In this episode of Exit Liquidity, we are joined by previous Bankless Analyst, Ben. Serving as a Member of Wildfire DAO Ben shares his unique perspective on the current state of Governance, Gamefi & research efforts, gamefi vs Risktoearn, and the power of crypto governance. 

TimeStamps
(0:00) Intro
(6:00) Gamefi
(15:00) Wildfire Dao
(45:00) Governance and Defi

Follow Ben: https://twitter.com/BenGiove
Follow Cedo: https://twitter.com/cedosalah
Follow Ali: https://twitter.com/cryptoaioli

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Disclaimer: Nothing said on Exit Liquidity is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Cedo, Ali, and our guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.

Exit liquidity where you find out how not to be exit liquidity

Going going well going well, and thank you guys for for having me on this is my first live stream ever So I'm I'm excited.

How's the how's the week treating you you're in the west coast right good weather out there

yeah yeah no the weather is a very nice very nice yeah I can't can't complain.

Yeah, there hasn't been any crises in crypto, which is always nice.

Right now we're in between like different seasons.

And so we're just bringing on me and Ali usually do this every week, just like talking shit, just talking about random stuff we're interested in.

And we decided to bring on some people that we think are interesting and fun.

So, Ben, you were previously at Bankless.

I know you messaged Ali about the charges and stuff before.

But I don't know too much about you other than like some of the research you've done.

So what we like to do to kind of start these off is kind of stick with the branding of Exit Liquidity and discuss a bit about like your experience in the space, how you got involved.

But we center it around kind of some of your biggest moments as exit liquidity or some of your biggest losses or lessons learned because I feel like that's what a lot of people resonate well with.

Well, There's certainly plenty of moments where I was exit liquidity over the years.

So yeah, so how I kind of got into the space.

Yeah, so it was around in 2020, like during COVID.

So I was just kind of like a college kid, just, you know, I don't know, just like being like, what the hell is going on with COVID?

Like, there's all this like craziness going on.

I was into stocks for a few years before in high school, early college.

I had some familiarity with the markets and stuff.

And I was like, why is the stock market going up and the economy is tanking?

I saw that there was, I was reading about all the money printing, QE and stuff, and then that kind of got me down the Bitcoin rabbit hole.

Like that whole summer of 2020, I was just obsessed with crypto.

And then, yeah, and then it just kind of just kind of went went from there.

I eventually kind of started the kind of crypto club, my my school, shout out Chapman Crypto.

And that's how I met David from Baincliffe's who was happened to be a Chapman alumni, which I didn't know at the time.

And he was like, hey, do you want to write for You want to do some writing for Bankless because it was big at the time, but it wasn't like what it is today.

Is that something like you've always been interested in doing or kind of like a side hobby?

I wasn't putting out any like kind of research, but I'd kind of been like a writer for a few years.

Like I wrote for like my college, college newspaper.

I did some like writing about like stocks for the site called like Seeking Alpha.

But yeah then I, yeah I connected with David and he gave me the chance to write.

So I was, I luckily had like, kind of that like writing kind of skillset.

And then he liked what I wrote, wrote about like Polygon, like the day before the gigantic crash in May of

And then kind of, I started doing more writing for them and then kind of joined in February of

And kind of the rest is history from there, I guess.

That's my kind of long winded origin story.

So you went, Bitcoin obviously is everyone's first kind of taste of crypto.

What kind of led you to other realms of crypto?

super into the gaming ecosystem right now, right?

Gaming has kind of been like a kind of a later, kind of more recent thing.

I guess like, I don't know, I had like a friend who worked in crypto And he was kind of really into like DeFi.

And then I think like, I forget what, this was after DeFi summer.

I like sometime towards the end of 2020, I like first used like Uniswap and like Ethereum.

And I was like, holy crap, this is insane.

And I think also once I took out a loan on Aave for the first time, I was like, This is incredible.

I just got a loan at midnight on a Tuesday and in 1 second just from pressing a button.

And then it just kind of went from there.

