Crypto Tools for Real People w/ Russell Castagnaro & Gardner Loulan (My Unicorn Account)

Rex (00:02.059) Gardner, Russell, welcome to the Signaling Theory Podcast. Russell Castagnaro (00:05.815) Hey Rex, good to see ya. Gardner (00:05.925) Great to be here. Rex (00:07.574) Of course. So before we get started, I'd love just to get a real brief introduction to you guys and what you're building with Unicorn, especially for those who are not familiar. Gardner (00:17.433) Rosal, you want to kick it off? Rex (00:17.56) So, yeah. Russell Castagnaro (00:19.767) Sure, I'm Russell Casanero. I've been in payments forever, since as long as you could make electronic payments. But I've been in crypto since about 2014, 2015. I got in because I was running government payments. We were processing about two billion a year, and we had to start accepting payments for cannabis licensing. I'll keep that short. I ended up liking it so much I got in to make my own. crypto custodyless Bitcoin payment system that was really more of a cashiering system for cannabis dispensaries, then moved to Colorado from Hawaii and became the director of digital transformation for the state of Colorado and deployed the first and most successful digital driver's license in the United States. Then went to East Denver to run Bufficorn Ventures and became the chief of staff for East Denver, the largest Web3 festival in the world. And then got onto the board and last year met up with Gardner and Griff, my co-founders, and we started Unicorn.Eath, my Unicorn account. Rex (01:30.606) Amazing, Cardner? Gardner (01:32.121) Yeah, hey, I'm Gardner. My career began actually at MTV and NBC on the broadcast and cable side of things and the communication age, back when those things actually existed. And it's come a long way for sure. I actually created one of the first short form video platforms, Think TikTok, kind of before TikTok, scaling that from about three to four people to, yeah, yeah, it was. Russell Castagnaro (01:55.223) Free Vine. Yeah. Rex (01:56.333) Yeah. Gardner (01:59.035) Scaling that from about three people to about 30 and 19 million ARR and notable partners along the way with Shaq announcing his retirement on our platform, which is pretty exciting. And then we partnered with others like WWE, WSJ, and then helped some Fortune 500 companies on the strategy side of things moving into the digital age. And then in parallel have always been interested in the crypto space, have been in since about 2013, supported a bunch of communities, a bunch of companies. And when I met up with Griff Green and Russell really started to recognize that like it was time to really build the next generation of branded accounts for experiences on Web3 Rails. And that's what we're doing at Unicorn.Eath. Rex (02:47.136) Awesome guys. So thank you so much for, for joining me today. you know, I think that this is a great place to get started. when, like the reason that I reached out to you guys and wanting to get you on the pod so much, really like, like just to, open up the kimono a little bit. Like I got your, I guess, year end letter, for like how things are going. And I realized like, Holy shit. Like we need more people like this that are dealing with. like the actual problem of crypto and not just like either reiterating on Uniswap or like even worse, like not even really working on technology and just working on like new ways to market like a token or yeah, I'll keep that brief. can get into hot takes on that around later, but to set the stage, like I very much believe that Like the opportunity in crypto right now is like, of course there is so much more stuff to do on chain. There's so many more applications that can be built. There's so much more infrastructure and like optimizations that we can be made. But like, frankly, if we don't start thinking about how this technology is used for real people to solve real problems, we are going to be stuck in this, like, you know, malaise that we've really been in since SBF, which is like, No new people, the people that do get in are like quickly get scammed by something. Quite frankly, maybe even the president of the United States at this point and like get burnt and then like some slow, slow attrition of like people that have been here for a long time to believe, but just for whatever reason, like don't want to be part of this industry anymore. And so I'd love to talk about why, you know, when I look at Unicorn and what you guys are building to me, that's like one of the core. building blocks of like how we kind of like get out of this malaise and start like building things for people that actually matter. And like start to abstract all of this technical stuff and all of this on-chain stuff away so that this is actually just a solution and not like frankly unintelligible nonsense to most people. But before we get there, I'd love just to hear like what is this something that you guys are experiencing right now? Like, do you feel like that? Rex (05:08.546) that we are kind of like trapped in this, I'll call it a death spiral that hopefully we can get out of, but this spiral of kind of like speculation for speculation sake on tokens that frankly aren't really doing anything. Or do you think that that's kind of like a pessimistic take from relatively new blood that is just part of this industry? I'd love to hear it. Like when you guys look around it, where the industry is right now, like. Do you diagnose and do you see the same things that I see? to wrestle like a human. Russell Castagnaro (05:43.232) You want to go first, Gardner? Gardner (05:45.229) Yeah, sure. I think even taking a step back and recognizing what people care about and what people want. And there's kind of three buckets that I generally use. Get paid, get laid, or lose weight. Those are the things that people ultimately kind of care about, right? And they're all kind of related to some degree. And so when you think about a new industry emerging, like people are going to rush into those kind of low level, low vibration. low energy effort things to try to, in this case, get rich quick. And if they can't even figure out how to do it or they can't actually use it in a way that is effective, then they're not going to continue to try to make any effort. And eventually those that are able to leverage scams and things like that are going to take over. And I think that's kind of historically what we've seen. And there's been a lot of things and barriers in place from kind of the top down in terms of regulation and things like that. And of course, narratives in the media that have helped perpetuate the problems at the bottom, at the swamp level. And I actually think that is changing now. And I think that is turning now. And for those of us that have been in this industry for philosophical reasons, and that is around the lines of like self sovereignty. and freedom, kind of however you define that, are actually starting to see a silver lining. And again, it's bottom up and top down where I think people are starting to recognize that this technology is not only functional and feasible, but we actually can make it simple and safe. And that's what we're focusing on. Rex (07:26.08) Yeah, man, I hear you. Right. And I'm in this industry because like I believe in kind of the ideals that like are best encapsulated in either like the Bitcoin white paper or maybe the Ethereum white paper. You know, I think for me, the best story I heard was a founder that I'm sure we all know, but I'm not going to out them. She told me a story where she was working for like JP Morgan or one of the huge banks, like literally doing financing deals for like warlords in Africa