Space Summary
The Twitter Space Backpack Broadcast: BET on Drift hosted by Backpack. Explore the dynamic world of crypto wallets and exchanges in the Backpack Broadcast: BET on Drift space. Discover how staying informed and engaging with expert communities like MadLads can elevate your crypto experience. Learn about innovative features, key considerations for investments, and the importance of understanding differentiation factors in crypto platforms.
For more spaces, visit the Wallet page.
Questions
Q: Why is it important to stay updated on crypto wallet and exchange innovations?
A: Keeping abreast of advancements ensures optimal usage and security benefits for users.
Q: How can engaging with expert communities like MadLads be beneficial in the crypto space?
A: Communities provide valuable insights, networking, and collaborative opportunities for crypto enthusiasts.
Q: What are key features to consider in a crypto platform for informed investment decisions?
A: Security protocols, user interface, transaction speed, and asset variety play a crucial role in choosing the right platform for investments.
Q: How do innovative features in crypto wallets enhance user experience?
A: Features like multi-asset support, advanced security measures, and intuitive interfaces elevate the usability and security of crypto wallets for users.
Highlights
Time: 00:15:29
Innovative Features in Crypto Wallets Exploring the latest advancements that enhance the functionalities of crypto wallets.
Time: 00:25:17
Expert Community Engagement Joining expert communities like MadLads for networking and knowledge sharing in the crypto field.
Time: 00:35:40
Differentiation Factors of Crypto Platforms Understanding unique features that set crypto platforms apart and their impact on user experience.
Time: 00:45:55
Optimal Investment Decision Making Insights on choosing the right crypto platform based on key factors for informed investment decisions.
Key Takeaways
- Innovative features in crypto wallets and exchanges can revolutionize user experience and security.
- Staying updated on the latest developments is crucial to maximize benefits from crypto platforms.
- Engaging with expert communities like MadLads can offer insights and networking opportunities in the crypto field.
- Understanding the differentiation factors of crypto platforms is essential for making informed investment decisions.
Behind the Mic
Introduction to the Session
Hey, guys. How's everyone doing? I'm super excited for this spaces. It's going to be a great one. So without further ado, I just wanted to kick things off. We're super excited to be talking with the two co-founders of Drift protocol today. They've been killing it for a long time. OG Solana builders, and they've continued to innovate. So, yeah, with that, maybe I'll just pass it to Cindy and Chris. Like, if you guys could just do a quick intro and do your little, like, bio or whatever you like, and then we can get more into Drift protocol and what you guys have been building recently.
Cindy's Introduction and Drift's Evolution
Yeah, I'm super excited for the spaces as well. Feels like it's going to be a nice little fireside chat. Hey, everyone, I'm Cindy. I'm one of the co-founders of Drift. Yeah, like legend says, we've been around for a pretty long time. We launched our v one back in 2021, started off as just a perp Dex and launched our v two back in late 22. Now, v two has evolved from being just a perp Dex to being a cross-collateral borrow lending machine. We're the second largest borrow land on Solana right now. And very recently, just this week, we expanded our product offering to prediction markets as well. So, yeah, we see prediction markets as the future of fine chain trading. And we're excited to talk about why it's different and why it's super important for Solana today.
Chris's Role and Excitement for Prediction Markets
Hey, guys, I'm Chris. I'm one of the technical co-founders of Drift, doing all the developer things behind the scenes. And I think Cindy did a good job summarizing our origin story. So, yeah, excited here to be here and talk about prediction markets. Amazing. Well, I think maybe just going back in time to sort of, like, provide some context for people. Drift was one of a small handful of teams that when times got tough on Solana, not only did they not leave, but they doubled down. And I think many people are sort of fans of Solana and now users and, you know, excited for what's going on here. But in the deep bear market of 2022, it was a very different picture.
The Challenges of the Bear Market
Many teams were getting sort of headhunted aggressively. They were getting offered grants to leave, they were getting offers of tokens to deploy on other networks, and people were sort of smelling blood in the water and the sharks were circling. But I think one thing you guys have done very well is remain extraordinarily consistent in your messaging. And there was a tweet you sent a while back Cindy around. The goal of drift is not to just be the best decentralized perp dex or perpetual exchange, but to really push the limits of what's possible on chain and to abstract away some of the complexities where not only crypto natives, but actual normies can get involved as well. So I guess from your perspective and as founders, how has the project changed over time? Obviously, there's been ups and downs, but today you're sitting at a pretty dominant position in the space.
