Lukas Seel: 0:00

Welcome to Helios Horizons, episode 34. Today we are joined by Cooper Emmons from Injective. We have a lot to talk about, because there is a lot to talk about in the Injective ecosystem. Very excited to get the discussion started. How are you doing today, cooper?

Cooper Emmons: 0:21

I'm doing great. I couldn't be more excited to be on with you and kind of chatting about kind of the future of bringing finance on trade and everything we're doing. So thank you so much for putting this together and inviting me.

Lukas Seel: 0:34

Amazing. I always want to get like a little bit of a feeling for the person we're talking to, because there was certainly something you did before you jumped into this crazy web3 space. So give us just like a a quick brief introduction to to your person and to how you ended up in web3 and what you did before yeah, totally so.

Cooper Emmons: 0:58

I've actually been building for over five years in this crazy chaotic industry full-time, but previous to that, I was working at one of the largest traditional finance brokerages here. I was still in New York, here in New York and moving, you know, things like interest rate swaps and all those different types of things and actually kind of what killed me or really made me go all in on the crypto space. Um, back in let's call it 2020, I guess, or early 2020 um was the kind of me discovering what amms were and understanding that, you know, you didn't have to have a phone and two counterparties on the end to make a market. You could actually have a smart contract to make a market based off of, you know, an algorithm or an equation, and that was super interesting to me and kind of. The rest is history.

Cooper Emmons: 1:47

So, um, I've been at injective for over three years now, or about right, let's call it about three years now, probably just under and it's been an absolute pleasure to work on such an incredible project with such a great long-term vision of creating you, creating financial infrastructure that will allow for developers and users to build and use financial applications that have no bounds, no kind of borders and no limits. So excited to get into more of that and kind of a lot of what we've been working on over the past couple months and we have a ton of stuff that we can hint at coming up in the coming months but also excited to look back at a lot of our recent products that we've put out and let users know about what they can, you know, take advantage of. On Injective and you.

Lukas Seel: 2:41

I mean this is interesting because, like 2022, I think, you joined Injective. In this industry, things move at such incredible speed. Obviously, Injective itself moves at incredible speed. What was it like in 2022, joining the team early on? What are the changes that you've seen over the past three years? We'll obviously seg into the big rebrand and all of the things that are going on now, but give us an insight of what 2022 looked like for Injective and what inspired you to join in the early days.

Cooper Emmons: 3:16

Yeah. So what inspired me all the way back then was essentially the concept of creating a sector specific blockchain right. So I had, in my first couple years, realized, like there's all this money and there's all this interest and there's all this talk about crypto, but there's not very many products that actually provide or add value to the broader world. And you have all these. You know this was back in the day where it was just, you know, high tps, performance layer one blockchains, but I couldn't find any actual products that were net, new and like provided innovation for users across the category. Um, so, with that being the case, kind of you know, uh, injective was an incredible opportunity that you know.

Cooper Emmons: 4:01

Injective was an incredible opportunity that you know I was super lucky to find at the time working out of an incubator in Chicago, in Junk Trading's incubator that was, you know, previously and formerly called or named the Pit.

Cooper Emmons: 4:15

I was super lucky to meet both Mirza and Eric and Vivian and a couple other team members who were lucky enough to offer me a spot on the team. But really, what attracted me to it was the concept of building applications that actually can be used in building blockchain infrastructure that's specific and serves a purpose to creating new and net new, innovative financial applications. So then that was when Injective made a very large pivot into an L1 that was sector specific and built for finance based applications, and now we have over 30 plus dApps live on mainnet. We've processed over $46 billion, probably coming up on $47 billion to date in volume across the ecosystem, and have a lot of exciting plans for 2025 in terms of how we're seeing the new regulatory environment with regards to tokenization and kind of bringing real world assets on chain and providing utility from the traditional finance world into the world of crypto and using the benefits of it. So that's kind of you know the real attraction and seeing it actually happen the way you know it was planned, I think is probably the coolest part.

Lukas Seel: 5:30

Yeah, let's talk about the pit for a second, because I think that's such a mythical sort of place that brought forth so many people in the space. Obviously the Injective team, but not just. What was that like? Paint a picture for us it's funny.

