Web3 Is Heating Up!

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USC Leading the Way

👋 Welcome back Vibers!

🧑‍💻 The entire Web3 Space is blasting off — both cryptocurrency prices as well as the blockchain technology adoption and products that are being released. Today we’ll be focusing primarily on the latter.

🤓 In this edition of “What’s The Vibe?”, we’ll be covering some of the knowledge we picked up by attending the “SC Blockchain Conference” in March; hearing directly from industry leaders, academic scholars, and serious builders. Time to get into it.

🚀 Let’s Grow!

Pioneering the Next Generation of Technology

⛓️ The University of Southern California has been home to important digital innovations, many of which make up what we know as the internet today. Now, it is opening the doors to blockchain; even going as far as including a Blockchain Minor program. Their USC Blockchain Club has grown significantly over the last couple years and now has partnerships with major venture capitalists like VanEck and a16z (Andreessen Horowitz).

☕️ The two day conference was insanely packed with lectures and panels from folks that would make any tech enthusiast jump out of their skin. Chris Dixon (2023 VC of the Year), Anatoly Yakovenko (Solana Co-Founder), and Emad Mostaque (Former Stability AI CEO) just to name a few.

🧐 The first talk was with Emad, who explained the importance of making AI accessible to everyone and how it will level the playing field in underprivileged parts of the world. The talk was hosted by prominent podcaster and Trojan alum, Tom Bilyeu of Impact Theory. Tom asked all sorts of questions about the intersection of AI and Blockchain and its potential impact to take over the world. Emad explained that blockchain is a fantastic way to mitigate AI and establish authenticity of a source. He continued with a hot take saying that human coding will be irrelevant in 3 years and that any computer scientist majors should shift to studying systems building. Certainly not what some of those near graduating in the room wanted to hear! Emad ended by saying that he is actively working with major governments around the world to help with policy, education, and activations. Shortly after this conference, Emad resigned at Stability AI to focus full time on ensuring the technology is accessible to all.

🏆️ Next talk was Anatoly Yakovenko, aka Toly. Toly spoke about how he started out at Qualcomm and would bike to work and back home to code with his roommates in Solana Beach, California (yes this is where the name for the Solana Blockchain comes from). He talked about the importance of taking risks and building technology that you own and control. This was in reference to asking why he built his own Blockchain rather than building on top of the popular Ethereum. He said he wasn’t expecting it to take off in the way that it did, but knew that they were building a niche for a specific type of developer and that they focused on that culture. Solana now has more transactions daily than any other blockchain in the world — 3x more than the 2nd place Wax and nearly 80x Ethereum. Fun fact, Toly ended up hiring his boss at Qualcomm to work for him after Solana took off. Cool story bro.

👀 There were other great talks on Day 1 such as Brian Brooks who served as Acting Comptroller of the Currency in the last presidential administration. He was single handedly responsible for much of the policy and regulations surrounding U.S. cryptocurrency adoption. For example, he allowed banks to hold the reserves to back stablecoins. This acceptance of stablecoins encouraged trust in a decentralized global system that is still backed by the US Dollar; allowing for international commerce through cryptocurrency with the safety of the FDIC. Brooks then stated “if you don’t have at least 15% of your networth in Bitcoin, you must not be paying attention to how inflation is moving.” Certainly, this made that particular audience happy to hear. He also went on to quantify the value of regulatory clarity. Stating specific instances where policies he put in place were announced and within hours $450million of value was moved into Bitcoin.

📌 The highlight for Day 1 was Chris Dixon. Chris recently appeared on CNBC and famously discussed the impact that blockchain will have on many industries. His recent book “Read, Write, Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet” is a fascinating breakdown of the internet age — its history, the present issues, and where we will be going. Dixon has been a successful investor during the digital era by bringing necessary products to consumers such as EBay or SiteAdvisor antivirus software. Now, he and his firm a16z are all-in on future innovations for internet products. They are currently managing $35 BILLION and Dixon stated that around 50% of their investments are still developing their products. His ethos was that good tech takes time and that it’s more about the right founders than anything else, even going as far to explain that they will often fund a team two or three times even if their ventures have failed. A notable quote from this lecture was Chris saying “the pendulum has swing too far in the AI hype, and more people should really be focused on blockchain solutions.” We put Dixon’s “Read, Write, Own” in the MUST READ category if you are at all interested in the future of the internet.

⚡️ Day 2 was much more technical but had some fantastic speakers worth mentioning. Speakers included Tarun Chitra of Gauntlet, a market simulation program that reads public on-chain data and can help projects predict outcomes for changing interest rates or fees. Pretty nifty. We also heard from John Nahas, Senior Vice President of Ava Labs (Avalanche Blockchain), about the work they’re doing across many verticals. They’ve provided infrastructure for Amazon Web Service marketplaces, become a hub for Gaming projects to build their ecosystems, and even helped JP Morgan and other large banks create private subnet blockchains for moving and tracking funds. Another honorable mention was James Ho, head of ventures for Animoca who manages $1.5B in investments of over 400 Web3 Projects. A couple of these we’ve mentioned in the past in our newsletters — Dapper Labs, the Flow Blockchain, and even our partner DanceFight!

⌛️ Although everything seems to be heating up, there was one sentiment across the board that every one of these expert shared… “we are early.”

Tre Rail’s Word of the Week

12 Letters: -ec-n-ra--z-
Definition - spread the power and control

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