SquidDAO: Web3 Project Deep-Dive: Part Crypto Hedge Fund, Part NFT DAO. An Anonymous Conspiracy for Mutual Enrichment
This week’s podcast episode is my first pseudonymous podcast. In this episode, we explore a new web3 project, Squid DAO.
SquidDAO is an “Economic Flywheel denominated in Ethereum.” What does that mean? Good question, I wondered too. It’s basically a conspiracy amongst anonymous people on the internet to make money together. And anyone can join! I dug in with a few members to see what it’s all about.
They sell NFTs, they issue tokens, they invest a treasury… they earn money! And they share it with token and NFT holders.
This is my first pseudonymous podcast as well as the longest one I’ve ever done. In this episode, we explore a relatively new web3 project, Squid DAO, with a few guys I only know by their online handles. Squid DAO is described as an economic flywheel backed by Ethereum and is part company, part DeFi investment fund, and part NFT project. SQUID is currently trading for roughly the value of the assets it holds in the treasury, which could make it a great investment opportunity. Squid DAO is a great microcosm of the world of web3 as it is essentially a megatron of the various forks of web3 projects, which makes it a great learning opportunity.
Favorite Quotes from SquidDAO:
“A person who's passionate about a buy and hold strategy or buy holding stake strategy, buying the token, we have the Squid token with staking and a commitment to long-term protocol health. If you're passionate about NFTs, then we have a sweet set of NFTs that's a lot more than just a PFP for your Twitter profile. It has a revenue stream attached to it. It has voting rights attached to it.” - Squid Steed
“If you're passionate about governance and the expansion of or proliferation of more and more governance opportunities in DeFi, we have that opportunity as well in that the NFT has governance opportunities, locking has governance opportunities.” - Squid Steed
“There's a lot of different ways that a person can interact with Squid DAO and find something, interact in a way they're passionate about or take advantage of all of it, come in, and innovate with us. It does have kind of an experimental, like a lot of things here, has an experimental feel to it.” - Squid Steed
“Now you can join a Discord and literally be a couple of clicks away from one of the smartest people in DeFi and their strategies and the way that they're thinking about the market or how they should position the treasury. Like, to me, that's the greatest benefit to being part of the Squid community.” - ZOption
“Wallets and blockchains never lie. So that is one thing that's been really helpful is that everyone knows everyone's position essentially because it is a smaller group, especially kind of within the cracking group.” - ZOption
“It's a really crazy achievement, to be able to design something that allows you to directly claim ETH off of NFT ownership for locking a token and having real yield.” - ZOption
“When I look at valuing Squid, it's really that simple. We have more revenue streams than other protocols because you have NFT and you have an aggressive yield farming strategy that has been put in place and bonding. So, you have an additional revenue stream that they normally don't. And we're trading as low as you basically possibly can.” - ZOption
“I have a bullish thesis on how we kind of change and grow, how much has happened in a two-and-a-half-month period that, when we have accomplished more in two and a half months than my company that I work for has accomplished in the last nine years. That rate of change, that openness to new ideas, and also the self-governance is working.” - Squid Steed
“The best way to learn in DeFi is really by doing it. Like reading articles and strictly scrolling on Twitter is never really going to get you that final like 30% you need. It'll get you like the first 50 to 70%, but really to get a true mastery, you really just have to invest your own money and take the risk yourself.” - Big Squid
“We're building up this stockpile of cash and we're putting that cash to work in other protocols to earn a return on that to eventually make more cash. That's the kind of the same way as a fund collects US dollars to invest, they buy a bunch of other stuff because the end goal of the investor is to have more cash at some point.” - Squid Steed
“When you come to crypto, it's like, wait, the team is just like these random internet people that are talking on Discord. But once you kind of understand that DAOs with anonymous people contributing is actually a lot more powerful because it's like I'm good at this, you are good at that, let's work together to build this new product, new tool, new marketing campaign” - Big Squid
“It is open-ended in the sense that banks and investment banks will always be adding new units and new investment arms as they see fit. So that's kind of my vision there. We'll have these really strong revenue sources, farming revenue, and returns from venture investments and some liquid token investments, and then we'll have all this other money from those returns and revenue to kind of diversify risk and invest in new strategies.” - Big Squid
Learn more about SquidDAO:
Squid DAO NFT Auctions
The Squids on Twitter
Additional episodes if you enjoyed:
Simon Judd: How Index Coop is building Crypto Index products
Jason Hitchcock: Your Guide to Web3 (DeFi, NFTs, and The Metaverse)
Sean O’Connor: How Blockchain is Changing Society with Costless Transactions
Podcast Transcript:
Eric Jorgenson: Hello again, my friends, and welcome to Jorgenson Soundbox, the sandbox of sounds. On this show, I welcome you to join me along my journey down various insane rabbit holes, today, an episode I've been looking forward to for months. I got wind of this kind of weird web3 project back in October when it started, and I've been slowly learning more ever since, but this was my first opportunity to really dive in with members of the team and ask a ton of questions that have been sitting on my mind until I got the opportunity. Squid Dao is the project. It describes itself as an economic flywheel backed by Ethereum. In practice, as we'll hear, it's part company, part DeFi investment fund, part NFT project, and it's built and run by a pseudonymous team from all around the world. Squid’s a really compelling opportunity right now as it's trading for roughly the value of the assets it holds in its treasury, but it also has earnings potential above $10 million a year from selling NFTs and some of its yield farming strategies. So full disclosure, I own Squid, I have staked a small amount of Squid for months, I have skin in the game here. No investment advice. This is possibly some shilling, but also, I'm interested in learning more because I invested in it, and I invested in it in order to learn more. That's how it all works now. If you really grok the Squid DAO and all the various components, I think it's a very good microcosm of the whole wide world of web3. And I do try to keep this episode sort of low jargon, accessible to almost everyone, though, we definitely throw in some examples and some lingo that is not commonplace. If you're curious and a quick Google doesn't solve it, just tweet me. I'm happy to help and explain things. Everybody who knows anything has learned it from somebody else, and we're all happy to kind of bring each other along. This is an amazing opportunity to talk to a few members of the team, some very early, and for me to learn much more about them, the project, its origins, and its outlook. One of the things I really love about Squid DAO is how long-term it is in a sea of projects that are sort of opportunistic or short-sighted. And interestingly, this is my first pseudonymous podcast. I don't know any of the three people who participate in this interview. I've never met them. I don't know their real names. I don't know where they live. I just know their handles from the Discord and the Twitter. And I'm sure with the way web3 is going, it won't be my last pseudonymous interview. Our main topics are we start with what Squid DAO is. It's really a Megatron of various forks of projects all over web3. We talk about the backgrounds of sort of the team and why they prefer to stay anonymous and what kind of work they do on a day-to-day basis in the DAO. And then we talk about the economics and really dig into how to value DAO tokens and how you look at the cash flows and how you look at where the revenue is going to come from, denominating things in ETH rather than dollars. I really kind of get into the details there. And if you enjoy this, check out my newsletter. I share weekly blog posts there. I'll have an essay about Squid DAO this week, and I have a bunch of other web3 essays out there and more to come at ejorgensen.com/newsletter. But please enjoy this conversation arriving at your ears in three, two, one.
Okay, welcome. Welcome Squids one and all, big and small. I'm very excited to learn a ton more about this project and have all three of you here – hidden, but here – and dive all the way deep with the Squids. I'm like a certified non genius as anybody who has ever interacted with me knows. So, I'm going to try to keep jargon low and ideas relatable kind of to anybody listening. But I really want to go as deep as we can on Squid DAO. And I feel like we have a great crew here to kind of take us all the way. But I'd love to start with you guys all introducing yourselves. I know you're all pseudonymous or anon, but if you would each give me a little bit of your background and experience that kind of led you to where you are and gave you the skills to jump into the DAO, that'd be a great place to start.
Big Squid: Sure. I can start.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, Big Squid, you start. I'll have to like moderate this as there's like three of us in Zoom, but it is what it is. Big Squid, take it away.
Big Squid: Yeah. First, thanks so much for having us. I’m very excited to talk about Squid today and kind of get the word out to some people that maybe haven't necessarily heard about Squid or don't know about OHM and kind of the mechanisms they built. But a little bit about me, so previously to working in crypto, I used to do a lot of FinTech strategy work. So, kind of like chief of staff style work for FinTech startups. And so that was for a couple of years. And then in the last bull run, I kind of fell down the crypto rabbit hole very late in the cycle, probably like December of 2017, and then really started getting involved in January 2018. So, some of you may know that's probably the worst timing possible. But I kind of stuck with it or I intensely stuck with it and researched every single second I could, followed up on all the news. Obviously, there was a lot less news back then. But over those months, you started to see DeFi come about with MakerDAO and Aave and some of the earliest DeFi protocols. So, I was always researching, always involved in crypto Twitter, just learning as much as I could. And then in kind of quarantine times, like early quarantine times when things started taking off, I kind of went all in and left my nine to five FinTech job to be a crypto DeFi degen full time. So, I spent about a full year investing on my own, farming everything, new protocols were launching every day back then in DeFi summer. So, there was no time to rest, awake all hours of the day, learning as much as I could. And then from there, I started contributing to some DeFi protocols and started working for a DeFi protocol full time, whatever that means in crypto. And then, yeah, kind of had this opportunity to- I saw Squid launching and I had an opportunity to get in early. And I am actually one of the few people or maybe the only person that knows the team personally. So not full anonymous, pseudonymous. And I've kind of been the one to vouch for in the early days, when people- it's generally a scary thing to invest when you don't know who the builders are. So, I was kind of the one to step up and kind of take that responsibility onto myself, saying like you only have to trust me because I trust them. And yeah, things have kind of gone crazy since then. And now I’m kind of full-time Squid DAO, all day, every day, thinking about Squid DAO.