Cooper Emmons: 5:48

You say that I mean the founders of Plume Network, who are close friends. They were there working on another project. The founders of Movement Labs they were there working on another project, obviously the Injective founders, and the list goes on. The guy who started Sphere started it there. It's very true, the amount of innovation that occurred in that place was kind of uncanny. But, as you know, the last round was led by Jump Trading and Jump Trading is one of the leading high-frequency trading or hedge fund type operations across all traditional finance in the world, not just in crypto across traditional asset classes as well, and Injective is very lucky to call them a huge supporter and a huge investor. And they had this thing called the Pit and I was there trying to work on another project actually, and ran into the team at Injective and things ended up working out. But really, jump was trying to foster a group of innovators and builders in the space and try to empower them to kind of collaborate, and clearly it ended up working quite well.

Lukas Seel: 7:00

Yeah, and, if you like, going back one more, like kind of the last time here, drawing a graph from like 2022, joining the team to yesterday's rebrand, and you already talked about this idea of having a sector specific application right, Actually solving a problem, dominating a niche, bringing traditional finance on chain and making that possible technically, but also from a regulatory and other perspectives. If you had to describe the journey leading up to yesterday, what was that like and what were the breakthroughs that you achieved? And then we'll start talking finally, about what happened happened yesterday and and like the, the journey ahead.

Cooper Emmons: 7:46

Totally. I mean, it has been a lot of hard work, a ton of hard work. So we've been heads down, you know, 14 hour days, you know back to back to back for a couple of years now and it's been great to see kind of you know builders in this space. I think my personal kind of what I get most excited about is seeing us go from kind of a very small ecosystem with, let's say, five or six dApps when I joined, to a massive cohort of builders and applications who are all injective, native and building applications for the betterment of the community and the ecosystem and finding a lot of success in doing so.

Cooper Emmons: 8:34

I think that has been the coolest part. I think the network effect of an L1 is quite interesting and something that a lot of people haven't cracked and something that we've done a really good job at. So that has been kind of the coolest part for me. But I can, you know very well, say that it is not all sunshine and rainbows and you know we are working around the clock to create the best experience for all of our builders and all of our users across the ecosystem. We're always, you know, available, whether it's a community member with a small question to a massive financial institution that wants to tokenize assets and bring them on chain. Um, we're always, you know, working to get 1% better every day.

Lukas Seel: 9:16

I wonder, since you mentioned the culture a little bit, I think that's also something, and you're, you're uh, you were, I think, talking about New York and that city actually, and as a fellow New Yorker, it's always something that's very interesting to me. I've been at the office a couple of times at Injective Still very scrappy, still now sharing with Zion in office. Some stuff is kind of untouched, I assume from 2022, even Some old branding and stuff. It's very cool, but how important is that sort of culture that you guys have at Injective? How would you sort of set that apart from other projects and this sort of scrappiness and maybe also, yeah, the culture of the city and the heartbeat of the city?

Cooper Emmons: 9:59

Yeah, so New York is becoming the crypto capital very quickly. I think it is the crypto capital personally, like I went to an event just last night that was hosted by the Blockworks team and there was just an incredible plethora of talent across the industry and it's great to connect and build with people and meet them face to face. It adds a lot of value, I think, to the relationships that you can build on the business end, but more specifically, like the office culture. You know, the biggest thing that I was the most shell shocked by and what has taught me, kind of personally, the biggest lessons on the injective side is is I find that a lot of teams in crypto are kind of one cycle builders, and what I mean by that is is you have this incredible euphoric moment that probably lasts six to eight months across the industry and then, as we saw, for instance, this past weekend, you have these large, you know downturns and events and they shake a lot of people out and you know they. You find out who's here to build real products over the next 10 to 20 years and who is here to, you know, launch something cool and hopefully launch a cool token over the next 12 months, and I think that the real defining factor for me has been, you know, if, if you know, we see a massive downturn, you know nothing really changes on a day to day basis. Everybody shows up and works 14 hours a day and puts their head down and creates cool products and that has been the coolest thing.

