What Happened to the Modular Blockchain Thesis? w/ Dino (Fluent)

Rex (00:02.159) Dino, welcome to the Signaling Theory podcast. Dino (00:05.198) Thanks for having me on. Rex (00:06.683) All right, cool, man. Before we jump right in, just for those who are unfamiliar with you and your work, can you just give a brief introduction to yourself and to Fluent? Dino (00:15.0) Yeah, yeah, definitely happy to. So I'm Dino, one of the co-founders of Fluent. And Fluent is what we call the most expressive blockchain. Our vision is for developers to not only be able to use the popular paradigms that exist today, like EVM and SVM, which are clearly the standards, but over the time horizon of five, 10, 15 years, we want, our vision is to let developers use whatever VM they want, whatever programming language they want, whatever tool they want. And the only way you can accomplish that and stay flexible enough to kind of adapt based on where the market is and what developers need at a point in time is if you have like a very, very expressive environment and you can capture all these different ways of programming. Rex (00:59.867) Cool. So hopefully we kind of unpack what you're actually building over the next, over this conversation. But I kind of just want to jump right into content. we, we've spoken before on podcasts and I will link it in the show notes for anyone that wants a historical look back at the types of things we were talking about in 2024. But you know, when we spoke last, the kind of like big bet and the big narrative. Dino (01:08.866) Yeah, let's do it. Rex (01:28.027) I guess the big narrative that was in the ether and then the big bet that you were making was that there are all these different VMs or computational environments that were starting to get much more traction in the blockchain ecosystem. We went from this world where blockchain essentially just meant EVM to Okay, maybe like not only is there Solana, but there's this whole world of Solana VM based blockchains. This time also is when movement labs and Rushi and that whole thing was like a huge part of the energy and momentum of the space. And so we thought like, okay, we see SVM is starting to become more popular. see movement or this move VM is becoming more popular. I guess I want to start off by just like. touching base with you and asking like, where do think we are in that journey? Do you think that that thesis is still holding water and it's very important to be able to support a set of blockchain-based VMs or has that kind of fallen apart since the meta has changed? Dino (02:44.012) Yeah, it's interesting. mean, it depends how you define that scope. I mean, what you're talking about is like the modular thesis, right? In a lot of ways. And I know we talked about that a decent amount before in the past. I think it depends how you look at it. Like clearly that's a term and I think it was like a narrative. actually, you know what? Hold on. I'm going to reverse it back for a second. Rex (03:12.889) Yeah, just you can start off from like, I asked the question, answer. Dino (03:17.326) Right, yeah, give me a sec. So, okay, you asked the question. Rex (03:22.459) I'm going use my old ask, but like, are we still in the VM meta? Dino (03:27.598) The VM meta. Some of the things that you referenced before, right, I think we're part of this broader modular push, if you will. And it's interesting how these things work, right? I think at the time it was really, really hot and now modular is really, really cold. And so it's really common for people to swing from like, this thing is the future of France when it's hot to like, this thing is just like a narrative or just pure hype when it's not hot. In reality, I think it always falls somewhere in the middle, right? Like even before Modular was like a narrative and I know that's like just before that is actually when I started getting meaningfully like active in the space. And I remember first getting hooked by Ethereum, but then very soon after just getting hooked by like the rollup concept. And I thought, and this was really coming from like a nerding out over the tech. mindset so like I remember digging through before it was nicely packages module right like I remember like digging through a lot of like Twitter threads and and just trying to figure out like what was going on and I felt like I had a very like natural introduction to it like pre modular hype and so yeah I mean I the way I think about it is there's real merit to that I mean like there was a bottleneck at the time for aetherium and they're like how do you scale that thing and you can do and how technology works most often is there's multiple different ways of accomplishing a task. And so in this case, you can make the blockchains like more performant or you can kind of like layer them in different ways. And so like, I think, I think that whole wave started off and it made sense. And I actually kind of liked it when people came along and they like, you know, packaged it in a way that other people understand, like can understand and stuff like that. So like I don't I don't think it was just a narrative. And I do think that when you enter this realm of a bunch of different execution environments, whether they're implemented as L1s or L2s, I think you do get an entirely new design space that's very, very well worth exploring as a lot of us are still to this day, even as that hype around modular died