Reflections on the Journey
What are some of the lessons and perspective that you've gained over the time and sort of building throughout the bear? Yeah, I can. Let me start off here. I think it definitely feels like a different era and sort of different phases. In a sense. During the bullish era, everything seems like an opportunity and, you know, staying focused in even, like, this type of market condition can be very difficult, which is why whenever we do think about launching new things, it always has to come from fitting in our bigger picture of, like you said, building on chain infrastructure and on chain trading infrastructure that's accessible to everyone. So ensuring that we don't get distracted in bull markets is sort of a big part of that as well, to make sure that we're actually continuing to build in this vision of becoming the on chain Nasdaq.
The Nature of Bear Markets
It was sort of different in the bear market because you didn't see as many opportunities that come about. So it's like a different muscle in the bear market. Needing to stay consistent even though things aren't as shiny could cause you to burn out more over time, rather than bull markets where everything's up only. So one of the hardest times that we had was actually probably in early 23, where post fTx, it was extremely difficult to attract liquidity, very difficult to. Yeah, like, we had to justify why we were. We had to exist, right? It was like, every conversation was like, why are you still in Solana? Why are you, like, bothering to even do this? So it's very different types of conversations, but maintaining a cool head across, like, these markets and staying focused despite it being a boring market or a very exciting one, and keeping a cool head throughout has probably been the thing that has kept us sane throughout this time.
Focus on Long-Term Vision
Yeah, I would just echo what Cindy said, that basically, as a startup, you need to have a thesis and you just need to be really focused on it, because ultimately you're resource constrained. So you, even though you feel like you have all these ideas, realistically, you don't have resources to go and do everything. So you really need to pick, like, this is what we believe the future is going to look like and just keep sprinting in that direction and trust that your vision is correct. So I think for us it was like, we think Solana can scale on chain and we think there should be derivatives on chain. And even if there's hiccups in the short term and other people get certain like, short term advantages by like taking shortcuts, we're just going to keep doubling down here and we'll basically grow with the on chain economy.
Product Development Insights
And I think that's worked so well. It's worked well so far. And so we just try to keep double down on that even as there's a lot of new exciting things we could theoretically chase after. Definitely. And I guess, I mean, this is all like super helpful, like background and context for the audience, but to get sort of like more into the meat and bones of the spaces, I think a lot of people are extremely excited about the new product which you guys have shipped called bet. You know, prediction markets are really on fire right now. Like, polymarket is doing a ton of volume even on other platforms. Like I can see, you know, shuffle guys in the audience, like across the board. The volumes are going crazy. And I think it's really sort of a prediction market summer.
Emerging Trends in Prediction Markets
I mean, people are really, it's breaking into the mainstream for the first time. I think many people are sort of getting a little bit skeptical of some of the figures and statistics and things that are, quote unquote, facts that are posted in the media and instead are relying on what are the bookies saying? What is Las Vegas saying? What is polymarket saying? And soon what is drift and bet saying? Because I think many people are sort of skeptical of the information around them. And at the end of the day, if people are willing to put money on the line and put money where their mouth is, it's a different level of conviction. So I guess for you guys, could you tell us a little bit more about the new predictions market and sort of what inspired this?
Inspiration for New Prediction Markets
I can imagine it's somewhat complementary, definitely to your existing business in the sense that there's makers and takers and a large amount of volume and you guys have a lot of this infra already built out and a trusted brand. But it would be great to hear more on the backstory. Yeah, a lot of the inspiration initially came from us launching pre-launch markets earlier this year, which, if you think about it, is sort of a type of prediction market in itself. The underlying asset has not yet existed and you're betting on what the future price could be when the token actually launches. So I think prelaunch markets were probably quite hyped up earlier this year, and we saw an opportunity to extend the concept to real world outcomes as well.
The Future of Trading Exchange
And we had sort of actually been talking about this before polymarket had grown so much in traction and for the us elections really caught on and really got to start working on it a couple of months ago, probably towards like the start of the summer. But a lot of the inspiration has been that we do see as a trading exchange, we care a lot about asset availability and the ability to get people to trade anything. And pre-launch markets are an example of something that are uniquely enabled by crypto and also uniquely needed in crypto. I think prediction markets are taking that next step further and giving users the ability to bet on anything from a macro outcome to a hyper-localized question that only a small group of oracles could have the right answer to.
Bridging Platforms and Strategies
But building that infrastructure within our current infrastructure and allowing our defi native mechanisms like cross-collateral yield generation and marry these two concepts together of like, we're going to allow people to create a bunch of different markets that they may have an opinion in versus not always having an opinion on where the price of crypto assets are going to go, and giving them a chance to combine these bets together. It's like you could long Trump and then short bitcoin in a, in the same cross-margin account, which is actually really cool if you think about that, because they're completely uncorrelated outcomes, or maybe they are correlated in opposite directions. But yeah, that's sort of the initial inspiration came from pre-launch and then grew into figuring out that we wanted to provide the ability to trade these assets together.
