JB Carthy: 0:00

Welcome to Helios Horizons, episode 14. Today we're going to chat about content, community and all things Injective with Munch, injective Ambassador. So, munch, maybe if you could start by introducing yourself and sharing a little bit about your background and your journey in Web3.

Munch: 0:21

Yeah, so I guess my journey in Web3, I really got into Web3 during kind of like the top of Solana last cycle. I was in crypto before that, just like buying things on Robinhood and Coinbase, but I really didn't fully understand what Web3 was until kind of then, fully understand what Web3 was until kind of then, and that's when I got more into Twitter and just this whole thing.

JB Carthy: 0:53

But yeah, it's been kind of the best thing that's ever happened to me. No, 100%, man, and like, let's say, even taking it back like a little bit more from before that what maybe brought you to the space initially? Or tell us a little bit about munch before, before web3 even existed in your life, if that makes sense, man yeah, so I guess we can start with.

Munch: 1:13

Like, the first time I heard about bitcoin, um was at high school. I was a freshman and there was this I don't even know if I can remember his name, but there was a senior that nobody kind of liked and he was like um, seen as like this nerd kind of smell, like like the, like you know the, the, the stereotypical kind of guy. But he came to me one day at gym, uh, gym class and he's like talking to me about bitcoin mining, how he's all these rigs set up and, um, this is like I don't know 2015, something like that 2014. Um, that was when that was like. When I first started digging into it, I got a binance account, I think that week. Um, that's when you could still use binance in the us.

JB Carthy: 1:56

Um, so yeah, so you've been around, like you've been around a pretty long time, man yeah, definitely definitely. Did you pick up any bitcoin? Maybe back at that time?

Munch: 2:09

dude, I did. I was um, I was young man and for some reason I just always wanted to trade it trade the ethereum, trade the bitcoin, trade the xrp um no for sure, for sure, man for sure.

JB Carthy: 2:25

I think everyone has those stories though, like you know, I think everyone gets into the space and the first thing you think about, or the first thing you see, is bitcoin and you see ethereum. Like that's how I started, anyway. Like you know, I started buying little bits of bitcoin, little bits of ethereum, then started dabbling on chain and I remember especially around the time the time it really started clicking for me was, I would say, around the time of Binance, smart Chain and, like DeFi or like you want to call it, defi season was kicking off. Um or like. Was it Binance summer, bnb summer? It was like one of those um taglines or one of those sort of like and mantras they had along with it, and you could earn like insane yields. Now you are earning like these mad inflationary tokens from these um exchanges, but that was the first time DeFi really clicked.

JB Carthy: 3:14

For me, it's like okay, so I can provide liquidity to this exchange, I'm providing this services in people. I have this asset and this asset I'm putting it into a liquidity pool and people can swap between it, and obviously I'm incentivized to do so and then I earn like yield from every swap that they make and I was just like this is amazing. And then obviously coupled with the thing of like being able to send money to anyone anywhere and then obviously all these assets being volatile in price and then being able to like speculate in price and things like that and without people, without having to get permission to do so, because I'd even tried like getting into a little bit of like trading before that or like dabbling in stocks and these sorts of things. I was always enjoyed a little bit of poker because I enjoy kind of like the probability, statistical element of things and I was just like, wow, like no one can tell me I can or can't like speculate in the price of these assets.

JB Carthy: 4:06

Usually there's always someone telling me what I can and can't do and can and can't participate in and in the financial sector, whether it's stocks like, and brokers kind of putting these regulations around, being able to set up accounts and stuff like that and then off you're from a certain region or if you don't have a certain amount of capital and you can't do a whole lot. But I think that was like the first, the first time it really clicked for me. So tell me a little bit, man, about like your journey with big, with bitcoin and ethereum, like through to basically now. So you've had like nearly a 10 year spell in the space man and probably I'd say falling in and out and falling in and out of love with it multiple times yeah, definitely, I think that's been the biggest problem for me.

Munch: 4:47

Uh, after my run with with all with binance and everything, and then, um, it being banned in the us and then me not being old enough to have a coinbase account at the time, um, I didn't really know what to do. So then, um, I didn't really do much until I got into college and got um into finance again. Um, and then I got way heavier into like stocks and traditional finance, um, bonds, everything, real estate, um got a degree in. That time during college is when I had, uh, I was working and I started picking up crypto again and that was kind of back at the top of Solana. So that's when that kind of was.

JB Carthy: 5:31

And what kind of attracted you maybe to Solana at the top of the last cycle, man?

Munch: 5:42

I mean, honestly, I think it was I was in love with NF. It was the first time I actually like traded NFTs and stuff, um, and I don't know if you're familiar with like Sharkify and all of the projects that are on Solana where you can lend NFTs and do all this stuff, um, but at the time that was like super intriguing to me and I ended up losing a shit ton of money. But, um, it was fun and I learned a lot. It helped me. Uh, I mean it helped me grow my twitter account. Um, in the meantime, definitely some positives from it we lose.

JB Carthy: 6:13

We lose money, but we make friends. Man like that is. That is the way. Um, no man, I I definitely. I remember dabbling in Solana myself. I was late to the NFT craze but I picked up a few NFTs. I think they're still lying in my phantom wallet. They're highly illiquid, absolutely nobody wants them and I paid like pretty reasonable amounts of money for them. But we live and we learn. Man, like we live and we learn. And what is it particularly about NFTs that kind of attracted you that way, as opposed to maybe defy or trading at that time, if that makes sense, because, like you're repping a pfp now? Man, obviously you're pretty heavy in the nft space, or at least like pretty heavy in the community, and like and believe in kind of that aspect of of nfts, you know yeah, right, um I think it was more or less simply like the community aspect behind it.