down. So I definitely do think that it's like. Dino (05:43.308) very worthwhile. mean, we're obviously making different trade-offs at the technical layer and everybody, and I say the technical layer because everybody thinks about the tech trade-offs, but there's actually way more trade-offs to make, right? Like there's actually like cultural trade-offs, there's economic trade-offs, there's just different types of like social trade-offs that I think are like just as powerful, if not more powerful than the tech trade-offs, right? And I think that what you will see is a lot more even general purpose chains that look... I guess how you could use hyperliquid as a good example where like it is kind of Indushtap specific but kind of vertical specific but also technically general purpose. so like, you know, I think there's something much bigger happening here that's enabled by modular and like loosely coupled systems which is not just technical trade-offs but all other types of like social trade-offs. And I actually think that's gonna get increasingly more important like as... industries and non-cryptonatives get involved in the space. yeah, long-winded way of saying, I definitely think that the design space that came along with Modular was way more than just a narrative. How that's progressed so far in terms of how these ecosystems have progressed are kind of a different story. Rex (07:01.025) Yeah. No, man, I feel you. And I think we're going to spend, if not the first half, like the bulk of this conversation dancing around this whole kind of the question really that I have is like, happened to the modular? Dino (07:14.604) Yeah, let's not dance around it. Let's talk about it. Rex (07:16.729) No, for sure. But I do want to take a quick detour because you made this comment where like you got into this space at a time when like you were just so enamored by it from a technical perspective and you were like digging through these Twitter threads and like really coming to this of like, wow, this is a paradigm shift in technology and not just a means of like pretty nihilistic speculation. Dino (07:43.8) Mm-hmm. Rex (07:45.019) And I just want to spend a few minutes, you know, getting your take or maybe just morning with you kind of the loss of that energy. you know, I have a couple of theories, like maybe too many people that came in with good intentions were burned by Do Kwan and by SBF or I actually really think that Elon's purchase and like transformation of Twitter also really changed that. think there's a couple of things going on, but I don't know, do you think that I'm just kind of being a Debbie Downer or missing the forest or the trees when I kind of look around and say like, and I are entrants from a different era that kind of are a dying breed, like don't really exist anymore. Dino and Rex, like we're the dinosaurs, right? But, or do you think that it's still there, it's just kind of in places that I'm not looking or transformed into a different ways or to put a... Dino (08:27.918) Mm-hmm. Rex (08:41.947) package on this question. mean, how do you think the crypto community has evolved since you've gotten? Dino (08:49.624) they get stagnated in a lot of ways, right? So I'm kind of torn on this and yeah, could definitely, I think sometimes these therapy sessions are also very nice, right? Like you gotta look back and be like, what the fuck happened? That said, and I would say that, I'd be like, what the fuck happened? But I think when I do assess that, I see the stagnation, but I also see like a lot of hope and optimism for what could be still. mean, it's, you know, don't get me wrong, like it's a struggle sometimes to not be. Rex (09:00.772) You Dino (09:18.402) to get jaded in this space. mean, that's just the nature of this like still crazy wild west thing that we're in. But I do really see both, right? So what happened? I think that crypto is just so narrative driven that yeah, there's merit to something, then a narrative kind of sweeps it away. I mean, there's like a very like small, still a very small space that is like a very strong concentration of like, you know. influential people and capital that can move things around and things just like shift so dramatically towards like where there's attention and that just makes things go out of control. And so I think Modular kind of went out of control and we solved the bottleneck along the way and like went way way way past it and you know what I mean? So I think the bottleneck moved and that's actually what makes me optimistic about it, right? So like I think we solved the performance cost bottleneck that is just simply not a bottleneck anymore based on the applications that exist today. mean, quick clarifier, like I do think you should continue to optimize like performance and cost because people, you know, as more apps do start getting like built, which I'm still optimistic of, like you shouldn't stop that is my point, but I think the bottleneck shifted. That's not the bottleneck anymore. The bottleneck now, in my opinion, is actually like less of a technical bottleneck. It's actually more of about, kind of product taste and startup execution. Like some of the skill sets that the non-cryptonative world or Web2 or whatever you want to call it, just startups, I'll say in general, have had to learn over time that that's a skill set that I think a lot of crypto people just never learned. I think that the bottleneck is