Capital Panel with Dylan, Chase & Iz

Hello. We're going to start the next session. I'm Chase. I work at Uniswap Labs, and I'm here with Dylan, who is the founder of Crypto the Game, and Iz, who is the CCO at Friends with Benefits. Excited to be chatting.

What's up? What's up? Likewise. Cool. Okay, well, maybe first I sort of gave introductions.

Yeah. But maybe we can kick it off with giving a little bit of context on what you both are building. So you're both building social experiences on chain that are actually also built on DeFi rails. So maybe we can start giving a little bit more context on what you're building and how they fit into the Uniswap ecosystem. Sure.

Sure. Hey, everyone. I'm Iz. Really happy to be here. Thanks, Dylan, Chase, for putting this, for having this panel.

So, FWB is working on a TWAM hook, which is a time-weighted average market maker. It's being launched with Uniswap v4, and we're really excited about this because our community recently voted on a proposal to think about ways that we can restock our token based on revenue that we generate as a DAO. So what's really cool about the TWAM is that essentially allows us to purchase the FWB token in smaller chunks and reduce or prevent the likelihood of front running, MEV, exploitative attacks. And it allows us to do it in a way that feels safe, compliant, and yeah, restock our token, which is something our community is excited about. Cool.

And yeah, I'm Dylan. I'm one of the co-founders of Crypto the Game, which is essentially a massive interactive crypto survival game. It's been compared to Survivor, Hunger Games, Squid Game. I see a couple CTG players in the crowd. But basically everyone buys in with 0.

1 ETH, is assigned a tribe, and over the course of 10 days competes in various on-chain puzzles and scavenger hunts. For immunity, you vote people out each night. Last person standing wins the pot. We've done two seasons so far far and season three will be coming soon and it will be on Unichain. So hence Uniday.

Yes. Maybe we can start there. I think this is the first time that you're sharing publicly that CTG season three will be on Unichain which is exciting. It's turning pink this time. Yeah, pink tribe gets immunity every night.

Yes, exactly. You, I think, have been really intentional about how you've approached building CTG. And I know you're thinking similarly with a lot of intention around season three. And so I would be curious to hear a little bit about what the decision behind building on Unichain was, what you're excited about in terms of building on Unichain. So the goal has always been to get progressively more on-chain each season.

I actually started my career in TV and kind of only stumbled upon tech by way of this app called HQ Trivia. I don't know if anyone played HQ, but it was essentially an interactive game show. And I kind of joined HQ for the vision of like a live interactive TV network so in the same way that it took a game show and made it live and mobile interactive the same could have and should have been set for like a shark tank format or a dating show in my mind a survivor show and that's kind of how this idea for CTG came to be but five plus years ago when I first had the idea there was zero crypto element to it. It wasn't meant for crypto arouse or anything like that. So I've always kind of wanted to intentionally like get incrementally more on-chain with each season.

So for season one the only kind of crypto component was essentially sending 0.1 ETH to our multi-sig and at the end of the ten days we sent 90% of it to one winner's address season two we implemented this almost like deal or no deal mechanic where you minted an nft which represented your spot in the game but you could hypothetically sell it for more than you bought in for as you got closer to the finale and it was worth uh much more and so I think with uni-chain specifically for season three it just unlocks so much more that And so I think with Unichain specifically for season three, it just unlocks so much more that we can do with, I guess, like incremental on-chain experiences. So the theme for the season is going to be Resurrection Island. So each season has its own theme, but basically the TLDR is if you do get eliminated, you'll be able to use on-chain mechanics to potentially earn your spot back in the competition. Cool.

I love it. Resurrection Island feels like a good fitting theme for crypto right now in general. Yeah, we're back. We're so back. Is on your side, I also think this is the first time speaking publicly about the hook that FWB is building.

You shared a little bit of context on it, but maybe you could share a little bit more. I think most people in the audience are probably familiar with TWAM and how it works, but maybe you can give a quick explainer and then also some context on why this felt exciting from an FWB community perspective. Sure. from an FWB community perspective? Sure, so I'll do the first part first, or the second part first.

So FWB is a DAO, about 5,500 people. It comprises people who are creative entrepreneurs, technologists, founders, builders, so people who are really interested in the bleeding edge of culture and technology, how these two things intersect. And essentially, most of the decision-making that we do around our treasury, around the way that we do events, basically all of the big strategic initiatives that we have are governed by our community through snapshot proposals. And I think something that as we've grown as an organization, we were founded in 2020, we're about to hit five years, there's been more calls from our community to be more involved in treasury management, diversification and thinking about more ways for the community to be involved in activities that are just handled on chain. And particularly I think last year, I think it was about last year, we passed this proposal for restocking because we thought it was important to have and hold more token in our treasury and also thinking about ways to implement our revenue in a way that gave back to the community.

So this proposal passed really, really widely, but we didn't have the appropriate mechanism to be able to do it. We had a lot of conversations with legal around compliance, how we could do this, what would be a way for us to actually buy a large amount of tokens that didn't seem super sus. So we were looking for a way to do this that really just met our needs. So when we read about the TWAM hook, I think there was an article published by Uniswap, I believe in August of 2023, where like, this is the thing. Like this is exactly what we need.