Eric Jorgenson: Nice. Yeah, I want to come back to that, kind of like challenges around anon and trust-building and vouching. But we'll do intros for the other two guys. But real quick, if you had three like the skills that you came into Squid DAO with, like if you had to put yourself in a box, are you like wear many hats? Are you a developer? Are you a DeFi expert around sort of investing in allocation? Like what are the hats that you wear?
Big Squid: Yeah, so I guess like many hats – not a developer at all, no technical skills, no design skills. Just wear many hats in the sense that like strategy DeFi degen many years, or a year plus, which is a lot of years in crypto years, of DeFi experience. So yeah, just kind of like general strategy investment type skills.
Eric Jorgenson: Cool. All right, Squid Steed, do you want to take the mic next?
Squid Steed: Sure, I’m happy to do that. I'm very new compared to most of the folks that I'm involved with at Squid DAO, most of the folks I'm involved with in the broader degen space, and I've worked in TradFi for about 12 years in a number of different roles, investment research, various investment analyst type gigs, now more of a portfolio manager in private client space, and I've done a lot of institutional work as well. So, to me, 10, 12, 14 years ago in college, the puzzle of the broader web2 economy, of the stock market, bond market economy was just so fascinating, and I love to try to figure out how all the pieces work. And coming into this, as a newer person, probably the newest person on the team at Squid DAO in terms of crypto time, it's a lot like that. It's one big puzzle to figure out. So, I'm trying to use the skills that I have in the DAO, which are around communications, marketing, coordination of the community. I really love to see- to meet people and figure out what their skills are in the DAO and then find other people that they might be a good fit to work with. Or as we go through the huge list of tasks, the projects that we have to work on, send resources to those projects, send people to those tasks, and watch people come up, flourish in the DAO and come up in the DAO. I think it's really fascinating. So, it's been- I think the fascinating thing for me has been trying to adapt my TradFi background to all this. And some of it adapts, some of it- thinking about risks and thinking about building out a deployed ETH treasury, there's a lot of overlap from TradFi, but there's also a lot that doesn't overlap, really having to kind of bend my head, bend my thinking around how this works, it's pretty wild. So yeah, so that's me. And I’ll be happy to dig in to more of that.
Eric Jorgenson: No, that sounds awesome. So, you kind of bring a TradFi background, you work a lot on the community and kind of bringing people in, and then helping them get plugged in and working through. Do you work on any of the sort of deployment strategy, too, with some of your investment background?
Squid Steed: Well, the way that I've approached it is a lot of the strategies and a lot of the way that people think about strategies is very what we call bottom up in my business, very specific to the individual strategy, the individual token and that token’s ecosystem and buying it and staking it, borrowing against it, earning returns off of it. My background is more of trying to optimize from the top-down view. So, where a lot of people are really geeking out on those individual strategies, my perspective is like what are we doing with the whole pie? How do all those pieces fit together? And what is like the fully deployed treasury look like as a portfolio? And I think that is an asset to the DAO. I'm not- I think the bottom-up analyst type level is more relevant probably and probably more important. But as we think about being an investment fund, an allocated large ETH black hole that is deployed into DeFi across multiple types of strategies, I think that looking at it through that kind of overall or holistic lens is going to be more and more relevant.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. Super interesting. Okay. And we'll explain more of those things in a minute here, but let's do ZOption’s intro real quick. You ready, ZOption?
ZOption: Yeah, let's do it. My quick background, so I started as an options trader actually at a big bank and bailed on that shit really quick. And I started a tech company after that, and that was about four years, raised money on it. I do have a little bit of an engineering background at least in that phase of my life. Sold that company, and I was at the company that acquired me for like a couple of years. Then I started another tech company, still in the middle of that one. So, I’m kind of familiar with VC tech, that kind of stuff. I started my crypto journey in 2016 actually as a miner, oddly enough. I think a lot of people kind of got involved at least a little bit during that phase as well. So, like had GPUs, then transitioned and actually had a pretty large facility for a period of time doing Bitcoin, that kind of stuff. And then like most of us who realize what do you do with all this like coin just chilling in a wallet? And that kind of was the genesis of me getting into DeFi was trying to figure out that piece of it, similar timing to Big Squid, like everyone, DeFi summer, realizing that all of these assets are workable, lending, borrowing, and that's really led to a lot of kind of portfolio management. And now in terms of how I got involved in the DAO, I mean, we made a pretty big investment in Squid at the start.
Eric Jorgenson: Who is we?
ZOption: Just like a group of friends. We all found it kind of at a similar timeframe. So, we were all bidding on the kind of original NFTs. In fact, like on the very first launch, I believe we were like one of the only other bids against like the Squid Zero, like the first one. And so, everyone was super nervous trying to figure out like what is this project? Because there just was no information about it. So, that's how I originally got involved in the DAO was really like investing in it and then realizing, okay, like this project needs a lot of help. And I think Big Squid had the same approach where, okay, we're invested in this, we can very clearly see what the needs are. The engineering team was awesome and was really solid and ships really fast. But in terms of like organization, treasury deployment, community management, there's a lot of holes to fill over the first 30 to 60 days. And so that was kind of the genesis of how I got started with Squid. And now, being involved in other DAOs or trying to cut partnerships and things like that, it's actually how a lot of them operate. Like a lot of them are these kind of big groups of people that are collaborating across multiple projects that are trying to understand how to help each other, how to help whether it's treasury deployment or bonding or policy set up. It's actually really cool to see kind of the whole ecosystem as it's developed.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. I mean, I feel like DAOs are a super exciting space and we're just, I don't know, they're just barely crawling I feel like. That's kind of what it feels like. All DAOs are struggling in their own ways to figure out the new ways to work and allocate information and resources and all this stuff. So, let's do a what the hell is Squid DAO sort of 101. I remember learning about this shortly after launch. But it really like- the most exciting description and iffy description I've seen is like an economic flywheel backed by ETH. But I think each of you described it like a little bit differently. But let's start with like what is it? How do you describe it? And then we'll kind of try to flesh that out a little bit.
Big Squid: Sure. So, I guess first to start, let's give like the TradFi web2 description of what it is. Basically, Squid DAO is a SPAC that raised close to 16,000 ETH and is now basically tasked with putting those ETH to work. And on top of that, it is kind of like a profitable tech company where we have different revenue streams that all bring in ETH or wrap stake Squid from bonding and those are also added to the treasury. But kind of holistically from there, the SPAC has raised now, what do we do? Squid DAO is an ETH investment vehicle and kind of like a flywheel in a sense, like you said, where the more ETH comes in, the more ETH we have to invest, the more strategies we could look into. So, Squid DAO kind of started with, if people are familiar with DeFi yield farming, it kind of started with just on chain, public, open to anyone yield farms. And we were determined to be the best at that and were going to deploy the most strategies, which we are doing at a pretty high level, but kind of as we get more mature and move up the risk curve, we are now looking to take on more and different types of investments. So, whether it means seed investments into- seed venture style investments into new DeFi protocols or kind of getting creative and doing some ETH loans to some new projects to help them get off the ground or kind of partnership style investments. So right now, we're working with a protocol called Redacted. We actually acquired 250K of their token and have put forward a proposal to their DAO to say, okay, our interests are now aligned, we would love for you to do bonding of our token. So, it's kind of very interesting in the fact that we're kind of high-level ETH investment fund, but then when you dig down to the deeper level of how the fund is structured, there'll be multiple sub strategies that will allow us to invest in a lot of different levels of risk across the board.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. So, I had a question here that was like by way of analogy, is it more like a fund or more like a company? And I think you said kind of early in your answer, like it's actually kind of both at once. And maybe the right way to say it is like there's three different revenue streams, yeah, inspired by different protocols. So do you want to walk us through like each of these? But I also don't think it's fair to assume that everybody knows the like origin of each project.
