We do this, not because it is easy, but because we saw it with easy.
Welcome to the show, hashing it out.
Shane from XMTP.
I wanted to try and bring you on to learn more about what XMTP is trying to do, so why
don't you do the normal thing, give us an introduction, kind of, before you come from
what XMTP is and we'll dive into it.
For sure, thanks for having me, it's good to see you guys.
I like this vibe and this basement we're in, it's incredible.
XMTP is a secure messaging protocol for Web3, and so our goal is to allow any walled
address in the world to be able to communicate with any other walled address, and we've
been working on it a little over like two years.
Me personally, I've been in messaging my whole career, and so I was back in the early
days.
When I was like 13 years old, I was on eBay selling baseball bats, because I was a baseball
player, and I realized that from 10 to 12 to 13, you go through three different bats and
your mom buys you three different bats with a different weight limit every year, and
I didn't want the old bat, put it on eBay, sold for $150, charged with people, $60 shipping
and handling, it's like robbery, and all my friends, mom's bought them bats, no one
wanted the old bat, so I started selling them, but really, the ability to connect with strangers,
meet people, sell things, and it all led to just communication, kind of was one of those
just early curiosities I had, and so from that to college, I started building away for
Facebook photos to show up on top of email back in 2005, and so I was trying to make
email more human or more social, and back then it was creepy as fuck.
Like people like, why are you connecting my Facebook and my LinkedIn and my email, these
are different worlds, these are different lives, offline and online haven't really happened
yet, you didn't really meet people online that you knew offline, like that kind of didn't
exist.
College was a little different when I saw Facebook, I was like, I know all these people,
but over time that led to a company called GIST.com, which was the first social CRM to ever
take like social data and map it to emails, and we grew to about 100 million people in
under two years, and in 2010, BlackBerry bought us, and I worked on BBM.
And really when I saw BlackBerry messenger, that was the light bulb for me, that really
you kind of felt like the future, I was like, this is how the future should work, this
is how people should interact, this is how branch should interact, you know, the double
check mark that you could see, someone read it in a BBM pin code, and then your status
was BBM, and that's why you bought phones, and I realized how much value people put
on like the status of having a BlackBerry messenger pin code.
And since that day, I think messaging has kind of become something that people really
identify with, and it drives their behavior, you know, as much as the blue level cell
is iPhones, I think back then it was BBM.
And so I worked on messaging for the next 10 years, and still working on messaging.
Awesome.
So knowing all that, and dealing with the environment of crypto, and the pseudonym, the anonymity,
how difficult has it been to kind of get some of those same, that same excitement that
you just mentioned, you know, the double check, the blue check, those are things that drive
people to these different software, believe it or not.
So how difficult has it been to emulate some of those vibes with crypto?
I actually feel like maybe I walked in a little late, you guys have been here a lot longer
than I have.
My co-founders kind of really OG crypto, you'd say, bit around since the beginning of both
Bitcoin and Ethereum.
And I was working on a company for 10 years doing messaging on SMS, Messenger, WhatsApp,
et cetera.
And I think what's interesting to me is, you know, it all started when this guy named Robert
Leschner from Compound.
He was like, hey, I have $11 billion in a smart contract.
I have 11,000 people who own it.
And I know everyone's a dress, but I can't talk to 95% of them.
And he's like, why can't I send an email or an encrypted message to these people?
And that was in like 2020.
And so when I really started thinking about it, I was like, is the wall to dress a new
identity?
Could it be the new email address or phone number?
And then the more I got into the space, and the more I listened to my co-founder, Matt,
he's like, the identity movement is happening.
And so I actually think what's been cool is the wave is actually riding with us.
And identity in the way it's talked about, I think, is going to be a little different.
Which is what's interesting about owning your identity versus renting your identity.
You rented it from Instagram.
You rented it from Facebook.
You rented it from Twitter.
Which is owning it is actually the opportunity for everyone to own any brand style they want
as their identity.
And use that is the double check mark of this world.
So because I can actually have any identity resolved to a messaging app, not I have to
use an Instagram handle on Instagram DMs.
My dot crypto address or my dot EMS address or my dot poly dot address or my dot swish address
because I want to associate with Nike.
As all this movement of everyone going after identity, I actually feel like it's not one
identity wins out in the future.
It's that everyone has their unique identity and the affinity to that.
And because you can own it and they're interoperable and it works in a composable way, everyone's
going to have all these different identities, but they're going to be able to work for utility
in ways that all work together.
And I actually think that movement, like even on XMTP, we support dot EMS, dot Farcaster,
dot lens, unstoppable domains, like all of them, CBID.
They all work together, you know, an ID fault to an EMS name and you default to a Farcaster
name and you default to a lens name and they love the dot polygon, right?
And I feel like what's cool is that movement's kind of like happening right alongside messaging
and messaging is just utility to identity.
And so for me, it actually feels like those little features are out red states and double
check marks and which app you're using might be actually more tied to identity in this
movement than features on kind of the messaging app.
That's pretty interesting.