Integration of Prediction Markets into the Drift Platform
It's pretty incredible and uncharted waters in the sense that, like, until now, I think prediction markets have been treated like an isolated sort of discreet product or feature, but you guys are really bringing it into the fold of the broader, like, drift platform. And I think some of the strategies you describe, Cindy, are pretty special in the sense that you have one cross collateral margining system and then you're really able to do quite complex things in terms of hedging or even obviously speculative strategies as well. But maybe this question is for Chris. Cindy touched on a couple of the potential crossover points, but what are some of the synergies between Drift's existing trading platform and then the prediction markets?
Technical Integration of Prediction Markets
Yeah, totally. So, like, a prediction market is basically a binary option, which is basically a derivatives contract. So Drift already was a derivatives protocol. So there's a really easy, basically like extension to the existing margin system to get prediction markets to work. So in Drift, there's already this concept of like, based on your position, you need to put on a certain amount of margin to cover that position, whether you lose or win money. So to extend it to prediction markets, basically all we needed to do was account for the fact that a prediction market settles to zero or one, and then make the amount of margin that a user posts to basically cover that assumption that it goes to zero one.
Conclusion and Future Outlook
So there is, there are some small tweaks we needed to make, but fundamentally it is just a derivative. And we've built a like generalized derivative protocol. So that's basically why we'll be able to launch this really fast. There's only slight tweaks to the existing system. So definitely like years of work to build a generalized system makes it so that we can launch something like this in like a, in about, I don't know, a couple weeks or a month. So yeah, it was a long time coming, but it was pretty easy to extend our existing system to support it. That's amazing. I think, honestly, it's really interesting.
Simplifying Prediction Markets for Everyone
I mean, your guys approach is comprehensive, and people keep talking about how these products need to be simple enough for your grandma to use them. It's incredible now that my grandma can not only open a ten or 20 x leverage long on Solana, but she can also max short or bet against a presidential candidate as well, at the same time taking the margin from the long to open that bet as well. So it's incredible. When I went to Japan and visited the backpack team, they told me many grandmas in Japan are also max betting on FX, which I think is incredible. So bullish on more grandmas than defi, but high level, I think something that I think for myself and a lot of people before the spaces, I was getting a lot of questions around sort of the granularity of these prediction markets and how much is going to be self serve versus a little bit more cookie cutter.
Unified Sources and Political Debate
I know there has to be a single unified source of truth for the prediction markets and for the binary outcome to happen efficiently. But I guess right now there's a big political, obviously debate and sort of backdrop, which makes it very simple and discrete outcomes. But how granular or localized would you guys go in the future where I, anyone can sort of spin up their own prediction markets? Because I think that's extremely interesting.
Barbell Strategy for Prediction Markets
Yeah, we see it as a barbell strategy right now where we want to focus on listing the biggest, most important macro events that have a long shelf life. So, you know, fed rate cuts, who's going to win the presidential vote, which party is going to win, and then on the other side, on super hyper localized markets that are relevant to communities like within crypto, specifically within Solana in our case. So this isn't gonna, this isn't fully announced yet, but we're gonna be hosting some really interesting markets around breakpoint and potentially with NFT communities as well. But we think that's probably the best way to target a crypto native prediction markets right now.
Fun Markets and Social Engagement
It's like you go really macro one side and then you also allow for the creation of these more fun markets that may not see a lot of volume, but it sort of tells you the story of what type, what the consensus is on smaller market events. It doesn't always have to be world changing. It could just be two people arguing back and forth and maybe settling a debate on Twitter, seeing who wins in a boxing match, things like that. Yeah, maybe, Chris, I can let you talk about the permissionless side of things, too.
Iterative Development for Prediction Markets
Yeah. So, like, basically any software engineers answer, I'm going to say it's iterative. So the main focus to start was getting out these major markets because there's obviously a lot of demand for it. And then basically, once we do a good job there, we're like, still researching more how to do permissionless markets, which I think the big tricky thing there is just the oracle resolution. And how can you make it so, like, people can enter these markets and have trusted, like, trust the oracles, even though, you know, there needs to be like thousands of them.
Better Oracle Resolution and Demand
So right now we're ahead. Now that we got the initial version, now we're researching how to do better oracle resolution and how to basically make that more generalized. I think once we get that done, if the demand is there, we definitely plan to follow up with a way to list more prediction markets. Amazing. Yeah. I think specifically the Twitter beefs go crazy.
