HandyCon 2025 | Day 3 - ALT: Attention Liquidity and Tech - YouTube

Transcript:
(00:00) [Music] hey good to see everybody good to see Mike and thank you for hosting another great year of cyon and I've been of lurking lurking lurking on at this event and I see a lot of new names in the participants so that's really good to see so today I know just I guess there's yeah I guess starting with a little bit of background about myself we part of kind of the founding team that launched handshake in 2020 we started working on this project 2018 or so um but prior to that you were I'm doing a lot of things
(00:40) working in building different projects in the Bitcoin space starting something around like 2012 2013 or so and yeah we started working on handshake in 2018 by now I mean we're in 2025 I my role here is just as a community member as somebody who's a fan of the project and and as you guys know we don't have like a foundation or a centralized entity or anything so yeah just wanted to kind of show up and share a few thoughts and yeah one of those is I thanks to the help of Nathan Woodburn I I wanted to kind of give you guys or a
(01:16) quick uh preview of a Blog that I've been writing i' I've been wanting to write a blog for a long time but I didn't want to use something like substack or or kind of anything medium or any of the centralized platforms and so Nathan Woodburn kind of helped start a blog um you guys can go check it out on is A.
(01:39) G so theg is a tldd that I bought pretty early on when it when it came available and and then the blogs hosted on A.G what's kind of unique about that blog about the blog um you know there's basically three sections of it so there is an I can TLD that I bought that that Associates with it but but I won't unveil it now so that you guys can just kind of use come check out on the handshake domain exclusively but it will be available to see kind of on the public web and or the Ian web I guess and and then there's a section of the
(02:10) blog that is just available if you have a handshake resolver so you need a handshake resolver to see some of the content that's that's on there and then there's a another section so one that solvable on Ian two sections that are resolvable only if you have a handshake resolver and then three the third section is just kind of more personal stuff I live off grid and like things that not everyone might be interested in you you you can purchase A.
(02:40) G subdomain to be able to see it but more than just chilling my blog or anything the idea just generally behind it is um just kind of like show how a more kind of decentralized censorship resistant blog could be developed and written as well as kind of showing ways that you can kind of I guess gate it through like a subscript subscrip subscription me method and and similar to kind of like how substack works right so on substack there's a public section where anybody can read your blog and then there's the paid group section and so we kind of
(03:14) like mimicking those kinds of ideas on um on the blog so yeah please check it out and if you want to build a Blog a similar type of blog we do intend on productizing at some point but just hit up Nathan Woodburn and he'd be happy to kind of set things up for you guys um so yeah and um yeah on the blog there's more more information just random thoughts that I have that are maybe like too long or too too weird or different to post on on on X or something more public so yeah so so that's that alot. g
(03:46) check it out and and then and then the other yeah I mean I guess going on to kind of like the main conversation that I want to talk talk a little bit about and and yeah please feel free I'm reading chat right now um so if you have any question feel free to just type it in chat and want to make this staging I saw sh shadow man posted should use some handshake and yeah I mean I think Kate right now is using X and Rumble primarily and but it could be something cool for him to do and and but yeah so get getting to my kind of main convers
(04:16) main the topic that I had kind of been thinking about which is alt um attention liquidity technology and and the order behind that is kind of important so you know I've been kind of thinking what would what make makes a blockchain kind of widely blockchain like a new chain or ecosystem widely adopted right and and and when I first started when I first started getting into Bitcoin I mean primarily we got into we got into this space kind of driven by both the technology and the IDE ideology behind it and and I think that's how all of
(04:55) like crypto kind of kicked off right like people that got into Bitcoin early I mean we weren't really we didn't really anticipate Bitcoin to gain as much value as it had and uh and just found the technology interesting it was peer-to-peer it was permissionless it was decentralized and on the value side of things you if you've ever thought about kind of the problems with Central Banking and fiat currency it provided a really cool like digital alternative to it and and initially a lot of computer scientists and a lot of people just just
(05:24) in the tech ecosystem like really really adopted and engaged Bitcoin really early on and and so I mean I so so if you kind of think about like how crypto was adopted starting with like Bitcoin and perhaps even ethereum and Cosmos and these types of ecosystems um there was a lot of attention kind of followed technology so technology came first attention came afterwards and eventually liquidity followed so tal like technology attention and liquidity but if you kind of see what's happening in the ecosystem now I crypto's gotten more