Big Squid: But yeah, so the interesting thing is it's like imagine a SPAC that continues to live on – it's not just a vehicle that raises once and then spends it. So, we had the initial fundraising, which we can kind of talk about how we're a fair launch and how we raise the money. We can talk about that later. But for the purpose of this question, we had initial liquidity into the fund. And the liquidity is there, and then we have the three revenue sources, which all come from forked protocols which means basically other teams in DeFi built it, and we copy pasted it to our protocol to kind of leverage it in a way that makes sense to us. And kind of what's unique here is we didn't just fork one protocol and then do the exact same thing as them. We forked multiple and then kind of built something new. So, the first is Olympus DAO which has built a bonding mechanism which allows the treasury to take in different assets and then in return bond back or give you back more of their governance token. So, in their case OHM, in our case Squid at a discount. So, for example, you give us a hundred units of token X, and we'll give you back 120 units of Squid over five days. So that's one way, which means that the token X, and in our case ETH that is brought into the treasury is actually just going straight into the treasury. It's indirectly- it's just like in traditional finance, when you bond, when you do a bond, you're raising money via bonds. So similar to that. The second revenue source is actually all the interest we've earned from putting our ETH to work. So again, in TradFi, there is no interest to be had anywhere, but in DeFi, due to risk levels and governance tokens, and various other reasons, there are high yields to be earned. So, with about more than half, 60% of our ETH put to work right now, we're earning a pretty substantial amount of ETH and other governance tokens a year. And then lastly, the last revenue stream is a fork of Noun’s DAO, which is basically a DAO with no token, only NFTs, where one NFT is auctioned per day, and those NFTs actually are governance rights. So, in most DAOs and crypto projects, the token holders actually vote, in Nouns, it's only the NFTs. So, we took that idea and implemented it where one NFT is auctioned per day in Squid DAO. And those NFTs not only get a governance vote, but actually share in protocol fees, which means that fees earned by the protocol are shared back out to NFT holders. But kind of to add on top of that again – I know I'm kind of getting deep into the hole here – but the Squid DAO governance isn't just NFT holders, it's actually also veSquid, which is a fork of the Curve finance locked mechanism. So, like to NFTs at Squid DAO, veSquid also has governance rights and the rights to protocol fees, which kind of makes Squid DAO a mashup of a lot of different protocols and all the successful parts of various protocols and mashing them together to make something new.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, I think it's really cool to imagine this as just like getting Megatron together of like a bunch of different good ideas from all over DeFi and web3. So let me recap by analogy back to like the world of equity and see if I've got this vaguely correct. So, profits come in from NFT sales and from the initial like $64 million in ETH basically that you brought in when you first like SPACed yourself and went for sale. Then you earn- then you deploy what's in the treasury from NFT profits and that initial liquidity into yield farming and profits from the bonding and staking. So, there's a bunch of treasury assets, then there are sources of profit, and then there's sources of profit from those treasury assets. And the benefits of all of those earnings basically go back to- the equity holders actually like split. So, there's like the NFT holders and the token holders both receive benefits from that. So, you can kind of own equity in the project by owning an NFT or by owning the token or both, with the one more caveat that if you lock, which I think is a really interesting mechanism. Like there's no long-term, there's no analogy for this in TradFi, I guess, except like illiquid startup equity. But if you lock it up for a long period of time, you essentially get like more rewards and more governance rights if you say like I'm committing to hold this token for four years or two years or whatever. Did I say anything wrong in there?
Big Squid: No, that's correct. That's, yeah, a lot going on, obviously, but yeah, that pretty much covers it.
Squid Steed: I would add, too, it's interesting, yes, we are a mashup of a lot of different innovations from crypto and DeFi. And you can look at it one way as this laundry list of innovations and opportunities, but it's also, I think, helpful to look at it from what are the opportunities for an individual user to interact with us, to interact with us as a DAO or as a protocol. And they're kind of, depending on what a person is really passionate about, there are a handful of ways to do that. A person who's passionate about a buy and hold strategy or buy holding stake strategy, buying the token, we have the Squid token with staking and a commitment to long-term protocol health. If you're passionate about NFTs, then we have a sweet set of NFTs that's a lot more than just a PFP for your Twitter profile. It has a revenue stream attached to it. It has voting rights attached to it. And if you're passionate about governance and the expansion of or proliferation of more and more governance opportunities in DeFi, we have that opportunity as well in that the NFT has governance opportunities, locking has governance opportunities. So, from that way, there's a lot of different ways that a person can interact with Squid DAO and find something, interact in a way they're passionate about or take advantage of all of it, come in, and innovate with us. It does have kind of an experimental, like a lot of things here, has an experimental feel to it. But I think that has been a benefit for us because we've got a lot of people who are OGs in the business who are like, yeah, come in, what's your idea? What do you think we should do? Or if somebody does that, and it's like okay, well, go do it and let us know when it's ready to launch.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned the governance, too. Because like what is the draw for people to get involved in governance? Why would people buy the NFT in order to get the vote or stake their long-term Squid in order to get a vote? What are some of the things that they're voting on?
Big Squid: Sure. So, two parts there. One is why would someone do it? So as of now, it's kind of just like hobbyist is not the right word, but just like early adopters, hobbyists, innovators who see this innovation happening and want to take part in it. But now we're very quickly transitioning to basically the opportunist stage of it, where we're in contact with a couple of VCs that have realized that if they acquire or win an auction, one NST auction, they can post votes to our governance to say, hey, deploy 200 ETH as seed liquidity to this new DeFi protocol I just invested in. So, we're very quickly transitioning from like, oh, all of us think this is awesome and we're so nerdy and this innovative to like real opportunists who are going to come in and say I just invested in this DeFi protocol, they need seed liquidity, we'll give you some tokens if you ape in a million dollars of your ETH and they're all able to do that by just buying an NFT. And this isn't something that many people have realized yet, but I think once the first VC or investor or whoever the large persona is that does this first, we'll kind of start this FOMO and realize that like, hey, this is a real decentralized fund, and by spending 10 ETH on an NFT, I could actually fund my own project if governance agrees to push it through.
Eric Jorgenson: What's your outlook on that? Is that like, oh shit, that's a hostile takeover? Or is that kind of like, hey, it's open and that's how DAOs roll?
Squid Steed: Well, the cool thing is that you can buy as much Squid as you want, but if you have one NFT, you get one vote, not to say that they couldn't stack 10 or 15 or 20 NFTs type of thing. But it's interesting in that there is that ability to direct deploy deployment of assets in an advantageous way based on NFT vote. But it's our argument that that is going to be pitched to be in the best interest of the rest of our holders as well that are trying to get that premium off of ETH.
Big Squid: Yeah. And to be honest, I'm ready for things to get crazy. Like if you want to come in and propose some crazy strategies, like we're all for it, but keep in mind it obviously still needs to pass governance. So, if you buy an NFT and come out with this absurd strategy that is so risky and is not really what we're interested in doing, it's going to get rejected. But if you come in and say I just funded this DeFi protocol, yields are high, they're going to give you some governance tokens, it was audited, then yeah, there's a pretty good chance that we're going to ape in some money. So, I'm really excited for that to happen and for things to get kind of crazy and have Squid DAO be almost like a fully open fund where anyone can- the rules are set, and if you follow those rules, you can come in and kind of access some of the liquidity.
Eric Jorgenson: Let's talk about the incentive alignment there. So basically, everybody who's involved in the project just wants more revenue. Like what is the order of operations of things that they want? Like, so we all want more revenue for the treasury. Does it matter what the mix is? Value accrues to the token and sort of to the NFT. You mentioned a rev share for the NFTs, which I think is really interesting, just as a mechanic that's kind of totally new in the web3 world. But what happens?
Big Squid: So I guess at a high level, what people involved in the project want is for Squid to be- sorry, for ETH to be put in the treasury to be put to work in a way where Squid trades at a premium, meaning that even if you have a hundred ETH in your own wallet, you could theoretically run all these strategies that we're running, but between gas and time and risk, it's really not as effective. And as we move up the risk curve and start making seed investments and other partnerships and other things that are kind of exclusively offered to Squid DAO due to our size and community and reach, then the premium of the token starts to accrue that like, hey, this isn't just a pile of ETH sitting in Aave or Compound, this is stuff that really is kind of above my head as even a sophisticated DeFi investor. Yeah, and then outside of that, I guess everyone's interests are a little bit different, like are you just a stake token holder? Are you a ve holder? Are you an NFT holder? But actually yesterday, or this morning actually in governance, something was just pushed through where previously a hundred percent of all ETH raised from NFTs was going straight to the treasury, but following this most recent governance proposal, 50% of that will actually be immediately dispersed back out to ve and NFT holders with a small part, 10% going to team and contributors. So, this is really interesting because now holding locked veSquid and NFTs is actually a productive asset. Like it's one thing to earn rewards in the same token that you're invested in. Then you're just kind of like compounding your risk in a sense or compounding your investment. But when you're getting paid out ETH, like anyone involved in the space will call that real money, so you're getting real interest on these investments, which I think will be really exciting. Which will allow investors to buy NFTs and then calculate, okay, in 250 days, I'll have made back my initial investment just on ETH payouts. So, it kind of adds a lot of new layers, and it's pretty exciting. I'm pretty excited about it as a holder myself to be able to hold these assets and get ETH.
Eric Jorgenson: That's amazing. Okay so, I want to do two things just to sort of bring everybody along for the ride here. So, one is to just like walk through the- is that as simple as if I hold this NFT in my wallet, or if I hold veSquid, which I'll define in a second, if those are in my wallet, then basically new ETH just like pops into my wallet every day, every week, and I do nothing else?
ZOption: There'll be a claiming function. So, the way the contract will be set up is basically daily, new ETH will be accrued based on what you own. So, if you have veSquid or if you have, let's say you have two NFTs, then your portion will be kind of split and then be claimed. You don't have to claim it every day. We've had a lot of questions come up as this has gotten passed. You can sit there and chill and it's not going to do anything, but you can claim it whenever you want to. I mean, in the short term, it will be the highest yielding ETH asset. Like as more NFTs are released and as more people lock, it's going to come down. But I mean, even just like napkin math, that's going to be well above 50% yield on direct ETH. So, we're pumped about it. It should- I mean, in theory, it's going to drive the price of NFTs up quite a bit. So how it affects our treasury, I don't even know if it'll change that much because the price of NFTs will go up and the treasury's portion is fine. One of the things we're talking about as well, just when we're thinking about proposals, is a reduction in APY. Because the counterpoint to doing this is, well, the treasury needs ETH, that's how you guys are minting Squid, that's how it works. But the best way to handle that is actually in APY reduction. And our protocol’s matured. And so, I think that's kind of the course; we'll put a schedule together similar to Olympus and kind of reduce APY over time. And that will kind of reduce inflation of Squid, and doing this process I think only brings more value to the long-term holders of Squid through veSquid, and then of course, those that are really heavy on the NFT side that are, like Big Squid was saying, putting out proposals. And to his point earlier, like stuff gets rejected all the time. Like people do post stuff and it doesn't go through, and it's not like everything that comes in is going to get approved. And I think we are open to the idea of someone coming in and locking a ton of Squid, buying a bunch of NFTs, and trying to get a large allocation put to an opportunity because, I mean, everyone today, like it's a small group of people. It's not thousands of people. There's probably, I don't know, I don't know what you guys think, it is probably give or take 50 to 60 people that have real influence in Squid governance. And I think a lot of them are like pretty big whales, I would say, as well as really smart people in DeFi. So, increasing that brainpower, that group of people, we're totally open to it. Like Big Squid said, we are down for it to get crazy.