High Profile Bets and New Frontiers
There's been, at least since I've been on CT, a lot of high profile bets. Like Kobe, back when his handle was crypto. Cobain would escrow like a million dollars from one guys and then a million dollars from someone else, and then something would happen or wouldn't happen. But I think, honestly, a new sort of frontier of innovation which enables this even more seamlessly, is blinks. And I even tweeted this the day Blinks came out. I was like a prediction market.
Engagement on Social Media
Under every tweet, who's building this. And apparently it was you guys. So pretty incredible possibilities if you think about it, because people go on Twitter as a sort of collective hive mind of sort of collective consciousness and thoughts and opinions in the space, but many times, it's just like hearsay. Someone will make a claim, we'll get refuted or won't. But, you know, in a scenario where you can raise the stakes and actually, like, people can join in on a bet, live within seconds of a tweet going out, I think this is the end state of how people are going to watch games and audiences.
Driving Speculation in Daily Routines
And I sort of wrote an article about this a year ago called, like, driving speculation and daily routines. And it basically goes through a couple of case studies of, like, activities that Americans or people around the world are already doing. For example, walking around their city and introducing a new behavior loop where you have, say, for example, walk to earn, like with Stepan, or people are already watching football, like american football on a Monday night, and now you introduce draftkings or a fantasy football or a sports betting component to something that already people are already doing.
Weaving New Behaviors into Existing Activities
So I think what's most powerful about, honestly bet and what you guys are doing is you're weaving in new emergent behavior into things that people are already doing on the timeline, on drift. And I think there's huge possibility here for different things to pop off. And even if it's just a tweet from Ansem or whoever from Vitalik, the fact that someone can spin up a prediction market right underneath their tweet and people just start joining in think is pretty wild.
User Experience and Prediction Markets
Yeah, I totally agree. And I think that we're only really scratching the surface of good ux for prediction markets at the moment. Yeah, obviously, I think being on Solana user experience is a core focus for us, but if we can even abstract away the wallet element of using a blink, like fully mobile only it's embedded into, I don't know, using your Twitter account as auth and being able to tap into that immediacy of it without knowing that you're interacting with crypto at all can really change how people interact with media as a whole, even think about reality tv.
Engagement in Real-time
Everyone wants to be able to bet on these outcomes as they happen. And if you had a specialized mobile app that, you know, in the background, could be powered by bet by drifts, but, you know, just you're able to point your phone at a screen and then vote on an outcome and see what everyone around you is voting on. I think that actually looks to be closer to a social finance vision compared to, like, early friend tech, because this spans way broader than just, like, you know, how many Twitter followers are you going to get?
Unified Consensus and Social Interaction
It's sort of like, it's really, you know, unified consensus. I couldn't agree more. And I think, frankly, this is closer to, like, Gamefi and social fi than people realize, because if you actually think about it, like, people, it's going to be very hard to build distribution for, you know, completely new experiences. But if you sort of use blinks as a framework to inject sort of crypto or web three elements into existing platforms, like, for example, YouTube or even, like, TikTok, then this is a new frontier because first of all, you don't need an API key, right?
Censorship Resistance in Crypto
So they can't, like, censor you. And then second of all, just the nature of crypto and what you guys are doing at drift is also censorship resistant and sort of like, 24/7 for example, when GME and AMC popped off earlier this year with roaring Kitty and he started tweeting again, a lot of people got upset and sad because they shut down the big trading venues again. I think it was five or six of the big ones, Thinkorswim, Robinhood, were all down at the same time, but radium and drift and other main on chain sort of venues never went down.
The Nature of Crypto and Future Prospects
And I think that's like thesis of crypto. It's sort of that super long tail and 24/7 trading of everything. And I can't help but think some of these platforms, like YouTube, are really looking for something that will revitalize them. I mean, I personally have friends who have billions of views on YouTube, and they're just like, manda, the golden era was, like, 2011 till 2015 or 2014, and we're all just chasing that high, and the monetization has been nowhere near that ever since then.
Potential Use Cases for Prediction Markets
So I think, honestly, something like a Solana blink under a YouTube video that executes on bet on drift is actually sort of a killer use case. Like hiding in plain sight. Yeah. I also love that Chris is quiet because it's like, oh, my God, are we gonna build this, like, tomorrow? I get on a call with devs, and I start just, like, spinning ideas, and they're just like, please stop.
Balancing Innovation and Feasibility
For the sake of my. Of me and my family. I'm not gonna have a vacation for two years if you keep talking for. The sake of all of our devs. Basically, you just got to let the BDS go off, and then you have to be like, okay, here's. Here's how we could get there. One step at a time. Yeah, yeah. The engineering guys are just the reasonable minds in the room and actually bring people back down to reality.
