All right, let's get rolling in. I'm gonna start with a question. How many of you in the crowd today want crypto to solve real world problems? Raise your hands. All right, yeah, like half. It's a bear market, I get it. How many of you think that crypto is currently solving real world problems? All right, bear market optimism, I like it! I think we are solving a few, but there's probably a lot more that we can do. I mean, crypto is this amazing technology, right? It's got these incredible attributes, radical transparency, verifiable ownership, data permanence, there are so many things that we can build with this. But we're not there yet. Right? Like crypto is still, if you ask me actually, like kind of a toy, right? I mean, a toy that's driving millions of dollars of volume every single day, but still not something that's really integrated into people's everyday lives. And why is that? How do we actually get there? That's the question that we're going to address today. Because we think that crypto has the potential to actually be better than most of the products that are out there on web2. But there's a process to get there.
Yep, so one way of looking at crypto is this pyramid view. So this is all the infrastructure that we are building, and about to build. In crypto. The bottom layer, we have the blockchain, of course, this is the secret sauce of crypto, what makes it special. And of course, the most interesting one is Solana. On top of that, we have the legos. So these are the composable building blocks that are built on top of the blockchain that allows developers to build interesting applications. On top of it, I would also say that, you know, one of the most interesting legos that are being built is of course, fungible token exchanges, kind of like Orca. And then lastly, we have these structures. And in order to create real world value, I would say that, you know, these structures need to be built. However, you also need to have solid legos and solid blockchains, in order to create something that people actually can derive value out of. And I would also say that over the, you know, 12-13 years since the Bitcoin white paper is published, we've been iterating on the blockchain level in the legos level. But I would say that in the last year or so, we've seen this shift where we're getting to the final state for legos and blockchains. And we're starting to build structures. And this is where we're going to focus on today.
So, as my lovely co founder just said, we are actually on the brink of what I actually think is quite a seismic shift and in crypto, going from just building the base and the legos to actually having a solid enough base to build really interesting structures on top. But how do we actually ensure that those structures are solving these real problems? That's where product market fit comes in? Right? That mythical thing that's kind of like a unicorn that most of us haven't found yet? Well, I think the very first question that we should ask when it comes to thinking about product market fit is how do we actually identify when we found it? For this, I'm going to introduce a small framework that I learned when I was a young, naive designer at IDEO, for thinking about product market fit. And it really boils down to these three adjectives desirable, feasible, viable. It's not just poetry, I'll break it down for you so desirable, what that actually means is things people want, right? Is the product actually something that people want? And you would be amazed, maybe you won't be amazed as we're at a crypto conference, but how often things in web3 are not things that anybody actually wants. Next is feasible: Is it technologically feasible. And that's actually something where we were gonna have a lot of problems too, when it comes to actually identifying ideas, we'll get into that in a sec. Finally is viable. And this is actually speaking to business viable, it could be desirable and could be feasible, but it might not be something that people are willing to pay for. And that's why it's important to have that viability aspect when we think about the business model. So in order to actually find the products that are this desirable, feasible, viable unicorn thing, we use this process, which I call the well I call, I do calls, and therefore I also call the human centered design process. So it looks something like this, this kind of roller coaster wave. But it's a process that's been used many, many, many, many times and is used by most web two companies to identify and actually get all the way through to building products that people actually really want. So it starts with inspiration. And that inspiration comes from people, you actually talk to people you understand their needs, and what kind of problems you can solve for them. And this is what we call divergence, because you're coming up with lots and lots and lots of ideas, ideally, and now actually worrying too much about whether they're necessarily feasible or viable. Next, you actually converge, you narrow down to those few ideas that you actually think are the most pressing to solve. And that are also possible to solve again, that's