whereas WazirX is a for-profit organization.

1:27:53What's the biggest difference between building a for-profit company, such as a crypto exchange, and a non-for-profit crypto network? I think a world of difference. It's, you know, when you're building a for-profit, I mean, I don't want to get into the fact that you'll have to maximize for, you know, profitability in a for-profit, which is so obvious. And in a non-profit, you don't have to worry. I would rather think more in the sense of, you know, when you're building a non-profit, decentralized ecosystem, you need to ensure that this ecosystem will survive and thrive and continue to grow without you in that.

1:28:40And not just without you, without your team also in that. I mean, that's the ultimate, I would say, vision for anything decentralized. And Satoshi Nakamoto has sort of shown that way, if you think about it. It's never existed. It's never been there. Yes. And Bitcoin is only growing. So that's the, I would say, the standard for everyone who's building a non-profit decentralized organization. Can you reach that level where without your involvement or your team's involvement, the project can still grow and survive and thrive. That's true decentralization. And what we did with that vision was to start with the nonprofit.

1:29:23So the nonprofit is just the start of that ultimate vision, which is can this project be truly decentralized in terms of not just running the nodes where everyone in the world can run a node on Shardium, but can it also be built by the community? That's the ultimate goal. But we had to start with a non-profit because if we started with a profit, you will never reach that. So the non-profit is just the start of a true decentralized project. If I play the devil advocate there, the token holders, right? They're sort of like shareholders. There's a different incentive system but it's still kind of, in one way or another, similar.

1:30:08If you have the decentralized ethos, you might see things differently, but I still think, and I'm probably not the only one, that most people are in crypto to make money. And even the OGs, they say, if you want to bootstrap a decentralized network, the best way is to make your early adopters and your early token holders rich, which is what Bitcoin and Ethereum did really well, right? So can we really say that a crypto network is a non-for-profit organization when for it to succeed, the majority of the token holders are probably there to make money and the protocol at some point needs to become profitable, which is, for example, the case with Ethereum, right?

1:30:54What's your take on that? So I think you need to separate out, at least in the case of Shadia, the foundation from the network. You know, those are two different things. The foundation's role is to create the network. And the network's role is to ultimately be able to govern itself, to run. And the network would have to be profitable in order to, you know, keep operating. and and but if i was to start with a for-profit organization which is running a decentralized network then you know this for-profit will always find ways to keep extracting money from this network so so the non-profit objective is so that the non-profit as an entity is not really motivated to extract any profits out of this network but the network itself can decide what it wants based on the network token holders which is you know everyone so if you today say that everyone's objective is to maximize profits, the network will probably go in that direction.

1:31:57Maybe in the future, it'll be to maximize efficiency or maximize, you know, something else. But the network holders can decide that. That need not be a non-profit. But the entity creating this network has to be a non-profit when you're starting something decent. So it's two different things. and I don't believe decentralization is about not making money or not being rich or something I think that's a false way of looking at things because if there's no economic incentive I don't think you'll see massive innovation even in climate there is economic incentive no one is doing it just for the environment they're gaining something out of it, they're saving money somewhere so yeah I think it's important to have economic incentives.

1:32:51The world operates that way. Innovation comes apart. But it should be for anyone and everyone who wants to be part of it, rather than just one entity that always makes money in a centralized ecosystem. Like when you share, when you talk about, let's say, Facebook or Instagram or YouTube, if you're a creator, maybe yes. But in general, you're just adding to the shareholders of YouTube's value. You're not adding to your own value. But in a network, in a decentralized network, whenever you're promoting it, you're getting your friends on board, you're adding to your own value. So I think value creation is important.

1:33:31And without value creation, I don't think we can build systems that will eventually be used by billions of people. Absolutely. But yet, your goal is to create value. but it's to be cheap and the two big dogs in the layer one Ethereum, Solana complete different approach one wants to be as decentralized as possible, Ethereum but very expensive, the problem that you faced, I faced these transactions are too expensive and then there is Solana centralization issues, etc fine, but like the main kind of argument is, hey guys, Solana one day you'll need to be profitable. How can you become profitable if your goal is to be as cheap as possible?