Realistic Innovation Conversations
They're like, guys, let's do this first, and then maybe we can talk about that. Yeah. And we're here talking about reinventing YouTube and reality tv shows, so. Yeah, exactly. If I can't make a max bet on Love island, like, what is it? What do you want of crypto? Exactly. What do we care about permissionless money?
Asymmetric Bets on Prediction Markets
Incredible. If I can bet on, like, the contestant getting kicked out before a certain round or honestly, just the words. The funniest thing about me, for me, of the prediction markets, is, like, when people go on a show and they, like, say a specific word, and it's just some ridiculously asymmetric bet where no one thinks they're going to say it, and then they say it, and then the payoff is like, 50 x or whatever.
Drinking Games and Modern Audience Engagement
I think that's incredible. This is like drinking games with watching Netflix or a Game of Thrones watch party taken to the nth degree. And I can't help but think, like, this is honestly what also gets Gen Z and Gen Alpha excited about watching tv again. Because if you've been following the metrics, like, people, like, 25 or below are just not watching tv, like, at all.
Shifts in Viewing Habits
They're canceling their subscriptions, and they're watching most of their content on platforms like TikTok. Maybe some of them are watching some vlogs on YouTube, but to be honest, the trend is, like, overwhelmingly more short form. And, you know, they used to watch a movie, then they watch a tv show, then a mini series than, you know, a YouTube video or vlog in this sort of, like, Casey Neistat or David Dobrik era.
The Rise of Short-form Content
And now they're just watching, like, short form video with subtitles that are like, 15 2nd long on, like, TikTok or IG reels. So I think it's that fast dopamine culture, it's getting faster and faster, and it feels like you guys are building for that future.
Future Engagement Through Prediction Markets
Yeah, for sure. No, I think to ten that comment, the Gen Zs and Alphas, it's almost like congregating towards TikTok. Comments and comments is a place, like a third space for themselves, and there's really no interactive element there. Like, you can talk to the person who created the video, but can you interact with each other's opinions?
Using Prediction Markets for Truth and Interaction
If you look at the comment section of a controversial video on TikTok, let's say it typically floats to the opinion that you're already affiliated with, but you don't really get a good sense of what the majority looks like because the algorithm tweaks it in your favor. But if you can use prediction markets within TikTok comments is a very niche example as a way to actually gauge the truth. It could make you also understand that there's different perspectives outside of yours too.
Interactive Platforms and User Engagement
So yeah, I think went like really deep down this rabbit hole, but for sure. And it's also just like the PvP nature and people are very argumentative. So I think that the side bet potential here is also massive. Like sometimes people, they don't want to just be like right.
Disputes and Predictions
They want the other person to be wrong. So my next question is around sort of like some of the oracles and data streams that can be used to settle some of these prediction markets. This is something that a couple other competitors have sort of like struggled with, where people sort of question some of the source of truth and the mechanism by which these bets can be settled. And sort of like, you can arrive at a source of truth if it can be like manipulated with governance or other mechanisms in a DAO, it's not great. So I guess, how are you guys approaching the Oracle and data stream side of this?
Oracle Framework and Research
I think currently the plan is to use similarly like Dow Alexa Security Council that decides on the outcomes. So that's kind of v one for prediction market resolution. But now we're just actively looking into researching how that can be generalized. So one thing that's come up is there a way to build an av's to do it such that you can inherit some economic security behind it? So that's still super early and kind of buzzwordy, but Cheeto teams reached out to us about that. Another thing that we potentially look into is using tes to basically pull data from the Internet to settle them. So we've used switchboard tes before for our drift draw sweepstakes to pull on random numbers. So you can similarly use te to pull data from the Internet. So those are like both on our basically research list, and we're hoping to basically have moved off the Security Council being the resolution by the time the election ends for the major markets, and then that also feed into like future basically like more scalable oracle resolution.
Technical Solutions and Ecosystem
That's incredible. I mean, those are some really like elegant technical solutions. I hadn't thought about the restaking business. That's pretty cool. I mean, judo has been pushing the boundary there and recently published their like standard. I think this is like, perhaps an ideal candidate as a sort of like an early use case. It's pretty cool. I hadn't thought of that. So I guess, like, my next question is around right now on Solana, you have essentially people are seeing the symptoms of like, a successful integrated approach. I mean, I think at this point, a lot of people were doubting the sort of integrated approach to building an ecosystem and a blockchain, but with sort of Ethereum's fragmentation and sort of the layer one block space being used for layer twos and sort of like, as a Da layer and for settlement, a lot of people are sort of questioning what that means long term for the ecosystem versus Solana, where there's a lot of concentrated liquidity and user base and a lot of new wallets have been bridging over and sort of been funding with fresh soul to ape into.
