Lukas Seel: 0:00

Welcome everybody. This is episode 11 of Helios Horizons. I am very excited to be joined by a man who is literally playing with fire. He gained notoriety first by burning a Banksy and then by burning himself as a little stunt to introduce his new Layer 1 network called Burnt XION, and I'm very excited to talk to the founder of it all, Burnt Banksy.

Lukas Seel: 0:30

How are you, sir?

Burnt Banksy: 0:32

I'm doing great. I'm doing great. It is appreciate you having me on, and I know we've been working together for a very long time, so I'm excited to hop into it.

Lukas Seel: 0:40

Amazing. Well, as always, I kind of want to start with your background, because you haven't been burning Banksy's your entire life. You probably haven't been on-chain your entire life, so give us a little bit of an intro to yourself and perhaps the journey that lies behind you and how you got involved in the crypto space.

Burnt Banksy: 1:05

Absolutely, I mean, I was in the crypto space for quite some time, kind of being in New York around the time of Uniswap in 2016 and ICO, when ConsenSys was really cool out in Brooklyn and a lot of the people that I was in school with were extremely into crypto and kind of one of those right place, right time stories where you end up mining ETH in your college dorm room because it's free and then you're here. H hell, I don't even know how, like 10 years later, I guess something like that and describing people how you got into it. So I mean, it was one of those things that seemed really cool. Obviously, I was a little late, being in like 2015, 2016, but you know, I think it's been an incredible industry and I would say that, like my real professional career really really started with, obviously, kind of the Burnt Banksy.

Lukas Seel: 2:07

Well, I mean, let's jump into that story.

Lukas Seel: 2:09

So, for everybody who doesn't know, this was maybe 2020, I believe right?

Burnt Banksy: 2:16

we bought the piece in November of 2020, but I think we actually did the stunt in January, february of 2021.

Lukas Seel: 2:23

Okay, so describe for people who have no idea what the hell we're talking about.

Burnt Banksy: 2:29

Yes, yes, tell the story so I have something wrong with me. Um, I think that's probably the best way to set this up, um, but we, back in 2021, we bought a Banksy art piece, we lit it on fire and sold it as an nft. T his ended up netting the largest, the highest average price nft sold on OpenSea, and kind of w ith that, also landed for most 2021 and then put that kind of landed us in the wikipedia for the word nft. So, that was kind of the start for us. Obviously, the whole idea behind that was just trying to spark the conversation around crypto, and I think we continue to do so ever since this day of just wanting to perpetually push the narrative, push the conversation forward, of bringing crypto to the mainstream.

Lukas Seel: 3:21

And it's so interesting to me because Banksy obviously a very well-known artist and also an artist known for stunts like this right Banksy himself destroyed an art piece right at the auction. The piece that you bought had something to do with the auction, the process of an auction, and all of that. So talk a little bit more about the background of, like, choosing the piece, choosing the artist, the whole meta layer that yeah, that you were going for there definitely.

Burnt Banksy: 3:50

I mean, the piece was very it was chosen very meticulously, as you said, like Banksy had done something similar before, where he shredded one of his art pieces, you know, and so we definitely found B anksy befitting. And then he has, you know, then he has this one piece called M orons, which is the one that we use, and like. On it it says ' I can't believe you, morons, actually buy this shit', which was just like the perfect, especially for just what we were doing. It was just absolutely, absolutely perfect. A lso, it was one that was here in N ew Y ork and we, you know, we kind of had we had the certificate additionally with it. Also, it was kind of again, it was another one that kind of it was sold in a Sotheby's auction and it kind of fit with the narrative. So it was genuinely one of those perfect pieces that we got extremely, extremely lucky to find, and every aspect of it was absolutely perfect, even down to the fact that Banksy was I believe it was the first Sotheby auction denominated in Ethereum was Banksy, and so I took that as kind of like this subtle, subtle, nod, subtle win, effectively.

Lukas Seel: 5:02

Yeah, I mean to this day, I think at the Injective office they have a Vitalik poster and an Angelic figure.

Burnt Banksy: 5:12

Wait, hold on. Have you been to the Injective office?

Lukas Seel: 5:15

Yes, I have.

Burnt Banksy: 5:16

Have you seen my desk in the Injective office?

Lukas Seel: 5:19

No, is there a burnt desk Did you set anything on fire?

Burnt Banksy: 5:22

Yes, of course. Many, many things actually.

Lukas Seel: 5:27

No, I don't think I saw it. Describe your desk.

Burnt Banksy: 5:31

What year did you come?

Lukas Seel: 5:33

This was earlier this year actually.

Burnt Banksy: 5:37

Okay, so you know where Mirza and Eric sit. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, I'm literally the desk across from Eric, directly. Okay, well, one more thing on the Banksy.

Lukas Seel: 5:44

Yeah, I think so, I'm literally the desk across from Eric directly. Okay, well, one more thing on the Banksy, because I think it's an interesting thing. So we're talking about early 2021, and we're talking about really the first time that NFTs kind of captured this mainstream attention, I think with crazy prices. You mentioned that this piece in particular was the highest average price. I assume that's because it was a toll of one pieces that were auctioned there, um, but but what was sort of the idea behind? You know, bringing taking it an original piece of art, a physical piece of art, burning it and putting it on the blockchain and then, you know, like, making it an nft and selling it as an nft. Was this like something you? You kind of wanted to legitimize the technology? You wanted to really introduce it as as this digital art that can still be connected to a one's physical piece or or describe kind of what, what you guys were going for?

