DevHub Live 4 - Guest: Trove Labs

Captions as YouTube publishes them, usually machine-generated, so product and people names can be misheard.

1. 0:00

   devhub I'm one of the moderators over there and we have a exciting episode here for you today we have Boris coming on today to talk about our awesome new Bounty program that this booster program is for developers and we think that is super exciting that can really get the word out there uh for boosting near and actually you know earning some extra money so everyone loves that so we'll have Boris come on and talk about that

2. 0:24

   then we have uh Brandon from uh Nico and well from Trove Labs but they've the Nico project as well as jump defi he's going to talk about being an entrepreneur and building on near as well as talk about some of the different like aspects and Landscapes of tokens and parts like that uh we're gonna have Owen who's one of our Devils come on on that call on the call as well and talk you know through all of that and then

3. 0:49

   we're going to wrap up with a new segment called tweet of the week which we're going to get to at the end and kind of break that down and talk a little bit about uh some awesome things that are happening in the near ecosystem uh don't forget to make sure that you have subscribe to our newsletter that you're following along with everything that we have going on here at devhub uh there's tons of stuff that are happening in the near ecosystem and we want to make sure that everyone uh is up to date

4. 1:13

   so the newsletter is the best way to go about that let's get started and let's get get into it I'm G to bring uh Boris up here and kind of really just introduce our our exciting new program uh let me grab Boris here hey Boris and let's uh let's get into to it so we have an exciting new program that is called The Bounty booster program and this is something that been the works for a little while um but

5. 1:46

   maybe you could talk a little bit about uh what exactly this booster program is who it affects and why we think this is such a powerful impact for the new ecosystem yes hello everyone Hey Joe thank you for having me again man um well yes this is this is a program that started a few months ago we wanted to you know to give an extra incentive for developer hacker hackathon hackers um so they you know have just one more reason

6. 2:17

   to hack near right but then we thought why why why limit it to to hackaton right let's let anyone who wants to use the near stack to the to participate in any hackaton they one as as long as we are are not already sponsoring it and if they win let's match whatever they win right so that's that's the that's the that's the the core idea of this so we what what we want you guys to do is ju see a partic you participate or see a hackaton not doesn't have to be even web three actually we prefer if it's not web

7. 2:51

   three and you want to participate and you you can think of a way to participate in that hackaton and win some kind of bounty using near we will match whatever you win it's either if you win a a sponsor Bounty or if you win the overall hackaton bounties or whatever H we we will match it so it's the idea well it's simple we we released an article and also the tweets um perhaps we can I don't know you can you can post the links here again so

8. 3:24

   basically basically we're expecting if you win you just fill a quick form and tweet about it and then we review it and it's everything uh checks we just send you the money that's as simple as that so and even so we we are so we want we want you so much to do that that if during the hackaton you are H need support from us just let us know before the hackaton you can tell us guys I'm

9. 3:49

   hacking is the hackaton I'm using near uh we need some support uh we'll make sure that we can probably probably you know connect you with someone that can H give you some support depending on what you want to do chain obstruction or yeah Etc so yeah that's that's it's it's I think it's really it's an awesome program and one of the things that uh I think is so important to stress is that it does not have to be a crypto project right like like and that's where near is an unique opportunity here where uh you can use

10. 4:23

    near as a solution doesn't have to just always be just like a blockchain per product but you can actually use our frontend stuff it can be can be the smart contract it can be any part of that if it uses near and it wins you can get bonus right yeah that's it yeah we just we call it an extra life perfect yeah yeah you have one more life to get a little more or more for the time you we understand you know you put a lot of time on this and we with we we have done hackaton in the other side

11. 4:57

    too so we we know is it's good to have our time H recognized so if you you're will to put some time in using near and learning near we're happy to to to compensate you for that yeah yeah yeah AB I think that's a that's a great way to put it one question that I I know probably people are going to come up with as they are digging into whatever else is you know what I guess can you maybe specify a little bit like what

12. 5:27

    constitute as a win is it anything that they have to be a top prize can they come in you know as a side Bounty how does this all work yeah yeah I say mention before yeah it could be any it could be even another sponsor Bounty as long as you implement it near in the in the final solution right let's say you you used near to some kind of bounty and you got I don't know also apply for the base and base give you some kind of bounty we we are happy to match that one

13. 5:58

    too yeah yeah and of course the general bounties or you know some hackaton have like a a vertical bounties so those two what whatever price you get or Bounty you can claim from the hakon we're happy to to match of course as long as you use near H uh as a part of the one of the part of the near stack and with that I mean could be chain obstruction it could be a reaction chain H the only limitation we we have now that in the past we didn't is probably aora not not

14. 6:29

    for us in particular is because we want to focus on on the non-bm part so but besides that I think every part the tools the sdks whatever it is you know for game yeah yeah yeah yeah it's it's a it's an awesome uh opportunity for for developers uh you did mention that if again because not it's supposed to be a non near sponsored event um but people might need help so what are some great ways to contact uh devhub and get some more help yeah I think the easiest way is

15. 7:03

    right now is to X to Twitter you just you can ping us and say guys I'm I need help with this hackaton and some of them will contact you or if you can join some of our telegram groups they probably will be faster um but you know some people doesn't want to join just another Tel group but if you're happy to Jo telegram probably will be the fastest way or if not also the Discord is also a

16. 7:28

    good H starting Point yeah AB absolutely I think there's a there's a lot of different opportunities and that's you know when we have developers come and talk to us you know again any kind of project whether it's for a different hackathon if you looking for support if you're looking for help in any way uh we're here to help help you build your project even it's not for hackathon you're just doing on the side uh we always want

17. 7:54

    people to come to the telegram group to the Discord talk about whatever issues you may be having and someone either from our team or even just the community is always there to help and so that's a really uh important part of all this so uh that this is exciting uh this and this starts immediately right there's no so soon as people yeah so get hacking yeah I read a I received an email today