Squid Steed: Yeah. It's so neat. I just wanted to add this. It's so neat from my perspective, too, because a lot of the stuff that I work on in TradFi is these super high-end strategies that have really fascinating stuff going on. And some of it's in VC, but that stuff is so closed off to the average investor. It's super high-end strategy for a super high-end client. But what this does is, this is the whole beauty of DeFi, and this truly kind of democratizes access to the best and most innovative strategies possible. Obviously, you scale your rewards by scaling into a bigger size position. But the person who wanders in, I mean like me, I literally wandered into Squid DAO one day from a different discourse, like what's this? It just happened to be day two. And I got super involved because I love the people, and it just seemed really promising. But a lot of people wander in and they just clunk down their 0.01 Squid buy or whatever it is and they're along for the ride. That person, that buyer has the same access to the same benefits of all of this thinking and all of the VCs being involved and the whales being involved. And if they lock, they get that vote. If they buy an NFT, they get a piece of that revenue. So, I guess given my newness in the space, it's such a stark contrast around the democratization of the opportunity itself. And it's just, it's really, really promising.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, that's a really good sort of- that is going to highlight a point I want to make on ZOptions, which is like the governance stuff that you mentioned that's getting voted in and voted out, like all of this is open too because this is all in a DAO, anyone can go to discourse.squid.xyz and look at the debate around each of these strategies and what gets implemented and what doesn't. And it's a great way to sort of learn from all these Big Squid brains.
ZOption: It's so crazy. Like the amount of alpha that just gets shared within that group because anyone can go front run anything the DAO is doing. Like all the strategies that we're putting in place, all the discussion that's happening, all the partnerships. It's one of the coolest things where any holder, any person that joins the Discord that wants to be part of the community has access to people that are so deep in this stuff and so smart. It's like when you first learn you can watch a YouTube video and learn something. Like now you can join a Discord and literally be a couple of clicks away from one of the smartest people in DeFi and their strategies and the way that they're thinking about the market or how they should position the treasury. Like, to me, that's the greatest benefit to being part of the Squid community. And there's a lot of like very heavy ETH kind of maxi strategies. People are- I mean, I don’t know how many protocols get shared every single day, at least a couple a day where someone walks through a strategy, something I've never even heard of, and I'm doing this all day, and so that's a really, really cool part of joining our community. Whereas like I'm in a bunch of other DAOs too, the level of- like that part is very different and a lot of those DAOs do reach out to us and ask for advice on treasury deployment or ask for advice on bonding. Like our crew has gotten really good on the policy side and on the treasury management side that we're being trusted outside of our own DAO to even give that advice.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, that's amazing. And I actually want to know kind of maybe from each of you, if you're comfortable, but there's a lot of- I've heard kind of each of you in your own way say I really love the people, I came to trust them, like these guys are awesome. But almost everybody that I see in there is anonymous. So, I want to know like how do those relationships develop? How do you build trust like as an anonymous account or with another anonymous account? And how do you gain the conviction that this team is amazing and that you're working with great people? Where does that come from for you?
ZOption: For me specifically, and then I'll shut up, like one thing is wallets and blockchains never lie. So that is one thing that's been really helpful is that everyone knows everyone's position essentially because it is a smaller group, especially kind of within the cracking group. And there's a lot of discussion and DMing that's going back and forth in the early days. Like people are stressed about having anonymous developers, stressed about treasury funds, how it all works. And all of that incrementally was solved. Basically, every single day, risk was being laddered down, laddered down over time. And then more and more people emerged as kind of the leader of specific aspects of the protocol. One of the big things that kind of formed was our policy team, which is just full of huge mega brains that now like within a day, we'll have a solution to what's going on or a proposal on what's going to be implemented. We'll get it voted, and then the devs implement it. Like seeing that whole process take place is basically what's removed kind of the risk, if you want to call it that, and built trust in those relationships. And then I think all of us have had to work pretty hard on specific partnerships or specific implementations. Or in Big Squid's case, like kind of having to take the point of making the dev team accountable, getting answers to specific questions, starting sub channels inside of Discord to get those discussions all the way through. And that's built a ton of trust inside of the community because they know that Big and others can kind of bring that accountability to the dev team and make sure things get implemented properly that get voted on. I also do personally know some of the people too, so that makes me feel comfortable as well – not on the dev side, but other people involved.
Eric Jorgenson: Got it. Yeah, I think there's something interesting around it's easy to trust a larger group of anonymous people if you know even a few people personally who you give a lot of credit to, that kind of like that chain of trust is there. But jumping in without even one person that you have deep trust with I think is a little harder. It sounds like Big Squid had a similar, like he knew some of the founding early team already as well. But Squid Steed, you just fell into the Discord and ran with it.
Squid Steed: I didn’t know anybody, man. I don't know any- well, I've talked to a couple of people and we're- I don’t want to say we're approaching doxing, but I've developed trust with a lot of people. When I came in, to keep going back to my web2 experience, to get really good at my day job, you have to be really predictable, really like risk managed, really steady and mundane, and that drives me fucking crazy. You know what I mean? Like that is not my personality. Like, so I'm kind of in this meat space gig where I've been in there 10 years, and I like the startup mentality. I like the uncertainty and the risk, and I've kind of always played well from a kind of underdog position. So, this is a perfect fit for me. It's like I don't know anybody in DeFi. I don't know shit about what most people are talking about on the strategy standpoint, but I'm like I want to learn all of it because I want to live the dream too. But when I stumbled into the Discord, it's funny, like I only had like two little dots over my Discord. I just started using Discord this summer, but very comfortable working virtually, I've done that for a long time. The culture and the people were different. The culture that I sensed in the group mimicked some of the best project- like product management or project development teams that I've ever worked on in my career. And I worked on and produced a documentary film during the pandemic that was sort of a local big deal. I wish I could share it with you, but I'd have to dox myself. But working as a movie producer is that same thing, you're trying to grab all of these different pieces and match them up and optimize them. And all of my business is looking at different things that are behaving in different ways and trying to form a composite portfolio and optimize those things. And a DAO is kind of like that. People are working in a decentralized fashion, all with a similar goal in mind, most of them. But they're working in different ways and you're trying to look at what's the sum of all of this? What's the composite of all of this? Everybody's paddling, what's the overall direction the ship is going? And then it was like, well, is there some way that I can help direct it just a little bit? So, I've got involved and reached out to a couple of folks who were just working on docs. It was an opportunity to build up the docs, and I've done so much fucking research paper editing and writing in the past, it was like, okay, I can probably help out here, and that was just an easy way to get involved and start having some conversations with people, and it just built. But the culture and the feel of the group was really like, yeah, there are some big whale type investors in here, but they're interacting in the general chat in the Discord, and they are like really helping people. They're answering questions. They're being respectful regardless of whether you're a small fish or a massive whale, and I was just like this is the deal. I'm going to be a part of this.
Eric Jorgenson: I've noticed that in the Squid Discord, too, actually. Like it is a great group. It is not so big that it's crazy overwhelming. There's not a ton of people in there like yelling about price. But it's very kind of calm and collected and helpful, willing to bring along beginners but answer complicated questions. And we scheduled this whole thing by just me hanging out in the Discord and trying to figure out how to help with marketing. So, this is- I vouch for that, too. I'm curious now that we're like this far into it, but why are you all like working so hard to stay anonymous? What is it that you get out of that? Is that like you staying anonymous from the Feds or like from each other? Or like is it a OPSEC sort of thing? Like what's the motivation or mix of motivations?
Big Squid: Yeah, I guess I could answer this. Also, to throw in for the last point, how do we grow to trust people, I guess it's pretty consistent with web3 and DeFi in its own right. You verify, you don't trust. So, it's you verify based on if it’s your first day in the Discord, like we're probably not going to trust you. But you can quickly gain trust where someone has just come in in the last week and has already proposed like 35 different DeFi strategies, and you could tell that like you can't make that stuff up. Like they're pretty high level, intense strategies. So that’s like one way to gain trust. And the other is just like pure consistency, hard work. Like if you come in every day ready to work, whether it's answering questions, posting memes, you just kind of gain trust that way. And then your question about doxing, I guess, not like I'm like working hard to dox, not dox, it's just like much simpler. Like you don't need people stalking you on LinkedIn and Google and like who are you? Like are you worthy of this role that you're fulfilling here? It's kind of like not the point. The point is like look at the work I've done, look at the work we're doing, and if that's good enough for you, that's good enough for me. And then there is also the aspect like where we live, you just don't want added trouble and not to say that like doxing in this project would give you added trouble, but it's like who wants to take that added risk of like what happens if in a year the US says like one person needs to be responsible for the DAO, and they're just going to pick the most active member, and no one wants any of that. So, it's just much easier to just be like, hey, I'm happy to tell you about my background and where I've worked in the past without naming companies and just kind of go from there. And yeah, it's kind of all about like verifying as opposed to like, oh, you have a hundred thousand followers on your real account so you must be legit.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, it's a really interesting kind of- it makes meritocracy easier, but everybody starts over. So, on the one hand, like you don't have a long track record in some cases, but you can earn respect quickly even under a new pseudonym.