Burnt Banksy: 6:45

Definitely I definitely like to piss people off a lot. You'll kind of turn to notice this. But with that being said, like I would think a lot of it kind of actually came out of something more spiteful, which was, you know, conversations when I was, when when I was like obviously kind of buying a lot of NFTs, you know, and back at the time when you had like punks, and that was not really anything, or crypto kitties, and that wasn't really anything. It was definitely a different time and I always used to be made fun of like well, if I can't touch it, if it's not in my living room, then where's the kind of the value to it? So, said you know what, fine, let me take something that has value, quote unquote, like was sold in a sotheby's auction, kind of going to that point. Y you know, and then you know, with that being said, was able to be transferred into an NFT right, and saying this had value, will it hold value if I quote, unquote, transfer it? And I'm a bit of a pyromaniac, I guess I I've realized over the years and so I'm like, obviously we're going to light it on fire, which genuinely seemed obvious to me, but I guess it wasn't for a lot. So, yeah, I mean it was definitely a lot of fun and definitely it was just to get a conversation going, I mean, and I think it worked honestly.

Lukas Seel: 8:06

Yeah, I mean it garnered a lot of attention in mainstream media. They were like what the hell is this guy doing s Setting things on fire? Then there were some pundits struggling to explain what an NFT even is. So I think it was a very, very effective way to actually gain some mindshare in the mainstream media and get attention on something, because I think as a stunt it's one thing, but also as something that really draws attention to what NFTs are, what's unique about them and why they're perhaps necessary. So I think that was a well-done compliment on that one. Thank you, appreciate it. Once you had burned the Banksy how did you get from burning something to the burnt foundry the Web3 foundry and how did that lead to?

Burnt Banksy: 9:01

Burnt XION yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean I think I would say right after the burnt Banksy thing, we actually built on Solana for quite a little bit. We built the first worked Metaplex for the first NFT standard and then worked with you know, and then individually built the first collection standard for Solana, and so we were very, very, very early in the Solana days, you know, and for us we actually wanted to build the first fully decentralized auction protocol, you know, and a lot of this was saying, you know, trying to bring the vision of saying, you know, anyone can be an artist and bring the vision of NFTs to life and try to make it no code, super easy and super, super, super simple for everyone. But you know, kind of unfortunately there was still this massive, massive barriers kind of getting in our way right, and I'm sure I don't really have to explain it to you, but you know there's a lot that, being in the industry, you kind of take for granted right when you're onboarded. You're kind of onboarded when you've already lost your money in a rug pull. You don't really tend to get rug pulled again, hopefully, you know, but for new people these aren't easily, you know, recognizable or performed right. So you know we were having a really really hard time. You know we were having a really really hard time onboarding users, especially as we were doing such like drops, like Applejack, or I think we did like five of some of the top Solana projects as well, you know, and so for us it was, you know, we of the top Solana projects as well, you know, and so for us it was, you know, we could kind of sit here and be a marketplace where we could really look to solve the real problems right, which was, let's provide genuine access to all. So I think, you know, throughout the entire lifecycle of Burnt, it's always really been the same trying to provide access to all. You know.

Burnt Banksy: 10:39

But I think, when you look at the different scales, we kind of, you know, we looked around being on Solana and we kind of looked around and we said, okay, well, you know, here's Polkadot, here's this Terra thing. Surely that won't crash anytime soon, you know, and we kind of looked at that and we realized that on like an actual fundamental level, there was a real mismatch in the industry where, you know, everything was kind of extremely insular, and this is in the bull market, still right, so everything was extremely insular.

Burnt Banksy: 11:08

Everything was extremely like self-serving and and kind of repetitive, redundant, etc. Uh, you know, it didn't really lend a big hand to like innovation, um. And so we kind of realized it almost very, very quickly that we kind of needed to take it into into our own own hands. And so I mean kind of with XION, that's exactly what we did, and we actually kind of it's funny we started off XION not even wanting to build an L1, quite frankly, and it just kind of became this like we want to do this, we want to do this, and continuous, continuous kind of design process of like, well, we need to go lower, we need to go deeper, we need to solve this, and it literally just kind of led us to completely changing it on the baseline level.

Lukas Seel: 11:57

So it's fair, then, to say that, basically, the spark for yet another L1 would be that you couldn't find an L1 that served the purposes that you wanted or the functions that you needed i In a way.

Burnt Banksy: 12:05

I think we kind of talk about this in the perspective, right, but it's very difficult to say, like the word L1, and to not take like this kind of legacy approach. I think what we really wanted also was this massive fractionalization was happening, right, you see the L2s, you saw Solana, you saw, you know all these guys fighting for each other and you saw, you know all these guys fighting for each other and you know, especially, like, when you say, oh, here's, here's another L1, you know not like there's 500 million out there already, right, so the thing that we really wanted to do was, yes, on on like a on a technical basis, we are a public, you know, we're a public ledger, right. But what we always wanted to focus on was being collaborative, which is where, like the term chain abstraction or you know, kind of more specifically abstracted interoperability kind of comes from right, which is it doesn't matter what chain you're on, right, we have seen a couple of launches that we've already done already, which Injective being one, saga, BNB. Y you know, and a bunch more cool, cool things coming. But I think the issue that kind of arises with that is we need to solve for UX in every capacity and we need to stop being so tribalist. Apologies, we need to stop being so tribalist and winner-takes-all because I think we are genuinely past the point of winner-take-all in this industry and I think we're heading for more of a modular future where people are going to specialize. It naturally makes the most sense for people to specialize and I think, no matter what, that can't be at the dismay of the end user.