18. 8:19

    from the death post they they just released the monthly news lat and they have a list of hackaton there like five so if you're look pick one use near and claim your Boost awesome awesome awesome yeah I think that's again that's a great way to do that right so especially if you think you have a good project and you're going and you need a front end like the like the cheat code here is like you know

19. 8:47

    react on chain you know using near for that like that's easy where everyone you know most projects you going need some kind of front end uh it doesn't over make you have to get dive into smart contracts whatever else it can be multi-chain as near starts to expand more into our chain abstraction which is again we encourage everyone to kind of check out those Community groups and

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    what we documentation on chain abstraction that will be an awesome opportunity too to start combining what we have here on near with these other chains as you do these different hackathons and hey Everyone likes more money right so yeah yeah definitely reacon chain will be the the probably the the easiest way to jump into it's just whatever project we're doing Deploy on on reac chain and and the rest is

21. 9:36

    whatever you want to do could be any any evm dap or whatever so that that would be the easiest way totally totally awesome uh well Boris I really appreciate you coming on and letting everyone know about this exciting program and we certainly uh we'll make sure that you know we're getting the word out continuously we'll keep promoting here people have questions uh make sure that you are you know coming and you know asking us different questions in the Discord like foris said come to the telegram hit us up on

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    Twitter uh lots of opportunities there so we really appreciate ites thanks forus and uh we'll talk to you soon okay bye thanks all right uh awesome stuff uh so again it really encourage people to check out this program ask us questions uh it's easy money uh again you know all the you have to do is win a prize add another hackathon and you can go next up uh really excited uh so I have I've known Brandon for a while actually interviewed him on a previous

23. 10:43

    uh product I had called Ready layer one uh him and his team uh that really they've been around since the early days of near they've been through the bare Market building and we really wanted to have Brandon come on and talk about uh not just like tokens in general which is a part of what they're doing at Nico and jump but just in general also building on near and being a builder right so

24. 11:08

    it's more than just actually writing code it's a whole process uh building a web 3 obviously is a little bit different as well than maybe a typical like web 2 project so that's one of those things that we're really uh hoping to uh engage with and get some answers from again I'm also going to have Owen come on too who's one of our devs so uh let's uh let's bring them up so here we go we're going to bring

25. 11:32

    up here's hey Brandon and hey what's up Joe how's it going hey going great going great thanks thanks so much for joining today how are you oh God still got this cough so I'll probably uh probably mute whilst I cough up my lungs for a bit but oh God noon yeah the the be build yeah Jo mentioned Joe Joe mentioned that interview with ready layer one that was that was some time ago I I I still

26. 12:08

    remember that we were uh you know just starting out building I think that was was that 2022 or 20 yeah that had have been like 2022 yeah yeah I think so yeah I mean you guys were still still early days I don't think much of anything had launched really for jump yet uh so no it's exciting so let's kind of jump in a little bit and uh as we're Dev focused here on on this is we want to talk about a lot of the building and St like that you guys have done you know you've done

27. 12:40

    nfts uh you've done tokens uh starting with maybe like Nico which was like your first project uh what was the impetus to kind of get into that and start actually you know building that Community through there to then lead into these other projects yeah so I'll start a little bit before that um my name is Brandon Brandon Mando in the new community we you know I was really into crypto especially at the end of 2021 I think that's when we actually

28. 13:12

    started building on near we started with the classy kangaroos actually which is a really old nft project that was our first one and our I guess the the main goal was that we had seen we had seen a lot about with ethereum and I think we were I was really interested in salana kind of enjoyed the lack of expensive gas fees and the communities there and nfts were really big in salana in those

29. 13:37

    days and um there was a lot of things that attracted us to near but one of them was just the way that everyone kind of worked together and was really open in the community there wasn't that tribalism that existed on ethereum and salana at the time so we kind of wanted to we were impressed with the tech stack what they were offering and we wanted to be first mov and develop a community and try and provide value um so that's kind of why we started with our small um nft

30. 14:05

    Collections and nfts were really big at the time um but that kind of led us to our you know our other projects led us to Nico and jump Defi and um I forgot what the question I think you wanted to talk about Nico but with with jump def5 we wanted to provide um more def5 functionalities for these different nft projects we saw a a large amount of nft projects and the problem is most of them didn't really have any sustainable models or you know ways to keep going so we wanted

31. 14:36

    to provide defi to them different ways to you know provide nft staking um launching their own tokens things like that because at the time that was really that was something that was lacking in the near um ecosystem infrastructure so that's we wanted to build out and I think everything just kind of like took off from there but our but our goal was obviously we're non-technical Founders we wanted to start with with something

32. 14:59

    small and then build and expand the ecosystem yeah I wouldn't I wouldn't say JUMP defi is uh is small it's quite decent Siz project I just staked my first uh be nft the other day uh that was interesting so would you say you came more to n for the the opportunity or the tech or sort of a mix between them I would say it was definitely all of it um again yeah jump defi is a lot bigger now but back then we started very small and we as you said as I said sorry

33. 15:38

    non-technical we had a couple developers help us with our initial um projects launching them and we actually experienced a couple times we brought in developers from you know who were used to building on ethereum uh solidity and when we brought them over to rust I noticed that there was like a small um difficulty curve but once they kind of got introduced to building on near with

34. 16:00

    near C building contracts and with Russ they actually enjoyed it a lot more and they found it was very simple very easy and we actually had two of the developers we onboarded actually uh build their own projects on near I don't know if they're still around anymore but they they actually were really interested it and they really enjoyed near so I find that there actually is a lot that near offers in terms of tech

35. 16:24

    stack and there's a lot of things that we don't even um a lot of projects don't even utilize like an example is uh I I forget what exactly it is but with what Shard dog has been doing with the easy oneclick activations that was something that you know was always there but no one was really utilizing that um from the near Tech yeah I feel a lot of people um they they stay away from near until they're in the ecosystem and then they're like whoa it's kind of crazy and don't want

36. 16:59

    to leave I know how that's been with uh with myself at least um yeah so with uh with Nico you just had the uh centralized exchange listing right yeah and as part of that you you got rid of like your you locked your contract uh and all that good stuff and I had with tokens I was just discussing in the contract standards Community uh not too long ago about how on near I'm not sure about other ecosystems like