Cooper Emmons: 11:30

That, I think, is a top-down leadership thing on our end from the kind of, you know, our founders, and something that I respect you know, on a whole other level, but I'd say it doesn't matter where the market is, it doesn't matter kind of what the time of day is, it's you know, what can we do today to to get us 1% better, create a new product that can be used and and and go from there. So the clock never stops ticking and we're always working. Um, that's kind of you know, the, the update from our office, and it's great that you've, you know, potentially, seen it and spent some time. It is, uh, quite a hectic, you know, startup type environment, that that we really love and enjoy and we've been talking where you mentioned this one percent, one percent um a few times now.

Lukas Seel: 12:17

All of these one percents have added up to the rebrand yesterday. Talk us through sort of the background of what informed it and you know what's new, where you're headed, and kind of the background and idea behind all of that.

Cooper Emmons: 12:34

Yeah, so I you know, I know the Injective rebrand. I'm looking at the logo that you know is right in front of me. It is incredibly beautiful. Um, I do not want to say that I really had anything to do with it because I didn't. Um, I hats off to our entire marketing team who made this entire rebrand happen.

Cooper Emmons: 12:55

Um, this has been months and months and months in the making, um, and we spent an incredible amount of time to really build a brand, um that was friendly to all different you know, types of folks, whether that be, you know, more of an institutional audience or more of a retail audience and really, you know, create a brand that could bring every different type of profile into the ecosystem.

Cooper Emmons: 13:20

So, with that being the case, you know, kind of those are my pieces there. I think you should go take a look at both the hub and the explorer. I think the new designs on the hub and the explorer are absolutely sick. The injective explorer, you know, allows you to take a look and follow transactions throughout the ecosystem and on our ledger on the distributed ledger that is injective on the distributed ledger that is injective. And the hub allows you to do novel and unique things, such as stake, your INJ and otherwise but those are two great places to go take a look at what our team has put together. But, yes, I'm super excited about the rebrand and I think, as I can hint out today, it will come with a lot of new and huge launches that we're working on and pushing on in 2025 on our end and I wanted.

Lukas Seel: 14:08

Like one thing that struck me actually about the rebrand was the new font. It looks very much like your. You know your background, your financial background looks very, very sophisticated, um, and sort of like stratify almost. Was that something you guys thought about for a long time? Was there any fight about like, oh, are we really going to this fear? I don't even know if you were part of these discussions, but it was something that struck me.

Cooper Emmons: 14:35

So I know that we worked and work with some of the best designers and some of the most thoughtful folks on how to create the best messaging and imaging and, again, I'm not a brand expert by any means, but I'm happy that we have those experts on our team that really worked through this and worked with some of the best teams in the space to design a brand that could be pitched to all different types of folks. I think something that I relate our brand now to quite a bit is Robinhood. You have this brand that is very user-friendly but also very institutional and friendly to onboarding a lot of the different types of new and unique traditional finance houses that we hope to collaborate and are collaborating with currently.

Lukas Seel: 15:25

Yeah, yeah, I mean, it just struck me. It was a funny thing. Okay, let's you know, like you mentioned a few of the releases that you started with yesterday, let's also talk about sort of the larger picture of where you guys are moving as a company and positioning yourselves. You guys are moving as a company and positioning yourselves. One thing that is going on at the moment and that's obviously a strong focus for almost every network layer one and layer two is AI. You guys released a bunch of agents or like one agent pretty early on, I think last month even and you have some AI hackathons at the moment. Like, how do you see that entire I don't want to call it narrative, because I think last month even and you have some AI hackathons at the moment Like, how do you see that entire? I don't want to call it narrative because I think it's way more than that but how do you see that integration sort of affecting what you're doing and also affecting what's happening in the financial sector at large?

Cooper Emmons: 16:20

Yeah, I think. Great question. The question is, where do I see the intersection of TradFi and crypto going? And AI? Yeah, we just launched an AI hackathon. I think the AI stuff is so, so, so interesting.