ZOption: Yeah, I agree with what Big Squid said. I mean, it's not- because some people have doxed like to each other. Like I know some people, they know me now, or we've met up or whatever. It's not really about like, oh, I can’t- eventually this is going to end poorly, and I don't want anyone to know me. It really isn't that. It's just like what Big Squid said, it's so much simpler for like process. And for me, running another company, like I have a bunch of employees. And everyone is in a different situation. So, it just makes it simpler. And to me, what's been, because this is kind of my first time doing it, what's been interesting too, and I think Big Squid mentioned this, is you just measure people for the work that comes out. There's no- there's not like politics about it because you don't know who the fricking person is. So you just say, oh great, like you did that, you're the best, awesome. Thanks for that meme, thanks for that article you wrote, like that podcast was great. It's so much easier to measure output and outcomes because everyone's just working for the same goal. No one's trying to position for anything.
Eric Jorgenson: I love it. So, this may be a Big Squid question, but I want to do when was Squid DAO born? How did it start? Like from whence did it come? How did the team come together? I think that's a little bit of a mystery for me on like kind of how, where DAOs come from. I know how companies are founded, but I don't know how different it is for a DAO to go from zero to one and be born.
Big Squid: I mean, it's kind of all blur at this point. I think it's been two and a half months. I guess we're up to like two and a half months that we've been alive. Yeah, like I kind of knew of the founding team but like wasn't necessarily like a part of planning the launch of this protocol. But how do DAOs come about? It's basically like a developer and like a businessperson or even just like two developers come together and say like let's build this protocol and this website and start a Discord and then like slowly or quickly transition to giving power away. So that's kind of what happened here is Squid DAO was a complete fair launch, meaning no VCs, no seed funding, no one had access to NFTs that wasn't a fair auction. So NFTs where it started every hour and then moved to every two hours and then four hours. And that was the only way to buy each NFT for the first 44 or 45 came with a Squid token. So that was more or less like the balancer liquidity pool launch, except rather than it being kind of like first to AYP wins or biggest wallet wins, it was just like everyone has the right to go out and try and win an auction, to win one Squid. And so that's kind of how it was born. And yeah, the dev team was responsible for the model, and they had always envisioned building the VE locked model. But everything after the auctions and the locking of the Squid has kind of been- or has entirely been community driven. So, whether it's been through governance or before governance was even set up, when we started deploying strategies to stETH and Rocket Pool and just the basic ETH strategies, it has all been community led. And I think that's kind of the best way to go about a DAO is like start with a dev and a businessperson, and then in the first week really start to give out power. And it's really not easy in the sense that there's still like a lot of operational stuff and structuring we need to do because we don't- a DAO works like, oh, I'm busy today, I'm not going to contribute, but I have nothing to do today so I'll contribute for five hours. So yeah, it's really a challenge in the sense that it's great to get this collective high brain of people working on the same goals and the same problems, but unlike a company, you can't just be like, okay, you're promoted, you now oversee these five people. That's not really how it works at all, in a sense. It's just kind of like, okay, who should we give a long-term contract to? How do we like- do we vote on this? Who decides this? So yeah, all the traditional operational stuff becomes a lot harder, but the sourcing of ideas and talent and community and network and friendship all becomes much easier than a traditional company.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. So, if we had to like org chart the DAO at the moment, so long-term contracts is analogous to like employees, you're expected to contribute a certain amount over a long period of time. Like how many people are involved at what different levels today?
Big Squid: So right now, no one has a long-term contract. It's just kind of month to month right now. Like you're working hard this month, here’s some Squid money. The devs, here’s money; obviously the devs get paid. But even still, just because we don't want to rush in to like, okay, you deserve this amount over four years, and then like next week they disappear to an island. Like obviously, it wouldn't be vesting and like it wouldn't be like they steal money, but it's just like a much harder problem when, one, you don't really know the person, like you know their work, but you don't know them. And two, it's like because Squid was a fair launch, it's not like we're Aave or insert huge DeFi protocol that has a billion dollars in their treasury that like they could just hand it out to everyone. Squid got zero allocation of Squid tokens, so it's all just earning fees. So, in that sense, like we're a little bit more cautious, at least now, about how we pay out. But yeah, I guess about in the next month, there'll be about like 15 people who make money directly via pay. And then we have a coordinape which is basically like a community voting system for who gets the pot of money. So, say I get 15% of the votes, I get 15% of the pot, and there'll probably be another 10 people who get paid through the coordinape.
Eric Jorgenson: Cool. That’s awesome. ZOption, will you tell us what partnerships look like? I know- like maybe run us through an example of kind of who you work with, what you work on. Is this about effectively deploying the treasury? Is this about getting other people to buy Squid? And I know, I believe we have a partner- Squid has a partnership with Index Coop who I've also done a podcast with, so that might be a reasonable example to use if it's a good example.
ZOption: Yeah, we can- I mean the easiest one for- that one's probably not the best for me to talk on, but the reality is like we probably have like, man, I don't even know how many threads are going, at least 20 right now on different partnerships. The most announced and kind of bigger one that has happened and there still some in progress on it is the Olympus partnership. So, I mean, the way that it happened was just me DMing Jaws and Zeus and just starting a conversation with them. That's the reality. I mean, I'd had another thread with Jaws about something else, but I just DMed him and said, hey, what would it look like if we worked together? And that kind of kicked off a bunch of ideas internally about like what could we do? How could it work? They gave us a bunch of ideas. We were asking for some advice from them on the policy side as well as some marketing questions. And then that led us to doing the 12 NFT project that we released where the bidding was actually done in OHM. And we did the Olympus gods, and Zeus actually came out and joined our spaces, mentioned that he’s a Squid holder, and he actually purchased the Zeus NFT for 333 OHM, which was pretty sweet. And obviously, that's a huge price increase from at the time, what NFTs were doing. And I don't know, I can't remember the total OHM raise, but it was over half a million bucks in terms of value. And so that partnership was super interesting. Like we wanted to take a position in OHM, and we also wanted to have a relationship with that group in general. And so that was kind of the easiest way for us to kick it off and bootstrap a position in OHM, and now that position is staked. The next steps for that we've taken are gOHM and wrap Squid and brought an LP pool over to Phantom. And so now, people that are more concerned about gas can purchase Squid over there. And so that's how we're utilizing some of our position in Olympus. And the next steps and kind of next discussion points with them are around our liquidity pool as well as bonding and the potential for Olympus to bond Squid. The big one that's out right now that is kind of in proposal stage that passed on our side was taking a position in Redacted. And we've now purchased and staked the token, and on their side, the plan is to have them bond Squid and then lock it for four years and essentially promise to never sell it, and then start voting in our protocol and having a greater influence inside of Squid. So that's kind of what we were talking about earlier where you could potentially have them putting in proposals and discussion points and policy put in place that could benefit them and benefit us. So, when I think about all of these deals, all I really care about is like the long-term view of what it can do for Squid. And does it bring more buyers? Because our challenge is not technology. Like we can deploy technology super quick. We can spin something out really quick from what gets voted on in policy. Our challenge is getting new people to buy. It's not even reducing selling, like most of the people that wanted to get out on the whale side are out. And a lot of the large holders are locked, and some of them are locked for four years, which is basically an eternity; it's forever when you think about crypto. And so, the commitment level is so high. So really what it's about now is how do you force people to see the value of what Squid is and what it can become? And so that's what a lot of these partnerships are is trying to validate that point and bring buying pressure to the token. And the proposal that just passed, which we kind of glossed over with the claimable ETH, that is like- it's a really crazy achievement, like to be able to design something that allows you to directly claim ETH off of NFT ownership for locking a token and having real yield, like it will be a very real amount of ETH for people compared to, oh, like I could throw this in Aave and make point 2. This is going to be a significant yield on ETH. I'm very interested to see what that does to the NFT price, as well as locking. There will be an incentive to go buy 20k of Squid, lock it for four years, knowing that if you do the math on that, you're like, well, I'm going to get over 20K in ETH back over those four years and still have the Squid and still have the potential of token upside, ETH upside. So, everything we do, that's the focus. How do we bring additional buyers? How do we help them understand like the mechanisms that we're building? Even listening to us at the beginning, I'm like, damn, part of our problem is it's kind of complicated. It's kind of a lot of shit. It's a lot. And for someone that wants to make the 5K, 10K buy, it's like, well, wait, should I buy an NFT? Should I- what's veSquid? What's wrap Squid? It is a little bit complicated. So, my invitation is just come to the Discord, ask the questions. Like no one's going to fire you down about asking a simple question like people do in other Discords. People are really happy to answer those questions and help you like make a decision on where to put your foot in.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. I'm glad you opened that up because, well, I was going to try to do what are the types of token, but I think that's a bad idea and there's good content written about that in kind of the FAQ and the guides. Plus, that's like 301. But I want to do the- I want to get into like the economics of the DAO, which is like kind of I feel like you set us up perfectly for. And I know like none of this is investment advice, and everybody's got their own kind of way to value these things and model out the expected returns. And you can maybe each answer personally or how you have thought about it. But in order to get this far, you must've each had a great expected value around buying either the token or the NFT or both. And I just want to like walk through the numbers and the case a little bit to the extent that we can and say like these are essentially like buying shares in a company whose cashflow you like and expecting the value of the equity to go up and to get some dividends out of it. But what are the variables in that equation, and can you kind of take us through it?