just that, like product taste, startup execution. And I think even with the performance and cost, you know, capacity that exists today, I think we can accomplish a lot more than we've shown so far with just clearer thinking around like how to build good products and frankly taking some of the DNA from just regular SF or tech that clearly worked very well. And I know, I mean, it's an if you know, know kind of thing in some ways because like if you're coming from that world, you know how people think about things and it's different. And then you get into crypto. Dino (11:36.866) And obviously there's a lot of bad actors in that and that's getting better as the industry matures, but there's still just a lot of like, you know, not so great things. But even within the well-intentioned cohort of people, I still think that skill is missing. Like people still, even if they have the best intentions, they want to build great apps and they're trying to iterate on like a product, I think a lot of the actual skills to do it are just not there. And frankly, I think that ties into, and we don't have to go too into this, but like that is what we focused on a lot for Fluent as we're building this ecosystem. We have this like super expressive thing and I framed it as part of like a bigger vision over five, 10, 15 years, because I do really believe in this like level of expressivity being needed. But frankly, in the near term, we're just zoned in on helping remove that bottleneck. And like we've oriented this whole project around helping people. build good products, figure out how to find a problem that's worth solving, do some proper design thinking, be rigorous with startup operations and execution. And I think that can actually unlock a real wave of useful applications. So we've been hyper, hyper focused on that. We actually have what we call the blended builders club, which I guess you could start off thinking about it as an accelerator, because it kind of mostly looks like an accelerator right now, although we have a much broader vision for it. But you could also call it like crypto Navy SEALs. Like people know that when they're like coming into this blended builders club, you're going to get your ass kicked. Like you're actually just going to get your ass kicked. And that's like by design. And it's part of that, in a sense, part of the social contract. Like we're being very opinionated with, with the ecosystem that we're building. And when we meet people who vibe with that, they're like, yeah, I want that help with just like rigorous prod, bring your product tastes, bring your startup execution and like help me build a real thing. I'm a real builder, but I'm in more or less words, like don't really know how to go about this. I understand either the blockchain side or the market side, but I need help in the middle. And that's what we've hyper-focused on over the past half year, and I think we're getting some pretty damn good apps out of it. So anyway, still, I'm not happy with where we are as an industry in a lot of ways, but I am optimistic about the future. Rex (14:02.819) I hear you. know, like the joke that I've been saying for years now, which isn't just not a joke. But like I think and I very much include myself in what I'm about to say. So like, you know, I'll take it as I throw it. Right. But I just like really believe that the people that are in crypto are the people that like for whatever reason, weren't able to like hack it in traditional companies or even like tech. Right. Which isn't traditional companies and Dino (14:25.614) Mmm. Rex (14:31.247) That was so much more clear earlier when it was like really the misfits and like the, mean, like look at Vitalik, right? Like, like I could barely imagine him at Google, let alone something like, proctor and gamble or, whatever. so, you know, I, I took about a year hiatus from making content and was working for the largest out in, crypto. And to me, it was just like, the most educational experience that I could have of like, okay, like I really do believe we're doing some interesting things here. I kind of disagree with you that we're getting better about bad actors. Like quite frankly, the only thing that got any traction over the last year was like straight up extraction through meme coins. And like, I think we take a huge step backwards and the only people that have prominence right now are the extractors, but. That aside, I think the bigger problem that we have is we're just not professional. And the people that know how to build real companies and how to turn technology into products and turn products into businesses, they look at us and they think, one, this is crime. And two, this isn't worth the career risk. And so I think... Dino (15:47.854) Yeah. Rex (15:58.748) That is like kind of one of the big problems that I think needs to be solved. And like, we just need to become more legitimate. And I don't really know. I don't know the path forward to that. Cause as I said, I think we're taking a step backwards, but you know, I think that's how I view a lot of the same things that you're kind of gesturing at. And so I just want to hear your response to that. Dino (16:21.034) Yeah, yeah, we're not too far off, right? Like I don't really disagree with everything that you're saying. And I I agree with most of it. How do I put the, like reframe it a little bit? Like I don't, I do also think that there's a lot of those like