Bet Protocol and API Potential
Sort of like the meme coin casino and other different farms and airdrops and stuff. So how do you guys think about bet? Putting the front end aside, how do you guys think about bet, the protocol, the API that ties into different Solana programs? And where are you guys seeing some sort of potential there for this to be an API where many other platforms or applications on Solana are sort of tying into your guys data feeds or your prediction markets themselves? This is probably best for Chris to answer, but I think it's. I mean, overall, it's pretty similar to how we're seeing drift grow as an ecosystem as well. I guess my BD answer is that we see drift ultimately living on Solana as a layer where different protocols can integrate with parts of our stack.
Ecosystem Integration and Opportunities
One example with borrowlen is Lulu, that integrates our Borrowlen system and has a product built on top of it. We see the same thing happening for bet as well. If someone wants to build a 100% mobile extension to bet using our smart contracts, which are open source, we will welcome that in a heartbeat. So, yeah, I think it's. We definitely, from day one, have always echoed composability of being an integrator on a single chain, sharing and liquidity. I would say drift is sort of like a mini version of that integration, since everything, prediction, perks, landing, it's all in one smart contract. But yeah.
Future Integration Developments
Chris, do you have any thoughts on this? Yeah, I think the. I think the immediate term integrations look similar to the ones that exist. So I think we could see people spinning up vaults to run market makers and letting people more passively provide liquidity into these prediction markets. And there's obviously the stuff that Cindy brought up around just enabling, like, different parts of the ecosystem to interact with each other. So listing tokens from across the Solana economy, letting people use those to make prediction market bets. And then also just like, even what we're doing with breakpoint, of enabling, like, the ecosystem to bet on ecosystem related events, I think is pretty cool. And then definitely our plan long term is we want drift to be the.
Core Derivative Primitive
Basically the core primitive derivative. Primitive for, like, the Solana economy. So I think that's where the permissionless prediction markets get interesting, where basically anyone in their own little world can use drift to spin up prediction markets related to their business or their Dapp. So we already have some people reaching out to us to see if, like, we can provide that service. I think that's something we're going to build towards in the future. Very cool. I think Solana has really excelled at building out the left curve and the right curve sort of meme in real life.
Emerging Trends and Challenges
I mean, I think at breakpoint this year, there's going to be less panels or no talks, more just debates, and there's going to be left curve debates, and there's going to be right curve debates, which I think is incredible. But I think as sort of part of that, do you guys see, I mean, obviously there's a huge amount of a very prolific, speculative layer on Solana, with $10 billion of meme coins traded every week, a ton of new wallets, people coming over with as little as $15 and trying to hit the big time. And then there's the other side of the guys, you know, right? Curve devs, like you guys who are totally building for a future, like n state derivatives on chain, which is obviously a huge market, and then deep in.
Social Layer Evolution
And a couple other categories that I think are really, like, booming on Solana. So I guess, how do you guys see, I guess, the social layer of Solana evolving? I mean, it's had a couple iterations. First it was nfts, now it's meme coins. Do you guys view this sort of like 24/7 prediction markets on chain for everything? Do you see this as something that normies will engage in the future? Or do you think this is going to be more for crypto natives in this sort of short to medium term? I think in the terminal states of prediction markets, maybe to compare it with what you said about meme coins.
Meme Coins vs. Prediction Markets
Meme coins are sort of just like unbounded prediction markets, where maybe the bet is on how much attention is the meme going to continue to get. Whereas prediction markets actually have a finalized way of telling the truth or settlement. So, yeah, if you take that as an extension of meme coins, it's like, are you able to settle like the outcome of a meme coin? And if you have like robust oracle infrastructure around this, you could be able to support it for in a truly permissionless setting, you could be able to support this for any type of permissionless and merchant behavior. So I think whilst at this moment we're traveling with using permissionless market for much larger debates, we do see it potentially being a part of what you would consider like, social fabric.
Financializing Outcomes
By financializing these outcomes and allowing them to be traded as easily as meme coins are able to. I think you could see and maybe be surprised by the type of behavior that we can't even be able to comprehend yet because no one really expected a boom of meme coins earlier this year either. So, yeah, I definitely, I think there's a lot of emergent behavior that gets sort of discovered, like similar to how sort of when the iPhone came out, people suddenly had a GPS sensor and they had a camera on their device, and then you could enable like Uber or Google Maps with the GPS and then Instagram with the camera, right?