Munch: 7:10

Um, especially during like bear markets, uh, it's really easy to like stay active and rally behind um nft projects where you're all kind of on the same team, on the same group. You know what I mean.

JB Carthy: 7:23

Um so, yeah, no, no, I get you. I get you, man. What's the NFT space like? I'm actually I'm not a huge NFT man at the moment myself Like I've went way more down the direction, I'd say, of like DeFi, of my on-chain activity consisting of like staking, defi farming and like decentralized perp trading. I'm not as much of an nft guy anymore, but how do you see the nft space having like changed and matured from like when you got into it first and like just what do you see happening different to like, to when you got into it back at the top of the last cycle?

Munch: 8:00

yeah. So, um, I don't know I'm not to post it because I don't know if I'll be able to find it, but I guess kind of the thesis for me is more or less like like I guess the best example is Ethereum or Solana, obviously, where, like the first, like NFTs become less scarce over time as a chain grows, and that's kind of the biggest problem with them.

JB Carthy: 8:30

When you say like they become less scarce as the chain grows, do you mean like maybe they start as like status symbols for the chain and like there's a small community and maybe initially, and then, as usage of the chain goes, grows and there's more users and there's kind of these like and like status symbols or brands that really represent everything the chain and the ecosystem the community stand for and if you own one of them, like it really is like a status symbol and represents that you've been here from an early time and you kind of build this relationship with other people that have those pfps exactly, and that was kind of like from an investor's standpoint in a trading standpoint.

Munch: 9:12

That was for me like one of the major keys of of even coming to injective in the first place from solana was the nf, was the nTs. Definitely Because there wasn't any yet, and that was like, simply from an investor standpoint. That was my thesis, if you know what I mean.

JB Carthy: 9:33

No, for sure, man, 100%. And I'm sure, like from that investor thesis, I'm sure you were one of the earliest people in the ninjas, Am I right?

Munch: 9:44

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

JB Carthy: 9:46

I've been on the team since mint unreal man so like tell me a little bit about the ninjas. I know, like I know briefly and I know broadly about them and but I'm sure there's an interesting backstory, and who better to maybe fill in the gaps than yourself? So I know the ninjas are like absolutely like recognizable on injective. Like you know, some of the team members have repped them, um, at different moments. We actually had Cooper on a few weeks ago. He was repping his ninja. You're on here repping your ninja. We got a few others. We got um Gwin Gwynthel and dot INJ, we got Spikey, all repping their ninjas. So, and we got other NFTs here as well. We got the sushi squad and we got teammate tyler and we got and the third and out here repping sushis as well. But tell me a little bit about the journey of the ninjas. And then I know, and there was the injective quants as well.

Munch: 10:36

So there's a good story behind that, I'm sure, my friend yeah, yeah, so ninjas were the first nft on injective um, or the first tradable nft, I should say um on talus. They minted for 1.11 inj, when it was at like seven dollars, I believe.

JB Carthy: 10:54

I remember it, man, and I regret, I regret not minting one at that time. I was like looking at them and I was like, ah, I'll, like I'll pick one up, like tomorrow or the next day, and like I never got around to it.

Munch: 11:04

And then I was like, oh, they're like floor price 20 inj and inj is now like 30 dollars yeah, man, the run-up, oh, the run-up was crazy on the ninjas man, um, we've had a few airdrops, it's, it's. It's my favorite community on injective and it would probably be, will always be. Just because I mean also kind of like what we were saying earlier, um, since we were at the beginning and like, even from having problems with minting on Talos, like it was so bad at first, um, like, I, I think we've grown together as a community and I've it's. You can't really find, like find that in many places on bigger chains like solana, due to how, like, non-scarce collections are, if that makes sense no, it does, man.

JB Carthy: 11:52

It's like there's something beautiful about like struggling together, like you know, and especially like the ninjas were born, I think, during like somewhat of a bear market, or at least, like the bull the injected bull hadn't really kicked off yet, or at least when it was in its like very early infancy. And then obviously you add in, like really the only people who are going to mint to the people who care enough to mint, because it's actually kind of hard to mint, because the ux like sucks so much. And then it's like everyone's making fun of you for minting, because they're like, oh like, why are you minting these pfps? Because, like inj is gonna pump. And then it's like a glorious rise to a glorious rise to the top, like you know yeah, man, it's been awesome and what do you think man makes the like ninja community, particularly on injective, so strong?

JB Carthy: 12:43

and and what, what's made it kind of like, if you want to call it, like the blue chip, like nft of injective?

Munch: 12:52

um, I guess for me, the best thing about ninjas is kind of how illustrious set it up from the beginning. Um, like, ninjas were super cheap, like seven dollars a pop, and then quants were free, and then for quants you got the uh kind of airdrop. So he always kind of like he never really took money from the community, if you like I don't know, he just always did it right and, as a founder, I guess that's something that I would want to back.