or just like the worst stuff, right? And like, we all know that this happens in big banks. But you know, after a while she got pretty jaded and like quit and just decided to do like kind of an eat, pray, love thing. And what she told me was this was, you know, mid 2010s, went to the border of Venezuela and Columbia and just like watched people across the border leaving Venezuela. And like every time the story was exactly the same, it was like, I went to work, I got a call from my wife. My wife said, the cops are here, do not come home. If you come home, you'll be arrested. So I just started walking and here I am. like people, you know, had nothing, just the clothes on their back, but like one in every 20 or one in every 30 or 50 people would say, but I got my private keys. And like that to me is what we're doing here, right? And I think that's what the three of us are doing here. And I think we can find and we know these people, but man, like. I'm just struck by the day of recording yesterday. saw, guess who's like back on the scene after like actually doing fraud and like creating movement blockchain and like basically vaporware that was all about the token. now Rushi Manchi is back like raising a hundred million dollars to, think it's investment or it's liquid or like whatever, but like. I just, I look around and I think that the people that believe are actually the minority, right? And like, what I worry about is that this industry is really driven by is, this like other group of people that like are here because it's outside of the financial system. And that means it's outside of the financial system that protects people and makes it hard to extract and makes it hard to do like really hard things. so, you know, I don't want this whole podcast to be like such a doomer. Rex (09:52.686) conversation, like I'm excited to get to how we can move forward and change that and change the incentives to be just from straight extraction to like building tools to build real businesses on. But, you know, when I look around, I am sad to feel like that's not really that energy that's here. And so. Russell Castagnaro (10:14.175) Well, I mean, you you can also look at recording day today. Doe Kwan, 15 years in prison. That's a win. That's a freaking win. Talk about a bad actor. He is one and he's going to go to jail for it unless, you know, Trump pardons him or something. But, know, which is not outside of the realm of possibilities. But the point is, that, you know, Rex (10:23.072) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Rex (10:33.132) much. Russell Castagnaro (10:43.507) The whole like everything that happened in 2008, not one person went to jail. think with Enron, one person went to jail. So this behavior is not specific to the blockchain. It's not specific to crypto. It is specific to any financial racket that you have where there's a lot of money and you can... Rex (10:48.856) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Russell Castagnaro (11:10.773) have a lot of walk into my own money to get people to do what you want them to do. And I think what you say about like, you you said, oh, because you can remember your private keys. Well, not that that's easy to do, but if you can, you know, you do have a level of independence that has never existed before as far as being able to have wealth. Transfer it with nothing else but your mind So I think that is a pretty amazing thing and I think also that you know, if you talk about things that are good for people What has caught on like I would say? 2025 is the year of stable coins, even though stable coins technically existed before it is when they moved into legitimacy and and stable coins are the first you know, killer app to come out of blockchain. And you could say, you know, it is ERC 20 or what. Well, CryptoKitties was amazing, but CryptoKitties brought down the net, was the first thing to bring down Ethereum because it killed it because too many people were doing it. And I remember how much in gas it costs to get my kids those CryptoKitties. like, yes, but Gardner (12:14.733) other than crypto kiddies, of course. Rex (12:16.44) Yeah. Rex (12:28.558) was too good. Gardner (12:34.222) you Russell Castagnaro (12:38.6) but like stable coins actually work. Gardner (12:41.848) Yeah, that was tongue in cheek, obviously, but I think that it is important. It is. Right. Russell Castagnaro (12:44.276) No, I know, I know, I know. But it's important. It was an important milestone. That's like crypto kitties are what brought me from being like Bitcoin is really the only thing that makes sense to like, okay, now I understand what can happen with Ethereum. Like I had a wallet, I had gone to ETH Denver before and everything and I was like, oh, now I can use this wallet for something that's other, you know. and I can give it to my kids. That's great. know, so, yeah. Gardner (13:15.075) And, and Rex, you're, you're talking to some like radical optimists here too. So I hope that we like balance things out a little bit. And the fact that like, you know, to some degree as a founder, you kind of have to be because every day is like such a slog to just build anything, whether it's in the software space or like the IRL space. So I think that, you know, when, even when we are kind of like joking about things like crypto kitties, like Russell said, it is an important milestone. Like everything is an important milestone in this journey. So it's easy to get caught up in stuff on like the day to day of like, my God, we've still got these like bros here that are just like pushing whatever their token is and trying to pump bags and rug people. Like I still see like messages in groups where it's like, hey, know, like people that like have like a public profile and they're like. let's get in this, you know, chat and pump these bags and rug. And it's just like, are you kidding me? Like this is still going on. But to your point, like, yes, that is still going on. But at the same time, like we are able to move past it now faster and with more legitimacy than we ever have been in the history of crypto thus far. Rex (14:29.686) Yeah, I, you know, I would say like the best antidote for feeling like more jaded on this industry, for me at least was last week. Time has no meaning anymore, but, last week I think was the Fusaka, Ethereum hard fork, right. And that I watched the live stream, like, let's be honest, like I wanted that pull off, right. but the, just like you watch the types of people that are working on core Ethereum infrastructure and like, That's where like kind of the true believers start like gravitate around. And, you know, I, you know, your third co-founder who's not with us, like the reason I know him as like a relatively new joiner was back when I was first getting into crypto, he was on the bankless podcasts and they just did like a full like storytelling of the, I believe it was the Dow, story. Yeah. And that, that to me just made me like, Russell Castagnaro (15:22.898) Yeah, the Dow hack. Rex (15:27.566) more than price or more than anything made me just regret not joining crypto like when I first heard of it in 2010 because it was a time when the community was so small and in order to be in it, when communities are small and everyone knows each other, it's a lot harder to rip people's faces off. so I think now is an amazing time. For the first time ever, that institution's actually do give a shit and like, think still don't really understand why Stripe is building L1. But like, well, no, no, as opposed to like being like an L2 or some way, like that's like kind of a whole nother conversation about that we can get to, but Stripe's building, right? And