Late-night Alex

New episode of Epic Web3 Podcast is live!

This time we sit down with Nick Dodson, co-founder of Fuel Labs, to talk about modular blockchains, alternative VMs, the best programming languages for blockchain, and more

Check it out!

https://www.podpage.com/epic-web3-podcast/top-web3-trend-in-2024-modular-blockchains-with-nick-dodson-ceo-co-founder-at-fuel

These two beautiful ladies in the photo organized another Epic event last week — ETH Infra Day at Devconnect, Istanbul.

This is our most successful event to date: over 1500 registrations, 35 speakers and experts, and as many as 15 sponsors.

This week in Istanbul (Devconnect) was one of the hottest weeks in the blockchain industry: 100+ events from different organizers and several thousand people coming from all over the world. But our event, of course, was one of the best 😎

The next location is Denver in February.

(More photos from the event in LinkedIn)

New Epic Web3 Pod episode is out!

This time we met up with Daniel Wang, CEO & Co-founder of Taiko, an Ethereum equivalent zk-rollup

We discussed:

⁃ The future of L2s
⁃ Best place in Asia for building a Web3 product
⁃ Is infrastructure ready to onboard new dApps
⁃ What’s the difference between different types of rollups
⁃ When EVM is great and when use alternative VMs
⁃ Fundraising in current market conditions

Watch and listen:

YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzQpvg4Cljg

Audio platforms — https://pod.link/1711405526/episode/488f48f48e165143c5b570ec633ce0fa

You may have already seen that we have launched the Epic Web3 podcast.

We invite founders of various blockchain infrastructure projects (mostly Layer 2s) and talk about different topics, both business and technical.

We’ve just published our second episode so I’m sharing it with you.

This time we were joined by Felipe Argento, founding engineer at Cartesi, and discussed:

- the future of the Layer2 landscape
- app-specific rollups vs shared rollups
- EVMs vs alternative VMs
- and many more L2-related things

Links:

- YouTube
- Spotify
- Apple Podcasts

Will be more than happy if you support it with your likes/comments/subscriptions

This cozy little channel needs only 2 boosts to be able to post stories.

So I kindly ask you to support it:

https://t.me/latenightalex?boost

(to boost, you need a premium account + latest version of Telegram).

I promise not to post a lot of shit stories!


PS. Also I promise to write here more often 😇

Interesting thread on Twitter (oops, sorry, X) about the state of the Web3 industry

https://twitter.com/dabit3/status/1683589971746209793

Nader Dabit, DevRel director at Aave & Lens Protocol, writes about how everyone in web3 is now building infrastructure and protocols that "improve the ecosystem" instead of building end-user apps.

You build another protocol, attract investors, issue a token, and you're rich before you even release the actual product.

It's much harder to build real applications on top of this infrastructure because:

⁃ First, you need real users there, not airdrop hunters and bots.
⁃ Second, an investor can download your app, play with it, and realize how bad it is.

---

We should realize that this is exactly what a DevRel director of one of the ecosystems should be doing — motivating developers to build apps in that ecosystem. That's why the post is a bit biased.

In the comments many people argue and write that the infrastructure is not yet ready to make good apps.

Moreover, Nader himself later wrote a post saying that he is a bit biased and that most modern apps wouldn't have appeared if people hadn't spent years building the infrastructure before.

In any case, the fact remains that infrastructure projects really do dominate web3 today.

Hopefully we'll see more use cases and end-user apps in web3. In the meantime, we at Epic Web3 are now focusing more on the infrastructure events. At least there is money in it :) And then we'll see where it goes from there.

"Epic Layer 2 day was one of the best and the most insightful events happened during EthCC"

Sooo excited to get such feedbacks on our Layer 2 day which took place last week in Paris.

We will continue doing our best to create the most meaningful events in Web3.

Next stops:

- Seoul, 4th of September (Infrastructure day)
- New York, 21st of September (Layer 2 day)

PS. Video recordings from the sessions are available on YouTube

Stories in Telegram

[update the app if you haven't seen it yet].

What I think:

- Glad they showed up, there's definitely no fomo now that I don't use Instagram

- I'm waiting for the feature to post stories as a channel (I'm sure it will appear soon)

- A little worried that using the Telegram as a work tool will be harder now. More distractions.

- The feature itself is done very cool, the UX is awesome

- Pro tip: if you don't want to see stories from someone — remove them from contacts (profile —> edit —> delete contact)


What do you think?