Lukas Seel: 13:40

Yeah, I think that's so great and we'll talk about that a little bit more later, about this anti-tribalism crusade that you're on too, but let's first dive a little bit deeper into XION. What's sort of the USP that you guys came up with? What is the value proposition? Who should be building XION and what did you guys come up with that you couldn't find on other L1s or you couldn't find out there in the blockchain world?

Burnt Banksy: 14:08

Yeah, something that we really like to say a lot is that we are the only walletless L1, which definitely confuses a lot of people as we kind of start to mention that. But I honestly think that that's probably the best way to look at us. It's, you know, it really is the wallet less one, and I think when you start to kind of talk about, when you start to really talk about that and you kind of say, okay, well, what does that even mean? You know, it just means that in order to kind of do a lot of the things that we want to do and get past a lot of these really, really, really legacy decisions like wallet extensions, etc. You know, you start getting into this really interesting aspect where we can say you know now what we want to do and how we want to effectively affect change and we want to create this chain.

Burnt Banksy: 14:57

Abstracted future is the way of saying. You know, well, everything's a smart contract account, everything. You know it doesn't matter what signature curve you're using, it doesn't matter what device you're using. These are all effectively extremely, extremely kind of, frankly, legacy decisions that have kind of played a lot of the facets done this way and you find out really quickly that it's because the guy before it did it, which is naturally quite unfortunate, but I think it's exciting. When you're trying to create innovation, you know that really just excites.

Lukas Seel: 15:35

Yeah, so what were kind of the main problems that you then were tackling? You're mentioning this walletless thing and I think it's a very compelling thing, right, because you know this entire process. If we're thinking about onboarding, what's the main hurdle really? It's like, well, who's going to like, sit down, find a place to securely store a seed phrase and do all of this stuff.

Lukas Seel: 15:55

So what were kind of the main innovations and problems that you guys were tackling with this as well

Burnt Banksy: 16:00

, you know it's one of those things which is, I would say, it's really difficult to just sit here and say, oh well, the user onboarding process takes 12 days. You know, you got to KYC, you got to go to Coinbase, you got to bridge, but there's just more like higher level function and I think, like you know, I've been asked this question quite a few times and you know, I think there's a lot to it. But I think, when you, when you really get down to the brass tacks of it it's people call Web 3, Web 3 and people call Web 2, web 2. And we expect these regular people to learn everything and, you know, genuinely want to go to that. We need to cross the chasm over to them, like we cannot just sit here and and just twiddle our thumbs and say, oh well, you know, you know we're going to make user education better. No, we cannot just simply make user education better. We genuinely need to meet the users where they are, because the real competition it's not other Web3 products. Right, we're competing with Etsy and eBay and we need to provide the value and actually provide value for people, right, like in a way that A, affects their lives and, B, that they don't actually have to change a lot of their consumer behavior. And so you can get into the specifics of saying, well, a user doesn't need to know what a wallet is or download a Chrome extension, but we have a limited amount of time on that and there is so much more than A being walletless and B being walletless going towards this kind of goal of complete, you know, of effectively complete abstraction, effectively right lends you debate, and I think, so long as you can see it from the north star perspective, I think it gets significantly easier to answer that question yeah, so so it's all of these you know, technical barriers, right, that that you're tackling, tackling with this, so so, cultural as well, and culture,

Lukas Seel: 18:03

Yeah, for sure. So I, I think, I think that's such a good point that obviously there's always this idea is like oh, we need to kind of improve Web3 and figure out ways to make Web3 better, in the sense like thinking that this is the competition, these are the products that we need to build, but really it's we're building for users. And where are the users? Well, the vast majority of them are not in Web3. And so now we need to solve for, well, why aren't they in Web3? Is there a lack of a value proposition for blockchain technology, or is it something else that holds the adoption cycle back, perhaps? And so let's talk about this general abstraction. You know you talked about the walletless experience. Let's also talk about the other. You know blockers that are quite common, like gas fees, the general experience of, you know, storing a wallet and all of this stuff. So what are some of the things that set XION apart as this user-friendly experience?

Burnt Banksy: 19:14

Yeah, I mean, I think the proof is kind of just, t here's a lot of different aspects. Number one, our main thing, is also highly regarded on focus and just kind of the projects that we build with and, you know, I would say the, the methodology that we kind of approach a ecosystem growth but then be just kind of what up, what defines a product in this industry? Right, because we can kind of look around quite frankly, there's no products in this industry for a regular person to use. Yes, of course, there's five products, right, there's NFT marketplaces, there's exchanges, there's, you know, AMM s and order books and swaps right, and there's bridges, right. The casino exists, yeah, the casino exists, but the casino hasn't really innovated in a couple of years. I don't think we've seen many new innovations since Uni V3, maybe two. I think that Uniswap has been the provider of innovation and it's been via swaps etc. W which, suffice to say, is fine. But I think that we miss just a genuinely massive portion of the market, especially if we like want to say, you know, we want to talk about, oh, we're going to bring retail on board. Retail doesn't give a shit about most of this, like there's no, and we don't give them a reason to outside of, maybe, a casino, which the only product market fit for new entrants is effectively exit liquidity for people who've been in the market for quite some time. You know, and I think that dynamic you're kind of probably seeing it with meme coins now right, which is getting exhausted, you know, and it's getting to be, you know, it's getting to be really reflective of the industry, which is we say that we want new entrants, yet every time we have these cycles we effectively squeeze the new entrants for as much exit liquidity as possible and don't really have much innovation to show for it at the end of the day.