So you, okay, so you, what piqued your interest back when you were doing like social media
in the beginning.
So you mentioned that Facebook was interesting to you and it sparked your excitement because
you knew the people who were being matched up with the profiles, right?
In that same vein, you know, you're crypto kind of disintermediates who people are in
real life to who their actual handles are online, you know, like sometimes you have
pseudonymous Twitter accounts or you have, you know, EMS addresses that, you know, these
people do malicious things or maybe they're doing, you know, benevolent things, they're
White Hat hackers that are trying to disclose information.
Where does XMTP kind of sit on the whole privacy issue?
Yeah, I think for me, privacy is the most important and the most exciting thing for the
entire space.
I think even as open blockchains become private, as consent becomes private, as attestations
start moving in, decay proofs, like privacy, I think, is the thing that actually takes
this mainstream.
And so if it goes to the identity play, what's interesting is actually interacting based
on common context.
And this feature for me is the most magic feature.
So if I go into Coinbase wallet and I'm like, it's a thing, sorry, it's a thing.
So if I go in here and I go to my PoApps, right?
So they have this thing here and I can go into my PoApps and I can click on XMTP Paris
and I can see every single person with that same thing and I can send in a message.
I can see their EMS name, whether it's anonymous, whether it's pseudononymous, whether
it's just a walled address, like it doesn't matter.
But the shared context and then the ability to communicate is the magic flip that I think
is almost like why Twitter was amazing and then it led to DMS, but on steroids.
So the idea of on-chain data is actually the Instagram feed of the future, which leads
to your interest, which then discovers people.
Whether you're anonymous or not, the shared context of being able to have history that
you can see and find those common connections, actually, you then are in control of how
you reveal your identity and in what sequence and whether or not you reveal it over time,
but we know why to start talking.
And I actually feel like that, that, the hook in use case, is one of the most interesting
that's really hard today.
I think that's also going to be something that people start to become more aware of is
like you've mentioned one side of the coin with respect to privacy and that is like people
who disclose things on a blockchain are immediately putting something out into the public.
And the problem that your friend had, who had all this money coordinated with a bunch
of other people, but he couldn't talk to him, is the situation where like I have an address
on a blockchain associated with money and I want to talk to them and that's a really
good coordination mechanism.
But the opposite side of that coin is that if I'm talking to somebody, I don't necessarily
want them to know what funds I have in my address.
And so when you make that connection, people have become more aware of like the things
I'm putting on chain are slowly allowing people to aggregate more information about
me and that may or may not be good.
But like how do you do the opposite side of that where you'd like to maybe selectively
disclose what I have while still being able to communicate with people?
It's the single thing that's the most exciting to me that I think we're focused on.
Have you used time in my email in the iPhone?
No.
So there's a new feature that Apple did and it allows you to spin up a random email address
for every relationship and interaction you have.
So if I go to sign up on a website or log into a website, I can actually say hide my
email and Apple makes smk19495939 at iCloud.com.
And every relationship is a unique email address.
To me what they're doing is the future of ZKs.
And this all flips, I actually believe that voyeurism around your net income of what I own
in my wallet is the thing that's actually stopping crypto from growing.
It would be from a business perspective from a privacy perspective.
The reason the world doesn't use it is because deejens running around bragging about
their wealth is not the future.
And the reality is when this flips, it should be my identity and my identity can be an
email address.
With all the things happening with chains with smart contract walls and account abstraction
and all the ability in the future where every identity in the world, including my Twitter
handle, including my phone number, including my email, can then have a wall address, everything
is going to be able to map the ability to own digital things.
The second step of that is your identity then is the thing controlling thousands of wall
addresses.
And I should have a wall address for my tickets, for my bitcoin, for my eth, for my etc.
But that should be controlled under my master wallet, which is my identity, which then
can decide to be public or private with everything below it and reveal that relationship
or not.
And what's interesting is that the fact that Apple hacked this is a feature where every
time I sign up on the web, it gives me a fake email and then I go in there and it says
shaneatshanemac.com, my personal email, and then I have all these fake emails and it
says Nike, fake email, Apple, fake email, person, a creator I signed up to, fake email.
And that's like an insight of they're hacking it today because it's so valuable for the
user to control their relationships.
And I actually feel like you have a unique wallet address for every single relationship
in the future.
That's all mapped back to a master wallet that is in control of those wallets and that
relationship should be up to you to disclose when to share things, what identity to share.
If you want to share assets, a single asset, and I think like your assets will live in
its own wallet and the identity will be the controller of what can be revealed to you.
A lot of work has to be done to make that simple, but even the fact that Apple kind of
made it simple in a total hacked way, and the fact that Apple cared enough to make a
feature that was putting users in control of your relationships, it reminds me of like
the innovation of ramp.
I don't know if you've ever used the credit card ramp.
No, I didn't, but I think I know what you're talking about.
It's phenomenal.
And the innovation was it flipped where you used to use one credit card number for all
your brands.
Now there's a unique credit card number for every brand.