ZOption: I mean, I have my way of doing it if you guys like, because I've done a ton of these, like an analysis of different DAOs, and I think the first article I released was just this concept around kind of the inevitability of the Squid DAO reaching a hundred thousand ETH. So, in all these DAOs, you can do evaluation based on kind of like an income derivative – how much money are they making? Or the more common one, because it's a little simpler, is just to say, okay, what's the multiple on the treasury? Or like what is it trading at against what it has on its balance sheet essentially. And today, Squid, I don't know what the price is at this very moment, but I believe we're either at or below risk revalue, meaning if we pulled the LP pool and we pulled all treasury out and we sold it for ETH, we would be trading basically at that number. And so, people are just valuing us at that point. So, from an investment thesis, if you look at Klima or Olympus, I think are still the two that are trading, even with Klima’s like crazy decline, they're still trading at the highest multiples. And I think Klima at one point was like 30X treasury, and Olympus was like really strong at kind of 20, 15 to 20X for a really long time treasury. So, it gives you a sense of the potential kind of upside on specifically the Squid token. And that doesn't factor in any of the other aspects – NFT, locking mechanisms, any additional bonding that we do. So, the bullish case on Squid is essentially, look, if we went down another 50%, we would be incentivized to either purchase the token up to risk-free value or distribute the ETH. So, investing today is kind of, you can't say it's risk-free because there's always risk in anything you do, but when you're investing in specifically a DAO at this moment, we're basically at the best entry point you could get in theory. Now, there are protocols if you look at other chains where they are trading below risk free value. But a lot of those, if you look at them, it's because the team maybe isn’t active, the team isn't willing to do buybacks, the team isn't willing to liquidate. Because of the way we're set up, all those things can potentially be on the table because you can propose it. You can bring it to governance. It is a collaborative effort. So, when I look at valuing Squid, it's really that simple. We have more revenue streams than other protocols because you have NFT and you have an aggressive yield farming strategy that has been put in place and bonding. So, you have an additional revenue stream that they normally don't. And we're trading as low as you basically possibly can. So, from an entry point, it's super interesting. And I think even yesterday Big Squid made an additional buy on top of his already pretty large position.
Big Squid: Yeah. So, I guess that's- I can add onto that too, but another way of building confidence is like, hey, look like I'm not leaving, I'm still buying. Like if I think it's a good buy, there's a good chance I know all the partnerships we're discussing, all the strategies we're building. And if I'm buying like maybe you should be buying. Not financial advice of course. And then to kind of like not simplify but to bring back to like TradFi terms of what ZOption was saying, Squid is basically trading at like 80% of book value, which would mean like if an ETF was trading at 80% of the assets it had in its treasury, I mean, on its balance sheet. And the most interesting thing about Squid is that not only is it trading at 80%, but the assets are in ETH. So, if ETH were to go to 20K in the next four years, like unlocked for four years, so I'm thinking a four-year time span, if it's at 20K in four years, then in theory, without any of the revenue and any of the yield, the price of Squid should be 4X. And it's just like the way you think about it in a sense where it's like you could compare us to other OHM forks, like ZOption was saying, and say like, okay, they're trading at a premium, so should we, but even if you take a step back and say like, okay, why are we trading at a discount? Does that make any sense considering our treasury is in ETH and put to work? From my perspective, it doesn't. But even if it does from your perspective, if you think ETH is bullish and going to go up, then almost by default or as design, so should Squid token. And yeah, so like I have a pretty substantial stake of locked Squid for four years as well as a position of just stake Squid. And then I got Squid 14, which was an early option, so extremely undervalued to where it shot up to after that. And then made many substantial buys after that. But I realized that I only had one NFT, and one NFT was like I couldn't even- when I was proposing all these votes, it was hard for me to get any momentum with these votes, and I just had to go out and like basically politic for other people to vote for my stuff. So, I bought two more NFTs and it's not like I control governance at all. But now I have like 4% of the vote is me now, so it's okay, like I have this vote and it's 4% of the way there ready. So, like let me go out and find 15 of the other percent and the other will just come naturally. So, I don't even remember the question you asked. I’m just kind of rambling here.
Eric Jorgenson: We are just kind of talking through the economics, like the expected values of these things. And the NFTs is an interesting one too, because the governance matters, but it probably matters to you because you have so many Squid tokens. And something that I remember trying to calculate real quick was like what is the cash on cash return of the NFT itself? Because the NFT entitles you to rewards, some from the bonding, but now also from the NFT sales. So, what was the payback period of your NFT?
Big Squid: Right. So I'm going to be honest, I'm a true DeFi ape. I do not calculate time to make back money. It's just like all a gut feel. And like I'm a very qualitative investor.
Eric Jorgenson: Just vibes man, just vibes. Not even napkin math.
Big Squid: Exactly. No napkin math, vibes only. But yeah, so in terms of- and the reason I say that is like I'm half joking here, but like when you get paid rewards in the same token that the investment is in, it's like that's not really even a worthy calculation from my perspective because if the token shoots up, then your math is totally wrong. And if the token plummets, your math is totally wrong. So, it's not really relevant in that sense. It's more of like a bonus option.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, it is one of the hardest things about some of these rebase tokens, like time and OHM and stuff, you're like, I mean, the rebase is great, but it's so dwarfed by the price that you could be right or wrong just based on speculation.
Big Squid: Exactly. But what I would model if I were to be buying an NFT today is how long it would take me to get my ETH back based on the price, based on this new governance proposal that was just passed where you're going to be getting 20% of all the ETH divided by your pro-rata share of all the NFTs. So, I own three, so three divided by I think we're on like 105 now. And I would do that math to be like, oh, this is kind of a no-brainer investment. In 185 days, I'm going to just earn back all the ETH I spent on this NFT and then all the additional wrap Squid, wrap stake Squid will be free in a sense because the NFT will have already paid for itself. And the governance votes will just kind of be an add on at that point. So yeah, I don't know the math yet because like ZOption said, theoretically, this should drive up the price of NFTs. It will probably happen slower than we think and then kind of all at once when big investors or VCs start to buy them to kind of leverage the ETH in the treasury. But yeah, I like to, in DeFi, to really separate what's real yield, meaning dollars or ETH, or basically, yeah, I guess really just basically dollars or ETH and then everything else as kind of just like free rewards, and you can't really classify that as real interest or real money, because again, if Squid goes 10X, your calculation was nonsense anyway. So making Squid and NFTs a productive asset will really allow investors and quantitative investors to really run these analyses.
Eric Jorgenson: Squid Steed, do you have anything to add on sort of the valuation and math? I'm guessing you did a little bit more math than Big Squid did.
Squid Steed: I mean, I did some, but I kind of waver back and forth between the polar opposites of like extreme quantitative due diligence and also like just what's the look and feel of it, the vibe of it, so to speak. I didn't have as much of a long-term well-formed view as a lot of people. A lot of people were attracted to Squid because they're long ETH. Like they are ETH maximalists. And for folks that are new listening, they have a view that ETH is going to be the most ultrasound form of digital currency in the world. And if you're an ETH maxi, this strategy can make a lot of sense because not only are you getting a long- or a bullish ETH exposure over time, but over an investment life or a market cycle, you should earn a premium on that because we're going to farm and invest ETH in a way that most small fish can't do on their own due to gas costs, due to expertise, due to just time, and the opportunities or benefits of scale that we have with the 12,000 ETH treasury plus extra. So, there's that view. But from the vibe side, if you look at the people who were involved and the innovation that's happening and the way that this was set up, one thing we talked about earlier was communication of the DAO early on, some of the initial challenges and hurdles, I looked at it as the founding devs kind of did us a favor by being silent on some things because what it forced to happen was – and I don't know if it's intentional or I like to think that the founding team is probably just like a lot of us who have families and day jobs and really interesting to do a project on the side, and all of a sudden, it blows up and you're working around the clock trying to make it happen. And whatever the case may be, that team allowed the opportunity to take place for people, for the cream to rise to the top, for people to get involved, to make moves, to stick their neck out, to ask for more responsibility, all the things you want to see in like a successful startup, or somebody trying to make a name for themself. This was the perfect opportunity for that. And it gave those of us who don't like to sit around and wait for people- I mean, there are certainly a lot of people like where are the devs? They need to get here and fucking fix this shit, the price is doing this, blah, blah, blah. It's like, and we've had so many of those questions, it's like, okay, well, you could sit around and continue to stew on that or you could just stake and chill and do some work, like get involved with any of these big brains in the Discord or these hardcore builders in the Discord that are passionate about this and learn something, just jump in somebody's back pocket, in addition to what we're doing in Squid DAO just to learn about the broader industry. So, from that standpoint, I have a bullish thesis on Squid the token. I have a bullish thesis on the Discord. I have a bullish thesis on how we kind of change and grow, how much has happened in a, what, two-and-a-half-month period that, when we have accomplished more in two and a half months than my company that I work for has accomplished in the last nine years. That rate of change, that openness to new ideas, and also the self-governance is working. People are very passionate about topics, but they are accepting of people pushing back too and saying, hey, I don't- I hear you are really smart on that topic and you're really passionate about that topic, but I just don't think that works. And people tend to say, okay, well, thanks for letting me know, and let's rehash it a different way. All that to me is those are the ingredients. Like we don't know exactly what the cake's going to look like when it comes out of the oven six months or a year or two years or four years from now. But the ingredients are there, the utensils, the cookware is there, we've got the highest- we've got the most commercial high dollar kitchen to bake the cake that you could imagine. So, it feels obvious to me that the product that's going to come out, the cake that's going to come out of the oven is going to be pretty damn nice.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, it is really interesting to look at- I mean, if anybody's listening who has made it this far, they clearly at least care somewhat or believe in web3 and DeFi and looking for ways to somewhat passively get like a smart edge on things without- everybody's kind of like overwhelmed trying to keep up with all this, all the new protocols, all the new ideas, and are kind of looking for a way to, how do I- who can I find to trust to like manage my money in an open way that can help me like get- you basically have to beat ETH as a return, right? Like anybody can just buy ETH and hold it. And if this is a viable option for earning 10X if ETH is going to earn 7X over the next two years, then I think that's a really interesting thing to look at. And it seems like the way the people in the Squid DAO think of it because, maybe you guys can tell me if there's more reasons why ETH is kind of- why everything's denominated in ETH. But it seems like that's at least the mindset of like, if we're not beating the return of just holding ETH, then what are we doing here?