Lukas Seel: 21:18

Yeah, I think it's such an interesting point that again like this idea of bringing in new people, but then the only use case they find is losing their money, and you know if they're lucky sometimes making some money, but it's such a good point that, yeah, the value proposition for blockchain as it is is is very thin if we look at the use cases that exist. But of course, you know we're bringing new use cases and I think what, what are sort of the main verticals that you guys are are trying to attract and trying to bring in? I know you guys work with animoka, big gaming company. Is that the main target audience? Or what are sort of, I would say, consumers?

Burnt Banksy: 21:59

is definitely the target audiences right. Y ou know, I think, as it really you know, for us. But you know, and this I kind of mentioned this, especially with how great the tools we've built are, it doesn't make sense to have a lot of derivative products because grandparents are not going to be coming and slinging derivative products on dog with hat.

Lukas Seel: 22:25

I mean, who knows right If they can dump their life savings?

Burnt Banksy: 22:32

I do, I fucking know.

Lukas Seel: 22:35

Have you onboarded your parents?

Burnt Banksy: 22:40

Dude, you know what. I was talking to my mom today and it was so nice because I've been building in this industry for quite some time and she just found out. She's been trying to follow a lot more and it's been getting a lot easier for her. But she just used a, We had a product called Earn OS. We had a product called earn OS deploy on us and they worked with like crazy brands like Uber and BMW and, I'm sorry, U ber and North face and S unglass H ut and practically doing like some direct campaign, very, very, very cool use case. And the thing that's even better is that you'd never see a f rickin' w allet and obviously that is completely powered by XION. And it was really nice because I was talking to my mom today and she was like oh my God, I use the Earn OS platform and I think I made $20. And that was really cool for me because I've been building in this industry for many years and that was the first test net product that my mom could ever use. Y ou know, and I think there's something to that which is really really exciting and you know, I think it shows by our numbers of testnet effectively why it grew so much. But you know, there's a certain. There's a certain, like I would say, beauty in that right of of, wow. Like a normal person, I didn't, I didn't ask any questions. There was no. What is this? What is this? Am I okay? Like it was just beautiful, and I think it made me really happy because it just makes me feel like we're on the right track and I'm excited to onboard everyone's parents and I'm excited to onboard everyone onto crypto, not just Zion, but crypto.

Lukas Seel: 24:09

Yeah, and let's talk about that specifically, because you wrote a blog post about this as well, kind of advocating for this use case focused approach that blockchain should really take, and I quote you here like you said, we must offer actual solutions to the problems that have kept products from attaining real adoption outside the industry, and so this is about EarnOS. So you know, like pitch us what EarnOS is and then tell us how XION comes in and really steps in a way that makes blockchain make sense in a consumer application.

Burnt Banksy: 24:44

Yeah, absolutely so. I mean, I would say a lot of crypto has already been proven out like base use cases. We have online communities being shown through and you know DAOs and NFTs. We have you know kind of transfer of assets. We have global payments. All these things are very on a bare bones level, are all kind of proved out in my mind. In this kind of niche group of crypto that exists I think EarnOS comes in and these guys come from U ber and they come from a marketing background, they come from an agency background. There's three of them all super, super exceptional team, genuinely and and honestly, what I'm very happy to call them my close friends at this point. But they sat down down and effectively say like there is so much money burned in growth marketing, right. To a point where you know companies are literally throwing money at a problem that is just effectively might well be lighting it on fire, but what EarnOS does is it affects?

Lukas Seel: 25:43

You would do that.

Burnt Banksy: 25:45

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've done it. I'm sure, um, but um, you know, as it relates, right like it is interesting because we can look at something like you're familiar with galaxy or Zealy or any of these, like questing platforms yeah for sure. Um, what was I gonna say? T hey say, okay, people will do actions for money, and we have now a way of distributing this to a global audience. So, working with, let's say, U ber Eats Japan, we want a Japanese audience to watch an ad, give their email to a mailing list, and I don't know. With Sunglass Hut, it was cool. You could like try on different sunglasses and, you know, refer and stuff. Very, very cool stuff. But then you get directly paid for that, and one of the things that crypto solves for which is legitimately impossible other places, is to send $5 to 2 million people across the world. You can't, you know, you really can't do that, especially instantly, especially globally. That's just not something that exists, right, and so EarnOS is effectively trying to mix this model of kind of questing with the real life, and and the results we saw on this was was absolutely insane. We saw 100, 150% increase in S unglass H uts following, I think, like a nine or, nine thousand percent increase in their engagement. A nd it was, and they're working even more and getting more brands and partnerships because of this, and it's extremely, extremely exciting stuff. But it's one of those things that you go on the app. You go on the EarnOS app, you will see zero mention of crypto and you can use that application on your phone. You can do it on your Apple Vision Pro, like how Somani did, or you could do it on your Xbox, like I did. You never have to know about anything.