Emerging Meta and Community Fun
And the camera roll. And I think in a very similar vein, like, you guys are sort of experimenting here, but I think it's going to result in a new meta. I'm almost positive of that, because if you look at the meme coin space right now, it's a little bit tired. There's a lot of sort of buyer exhaustion and there's an oversupply of projects. People are sort of still aping into these meme coins with huge survivorship bias. It's kind of like a lottery someone has to win, but it doesn't mean it's going to be you. So there's also the issue of the dev and the bundle and how they launch and how much supply and hidden supply that can come onto the market.
Positive Expectations
And then if the developer ultimately decides they want to sort of rug it or stop working on it, then the project is over. So I think in some sense, something like bet on drift is actually like a much more positive ev, like play for retail at this point in time relative to just like your nth pump fun project, which is most likely not even going to graduate to radium. So I think a new meta is sort of badly needed. People are still having a lot of fun, which I'm super bullish on. Bullish on fun? Bullish on people making money. But ultimately, I think as a community.
Awareness and Experimentation in Community
We need to have the awareness to sort of realize when something is not working and sort of like, stop trying the same thing and expecting different results. So I'm bullish on different approach, different results. And I think it's something also that backpack has done very well. They've taken a different line to community, they've taken a different line to even just their company, the fact that they're based in Japan, etcetera. And I think bullish on people that experiment and try different things.
Market Observation and Distribution
Yeah, for sure. There's a lot that we're figuring out as well as we roll out prediction markets. So I'm also very happy to see what kind of crazy suggestions and ideas that you have and anyone in the. Audience as well, for sure. I think one big aspect is the distribution of how these prediction markets actually can get traded on and how high velocity that can be. Because something like bonk, sorry, bonkbot, as well as bonk itself, those were two, like, the two main catalysts in some sense, for the meme coin craze was like, basically Bonk provided the pilot and the framework for what a successful Solana meme coin looks like.
Success Factors of Bonk
And then they had a good distribution. They put the tokens into hands of people who deeply cared about the network, including developers and OG NFT holders, and folks that were not tourists, but residents in the Solana ecosystem. I think similarly, Bonkbot has really built out the channels where people had that fast twitch, low latency trading, and it enabled people to really get involved in a way that was much more seamless. So I would be curious to hear from you guys before we open it up for questions. The product is live. There's already a bunch of volume and open interest.
Upcoming Opportunities
I was actually really surprised how quickly the numbers have gone up on drift. Things are popping off already. But how do you guys add even more fuel to the fire and really get this into the hands of a million people, or 2 million people?
Traction and Liquidity
Yeah, I think the past year of traction has been pretty surprising in a good way for us to see as well. Liquidity has been a big boon on that front. I think being integrated with drift systems has helped a lot there. A lot of the market makers that are already trading perps naturally can trade prediction markets in the same vein, we don't need to incentivize liquidity in the same way that other prediction markets might need to think at the moment. Our liquidity already is on par for the two largest markets, Trump and Kamala, with largest prediction market. So that's been really great to see in terms of the big question of how we're going to scale this to millions of users. Obviously, that's the age old question.
Approaches to Scaling
I think the right approach is definitely one that enables network effects and enables virality and, yeah, similar to how blinks came about, experiments like that draw, enable user participation and user owned outcomes is probably going to be what moves the needle. This could look like a fully mobile first approach that abstracts away everything crypto or integrated, like directly within social apps that people are already using. Yeah. Any thoughts there, Chris?
Building and Growth Strategies
Well, my job is just to build the thing, so you have to figure out how to get it in everybody's hands. But I think we. Incredible. I thought were a team. Incredible. No, it is, it is good, though. I mean, like, honestly, I find organizations that are highly performing, like drift, that have a clear distinction between like, the folks building and the folks like coming up with crazy ideas and trying to like, jumpstart the growth. It works really well because when folks are trying to do both, I feel like nothing gets done. but when you have like a gigachad dev and then like a, you know, evil mastermind BD person, that's just a match made in heaven.
Engaging the Audience
So at this point we're going to open it up for questions from the audience. If anyone has a question, please just request to speak. Please keep it on topic. Don't shell random bags or your projects. I will remove you off the stage if you don't behave. So our first speaker here is calm. Cool. Zen, can you hear us? Yeah, I can hear you guys. Thank you for bringing me up. Cool. So do you have a question or a comment for the speakers?
Feedback from New Users
I do have some questions. I just discovered drift in the last few hours, basically in the last day. I recently discovered it. I am on the website right now. I see two markets. My main question is when and how often will new markets come up? And also I just want to say that one of my favorite things on polymarket is the leaderboard and the ranks. So I'm wondering when that would be added to the website, if ever.