So you control every single relationship you have in your business on a single credit
card number basis.
And if you want to turn it off, change the budget, whatever, kill that credit card number.
That's the same as every interaction of a follower, every interaction of a sender, every
interaction with your creator, every interaction with the business or ticket, et cetera.
I believe you're going to have thousands of walled addresses and you're going to be in
control of the relationship with them.
How do you do that, though?
How do you build that in a way that, because this is something that I've noticed over time,
being encrypt over so long as I've played with new things, I create new accounts because
I don't want the specific assets tied to each other or I don't want to like, you know,
using the count that has a lot of value in it on something new and sketchy that might
break it or whatever, I end up having this management problem, right?
Don't know where everything is and I don't remember how to like identify what thing belongs
to what, right?
The amount of things I have to control it explodes.
If you want to have that level of fine-grained control, how do you make it usable for people?
Because that's another problem is that, like Apple, you need to make it easy and intuitive
to use while also having that kind of privacy and control feature.
Honestly, Apple, Bramp, they're already doing exactly this and everyone who uses those
tools are like, wow, this is incredible.
We just need to actually bring more user experience and better products into the space to start
doing this.
The fact that like crypto almost prides itself on how hard it is to use is crazy.
People are like, I can figure it out, yeah, it's not how it should work and I think we
have to do a lot better job simplifying these products to feel like the best products
of like the Web2 era and it's cool because a lot of talent is now coming into the space,
a lot of design thinking and it's not that hard.
A lot of things had to infrastructure get in place.
When I look back, it's like the EOA stuff is hard, getting to MPC wall, it's now getting
smart contract wall, it's in account abstraction.
These things are what's going to allow social key recovery and things to start happening
where a single identity that I own actually for me is really simple and that owns all
these things and it's probably not called a wall address, I probably don't know what
chains are.
Am I not even know what XMTP is?
I just know that I have my ticket wallet.
I know that I have my asset wallet.
I know that I have my friend collector wallet and you probably don't even have to like
understand all these concepts and therefore you have an identity that's associated with
the wallet and a list of all the other things you own.
But a lot of that has to happen more in a single screen, easy way to do and I think if
you use the products like hotmail or ramp, they're very complicated in nature yet like when
I give ramp to everyone in our company, everyone instantly gets it because they've done
incredible job interviews or experience and we just need to have better design.
It's almost like we want, in Web 3, we want the peer to peer aspect of everybody can
contribute to the underlying infrastructure that empowers people to have unique accounts
tied to whatever services that they're looking to use but that is very difficult in terms
of scaling it to perform in the same way that people are used to the Web 2 experience
in terms of doing it in a peer-to-peer context and having nodes communicate between each
other in terms of creating that social graph that doesn't create enough, doesn't create
too much bloat in terms of redundant message passing but then creates that experience that
is exactly akin to the Web 2 experience that you're talking about with ramp.
So like, I don't know if you could speak to how does XMTP do that, the peer-to-peer
stuff underneath?
What do you mean underneath?
I feel like under the hood when we're talking about the usage of a lot of the node clients
that are in the space use a little peer-to-peer for the communication, for the awesome sub-communication,
so how does XMTP do some of that lower level and communication between nodes?
Totally.
What's interesting is if you're asking about a user experience problem versus what we
use underneath, I actually think we can build Web 2 level quality experiences while also
having like distributed node networks and doing all of the other stuff underneath.
I don't know if you've ever seen, we have an app called Converse here and this is
the WhatsApp for XMTP and I don't know if you really, it basically just looks like
that message.
It's just like high-message, we might not want to show that to the camera.
So this is my message, right?
And this is my XMTP.
And I use this as my main messaging app now, right?
You have your telegram, you can scan here, you have your EMS name and you're able to
just scan it, download it yet, log in with any wallet and then all of your messages show
up.
And your ability, I think, underneath what's powerful about having a distributed decentralized
network is very simple.
If I don't trust Converse in the future, I can delete Converse and I can go to another
app and my messages are portable.
And I think being able to own your communication like you own your assets is the shift where
you're not locked into a WhatsApp, a telegram, a Twitter DMs, right?
The fact that like imagine Twitter gets bought by an individual from being a public company
and I don't like the person that runs it who can read all my DMs, I just can't take
them with me.
The ability to have portable communication that the user owns is the reason why the distributed
node network and the underneath stuff matters.
But on the user experience side, our goal is to just, it should feel like, I message,
it should feel like Web2 message would be that simple.
And I think the coolest thing about even, you know, the launch we did just with Coinbase
Wallet is like, it does, you know, it really does feel that way.
How do you, this is a technical podcast.
Can you walk me through the lifecycle of a message?
Like if I send you a message on converse, how does it go from me clicking send on my
phone to you on your phone?
Totally.
So there's an XMTP identity that's created based on your wall address.
The private key is what's used as the encryption and decryption mechanism.
And then the XMTP network is the transport layer.
And there's a distributed node network.
We are the main operator of the nodes in that network today, our plan is to progressivate
a centralized over time so that there's more node operators running at the node layer.