37. 17:39

    with ERC but like NEP 141 tokens they just Define the uh the token interface right so that doesn't affect any of the business logic that is going on yeah NFA um that doesn't Define any like the business logic going on in the contract do you think there's any cool features that could be added to like a Nico token or or a meme coin or something because I sort of had this idea about um on a exchange when you're you're

38. 18:18

    trading these tokens then a proportion of what you trade gets uh converted to like marketing efforts or or whatever I think there's some interesting possibilities though it's actually funny you brought that up because that was actually something we tried to do initially with Nico token we had we were trying to implement a tax like it's a 5% tax on selling that would go back into the ecosystem go to the different uh distribution mechanisms we have to you

39. 18:49

    know provide Nico to Holders stakers things like that um we had that initially and that's part of the reason why also the contract wasn't locked up until the Mec listing because I I I feel like there's a lot of new standards that people have been making recently and um for nfts or tokens um there's a lot of functionality that's possible on miror but the problem we ran into with that was that while it

40. 19:19

    worked in our contract we couldn't get it to function on ref Finance because we needed ref Finance to change a small I think front end um segment of code to enable it or else the transaction just wouldn't go out because ref Finance wouldn't accept uh it just wouldn't accept our tax calculation in there so we tried to do that we tried to uh talk to ref Finance about it and I think ultimately we just uh since they were the main Exchange and they didn't it was taking some time we just kind of nixed

41. 19:52

    that whole thing and uh just went with a normal token but yeah there there's a lot of cool things that we had thought about and we wanted to implement them but I think um there are still ways to implement them but that specific one did not work with uh The decentralized Exchange on here so I'm surprised knowing you guys you didn't just decide to spin up your own exchange because of that we uh we were working on that actually as well as part of jump Defi and we're actually

42. 20:24

    um that was something it turned out to be a lot bigger of a develop M um we again we were going to do that we were going to allow jump def5 to be able to provide that but we just figured it would be a lot quicker and easier you know to get Nico going without that Tex um so yeah we we abandoned that but we did have that idea and I think there are a lot of potential ways to do something like that that could benefit an

43. 20:48

    ecosystem or just have new innovations that can help um a project that we haven't thought of sure and as as of late chain abstraction and chain signatures has been like a big thing in the near ecosystem apart from like AI as well it's it's sort of a battle between them right now think like Trove labs and and Nico and and jump defi all your products you have uh are you looking to use chain abstraction in any way maybe cross chain staking or something like

44. 21:23

    that can we expect to see yeah so we're actually working on a really big thing for jump we are trying to build out a aggregator for the different dexes on year I know there's mainly ref Finance there's orderly um VX and I think a few others but we're trying to kind of create something similar to the vein of like Jupiter on salana we want to aggregate everything on near and provide the best trades on jump Defi and we're actually

45. 21:53

    in development on that it's going to be a little bit more time we'll uh provide more Alpha as that comes out but the next step I think would be to figure out how we could use chain abstraction and possibly aggregate on other um other chains I mean we we're still looking into how to do that and we're really excited with the chain abstraction technology I we definitely are you know

46. 22:19

    we're excited for it but I think we're still kind of working on that I'm not sure how many projects have actually been utilizing chain abstraction technology you guys might know more than me yeah we saw we saw a lot of hackathon participants using chain abstraction and chain signatures which is great to see but I think it's a very big concept to get your head round in the first

47. 22:42

    instance from what I've seen the actual like implementation and the programming isn't too difficult um but trying to wrap your head around some of it is is uh the struggle which we saw at the hackathons but I do know I've spoken to a few people just today that are working on uh chain abstraction products and I'm excited to uh see what's happening have you seen many examples floating about Joe yeah not a ton yet I mean I think

48. 23:17

    that's where it's really an experimental phase you know but BR I think one of the things that's been great about you guys and I love that you brought up is that like there's so much untapped potential here still right like so from I mean chames traction is just the new part of that but even beforehand there's just a lot of parts that are not really being utilized and that are available to

49. 23:40

    developers to start experting with that it's a little bit different is that something where you guys are trying to constantly prioritize innovating or is it sometimes it's just about look I got to get a product in production from there oh I think at the stages we're at now we're definitely looking at innovating we've been looking at a few different things with uh streaming with Nico um with the new uh baby AI acquisition we're looking into

50. 24:11

    Ai and how you can do different um token functionalities with AI we'll have more information on that later and again with with jump defi we're focusing on the aggregator but we we've already established some things so we're we're always trying to innovate and see what kind of cool things we can come up with and like I said after we kind of establish our aggregator development we're going to be looking into how and how we can use chain abstraction to kind of advance that and that's kind of the goal

51. 24:42

    because you know I I think one of the things we we figure is that we like to build like CH chain agnostic I feel like that might be kind of the future and with near like being able to utilize that use chain abstraction to allow people to participate in other chains do transactions on other chains I think that is a very big um yeah it's very big um we've always kind of built with user accessibility in mind you know you want to be able to do things easily

52. 25:15

    from a few wallets and yeah and what you gave me a bit of a shale a few months back about baby AI but can you say any more on it now like what what is it that baby AI is doing yeah the the main thing we're trying to do is we're trying to aggregate a lot of the basically the main AI um algorithms the main AI um like platforms like chat gbt uh mid Journey a couple there's a lot more popping up we want to aggregate them and provide them on the app but we

53. 25:55

    also want to provide rewards to anyone or using um AI generation so there there's a couple things that we're looking into doing on how to do that but at the moment we're trying to aggregate a bunch of these so that you can kind of get the best option because for right now a lot of it is like fragmented some AI platforms are better at certain things some of the image Generations like for 3D renderings are better on Mid

54. 26:20

    Journey but with like Dolly it's much better at doing like canvas art and stuff like that so being able to you know a lot of people don't really want to get too hard into the prompt engineering aspect of it and they just want to be able to make what they want very quickly and easily so that's kind of something we're doing there but I think there's a lot of you know there's a lot of potential in being able to give rewards for people for using um