like legitimizing this technology and like that is something that is just so. Russell Castagnaro (16:05.374) You don't? Really? Rex (16:27.957) unimaginable back in the time when the Dao or the Shanghai attacks or any of that stuff was relevant. Gardner (16:35.129) Well, I can't say too much, like definitely keep your ears open about what is coming back in the coming weeks around some of the OGs that were participating in the original DAO. So there is a lot that is being legitimized and re-legitimized in some really big ways that are from the core community too. So just, you know, like Another reason to be optimistic, like not only are institutions trying to legitimize their own, perhaps capture, but there's some other entities that are part of the original teams around all of this that are also coming back and they're going to be doing some really, really cool things. you Rex (17:24.29) So Gartner, are you leaking that Ethereum Classic is about to have a resurgence? Gardner (17:27.835) I can't say anything but I'm just letting you know that there is some cool stuff happening below the surface right now and it's going to bring back some some cool times and some cool memories as well for a bunch of people. Rex (17:42.575) Cool. All right, so let's move this conversation forward and get to what's going on now, what you guys are building, and what there is to be excited about. So before the show, I was just clicking through the website just to see if I could find anything fun to cue off of. And on your guys' YouTube page, I saw a really great clip from Bankless, I think only from last year. But I think the context is Mark Cuban was hacked. And David and Ryan were saying like, my God, can't believe like OGs people that like know what they're doing, which I'm not really sure if Mark Cuban is or not, but like they're getting hacked. Like we need to solve, like this is unacceptable. And you know, I think it's important to like put that next to the self sovereignty conversation, right? Cause it's like always so good to say like you have control over your assets in a way that like until you actually can send USDC between like exchanges or bank accounts. Like you don't even realize how restricted you are. But the flip side of self sovereignty is like you take on all that responsibility yourself. You're so much more vulnerable and there's not government agencies or insurance or, or like shareholders that form an equity backstop to make sure that even like if you did nothing wrong, like you're made whole. And so, Russell Castagnaro (19:08.339) So, Rex, let me just interrupt you right there for a second. if you could say all the things that you said, except you could be talking about cash and no one would think anything of it, right? Like, if you have a thousand bucks in your pocket and you're carrying it around, you know the risk. You can get ripped off. You can lose it. You can do all sorts of different things. And I think the problem is that people Rex (19:11.053) Yeah. Russell Castagnaro (19:37.808) aren't used to thinking about that. They think it's electronic so that it's more like credit cards and bank accounts and stuff. But they're not thinking about what it is. Like when you have cash in your pocket, that is your custody. Right? And also like when your money or your data or anything is in the custody of someone else, when you're hacked, you're not hacked actively. Rex (19:51.48) Mm-hmm. Russell Castagnaro (20:05.413) It's one hack that goes in to get five million records from LexisNexis or your healthcare provider or whatever. Whereas sure, it takes a lot less from like a compute power and attention and everything to do an individual hack of an individual person, but you can't do it at scale. Rex (20:13.048) Mm-hmm. Rex (20:29.742) Sure. Russell Castagnaro (20:30.597) Right. So I think that there's just to just I think it's important to draw out that the the the analog that we should be talking about is how is crypto different from cash, not how is crypto different from credit cards. Rex (20:35.096) Yeah. Rex (20:47.35) No, I think that's a very fair point. I mean, I think you're right to draw the parallel to cash because like ultimately, no, no, fair point. you know, Ryan and, just, and just Ryan and David, on the bankless podcast, kind of like pose this as like, this is the big problem. Like if there's any startups out there, like come talk to us, blah, blah, blah. and so I guess like my question to you is like, is, do you see yourself as building something to solve that problem or is what you're building with unicorn kind of solving a different problem that happens to address this? Mark Cuban comes to you and says, I got hacked. Like, how can I avoid this in the future? I mean, what's your response? Russell Castagnaro (21:39.655) Yes, like we are definitely working to solve, you know, that's one of the one of the three problems that we're trying to solve. And, you know, you have to think about the nature of how people are hacked and how it is tied into the experience that they have. The current typical experience that someone has in crypto and in Web3 is I have a wallet. I'm part of the community or I'm following somebody on Twitter or I'm in discord or telegram or I get an email. It says, go here and do something. Right. And, you know, I was the chief of staff at East Denver for two and a half years. whenever we would send out an email, we would get out, get hundreds or thousands even of letters of emails saying, is this real? Right. Because that's the number one way that people get hacked. Rex (22:31.618) Yeah, of course. I probably find those. Russell Castagnaro (22:36.56) right, is because of a link that's a scam website. That's how, you know, it's not because of the technology that they get it. They get it because of the user experience. And so the way that we address that is that we have a whole experience. So we're B2B2C. So we work with brands and companies. And what we do that is different is that we allow them to create a whole experience, not just an app, not just onboarding, not just, you know, but They control the onboarding. They control what DApps are presented. They control what networks and tokens and all these kinds of things are available to the users that are part of either their customer base or their followers or their community or what have you. And they know what to do next. And there's a central place that they go to access all these things. And that's is really important because you can trust the experience. Plus, you can't do anything with your account and the wallet that's attached to it that isn't sanctioned by the brand that you're working with. So could that happen to Mark Cuban in the future? Well, if he's using Metamask or Rainbow or one of those wallets, yes. Because what those wallets don't do and shouldn't do is protect you from Rex (23:45.838) Mm-hmm. Russell Castagnaro (24:02.662) doing what you want to do. Right? And so if you're going to live the libertarian lifestyle, you got to live the libertarian lifestyle. However, if you want to leverage the technology to experience something, well, there's another way. And that's where leveraging a smart contract wallet that's tied to an experience, that makes all the difference. And so somebody that came in, let's say, what is it that Cuban's got the insurance? Rex (24:03.853) Yeah. Russell Castagnaro (24:32.33) What's his insurance company called? The super cheap copay thing. I can't. Anyway, it's a fantastic service. But let's say that he was using blockchain for that and let you, you know, let you buy your prescriptions or whatever and order them all with crypto or with fiat or whatever. And so