Ep.91: Filling the Voids in the Crypto Market—with Joey Krug of Pantera Capital

An Amazon study revealed that 100ms in latency cost them 1% in sales. Meanwhile in crypto, it can take as long as a week to set up a CoinBase account! Imagine how conversion rates would skyrocket if the industry tackled latency and solved for the two greatest voids in the market: fiat on-ramping and scalability. So, what blockchain startups are making progress toward these goals? And how is the blockchain landscape likely to shift in the next few years as we work toward large-scale adoption? Joey Krug is the CIO of Pantera Capital, an investment firm focused exclusively on digital currency and ventures in the blockchain space. Prior to Pantera, Joey cofounded the Forecast Foundation, an organization that contributes to the Augur Project, a decentralized prediction market protocol owned and operated by the people that use it. He also started an AngelList syndicate that backed the popular 0x protocol. Today, Joey joins us to explain how he balances his work for Pantera with his ongoing involvement in Augur. He offers insight around the early days of the Augur Project, discussing the decision to pursue an ICO, his method for building the team, and the hurdles he faced developing Augur on Ethereum. Joey also shares why he took on the oracle problem at Augur and gives advice on building for chains other than Ethereum. Listen in to find out what recent investments Joey is most excited about and how those companies address the current voids in the market, fiat on-ramping and scalability. Topics Covered Joey’s path to Augur and Pantera Capital Came across Bitcoin in 2011 on Overclock Started Augur to disrupt financial system Joined Pantera as technical partner in 2017 The Augur reporting system Designated reporter selected to submit answer Stake tokens (reputation) on real winner Disputes end OR split into two universes Why Joey financed Augur through a crowd sale Project rather than company (no equity to sell) Needed own token due to forking concept Joey’s take on how the market has changed Pendulum swing from ICOs to equity deals The voids in the market Joey is looking to fill Fiat on-ramping Scalability problem NFT ideas Joey finds interesting NFTs with video games Buy electronic artwork How Joey balances work between Pantera and Augur Most of time at VC firm Oversee that Augur running smoothly Joey’s advice to his younger self at Augur Fully think through what you’re building How Joey built the Augur team Skype crypto discussion groups Open communication on Reddit, Discord No org chart but defined responsibilities Joey’s thoughts around building for future chains Likely compatibility with EVM, WebAssembly Build on Ethereum now (high odds of porting code over) Recent investments Joey is most excited about Wyre likely to increase conversion rates exponentially Bakkt (institutional grade exchange for crypto) Synthetic Minds makes secure smart contracts easier The hurdles Joey faced in developing Augur on Ethereum Making smart contracts secure Writing decentralized UIs Joey’s insight on the oracle problem Design for incentive compatibility Still slow (takes one week to resolve markets) Joey’s thoughts on the scalability timeline 2K transactions/second in next 18 months 10K TPS in 4 years (many sidechains necessary) The difference between fiat and Dai stable coins Fiat = same drawbacks as existing system Dai backed by Ether as collateral (fewer limitations) Why Joey took on the oracle problem with Augur Maintain decentralization, remain P2P Connect with Joey Pantera Capital https://www.panteracapital.com/ Pantera on Twitter https://twitter.com/PanteraCapital Augur https://www.augur.net/ Augur on Twitter https://twitter.com/AugurProject Augur on Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/Augur Augur on GitHub https://github.com/AugurProject Joey on Twitter https://twitter.com/joeykrug Resources Overclock https://www.overclock.net/ Zeppelin https://zeppelin.solutions/ 0x https://0x.org/ MakerDAO https://makerdao.com/en/ MetaMask https://metamask.io/ Cosmos https://cosmos.network/ Polkadot https://polkadot.network/ Guesser https://www.guesser.io/ Discord https://discordapp.com/ StarkWare https://www.starkware.co/ zk-SNARKs https://z.cash/technology/zksnarks/ EVM https://www.mycryptopedia.com/ethereum-virtual-machine-explained/ WebAssembly https://webassembly.org/ Wyre https://www.sendwyre.com/ Amazon Latency Study https://blog.gigaspaces.com/amazon-found-every-100ms-of-latency-cost-them-1-in-sales/ Bakkt https://www.bakkt.com/index Synthetic Minds https://synthetic-minds.com/ IPFS https://ipfs.io/ Oraclize https://provable.xyz/ Chainlink https://chain.link/ TLSNotary https://tlsnotary.org/ Gnosis https://gnosis.pm/ Connect with Boost VC Boost VC Website https://www.boost.vc/ Boost VC on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/boostvc/ Boost VC on Twitter https://twitter.com/BoostVC