And then the private key on the other side, based on whatever application you're using.
So it's not app-specific.
Is the decryption mechanism by which the message gets decrypted in that application?
And so, you know, basically removing the app layer as the layer that owns your messages
and moving that to the key in the node network.
Definitely like the way I see it.
And this is the, I think, the generally right way to think about the, I guess, app universe
within Web3 is that, like, the infrastructure is the same for everyone, totally.
And what people are building is the user experience, like the candy, the eye candy, the features,
the extra things, and how I want it to look like, and that, and maybe even like gluing
some of these features together so that it's all in one app versus maybe I only want
to do messaging versus I want to do messaging and applications.
Totally.
And like you said, the key feature there is that in the event that I don't like something
I can exit and never lose my data.
There's no longer lose my data, there's my identity on those things, and take it with
me and try something else and it shows up.
And that's the user benefit.
I think the coolest thing is the developer benefit because coming from the Web2 world,
there's two, there's two main things.
The first one I think that is the most unique is that there's no cold start to the network.
So the idea that actually you can build a unique experience, but when you plug into the
underlying network, all of your conversations or relationships or the people you're bringing
to it show up, that allows you to actually, like,
not have these walled gardens of silos of Web2 networks that were like, use my messaging
app, I'll use the SMS phone number to find everyone on the app to try to get everyone
on it to build the network.
And this one, actually, the coolest moment of this is like when I log into Coinbase walled
and I've been using Converse for a year, and all my messages show up.
And I just start using it and Coinbase launch payments.
So now it's like, I'm able to use my whole network and all the messages I've ever had
and all my relationships are there, and now I can send USDC free globally, right?
Because there's a new content type they innovated on called payments that's built into
the experience.
And so I think what's cool for developers is actually like when you can port your network
and then everyone can keep innovating on the UX and different features, you are able
to actually not have the cold start problem and really just let people continue to get
more features and, like, new experiences like that.
The other thing is having the underlying node infrastructure, doing it in like a permissionless
way, or the last 15 years, every API got changed at Twitter, every single relationship
got changed at Facebook, all the endpoints get changed and they force you to adopt it
or they cut you off or they charge you $500,000 to get the Twitter data and they change
it next month.
I've been getting fucked by working on top of web 2 platforms for 15 years.
By whole career, just because I accidentally was messing around with Facebook photos in 2005
was built on being great partners to those companies and we were good partners to them,
but it was so hard.
It was so hard to work with Twitter in the early days to be the number one partner with
Facebook Messenger.
We launched 1-800 flowers, doing bots with commerce, doing payments on Messenger in 2014
and Zuck was like, this is the future of messaging and businesses and brands.
We were the company assist that built that and it's just so complicated.
When they're telling you, you have to do this, here's the rules, here's the business,
we'll cut you off, here's V2, we're cutting you off again.
That was the relationship, my personal driver to do this company is to have a new developer
relationship where actually it's more valuable for developers to actually extract the value
out of it, to bring the network and be able to invade on top of it and not cut off people.
I feel like that is the whole reason to do this.
So part of what I'm understanding your complaint is from these large companies that you used
to work with is they change things without kind of a conversation with the people who
are using their products, Facebook, you know, some of their stuff is close source, some
of it is open source, and Web3, much of communication protocols try to be as open source as possible
because people can take pieces and then plug them into their own projects, potentially.
Same thing in the way that, you know, LibP2P for IPFS was useful for, you know, communications
for all the other projects.
And so does XMTP have some sort of like open source way that people can actually see,
you know, under the hood, how you guys do the communication stuff?
For sure.
It's fully open source.
Oh, wow.
Okay.
XMTP is open source and our goal is to do everything in the open and run it as a fully open
source protocol.
How do you foster that collaborative nature?
Like how do you get people to leverage what you've built versus redundantly build something
else?
What do you mean?
Like, how do you get people to reuse and collaborate with you on making that feature
said better?
Yeah.
Instead of saying, like, we're going to build it, we're going to build the same thing ourselves
and try it in a different way.
Like, that's the kind of the goal, right?
If you want that shared infrastructure, you need groups of people who are vying for basically
the same audience to work together to build the same infrastructure and then some alternative
piece on top of it.
It's like, you need both.
You need to run a business and you want some type of ability to continue paying your employees
and build things, but you also want to work with all of the other people doing the same
thing.
How do you do that?
Yeah.
I think to go back to both questions.
I think the lines are both.
So, the first one around the past companies and the Facebooks and everything, always changing
things.
I don't think it was their fault.
I think the model of then was you have to have the attention because advertising was
the only of this.
The value is data.
Yeah.
It had to feed who owned the attention and who owned the attention was who owned the
app.
And if you didn't own the app, you couldn't serve the ads and that was the model.
I think to answer your question is, two things.
One, doing everything in the public, we drive everything to the discussions forum, we try
to do everything around every product release, all bringing in the community, driving that.
It's all coordination.