Lukas Seel: 28:09

Being aware where the consumers are, how they interact with certain use cases, and then how to really take what's unique about crypto and cryptocurrency and micropayments and all of this stuff and translating it into a product that is actually say for for these brands to to, you know, join a product or work with a project that is, in the crypto industry did, w as there any hesitation? Can you talk about that process?

Burnt Banksy: 28:20

um, I mean, as it relates to them, they come from the branding, they come from that world, and I think most of the people building on XION do come from that world and so, no, there wasn't really much hesitation. And I think it was even more interesting because it was like, hey, this is a test that this money isn't real, and we've done this for you. Imagine when the money is real, right, and so, if anything it was, it was more interesting to say it's like, wow, ok, this is what you could do with nothing, imagine what you can do with something. And so I think they have millions of dollars in committed spend at this point, and you know really, really, really exciting stuff, I mean honestly. So, on a hesitation, the first answer was no, and then actually quite the opposite, which was extreme excitement upon seeing the results.

Lukas Seel: 29:08

Yeah, yeah, I imagine. I mean there's an interesting case study as well in New York City and San Francisco that I think is very interesting. I think Boba is that the shop's name that has this loyalty system that's building on Solana. Are you familiar with that?

Burnt Banksy: 29:25

No, I'm not actually.

Lukas Seel: 29:27

You can check it out in I think it out in Midtown somewhere as well. It's basically just turning a loyalty program, powering it by NFT. If you go into the shop you get a stamp that is an NFT or a token. You can redeem that in the real world. They also have published the case study that tracks the results and, as in your case, like 9,000% increases are just, you know, kind of unheard of. And it's really something that is powered by this new approach to engaging consumers in novel ways, because they want to be engaged right, they want to be heard, seen and engaged with in novel ways. We're getting to a point where we can do this right. And speaking of that, when mainnet I mean, look at this.

Burnt Banksy: 30:40

I think we commented on the tweet yesterday. You know, a lot of people are really asking me this. I absolutely have a firm date in mind, but I, of course, you're going to have to. I think I'm having some mic issues. I'm sorry.

Lukas Seel: 30:58

Understandable a Always comes at the worst time, did you hear that?

Burnt Banksy: 31:01

Sorry. I gave the exact date for the main headlines. I don't know if you heard that. I won't repeat myself, of course.

Lukas Seel: 31:10

I mean that must be so exciting, Like, don't give the date away but talk about, like, how you work towards that moment, because I think it's such an interesting thing, like as a founder, as somebody who's poured so much hard work into this, who's worked in this industry, you know, from the college dorm all the way to now almost adulthood, like you know how does that feel.

Burnt Banksy: 31:32

Almost adulthood.

Lukas Seel: 31:33

I know I need to insert a little burn here, hey-o, but how does that work, how does that feel really? How excited are you guys, how excited is the team? Oh yeah, we're terrified.

Burnt Banksy: 31:47

I mean I'm terrified, yeah, but no, I mean mean, obviously I'm excited like it's interesting because it's a very big moment, naturally, but it's also the starting block, right, you know, and I think, as it relates, I mean literally right, like everything starts on that day and everything becomes real, right, like the money is real, the project and everything. Honestly, everything gets a lot quite easier, honestly, because you're able to show the results. You know and listen, this isn't my first testne t launch. This isn't my first mainnet launch. This isn't my first token launch. You know I've worked at a company before, that that had a token launch as well, right, so I was able to very, very fortunately, see the the token launch project or the token launch. I would say go through if anyone's wondering that that project was obviously I injective. Hence, you know, um, but you know, so it's one of those things where it definitely does not feel like my first rodeo. It's not my first rodeo. The team has been prepping for a very long time, the Helios team. Obviously, you guys know, you guys are helping us out, kind of in the trenches with us and yeah, they feel like trenches sometimes, but I think when I'm able to kind of sit here and say this company has worked with Uber and Sunglass Hut. You know, my mom is now on boarded and all the things that were once y You know I don't have to say, hey, we're in beta anymore. It's hey, we work with Uber, we work with Sunglass Hut and all these projects are real and you know, and we have this super strong community. That is honestly the best. But you know the way that we approach it. It's, yes, of course, it's a big day, but it's also the start of everything, and so, no matter what, like you know, I see a lot of projects treat the token launch and the mainnet launch like it's a finish line, when in reality, everything just starts. And so, you know, I would say that that's probably like the biggest thing, which is, you know, yeah, it's fine now, but honestly, yeah, so interesting and let's talk about.

Lukas Seel: 33:57

You talked about Helios, thank you so much for the shout out. Let's talk about your partners because it's so, you know, impressive. I think you go on xion. burnt. com, everybody check them out. Awesome project, obviously, as you can hear here, quite literally, the who's who of blockchain, all the OGs are there. There's so much support and let's pivot a little bit to this. Like you know, maximalist, like multi-chain maximalist approach, because you have Injective there. You have, you know, the big bridges, you have Osmosis, you have Axelar you have, you know, everybody in there Circle, of course. So let's talk about these partnerships and how important that is for you guys to start off with and with such partners, and what kind of the process was of getting all of these different VCs, chains, protocols and all of these people under one roof chains, protocols, and all of these people under one roof.