bad actors still in crypto. Like I do still think that's a problem. Like I see less and less, not less bad actors, maybe that was the wrong way of putting it, but less... Room, well, actually, wait, let me redo that one. Can you ask me it again? Rex (16:55.355) Yeah, so I think we just need to get more professional. So what's your response? Dino (17:04.782) We definitely need to get more professional. That's absolutely clear. I mean, I guess there's two pieces of it. There's the integrity piece and the professionalism piece. And I'm separating these for a reason, because what I've observed are a lot of people who almost lack the professionalism. I don't think we disagree, by the way. I think this is similar to what I was trying to express before, where... You people don't have like the skills in crypto, like traditional skills in crypto. You got like a lot of like really young people, which is fine. Like you can't, you have to learn the skills like somewhere, even if you're, but I guess the point of clarification I wanted to make is even a lot of like good actors don't have those skills. So I think the professionalism and the, as I was calling it, you know, whether it's product taste or like startup operator or execution skills, I think are separate from like the moral compass of a lot of people. Where it gets, that said, there are a lot of bad actors still in crypto, but I think it's muddy. I think it's muddy because there's a lot of, well, because there are people who don't know what they're doing, like maybe they know the blockchain stuff, maybe they know they have some interation around markets or an industry or something like that. they don't know how to operationalize things and they just kind of gravitate towards what they know and if like there's a lot of velocity and attention around like memes or whatever like they say okay well I guess that's that's where I'll go innovate because like they like there's a lot of people and I can speak experientially because there's a lot of people I've gotten to know over this period of time where I'm like I know they're I know they're a good person but they're doing all types of stupid shit. And I know it's because they don't know how to operate a startup. They don't know how to take an idea or a problem to solve and bring it to product market fit. And they just kind of veer towards whatever has the most attention, which is honestly a bigger problem and theme that we've observed over the past couple of years and actually leads into what we're building, which maybe we'll talk about later. But I do think that this Dino (19:18.798) dramatic over-indexing on attention has been very, very, very problematic and actually blurs the line between people who might otherwise have integrity or moral compass and them just not knowing how to do the startup thing and effectively getting lost. That doesn't apply for everyone. There's still a lot of bad actors. There's still the wild fucking West, but I do think it's more nuanced. Rex (19:45.264) Totally fair. you use this term that it's muddy. And I actually think that's like perfect. there's a about a month ago and I don't know if Dragonfly is an investor and you guys so feel free to do okay. So Hasib was responding to a tweet or something but he he wrote what's the crypto one liner that lives in your head rent free. And he said he said for me it's price is the product. And like that Dino (19:57.239) No, no. Dino (20:12.312) Yeah Rex (20:14.639) That I think really well encapsulates the muddiness of like this, like, we good actors? Are we bad actors? Because, you know, think all businesses and we're not businesses, right. But like all, capitalist enterprises, but like, especially crypto really like struggle with this problem of like, Hey, what are we building here? Is it real technology to solve people's problems or is it like wild? Dino (20:18.52) Yep. Rex (20:42.931) speculation to like maybe make a bunch of people rich, but especially make us rich. and you know, like I, like to me, it's like kind of hard to ignore the fact that like the one thing that everyone can acknowledge was, is just like legitimately successful since SBF, which like, you know, I mark as like the, the true end of the last cycle is hyper liquid. And what's the innovation there? It's not perps. It's not like whatever they're doing. It's that there's no KYC. And like, I don't know what it says about that. What about what it says about this space that that's the one product that makes money. And it seems like what, what else everyone else is trying to do is sell price or like sell a token. Dino (21:14.445) Mm-hmm. Dino (21:38.894) Yeah, I remember that tweet from Hasib and I actually agree that's the thing that lives in my something very similar lives in my head rent-free Token is the product effectively the same thing that he said but man for like a couple years when there was more of a bull market and people were More frequently in that state of mind I would get really pissed off. I would just get like really mad to be honest because and you're wrong, token's not the product, the product is a product, and then the token's kind of another product in a way. honestly, it got me so worked up sometimes that I would think about it, and I'm like, why does everyone feel so, is everyone this scammer, or am I missing something? Is there more to this? Because coming from more of a SF tech kind of background, It just didn't