JB Carthy: 13:22

Um, if I want, if I'm participating in a blockchain 100 and I actually know as well, like the quants, the way they kind of emerged more so was like they emerged around the time inj 2.0 and came live, if I'm not mistaken, and, um, essentially they were contributing to the injective burn that's growing every week, by the way, and which is pretty incredible, and, like the INJ 3.0, tokenomics are, like it, combined with the activity on chain, combined with the great work of Helix and the other dApps and on injective that are contributing on the activity and the volume and the users that are coming like to use the fantastic and DeFi protocols that are available, that burn auction is growing like week on week. So how much do you think maybe the quants, like aligning themselves with the chain and the mission of injective, contributed to their growth. They kind of showed like they were selfless or a little bit more selfless and looking out for the collective, like all the I think it was all the royalties went to the INJ burn, if I'm not wrong, is that?

Munch: 14:29

Yeah, that's it. I think they've actually, I think they stopped doing that and they started buying back cunt, since they've burnt so much already, but yeah.

JB Carthy: 14:42

No, 100%, man, 100%. Whereabouts you coming in from, man man actually, by the way or whereabouts are you calling from?

Munch: 14:52

Yeah, so I'm from Michigan in the US.

JB Carthy: 14:55

Nice man. And what's the block? I know there's a. Am I right Michigan? Michigan have a pretty great football team. Oh yeah, oh yeah. Are you big into the football yourself, man? The American football yeah, dude, I've.

Munch: 15:11

Uh, I used to play it and then I've. I've been a Michigan supporter since I was a kid, thanks to my parents would you been in?

JB Carthy: 15:18

like? Did you go to Michigan University like Michigan State?

Munch: 15:23

oh, dude, I michigan state, so I didn't go there. And then my grades weren't good enough to go to michigan, so I went to western michigan and did you?

JB Carthy: 15:33

you played football in the college as well, there no, I uh.

JB Carthy: 15:39

I stopped playing my junior year no, for sure, and you, you were saying man about, like you know you went to college maybe, and when you were saying man about like you know, you went to college maybe, and when you were in college, maybe you were reintroduced to maybe the financial aspect of things and doing your degree or whatever, and then went down the route of maybe looking at like stocks or investing more in tradfi and and going down that route and then maybe at what point did you swing back to coming back into crypto again after that, like when you were in college and doing your degree, did you feel like a good amount of resistance to blockchain technology as it grows and it coming into like mainstream, or did you feel like something that, like I think you've got a fear and fun in the speaker?

JB Carthy: 16:27

Oh, I'm not that one. No, you're okay. I was just saying like when you were in the college, did you feel like there was a, there was kind of a blockchain community there or starting at that moment, or was it still too early to emerge? Was there resistance or support for cryptocurrency, blockchain, web3 when you were doing your finance degree?

Munch: 16:50

Oh yeah, so I actually did like a full report one day on Bitcoin in front of my entire class in like one of the hardest classes at that school, and the teacher, like I forget what it was, there's this big thing about tesla that came out that day and the project was like you had to come in and like, um, share some, uh, some current news about a certain uh, stock or an asset or a commodity or something. Um, so mine was about bitcoin, um, and he hated it and he was like, why didn't you do it about tesla? Because they had this new blah, blah, blah. Um, and he gave me so much shit in front of the whole class for making it about crypto and, yeah, so it.

JB Carthy: 17:38

There wasn't a single crypto class at that college either, um, so I definitely, at least where I was, I there wasn't really being pushed at all and what was it maybe at that early stage that, like, made you want to make to, um, do your report on bitcoin or um, what got you interested in it that early at that moment? That had your, had you, had you so like, that had your conviction such that you were presenting about it in college?

JB Carthy: 18:15

I guess the main thing that I loved so much about it from the beginning was just the massive network that's behind it, just the, the, the massive network that's behind it, just just the idea of, of, kind of the unstoppable, unstoppable computer network that it has created by now, um, and the fact that it, in my opinion, is going to be really hard to uh replicate those network effects no for sure and like I'd say personally, like you know, and when I remember remember talking about Bitcoin, or I remember hearing about it as like maybe I've learned more about it and moved through the years, and the thing that makes it like really apparent to me, that makes it really valuable, is like having this global, decentralized, permissionless currency that essentially, just simply by existing, holds governments accountable, that essentially, just simply by existing, holds governments accountable.

JB Carthy: 19:09

So like, let's say, if you're from like Zimbabwe, or you're from one of these countries where the banking system maybe isn't so like secure or doesn't have as much integrity and, you know, maybe the currency can be subject to like hyperinflation, and like they can easily trap you into using their currency and making their currency valuable in their economy by a either restricting your access to the financial system or be by, when you are like in their financial system, restricting your ability to exchange into other currencies or conduct international transactions, international transactions.

JB Carthy: 19:45

And then another way is like, let's say, if you're from a country where you're actually not allowed to open a bank account for whatever reason, like you may be like in a certain country where women aren't allowed open bank accounts and or there might simply not be any banking infrastructure available and it's like if you have internet, like you can send money anywhere and for very small amounts of money and no one can tell you you can or can't do. And I think simply something like that existing holds governments accountable, because now in some of these countries they can't wield the same power over their citizens. There is going to have to be a more responsible approach to managing economies, because people will just be able to choose not to use certain currencies if they're just being mismanaged. I don't know what your thoughts are on that. Your professor back in the day might not have felt the same, but I wonder if he feels any different now.

Munch: 20:41

No, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm agreeing with all of that. I think there's an insane amount of reasons why bitcoin, um, yeah and man like, tell me a little bit about um.

JB Carthy: 20:52

so obviously you were saying like you came into injective and maybe the nft scene got you in an issue like you were. You were heavy into the nft scene on solana and you saw the emergence of the ninjas and you poured it over. But am I right in saying that now you're a part of the Injective Ambassador program and so tell me a little bit about how you got into that man?