How is Epic Web3 doing?

Yesterday we had a DeFi day in Lisbon. It went great, almost 100 people. Everyone was complimentary (somehow we always get compliments, I don't understand what's going on yet).

Economically it was our most successful event so far (thanks to the sponsors). But we are waiting for the event in Paris on July 18th (lu.ma/l2paris), it should be hot there — 8 sponsors, co-founders of zkSync, Arbitrum, Fuel and other blockchains among the speakers, more than 1000 registrations for the event. The only thing we're worried about is that there will be too much content for one day. Well, we'll see.

We are planning events in Seoul and New York in September, Barcelona in October, Lisbon again in November. I'm writing all this and I still can't believe it — so excited. Hope it works out!

At the same time, we've started building a new product: a club/membership for Web3 founders and their teams. Research first. If you're a Web3 founder, contact me and we'll talk.

On Friday we had our first Epic Web3 Conference in Lisbon.

There are still a lot of emotions and it is very difficult to reflect, but I will try.

Bottom line — it was epic. Everything turned out super cool. There's an incredible amount of great feedback, it's so damn nice.


What came out particularly well:

⁃ Speakers and content. There's a reason we put so much into it and did two dry runs with each speaker. The quality of the content was noticed by literally everyone.

⁃ Audience. We had a relatively high price (€300+ for the current market — that's a lot), and a fairly narrow positioning. This excluded irrelevant people and most of the visitors were real builders/founders.

⁃ The venue. It's small, but it's very cool. Just right for our format. People were really complimentary about the venue and the atmosphere.

⁃ The internationality. It was a very international conference. There were a lot of people who specially came to our conference from other European countries, and even from the US, Canada and Brazil. For the first conference, this is just unbelievable.

⁃ Different formats and activities. We had a 1:1 speed consulting format that everyone loved, and it seems like the experts loved it as much as the attendees. The Pitch Roast format was amazing; it was a full house and we will definitely do it again. The Startup Pitch Competition was also great.

- The quality of the organization. I am once again impressed with the work of our team and especially Olly. The number of mistakes was minimal and only we ourselves seemed to notice them.



How many attendees?

There were about 450 people (including speakers and experts). For a first conference and with a rather high ticket price I think this is a good result.

Our original plan was to have 1500 people and a 2-day conference. About halfway through we realized that this was too optimistic and changed the format and venue. In the end, it seemed to work out well.


What I'm not very happy about:

⁃ The number of participants. Everyone praised the conference just for the fact that it turned out to be a cozy event, but as organizers, of course, we always want to gather a larger number of people.
⁃ The number of investors. We had about 20-30 investor representatives, which is not enough for a startup VC conference.
⁃ Economy 🙂 We spent more than we wanted to, and earned less.

But again, for a first conference, it's all more than okay. I think we did it really well!

This is a very important milestone to celebrate and praise ourselves for.

OMG our conf is already today 🙈

I can't hide from you the most useful software I have.

It is Paste, a clipboard manager.

Why is it so useful?


Standard clipboard mechanism: you copy/cut something to the clipboard and paste it somewhere. When you copy something new — the old thing is deleted from the clipboard.

Clipboard managers allow you to:
1/ work with a long history of what you have copied
2/ folders for pasting frequently used entities: links, texts, images

---

This seems to be just vital for those with a lot of communication.

I have dozens of pre-saved templates for all cases: link to Calendly, link to pitch deck, standard responses, Epic Web3 outreach for different segments, etc.

And it's all conveniently organized into folders.

I also recently noticed that they have an iOS app that works as a separate keyboard. So now it's all available from your iPhone as well.

And it all costs a ridiculous $15 a year. That is the best $15 a year that I spend on software.

Anyway, sincerely and without any referral links:

pasteapp.io

How I really use ChatGPT (seven specific prompts)

𝟏. 𝐖𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐲

This is when I write a letter in the style of "Are you out of your fucking mind, how dare you offer me this" and it rewrites it in the style of "I appreciate the suggested conditions and I would like to express my thoughts on potential enhancements."

Works perfectly.

𝟐. 𝐂𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠

This is when I write text in my sloppy English and it corrects mistakes without changing the meaning. I try to use it almost always before I send/publish something important.

It works great.