make any sense to me. like, I feel like we, you and I are cut from a similar cloth in that way. But like, I would think about, I found myself thinking about it and I'm like, in some sense, like they're not wrong. Cause you can apply, if you really wanted to have that mindset, you could apply it towards even companies or other, as you said, kind of, you know, I forget how you worded it. Yes. Rex (23:01.253) capitalist enterprises. Dino (23:04.556) In a sense, they're not wrong because as you worded, other capitalist enterprises, right? Like can kinda say the same thing where, you know, the main objective to return shareholder value in a lot of capitalist enterprises, AKA companies, is to basically make number go up and return that value. But no one thinks of it that way because like, why would you think of it that way? Like that's where... Rex (23:31.909) Well, the guys at Enron did. Dino (23:34.658) Okay, yeah, exactly. So in some weird way, like they're kind of right, but in the way that they're right, it shows how the mentality in this space is broken. You know what I mean? Because like you, I'm like, okay, I get it, but like you should not think of it that way. That just says so many things are wrong about the space, as you mentioned, in a one-liner. So I fully agree with you. There was another point I wanted to make, but I forgot it. Rex (24:05.689) Yeah, well, if it comes back up, feel free to blurt it out. But let's back off from this opining about just the state of the industry and let's go back to the modular ecosystem or thesis or whatever. So, you know, I think one thing to kind of look at is like, I very much agree with the... Dino (24:12.738) Yeah Rex (24:30.787) like fundamental idea of modular, which is like this technology is really complicated. And in order to do it, you know, full stack completely, right. It requires so many resources, so much like building knowledge, so much operating knowledge. know, like in all technology, it makes sense to break these up into modular pieces and allow and make them as Lego like. And when I say Lego, like that's composable, but that's also like. with the, like at the level of a child to use in order to build whatever you want. And that I still think is, is a fundamental thing that all technology, but especially blockchain technology like needs in order to be successful. I am a little confused why when I look around there doesn't really seem to be like things being built. using these pieces, right? you know, hyper, like pick anything, let me rephrase that. Like, do you see things that are building off these modular pieces that like, how are even achieving the things that the monolithic or integrated blockchains are building, let alone enabling new innovation? Dino (25:55.95) Yes, so you mentioned Hyperliquid and it actually made me remember the thing I was going to say before and I think it actually ties reasonably well into your question. So let me actually start there. You mentioned like what applications are actually working, like what's actually being built that's useful in this space. And you mentioned like the most successful one being Hyperliquid and you mentioned the reason that it's successful being NoKYC. I would probably push back on both of those things. Because number one, I don't think Hyperliquid is actually the most successful product in the space. They're the most profitable, potentially, but I don't think still the most successful, at least the way I term it. At least for the state of the market that we're in and kind of like the nuances around how this market interacts with the rest of the world. Because I would make the argument, and maybe you'd guess this, that Polymarket is a more successful application, at least the way that I would define it as more people are getting true utility out of that product in a way that isn't relying on either speculation or, well actually it's an interesting one. I mean speculation. around a token. I mean, like speculation around a token, like a lot of the other projects in this space might seem to be getting traction because of speculation around a token. like speculation as part of the utility of a betting platform, I look at it differently. To me, that's like part of the utility of ProliMarket. And on the front end side of it, the byproduct is that people get like a news source, which is actually like really, really interesting. And so there's millions and millions and millions of people that Rex (27:22.971) Like introspective. Yeah, yeah. Rex (27:32.368) Mm-hmm. Dino (27:50.83) See value is this as like a data product or like a you know, like a news engine That like don't even need to know that blockchain is powering it or anything. There's this troop, you know almost like Like this truth machine on the front and this like betting machine on the back slot machine on the back And so I think that's that's pretty powerful and I can imagine like future versions of that that You know, maybe design like the economics and increasingly interesting ways where, you know, there's no reason why Polymarket couldn't be making money and then Polygon couldn't have designed their economics in a way where they're actually accruing value from that and so on and so forth to Ethereum as well. I mean, you could debate like Polygon and Ethereum and how that interacts, but you get my point. Like I think that it's on the each layer of that stack to design their economics appropriately