Munch: 21:14

Yeah, yeah, so for a while I didn't even, honestly, know it existed. I was just posting about Injective and then after so long I found it and I actually applied a few times and didn't get a response for a few months and then I applied again and they let me in. But I don't know. I just love posting content and getting paid an injective a little bit for it is definitely something that I'm for and how?

JB Carthy: 21:52

do you think, how do you think the ambassador program do you think it's really been kind of very helpful in building like strong community on injective. Like we see everyone going like on twitter, I often see people like posting content about injective and updating everyone with different pieces of news that team are releasing and and sharing their own little takes on it and sharing their own insights. And you always see those, the ninjas beside the name, like you know. We see we see Tiga here in the audience, we see IK in the audience, we see Ackerman, spikey. Do I see like Gwynthal again has the ninja beside the name? Do you think like the ambassador program's been like a really we talked about maybe the NFTs and we talked about like these communities being really strong and like lots of relationships being built out of them and kind of people sharing a mission and coming together. Do you think the ambassador program has been really helpful for the growth of injective?

Munch: 22:51

I do. Um, I think it's hard to make it perfect, and I think they've been working on it too, because just at first I didn't think that, like at first, it seemed like they were just almost letting anyone in, which I think isn't the route to go. But I think they've started to narrow it down a bit and I think like, instead of what doing what a lot of blockchains do is kind of like paying already bigger kols. Um, I think the idea is that they're trying to obviously grow their community organically, um, and I guess you can.

JB Carthy: 23:34

You can call it not organic if you want, due to payment, but I think it's organic, um, so yeah, I think definitely, though, like you know you you talked about there like building it organically and giving everybody the opportunity to join, and the way you can join maybe at the lowest level, as they have, like ninja, warrior, knight, lord and master, I think it is and then, as you rise through and they give different people different rewards, it not only like incentivizes people to learn about the chain, but then it also incentivizes people to share what they learn and then produce really valuable content.

JB Carthy: 24:08

And then, if we think about, maybe, the role of content creators and how important education and information is when we talk about trying to bring new users to the chain, who better to educate new users about how to come to the chain, what is being built on the chain, than other people who have probably gone through a similar process to learn the same things themselves?

JB Carthy: 24:30

You know, and they're just trying to involve people. You know they say like if you're, if you want to like write or you want to like communicate with people, maybe the best people to talk to are those who are just two steps behind you and the best people to learn from are those maybe two steps ahead of you, and I think this kind of program allows everybody, regardless of their level, once they're willing to put in the effort, learn about blockchain and do their best to make good content that helps educate and inform people to get involved. And I'm sure it's given like plenty of people here, um, or in the injective ecosystem, their first start and in web3 content creation or web3 writing or may eventually have even led to like a more full-time time role in web3.

JB Carthy: 25:18

am I right in saying, man, that like you work a little bit with Talos and yeah, yeah, um and I'm sure that maybe you're what you learned along the way from being part of the ambassador program and creating that content and learning to communicate was definitely helpful and when you moved into that role, you know yeah, no doubt.

Munch: 25:45

Um, I guess it's just honestly a lot of, uh, a lot of web web3 companies are in a rough situation right now and what is the? What is the main reason for that, would you think, and what is the, what is the main reason for that, would you think? Um, I guess that's a good question.

JB Carthy: 26:10

It's would we say like obviously, obviously, let's say the market is going to have a part to play. Over the last few months that maybe maybe the assets that people were holding and the tokens people were holding maybe have declined in price so they might not have as much capital to be able to bring team members on and develop and build as hard as they could. That would probably be a fair thing to say.

Munch: 26:37

Definitely. Yeah, no doubt. And it comes and it goes, and it is volatile in both ways too, you know um to the upside and the downside, so, and I think, like I guess, it's all about being able to grind it out during the rough times.

JB Carthy: 26:51

No for a hundred, a hundred percent man. So tell me a little bit about things, things at talus, how things are going. So I know you guys are are building pretty hard and I know, like that, you, the talus token has been launched for a while. So I know you guys are are building pretty hard and I know, like that, you, the talus token has been launched for a while. But I know you've recently had some upgrades to the platform in the last few months or whatever, and so, yeah, what are what are talus building for the nft? For the nft ecosystem on injective?

Munch: 27:16

yeah, so I guess the most recent like thing that they've kind of integrated is immutable NFTs on Injective. There's a new collection called Number of Beasts that came out and they're the first immutable NFTs on Injective.

JB Carthy: 27:33

And tell me a little bit, my friend, about immutable NFTs. I'm not familiar, but it does sound exciting.

Munch: 27:42

So I don't know exactly how it works. I know they did it with I think it's called Iris and Arweave, but the idea behind it is like a lot of NFTs are kind of stored on IPFS or somewhere that has more of a central server behind it, somewhere that uh has more of a central server behind it, um. And the idea behind immutable nfts is kind of that your nft is always going to be there even if uh someone's server goes down, um, you could always get to it, etc for sure.

JB Carthy: 28:13

So they're kind of more inscribed on chain and rather than being held on a server and then the link just being held on chain.

Munch: 28:23

Right and I was trying to figure out today, like if Areweave and Iris helped put it actually on Injective's chain or if they have their own type of like chain that stores it for them. I don't really know how that part works. I've been trying to figure it out.