Big Squid: Right. Yeah, so we're not- I know the word ETH maxis has been said multiple times. It's more like ETH maxis as in like ETH is the best index. Like if you're not beating ETH, what are you even doing here? But it's not like we hold other tokens in the treasury. It's not like we hold Convex, we just bought Vutterfly, we're farming Curve and Convex. We have a position in Y Axis which is pretty significant in their gauge. So, we're earning a lot from their gauge. Yeah, exactly. OHM as well. So I would- we haven't like formally announced this, I don't know if we ever will, in the sense that like our index is if we don't beat putting ETH into stETH on Convex and then staking that LP token and earning Convex, if we're not beating that 5 to 7% that pays on your ETH, then we're basically failing. Like if you could do the most passive strategy and beat Squid DAO, which is a bunch of big brains that have experience deploying strategies, then like what's the point? Which is pretty unique in the sense that you'll find a fund that's holding, denominating in dollars and benchmarking against ETH. Whereas like we denominate our portfolio in ETH, and if we're not earning 7%, if it's not growing by 7% a year in ETH, then we kind of view that as a failure. But yeah, again, like it's not ETH maxis, it's more just like we don't look at the dollar amount so much. We just look at the amount of ETH that the portfolio is worth. And then to kind of like directly answer a question, if like someone is like, okay, I want to learn a little bit more about Squid or like maybe I'm already fully invested but want to do some farming, how do I learn? The best thing that I could do, to recommend would be to- so Squid is fully on chain, so you could see all the trades that we make and all the farming strategies we deploy. So, if you go into our Discord in resources and scroll up to the Zapper bundle, you could actually go to the history and look at all the trades we’ve been making. So that's kind of one way to like get your own farming ideas on your own. And the other is just kind of like joining the Discord and like watching- going to the ETH strategies channel and just like watching some of the people go back and forth. And even if the DAO passes on it because like we're not looking to invest in options right now or like the strategy is too risky because of X, Y, and Z, like maybe you don't think so, and that's just like kind of a place to get new ideas, which like Steed and ZOptions were saying, that's kind of like one of the best parts about being involved in Squid DAO is that all the people are so friendly and smart that like even if you're not going to do the strategy you're talking about for Squid, you're learning on your own. So even if you never speak in the Discord and you're just like kind of read only, you'll still be able to learn a crazy amount about ETH strategies and deploying ETH and what’s a safe amount to borrow against ETH collateral. And then you borrow dollars, how do you best farm with that? When to sell the tokens you are earning back into ETH and all of these kinds of things. And yeah, I think that's kind of the best way to learn in DeFi is really by doing it. Like reading articles and strictly scrolling on Twitter is never really going to get you that final like 30% you need. It'll get you like the first 50 to 70%, but really to get a true mastery, you really just have to invest your own money and take the risk yourself. But yeah, I often tell people that even if they're not looking to invest in Squid, just join the Discord, and maybe you'll just get some other investment ideas or some new lines of thinking.
Eric Jorgenson: Yes, totally agree with that. It's a little bit more skin in the game and a little higher signal than scrolling Twitter for sure. I want to kind of bookend this economics kind of chunk with-
Squid Steed: Can I jump in with one thing? One thing I just meant to say is relevant to, or to use the analogy for the broader TradFi investing public, we're on ETH main net, and ETH for us as cash, essentially. Like it's not just about investing ETH, it's that we're built on ETH and we take in money from NFTs. We're taking that in in cash, which for us is ETH, right? So, we're building up this stockpile of cash and we're putting that cash to work in other protocols to earn a return on that to eventually make more cash. That's the kind of the same way as a fund collects US dollars to invest, they buy a bunch of other stuff because the end goal of the investor is to have more cash at some point. So, that point can get lost at times when people in the Discord or when people are checking the price and the checking the USD price. Well, the USD price is great, but the ETH price is really the one to follow because that's home base for us.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah. And it's almost like the fund reinvesting its own management fees or something into more equity, but you hold equity in the fund by buying the token. So, I grabbed some numbers to kind of put to some of these things that you guys mentioned. So, as we are recording in sort of January, early January 2021, the market cap is around 49 million. You guys correct me if I'm wrong or misreading anything. The market value of treasury assets is about 41 million. And so that's like, yeah, I think you said 80%. And then the risk-free value of treasury assets is 27 million. What accounts for the difference between market value and risk-free value?
Squid Steed: Yeah. So, there's two pieces. There's the risk-free value, which is ETH that we have banked cash that we've brought in, in other words, from NFT sales. There's also a decent amount of liquidity that we hold as part of the liquidity pools. So, people can interact with our ecosystem by depositing their mix of liquidity and ETH and Squid into an LP. However, we actually own the vast majority of that liquidity pool. That's on our balance sheet and it’s part of our treasury, but because it's in that liquidity pool sleeve, if you will, it's not part of the risk-free value calculation.
Eric Jorgenson: Okay. So, those are all still owned assets. They could be made liquid at any point really. They're just kind of a different bucket. They're subject to a permanent loss basically.
Big Squid: Yeah. Risk-free is just kind of like here's the ETH that you deployed, and this is like your base asset. Whereas like an LP, even though half of it is ETH, it's still like its own type of investment. Also, just to update or correct the numbers you put out, I think you only were looking at the multisig address. So, there's two addresses for Squid’s treasury. One is multisig, and the other one is like where the funds go directly from NFTs, and then they're moved from that wallet to the multisig to be invested. So the book value according to Zapper right now, which I know there's a pretty large investment in a 500 ETH investment. So, 500 ETH is worth- that's like $2 million now. So, Zapper is saying the two wallets combined is worth 53 million ETH- sorry, that'd be great, $53 million plus the $2 million that's not showing there, so 55 million and Squid token is trading at 49 million. So again, below book value. But so that 55 million includes the LP. So that's higher than the risk-free value because that's investments that “have risk.”
Eric Jorgenson: Which is what Squid Steed just explained. Okay, okay. Yeah, I was looking at the Dune Analytics dashboard. So that may only be looking at that one, the multisig address.
Big Squid: Right. I think some of the investments Dune doesn't recognize. Like when you deposit into certain protocols, it doesn’t see that necessarily or that the query that was created isn't updated to include all that. So yeah, that's I guess like another problem with our fund is like when you go to invest in any other fund, like the numbers are there and they're very clear. Whereas like on chain, obviously things are a little bit more difficult because if it's not on Zapper, it's not on Dune, it's kind of like lost in the ether. But we are working on a partnership or the partnership- We have a partnership with Multifarm who's creating us custom dashboards that are going to be public where everyone can see all of our deployed strategies, the buckets of risks that each strategy is in. And then they're going to be building us some private ones to kind of monitor our liquidations and deeper into risk levels and kind of which protocols are do we have all our money deployed on. So, for example, like 40% is exposed to Convex, etc., things like that. So that will be amazing once that comes out so we can be able to share. And rather than me telling people to go look through Zapper and the history, which obviously you need some experience to even comprehend what Zapper is telling you, once these dashboards come out, it will be a lot simpler and kind of like, oh, I logged on to Fidelity, like what does ETF look like? It'll be a lot more like that.
Eric Jorgenson: That's awesome. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy, you guys are only two and a half months old, so like super baby here, and all the tools are evolving for all these DAOs so quickly. I'm sure you are not the only ones with this challenge. The other number to drop, I think, is that also, if I'm reading this right, yesterday, the DAO took in 11 ETH, so basically like $42,000, which is annualized around 15 million.
Big Squid: Yeah, exactly. So, the NFTs had dropped down to like 5 ETH for a couple of days. Price action was down, and people were scared. There weren't that many bidders. But obviously things change very quickly. And now with this new proposal that ETH will be paid out and some really cool art, the most recent NFTs have been some really cool art, so yeah, now we're averaging close to 10 ETH again for NFT auctions. And like you said, that's $15 million a year, assuming ETH doesn't go up. So yeah, I mean, again, that's a really exciting part of being a SPAC with revenue. It's like we have all of this ETH and money to deploy, but we're also going to continuously raise for perpetuity, into perpetuity.
Eric Jorgenson: That’s awesome. I mean, a $50 million like company trading at book value of its assets earning $15 million a year.
Big Squid: Right. Exactly. And when you say it like that, people are like, oh, that's crazy, like how does that make any sense? But right, when you come to crypto, it's like, wait, the team is just like these random internet people that are talking on Discord. And then, like it's something you need to get over, but once you kind of understand that DAOs with anonymous people contributing is actually a lot more powerful because it's like I'm good at this, you are good at that, let's work together to build this new product, new tool, new marketing campaign is a lot more beneficial than like, okay, this is your job at this company to do this, whether you're good at it or not. It becomes a lot more beneficial to kind of share roles and responsibilities.