so it aligns with the success of the thing built on their platform. Like that should just be obvious. And I think that the the Polymarket, Polygon, Ethereum thing is, you know, and I'm sure they're working on it. There's nothing against any of these teams, but I don't think anybody predicted that Polygon, Polymarket was gonna take off the way that it did when it did. And now they're like, okay, now let's think about the money and kind of value accrual side of it and what's possible there as they're starting to partner with some of like the biggest. companies in the world and actually provide like real value to masses of people. And as kind of the layers underneath are like, wait, hold on, there's this really popular app, like what can be done about this? I'm not in those rooms, I don't know, but I can imagine like a future version. I can imagine many examples of applications that do provide like actual utility in some form, whether it's more on like the financialization side or whether it's more of like the by-product information side on the front that just have designed the economics like. top to bottom of that stack well so everybody's able to accrue some sustainable, hopefully sustainable value. So long-winded way of saying, think that, I think there's hope for actually doing future versions of these products with actual utility that can appeal to the masses of people and be sustainable. Rex (30:08.899) Yeah, I totally take the pushback. Is hyper liquid the most successful? Like, Polymarket is a clear challenger. I think there's like something very funny about, okay, like Polymarket is not built on speculation of crypto. And so that's good. It is built on speculation. So like, it's hard to make that blanket statement of, but it very importantly is not speculating on its own token and it's not speculating on the price of ether, the price of Bitcoin. It truly has utility that is extrinsic to betting on our own industry. so this is what I want to see from our industry is we've reached a point whether the modular story was part of this or not. And frankly, I'm not really sure that it was. We've reached a point where blockchains are performing enough that we can start building things that are not just about blockchain. And I think the thing that we're missing is the next wave of founders who come and say, this blockchain thing is really interesting. I'm going to build something. that uses it just like I would build something that uses like next.js, right? Where like the product isn't like a better next.js or like a way to speculate on next.js or like saying in any way, like, we're going to scale next.js, right? Like it is like, this is a tool. This is a component that like, frankly, if any user knows what this is, they're either in the industry or we did something wrong. And like that is the kind of energy that we're a little bit starting to see with this whole like stable coin institution thing, which to me like sounds interesting, but I feel like I've been hearing about institutions for the entire time I've been in crypto and I still don't really understand what it means, but I guess the what needs to happen. And like I just. Rex (32:29.657) you know, maybe this is a good time to kind of pivot a little bit into what you guys are building and maybe how you can bridge this gap. But like what I'm not seeing is the people outside of our industry who don't have a vested interest coming in saying like, these are tools that can make my business better. They can reduce friction on payments. They can reduce my costs that can, you know, provide some sort of like verifiability or identity that like if I were to build it myself, wouldn't really be valuable. And so, one thoughts, you agree, disagree, and, assuming you kind of have similar vibes on this, I mean, and again, feel free to like turn this into a plug for what you're building, but like, what do you think we need to do in order to like bridge that gap and show people that are not crypto pill that like, Hey, you don't need to make your whole life about this industry. Like maybe just consider introducing like this, API or this SDK or. this tool. Dino (33:31.66) Yeah, yeah, no, there's a lot to unpack there. I think that you're right in that that energy is not, it's hard to find in the space right now still. And I don't necessarily think, despite me being really bullish on what's happening with stable coins, that that is going to activate the type of energy that you're referring to. So my mental model around this is you have like, real world assets, RWAs and like net new assets, NNAs. Shout out to Ryan from BlockWorks for coining that. I don't think it's caught on yet, but I think it's pretty good. And net new assets can also be in a way like net new markets too, right? Like I look at like prediction markets is kind of like net new markets. There's a lot of net new markets in there. Let's just buck with that the same way. It doesn't have to just be assets. And I think that right now everybody is so... fixated on real world assets and that's great, right? If we reinvent how kind of like fintech back ends are done and make things more efficient and affordable and global and permissionless, this is all really, really good. I don't think that necessarily excites the next generation of builders, especially less crypto native builders to want to, like you said, not take a huge amount of career risk, but rather just