Cooper Emmons: 16:37

I'm personally not an expert. I spent actually all weekend on DeepSeek and OpenAI and Claude messing around and creating a bunch of different tools, and I can't believe that somebody who couldn't create a website or a trading strategy or is non-technical that's like me now I can use these tools to do so. I think it's going to be a massive unlock for people that want to build applications, specifically in the Web3 space and specifically within the Injective ecosystem. I think that's going to be huge as it relates to kind of more traditional finance. Just yesterday, I was listening to the Apollo earnings call, who's a massive, you know financial house or financial conglomerate that's doing, you know, focused on things like origination, you know, as well as asset allocation and asset management, and you know they had brought up for the first time in history, the term tokenization on an earnings call, and they've recently partnered with Securitize, who's one of the largest asset issuers when it comes to tokenization in the space, and I think at large, you'll see some large announcements in terms of partnerships and issuers that we're working with. On the objective side, we're seeing people open up to the world of tokenization for two real reasons.

Cooper Emmons: 17:58

One, because this world of crypto, the amount of liquidity in it and by liquidity I mean the amount of dollars that you can go get in this world is so large that traditional asset managers can no longer ignore it. Tether having, just when I looked yesterday, over $130 billion worth of issuance. These are numbers that the largest asset managers and largest financial houses in the world just can't look away from, and I think that that's going to bring them all to the category from. And I think that that's going to bring them all to the category as specifically, as we continue to see such great growth and new regulations come into the space, from things like stable coins to things like you know how different assets should be treated. I'm super excited to see how that all kind of scales. So that's thing one in terms of kind of you know, of using this entire venue of crypto as a liquidity source. I think that's super cool because that's the concept of democratizing access.

Cooper Emmons: 19:01

Traditionally, a lot of these funds, they go to high net worthers within crypto and then those asset issuers are going and allowing for small retail users across the entire world to access these different types of unique and finance-based products. So that's thing one. So that's thing one. Thing two that I think Injective, specifically, is incredibly well positioned to absolutely crush in the year of 2025 is okay, cool.

Cooper Emmons: 19:35

We've gotten the money from crypto and we've poured them into these traditional finance assets and we've tokenized assets and brought them on chain. What do we do now? Right, and that's kind of the phase of the cycle, in my personal opinion, where we are. We have all these, you know issuers that are interested in the space and they want to come on, and you know, tokenize different forms of assets, but what are they going to do with those assets applications? And providing Web3 modules out of the box that will allow for different types of issuers to create a menu of different utilities or use cases for their assets is so exciting to me.

Cooper Emmons: 20:19

So imagine a world where you can take some form of tokenized real world asset let's call it some form of fund that's yielding 18%, but traditionally, in the traditional finance world, those have significant lacks of liquidity.

Cooper Emmons: 20:39

So what I mean by that is I subscribe $100, or let's call it a million dollars because that's probably the minimum check size into a venture fund, right, that venture fund is not going to return me my funds for probably five to seven years.

Cooper Emmons: 20:53

So as a retail user one, I don't have a million dollars to allocate to this investment fund in the first place, but two it's going to take me five to seven years to get any of my money back or any form of that return on that capital.

Cooper Emmons: 21:10

And by tokenizing something like a venture fund and then creating a secondary market where one now it's fractionalized, so we can break down the increment of investment down to $100 or $1,000, as opposed to a million, which is a massive unlock for all different types of users, as opposed to a million, which is a massive unlock for all different types of users.

Cooper Emmons: 21:29

But then thing two is we can create access to instant liquidity where, for some premium, they can trade their token and seamlessly swap at any time as opposed to having to wait five to seven years into a stable coin or into a USD equivalent that's instantly redeemable. We've now created kind of the broader concept of democratizing access to financial products that only you know are available to kind of some of the richest people in the world. So that is what I'm incredibly interested in are you know those two topics? And I think Injective is really going to be a leader in this space across the rest of this year by working with issuers and providing a kind of menu of different utilities where they can take their tokenized assets and really use them in a beneficial way.