And I think coordinating all that, we have XIPs, doing it very much like a lot of the improvement
proposals of other protocols, we take a lot of inspiration from and trying to run that
process.
The thing that matters more though is, I do think that protocols today have the ability
to create economic incentives to actually run an ecosystem that isn't driven by advertising.
That isn't driven by, I need to own the attention to have ongoing value at the protocol level
and the application level to have a better relationship going forward.
And I think, for me, that feels like that is the innovation that allows for a new incentive
that doesn't mean we have to go build the app layer and we don't build any apps.
So I think the last thing is, other people in the space have built a lot of like, hey,
we'll build a cool app too.
We have it.
And I think our statement there is that we're not going to build applications and we are
just going to focus on the protocol and work on helping and enabling innovative applications
to build on top.
That helps with fostering that kind of like ecosystem of applications if you're not
opinionated and building one of them totally.
Or ours shows up first because it has the name of the protocol or a lot of things are
wrong and hard if I was Coinbase Walla and I searched for X and T.P. and our app showed
up before theirs that feels not fair or even converse, he's more of a start up or the
whole lens ecosystem or the DM layer of lens as well.
They should be driving the value of the application layer and showing up in search and we should
be serving that at the network layer.
But I think we have to make the economics work where the whole circle works.
And I think that's the innovation is that actually protocols can have ongoing like
economies that are able to fund the ecosystem that aren't driven by whatever application
extracts the most attention, drives an advertising budget, which means they win and then cut
out everybody else.
So when you're talking about like X and T.P. as a protocol and kind of competing with
SEO in terms of priority when you look up, you know, how does lens work or how does
farcaster work or any of the kind of application layer projects that use X and T.P. under the
hood?
You guys kind of like what's the happy medium in terms of people knowing that under the
hood, X and T.P. is being used for these apps?
I could see a world in five years where no one knows X and T.P. exists.
But the interoperability to do our goal is to be a secure interoperable messaging layer.
And I think if a lens app can send a message to a wallet app or send a message to any
app or send a message to the WhatsApp of X and T.P. and any wallet address can send
a message from A to B. That interoperable network of reach of can the message actually get
delivered to me is the thing.
And so what we care about most is do we have the most reach and do we have an interoperable
layer and developers know that they can reach it?
So building developer tools to let them query the network to see all the identities, can
they reach those identities?
What applications like making sure the developer world knows that the interoperability
is growing, the reach is growing, the network is growing.
To me is the thing that like where we need to be known.
At the user application layer, I think they just want to know that their dot ethandal can
reach their dot lens handle or their dot lens handle can reach to any anonymous wall address
or an email address that's got account abstraction actually can communicate to a phone number.
I didn't even know that was possible, but it actually is today like what's cool about
what's happening is that all the sudden you can truly have like a universal inbox or
like a fully interoperable inbox where an email address and communicate with a phone
number.
And that kind of wasn't possible either, which is a cool, another way to think about it.
It's not even it feels really Web 3, but because you have a kind of shared wall address
underneath the account abstraction, all of a sudden now any identity ever can communicate
with each other.
Nice.
So, after 15 years of getting fucked by Web 2, do you feel like-
Do you feel like in Web 3, you're doing the fucking?
No, not at all.
I actually feel like it's the sole thing to drive.
I think even every language we use, it's not on top of we say we're building with.
I think this only works.
If you think about like marketplace or network dynamics, the goal of a successful marketplace
or a supply and demand dynamic should be that the network has a lesser take rate than
the ad.
So if you're moving the value to the application layer and reducing the value of the network
layer, then it should drive more incentives for more applications to join and actually
grow bigger.
And then it's big enough the network layer can actually have enough incentive to be valuable
because it's huge.
And I think that dynamic has to be true and that allows us to actually build a different
relationship where thousands of applications can actually flourish.
I mean, I look at it like email, like SMTP exists and trillions of dollars has been created
on top of email.
Like the amount of like, there's been $30 billion email marketing companies probably
more, right?
It's the tool everyone uses every single day.
Outlook and Microsoft suite and all of that massive.
And I think for me to create that in a new way is just the most exciting opportunity.
That begs the question, how do you make money?
If you're building protocols, not focusing on applications, what drives revenue and growth
for XMTP other than adoption, but there's not an obvious revenue generating model if
you're just allowing applications to send messages to each other.
I think there's a lot of ideas here, right?
The one that seems that is the most interesting is if you can actually get a new network
built and the ability for users to be more in control of their attention using say on-chain
data, right?
I actually feel like the true innovation is to innovate on the opt-in.
And if you think about the opt-in of SMS and email as the thing that even the laws in
different countries have different rules around protecting the consent for the opt-in.
But if you can actually move that where brands will happily pay for more opt-ins, right?
They have for years.
And if you can actually move that to a more public directory that a consent mechanism,
now the whole ecosystem uses to make a better relationship where people have more control
and they can take their consent with them, not just their inbox.
So the whole ecosystem has to follow the consent rules that could live with your identity.