they wanted to use something like us. Well, everybody that would get a wallet with that would only be able to use it on the things that Rex (24:38.382) know, Cuban pay. Russell Castagnaro (25:01.04) that that company that his brand wanted you to use. And you wouldn't, and you know, if you made a transaction and paid for something where that was 50 USDC, you wouldn't the next day come to your wallet and see 27 fake USD tokens in your wallet, right? Which is the common experience now, because you know, one out of every hundred people that gets that does something with it that ends up leading to a Rex (25:22.286) Mm-hmm. Russell Castagnaro (25:30.621) successful scan. So, you know, that kind of control is really important. That kind of trust that you can get from what comes back to a portal, you know, and being able to give people and, know, instead of just onboarding them to a single app, onboarding them to the, to the whole of web three that you want them to is very different. It's the, you're too young to remember. AOL or something like that. it's more like, like, like the difference between AOL, which was this curated environment to make it as easy for people to get access to and the most mosaic browser and Netscape and browsers that came out, which let you go hit anything. Right. It is, it is that kind of a leap forward and, one that, that does mitigate the risk significantly to the user. But, but even more importantly, Rex (26:12.876) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Russell Castagnaro (26:29.586) Like you said you came in what year? How long ago? 2021? Rex (26:34.254) I started in 2020, but I spent my first, you know, cycle getting, not cycle, but first few months getting lost in like Cardano and thinking that, you know, Tezos was relevant. Russell Castagnaro (26:44.114) I'm so sorry. But so let's see, what year was the Heineken NFT? Do you remember Gardner? Was that after that? I think so. Yeah, I think it was. Like, so all these, so these major brands tried to do NFTs. And aside from the onboarding headaches and everything, you know what happened? Nobody knew what the hell to do with it after they got it. If they were, you know, like they're just sitting there, what do I do now? Well, the answer was nothing. Gardner (26:56.438) after 2020. Gardner (27:00.973) around then 2022, 2021. Rex (27:02.254) Mm-hmm. Rex (27:11.598) Sure. Russell Castagnaro (27:18.192) Right. There was no experience around it. You know, you'd never see Disney doing something like that because Disney understands experiences. Right. So that was just sort of them tipping their, tipping their, their pinky toe in seeing what it was like. But, but they essentially orphaned all these people that did it. Even, even something like the Trump token, which came out and they made it easy for people who didn't have crypto to get it. What do you do with a Trump token with any of them, the NFTs or the tokens or Melania or Baron or whoever, you whatever they are nothing Right. There's there's no real community behind it. There's no that that that is the same old thing But what you know what does make sense when you've got a brand that says we want to enhance our experience maybe your Gucci or you're a luxury brand and you want to give people a way to track the provenance of products Rex (28:01.218) Yeah. Russell Castagnaro (28:17.169) that they have. maybe there's a little NFC chip in the bag that's bought that can track it. And there's a digital twin to that. You have an NFT when you purchase it. I even remember my kids played with the LOL fun dolls, you know, and they would sometimes they would give you an NFT, which I was like, Oh my God, they're giving away NFTs. like, like those kinds of things that can enhance a real product and real experience. Maybe you just want to throw a party that people who have collected, who have drank more than a case of beer in the case of, you know, in a space of a year, like that, they're now token gated, they can get in for free. You you cannot do those kinds of things now with normal technology, but with Web3 and an experience that lets anyone in that doesn't even have to know they're using the technology. That's where we win. That's when we can have ticketing systems that don't require us to go in through Ticketmaster or AXS. That's when we have, we can really bust open some of the things that are out there and do them much more cheaply than you can with current technology. That's normal cloud technology. Gardner (29:38.233) I think that's really important too to recognize that they don't know what technology they're using, nor should they. It's kind of the same concept that like you don't need to know what TCPIP is to send an email, right? Like that is not the point of what digital technology should do. The point of, well, the point of digital technology is not how it's done, it's what it is actually doing. Rex (29:45.858) Yeah. Rex (30:05.186) Mm-hmm. Gardner (30:05.408) And so we've focused on the safety and simplicity side of it and really leaned into the simplicity side of it in order to make it possible for anyone to use this technology. And it's very similar to the concept of like an airline program. This is always the parallel that I draw where it's like you have an account and then all the things that you need to do and know about that airline are held within that account. and you also get a wallet with that account. You may not call it a wallet. You may just have, what are my points in my account? But the same thing is true with tokens, whether they are enumerated from one to a million or whether they are images that prove that you did something or went somewhere. These are all the same things, but... Rex (30:40.652) Yeah. Gardner (30:59.864) You don't need an airline anymore to track all of that. And you don't have a central authority that can take all of that away from you. So these things are truly revolutionary and people will start to recognize why that is and more and more do on a daily basis or a weekly basis or whatever it might be. But it requires infrastructure like ours in order to bring that to them without them knowing what the benefits are until they are weeks and years in. and they have portability of whatever they own and they can access that through an email. And that is a signer on an MPC or something like that. know, like these things are super important for people and they may not even know it yet. And that's the kind of exciting part is that we've kind of been able to see around the corner for a decade plus, but only now are we able to actually bring it to people because of the different Rex (31:46.382) Mm-hmm. Gardner (31:59.067) the different ways that both the core infrastructure is being created and making it simpler through just different EIPs or whatever it might be. And also the narrative is starting to change from the top down. so safety is kind of the second layer to that to make sure that not only can they access it, but they're also not exploited when they do it. And that's some of the things that Russell was talking about where like when you're on the platform, you can't even connect. Rex (32:23.224) Yeah. Gardner (32:29.368) your account abstracted wallet with dApps that aren't approved by the organization or the community that you are a part of or using. Rex (32:39.522) Yeah, you know, it's funny in this conversation or in this industry, we kind of, I find that the conversation always gets locked into the dichotomy of like you're centralized, you're traditional, it's the old way, or you're like super libertarian, it's self custody, it's like you can do whatever you want. you know, like this is technology, like we can