55. 26:51

    AI for using prompt Generation Um there's a lot of data there associated with it too that can help uh refine the models for baby AI as well so there's a bunch and we'll uh definitely give more as we get further along with it but we are excited um again with the Innovation like Joe said trying trying new things I think that's the best part of building on near is that it's we talked about it

56. 27:14

    a little bit but it is very I I feel like it's easier to build things with more functionality than on something like ethereum again I'm not a non-technical developer I uh I know a little bit about all of this but what would you guys say like does the smart contract functionality on near is it better than that on salana or I I feel like they're similar since they're rust but how does it compare to other chains I feel like the the one thing

57. 27:44

    that n offered from the start was um the account abstraction right and I feel like that does make a lot of things easier um and like it's it's from a sort of non-technical standpoint it's just like someone wants to pay me I don't have to give them 64 letters or or an hex or whatever I just say I'm py vortex. or or i spice. n and they know they could just pay me simple um but yeah I think like function called access Keys that's one of my favorite things about n

58. 28:28

    uh and I mean the reason I came into near was because of the tech um I I don't know what what what was your experience Joe coming into the ecosystem yeah it was I mean it was heavily Tech based um I've talked about it before in some other podcasts where it really was about I come from a very heavy web 2 an Enterprise background and when I was researching more in web 3 a lot of this stuff wasn't overly interesting to me because it felt very restricted right like like you have to kind of follow these rails this is kind of what's available to you especially

59. 29:07

    like solidity was very restrictive um and so opening things up with especially like account abstraction and where you could be creative as a developer as someone who wants to build product and not have all these restrictions where you could really push and feel like you're building more in kind of web to that's where like the open web concept really comes from of like hey it's really just like building the open web

60. 29:30

    it's not like building crypto per se when you're on near and that's was really enticing as a developer to really say saying hey I can actually innovate here not just build another meme coin yeah I think that Nails it pretty pretty exactly it's kind of how we feel and um again non-technical but near does offer a lot and all the the developers we've worked with they really do enjoy it and feel like it gives us a lot more

61. 30:01

    functionality I think going going back to the talking about baby AI uh I think a lot of people when they think of blockchain and AI they're thinking of uploading these massive models on chain which I don't really see happening like near is is pretty cheap for data storage right you're paying one near for 100 kilobytes of data but some of these models are pretty massive so you don't

62. 30:33

    want to be paying uh I don't know thousands like one person came up to me at Denver and was saying uh I I want to have this 600 megabyte model on chain I like yeah probably gonna cost you quite a bit I would not recommend yeah I think the interaction between like the payment systems with AI is where it will really come into play uh with blockchain for example you said uh how baby AI is using it to pay people using the models which I feel is like a

63. 31:15

    really interesting use case because I know IL has been talking and a lot about uh using it to well this is how near started really uh rewarding contributors for uh like data labeling right and even rewarding those who are uh creating the content uh models are trained on I think that's a very interesting use case because there's been a few uh a few lawsuits and cases about how uh like you've put out an article right and say

64. 31:53

    you you have this article and you're maybe earning money from that for running ads adjacent to the article or whatever but if this is being used by like a an llm then you're not seeing those ads right and your content is somewhat just being stolen so it's sort of the end of uh like monetizing your your content so I think payment systems for rewarding those who were producing original

65. 32:27

    content could be a very interesting use case and I'd love to get involved with that yeah yeah there's definitely a lot that we're looking into there we have uh kind of like we're still building out the base baby platform it has um an app already on the Android store we're looking to get it on the Apple store but we're looking much more into that how we can actually innovate with paying tokens

66. 32:52

    um for getting this data and making um Generations on AI um one of the things I I thought was interesting was the this new project on near I think Edge U Edge video they're utilizing like I think Web Two streams but they're providing an overlay and providing rewards via you know web 3 on top of that and I think that's that's a really interesting thing I haven't seen too much of I I don't think but that's that's something similar similar in a way to reward users

67. 33:26

    or reward people for watching these streams so what do you guys think about that sounds cool I about this do you have any thoughts Joe yeah so product aside um you know I think the concept is certainly interesting right like it's about because it brings back the ownership piece of can I have more ownership over um my data am I being rewarded properly am I like am I the product versus you know am I consuming a product things like that so all of that stuff is super

68. 34:03

    I think Super interesting to explore and I wonder you know longterm like do people start to see that the struggle that I think I always have is that we've come to a place I feel like sometimes in society where a lot of people have just like given in and they don't really think about that anymore like the convenience of a Facebook the convenience of all these other platforms right like it just it's people like I I don't really care about my privacy so much where as we get further along if we

69. 34:35

    can match that you know that ease of use and then provide like you said like rewards to that and people start to see oh you know like my time is valuable that is such an interesting Dynamic to get people at least interested in what's available here from an open web perspective yeah well I'm I'm seeing like recently uh Elon Musk was tweeting about how I think they're going to start introducing payments for posting tweets right for anti-spam so I'm think it one of the

70. 35:14

    main blockers for building on on chain is that You' you have to pay gas for your transactions right so I'm thinking now Twitter needs to become on near right I know there was Reddit in the past were looking at uh introducing blockchain so I think it's I think it time Twitter comes along um because we we haven't seen apart from sweat I know that was like existing before uh the like blockchain integration right but we

71. 35:54

    haven't seen many classical like web two companies get integrated with blockchain and I do hope that that time is coming soon are there any uh there any applications you could see coming on to near uh in the in the near future um I don't know I I I want what I I want some sort of like streaming or spaces alternative to like twitch or even uh you know Tik Tok all of those because

72. 36:32

    we've had a lot of trouble in the past with some of our accounts getting blocked because of the you know just just the the terms that they were able to dictate over people in the content that they post you know it's mainly just they see crypto and they automatically flag and then suspend your account and it makes it really hard for a lot of content creators that specialize in crypto or web 3 um to make content