1:34:19And I would ask the same question to you, Shardium. How can you build a profitable protocol when the ultimate goal is to make this transaction as cheap as possible? See, I think it also depends on how you're architected. For the Shardium network, for example, we don't have a technical upper limit on how many transactions can be executed on the network. It's just constrained by the number of nodes in the network. And anyone in the world can run a node. And our requirement for running a node is just about 4 GB of RAM and 200 GB of hard disk. So one node on our network would cost maybe$200 or something.

1:35:04as against, you know, just the hardware requirement of nodes in a lot of networks, it runs into hundreds or thousands of dollars. In our case, it's a very, you know, minimal configuration node. Now, if you, there is a point, so we've done some maths to know that above a certain number of transactions per second, the network gets into profitability because a node with 4GB RAM can run hundreds of thousands of transactions. In fact, it can run millions of transactions per day. And even if your fee is one cent, you're making a large amount of money. And this has to be true, by the way, because if you think about it, none of the Web2 would otherwise work.

1:35:55If you look at Web2 products, they do millions of transactions, they charge you just$5 and$10. and only less than 2 % of the people ever pay. So, you know, it's actually incorrect thinking that technology is very cheap if you want it to be cheap. And you can actually afford low fees if you're architected in the right way. And I think that is how Shadyum has architected itself, which is no special hardware needed. you know you don't have to run 36 gb ram and have gpus and stuff this is just a normal computer it will eventually many people will run you know either from their homes or but on the cloud also you can run it and it costs you 30 50 a month so you just have to make sure you you process transactions that are worth more than 40 maybe and you just have to make sure that your technology is actually used and you're building demand and creating value.

1:37:01That's the ultimate goal. So it's kind of like forcing you to innovate more on the value creation side than just saying also we're expensive like Ethereum and therefore now the network is profitable so we do not really incentivize to improve it, right? Right, right, right, exactly. And for us to be profitable as a network we need to have tens of millions of people on it. so that's a you know i love that as a challenge that you know i need to bring more people yeah so i don't have to stop people i have to bring more and more people if we get to 100 million people we are even more profitable so so that's a direct correlation between adoption and profitability which has always been the case in web 2 and in in general absolutely anything you've never seen anyone being uh you know stopping people from coming right you need more and more and you scale up and that's the kind of network we are trying to build so we are directly motivated to bring more people at no point will we say you know this is good enough yeah which is the right incentive to have obviously you told me you are obviously extremely focused on your project i mean the different companies that you run but there is also a few other kind of sub areas of the industry that you like one of them is a decentralized social network why do we need decentralized social network i think uh one is i have a personal enmity with all the centralized social networks.

1:38:25You should know from my story. So that's my first reason. I personally believe that all these centralized networks should die. I don't think any one entity should have so much control. It never works well. And we've already seen that happen. That's the reason why all of the founders of these social networks they called in Congress and, you know, then all these new secrets come out in the open about how your data was misused or, you know, how your reach was, you were shadow banned or, you know, how your tweets were not allowed to be shown. All of these things, why? Because centralization. Absolutely.

1:39:08So I think it's a no-brainer that a true social network should be under no one's control. Because social network is free speech. and doesn't matter, you know, how genuine any founder's intention is. Like, for example, I, you know, like the fact that Elon Musk talks about free speech on Twitter. But see, end of the day, he'll also, they'll have to adhere by the local regulations and rules by the various governments. And while the person doing it might have great intention, the world, the way it is structured will not allow him. But if you now change this to a true decentralized social network, you're not relying on the promises of an individual or a group of people or a large board of companies, like a company with a board of directors who are independent and whatever.

1:39:59You don't have to rely on any of those things. You have to just rely on technology, which you can always rely on. And know that you're protected in terms of if you want anonymity, you're protected. Privacy, you're protected. it if you want free speech you're truly protected so i think uh that's why i believe that uh decentralized social network is a must the the thing the challenge is and i feel the mistakes that are being done is to try to replicate what exists like you know trying to replicate twitter it's a lot like um if you think about it when there were these physical newspapers if you wanted to build an online newspaper it's like trying to build an exact replica of how the physical newspaper is.