build whatever we want and that's including these intermediate states. but you know, Before we started recording, Russell and I were just shooting the shit and talking about a bunch of stuff. why I got into crypto was before that, I was in traditional corporate finance. I was part of the treasury team of a Fortune 20 company. And we were regularly sending multi-hundred million dollar wires. And it's a terrible process. It can take up to the entire day to send the wire. And really what's happening behind the scenes and like, don't know this until the CFO is breathing down your back and you have to call the banks and they're just trying to get you to shut up. So they explain to how it works is if, you know, if it's too much money, Bank of America sends it to eight correspondent banks. They send it to their eight correspondent banks. It's this giant web until it gets to the destination and no money's actually changing hands. They're just, signing, intermediate, like settlement contracts that will Eventually get the money there, but like the wire, the, you know, swift system will call it done. Right. And, know, Russell, you brought up, like Mark Cuban's insurance thing. And it's like, we, can use this technology just to like be, allow someone to do something so boring that doesn't require or even involve any of like NFTs or web three things, but just instead of using credit cards, which charge fees take forever to settle and are selling your data on the backend. You can just use stable coins. I think what you guys are building and what you're saying is that what you can do is build this branded experience that takes the parts of the technology that deliver that utility, make a better consumer experience, and then just locks away all of the things that we don't want. Rex (34:57.314) You don't have to be able to connect to Uniswap or like fake scam Uniswap just because you have stable coins. Yeah. So, I think that's, that is like, I'm totally down for the pitch. I'm like curious to, of today, while we're still in this, like phase of crypto where, unless you're in it, the perception of it is like still, not that great. And, we're just now kind of like getting to that point where people can understand that there's real utility outside of speculating and, the drug stuff and all that stuff. Right. Like today, what are the types of. Brands or companies or businesses that are really starting to understand the value here and that you're starting to work with to build these consumer experiences. mean, feel free to drop names, but I mean more like what are the types of entities? Russell Castagnaro (35:52.081) I mean, think, well, first is, you we started with events. And so events have a really clear need. So it's easy to address those. events are a big one. We also work with L2s, however you want to classify those. So we've done, we worked with Polygon, we're working with Arbitrum to get more activations. they're probably not the ideal customer in the long term, right? Because they don't have a specific experience they want you to have there. They want you to use the use everything more, right? So I think what you've got is for companies that want to enhance the, that want to control the whole experience and leverage benefits that they can get from web three without really having to change what they're doing or how they're doing it. If you look at like a, we don't want to talk too much about event companies, but if you look at like a company that sells toys or something like that, you want, if you want to let people like create a twin of their product or customize it, or you want to be able to enable something like you're doing gaming cards or something and you want to have a digital gaming card that they can use and play games online with stuff that they bought. You know, that would be extremely expensive to do with typical Web2 technology. But to have every time they log in, can mint, can do it when they buy them, they can mint, they can log in, they have proof that they've bought it. You know, you have ways of doing this. And, you know, one of the first companies that worked with us was Gladiator. They have like a card based game. And they like showed that it can work. if you've got, if you've got, want to do a loyalty program, that's not something that you have to pay a whole lot for because they are, they are expensive and integrating in them is tough. And you also want to have, maybe you want to have it for a large, whether it's a group that's geographically connected or philosophically connected. You can do that and you can share the, you you can share a loyalty program. Russell Castagnaro (38:17.327) But you can do it much less expensively. I mean, you mint an ERC-20 and go. You know, it's very easy to do that as long as you're not trying to make it into security or something. That's really straightforward technology. Leveraging gamification in any way. If you want to gamify people, keep them involved. You can do that and that leaves the users in custody of their own tokens, which Rex (38:22.478) Mm-hmm. Russell Castagnaro (38:46.977) if there is any value to them can be something that you have to kind of put onto your, you know, your valuations and your, you your accounting, you have to like account for those things. If they're no longer in your possession, you don't have custody of them. They're not no longer liabilities that you have to hold for your customers. So there's a lot of things that you can go all the way to, like I said, You want to let people check into events. Do you want to give people a, like, remember when the last tour that, that Taylor Swift had, she had the big thing with, with Ticketmaster. How do you prove that you're a real Swifty? You know, how do you do all these things? Well, I'll tell you if they had, if they had like a web three wallet on the backend, you know, that they, maybe they didn't know about it. Maybe they did and they checked in. to the concert there based on their location. They checked in, they got an NFT saying that they had it and they had 36 NFTs in their wallet on the back end, not that the person even has to know. Well, now you can actually mathematically prove they're in fact a real Swifty and they should be getting treatment that gives them early access to tickets, you know, or something like that. all this technology, all this, Rex (40:02.018) Mm-hmm. Rex (40:08.12) Mm-hmm. Russell Castagnaro (40:12.557) All of our web three technology enables this. And there's lots of teams that want to do it. Go ahead, Gardner. I'm talking too much. Gardner (40:16.121) And it's. Yeah, no, I mean, I was just going to say that actually extends to not just people that want to prove something from kind of like a fandom perspective or, you know, a status perspective, but also you have businesses and we can't talk too much about it, but like we are working with an organization that effectively wants to prove that they have one of the safest organizations based on, you know, checklists that need to be done. And there is a transparent way that they then can have that claim be validated by literally the world. And so you have employees that are doing things that are going to, of course, not only benefit that organization by just their legitimacy, but also benefit the individual where they are actually provably doing the things that they are supposed to be doing. which also in effect creates safety standards that elevate their industry, their company. And then you can also prove that on a ledger. And so like these things are not only important for individuals where they are able to show off, you know, whatever event experience thing that they have done from kind of a