know, dabble and use these new tools and primitives that we've been building. I do think, I do feel optimistic on the net new asset and market side that we can pull that off. I think Polymarket is a decent example of this. I don't know if you're familiar with, they actually pivoted recently, but Time Fun I think was a pretty cool example of this where they're like tokenizing people's time and attaching that to like utility and stuff. I think some of these ideas are actually really interesting and I think there's a lot more where that came from. There's a ton of stuff that you can do around different creator markets and different types of social-fi things that are not just speculation. And we can get into that and actually that's what we're really, really focused on for the Blended Builders Club in the Fluent ecosystem. But you see it, right? You see your friends Dino (35:54.466) at least in my circles, actually being interested in things like Polymarket. Them saying, wow, that's actually interesting. Both from a user perspective and both flavors of users, people who like to bet on stuff and people who just believe in this value proposition of markets helping to source truth better. So two different flavors of non-cryptonative users are interested in this thing. And it's way easier. for me to get people, builders, excited with those types of examples as well. For years, talking about different types of use cases for crypto, different types of applications, not only were they not kind of being built at the rate that... that you would like, but it was also just like impossible to even use the ideas. Like even just like use the ideas to recruit more builders, because people just didn't care. They're like, these are actually just not interesting to me. Even so stable coins, even things like like perp dexes and stuff like that. Like most people don't give a shit about like trading and most people don't really love thinking about finance to be totally honest with you, at least where I'm from. But they do like pop culture. They do like fun experiences. And I do really think that, know, net new assets and markets, let's just put this broad stroke category, can get a lot of people very, very excited about these new crypto primitives. you know what? We're doing everything we can to recruit builders. And that's really why we're doing this really concentrated Blended Builders Club thing, because we're like, hey, There's not that many builders in crypto that are like what we view as like the caliber of builder that can build like a mainstream app that you and I would like to see. But there are some. And so if we orient this whole thing around giving them the world and providing them the structure and startup execution and all this stuff to increase their chances of success. Dino (38:08.354) we can use those examples to then inspire kind of like the next generation of builders. And you know what, like some of that might have to come from a small group of crypto native people also just running those experiments and building those apps themselves. mean, maybe this is a good segue into what we're building internally, but I do think there's like a ton of experimentation that's right there in front of us and we're gonna chase it. Rex (38:34.329) Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, I would love to talk, whether it's what you guys are doing internally or maybe what some of your favorite builders in the blended builders club are building, but like, what are you, you know, as you look up from like continuing to develop the tools that make on-chain integration easier or better or more performant or whatever, and into like, okay, we're doing this. So that dot dot dot, like what are the applications that, you know, You can talk either like short term of like what people are like actually building or like much longer term to like how the world changes because of these like backend primitives and protocols that we've built. like, what are you kind of like excited about that? Like, okay, like these are applications that like really fit a need that people have in the real world that are not really just about like, I want to get richer. Dino (39:31.372) Yeah. So I'll mention a few quickly that are currently in the Blended Builders Club. in the first cohort, which there was a cohort of five and we have another cohort that'll be announced sometime soon. And I'll just touch on a few of those. So one is Yumi. So they're working on basically buy now, pay later using crypto rails, right? I think that's like a very clear thing that threads the needle between like better capital efficiency and like cutting costs on payment rails, but also plugging into like user experiences that I enabling you new user experiences that That that people can like feel directly like that. We're really really drawn to that, right? Like literally yeah, they're back in kind of infrastructure thing But you know if they can enable kind of like, you know new types of products to Be integrated into buy now pay later. Like that's that's a that's a pretty pretty cool thing There's also Pump Pals, which you might've heard of. think they've probably gotten the most jarring brand and it's actually awesome. it's in its current state kind of similar to Fantasy Top for OnlyFans. that sounds funny, but I'm really, really bullish on this. One of the founders is crypto native. One of the founders is less crypto native, although