73. 36:58

    without it getting you know getting demonetized or flagged and I feel like near or other blockchains you know near I hope would be able to allow content creators to get funded for you know content that they create I know it's the the whole point you know Joe talked about the convenience or you know are you what are you sacrificing and YouTube Tik Tok all of those they have the widest audiences available so that's probably the main issue that you'd have to tackle but I really do want to see

74. 37:30

    some sort of alternative because right now it's it's just kind of getting annoying and even with like when I try to host like Twitter spaces they you know there's always technical issues I want something else well Joe and I actually had a little conversation about this uh I I think it was last week because I was trying to see what engagement we were getting on these live streams I know I was asking like how can we tell how many

75. 37:57

    non near people are interacting with these live streams right and you can't you can't necessarily get that information from this uh platform but we know with blockchain then it's all open graph right so if we had that on stream on chain streaming service then we could just instantly tap in see who is watching and uh like from from where they're coming from right uh so yeah it's it's all about the open graph

76. 38:30

    really from my perspective why we'd want um it on chain apart from the the permissionless bit as well yeah sure um I don't know if you guys would like to talk about this but I wanted to maybe talk a little bit about just as you said my perspective on building as a builder on near you know without having any coding knowledge um I think there's been a lot of you know we in the new

77. 39:01

    ecosystem we always try and focus on like how are we going to onboard all of these people you know how do we get more people to use near join the ecosystem but something that you guys obviously prioritize which is the more important issue is like how do you get developers to build on near like how do you get people to cross over from potentially you know from switching from solidity to rust or even just sacrificing some of

78. 39:26

    the volume that's on a to build on salana or build on near specifically coming from salana with R to build on near because that's it's really important um and uh it's it can be kind of difficult especially to find different developers and I would just like to highlight two of the resources that we've been using lately which would have been really awesome when we were starting up to avoid a lot of issues was uh near Horizon was actually very helpful um we learned a lot all the

79. 39:57

    lessons in the latest cohort already through building through the bear for the previous years but having something like that when we started building would have been so helpful I mean covering what to do like uh for the business entities legal marketing like going through all of that I think that's a really great resource right now I know they're on cohort 3 I think I think Joe

80. 40:19

    and Jared were part of number one um yep but there that I really like what near has been doing there like I think they should keep that type of stuff up it's really helpful for Founders because there's just so much you have to balance and you can learn there especially if you're new and um finding developers that's that's really difficult you know um one one of the resources we've actually been working closely with build

81. 40:46

    Dow we have our own developers in different places but build Dow is actually pretty cool they've been able to aggregate all the developers and kind of provide different people for different tasks on year and kind of like facilitate the whole process and I think that that's a resource that other people looking to build on near should definitely look into so shout out to build Dow it's uh definitely helping and I think that's a good way to you know as

82. 41:11

    the demand grows more developers can onboard through build Dow and then possibly find other projects to keep working with and uh stay around on near but uh yeah for sure yeah it's it's definitely like it's not just about like coming in into the ecosystem right you've got to you got to stay there and have something to do yeah we we were trying to do that with the um the challenges as well give go give some people an idea of what they

83. 41:43

    want to like a task to build but I think a great way to uh to keep in the ecosystem and keep going is just like start your own project whatever it may be make just be for fun but it might turn into something big right but not everyone is of that that founder mindset so I think it's it's it's difficult to for for some devs to become like Founders themselves and I think Horizon is doing a a great job of that and I also think that you you have to build your

84. 42:23

    team so that like if I'm a developer then I have to find someone who's of that very like business mindset yeah I I was gonna ask you and you guys coming in that are been really heavily product focused and you know it's again you need to go out and actually hire devs was the catch for I mean besides obviously like you're paying people right but you got to actually get people who are going to be engaged and

85. 42:54

    understand what you're doing did it help that you were coming in with clear products in mind uh or was it something where you would say look here's what we want to do but we'll give you some freedom to explore and build with us you know what's that catch because I think that's where when people come into any ecosystem this is just like a near problem right where it's like what what

86. 43:19

    can I do here is this going to be just like a job for me and so I think as we talked to Developers you know where is that line for you guys as I guess entrepreneurs that you want your developers to kind of fit into yeah so I guess we started with a really close developer worked with him for for a very long time and I think we kind of Started From The Innovation process like what can we do and then we

87. 43:45

    run it by him and see what's possible and again with near there definitely was a lot uh lot of potential for a lot of the ideas we were building NE not necessarily so on etherum with like how immutable and all of that stuff the way that contracts are designed over there but yeah we kind of just you know bounced ideas off of each other David and I um and our developer Eric and kind of just kind of worked from there to see what was possible so sure yeah and I

88. 44:16

    guess you know there there is a there is a lot we've talked about like how how much you know how much there is being a Founder how many things you have to learn and what you have to do and one of the issues we encountered with a different developer was you know that that web 2 development like coming into building on near as Founders without too much of experience on directing a you know software development team and all of the issues in between that there is a there's a lot

89. 44:48

    we had to learn there and like you said there's always a discrepancy between what what you want to innovate on and what is actually possible and um we definitely we definitely ran into some challenges there but yeah again on near I think it is pretty uh this pretty is easy to kind of just come up with an idea and kind of make a reality more so than like on ethereum sure uh So speaking of also then of this part of it too is like when you go to

90. 45:21

    hire developers what are you looking for like what should we tell developers to say hey I don't have my own project I want to go work what are the things that you guys are looking for to bring developers in yeah yeah so let's see um I guess recently um we're kind of looking for people with some contract um experience I mean I think a lot of people don't necessarily have too much experience with near but I think we it's not too much of a learning curve for them to kind of transition

91. 45:54

    over it to to near um smart contract so we kind of had some examples for them to look at but getting developers who are already like experience with solidity or maybe a little bit on salana it's not too hard to get them to um be able to work on stuff from near um yeah I mean I I don't know in the past we yeah I'm not I'm not exactly sure I guess just people who have somewhat contract experience people that