POAP sort of perspective, but also... from a way that is actually affecting the bottom line of organizations, where people can get rewarded for the day-to-day tasks that they might do, and they might get benefits from that after they amass a certain amount. They can trade it in for something. Maybe it's vacation time. They can get a reward in merchandise. They can translate that into other mechanisms that may be beneficial to their lifestyle. Rex (42:11.276) Mm-hmm. Gardner (42:11.298) And so these things are really powerful and valuable, not just from a shiny thing perspective, but also from like a bottom line, similar to what Russell was talking about there, then like in terms of like P and L, or also just in terms of how you are perceived as an organization as a whole. So I think there's a lot of powerful ways and mechanisms that these things can be used. And we're working with a bunch of different organizations that are using them and really diverse ways, but it's the same technology layer, you know, like, that's the coolest part is that with every client that we onboard, they use effectively the same stack, but they use it in different ways because each community is different in the individuals that make up that organization. So that's kind of what really gets me excited is that it's like, wow, we can build this feature and somebody else uses it and like almost an opposite way. because they have a different construct of how they've set things up. It's really fun to see. Rex (43:16.098) For sure, man, like all of this, to me, there's some things on here that like are just so such no brainers that like all we need to do is kind of explain how this technology works and like instantly the at least like smarter, younger tech forward people like companies understand it. like specific, you know, the Taylor Swift example, like that's a good one to me because it encapsulates the. The ideal use case for this kind of technology is when you want to, definitely identity is like a easy thing when you want to be able to prove identity, but it's specifically proving identity across different companies or entities that are not associated. So you want to be able to get the venues involved and then you also want to get the record companies involved and everyone can contribute these. identity markers onto the same chain and that creates an identity that can be referenced by like the merch giveaway store or by like Ticketmaster or whatever. And so like anytime that you need to build an identity that is owned by the user and they can use that either naively or through like cool things like ZK where you're just proving specific parts like spot-on like a little technical but once you explain it like I think you can sell that into anywhere that needs it, right? The thing you both, I think, have brought up airline points a couple of times. like that to me is one that always like I have always heard that like airline points, like imagine if they were ERC 20 tokens instead of just these points that are in Delta's database. Right. And like, you know, I guess from me as a flyer, like, cool, like I could sell them on the open market or I could see that they're cheaper. Like I could buy them, but Like if I'm sitting in delta shoes, what I would say is like the best part about these points is we're issuing imaginary money, which not only do we control the supply of, not only like do we control how much their value is, but like at any time we can give them away for free or take them or whatever. like, why would we want sovereignty? Like the reason this is bringing us value is because like we're the sovereign in this. And so. Rex (45:41.142) I guess the question I'm asking is how do you pitch loyalty points when my assumption is the way most businesses who issue loyalty points see them is antithetical to what blockchain delivers. Russell Castagnaro (45:59.267) Well, that is, mean, you bring a great example, a great point, and you're talking about companies that have sunk costs in those mileage systems, and they're not going to switch. Right? There's no way. However, there's a pretty high administrative cost to all of that. And so let's say you had the next generation of airlines come around and they recognize that they don't have to have like a one pass per, they don't have to have like a, what is it? The, you know, those like the big networks of, of, of, you know, that have it. Well, if you've ever tried to transfer miles across, it's kind of a shit show, but like you could actually enable small regional airlines to have a pooled mileage program that they could use. Rex (46:36.716) Yeah, Sky Team, One World, yeah. Russell Castagnaro (46:54.786) And that they could have a way to go that could compete with what Delta and United and American have. Right. Gardner (47:03.704) Yeah, what if what if you're able to stake points, right? Like what if you're the first airline that comes out with a way that you can stake and generate more points by actually locking your points up? Like I would I would use that over the other airline program in a second, you know, so like I think I think Russell's right in that, like they have no interest in doing this. That is absolutely in their favor to ensure that they have these liabilities that are actually used to leverage. Rex (47:03.758) Mm-hmm. Rex (47:21.038) Mm-hmm. Gardner (47:33.339) loans that they want to get for their organization, right? Like that is going to be the way that the old world works and will continue to work until it dies. The question is who is coming up next that wants to create competition and who is coming up next that wants to actually go after and flip it on its head and say, Hey, individual, I want to give you incentive to actually be loyal to my organization. Not because you get a 1.5 interest rate. on every meal purchased cash back, whatever, blah, blah, as opposed to 1.6. The question is, what is the actual value that you can get from that transportability, from that interoperability, similar to how you would as an identity layer, similar to what you were talking about before? Rex (48:22.541) Mm-hmm. Russell Castagnaro (48:23.15) Yeah. Think about, think about this, think about like the cannabis industry, which in the United States now is tied down state by state. Right. And so let's just say that you wanted to have, let's say you've got, you're a big company and you've got, you've got dispensaries in eight states and Canada. Okay. Which is a very, there's, quite a few who would fall into that category. Well, you could have a loyalty program that was run on chain. that you could, you could do everything and they could use that across everything without having to do, have some third party company created to do it without any of that. They're just using tools that are, you know, ERC twenties that they have the con that they control the contracts on minting and things like that. Like that, that's an easy, an easy answer, you know, I'm, know, because you can't bring your pot from one state to another, but you can certainly go to a, a, Rex (49:10.296) Mm-hmm. Rex (49:13.985) Mm-hmm. Russell Castagnaro (49:20.878) go to a similar dispensary and get it and, I can use my points here too? Oh, great. Rex (49:28.696) Mm-hmm. Gardner (49:29.018) But more to the point, Russell, I think you're mentioning here is like the cost that it takes to spin something like that up is going to zero. like an organization that is designed to build these loyalty programs and all of the infrastructure that is required to maintain these things is massive. And there really isn't a need for that anymore. Rex (49:39.671) Mm-hmm. Rex (49:56.814) Yeah. Russell Castagnaro (49:57.806) And