Burnt Banksy: 35:01

Well, you know, as you said, it's like, oh geez, right, I don't really look at you know, I look at Eric from Injective as my best friend, right, I look at so many of these people as my friends and people that I've hung out with and people that I've had the pleasure of meeting through my years working in crypto, right, and so you ask, like, what it's like under a roof? Like it feels like family, like it really does. And you know, with Wormhole, just seeing everything with Wormhole from pre-Wormhole to where it is now is awesome. Same with Pyth right. Same with you know, A axelar, I'm very happy that I'm l ike 'mikeuper close t to Georgios right, and just the whole team over there is absolutely incredible. So the beautiful thing especially about this industry is it doesn't feel like work, it is a lot of fun. I was just talking with, like, the Hyperlane team and just being able to have fun and grab drinks. It's friends, it's family. It does not feel like, oh, we were able to to secure this. It was just like, hey, we, we can actually work together. Now, you know, and even meeting some of these people being in Solana, being a marketplace, it doesn't need to be. Hey, you know it. You know I hate the, the, the very like opportunist approach which is like, hey, how can we work together? But it's like, you know, eventually we'll, t here's There's always something you know, and I think, especially with the idea in mind that rising tides raise all ships, I think, as long as you're not d a uh, you know, and you're not, you're not one of those people who just hits people up asking for something, it's like you go a really long way you know, just being kind not making enemies, it's, it's, it makes working fun, you know, and then B, it just allows for really great growth that people actually enjoy.

Burnt Banksy: 37:27

Obviously, you know, this is th a space where I could talk about ibc, which, I will be honest, was awesome. You know, this time I have to IB explain but, like, even this XION P P casso were on uh, we had an ama with uh, with uh, with toki who's doing ibc to bnb and eth right, and you know, ibc is one of the craziest innovations to really come out right and it is so underutilized and especially like something such as interchain accounts, which primarily is used only for auto restaking or sorry, that's, you know, interchange accounts, and then AuthZ, which is primarily used for auto restaking. You will get so many interesting combinations working with the stack. That's provided, you know, and I think, as it relates to our original ethos right, which is we don't want to be this another isolation island of an L1. We want to build for the end user and that's who we build for at the end of the day. So with Injective we actually hit the hard. I mean, I'm sure you guys remember it, we hit the hard-coded limits of the Hermes Relayer on IBC because, after, I think, 200,000 Interc created um, we hit the hard coded limit of the Hermes relaye, um, you know. And so now we have another one. I mean, this is a little bit of alpha, but I think the next one is probably I think John might kill me here, but I believe it's neutron. And this is another attempt which is going to be a different approach, with the, I believe, the abstract money team, which I'm very excited for, which I think will be a much, much, much more sustainable launch that ideally won't take down IVC. We effectively want to have an interchain account on every single blockchain and then, since everything is a smart contract on our chain, be able to facilitate multi-year omni-chain functionalities at the click of a button.

Lukas Seel: 39:31

I think such a cool way of approaching this and so important. I think, as a consumer again, your mom obviously doesn't give a shit about Solana or Injective or the you know the Manlets or whatever the Ninjas. She doesn't care. She just wants her discount when buying or when taking Ubers or doing all of this stuff, and I think that's so cool that something makes that possible to not care, because I think we care way too much. The people that are locked into crypto and and blockchains like oh, man, it's like, oh, you're part of that community who cares, like we're all, as, as you were saying, like it's, it's really about making friends and lifting all boats with with the tide of of new people coming in, and we don't want new people to come in to get burnt like you burn yourself by the way, we, we haven't even spoken about that.

Lukas Seel: 40:25

What, what the hell was going on there. So you, you, when did you decide to set yourself on fire? This is dude you want to laugh. This is gonna be so embarrassing.

Burnt Banksy: 40:33

I decided to light myself on fire, like a year and a half before I was like this is something that I want to do, I and like we had planned out the entirety of it, like the absolute entirety of it, with the next steps being figure out, why we're doing this, and so I, I, um, I, we kind of came time for the, you know the, the fundraisers happening. Uh, you know, and we, you know, we, we were quasi coming out of stealth, in a way, like we had launched the new test net and everything was going great. So we wanted a way to, to, to bring this out and you know, kind of show, exactly what we do here at Scion. And I was like you know what I got the thing for this, like you know what I got the thing for this. And so I, I pulled out the old, uh, the old plan, and the next steps were announced. The fundraise, uh, you know, obviously it was super exciting, so.

Lukas Seel: 41:27

But you're not saying you've reverse engineered building an l1 just so you could set yourself on fire.

Burnt Banksy: 41:32

That's not what you're saying um, I'm not not saying that. Um, um, no, this is, I have some dude. It's funny.

Burnt Banksy: 41:42

I have an entire folder of dumb ideas that I at some point want to do. Like, for instance, I would love to have a stable coin. That the only way to redeem it. You know like. You know, like those those carnival booze where the cash flies around everywhere and you've got like 30 seconds to grab the cash. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the only way to redeem the stablecoin, and I think that would be awesome, I think that would be hilarious and it would be at every conference with one of these stupid fucking money booths. And only if you hold the coin do you get, only if you hold the token do you get a one-for-one redemption of the stablecoin for one redemption of the stable coin. And all the way down to the line of.

Burnt Banksy: 42:22

I think that we've done insane research on doing a lot of work on NFC chips actually A lot of work on NFC chips and then eventually wanting to make a rosé wine brand that has NFC chips in it. There are so many dumb things that I want to do, and I think this goes to Mainnet, which is, once we are in Mainnet, all of these are really happening. I promise you these are all getting done. There's no doubt about it, because I want to do that.