92. 46:27

    I want like are probably going to stick around um a little bit longer spend a couple more a little bit more time rather than just like do a gig and leave you know but uh for sure yeah yeah I uh with with my like own personal project we just well I just finished like Contracting the developer for the first time and uh he was actually he knew quite a bit about near so that was a very fast onboarding process and when

93. 46:59

    it's like shortterm Dev work um rather than like an ongoing contract or an employee then the knowledge of like the specifics of the ecosystem definitely uh comes comes in useful like a solidity Dev will probably be great uh like longterm but you can't necessarily afford to have them like learning initially right yeah so that's kind of why it was difficult for me to answer because I really have we work with multiple teams and multiple developers some teams we

94. 47:37

    have on bigger projects some teams on um other projects you know Nico jump but we also just have a couple different devs that kind of just make sure everything is maintenance uh issues there's always troubleshooting um it's good to have people with experience with like front end and other stuff and some people who have more contract experience so I it's kind of like to be honest developing a

95. 48:01

    team with strengths and weaknesses kind of just you know working from there but I would say that most people really don't have too much issue transitioning over to near and if you can find you know maybe not everyone is a full stack developer but a good contract backend guy and a good front-end developer you can probably um have a good base to get started working yeah I I always avoid front end as much as I can or my front end is uh

96. 48:33

    AI prompts so don't ask me to make a front end for you yeah no as I mean so brand this is just not about you guys your projects but just from your opinion as an entrepreneur and you guys are getting into AI like where do you feel some of that actually fits into you know your work you know developers and your team is that something that you guys are trying to embrace more to you know reduce some costs or is it where you feel like hey it's still too early so we

97. 49:07

    want to make sure that we're getting you know people who are going to fill in the right positions um yeah so like AI is is super helpful like as a Founder there's between like like two years ago starting out versus now the amount that a couple people are able to do is you know expanded so much before like U not saying that it's you know great replacing all these types of like you know graphic designers or things like that but with AI you'll be able to

98. 49:41

    easily pop up some graphic designs you know it helps with marketing much more like makes it much more efficiently you can pop stuff out a lot faster um it definitely multiplies what people can get done I don't necessarily know if like how going to be you know replacing developers or things like that I feel like there's still a long way to go before you know human expertise isn't

99. 50:07

    needed on a lot of these things but it definitely can help I've you know I've used open AI to help figure out some coding that I botched or some some things like oh okay that's that's what's wrong this little uh this little period here messed up the whole thing so um yeah yeah I I I'd say we're still you know we still need developers I there's there's some things that AI has replaced but still not not 100% we still have graphic designers and things like that

100. 50:39

     but it but it has helped um I mean that's kind of why we're looking at building things with AI definitely want to embrace more of that it's it's definitely here to stay and it's been expanding at a rapid pace so we want to see how we can innovate there and yeah use it to our advantage as most a lot of people are in crypto right now as you guys mentioned yeah yeah sure yeah I mean Owen I mean you're you're in all the camps here right like so you're doing relations you're building your own

101. 51:10

     little product you're doing all these different things you're also you know someone who is a developer like what what are your thoughts on a where of the solit you know you mentioned using it for front end but so I think like Brandon said with just checking my code and if I forget some some stupid thing um sure like how to write a a certain line in in rust or whatever it comes in great there but I think one of the things that will

102. 51:46

     probably never fade is the like original thought and like original Innovation so I do think that AI right now is struggling to like come up with something so if you prompt it give me the next like big crypto project right or product it's not going to come up with that so it needs an entrepreneur like like yourself to come in there and then tell tell like AI what to do like how to make it um yeah but I do Wonder in in the future if you can just prompt something and it

103. 52:29

     wam bam you're a millionaire yeah I I think the you know human creativity and Innovation is going to be very hard to replace so it's going to be some time before we have to really have that conversation but it is uh it's definitely progressing Every Time I Think of the rate of AI technological expansion I think of that Will Smith video with the spaghetti and the new one that they released like it's only been like a year so Prett uh it is pretty

104. 53:01

     crazy so I we will see how fast this actually you know progresses yeah there's some there's some downsides to it because they could it could be like a video of uh like you doing something AI generated but then there's also the flip side of it like I I don't know I could go do horri something horrible to someone like P punch an old lady on the street and there's a recording of it but then I can just say oh that it was AI it

105. 53:33

     was AI so I'm safe oh yeah man you thought if you thought fake news was bad a while ago it's gonna be really bad coming up here you're not gonna know what's real oh no AB absolutely I mean that that's one of the things where you know you're already seeing it I mean I mean you know like the the US election coming up this year right so like that's you know we're already seeing it where people are using the AI voices for fake rooc calls and all that stuff you know so it's going to be everywhere I just think from like a

106. 54:06

     developer standpoint where I there's so much talk of like where does it like eventually replace people but I think you're spot on guys where it's like you still need that creative piece and you need to understand like building an actual product and that that part of it just I feel like we're further away from the true like creativity piece I do though worry about um and this has been talked about on socials a lot especially I think this a whole Foreman like Reddit about it of like that that junior level

107. 54:38

     developer though of like does that get F start to get phased out and what happens then because I'll speak from my own experience as a founder and as a as someone who's building a product as well uh I no longer have a need for a junior developer because all those tasks that I would send I would give to them I give to AI again that saves me a ton of money and that saves me a ton of time and I want to be able to support the next group but you know if I'm doing it yes

108. 55:09

     true I I don't have a budget right I'm I'm bootstrapping but you know Enterprises you know company you know corporations starting to do that so what happens in between you know like there's the you you you need that experience right like we all went through it to to you know have those jobs to build yourself up to be eventually be a more senior developer how do you get there it's a pretty good question I mean I say we have't answer today but I just those are the things

109. 55:42

     where we talk about AI as from a developer perspective I think it's less about like being replaced today it's like does that just start to get phased out and who becomes that next crop of senior developers just have to learn for 20 years until you get J yeah no for sure and like and that's the thing too like and you know if you went to school for it right so if you went and you got a computer science degree