we should say explicitly with unicorn.e we can do that. Right? Like we can make that possible for brands and businesses that want to compete on that level, that want to distinguish themselves from the rest of their competition by providing this kinds of things in a way that doesn't leave anybody out. It doesn't matter whether you're a six year old. Last week we had Gardner (50:01.946) Yeah, sure, sure. Rex (50:02.765) Yeah. Rex (50:08.696) Yeah. Russell Castagnaro (50:27.654) two twin six-year-olds mint NFTs on our platform for the first time, which was super cool to watch them do. Gardner (50:33.268) I have the spectrum of an 80 year old mom and an eight year old daughter. And they went to ETH Denver last year where we created the infrastructure for their account program. And of course I manage my daughter's email address. She doesn't, know, she's not really active online in that way, but she went through the flow where I signed her in and she was able. to join this event and then she actually has a smart contract wallet which from here forth will be used in every year that she goes to eat Denver. And my mom was able to do it as a complete Luddite and doesn't really know what Web3 is. And it's, I'm sure it's the same refrain that we've all got. Like my daughter used to say, like, I worked for Bitcoin. Like she, she thought it was a company. And so like. Rex (51:24.93) Yeah. Gardner (51:29.006) You know, these sorts of things that even if you don't know what this is, it's like, I can create an account and I can participate in this ecosystem and I get rewarded for it. And that's one of the coolest things about ETH Denver in that there are, and this is a stat from kind of Russell's side of the house. And Russell, I don't want to like steal your thunder in terms of the experience that you have with ETH Denver, but like just from my personal experience of my family actually going without knowing anything about Web3. That is one of the benefits of ethember is that there's so many people that are curious about what all of this is. And there's so many OGs that are there as well. And they can now all operate within the same ecosystem because they have their ethember accounts. I'm gardener.ethember.com. I'm not going to dox my family members names and their usernames, but the point is like they understand that human readable address. They don't understand a zero X address, nor should they. Rex (52:22.526) Mm-hmm. Sure. Yeah. Gardner (52:25.262) just like they have an email address that's human readable, but there's an alphanumeric string underneath that that is actually in a DB. So like these are the things that again, we're abstracting all of this away. And then they're getting rewarded for participating. Everybody that goes to ETH Denver gets Spork returned to their wallet. They now have, they have effectively loyalty points to continue to go to ETH Denver and continue to use them. Rex (52:31.008) Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Rex (52:43.662) Mm-hmm. Rex (52:48.142) Mm-hmm. Gardner (52:52.28) And that can be scaled to literally any organization, whether you're a five person organization or a five million person, five billion person organization. It's all possible at low cost, at the speed of light and in the palm of your hand without needing to know what anything about web three is. Rex (53:11.02) Yeah, no. And I take all of those, like that, I think it's a good response, right? Cause I think like at this point, I like Delta's like loyalty points program, like it's part of it's a major part of their investor calls every quarter. Like it's a huge thing on their balance sheet. I'm like, that's not really what we're talking about. we're talking about like, the new guys, right? And like the people that bring so much competition that Delta is forced to move on to these rails because otherwise they're just not like providing a compelling product. And so, yeah, I mean, I think that's like the nature of technology is to like bring more competition to the table. Gardner (53:53.999) Well, and did you think, mean, think about it this way too. Think about like the, the treasury as Delta, right? Did anybody ever anticipate prior to a few months ago or last year, a concept of a Bitcoin reserve? Like, of course we thought about it. Like it was like, but they're never going to do that. That's crazy. It's not in their best interest. I mean, we're talking about the same thing here with Delta. They're never going to do that. It's not in their best interest. Well, guess what? Rex (54:01.924) Mm-hmm. Rex (54:20.814) Sure. Sure. Gardner (54:24.814) History might prove that otherwise because it's moving fast. And AI, haven't even touched on that. Like the concepts around the fact that we're gonna have more sentient beings than there are humans on earth. They're gonna be transacting, especially with like X-402 and everything that's going on there. Like this is not stopping. The train has left the station. So who's gonna catch up and who's gonna meet the puck before it gets there? Rex (54:27.448) Sure. Yeah. Rex (54:47.468) No, that's a beautiful way to kind of put the point. I love the Bitcoin treasury. It's against their best interests and look where we are. So, love that. I think with the last few minutes here, what I would love to ask you guys about is, part of the development of these technologies is exactly what you guys are doing and what we've been talking about, which is taking the base technologies and wrapping them into like... tools that businesses can use to do things. I think another piece of it, is like the actual technology itself is still evolving. And like the specifically a lot of the evolutions that are in the pipeline, like really make your guys' life easier. Specifically what I'm thinking about is account abstraction, but X 402 is like another example. So, you know, like looking forward, I'd love to just like throw out an open question of like, as you... are looking forward to how blockchain itself is developing and evolving. Like what are the things that like really get you excited that you think are really going to open up new things for unicorn or just like open up new things for the industry or the technology in general that really again get us from this place of like speculation for speculation sake to like solving problems in the real world. Russell Castagnaro (56:13.612) Well, I can tell you that I think being a company doing Web3 and blockchain and experience in a non bull market is a great thing because there's a lot less static to signal, right? You know, there are always going to be people that are pushing bad financial scams, whether they're on Web3 or they're not, you know. So that isn't going to go away, but what is going to happen is there's more and more successes, more and more good things that come out. And I think that we've definitely got the balance between account abstraction, MPC wallets, smart contract wallets, paymasters. The technology there, back when I was trying to onboard people to self-custody Bitcoin wallets and doing payments at cannabis, it is so much easier, right? So I think that the technology has already hit a level to where anyone can use it if the experience is designed appropriately. I think that diminishing of static is what really will help a lot. I'm unapologetically condemning most of our industry for jerking around doing stupid things like meme coins and stuff when really what we should have done and what we could have done in the last two cycles is eaten the debit card market lunch. know, debit cards are the biggest part of credit card processing that grows. They get an enormous amount of money. They're not great. And instead