he's like understanding how everything works now. But they've spent a ton of time building just simply boots on the ground, building like trust and relationships with these like adult creators and getting them to see like the value in using these new tools. those people, like most people think that all of these adult models are just rolling in cash. It's actually not exactly true. It's more similar to how most kind of Dynamics work with with creators where there's like, know 2 % of them that are making like a ton of money and then 90 98 % of them who are not really actually making as much money as you think and so the value prop of like new types of tools and experiences to offer your audience whether that's tokenizing like their their time in a way where like, you know people get a new experience or whether that's You know even letting D gens kind of like speculate over here while they're just earning from their Dino (41:56.738) from their work, right? Like if you have, if you have the, way to think about it is you have these creators who their attention and social capital dramatically like exceeds what they're able to, you know, to convert into financial capital. And so it's like a very clear problem where like crypto speculation and betting and degeneracy on the backend could actually end up, you know, solving a problem for people on the front end. It's actually beautiful. They come in. and they don't really have to do anything except like lend their name and likeness. Crypto DJs do the crypto DJ thing and they just earn passive monetization. Like it's actually pretty cool. No tokens, no speculation except for like the core betting app thing that crypto DJs are gonna do anyway. It's lovely. anyway, that's another one I'm bullish on. It sounds so like silly and funny. It's jarring and that'll hopefully help like their marketing, but like it's actually solving in my view a real problem. And then another one I wanna mention is buzzing. Buzzing, it's very simple to think about. It's a prediction market play that uses AI to democratize both market creation and market resolution. And so it's very, very straightforward. These are like ex-Tesla guys. They're like, hey, AI could do this pretty well. They're like, wait, kind of like most of the same AI that's doing the market creation, just kind of doing the research and automating and setting up the constraints and everything is also just pretty good at resolving it. And you know what? That could probably be decent for a lot of markets and actually enable prediction markets to move at kind of more enable conversations to move at more like internet speed. So cool. Like we have, we have some of these apps and there's, there's more and I'm not doing everybody justice by not going into more of them, but I know we don't only have so much time, but like those are the types of apps that we're like hyper-focused on helping them. And you know what, like if we got to help like buzzing strike up partnership with like the, the NBA or something like that, like we'll do that. Like, so So we're taking this very curated approach. And so that's just a few examples of what we have in the Blended Builders Club so far. Rex (01:01:18.831) Yeah. Yeah, man. Good thoughts. So, like I think for the sake of both, you're in my schedule and everyone's attention span, we'll wrap this up here. So before I let you go, can you just share with the audience if they, are interested in learning more about the blended builders club or like really inspired by kind of the conversations that we've had and want to think about building applications that are user facing and for experiences that are not, introspective backing to crypto itself. Like, what's the best place to learn more? What's the best place to find you and find Fluent and where should they go? Dino (01:01:58.678) Yeah, well, I'm just terminally online at Blendino on X. mean, you can come to my account as a nice router, but I mean, we're just always talking about the apps that are building. think that, you know, if you find me, if you find Fluent, you'll probably find your way to apps that might interest you. And then if you're interested in this blended builders club, like if you want to join the crypto Navy SEALs, like reach out to me, slide in my DMs, comment on my post, doesn't matter, like I'm online. The Fluent team is paying attention. we are, ears are to the ground of, and I think we're pretty good at sniffing out who kind of the real builders in this space are. So, you know, if that's you, just reach out and good things will happen. And yeah, I think that's it. mean, stay tuned for... some of the stuff we're launching because I mentioned the product that we've built in-house and have hopefully launched by the time this comes out. But there's a lot of other really cool things on the radar. cohort of apps will come out soon. Thank you for the time, by the way. This has been really, really fun. It's a very refreshing conversation. I think that there's too many pods and too many streams and too many spaces that are... a little bit of the same stuff and so it nice to have just like a very like real conversation with you. Rex (01:03:34.425) No, man, I think the best podcasts are the ones where it just sounds like two normal people having a conversation you just happen to be in the room for. So, no, man. Dino, thank you for the time and talk to you soon. Dino (01:03:47.702) Alright, thanks man.