1:40:42But that's not the form we consume it in today. In fact, when you get that PDF of a newspaper, you know, scan, you don't feel like reading it. News is consumed in a different way online. So I think it's the same concept that we need to start thinking about when we think about decentralized social networks. It's not going to be a decentralized Twitter or it's not going to be a decentralized Facebook. I believe there's going to be a new form factor and a new way of bringing decentralized social networks to the world. I don't have that idea. Like I said, you know, some 22 year old or 23 year old is probably building it.

1:41:18Okay. And it will take off, you know, and this is the kind of those mega massive scale companies that we talk about that should be built. But yeah, it'll come. And I strongly believe it will. And I think it should. we don't want our future generations to be you know confined to a few centralized three or five social networks deciding what the world is going to talk what the world is going to consume I think that needs to change so I'm a big believer of decentralized social you also love decentralized gaming topic why? more from I just are you a gamer? I was and And I mean, I started with a game.

1:42:06Yeah, I was into games very early, I think. Right from the days of the handheld video games that used to come to then the era of Sega and everything. To then the Simba era where I had an Engage. I don't know if you know, there was a Nokia Engage phone, which was made for gaming. This was way back, you know, 2003, 2004. and then then ps5 and now i have the ps5 but it's reduced now over the last because of entrepreneurship you know i play it more like a just to relax i like games when because i don't think about anything else anything else you do i think we were talking at the beginning how attention is you know reduced but i feel games still hold your attention you can't think about anything.

1:42:59When you're playing a game, you're in that world. So gaming is your meditation. Yeah, gaming is my meditation. And I think it's everyone's meditation. So that's, I think, the reason why I like games. But why do I believe, you know, decentralized gaming will emerge is because when you're building your world, that meditative world, I don't know whether it'll still remain meditation, but how about making it a little more permanent, making it a little more valuable and i think uh the decentralized aspect will make it maybe after that it may not be meditative it might be stressful you know that there's wealth in your game now uh so yeah there is this whole casual gaming which i think may not really need to be um you know on chain or connected to decentralized uh ecosystem but there is this whole uh career gaming i would call it where you're making a profession out of it.

1:43:58And we've seen glimpses of that, like Twitch, for example, just professional gamers just streaming and people watch it and they make money. And then there are gaming competitions and all. But I think we could really have a world where games and their assets are valuable. and also transferable. So you move. So all of these things are only possible with a decentralized ecosystem being attached to the game. And I think that's where gaming will probably take off in a good way. But again, like I said, I don't know what form, shape. You have to talk to some young guy building something there.

1:44:45A last one you told me is a key infrastructure, even in the Web 2 world, right? But also in the Web 3 world that is still underlooked and that you're very bullish on. Decentralized notification, and more specifically, a protocol called push protocol. Why is what push protocol is building so important for our space? Yeah, I think, and this is one of those, you know, often where it's obvious, but it's still not obvious kind of thing. and i think uh if you if you look at your uh mobile phone usage uh it's filled with notifications you know for good or bad better or worse notifications are important and they are here to stay because um with so many things happening around the world you can at least focus and make sure that you only get notifications for let's say the important things that matter to you but that's your entry point that's something that you don't ignore and uh if you know if you look at the progress of web 3 uh maybe we've started with less products but in the next three to five years we'll be bombarded we already feel that you know overload of so many web 3 products yeah and this will just continue to grow with a decent life social coming in gaming coming in it'll just keep growing uh at which stage i think the industry will also realize that uh you know notifications are going to be much more important.

1:46:10But you can't plug into an existing centralized ecosystem for those notifications. You need to have a decentralized notification protocol where you can just use that to deliver notifications to your customers or you as a user of a decentralized social network could just plug this into any of the app that you're using and receive notifications for let's say every like that you get. I'm just thinking out loud. But that is something that does not exist today. so it's more the infrastructure to provide notification in a decentralized world that don't exist rather than a purely decentralized way of doing notifications right yeah i mean um it's a protocol where um you know anyone could plug into that and say that for example give me um you know you can create channels on push for example you can create channels you can create channel for, let's say, a DEX, where you want to know every time a particular token is traded, I want to know this.