And yeah, then DeFi is my first love outside of Bitcoin.

And then eventually I pivoted into gaming this year because I feel like it's more exciting than DeFi right now.

And any moments in there, there were some hard lessons, some exit liquidity moments along that journey?

Let's see, I got really wrecked on a bunch of Polygon shitcoins during Polygon summer.

When I first started yield farming I was like, oh, I'm gonna buy like the farm token just Because you said such I should buy the farm token That's like the number 1 rule what you don't want to do.

So a lot of that I got really got kind of crushed on Jewel, DeFi kingdoms back.

Umami, That's kind of a bit of a more recent 1 after defy alpha kind of Kind of kind of rug but it seems like they're doing well.

I don't know what I need But it seems like they've kind of recovered which cool see

yeah, and I Just kind of leaning into the more recent stuff going on anything you kind of like Research or piqued your interest the past few weeks or even this week

Yeah, yeah, so I've really been kind of the past past few weeks like really getting deep into like on-chain gaming These are like games where it's like the the game logic is like itself as are like smart contracts So I've been kind of like trying to try to do as many of like the different.

There's not like a ton of them out there, but I'm trying to do like trying to play like any I can get my my hands on.

There's 1 called Rascow, I think that's how you pronounce it, that kind of launched at Believe last week.

There's also 1 called Sky Strife, which is kind of like a tower defense type game that I went to the playtest for last week.

So yeah, I'd say like on-chain gaming has kind of been where my focus has been kind of for the past little bit.

What are you assessing when you look at these games?

Like if you split it into like the blockchain utility, I guess, versus like the game being fun.

What's like the split between those 2 of what's more important?

I mean, I think the game being fun is like, by far, I think like the most important thing.

So I take like a very, I don't, it's maybe like a

kind of like split, because really like, I don't know, I take a very hands-on approach when I research, I want to kind of use, I actually want to be using the apps I write about, like playing the games I write about.

I don't just want to be someone from the sidelines.

Because I feel like in this space, so many people are just kind of like talk about stuff and like it's kind of clear it's like okay you haven't actually like used the thing you're talking about.

I feel like you have to like use the kind of just in general like use the dApps like play the games.

So I take like an approach of like, like I feel like for on-chain games, like I'm the target customer.

Like I'm kind of the, like the crypto native kind of like gamer and DGEN that they're targeting.

So I, yeah, I really just like, for me, it's like, OK, I'll go to a game.

And if I don't really like it, is it at least well-made?

And can I at least envision other people liking it?

Just out of curiosity, what were like, what were some of your favorite games like outside of outside the blockchain space outside of Web3 gaming?

So I mean, this is a bit of a kind of generic list, but I mean I really like, I mean, COD, I grew up on that.

MW2, MW3, Black Ops, Black Ops 2, just incredible.

I really like the Batman Arkham games, great trilogy.

I mean, GTA, all the GTAs, not just GTA 5, GTA 4, GTA 3, San Andreas, Vice City, all just amazing.

I mean, I like board games too, which is what I kind of feel like on-chain games kind of feel like, because a lot of them are very like turn based.

Yeah, I had those are probably if I had to pick.

Yeah, I'm playing pretty decently well as well.

And like, I mean, I feel like there's been a dry spell recently and like there's nothing nothing to play.

And I still don't play any on-chain games.

I feel like I mean, I saw the either of you seen the parallel game watching.

They did like some like open sea change their PFP and everything to like match theirs.

I have no I haven't looked into it at all but I was wondering if you have any thoughts on it.

I haven't gotten a chance to play the beta.

I really want to, but it seems really cool.

I talked with, I forget his dumb terrible names.

I talked with someone on the team and they seem really cool and I'm excited for it But it's hard for me to weigh in and like unless I like actually get the chance to like play it myself I feel like

Yeah, those card games are not really my cup of tea, but I'll probably try to give it a give it a go eventually.

So you're transitioning to like contributing to Wildfire now.

I there really isn't much on them, It seems like a new initiative and like a good amount of people seem to be joining.