Eric Jorgenson: For sure. Yeah, I mean, the risk exists and that's where some of the reward comes in or where some of the upside comes from. So, I mean, and also, it's fair to say that there's a lot being pioneered here. I think it's easy to hear something on a podcast and be like, oh, everybody knows about this. Less than 200 people or 2000 people hold Squid tokens still as far as that dashboard says. So, wildly early, like all of those people would fit in one room. So, if we think of this as like a secret conspiracy happening in the open online, it's way more fun for me. So, let's talk about like the long- this is fourth quarter. We're almost done, I promise. I know I've been like just digging and digging and digging, but I want to look really far out. What does the Squid DAO look like at its very highest aspiration? Like what happens if everything works perfectly?
Big Squid: Yeah, so I've made this joke on Twitter that Squid is like the web3 investment bank, like Goldman Sachs before all the regulations were put into place as to what they were allowed to invest in, in the sense that like Squid DAO is just this massive investment vehicle with no rules. We can invest in whatever we want, whatever tokens we want as long as it's on chain. I guess we do have rules. Like we're not buying real estate. We're not doing anything like that. But as long as it's on chain, we're open to it. Which then kind of like opens the window to some friendly investment manager competitions, where it's like there's been discussions of like me and a couple other people coming together to start a new multisig of all trusted DAO members to be like, okay, a larger DAO, give us 250 ETH and we're going to deploy it as we see fit. The fees will be this. Exactly. And then other people will be like, oh, I'm a capable manager too, like let me get some ETH, or we just spun up or we're in the process of spinning up Squid L Ventures, which will be our seed venture fund. So, it's like, oh, you're a venture capitalist in web2 and you want to come contribute, like come help us find deals and deal flow, and then look at them and decide which ones you want to invest in.
Eric Jorgenson: Yeah, put me in that Squid L Ventures channel, I’m in.
Big Squid: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I guess to wrap it up, it is open-ended in the sense that banks and investment banks will always be adding new units and new investment arms as they see fit. So that's kind of my vision there. It's like we'll have these like really strong revenue sources and really strong farming revenue and really strong returns from venture investments and some liquid token investments, and then we'll have all this other money from those returns and revenue to kind of diversify risk and invest in new strategies.
Eric Jorgenson: Love it. So, what can we do to- let's talk about the contributor participation piece. Like what kind of help do you need to get there faster? What do you- ask not what the Squid can do for you, but what you can do for the Squid. What sort of stuff is there to chip in on?
Big Squid: Yeah, so I guess, like this is not the answer you're looking for, but really anything, like marketing, biz dev, are you developer? Are you a front end developer? Are you a degen strategist? Are you a coding strategist, meaning like you could deploy smart contracts that will say, okay, leverage this amount and then start to close leverage at these prices and kind of automate all the strategies? We would love like a yearn strategist basically. We would love to get some of those on board. Or if you're just like a smart person that works in web2, just come start talking and like reading what we need help with, and you'll definitely be able to find things to contribute. But I think that's kind of right, like, as Steed was saying, he was like, how did I get here? Like I feel like I don't belong, but like I'm being very productive and I know I'm doing good things and the DAO is telling me I'm doing good things. I think that's kind of also what separates us from some of the other DAOs. The team launched the protocol and is still involved, but they're not- they're more like devs, and I'll talk to them about strategy, but they're not so much involved in day to day. And like, oh, should we post this governance vote with 4% or 5%? They're not really involved in that sense. So, from the very early days basically anyone who came into the Discord with good ideas, that would say, okay, like here's your role, you just got assigned this tag in the Discord, you can now see these channels. And that kind of level of openness. And you didn't need- there was no interview. I didn't need to see a resume. Like you gave me one good idea and you're already able to contribute. And that doesn't necessarily mean we're going to implement your strategies, but just to be able to be in the room with the decision makers or the collective decision makers, the people who have a lot of governance votes is pretty powerful. And I think that's kind of a reason why a lot of web2 people like ZOption and Steed have gravitated towards Squid is because like we don't care that you don't have my two years of DeFi investing experience. Like that doesn't matter. Just because I was early doesn't mean I'm better than anyone else. And that's kind of the mentality we took is like if anyone shows that they're going to work hard or write good articles or contribute vision to the protocol, like we're willing to get you involved. But yeah, I guess on a specific level, we definitely need help getting the word out with marketing, and marketing kind of has many legs to it. Like there's the crypto Twitter marketing, which like between Ever and the DAOs, that is sufficiently covered in a sense. But then of course there's the much grander marketing, which is like we need- we don't have any materials that a traditional fund would have yet. Like here's our prospectus and here's our investment fund overview, and here's just all the traditional stuff when you go to a normal fund you'll see on their website. Like we're not that mature yet where we have all that stuff.
Eric Jorgenson: There’s a notion that anybody can jump in and chip in on and there's a notion, there's some docs, there's a Wiki. So, let's do a real quick like three different buckets for next steps. So next steps for general curiosity is like who to follow on Twitter, what to read, and what to join.
Big Squid: Sure. Who to follow on Twitter – definitely Squid DAO, which is @SquidDao on Twitter, myself, bigsquid0X, ZOption, I can't remember his Twitter name offhand, but if you just scroll down the Squid DAO or my Twitter feed, I've definitely retweeted him recently. And then 0XSteed who was on the call earlier. And then like if you just follow us three and the DAO, you'll be able to see all the people who are retweeted who are actively tweeting about Squid or involved in the DAO. So yeah, I guess that's like level one is just like, okay, I don't really want to contribute, but I just want to be up to date on what's happening.
Eric Jorgenson: To learn more. The second bucket being investors. So, people are interested in investing.
Big Squid: Then definitely join the Discord. And there's a lot of different channels that you will get access to over time. Well, actually let me take that back. A lot of them are public. So, you could see a lot of the partnerships that are happening and the ETH strategies. But then like as we identify you as like, okay, you're really good at ETH strategies and marketing, you'll be added to a couple other channels. But just consider that like premium alpha. If you're not in those channels, like definitely open to asking any questions and there's going to be a million people who come in and answer those questions and you'll be able to a read all the way up to all the partnerships and what's being talked about. So yeah, if you're an interested investor, definitely join the Discord and read through the docs which are linked on squid.xyz . If you scroll down on the left bar, you'll be able to see a link to governance and docs. So, I’d definitely read through all the recent governance posts to see what's passed, what hasn't passed, kind of look through the voters to see who are the top voters. And then kind of click around on their NFT- their ENS addresses. Are they buying? Are they selling? Are they buying more? And yeah, and then just kind of like read through the docs and kind of ask questions as they come to you.
Eric Jorgenson: Cool. Okay. And as you mentioned, contributors of all stripes, so marketing, writing, meme making, strategy developer of kind of any skillset, and design. Like there's a way to kind of chip in and help I think pretty much no matter where you are coming from. Cool. Well, I feel like- I mean, there's still another page and a half of notes here. I could do this all day. There's so many interesting things to dig into. Maybe we'll have to check in in a little bit here. But I super appreciate you kind of bringing us all along and showing what's going on. I'm very excited about this whole world and I think Squid DAO is such a perfect example of everything exciting that's happening in DeFi, in NFTs, in investing in web3 and in DAOs. It's kind of like understanding Squid DAO means you understand almost all of what's happening in web3 applied like happening in real time. It's just such a perfect, amazing example and full of good people, even though they're anonymous. So, thank you for taking the time, all of you, and appreciate you taking the time to teach everybody. And I hope to see some more people in the Discord soon.
Big Squid: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, definitely happy to come back on in a couple of weeks or months or whatever and kind of discuss the recent happenings. And just to throw in one other point, like if you are listening to this as an investor or a major stakeholder in another DeFi protocol, or you have some exposure elsewhere, I would definitely suggest you look into the NFTs and kind of leverage the open decentralized fund as it should be, meaning that the capital is truly open, and if you have good ideas to benefit yourself and will benefit Squid as well, definitely come and pitch them because we're not set on our own ideas and we're open to listening to anyone with good ideas. So, if you are an early DeFi protocol founder or investor, definitely get involved with Squid in whatever sense because we would love to help you, whether it be loans or seeding. Yeah, and just kind of see where that would take us together.
Eric Jorgenson: Put that treasury to work, baby. Thanks, Big Squid. Appreciate it. Talk to you soon.
Big Squid: Thanks so much. Bye.
Eric Jorgenson: I really appreciate you hanging out with us today. Thank you for listening. This was our longest episode ever. So, I'll keep the outro short. If you liked this episode, you want more like it, you will definitely want to check out my interview with Simon Judd. He's from Index Coop, which is a DAO that creates index products in the crypto world. Second, Jason Hitchcock, my most listened to episode ever. He is a DeFi degen and strategist and knows a lot about some of the protocols that we mentioned in here and the investment opportunities. Last is Sean O'Connor, who does an amazing explanation, kind of the basics of blockchain and has an amazing story about tokenizing the first NBA contract and other sort of investment opportunities and novel applications of web3 technology. So, check those episodes out. If you love this completely free, un-sponsored podcast that I invest thousands of dollars and many hours of my life into, please leave a quick review and help share with others, help the podcast grow. My thought to end on here for you to carry with you is just how crazy the variety of things happening all over the world is. The economy is truly mindbogglingly huge and fun, and we're all just so lucky to be alive right now. I hope you take some time to marvel at it the way I do, and this interview got me to think new thoughts and see farther than I have before. And I always relish those moments.
I really appreciate you hanging out with us. This is all about laughing and learning, building leverage, and compounding our faces off.
What our brains aren't evolved to comprehend is how much leverage is possible in modern society.
There's a revolution going on, man. Go pay attention to it. Get a part of it. Get exposed to it. You're going to make money along the way. You're going to have fun.
A call to adventure.
This is the new form of leverage.
Eric Jorgenson: Take a few quiet moments for yourself. Breathe deep and be well.