that feasibility, right? You get those solutions, bring them back to people, do some user testing, do some ideation diverge a little bit more, and coming up with a potential different implementations? And then finally get through to actually building the real product? Simple enough, right? Well, maybe not simple, but it's definitely something that exists and works. It has been used many, many, many times, and web two. And often actually kind of doesn't work that well in web three, if you ask me. And so to illustrate some ways that this can potentially fail, I want to tell you guys a little story, kind of forgive me for making it very personal. It'll be the story of how we actually met and started building some crypto products. So it was, let's see, March of 2020. We were in Tokyo. And I had just gone through a messy breakup and moved into this co-living house, kind of didn't know what I was doing with my life. And then soon after that, pretty much Tokyo locked down, we were all locked in this house, also bored out of our minds. And so I found this guy across the hall. And I was like, Well, you're a developer. I'm a developer and a designer. Let's build some things. And so we promptly started to build some things. The first of which was this little weekend project, which we called crypto quiz. It was extremely cute and pretty lame. It was a Facebook style quiz, which was, I think the theme was, if cryptocurrencies were high schoolers, which cryptocurrency would you be? The idea was to educate people about crypto through these like cute quizzes. I really was glad that I ended up not being bitcoin cash, it's still on the internet. Still on the internet. You could find it, though. Unfortunately, though, we posted it on Hacker News. And promptly, there were crickets because nobody cared because this is like the classic example of something that didn't use a human centered design process. And therefore it was not desirable, feasible or viable. What it did teach us, however, is that we really liked working together and building stuff related to crypto. So soon after that, we went and built our second project, which was actually called Wallaroo, a high interest savings app style thing on Ethereum, our very first DeFi app, which was actually backed by lending out Dai on Aave under the hood. And we actually did build this it was a working app, it was definitely desirable, did lots of user testing people wanted this like kind of simple interface to be able to get yield, it was actually actually feasible as well, you know, we built it and it worked. But it was also peak DeFi Summer. So very quickly, it became not business viable, because nobody wants to pay $50 in gas to deposit like $20 to earn interest on right. So again, important to thinking about all three angles: Desirable, feasible, viable.
Yeah, and the constraints of blockchains, and that making it difficult to develop applications, especially applications that you know, everyday people care about. And the difficulty of that was something that I kind of internalized, but it wasn't really something that I could verbalize very well. So whenever we kind of like got together and brainstormed ideas, even after we initially launched Orca, it would always go something kind of like this. Or you would say, hey, wouldn't it be cool if we could do X? And I would say, No, you can't really do that blockchains are too slow. And then we would say, Okay, fine. How about why wouldn't that be really cool? And I would say, No, because you know, there's a civil problem, and attackers will be will just like maliciously create an infinite number of addresses and attack it. And this cat just kept on happening over and over again. But what we realized after a while was that or he was taking this human-centered approach. And starting with the first step was just coming up with ideas that users would want without being constrained by feasibility. And we realized that wasn't the right approach.
So today, we're actually going to propose a small tweak to the human-centered design process, which is potentially actually a little controversial for those who believe in it, but it's actually to start by asking "what can we feasibly build"? So you're still going to talk to people throughout. But you're going to first start by identifying what's actually feasible to build with crypto. If your goal is to build something in crypto, right? It's the toughest constraint to fulfill is actually something that can be built with crypto, it's starting to be a bit wider. Now that we have the performance of Solana, shout out to all the hard working folks at Solana labs Solana foundation. But you're gonna have a lot more success. I think, going from this broad range of ideas that you generate from that question of what can we build, and then narrowing down by talking to people to identify the desirability and viability. Whereas usually, we start with people and desirability, so small tweak to the process, but one that I think will actually save you a lot of time if you're anything like us, and potentially also a lot of really, really painful and irritable conversations with your co founder.