But from what I could grasp, there's a lot of focus around tokenomics design and governance models.

Could you give us a little discussion on what it is, what you guys are planning to accomplish?

There's not a ton of information at the moment.

We're kind of trying to keep it low key as we ramp up.

But yeah, so essentially Wildfire, It's a service DAO kind of born out of FireEyes DAO, which is a service DAO.

These kind of like 4 guys, James Waugh, I think he's blockchain James on Twitter.

Callum Gladstone, I forget his Twitter handle, then Lucas Campbell, who's kind of my old editor at Bankless, and then Cooper Turley, who's Cooper Trooper on Twitter, who's like the music, like Web3 Music guy.

So kind of they are a, the 4 of them kind of are help like design, design tokens through FireEyes.

So they've helped like design Optimisms token, Aave, Rocketpool, ENS, Gitcoin.

And yeah, so we're kind of like born out of them to kind of help.

Like, we're kind of like Wildfire is kind of like their governance arms.

We like participate in governance on their behalf, to be their like tokens.

So we're like a governance delegate for like a bunch of the DAOs that they help design the tokens for.

So Wildfire is participating in governance for Optimism, ENS, Gitcoin, Safe, and Rocketpool.

So you can delegate to us if you guys want.

The addresses are in our, we've got to make them more public.

But As of right now, they're in our Discord, which I believe you can join from our Twitter.

And yeah, so what Wildfire is going to do is we're going to kind of work with these DAOs to kind of help improve their governance, tokenomics, as well as kind of like proposals to help kind of like really different growth strategies.

So like with like Rocket Pool, it's like maybe we're gonna cook up a proposal to help like, how do you take some market share from Lido?

And how can Rocket Pool break, gain more market share than they have right now?

I think, I like Lido, like they have too much sake.

even though it's much better that it's in their hands than like finance or a centralized exchange

Yeah, and were you involved in any of those designs?

No, no, I I was not not myself, but yeah, it's cool.

I've kind of been friends with them for a few years, so I've gotten to see some stuff, but I wasn't 1 of the designers of those tokens.

Any new proposals you guys plan on pushing out?

Have you pushed anything out yet on any forums?

We haven't yet, but I think, I know I definitely want to kind of like I was saying, do something with Rocket Pool, kind of, I don't know, some sort of like an incentive program.

I think like our ETH should be integrated more widely across DeFi than it is right now.

Yeah, I think I think Sasol was like talking about that on Daily Guay about like taking the rewards that ODAO members get and kind of using them as incentives.

Do you think that's a decent idea Or do you have like a specific 1, I mean, if you can't share, that's fine as well.

Yeah, yeah, no, I do think that's a good idea.

Cause yeah, the ODAL members get paid a lot.

Using that money elsewhere, I'm definitely in favor of.

And I also think I'm definitely in favor of some joint incentive programs with some of the other kind of staking providers.

Maybe you create a joint balancer pool with RE, FRXE,

Yeah, that's actually a pretty good idea.

Because you don't want the liquidity to be fragmented across a million different places.

I feel like in the early days, like why Lido was like, how it got to where they were is they just had Curve Pool with just billions in liquidity.

I mean, even now I went to, I mean, I don't understand Rocket Pool nearly enough, but even now I went to like grab some Steve and I was debating getting some like our youth and The the difference was around like

in terms of like cost just to get like half an ETH.

And yeah, yeah, it was, I think there's like a premium on our ETH, right?

Yeah, I think it's like, cause it's not like a rebasing token, like a staked ETH.

So it's like the reward is just kind of like accrued at the Like the token price itself Yeah Yeah, but I I think I think that has kind of like maybe like the cues that exit cue kind of lessons or there's some way to like arm that out that I'm not smart enough to do myself, but some giga brain out there, I think we'll probably be able to probably able to do it.

Any have you like spanned outside of the bankless?

Myself included, or like sort of eat maxis in a way.

What kind of camps do you usually reside in?