Lukas Seel: 42:50

I want that wine please.

Burnt Banksy: 42:51

Dude, it's going to be good wine.

Lukas Seel: 42:56

Kali, where are you going to go?

Burnt Banksy: 42:59

Oh, I mean, burnt fondue is french, so I feel like I feel like we have to do a cote d'azur rose. Um, I hope he's listening here, but I'm staring at him in the office and it doesn't look like he is, which makes me cry a little bit. But either way, yeah, we would definitely do this out of France for burnt fondue.

Lukas Seel: 43:19

Amazing. Now would be the time for people in the audience. If you have any questions, feel free to comment. Also, feel free to request a mic. We might be able to take one or two speakers here up there Before we go to that section. You recently raised $25 million. How important is it for you guys to have this extra backing for development? What's the thought process of bringing in more VCs and then what kind of runway and what opportunities does that open up for you guys going forward with the main network?

Burnt Banksy: 43:54

Yeah, you see this right, it's for what we want to do.

Burnt Banksy: 44:00

We need to hyperscale, you know, and I think it's in one of those interesting aspects which we've seen EarnOS, we've seen a couple of our other projects we consistently seeing 100,000 users in under a week for a lot of these, all of them being global and not needing to know anything about crypto being global and not needing to know anything about crypto, you know, and so it's one of those aspects which is in order to bring this to life and go with the speed that we need to do and the efficiency that we need to do it.

Burnt Banksy: 44:27

You know, for us it's, it's one of those things that is kind of a kind of a no brainer in some capacity, right, which is, you know, and I think, moreover, it's also people that we need help from, right. Like you know, it's one thing to say that VCs only provide money, but you know, you really want some of the best advice and I think, especially like you, look at our relationship with someone like Multicoin. They've helped us in some of the most pivotal moments in the world and I wouldn't trade that for anything.

Lukas Seel: 44:58

Yeah, I think that's such an aspect that people who aren't in the business or who aren't in like founders at that level often don't think about right, because VCs aren't just people throwing money at you. They're typically people who want you to succeed so they can make money off of you. Yeah right, so you know, I think that's such an important aspect that's often forgotten. Yeah right, and it's yeah, it's just so important I think that that happens and that's also not just always mercenary capital, but it's really connection makers and people that you know you get on your team and they even give you money. So I think, yeah, important thing to raise there. Did you want to add anything there? No, no, no you nailed it Okay. So then I'll go for the first audience question, which of course is a when. So when token?

Burnt Banksy: 46:04

I already already said that, I already said the date I can't.

Lukas Seel: 46:08

If you didn't hear it.

Burnt Banksy: 46:09

I'm sorry, get better. Yeah actually, maybe it was all you, not me.

Lukas Seel: 46:15

Yeah, I hit mute all and ruined the moment for everybody.

Burnt Banksy: 46:20

I'm sorry everyone.

Lukas Seel: 46:21

Yeah, I hit mute all and ruined the moment for everybody. Sorry, everyone. Yeah, so sorry, but okay, let's go towards something else.

Burnt Banksy: 46:29

Did Dimitri ask when, motherfucker.

Lukas Seel: 46:32

Did he Come on? Dimitri, you know better.

Burnt Banksy: 46:36

I'm looking at our inner syndicate in Gouchen. He goes let's just join and ask when always, always the best question to ask.

Lukas Seel: 46:46

I have another one though. Um, if you think you know, like your mom is now firmly on boarded, let's say yeah um, if you think of this moment in crypto and in blockchain and web3, where do you think we stand? Are we at the cusp of actual adoption? Are we at the cusp of everything being abstracted enough that normal people can interact with it and want to interact with it, or don't even notice that they interact with it? Where do you think we're, we're at in in terms of, like, this adoption moment?

Burnt Banksy: 47:22

I think we, if you're familiar with the term of crossing the chasm, we are just about to cross the chasm, but there is the, the, the next step of users which, like in any technology, adoption, life cycle, right, you, you of course have, you have the early adopters, with the people who okay with the flaws, who okay, learning all this right, and I think, once you get to the mainstream, it's, it's a chasm, and there's books written about this, one of them being crossing the chasm, and I think that there will be a few people who can successfully cross the chasm, if it's very difficult, um, and I think that we're at the precipice of that. I think that eventually, that chasm will naturally be crossed. But you also run into an interesting chicken and egg problem, which is there's no users in this industry because there's no products in this industry, and then there's no products in this industry because there's no users in this industry, and so it's trying to solve that catch 22. And I know you can argue, a fucking Uniswap is a product, but like, it's not a consumer product, it's not something that, like my, my mom's going to use on a daily basis, like if, if my parents were spending most of their time on the banking app, I'd be completely in agreement with that, but they don't. You know, and I think bringing the web to a place where you know web three it's just called the web that's that's success in my mind, and I think we are at the at the web 2.5 moment. If you would, that requires this next leap and I think we're right . Um Y, you know, I hope this, I this this meme coin shit dies, so that we can get back to building. But that's what you see in a bull market. So, you know, you can love the. You know, don't hate the player, hate the game and don't hate the game, just get better at it, right?