JB Carthy: 28:39

No for sure, and so, even around, like, we've actually got like ourselves coming up it's not directly, not directly related to nfts, but, um, we are.

JB Carthy: 28:51

We are holding an event in um, spain this september, so we're actually trying to build a cross-chain authenticator app, be able to link and verify people's wallets between different chains, to help and maybe projects, nft collections, mint and be able to verify maybe is it the same person on two different chains and then, like, this could be a really useful tool for things like cross-chain interoperability, yeah, and being able to, like, create a more inclusive, cohesive and blockchain and web3, where where things are being built isn't as important as what is being built, being able to link all the great things being built in all the different places together and help companies or products connect with the users.

JB Carthy: 29:36

How important yourself, man, and do you think, will interoperability and like multi-chain be in the future, or what is the importance of it? Do you think yourself? You know you came over from solana and nfts to injective and maybe the injective, nfts or the ninjas maybe was the thing that attracted you over, but how important would it be for you, do you think? Or how much of a nice addition would it be to be able to move nfts between different chains um and to create, like, yeah, a more inclusive overall community in web3 than maybe these sort of little tribal, these tribal um branches that emerge and on all the different ecosystems, that all nft lovers could come together a lot easier and trade NFTs regardless of what chain the NFT was coming from.

Munch: 30:24

No, yeah, I think that would be massive. I know, coming from Solana, a lot of people think that Solana is just going to be kind of like a black hole and kind of just take everything over. But I don't think that that's going to happen. I think interoperability and speed is kind of going to be the way forward.

JB Carthy: 30:49

No, I can agree, man, because I think, like we touched on earlier in the conversation, and the thing that really made me so aware that low cost, high speed, like layer one blockchains were really going to be at the forefront of anything that was being built in the space was like the difference between using, like ethereum and I know it was back in the day, bnb when bnb summer was going on, and but it was just like okay, I have this one place where, if I want to make a transaction, like sometimes, sometimes I was paying upwards of like 50, 100, 200 dollars, when sometimes the actual token I was trading or the amount of it I was trading wasn't even that much, what didn't even have that much value. So I was paying more in gas than I was in like for the token I was trading and then moving over to BNB and being like okay, things, things are kicking off over there and it's like crap. Like I can send money to somebody and it costs me like a couple of cents and I can deposit money into this liquidity pool and I can harvest and compound my rewards and it costs me a couple of cents and I can deposit money into this liquidity pool and I can get paid rewards when people swap between two assets, I can get paid and incentivized, and for providing this liquidity and this DeFi protocol and all my actions on it like take a couple of cents. And I remember then that's what like maybe got me looking at like what are the next layer one blockchains, what are the next? High speed, low cost and like environments that are going to emerge where users are going to congregate. And then I remember I was having a look around.

JB Carthy: 32:26

Obviously us at Helios, you know, and we're staking providers for multiverse X, we're staking providers for Injective. They're two of those chains that are building incredible solutions for the space in terms of like the things we talked about, which is like speed, cost and interoperability, um, but there's other. There's others as well, and I think what's different now than back in the day is like we also have these and great bridges that weren't there so much before. So it's like okay, and I remember trying to get funds not that long ago from one chain to another would be quite difficult. You'd be lucky if there was a bridge between two chains that you wanted to move funds between. Now you have the likes of Axelair. I think they connect well over 50 chains anyway. We have the Injective bridge, powered by Wormhole, connecting many chains as well.

JB Carthy: 33:20

I know there's bridges to solana, ethereum, which is really important for injective when you think about the amount of liquidity, and that's on inject, that's on solana and ethereum, and I think that's been kind of one of the challenges for other chains outside of those two is how to capture some of that liquidity and bring it natively and onto the, onto the other chains and because maybe some of the bridges haven't been there before, um.

JB Carthy: 33:43

And then you also have things like entangle and that are also bringing forward and the ability for apps to talk to themselves talk to each other, sorry and across chains. So I think things have definitely improved a lot from where they were, I'm sure, when you started in the space, like 10 years ago initially, and now, like maybe from the top of the last cycle, when you were saying you really started getting back into it with the solana nfts, and how do you think things are changing in that regard and do you find things easier to use, easier to move between chains and have you really noticed that um over the last while, would you say?

Munch: 34:21

yeah, definitely. Um, I would honestly assume that, for whatever reason, most people still transfer through centralized exchanges. Um, I don't know why, but yeah, I love uh wormhole. I use it all the time.

JB Carthy: 34:39

Um, yeah, I think they power, they power in the, they power the injective bridge, to the best of my knowledge. Yep, I think so. No for sure, I know I used. I know I used wormhole to get some of the funds I had from, and other chains as well, onto injective and and they were very easy to use. And so, man, like, tell me, like we chatted a little bit about maybe, how you got into injective and a couple of things going on. I know maybe you like to trade a little bit as well, am I right? How have things been going, um, recently in that regard for you? I know trading can sometimes be, uh, it can be a euphoria and then sometimes it can be like despair. So what mood are we in? What mood are we in at the moment? Did you kind of predict the predict the market downturn when it happened?

Munch: 35:29

yeah. So I had a feeling about it, but, um, I didn't do anything because I was actually like, I mean, I basically sold 50 off the top of everything besides my injective bag, if not more than 50%. Um, so instead of hedging, I was just, uh, collecting cash just in case it went down. Um, and in terms of trading, I guess like, uh, one of my biggest like rules for trading is to not overtrade and like. When markets get choppy and I start to overtrade and lose a bunch of money, I usually try to tell myself to stop for a while. So I haven't really been trading much besides like a random meme coin here and there just for fun, and then just buying more spot bags with the profits that I took back in, like november and december.