𝟑. 𝐖𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐚 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 (𝟑-𝟒 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞𝐬) 𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐥𝐮.𝐦𝐚/𝐝𝐞𝐟𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐲

(This is in the Internet-accessible version.)

When asked to write a short description of the event. So as not to write myself.

𝟒. 𝐑𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐯𝐞 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐞𝐱𝐜𝐞𝐩𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐝𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐢𝐧

(This is in the Google Sheets plugin.) When you have a column full of sites like https://my.epicweb3.com/, and you want to bring them to the nice epicweb3.com.

It's faster than writing a specific formula

𝟓. 𝐄𝐬𝐭𝐞 - 𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨, 𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞 - 𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐨, 𝐚𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐥𝐞 - ?

When I try to remember a word in Portuguese.

It answers: aquilo. Well done

𝟔. 𝐈'𝐦 𝐦𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐚 𝐩𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐥 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 "𝐁𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐤𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐁𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧 𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐛𝐨𝐧. 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐈 𝐚𝐬𝐤?

When I should prepare to moderate a panel. Gives out all sorts of crap, but it helps to have something to fall back on

𝟕. (𝟏𝟎,𝟎𝟎𝟎,𝟎𝟎𝟎 + 𝐱) * 𝟎,𝟎𝟏 = 𝐱

When I have to figure out how many shares to issue and give them to an investor to give them 1%

How are AI and Web3 related? And why is Sam Altman making a blockchain startup?


Yesterday, Sam Altman's Worldcoin raised a $125M Series C.

I tried to figure out what Worldcoin does.


The basics:

As AI develops, it will become increasingly difficult to distinguish between humans and AI.

=> We need mechanisms to make sure that it's a human and not an AI interacting with us. And we need to store that information somewhere.

The best way to store it is on the blockchain, because that way it can't be faked.


What Worldcoin does:

Worldcoin puts things around the world called Orbs that scan your iris and identify you.

I looked - there are five places in and around Lisbon that have these Orbs. Not bad. In China, for example, these things are banned, but there is a black market.

Right now Worldcoin claims 1.7M verified users. By Web3 standards that's a lot (if true).

Right now the motivation to get verified is the coins that are handed out within the app.

The idea is that verified users can send money to each other, pay with cryptocurrency or fiat, issue a debit card, and sign in with a Worldcoin ID.

Looks like a cool idea to me. Super complicated, but super ambitious. Let's see what comes out of it.

I like to study deals on Web3. It gives me an idea of what's going on in the industry.

For example:

Lifeform.cc just raised Series B at a $300M valuation

Lifeform is a company that allows users to create virtual avatars.

You thought Metaverse was dead? Turns out it's not. That's always the case in any industry. The hype fades, but the builders stay and keep on building.

I did some research on what Lifeform is doing:

"Lifeform has developed a cross-platform hyper-realistic 3D virtual human avatar creation system that uses NFTs to enable people to manage and retain multiple zero-knowledge pseudonymous digital identities through a decentralized identifier (DID) solution"

Now you try to figure out what that means, haha.


A short history of the project:

- 2021 - launched (just as the Metaverse hype was going on)

- 2022 - raised Seed Round

- Feb 2023 - became the most popular dApp in BNB Chain with 3 million MAU and raised $5M Series A at $100M valuation

- May 2023 - raised Series B at $300M valuation

Okay, looks like we have some work to do

Just in case you’re interested, here’s Epic Web3’s (unofficial) events plan:

⁃ 9th of June — Epic Web3 Conference, Lisbon, 700 attendees

⁃ 5th of July — DeFi day, Lisbon, 100 attendees

⁃ 18th of July — Layer Two day, Paris, 100 attendees

⁃ 4th of September — Builders day, Seoul, 100 attendees

⁃ November — something epic, Lisbon

⁃ TBD — Epic hackathon


Yeah, we have a lot of work to do

The week of Web3 events in Lisbon is coming to an end.

I counted: Olly and I have a total of 10 attended event.

Yes, it’s exhausting. But I see a lot of progress for Epic Web3:

- First of all, one of those events was organized by us (and it went great)

- At one of the events, I was a panel moderator

- At all events we meet at least 20-30 people we know, and sometimes it’s 50+

- Almost everyone we meet has at least heard about our conf in June

- A lot of people tell us that we do cool stuff

That’s very cool and that's all we've done in less than six months.

It’s very important to celebrate intermediate milestones, so I think we are doing great.

And how much fun is ahead!