Okay, so what are some examples of using this modified approach in practice? Well, we first start with what is actually feasible, given the technology that we have today. So we can just use Orca, as a lego, and then Solana as a blockchain, and then just think of what we can build. Right? So then maybe I can think, well, we have a universal marketplace for fungible tokens, we can make an FX market, we can also make a market for carbon offsets, right, I think these are two feasible ideas. I think some other things, it kind of gets in the weeds. But since we have a universal marketplace for fungible tokens, we also have this kind of universal price feed for any asset that's trading on Solana that can be used by other smart contracts, that can be used as like a risk engine for any kind of lending Protocol, or any kind of derivatives protocol. Maybe that would be interesting. Without a doubt, I mean, there is some feasibility there. And then we start with that, that's the first step, that divergent step. And then the second step is talking to other people, whether it be engineers, other people on your team, or actually users that you might think would use it, and then understand the other two aspects. So the other two, other than feasibility would be viability and desirability, and see if it's feasible, see if it's possible. So I think like, if you take FX markets and carbon offsets markets, for example, it is feasible, but there are kind of like regulatory issues. Also, if you think about people that are actually using FX markets, they're not on Solana, they're not on phantom trading, euro coins to something else, for example. So maybe those are not really kind of, you know, things that should move on to the next step. But maybe the price Oracle is, right, so maybe it is good to have a good risk engine that's fully on chain, because what we've seen, you know, even in the last 24 hours, that centralized exchanges have solvency issues. And no one really knows if, you know, these centralized exchanges have the assets that they claim. On the other hand, if it's DeFi everything is fully on chain, everyone can account for all the tokens and the solvency of the protocol, without having to ask some centralized party, everything is transparent by default, well, maybe this is something that we can kind of iterate on or try and build towards. So that's an example.
So there are so many inspiring ideas that can be built with crypto, right, Yutaro just gave you a few. So feel free to just run with them. But you know, what we can do potentially, as founders of a DeFi protocol, is a question that we ask ourselves every day. And so with that, I'm actually really excited to share our updated vision and mission for Orca going into 2023, the vision of which is crypto as a public good. So what do we mean by that? It's really essentially similar to how we see the internet like something that's incredibly creative, incredibly open, people use it to build pretty much anything from like super useful things to super sort of wacky weird and fun things. And we think crypto has the potential to do the same thing. And orca actually can have a really important role to play in that as well. Which is why the mission that we have aligned around is lowering the barrier to creation and web three. And I think this is particularly inspiring because it's going beyond just DeFi right. DeFi is wonderful. There's a lot of things that are really promising when it comes to a brighter financial future through crypto, but I think there's so much more that can also be powered by crypto, right. Everything from we're starting to see real estate games you know, Yutaro mentioned like carbon marketplaces. is, and I think this mission speaks to that. But you tomorrow, why is a crypto marketplace actually important for creators and web three? And what does that success look like?
When you think about what can actually be done on blockchain, I think we all kind of understand this. But it can't be good for everything. It's good for kind of a certain set of things. But it's incredibly good at it, right. So whether it be primarily kind of like payments it's good at or the exchange of fungible or non fungible tokens. Those are also things that they're good at, and then composing those things together. And what we build that Orca is exchange of fungible tokens is kind of one of the basic actions that anyone wants to do. And also, when we think about creation, well, when we have assets that people can kind of price independently, and anyone can access it from all over the world. And they only have to pay a few cents in transaction fees to buy or sell. It helps with the process of creation. And one thing that I also see is that, you know, right now, I think Solana is in an interesting place. But if we look at the technology, it's clear that a lot of interesting things moving forward and crypto have to be built on Solana or something similar. This is kind of similar to what I saw four years ago and Ethereum, where despite kind of like the mainstream narratives, where people were starting to write off Ethereum, it was clear that there's so much activity happening, or I would say that almost all interesting activity was happening on Ethereum instead of Bitcoin. And I kind of see something similar with Solana right now. But one of the main things that I feel like is still missing is kind of this culture of innovation that's using kind of like the crypto native technologies, and also kind of this culture of creativity, almost even for the sake of creativity. Now, granted, there is some of that already happening. And I do love some of the projects that I see in Solana, but I would love to see more of it. And I think if I see more of it, you know, that's really when I would feel super confident about Solana.
So how do we see more of that creation? What can we do? Well, I'll turn it around, say, what can you do? What you can do is actually start building some of these ideas, right? Orca, and the last wave of the Orca Builders Program gave out 11 grants to protocols building on top of its core concentrated liquidity, AMM. But there's still way more ideas to be built. And so if you are a developer or a maker or creator, however you identify who has that ambition, what we'd love to see is you going ahead, throwing out your name into the ring, and you too could have the chance to actually be funded to make your idea a reality. So with that, we're Ori and Yutaro, and we would like to invite you to start making. Thank you Breakpoint!