I think the ETH, I believe in the flippening and I think Ethereum is gonna be the, Ethereum and the layer 2s are going to be the largest smart contract ecosystem.

I guess I'm a Solana manlet if you guys have seen that meme on Twitter.

Now that kind of SPF and all the VC shitty people are gone, I think it's kind of like community and like culture is like a lot better than like it used to be.

And I think there's like, there's a lot of, there are like a bunch of cool apps being built on it and like right now it is like more scalable than any or at least can process more transactions than like any Any other chain But you got it.

You got to give it like credit where it's due

Are you believer in the solana defy summer?

you messed around with anything on there?

I was really big into Solana DeFi back in like Alt L1 season.

I just feel like sitting in class, like aping into different saver pools at the second they launched.

But I'm not really like a, I don't know, I'm more of like an L2 guy.

I think like the Cosmos ecosystem is like really cool.

There's like a lot of always like interesting experiments going on there.

I just feel like a lot of the times they shoot themselves in the foot with all their drama and founders rugging.

I feel like they can't get out of their own way a lot of the time.

But so yeah, so I'm not, I'm not a, I'm not, I'm not like a pure like total ethmaxi.

Like I think, I think there's like cool, cool people in kind of every different community, like every different chain.

And I also think it's just good for the industry to just have it so there's not just 1 chain that rules everything or 1 virtual machine that just does everything that we use.

Like I think I think like we want crypto to be like as decentralized as possible.

And I think a way of doing that is where there's multiple different standards that you could build applications with.

You don't just have to use the EBM or that.

I was, I forgot what it was, but I was reading something earlier this week about decentralization in like DeFi specifically.

Decentralization in like DeFi specifically.

And there were like, it was a very opinionated article.

Like I didn't fully agree with all of it, but I thought the points were kind of interesting and curious like to hear what you think of them.

1 of them, which is like not an entirely uncommon opinion was that like decentralization doesn't really matter.

Like, yeah, it's a fun buzzword and all, but when it comes down to it with what we have right now, it's more of a hindrance than it is an actual value add to a protocol.

And a lot of the times it's not actual decentralization.

Even Uniswap, Paradigm can swoop in and influence whatever proposal they want to.

And the second 1 was about like DeFi like development in general, which was like a little bit more interesting to me.

It was that like, a lot of people are trying to build better tools on chain than are in Dratfi, or that are available in permissioned ways.

And this person was saying that that's the wrong approach.

And instead, we need to just be building like entirely new shit.

So like, you know, all these new like, all these new perp decks and better AMMs or whatever, and marginal improvements on stuff that already kind of exists.

But then, I don't know, like LSDs or something like Alchemix that's not done anywhere else is a better approach when we have this like sort of sandbox to play with with You know a good amount of money and novel technology in it.

I Don't know I kind of rambled there, but I found those 2 points really interesting.

I don't know if you have any like hot takes on decentralization itself or like the future of DeFi.

I definitely fall into the, it's probably not that surprising as a former Bainclos employee.

I fall into the camp of, like I do think decentralization like matters, but I think like like it kind of just, I don't think it's still like black and white towards like you have to be like 100% like if you have 1 upgradeable contract, you're like, you know, getting like thrown in jail.

Like, I don't think it has to be like, at extreme.

But I think if you look at crypto, I'd say all the most successful products that we have.

So probably if you consider Bitcoin and Ethereum, all the most successful projects, I should say.

So like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Uniswap, Aave, Maker, they all kind of like prioritize being decentralized, I'd say.

Like they didn't kind of cut corners in that regard.

Like even Uniswap, like what you were saying with like paradigm, like sure they could influence like the governance, but they can't like change the...

I'll still be able to swap on like Uniswap.

They can't change the contracts because it's like immutable.

So I think it really matters for financial applications.

So I want my bank to be, or my on-chain bank, like an Aave, to be as decentralized as possible.

See all exit liquidity transcripts on Youtube

Disrupting Crypto Governance w/ Former Bankless Analyst and New Wildfire Dao Member FaultProofBen