JB Carthy: 36:27

Even even in february I was still taking some profits but and would you say, like your experiences over the last few years now makes you a little bit more cautious and, like you are, you're always happy to maybe consolidate profits and consolidate gains into stable coins a little bit more readily than maybe you know kind of the thing people talk about. The first cycle you learn how to make money. In the second cycle you learn how to keep it. Do you think that's maybe ringing true for you as well?

Munch: 36:56

Yeah, definitely, and actually, like kind of how I started becoming a D-Gen, was playing with options in TradFi Kind of around the time the first GameStop thing happened Like kind of a little bit after COVID I think.

JB Carthy: 37:14

I remember that as well, man. There was crazy hype around that. What was the? There was like a saying that they, that they kept. There was like kind of a mantra, um, that the community kept repeating. I can't remember what it was now, but it was kind of like we'll never sell. It was like diamond hands, was it? It was going up like I, I think like well, like hundreds of percent, like, if not like over a thousand percent, and everyone's like diamond hands, diamond hands never gonna sell.

Munch: 37:45

And I'd say many of those people somehow, if I could predict, made their way into crypto and meme coins at some point after that yeah, I made a ridiculous amount of money on amc and then over the next I don't know three, four months, just kept playing options and lost it all and then. So what I was going to say is that sucked, but in terms of like volatility exposure and like figuring out when I'm destroying myself, that was probably one of the best things I've ever done.

JB Carthy: 38:22

No, I agree, Like from my own experience as well. Like you know, I got into the space and obviously, when you're not so aware and it's your first time, maybe, engaging with everything, you kind of believe everything you read and you kind of get carried away with the hype. And I remember when I was holding like I never really leveraged, traded up until recently when I started dabbling in it a little bit more. But I remember at the start I was holding my spot bags, I was staking them and I was like, oh, this stuff is going to keep going up forever. But eventually the law of like supply and demand kicks in. There's too much supply and not enough demand and then the prices start going down and you're kind of like like, oh, it's only a little dip, I'll buy some more. It'll go up um and I I gave away like a lot of the money that I made um during the last cycle. But you know, the same way you're talking about there like I would definitely um, feel like I learned a lot of lessons from that that I've carried forward like in terms of.

JB Carthy: 39:18

I don't even like talking about things in terms of cycles anymore, because the price just is what the price is like there's no point. Even it is obviously you have to acknowledge it because you want, you don't want to like be holding something that you can't, that is far less liquid than when you bought it or, for that, far less valuable than when you bought it. And but ultimately it's just like the technology exists regardless of what the price of the technology is. If that makes sense and I know there's obviously dynamics at play where, like, if the price, if the price of an asset goes down too much, like is there going to be enough of an incentive for stakers or for validators and staking providers to run the nodes to earn this asset that might not, might not actually be paying them enough money to continue providing the service. So kind of on a higher level, there's kind of and there's an importance to the price, but at the same time, the technology is not the price.

JB Carthy: 40:10

And my asset is kind, or my mindset has kind of shifted a little bit more to being like, okay, like, can I just use all this great technology we have available to us right now? You know some of the great protocols being built like an injective you have helix, you have lavana, you have neptune, you have dojo, you have all these defy protocols, bringing all these different solutions, and can I use and mito as well? Actually, might I add, and bring all these great solutions and just going right, can I just treat it a little bit more sensibly? Can I learn to use what we have to earn yield regardless of market conditions? I don't know how you feel about that, if that's kind of how your mindset is kind of switching as well.

Munch: 40:57

No, yeah for sure, but one of my bigger theses is definitely not maybe regarding to like the Bitcoin cycle, but more like the monetary policy cycle.

JB Carthy: 41:17

And how would that like? What would you mean by that? If that makes sense, like what would you expand on that a little bit more um, or how would that? How would that manifest for you? Like, how would you make your decisions based on monetary policy?

Munch: 41:30

uh, basically I Basically more or less I would say it all comes just down to global liquidity. If interest rates are higher, global liquidity is going to be not as easy to go up. If rates are lower, global liquidity will be easier to go higher. And if you use that as kind of like a basis of your macro foundation, I think you're going to be in the right spot.

JB Carthy: 42:04

No thanks for explaining that, man. I appreciate it. So, in terms of like, maybe, things at the moment, I talked about maybe a few things that are building on Injective. You know, like some of the DeFi protocols like Helix, lovana, mido, dojo we talked about Talos with the NFTs what kind of excites you most at the moment with Injective? Maybe things that are coming in the future, things that have just gone by. You know what's kind of getting the juices going. What are you most excited about with Injective at the moment? Or even, if you want to go wider, what is exciting you the most about Web3 crypto at the moment?

Munch: 42:53

Tech-wise honestly, um. Tech wise honestly, um. To me, deepin is the most exciting thing. Um. Whereas I I obviously think that defy is one of the biggest use cases of crypto, I do think Deepin will offer much smaller valuations with much higher risk to reward, if you're talking about just a investor standpoint.

JB Carthy: 43:23

And could you maybe do you have any kind of particular projects or particular use cases that you kind of have your eye on?