Lukas Seel: 22:22

And I think you basically touched on it in a number of ways already and I think you basically touched on it in a number of ways already. You guys were actually at the crypto ball. Sachs had a big press conference yesterday where he mentioned the US stable coins and the dollar stable coins that are bringing basically the dollar dominance around the world as a very, very attractive value proposition for the government around the world. As a very, very attractive value proposition for the government, like you know. How are you guys positioning yourself like the injective in this new framework? Is there anything specifically that you're working on? Is this something that's, you know, in your view, has changed the game significantly and you're positioning yourself accordingly? Changed the game significantly and you're you're positioning yourself accordingly. How, how do you guys think about this incoming, uh, or now um, leading administration and, um, how that's changing the game for you guys?

Cooper Emmons: 23:17

yeah, great questions across the board. Um, I think that, right, it's kind of wait and see right now. We just saw saks give that press conference and they said, for instance, right, we want to regulate stable coins, and I think that that could not be any better. Right, it's kind of wait and see right now. We just saw saks give that press conference and they said, for instance, right, we want to regulate stable coins, and I think that that could not be any better. Right, it's good for the united states, it brings treasuries on chain and creates broader acceptance of the us dollar. As an american myself, I could not be more excited to see stable coins find footing for real regulation and create real use cases in distribution globally. So, in addition, I think that this administration will allow different types of issuers to feel, or different banks, for instance, to take the asset class seriously, and we just saw Jerome Powell in the FOMC meeting essentially say that crypto is a great innovation and will be able to serve and banks should be able to serve their clients in whatever ways that they see fit. So that's kind of my take.

Cooper Emmons: 24:17

I think it's kind of wait and see. Right now it's be on top of it. We're working with as many regulators as possible. We were down there in DC, as you noted. We're working with, you know also, different forms of regulators and staying on top of what is to come and make sure that our builders within our ecosystem always have access to, you know, the best and you know essentially most supportive, you know, access to creating whatever applications or products that they hope to. So, I mean, don't really have much to touch on there, it's just kind of. You know, we're excited by the current landscape and the environment and I think that we're waiting to see really the actionable change that a lot of you know has been touched on or talked about here. You know, recently.

Lukas Seel: 25:00

Well, there is some actionable things or some things that are already happening on Injective, in terms of in GTFs and ETPs.

Lukas Seel: 25:09

I think we've seen some things happening with Sweden, korea, like you know. This is, I think, something that's very interesting in so many ways, from so many perspectives the way that the regulatory landscape in different countries is really evolving, the United States now probably taking a lead in many of these areas, but other countries already kind of forging ahead. Talk about, like that, if you can perspective this sort of institutional adoption, that again as a blockchain that's really focused on one sector specifically. You still have different types of customers, right? You have the small retail investors. You have institutions. You have enterprises that want to tokenize, as you were mentioning. How has this sort of institutional adoption progressed for you guys with yeah working with other governments? We've also seen the Australian dollar stable coin Launch, I think on injective already, and these are all incredibly large steps and achievements, I think, for the ecosystem. So talk about the strategic importance of that and and how you guys I don't know reeling in these contracts and investors there.

Cooper Emmons: 26:35

Yeah. So I mean, I guess, great questions across the board. As you're noting, digital assets will likely become available through a whole host of different venues moving forward, and on the Injective Foundation side, we are working to make sure that different types of applications will become, you know, available in the right. You know ways and access to those things can be possible. Moving forward, really, that's all I have to note on that end right, that's all I have to note on that end right. No-transcript.

Cooper Emmons: 27:32

With the, we're viewing this as a traditional business right and I think that we're seeing people wake up to that. And revenue matters, and revenue matters for ecosystems, and so long as people within our ecosystem and different open source builders create new, novel and incredible applications, you know everything will work out across the board from our perspective. So, to double tap on what you noted, I think we're seeing, as you noted, sweden launched some form of ETP or ETN. We're in conversations with a lot of different issuers. I actually have a couple calls late tonight in terms of other jurisdictions that are looking to be leaders in this space, but I think it'll. You know, we'll have to see what comes and I will note too. You know that there's some exciting things coming and we're working, you know, around the clock to make them.