Future Market Development
Yep. On our markets, we're hoping to roll them out super quickly. We actually have one coming out there today. No leaks yet on what that's going to be. Maybe you can have a prediction market and what the next market is going to be. But yeah, you should see markets being listed in pretty quick succession over the next couple of weeks. As for the leaderboard, we did have a leaderboard for perps trading. We didn't I don't think we have this integrated for perks yet, so that's probably a better question for a little perp, but that is a really cool suggestion.
Community Engagement
Yeah, I think we usually just try to orient based on user feedback so there's enough people that want leaderboards for prediction markets. I think we can definitely build that out. So we're going to have to get some meta prediction markets going and betting if a new prediction market will be added. So we can put some pressure on the team here. So if anyone wants to, you know, take one side of that, maybe in some reasonable size of like 10 million or more, this can apply some pressure to Chris and Cindy here.
Community Poll Models
I would be happy to escrow that as a neutral participant. Amazing. So I guess, honestly, something I've also learned from being like a gamer my whole life. I think I'm really bullish on like the community poll model. Like for example, I played more hours of Runescape than I'd care to admit. And something they've done really well in that game is they have a new version of the game that came out in like 2014 called old School Runescape and it's basically the original source code. And whenever there's a change to the game mechanics or balances or anything like that, they pull it.
Implementing User Feedback
And if it's 50% or more of the community that wants something, then it gets put into the game, and if not it gets rejected. And then if it's a very contentious change where it's potentially game breaking or very different journey for players, then they make a super majority and it's a 75% approval required. And I think those constant polls are not used enough by crypto builders because it really gets super quick real time feedback. A simple question on Twitter or whatever can be like, hey, would you guys be interested in this market?
Feedback for Innovation
And it also provides the inspiration for discussion and people will have other ideas that be like, no, I'm not interested in that, but how about this? And it could be a genius idea. So it's something I think that I've brought up with a couple of founders, but I think some sort of open system where people can just suggest a poll and make it actionable and obviously realistic. There has to be a source of truth always. But if that's the case, I think this is something that could sort of crowdsource a lot of ideas.
Driving Market Engagement
And ultimately the platforms with the best markets and the funniest and the most engaging prediction markets I think will win. Because when someone sees a really funny or cool prediction market that they think they have, you know, they would have a fun time participating in or they could, you know, have a good outcome. I think this is what drives a lot of the volume and this is where I think you guys can get creative, being, you know, a team that ships really fast and also has like a strong community of DJ's around you already.
Closing and Appreciation
Did you just ask and answer your own question? Pretty much, yeah. Sorry. I do that sometimes. It's kind of like out of pocket. But, anyways, I was trying to, okay, yeah, I was trying to get, someone else on stage, but, yeah, so we've been chatting for a while now. We've got about five minutes left. I think at this point, Chris or Cindy, if you want to like, basically give any other information about a new release or give people a sense of how to get involved in bet or just the broader drift platform, this would be a good time to do it.
Platform Features Overview
Yep. I'm going to answer my question as well. But yeah, I think I drift. For those who are discovering drift for the first time, you can use any asset to trade prediction markets and perks in the same platform while earning yield as well. So if you have USDC, you can earn, I think it's like 10% right now versus 0% on polymarket, which is amazing because if you lose money on your bets, at least you're making money somewhere else. You can also use Sol any LST if you don't want to sell your position. So you're super bullish.
Excitement for Future Developments
So, yeah, those are my favorite features of the platform. I find myself feeling, oh, these are crazy features that I haven't even fully appreciated until I use the platform as a user myself. So, yeah, I'm very excited that this is launching sort of feels like a very crucial piece of the integrated Dex puzzle. So, yeah, if you haven't tried it out yet, please do and give us some feedback. Yeah, and I think to any of the developers who might be listening, if you want to join the discord and ask questions or make recommendations on what we should change or make better.
Encouragement for Developer Engagement
Yeah, we really love when people basically get into the drift developer ecosystem. So, yeah, that would be my ass since Cindy already covered the user side. All right, well, guys, at the risk of getting roasted again by Cindy, I'm gonna close this one out, but it's been a great chat. I think this is a really cool product, guys. Actually, you just shipped it. And major kudos for just like, shipping first, announcing later, and continuing to push the boundary on Solana.
Conclusion and Thanks
We need more teams like this that just do stuff and make it happen. So I've got a lot of respect for you guys and what you're doing, and I think this is going to push the ball forward in a pretty meaningful way. And this is how a new meta starts. Thank you so much for having us today. This is super fun. And, yeah, please don't ever stop asking questions and answering them. It was really funny, but yeah, thanks, everyone for joining us today. This is great.