Now you're starting to get to a world where every single wallet address, every single
identity, actually, there's a consent mechanism that every time someone opts in, there's a
value that's transferring and most of that could go to the app layer, a little bit of that
could go to the protocol layer, a little bit of that could go to the user.
And I think that area of really, and that's the thing where I came from, that lives in
a black box, right?
If you go from an SMS tool, that's-
Well, it was always the value, right?
If you connect everything, you control, you have that data capture.
You can sell that data.
And I think that's a public good, though, too, because that lives in a black box, and
if you put that public and you have a public registry of identity with a private consent,
and now you're able to let the whole ecosystem know who has the consent to talk to who in
a very verified way, that isn't app specific.
Today, you go to an SMS tool and then you go to a new one, and they're like, hey, we're
going to spend six weeks looking at your website, checking out your language, making sure
that you didn't steal these numbers, making sure your language is right, so people aren't
confused, you're following the canned spam laws, all these things.
But actually, you could do this in a way where let that live, where anyone plugging into
the network, already knows if two wallets have the consent mechanism that the user opted
into.
And I think in their lives, a future of attention of how you control it, and I think there's
a big opportunity for the monetization of the entire network in there.
So this is something I've been thinking about for years now, which is pulling groups of
people and allowing that group of people to be dynamically sizing based on how and who
they want to contribute information from their own identities to groups that are willing
to pay for that.
For instance, if you were able to track health informatics for a group of people who are
interested in subsidizing their health insurance, and they were willing to pull together to
sell their information to an insurance company, and then an insurance company was able to incentivize
them to together have a discounted rate for insurance, you could do that for every industry.
Totally.
Yeah.
I love stuff like that too.
I mean, that's a little different, but also totally possible, which is more of like using
your ability to publish things on chain to almost be a signal to what we want, and then
aggregate groups of people around us, or other people could join that.
That's not possible until you have that connection layer, right?
You need that, it's like what we've noticed in the history of blockchain so far is competition
across incompatible blockchains.
And now in this era of bridging, we're trying to figure out, how do we actually move messages
from one place to the other?
And when you think about an address on a chain, it's similar to the identity situation.
And so as people start understanding that wallets are just management of various types
of identity, and how we connect them, and the various ecosystems in which you use them,
where you're keeping assets on different blockchains, like that's the connection later
you're talking about, but messaging layer between these things that allows you to create
that opt-in network, because you can talk from anywhere at any other place, but you need
some like transformation layer between, and so you can't build things like what he's
talking about unless you have that glue that puts everything together, which is that communication
layer.
Totally.
And what's interesting about what you said is like, it's the reason why we went chain
agnostic, and we were focused mostly on the public private key pair related to the kind
of identity and the wallet, not the chain.
And so we're focused on the EVM community right now, but we are not dependent on EVM at
all, and I think it's like the most exciting thing is to think about communication between
identities that really the chain doesn't matter what chain you're on.
So you mentioned the universal inbox.
That sounds promising, but the universal inbox equals universal problems, like that's
a lot of messages, and more messages, more problems.
How do you guys mitigate spam, like how spam mitigated, you know, I can imagine if anyone
knows a universal protocol to send me a message that I'm getting messages from anyone
and everyone, so how do you guys mitigate that?
Yeah, I think it's like the question everyone talks about the spam layer.
The cool thing is like one application like a converse is like a universal inbox, but
other applications can actually filter differently.
So if you think of the lens ecosystem, an app called ORB, they're actually using your
on-chain data to give you the inbox you want.
So if I tap Lens, I only see anyone who is on Lens who's messaging me, but even further
kind of like what Twitter did, right?
If you go to more of like how we can innovate on DMs, on the Lens app, you can even say
Lens only follows, right?
So you're messaging inbox actually using on-chain signals to be better filters for the inbox.
So I think that's like base level stuff.
Obviously there's a lot of spam stuff we can do in the future.
Right now it's really trying to innovate at the app layer to then figure out what to
bring to the protocol layer.
But I think the most important thing is using stuff like that where the user is able to
have more control at the application layer over how they see their inbox.
Those doing DM-like stuff around approve, approve, approve, approve and block, etc.
So like the Coinbase wallet application, it's all based on if you have no past-chain
interactions, there's an approved inbox, you have to approve the message.
So very much like Instagram, Twitter, type DM model, not just like an open tree for all.
But I think what's cool is the startups, like the ORBs and the Lensers and stuff, kind
of innovating on the inbox where based on my POAP, filter my inbox, based on Lens, filter
my inbox, based on past interactions.
This one called Matchmakers Super Cool, which if you go in here, it actually is using
all the on-chain data, all the on-chain data to build a better recommendation graph.
And what's fascinating, like this is my fiance, and I didn't build this algorithm.
What's cool is this is a company called AirStack and Converse aggregating on-chain data.
But you can say transacted with you, Lens Mutual Follows owns the POAP that met Patricio
in November 2022.
And so, and it's actually really good.