110. 56:14

     and you went through that whole thing the problem that's always been and I don't know if it's much better now but certainly wasn't in the past we're like you may be fundamentally sound developer and understand all the stuff but to actually go and build a product and actually go work not even build your own thing just go work in a corporation as as a software developer software engineer that's such a different skill

111. 56:38

     set like it's just yes you can be technically sound but like the skill set of like actually shipping to production getting that stuff out is so different and so that's where like a junior to Mid to senior was so important and now I feel like that's starting to get cut out and so that's going to be a really interesting thing as we start to you know see all this progress yeah so let's yeah I mean that's what it's gonna be right it's gonna be yeah you're gonna have to start doing more of your own

112. 57:08

     stuff so pulling all this together uh I don't want to take too much more of your time Brandon this has been great to talk about you about as you start to see the future of you know we talk a little bit about like what you guys are trying to build and the possibilities to innovate here on near what are some of the things that are really you know the next step for you guys as a as a true Builder right so not just like throwing out products but is it something about like

113. 57:40

     you know like you said like are you streamlining all the different offerings you have do you feel the need that hey we just try to keep expanding and keep experimenting and wait for that to come down the road how do you make those decisions as a builder founder yeah so I think we've talked about a little bit you know we have been streamlining our off offerings building out our platforms or finding them a

114. 58:03

     little bit more especially with like big events coming up I mean I know a lot of people are looking at the the future for crypto and a lot of people are optimistic including myself I feel like we are either on the edge of breaking out into a bull market something like that don't know hope so but um I think that near itself has had a lot of different narratives over time you know

115. 58:33

     uh uh wallet abstraction boss chain abstraction but I do think right now chain abstraction is probably the strongest one I think we're we're we're sticking with that one for sure finally and I think there's a lot that you can kind of I mean a lot I'm hoping for a lot of potential there to you know build on near because it's easy because the transaction fees are great because the

116. 58:58

     community is great um there's a lot of support and then use chain abstraction to kind of expand from there um and kind of just having that chain agnostic uh ideas or sorry just having that perspective as well so we do want to offer this to more people you know break beyond the near Echo chamber as well but that's kind of like the next steps after we kind of consolidate what we're building here but yeah I think just kind of aligning with that chain abstraction

117. 59:30

     narrative with near and seeing how we can build things out from there I think that's like our goals that's the next step for us and I think maybe a lot of projects on near yeah I've heard of a lot of projects like they they were existing projects before and now they're adding that that chain abstraction uh parameter to it I'm very interested to see where it will go yeah I mean it seems like

118. 1:00:03

     near really has been building up there's there's probably some things that were some interesting choices we made in the past couple of years but I think recently um things have been pretty well uh I feel like we're really on board with the new Narrative of things um the infrastructure I mean it seems like the transaction volume is really high we're doing really well in comparison with some of the other chains out there so I think that people are starting to notice near I I felt like um at e Denver I

119. 1:00:37

     really had a lot of people that kind of knew about it and were interested and wanted to talk more about it than some of the other conferences I've been to in previous years so um feel like people are starting to take notice and I think with this uh more people getting into crypto they kind of just want a smooth experience they don't want to have to have all these different wallets all these things so if you can provide Fast Times you

120. 1:01:01

     know large scaleability low transaction costs and the ability to do a bunch of different things from like one wallet I think that's something people are going to start wanting so that's my take seems like everything's picking up I just refer everyone to D radar tell them look at the top 10 DS yeah and the transactions I think we're where second on transaction volume uh just behind salana and first in first by far in uh unique active wallets

121. 1:01:39

     right so it's looking good yeah yeah no it's it's definitely an exciting time to to certainly build um and it's you know I'm hoping that more people see that you know again it is possible to both build and attract users here uh having a good product having something strong uh there is a lot of opportunities here near doesn't have the biggest name but really I think right now that the tech stack uh is in a a

122. 1:02:09

     really great place to to start building yeah any kind of things you'd like to kind of like wrap up with anything else you know promotion I don't really have too many shows other than uh I mean yeah I mean just that we're going to be uh announcing some more things coming up we've uh we've been building a lot as as we do we've had a couple uh things come live recently you know we have the jump D5 vaults uh just different ways to stake and earn rewards from other tokens

123. 1:02:42

     in the ecosystem like black dragon probably have some ways to stake X jump and earn long later we got um the mexc listing for Nico that was pretty cool uh I know I I thought we were the first one to go on a big um centralized exchange like that but I think maybe there's a couple tokens from the her wallet ecosystem already on centralized exchanges I'm not sure but that was pretty cool it's good to see more uh you know I hope more tokens list on centralized exchanges from near so

124. 1:03:16

     people can kind of see that um yeah nothing really to shill right now maybe in the in the future no that's awesome I I really I appreciate your perspective uh I think it's important that developers start to hear more about what it is actually to build and uh execute in production here uh and your guys' experience and your success so far of not just shipping a probably shipping multiple things uh and

125. 1:03:45

     still still building is a testament to what is possible and you know I think that's something that we want to continue to get that message across uh if people want to reach out to you maybe ask some questions uh is Twitter the best place to reach out yeah yeah I definitely look at my Twitter DMS every once in a while um nice and you know Nico and jump as well so reach out there probably find me on Telegram and Discord pretty easily too perfect but uh yeah thank you guys so

126. 1:04:17

     much for the conversation it was really great it's always a pleasure to talk to you guys and I appreciate everything you said about us as Builders can say the same about you guys uh Joe as well with Shard dog and everything else you guys really have been carrying the near ecosystem on your back helping a lot of projects with your Shard dog links and uh even Owen has helped me out with some

127. 1:04:40

     technical issues and different things on on near for our project as well so that's again that's one of the main reasons we uh enjoyed near the community is very uh helpful and accepting so like Joe said reach out to anyone and they'll probably help you sure that's well yeah thanks for joining and we look to have you back on some time maybe talk a little more about uh your AI offerings and things like that oh yeah all right thanks guys all right thanks so