It allows us to do this in a way that gives us some level of granularity of control of how we put in these swap orders, the duration that they take place in, in a way that feels like we're managing risk around either buying tokens for the restock, or if we want to think about how we diversify the treasury by buying other kinds of crypto. So yeah, it's been kind of like a long time coming thinking about the right tool for this. And I think it's been really interesting as we've thought more about how we involve the community with governance and automated, like automating the way that we manage our treasury to get a lot more community involvement and alignment between our core team and just like our regular community members. So it's been really exciting for us. And yeah, we're really happy to be working with Uniswap on it.

Yes. So we're excited. And I think what feels exciting about both of these, it's like a through line, is DeFi, I think, often feels like it's this DeFi summer 2020-esque term. And there's sort of a DeFi renaissance, quote unquote, happening. And I think what's exciting here is in both the case of CTG and FWB, it feels like we have these new, more social use cases that are popping up, whether it's because their truly social experience is built on top of something like Unichain, which is designed for DeFi but can be used for other things, or if it's something like what FWB is doing, which is more about how do you empower communities to be able to build on DeFi rails so that they can do other cool and interesting things.

Which kind of brings me to this question of, in terms of the DeFi Renaissance I'm curious if you think about like what the role of social use cases might be How do you think about that? What do you think the future of DeFi might look like and where do you think these social? Experiences might fit into it. Yeah, I mean I've kind of always thought of CTG as essentially a decentralized reality show And I feel like in my mind mind, I guess the future of trad TV is potentially on-chain TV, or at least on-chain reality competitions. For season one of CTG, the person that won the 40th prize was a player based in Japan, didn't speak a word of English, and essentially played every single night, overnight, and then went to his day job the next day.

And when I think about trad reality shows like Survivor, someone that doesn't speak English, someone that lives in Japan, would never be able to apply, let alone play and win, on a traditional reality television, a reality show. So I guess I think of what we're building as a decentralized reality TV. I feel like DeFi, the term, can encompass so much more than financial applications. Totally. Iz, I'm curious your take.

It's funny because also F2BB was sort of the early days were in some ways enabled by Uniswap and was a social use case that I think no one would have anticipated. So I'm curious how you think about the future of that. Yeah, I think, I feel like DeFi Summer is like, how do we make on-chain primitives or financial primitives that work? And now it's trying to find meaningful social context for these things. To me, it's more just like now we have better tools that can actually operate as coordinating mechanisms so it's it's just enabling like the thing that I just named like communities to have more control more access more parameters where they can think about collective decision-making for Treasury management for sharing a wallet, like just group decision making that's facilitated by tools that work, that feel like they're built properly, that can be trusted.

And I also think that especially like in the case of FWB, like using the TWAM, like having this way of restocking the token, it's signaling to be a long-term holder, to be a long-term community member to be a long-term community member because we are invested in the health and growth of our community. So I think that's another component of it, of just like as more communities adopt DeFi rails, like there will just be less of like a, maybe like pump and dump or sense that like things aren't really gonna last just because communities have more ways of managing their treasury and allocating funds Totally. Yeah We talked a little bit about Dylan your dream in terms of reality TV on chain When you think about what could happen with social use cases in crypto, you know five to ten years from now for each of you I'm curious. what's the dream? What's the one thing you wish you could do on-chain, or one sort of vision on-chain that you have?

Yeah, I guess, I mean, it's kind of the same idea, but basically that initial vision of HQ Trivia, which is like every traditional reality competition or game show, like there should be an equal equivalent on-chain and online that anyone can play and compete in, wherever they are, wherever they live. I always wanted to go on Survivor. I apply every year, and basically what we decided to do was just build the game that I always wanted to play. There are millions of people out there that have wanted to go on The Amazing Race or play Who Wants to Be a Millionaire or go on The Bachelor. And there should be an on-chain equivalent of each of those things for everyone.

So I guess my goal or my hope is that every Shrad reality competition format has an on-chain equivalent eventually for everyone. Do you consider that like game fire? Like, I guess it's more entertainment. I don't think so. We called it Crypto the Game mostly just to be a little polarizing and get some attention, but it's really Crypto the Game Show or Crypto the Reality Show.

I don't think it's much more of a reality competition than a mobile game or anything like that. Totally. Also, I feel like the intersection of like on-chain games and some of the AI media stuff is kind of fun. I could see a personalized like, you know, reality show being created out of on-chain actions. We did have the idea, Brian, one of my co-founders in the audience, but we did have an idea of one season having it be bots versus humans and basically like seeing which tribe would come out on top.

So soon, maybe season four, who knows? Maybe season four. Iz, what about you? What's your dream on chain? Dream on chain is hard, I think, because crypto changes so quickly.

I think trendy answer is AI-enabled DAOs, so like intelligent cultural cooperatives where AI agents are like curating DAO membership, helping communities make decisions, kind of integrating governance in a much easier way. Governance is really boring. I think AI can really help that. Non-trendy industry answers. I would love to see like crypto power like a library of Alexandria, so like something like Wikipedia or Discogs where there's a lot of institutional knowledge in a specific industry that would benefit from having longevity and immutability for like the future.

And you imagine that would be something that it's like a sort of media library that lives on chain. Yeah. Do you think for FWB that's the type of experiment you'll be running anytime soon? Perhaps. Perhaps.

Don't want to say too much, but maybe, yeah. Okay, cool. Well, one final question. We'll do it as one word. What's the thing you're most excited about right now in crypto today?

You go first. Boudin. Boudin. Yeah, I was going to say token launchers. Great.

Love it. Well, thank you both. That's it. Thanks, everyone.