1:47:09And you can build that channel and then that channel could be used even by a centralized product if needed to deliver the notification to you. Or maybe someone would build a product which takes that notification and then does an action on it. So a lot of these things can be done. This is just a pipe, which brings you actions that happen. So it's a sort of oracle for notification. Sort of, yeah. To make it simpler. Yeah. And that, I think, is going to be very important because that's also where interconnectivity goes to the next level, where there will be different products who want to interact in different ways.

1:47:46And you could use these notification channels to do those things. But yeah, I think that infrastructure is yet to take up. We talk about oracles. We talk about L2s today, and we talk about all these different protocols. But we don't talk about a key infra, which is the notification ecosystem. So I'm a big believer in that. You said with the cryptocurrency revolution, change in the fintech industry is inevitable. Why is Web3 such an important technological revolution? you said 30 years ago or what are we now 30 years ago I would have made my mission to get as many people on the internet as possible because that's where magic happens right and obviously we call this crypto technology web 3 which is a kind of continuation of web 1 where we had then web 2 the mobile wave and now web 3 but for a lot of people it might not seem that obvious that this is kind of like the next evolution of the internet why is it for you i think uh if you think about uh you know progress in general what is progress progress end of the day is more freedom that's what progress is simple as that it always gives you more freedom you know and if you look at the internet the progress has been that you're going towards more freedom so the question is where do you see yourself being able to get more freedom is it on a on a web two or a web one which is um you know which exists as it as it does versus a web three which is decentralized and the answer is always going to be simple which is a decentralized web three ecosystem is going to give me more freedom than a centralized one.

1:49:56Now I cannot do, if I use a product in a centralized product, I can do three things, I can't do five things. That will always be there. There'll always be, you know, restrictions of some sort or the other. Or there are also compromises that you're making with your privacy or with control. You know, what if tomorrow So Gmail locks you out. And sure, these are, you know, doomsday prediction kind of thing. This may not always happen. But that should start, you know, putting that idea in your head that that's a possibility. And as, you know, as entrepreneurs, a job should always be to get people towards better, you know, products and services that give them more freedom.

1:50:41So I see this just an evolution of our freedom online. We're going to be more free than we were. That's why the internet came, right? It gave you the freedom to access any information, talk your mind out, connect with anyone in the world versus the offline world, which was only 10, 20 miles around you, you could access. Here suddenly you had the entire world. Now, Web3 is giving you even more freedom, which is freedom of information, but also the freedom of value. Owning. Yeah. It's basically what Chris Dixon calls read, Web1, Web2, read, write, Web3, read, write, own. Yeah, yeah. So ownership also comes in.

1:51:26And yeah, I think that's how I see this evolution. And I want to get more people to that freer world than what exists in Web2. and many times you know when you are in an ecosystem you don't see that you know till it does not happen to you maybe to a lot of us in web series it's happened faster but it's going to happen to everyone everyone's going to get affected by um you know the the negatives of a centralized ecosystem today it's probably 10 million people tomorrow it'll be 100 million people everyone will get affected at some point in their life um and maybe that's a moment for them to switch.

1:52:04But I would say it's our responsibility so that they never even have to reach that stage. We should get them earlier. You know, otherwise, they'll all have to suffer the way all of us have suffered. So that's what probably motivates us to do this faster. Others, yes, you just sit back and relax in the next 30, 40 years, everyone's going to be on Web3, by the way. But I think that would mean an entire generation of people who never experienced true freedom. And I don't want that to happen. So maybe, you know, we need to push faster. We should not have everyone go through these struggles. Get them faster to a decentralized ecosystem.

1:52:42Thank you, Nishan. Thank you for this great conversation and thank you for following this mission of bringing more freedom to people because this can only make the world a better place. Thank you. Thanks a lot for having me here. It was amazing to have these I would say deep conversations which usually it's really surface level discussions. I think here we truly went deep into quite a variety of topics and I really enjoyed having this conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Nice.