Munch: 43:37

kind of have your have your eye on. Yeah, so there's one um, I'll talk about two. There's one on solana, called nosana, that I love. Um, it's basically it's pretty similar to something like render, where it's like a gpu marketplace, but, uh, they specifically focus on um, ai inference training, instead of render, which mainly focuses on rendering graphics. Um, so yeah, and then there's one on uh, there's one on the objective. That doesn't really get much hype, but I love the idea. It's called time works and I'm have you have you seen?

JB Carthy: 44:08

I have actually man, but I don't. I don't know if you I have seen the name, but I actually can't say that I know a huge amount about them. I'm actually Googling it right now just to kind of bring myself up to speed quickly. But if you want to fill me in, let me know a little bit more about it.

Munch: 44:23

So, from what I understand, the idea is kind of like if you're a company that needs data processed in any way you can, you can send it to them and they have ais, and then they also have, uh, people through their app that process the data for you, and I'm assuming you will like have to pay and buy to have the data process in their token.

JB Carthy: 44:53

Um, yeah, no, I'm looking at their website here and I think it's like you're saying, like you can help train ai or like help shape the future of ai and then earn while doing it, and which is obviously like going to p. I was actually. I was actually chatting someone today. I was trying to explain about how crypto, blockchain and AI could kind of like fit together. Because you know, kind of when you give, like give a prompt to maybe one of the centralized AI providers and it gives you back an answer that you know um, it's kind of been programmed to give or taught to give, um based on pre like predetermined biases or prejudice from the person teaching the model and then going like okay, like with crypto, it's very easy for a centralized entity or a government or someone to try and put pressure on this company to train their model in a certain way. But you know, with crypto you can have okay. You can't just tell one person to shut down their server. With that AI model that everybody is using, you could have like we have with Injective or like we have with other layer ones you could have multiple validator nodes around the world helping support and run this AI. So you can't anymore go okay, if I don't't like this AI, I'm going to shut it down, and then people are incentivized to train it and by being paid in the token when people are using it, people are incentivized to maintain the infrastructure and to keep it running, because you know, when someone and runs a prompt, maybe that might cost a cost, a token or two, and then that got that gets distributed among stakers and of maybe the platform itself or, on even a higher level, among validators of the chain upon which the platform is built. And then obviously it's a little bit more censorship resistant and because you can't as easily go to every single validator and running a node for that network around the world and just shut it down.

JB Carthy: 46:53

But one use case that actually always struck me as being pretty interesting would be in the like the area of health care and like so I kind of come from like a background, if you want to call it like training or nutrition and some of these things, and I always found it like it's very hard to directly be able to validate and quantify, um, people's efforts and then or people's like physical states and physical capabilities, and be able to reward them for it. Like so I think obesity is going to in the future, at least it's going that direction. I think it's by 2050, and tackling obesity is going to take, apparently, 3.3 percent of global GDP, and it's just like, okay, well, what if we could create, like a way to incentivize people to take actions that would make them less likely to end up and becoming like, overweight, or more health, more healthful actions, if you want to call it, therefore reducing the stress on the health care system? But then the question becomes okay, how do you tie people's actions to these incentives? And then I think, okay, what if we had some sort of biometric health tracker, like you have lots of them available now in the market that could track things like people's heart rates, people's hrv and people's maybe sleep, people's activity, and be able to go.

JB Carthy: 48:13

Okay, we can buy, we can biometrically validate that this data is coming from you and then, as a result of this, this benefit that you're giving the, the government or the health care system, because you're not going to, you're taking actions that mean you're not going to be as much of a burden on in the future, and that means we can go and give you maybe tax breaks, or we can go and give you maybe tax breaks, or we can go and give you cheaper insurance and rather than just blanket like going, okay, you're 25, you're male, so therefore you are. This is your quote for your insurance, or this is your like for your health insurance and or this is your quote for your healthcare. Instead you can just incentivize people a lot more directly to do things that are healthier, and then I suppose that could probably transfer into a lot of other sectors where you can bring the incentive and the incentives from a collective to an individual level, if that makes sense.

Munch: 49:10

No, yeah, that would be insane. That's kind of like. My exact thesis with deepin is, like a lot of projects are going to fail but, um, the ones that hit are going to have potential to kind of scale um on a insanely massive way, like exactly what you were just saying. Um, like there's even a few projects on salon I don't know if you're familiar like helium mobile. It's kind of a cellular, cellular network, um, obviously trying to compete with like verizon and stuff. There's hive mapper, which is um like a, like a, a mapping service, obviously like a competitor with like google maps or something. Um, so, yeah, a lot of them are gonna fail, but, dude, the ones that don't are going to be insane, in my opinion no for sure.

JB Carthy: 49:56

I think it really comes down to like the, the little bit more experience I always gain in this space. I think it really comes down to like how, how deep is the problem that the they're trying to tackle and then how can they overcome the obstacles to adoption and if that makes sense. So it's like there's no point having the best technology or the best idea and if there's too many obstacles in your way to be able to implement it, like whether that's like regulation, and or whether that's like being able to onboard enough users to make it a viable business model, and or if there's already a competitor and in a web to inverted commas and that already has captured so much of the network effect. But it's like how good is the product, how deep is the problem it's solving, how necessary is blockchain to solve that problem? And will they be able to attract users? And there's definitely going to be a lot of losers, but I think, like you were saying, like the winners that hit, um, I think, I think the next, like, if you want to call it like billion dollar, like big, massive companies, and there's going to be large amounts of them, or at least a larger proportion of them. They're going to be start being built using like blockchain and web3 technology and integrating it and leveraging the power of it.