(05:55) more developed um and know it really feels like you know the attention piece is is the piece that you kind of have to capture first right so it's like so so so the topic so title of this talk really was about starting with attention and then liquidity and and and then and then technology kind of became like a tertiary aspect um of of needing of techn like why people start start using this stuff as opposed to the other way around and I think if we still lived in a tal type of like technology first kind of ecos systm and if that were all true
(06:29) I mean definitely you know like handshake would be somewhere definitely among the top 10 maybe even the top five type cryptocurrency networks out there but I think one of the but areas I think the community could try to like work on and try to figure out is kind of reversing that the technolog is really there and and I I I I think attention follows liquidity and even if you look at the handshake kind of price chart or options chart or or any any any kind of like metric you want to point at whether it's name registrations or Price or
(07:00) volume on exchanges I really like the the liquidity really followed and the price appreciation and things like that really followed followed attention right so there were certain events early on in in in in handshake Network launch followed by like name cheap acquisition of name base and things like that where you really saw liquidity and and price and these types of things adoption really follow um as oppos lately and and so you know mean I mean as I've been kind of thinking about like what what what what could be
(07:33) priorities for for handshake as an ecosystem to kind of like consider um you know like attention comes first uh attention seems kind of like as as as kind of like maybe one of the main things and and yeah and then I think I'm on a panel later today related to kind of like the future of handshake governance and these types of things and and and I really think attention could be like one of those places where um where we kind of consider but yeah mean so just to kind of open things up for everybody else is is this the first
(08:02) handy con for anybody kind of for anybody in the audience today or in the chat today or is it their second or third um and actually how many handic cons have there been I I think this is maybe the fourth or fifth one um yeah so the for the for the people where it was their yeah so people are saying this is the fifth one and and so that's really cool and yeah shout outs to Ann and Michael and Michael for keeping this going and throwing event I think it's um it's one of the kind of Premier Events for handshake every year and but yeah
(08:36) for the people who who this is their first I think I saw one person on here that said it was their first um yeah Helga Helga and B on um yeah how did you guys find out about handshake and when did you guys when did you guys hear about it where did you where did you kind of like find out about handshake I'm just kind of personally curious a Twitter post from nft people okay that's pretty cool yeah I mean do think nft um yeah I mean you know all all domains even all these all these T tlds are essentially essentially kind of nfts and
(09:08) so yeah I do think there's a huge intersection with nfts and yeah okay bason on says he's been around for a while and this is the first time or he's been I guess schedule coinciding with this event telegram group helps a lot okay named Jeep that's pretty cool okay and bought an UD domain first yeah I me I I do think UD overall like UD may be like a good example I think they've been decent when it comes to you know generating attention I yeah I I think kind of some of the some of the issues
(09:41) are the tech part of things are a little bit weak or maybe it's just the design of how how they how they created it but yeah I I do see a lot of people that get into handshake after um after like seeing something about UD first and yeah and I guess like one of the things that handshake Community could do better is is getting like the same level of attention or or as UD does or figuring out how they're getting attention and kind of mimicking those types of things yeah same UD for publicity yeah I do see
(10:10) a lot of people getting getting into handshake with UD first yeah so that may be that may be strategically like something to consider converting converting yeah all the pissed off UD UD users UD buyers and and telling them there's a actually a more decentralized censorship resistant kind of alternative to this for sure well cool yeah I mean is do you guys have any kind of General any other questions I I I didn't have much of presentation to kind of I didn't have like a whole presentation or anything or too many updates on my side
(10:41) of things this year um you know we'd love to just kind of um be present and and see if you guys have any questions um where are the other Founders I mean yeah they're they're they're around they're kind of working a lot of them are working on on on warp know I'm helping them work on warp as well which is kind of like a a decentralized exchange that has a I guess the key difference again compared to other decentralized exchanges is um yes is is that there's a limit order book on the