Lukas Seel: 49:09

Yeah, I mean, what is your two cents on meme coins? I think I hear a certain sentiment, but what's your kind of take on the current craze? Y

Burnt Banksy: 49:18

I mean, I think it's a you see it a lot right, and I think you have money that wants to come into the industry with not much new innovation, like ICOs kind of were what that was, nfts were what they were, you know. And then I think you now get like you know, here's the thing, meme coins have always been around. It's nothing, it's absolutely nothing new. Obviously, dogecoin was the first right, and so, you know, I think just the fact that I think the fact that they're not new, upsets me a little bit. Y you know, it's not really a new innovation. I think Pumpfun is freaking awesome, though. Um, I think it's brilliant, and I hope that there's a way to lateral this into innovation, because I think people need a way to express themselves, especially in this industry, and I think people should be given the opportunity to do that. But this is what you get in this industry. You're always going to get something cool that then gets hot and then burns out, and then the new thing comes along. So it's exciting. It is exciting and it's also, you know, there's naturally going to be sentiment of retail adoption without hurting people, right? So I'm all for fun. I'm all for the fun of it. I of course, have a ton of meme coins, but I just don't like to see people who would otherwise enter this industry losing everything because Dylan Danis deletes all of his tweets and acts like he didn't have a meme coin. You know?

Lukas Seel: 50:49

What I mean. Yeah, I would have been very surprised if you didn't have at least some QUNT in your wallet there.

Burnt Banksy: 50:56

Oh yeah, oh absolutely, oh, absolutely I do. Are you kidding me? Come on, you got a INJ whale here, apparently.

Lukas Seel: 51:06

You cannot not can you dude?

Burnt Banksy: 51:08

I was pissed because I used to be. I mean, it all started when, when, uh, kira muses muses cat was going against eric's cat, ginger, and and listen man, I was team. I was team Ginger, you know, because we were at Eric's apartment and Ginger scratched me as I made him bleed. So I'm like that's my fucking dog. Kira, of course, shot him out and I'm very upset by that.

Lukas Seel: 51:30

So yeah, yeah, it's always so funny, like it's fun, because what's really also? I think an interesting takeaway from this is like there is not just there isn't that much tribalism actually at the, let's say, the VC levels and and the founder levels. Right, there's a lot of cooperation, there's a lot of people getting along, building stuff together, and and not being so anti each other. That is often at the retail investor level, yeah, where it's like no, it's my chain, it's your chain, like all of this bullshit, and we really need to abstract the tribalism away.

Burnt Banksy: 52:09

I think that's a main takeaway. Someone tweet that, John tweet that. All right, that's getting tweeted.

Lukas Seel: 52:17

You're welcome. That's going to be 10,000 cut for you.

Burnt Banksy: 52:22

Send me your cap. I got you dude.

Lukas Seel: 52:27

Yeah, no, I think such an insightful conversation. I also want to give a note it was a lot of fun too, because I don't think we have anybody coming up here. I don't see anybody not asking boring when questions in the chat, so we'll skip all of that. What are you excited about? Obviously, you have the mainnet launch sometime in the future maybe not a very distant future but what are you excited about post-launch, apart from NFC wines?

Burnt Banksy: 52:57

Fuck, that was a nice answer. No, I mean, what am I excited for? I am excited. I'm excited to start this journey. In a way, I'm excited for the projects to make a difference. I'm excited to actually build and reward people. I'm excited to see where this industry goes. I'm excited to see where we go. The team is obviously extremely excited, and I mean, listen, we've been waiting three years for this and so it's hard to pinpoint a single thing, because everything that's been leading up to this obviously caused the excitement for it, and then everything that will come is going to be magnificent.

Lukas Seel: 53:41

There's no doubt about that is your mom going to be proud?

Burnt Banksy: 53:45

my mom will know what the fuck is going on. But that's the point. I don't need her to see anything, I just need her to use EarnOS and look at an ad and you, you know, be happy that she made $5.

Lukas Seel: 54:00

Yeah, well, again, thank you so much. I think some really interesting points about like how Web3 can look just like the internet and just like any other consumer app and really, you know, overcome this whole stigma, not by educating people, but just by pulling people in through use cases, rather than trying to go out there and evangelize about all the technological advancements. I think that will come as people understand that perhaps they own their data or they can get rewarded in very different ways that just simply aren't possible in Web2. Rewarded in very different ways that just simply aren't possible in web two. But it's something where we need to show use cases first before we we start evangelizing about like abstract philosophical decentralization things. So I think, yeah, thank you so much for the conversation and also thank you so much for for what you're building, of course. Thank you.

Burnt Banksy: 54:58

Hey, thank you guys for helping out. I mean you guys, it literally would not be possible without you, so there's no way that we could be here without you guys. You know very happy we could do this, but also from a validated perspective. I mean, we've been working together for definitely over a year now and I mean there's been a lot of issues, which is great, and that's what a test is for lot of issues, which is great, and that's what a test is for. So thank you for helping us out and, you know, get ready for mainnet, because I mean you're going to need a lot of RPCs.

Lukas Seel: 55:25

Well, can't wait for that. Thank you so much, bernd, for coming on here. Everybody, thank you for listening. This was Helios Horizons, episode 11. We talked about abstracting away the complexity in Web3 and make it so your moms can actually use consumer apps, make money and feel better about the world and themselves through blockchain technology, even though they don't know it. Thank you everybody for tuning in. Thank you again so much for coming on and we'll talk to you all very soon. Talk soon, thank you. Bye-bye, guys, bye.