This was like, in a hypothesis a year and a half ago, I was like, imagine the like using
SMS every messaging after the last 15 years, my friend, the more you, the more you have
that aggregated layer, you can do an Indian analysis across a bunch of different sessions
and make good recommendations.
And so the assumption in the hypothesis was good.
And I was like, I don't know if it's really going to be like, is it really going to show
many people I want a message?
And when I saw this, like this is Lazarin from A16Z, transacted with you, Warpcast Mutual
Follow, both eligible for ENS AirDrop.
So I know he was really early in the ENS community.
We both fall each other on Farcaster and we've transacted, right?
And like some of them, I mean, this is insane, right?
It's like, what that also does is really puts on display what you have out there and what
could be aggregated.
And I think that's the general idea that I think I'm trying to like think about people
finally understanding is, why do I have these assets?
And what can you do with them?
Because we went through this like NFT explosion, people bought them and you can't fucking
do anything with them.
Totally.
It's now where people are starting to understand I was like, I have this because it connects
you with people.
Yeah.
And so like, you can see that the assets are actually useful for a context that connects
you with the community.
And then when you combine those things, you get better and better filter mechanisms on
it.
Totally.
This is someone, these are my people.
Yes.
They've done this.
They've done this.
They've done this.
They've been around for this long.
And you have this entire ecosystem world of past history and interaction that you can filter
to then make it easier to find them.
And you say your point earlier, this is the single coolest thing that I've seen in any
developer build that I didn't know would actually be this good, but I thought maybe it
could be possible.
And to the question earlier about like anonymity, this person right here, okay, I have three things
in common with, I don't know who they are.
But I do know the context and I can just click chat and I'm opening it.
I'm already fucking talking.
So like that, that, that I think is the magic of what you asked earlier.
And I didn't really, I didn't really know if this would be that powerful, but I feel
like this actually should be probably the thing that's starting to make its way across
all the applications.
Yep.
Where you're starting to realize the connection, like possibilities that you didn't even
know existed.
And when I saw that, I was like, holy crap.
And I mean, I didn't even know I was talking to that person, but like that stuff's magic.
And I think that's the kind of stuff where it goes from, why do I have all this stuff
to like, wow, this stuff actually brings a lot of value to me.
And then what's important is now that you are able to kind of create those filters that
get you to key on who you want to talk to, that you have had previous context shared
context with, I think in order to make that more private, you start integrating the zero
knowledge component, right?
So that even though you've had shared context with these people in the past, it doesn't
completely dox who you are and it doesn't dox them, even through any amount of connections
you may have.
100%.
You can imagine that experience right there.
If you clicked on the chat, I've never chatted before, but it knows I have a bunch of shared
context.
This is where your question earlier about like UX, the UX should be, hey, the app is saying,
do you want to share, and you're like, default, no, this, this, and this, right?
And I'm like, this, this, this, and that is actually just managed at the app layer with
wallet addresses in the background, but at the foreground, it's just what information
do you want to share?
And I think when I see teams like this building, like this type of experience, I'm really
optimistic that like that type of user experience is close.
You got your fiancee in the crypto, you said?
Yeah.
Man.
That's all.
That's all.
You know what?
You know what actually happened?
This is, it's cool, right?
So she actually runs a country radio music show.
She has one of the largest country music shows in the United States.
Plug it.
And it's called Katie and Company.
There we go.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That should be the YouTube better.
No, but what's interesting is I got her Katie Meele.e, right?
But I had her do it.
And it was, it was painful as fuck, right?
Signing up was like, I figured what wallet I was using and I was like, go use Rainbow
Wallet.
It's supposed to be better UX.
And you're going to do a couple of transactions.
How do I even buy it?
I'll use your Apple card on Rainbow.
It doesn't actually work.
OK, go to Coinbase.
What's Coinbase?
I was like, all right, we'll do this, three hours later, whatever.
But she buys Katie Meele.e, then I was pretty early on, right?
And then the air drop comes.
And all of a sudden, she's like, I have $5,000.
She's like, is this money?
And I was like, right?
She's like, can I put this to her student loans?
And I'm like, yeah, you could, she's like, I'm going to go long.
I like E and S, right?
And I'm like, all right, let's go.
And she's still in a day has E and S and et cetera.
And that was the thing.
And so it's just fascinating watching the power of that and the utility of an identity.
And now she owns her name.
And also getting that value.
That was like a light bulb for her.
And then she's buying different NFTs.
She's trying different stuff.
She's minting some for her birthday, stuff like that.
So it's kind of cool to see her get into it.
But yeah, I think it's cool when people outside of our little world kind of find it.
We made it easier for them to contribute and participate.
And it's not much like, what are you nervous doing?
Totally.
And then they see the things that we got excited about, like, I $5,000 in my wallet.
Now where'd this come from?
Did what?
Did what?
I can use this.
And I think we're getting better and better at that through applications like that that
allow us to kind of get good recommendation based on previous history and things I own.
You've just recently gone through an integration with Coinbase so that you can chat with your Coinbase wallet.
Congratulations.
What's next?
What's the goal?