(11:12) on the exchange on the thesis behind warp really is that um is like yeah decentralized exchanges I think are like one of the coolest use cases built on smart smart contract platforms overall and it's something Bitcoin like doesn't have if there's any kind of case that you could make for any ethereum salana Cosmos any of these other smart contract platforms is that they can't they can do permissionless exchanges with between all these crypto assets and but they rely on this kind of mechanism called
(11:46) amm automated Market maker um and and that mechanism basically is what of a hacky mechanism to provide this type of capability requires people to add liquidity to these amm pools and and I mean there's a lot of inefficiency there first you tie up a lot of capital to add these liquidity but two um when you start thinking about the incentives for people to add liquidity to these amm pools it it seems there's like impermanent loss and there's kind of issues related to doing that and yeah I mean there's a reason you don't see this
(12:18) in traditional markets right when you when you basically uh you know when you basically uh you don't see like when you have to when you want to trade apple on NASDAQ you don't see people having the like deposit a million dollars in uscc and a million dollars in Apple stock in order to trade it they just they just have an order book and and yeah I mean I think I think know the more you look into like how amm work there are like lots of little like issues with that and and not just on the efficiency front but
(12:46) like in the ways that work so warp is an idea to kind of build onchain limit order books on these smart contract platforms um we also have some bridging ideas so that you could Bridge like nonm token assets such as like Bitcoin or handshake onto it and in in a decentralized way and and so yeah I mean it's it's it's a it's a pretty tough CS problem it's it's a big technical kind of problem that that we're trying to solve on on warp but yeah I mean that's kind of how it is yeah Mario asked a
(13:16) question related to why are most Founders and Seed investors So Silent about handshake um so on the founder side of things and again I can't speak for everybody I can't speak for all the founders related on the project but in general like our idea for launching handshake was very much mimicking kind of the just basically following the footsteps um of Satoshi and the way he launched Bitcoin um you don't see Satoshi Satoshi wasn't active for too many years past maybe like a few like maybe like a year or something after
(13:52) Bitcoin launched and mostly just on on forums or via email and or mailing post and email and and we wanted to do something kind of similar right whenever you do have Founders that stick around they become kind of like a centralized point for attention and that can be good or bad it's a double-edged sword one Founders do like gravitate more attention to themselves when they talk about a project and and and so they can kind of direct and harness that that attention and energy into different places and and kind of furthering the
(14:24) furthering the network the way like balic does for example with with ethereum um but on the flip side of things becomes like a centralized point right and and then what happens if the founder doesn't want to do that anymore when and the ecosystems kind of dependent on it or gets hit by a boss or lots of different like situations like that and so you know the way we designed and thought about like kind of launching handshake was that it would be like way more in this in the foot following the footsteps of of Satoshi rather than
(14:52) rather than like a lot of these more more modern kind of platforms and and and and then the other part of it is you know a lot of these um like a if you look at like vitalic he has this like really long road map that he's trying to still execute um you know even like 11 years after they launched or 11 years after they did the Ico um whereas whereas we we shipped handshake basically feature complete right we didn't build the apps or like anything like that on top but you know in terms of like you know everything related to
(15:20) like purchasing a TLD in terms of like DNS imple implementation the proof of work like every every aspect of what we've kind of described that we would ship on handshake we we've done and so there was really no need for us to kind of like stick around and continue doing something you know what like basically our job was kind of complete which is also like more in the style of like Satoshi than than anything else yeah and then yeah that do asked to other Founders I think I've addressed any anything else price
(15:51) predictions no I don't have any price predictions yeah I mean like JJ popped up the last JJ came by I think the last few years I me I I think I think he's just heads down working on working on things right now but but well yeah anyway thanks you guys so much for for being part of this Alex yeah no it's a pleasure Andrew we're gonna we're gonna be chatting a little bit more later today this is It's always awesome to hang out with you and get get your insights please we'll we'll see
(16:21) Andrew bit in a little bit so we can always ask a few more questions but I think if we want to stay on schedule for the time being we are going to have [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] he [Music] this event wouldn't be possible without our amazing sponsors our bronze sponsors dweb Foundation dox our community sponsors handshake Australia name base de centralizers hnsm Market thank you for your support in
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