128. 1:05:12

     much all right that was that was exciting uh that was really for me as a builder as well I think it's so important to get these messages out that you guys can see that look we can do a lot of stuff building here on near uh it's not just again meme coins and everything else that's fun that's here that's available uh they're doing it too but you can actually build anything that you actually want to get into and for yourself as a a developer if you have your own idea that's great uh and as

129. 1:05:45

     Brandon mentioned we have programs like Horizon here that can help with you know kind of growing and becoming an actual business but then we also have that ability to just like come in and find work uh there are a lot of projects building I'm always getting asked if you know uh you know do you know any developers things like that and there opportunities for you to come into the ecosystem and get involved and things

130. 1:06:09

     like that so I really would encourage uh anyone who's interested to do that one of the things too here is and I'll I'll just highlight this is our newsletter is a great place to continue to get information uh about that stuff upcoming events different places to look communities and things like that are uh all you know I think a nice opportunity for people uh let's move on to the last

131. 1:06:33

     segment here uh this is something a little bit new wanted to give a try tweet of the week uh I think it's important to see also what's going on in the ecosystem and there was a a great one actually kind of came from today that I wanted to share with everyone and if you didn't get a chance to uh see this morning uh so the one of the co-founders of near uh Elia posted this morning about uh essentially the state where you know Nightshade version two

132. 1:07:05

     which is part of the validation process on the on chain and what that actually starts to look like and so here I'm going to share share my screen here so we can kind of go show this together so let me me here we go we can focus on this and you know this is where uh I think you know I'm not going to read to everybody here but I would encourage everyone to go and check this out and read this through and basically

133. 1:07:48

     the possibilities here on near to actually grow and expand and to actually have an opportunity to really see uh large growth quickly without actually having to have the Growing Pains of uh you know bottlenecks and things like that I think is really under underappreciated at times one of the things if you are building a project and you are looking to hit scale uh a lot of the concern that comes up right now especially I would say in you know if

134. 1:08:28

     you're coming from web 2 and you're coming from you know again whether it's Enterprise or just uh consumer-based products and you try to hit that scale is oh blockchain is going to be too slow or blockchain's going to get congested and now what's the point of me actually you know building this feature in and a couple highlights from this tweet that I really wanted to point out

135. 1:08:54

     to everybody is that you know one of the things that near is has designed for and is building out and making sure it's part of the protocol with Dynamic resharding what that means is that as that congestion builds up you don't have to pause your app you don't have to stop your app and then migrate it or scale it up it's much more similar to like the example of uh Auto resizing on like AWS or something

136. 1:09:28

     like that where if I actually go and you know I have an ad server and I have it set up to actual Auto scale I get a ton of traffic and now I can have more servers deployed and handle all that traffic uh this is a similar concept to that and so as soon as that congestion you know and this is a nice piece right here he says you know as soon as that congestion is detected it can split that Shard can split and what that does is not only for

137. 1:09:59

     your own project who maybe is having that traffic but the other projects that are there are not also being affected so as a whole the E the whole ecosystem benefits from this so where maybe just one project can possibly slow everything else down because of maybe it's something as simple as like here's a massive like you know airdrop or whatever and now now it's bringing a ton of transactions online well that doesn't

138. 1:10:29

     have to affect the entire chain here on near and so you can feel strongly that you can actually keep up with that scaling with that growth uh you know it's a it's a a longer kind of tweet but it's not too long I encourage uh anyone uh really to just kind of read this it's not overly technical uh I gives you a sense too of the difference between near and other chains um but I I want to bring it back to the web 2 example here is that just like you would scale in web

139. 1:11:00

     2 with multiple servers uh this is an opportunity to actually do that uh here on near and that's where again we do have uh tons of transactions happening each day as Owen and Brandon were talking about if you go on dap radar uh you can see that near is a heavily used chain and we are not running into uh those congestion and scaling issues that's all due to Sharp in and as we go into the next stage of that uh it's only going to get better going to keep prices

140. 1:11:32

     down and everything else so uh big piece here that uh you know please take time to go back and re and check this out uh let's before we go I I want to make sure again uh in case you you missed it earlier uh I want to you know highlight for everyone here that you know the the Bounty booster is live uh for near again this is a huge opportunity if you missed Boris on earlier I said go back and watch the beginning of this this live stream but uh if you are building you're on any

141. 1:12:08

     kind of hackathon that is not sponsored by devhub or or near so it's a different one could be web 2 it could be another crypto confer whatever it might be you use near in your Tech stack in any part of your Tech stack and you win about you can get a boost that matches that up to $5,000 uh it's a great opportunity for you to actually again not only just make more money but to improve your Tech stack and really see what near is about uh if you're not if you're already using

142. 1:12:40

     near and you want to go to other hackathons because you believe that the something that can win at other places again here's the nice opportunity to actually do both things uh and please you know check out that the Tweet that's linked here uh ask us questions but we want to give the opportunity for everyone to really uh you know leverage near as best as possible uh through this

143. 1:13:05

     program uh this has been uh again really another insightful hopefully for everyone uh episode uh I learned something it was great to talk to uh builders on here uh please keep asking us questions please keep uh reaching out as always uh if you need Dev support uh please come to our Telegram at the best place it's always active uh you can see all our communities here at near Dev hub.org uh that's an easy place to go to for uh all of that and again uh keep

144. 1:13:37

     coming back each week uh every Thursday uh we'll continue to have more guests we'll talk about more topics here about being a developer not just on near but in general uh and more opportunities to uh keep growing uh as well I'll leave you uh with this uh if you haven't already checked it out uh our community calls that we have uh if you've missed any of them uh go to our our YouTube it's linked through uh our our main website all of them are there you can go back and you can see all of

145. 1:14:10

     that uh it's a great opportunity to keep up to dat uh and my favorite thing to keep Shilling uh our newsletter make sure you signed up we'll have links to that everything there as well we'll show you upcoming calls and dates and things like that uh and make sure you're following us here on Twitter and everywhere else to keep up to date with the near ecosystem thanks again for joining us and we will see you again same time next

146. 1:14:35

     week thank you