What are we all trying to build towards and do in the next three months year?
Yeah, I mean, the Coinbase wallet partnership has been incredible.
And I think working with them has been awesome.
Since day one, I was kind of like, it feels like wallets are the heart of the universe.
And so everyone's like, oh, messaging's been tried before.
There's all these other examples in the past.
And I was like, how do you actually, we've been doing it for a while.
And I'm like, how do you actually add value to the wallet application layer?
And how do you make sure that everyone in the ecosystem knows that you can reach the wallet?
And you can actually have the end in where people can have a one-to-one relationships in the wallet.
But also any app or application or creator can actually finish that loop.
And the demos that I would see all the time, or everyone would be like,
look at all these dune dashboards and they're like tons of walled addresses and all these attestations and all this stuff.
And then like, and what are we going to do?
And they're like, I can't really do anything.
And I'm like, why can't you create that last step?
And so for me, I think we're focused on how do we be the wallet in box?
How do we get more wallets to adopt so that we're the ubiquitous network in all of Web3?
And if we are the default network for communication for wallets,
I think that attracts thousands of developers and users and individuals who want to use and reach the wallet.
And if those two pillars are true, like a supply and demand marketplace,
I think that's our focus right now.
Our focus for today is on EVM,
but I think all of Web3 and actually the ability to use communication to crosschains without even really feeling it
is probably the coolest thing where that goes in the future.
But that's kind of where we're focused now.
That is a hard problem.
Totally.
Yeah, I mean, that's also why I think the focus really matters.
Like we're just doing secure DMs for wallets for developers to be able to reach the wallet
so that users can talk to walled addresses in EVM.
Like if I was like really clearly to, you know, publicly into our team, that's like our goal.
Like let's just make this work for this ecosystem so that that end-to-end loop actually drives a lot of wallets
to Kerr Chat.
Done.
And then you can go like, well, I can do so many other things, like for sure.
But I think if we can just do that and add a lot of value to this ecosystem,
that gives us maybe the opportunity to do more.
Nice.
Well, you guys want to wrap?
Yeah.
I got it.
In 10 words or less, can you describe XMTP?
Secure text messaging for Web3.
I'll chime in with another question.
This was our old question.
Is what you do hard?
I feel like building anything from scratch, going from a made up idea in your head to something actually works.
It's harder than it looks.
I think the answer to the question is, it's always really hard for everyone working on it.
But I convinced myself before I started that it won't be as hard.
That's true.
Two and a half years in, I'm like, fuck.
It's always as hard.
And I think whatever that thing is of like the delusion right before you start something,
the day I was CEO of my last company for almost a decade.
And I remember the day we sold it, I was like, I'll never do that again.
And I was like, that was, it was hard.
I was building chatbots in 2013, and I don't know if you checked,
but the chatbots weren't working in 2013.
And now they're here.
So we were a decade early, and I think being really early is the hardest thing.
It's the thing I ask about now.
It's like, is it too early?
Where's the value of a crew?
Can we stay alive long enough to really capture a new network and a new communication protocol?
So like we have to really think long-term to think 10, 15-year intervals.
And when I was doing assist, it was that same thing, but like it never happened.
We were innovating all the best messaging experiences, et cetera,
about Facebook Messenger didn't work.
Apple Business Chat didn't work.
Google Business Chat didn't work.
I was the first to launch them all of them.
That's millions of dollars of just like experiments that really didn't work.
Chatbots didn't really work.
So the only business was Chatbots for call centers.
I'm flying around to Mason, Ohio, helping the Macy's call center team
have like 2% of queries answered by a chatbot.
That was kind of shitty.
And so staying alive is like my number one startup kind of value.
But at the end of that, it was so painful.
And we ended up, you know, being able to have like a decent exit
and because call center companies wanted boss, et cetera.
But the pain was so great that I was like, I'll never do that again.
And I was like, I'll never do that again.
But whatever happens in that two-year lockup of forgetting all the pain.
I don't know what it is about human nature, whatever.
And then you like just kind of like, it won't be this bad.
And I think it is really hard.
The thing that keeps me I think more sane is having a longer term vision
and really thinking long term and being able to reduce the surface area
to try to have the opportunity to build something great.
And so my goal to make it less hard for our team
and our developers and our community is to keep reducing the surface area
as it always wants to keep expanding.
And if I've learned anything, my first startup of the opposite.
I had tons of ideas.
It always bring more.
Let's do Apple Business Chat.
Let's go to Google, Google's calling.
Let's go here.
And I think that's the thing that's really hard to like deal with.
You always like your ego.
You're like, fuck, let's just do more.
Let's go broader.
Let's, another brand wants to, and you do all this custom shit.
And I think the thing that I have more confidence in now is saying no
and trying always.
It's always a push.
But just really trying to come back to like, we do secure DMs.
And that's all, you know, we do secure DMs.
We're just starting on EVM.
Let's focus on the wallet community.
And I think trying to have that like ability to focus hopefully helps our team
to make it just a little easier because it is always hard.