of trying to make, you know, services that convert your crypto into a debit card, you should just go to the rails and, and let people pay with crypto. And now that we've got stable coins, there's no reason to not do that. And I think that's finally going to start happening now as the experience, you know, of somebody like my parents can actually have wallets and use them. Russell Castagnaro (58:40.594) and for things really, really easily. So I think that would be for me the most important thing and because when you start moving to what is it that not just selling a token, because everyone that's just pretty straightforward and mostly scammy and whatever, if you have a business that has a specific experience, certain things that you want people to do, There are not a lot better ways to motivate people than to leverage Web3 technology, transparently. And that is where I think the real growth will be. Look, we already see it in the financial industries. Everybody who's anybody is already hardcore tokenizing all their stuff. They're planning on doing things in blockchain. They're doing all that stuff internally, even as they work to slow down public blockchain adoption. Rex (59:15.757) Mm-hmm. Russell Castagnaro (59:37.472) You know, but, so, so the smart money's already there. It's just a matter of how soon it gets out to retail and people start providing this to retail. And one of the things that we're trying to do is because we're working with DAP developers everywhere. If you're doing a DAP, that's not just a DeFi scam and, and actually has utility for people, then you can go and offer it up to communities that are working with us. Right? Whether it's, you know, BitBazzle or ETH Denver or Polygon users or Arbitrum users or whoever. Right? Like if there's some utility there, they can get in and people can have a much easier time using your tools because they won't have to have gas. They won't have to worry about all these different things. have a very clear channel. Rex (01:00:23.628) Mm-hmm. Rex (01:00:29.932) Yeah, great. Gardener, what are you excited for? Gardner (01:00:32.93) Well, I think first it is important to recognize that it's always going to be about memes. It is, and I'd mean that not from a token perspective or not from a social image perspective, but it's memetic desire. People aren't going to know how to do things or what to do unless they see others doing it. So I think people participating in this and becoming aware of this and the narratives changing in the media cycle is going to be a big part of that. So I'm kind of excited to see how people start using these things and we can start not pushing the use cases, but kind of pulling them in and like similar to what I was talking about before, where we have different organizations using the same tech in different ways and novel ways that we haven't even considered. So I'm really excited about that. And I think one of the main kind of impacts from that is when it starts to create an identity layer for individuals. And they can take those experiences, they can take those credentials, and they can use them and they can have attribution and they can have some level of provenance that proves that they are this person, that they have done these things, and that they can do these things, you know, in kind of like the human mesh network that is going to be hard, I think, to prove, harder and harder to prove. as we start getting more and more bots hitting the scene. So I'm excited to see how people use this technology without potentially even know how they're using it until we can point to it and be like, that's awesome. So we're seeing some of that now, but we're gonna see so much more of that as the next generation comes up and start using these things natively. Rex (01:02:14.253) Yeah. Rex (01:02:21.036) Yeah. You know, I like to say like to me, the killer app of all of this technology, it's like very simple, right? It's sign in with Ethereum and like not only does that solve the password problem, which has led to all three of our social security number and like fucking favorite ice cream and every piece of information about us being like publicly available for like $4 on the dark web, but, back doors us into like building. like credible identity that, you know, it's a little bit scary. But like with technologies like ZK, you can prove that you're a citizen or over 21 or like went to the Taylor Swift concert without revealing everything about yourself. And I think that concept is what makes DeFi and stable coins and all these things relevant and maybe not the other way around, where we've just seen like so much. Like not only is it, is it complicated and people get scared because of self custody and all this stuff, but like the financial institutions that are worth trillions of dollars today are like directly threatened by it. And so therefore like we're fighting regulation. We're fighting all this stuff. to me, like the whole point of this is internet native technology. Let's find some internet native solutions. yeah, I just, I love thinking more than more than about like how, how can we. offer a better savings account for people. It's like, what does this do that really wasn't available before? so, yeah, I think, again, why I was so excited to talk to you guys is, I think that you guys get that in a way that is refreshing and rare in this industry, that it's about, let's create tools that allow people to build these identities, to build experiences, and like, Let's do something with this. Let's not just basically hype up a bunch of VCs enough to create like the token pump and dump cycle. So that's what I'm bullish for. And that's, I think a great way to kind of like wrap up this conversation after spending the first 10 minutes talking about how shit everything is in this industry. All right, guys, thank you so much. think for the sake of everyone's time and attention span, we'll wrap it up here. But if people are... Russell Castagnaro (01:04:26.089) Amen. Russell Castagnaro (01:04:38.411) Thanks a lot. Rex (01:04:44.546) like interested by this, excited, inspired by this. Can you just let everyone know where they can find you guys, where they can learn more about Unicorn and maybe just like how to start getting involved? Russell Castagnaro (01:04:55.531) Sure, our website is myunicornaccount.com and that gives a quick brief and it also lets you sign up for a free account if you want to see how it all works and everything. I encourage, know, if Denver's coming up, go ahead and sign up for eathdenverapp.eathtember.com. Get your tickets free if you use the app to sign up and learn more. and look for more tweets from us and more comms because we have a few more cool things. We just finished BitBazzle, so you're too late to do all the cool things that we did at ArtBazzle. But we've got some pretty cool things that we can't disclose yet, but you should watch this space. Gardner (01:05:41.198) Definitely. Follow our cast tag on X. You can follow me at Gardner. It's just my name. G-A-R-D-N-E-R. And yeah, it's a fun time to be in this space. It always has been, but the momentum is really starting to crescendo for the next wave. And so make sure you catch it. Rex (01:05:42.349) Amazing. Rex (01:06:05.985) Awesome. Well, I will definitely see you guys in East Denver. Of course, it is the premiere conference, but also it's the only one that I can consistently go to. I do not think I'm going to make it to India next year. All right, guys. Thank you so much. Yeah, right now. Thank you guys so much, and have good rest of your day. Russell Castagnaro (01:06:22.902) Well, go get your ticket. OK. Thanks. OK. Gardner (01:06:29.2) Thank you.