JB Carthy: 51:07

And we actually had like xion on a space recently and they were just saying they they launched on their test net a platform called earn os where brands could incentivize globally, um, some of their customers, um, or their followers or, um, whatever you want to call it fans of their brand, and they can go. Okay, if you I think sunglass hut were one of the people they're working with. So it's like okay, if you go into sunglass hut and you complete this task of trying on sunglasses and posting a photo about it I'm just using that as a hypothetical high level example and we can reward you directly for doing that. And with crypt, with crypto, and they were saying like where else can you like in the world, with what other technology can you almost instantaneously send reward two million people at once with five dollars? And it's going to completely change the dynamic of how brands build relationships with consumers, how digital marketing is carried out, and like it's going to really incentivize like consumers to become stakeholders of brands and almost have a greater role in building brand, if that makes sense, and companies being able to directly incentivize those consumers, those fans, those users, and a lot more easily and seamlessly so.

JB Carthy: 52:31

Man, I think at this moment this is kind of like thanks so much for, like, all the insight. I think this is one of the moments where we go to the audience and say, if there's anyone wants who wants to pop up and ask a question and feel free to come up. Um, but in the meantime, man, like, um, what else is going on with you at the moment? And what's happening with munch? And is there anything, anything you have planned along along aside from and working with talus at the moment? What else is going on with yourself?

Munch: 53:02

um, yeah, man, um, I'm. I'm looking for a dev team currently. Honestly, um, I had this idea for like five years that I wanted to to work on um and I'm not a dev myself, um, but I finally got some capital for it, so I'm slowly working on trying to find a dev team, do you?

JB Carthy: 53:26

have like, um, not, you don't give away any secrets, man, but any, uh any hints about what it is you might be working on or like to work on.

Munch: 53:37

Yeah, so It'll involve. If it did happen how I wanted it, to my perfect vision of it, it would involve gaming, but instead of we wouldn't be building a game. Uh, gaming, but instead of uh, we wouldn't be building a game. We would instead be aiming to bring uh popular games, not on chain, but um, in a way kind of I get.

JB Carthy: 54:05

I actually I actually think that often as well. Like I love, a game I particularly love is like football manager. I don't know if you ever played football manager um over in america, but it's basically just like this game where you watch dots run around the screen and you tell them like how to stand and like how to attack and defend for soccer and not american football, but uh, like soccer football. And I would like to be so cool if it was run on web 3 and all the players were NFTs, all the stadiums were NFTs. You could, let's say, the prize money for the competitions could be paid in a token that you could then like exchange for like real money and like inverted commas on an exchange and yeah, and just create like this whole self-sustaining ecosystem around a really, really popular game.

JB Carthy: 54:55

And I think it'd be like the next evolution of like esports and how esports have been so popular and like the, like the creating that competitive element and that that sort of like monetization of esports where people go OK, I have this hobby, but now I can like earn money from this hobby. Has like taken things to a new level. I can like earn money from this hobby. Has like taken things to a new level. I think, like something like that could be like a game changer for, um, like certain games, and I think if the right game adopts it, adopts black blockchain technology, and when the use case is right and the time is right, um, I think it could be massive, and one of the next, one of the next big games will undoubtedly have, like big web three elements in it, or at least there will be a big game with big web three elements in it at some point soon.

Munch: 55:38

I'm pretty confident I guess I'll just say it. I guess what I want to build is um, like let's say, uh, you love to play fifa I do, I do I want to. I want to build a platform that allows you to wager X amount of injective against somebody else in a game of FIFA, and then winner takes all obviously, and then you can build tournaments and whatnot on top of that, oh, I would.

JB Carthy: 56:04

I would love that man, I would, I would be 100 percent using that.

Munch: 56:09

Yeah, I think it could be really good for onboarding people. Honestly, I have never seen it anywhere else in crypto. I always wanted to build it on Solana, but since I've been so big on Injective I've just recently been like man I should just build it. It's just been hard to find. Since it's like semi-gambling, a lot of devs are scared to do it legally-wise.

JB Carthy: 56:36

More or less in a position to just like screw it.

JB Carthy: 56:39

But yeah, no man, I actually would really love to see that come to fruition because I can definitely say, if I could like play, if I could play fifa to earn injective, like I'd have to pick up the playstation controller again and start like start getting good again.

JB Carthy: 56:52

Um, but that is a great. That's a great idea, man, I hope, I hope, wish you the best of luck with finding the dev team and you should, you should apply through our uh or devs. Actually, if there's any devs listening like we are obviously like I touched on early in the earlier in the conversation and going to Spain to like build that cross, cross chain authenticator app and that I was talking about, that might that will be able to connect, like injective, multiverse x and hopefully integrate more and more chains and see any devs listening there that want to build something cool and head on over to our website and the applications are open and but, munch, man, I wish you the best of luck and with what you're building and I hope that you find the devs that can help you bring it to life, because I'll definitely be one of your first users and, if it happens, you know yeah man, I would be so psyched I appreciate it.

JB Carthy: 57:43

No stress, man, and I think there was no. There was no questions or no one coming up to request from the audience, so all that's left to say is really, really appreciate you coming on and thanks for spending the time to come chat to us and wish you really good luck with everything that's going on with yourself at the moment. And yeah, this was Helios Horizons, episode 14. And we chatted to Munch about all things injective NFTs, we chatted about his journey in Web3. And we chatted about, maybe, where things are going in the future the future of Deepin, the future of gaming being built on Web3. Really great conversation. Thanks everyone for joining us and talk soon, guys.