Lukas Seel: 28:23

I want to see, like if you compare this to 2022, like how different are these conversations today than if you compare them to 2022? Did you have any of them back then, or is this something that's kind of like been happening more recently or very recently? How different is sort of the perspective of the outside world and institutions, especially traditional institutions, compared to a couple years ago?

Cooper Emmons: 28:53

Yeah, I mean to be honest with you. Many of them weren't willing to get on the phone even with any form of crypto company. Let's say, four years, Obviously post it's funny that they alluded to it in the David Sachs thing yesterday quite a bit Post-SBF, a lot of people were very afraid of the space and now we're seeing, just in the past six months, everybody wants to get involved again for the first time. So being on the forefront of that and trying to collaborate with as many traditional parties as possible, I think, is really, you know, what our main goal and purpose should be.

Lukas Seel: 29:30

Yeah, I think this is so interesting and you mentioned this press conference or this entire administration. That approach, I think, has changed so many different things. I kind of want to, from the regulatory frameworks and the changing landscape as a whole, also want to get back to the rebrand or the repositioning, Because one of the important or new things I believe that you guys announced yesterday is broadening, let's say, the chain reach. Right, we're going back to the institutional reach, to the Web3 ecosystem and Cosmos there. Let's talk about EVM and how important it is to connect and have a seamless financial layer that works on different VMs, on different virtual machines and across different ecosystems that already exist. What was sort of the thought process there that went into that expansion? I don't know what you guys want to call it, but, yeah, take us through those kind of changes and the change positioning on Injective relative to working with other chains and other builders.

Cooper Emmons: 30:42

Yeah. So I mean, can you, In terms of the question EVM in particular right Like you know you announced injective EVM yesterday.

Lukas Seel: 30:55

How do you guys see that sort of changing the outcome? What is the strategic reasoning behind that positioning you know going for like an omni-chain approach and like just the kind of background to let us in a little bit about what you're planning and thinking there?

Cooper Emmons: 31:12

Thank you so much. No, I appreciate it. So, essentially, it's a great question. We announced that we are building one of the most performant EVMs that will essentially allow applications that deploy to take advantage of our novel Web3 modules, such as our Exchange module and Liquidity and Order Book, so on that kind of why is that so exciting? 90 plus of mindshare.

Cooper Emmons: 31:39

If you go to either asset issuers, um, or if you go to any of the above, um, they're, they're all very familiar with evm and they have, you know most of them already have EVM contracts written out of the box.

Cooper Emmons: 31:54

You know, Cosmos is an incredibly, and the Cosmos SDK specifically, which Injective is a derivative of as a chain, is essentially, you know, an incredibly performant and customizable framework and incredible kind of web assembly framework. However, um, you know there's not that many folks and you know we saw Lumatera back in the day. You know also, you know, uh, choose to create their you know, chain and stack based off of this. Uh, you know we've seen many other teams like, say, or bear a chain or or others, um, iterate, you know, using something similar, using something similar and many others. But our goal is to add some form of EVM that essentially allows for any application across all of the crypto universe to come on and deploy and either issue their assets or run their applications and seamlessly operate within the Injective ecosystem through a single token representation. So that's why I'm super excited for what is to come for EVM and allowing access for all the EVM applications across the world to now deploy seamlessly from Ethereum, from Arbitron, from all these different chains, and access the future of Ejective.

Lukas Seel: 33:14

And I think that brings us also very neatly to another point I wanted to touch on. Yesterday, with the rebrand, you released this very nice video with Mirza and some others, eric in it, it's, like you know, injective as the chain for institutions, as the chain for investors, but also for builders. Right, and I think you know, expanding this, the capabilities just of the virtual machine and launching this Injective virtual machine brings in so many people that can, you know, start launching their applications with a few clicks, essentially probably on the network, like, how do you guys think about, like, attracting new projects, new builders, new innovators, um to to injective?

Cooper Emmons: 33:56

Yeah, um, this EVM is a big part of it, right?

Cooper Emmons: 34:01

You know, if you have EVM code written and you're thinking of deploying on Ethereum and now you can deploy on injective with a couple of clicks, as opposed to having to hire three new engineers and rewrite for you know, several months and get re-audited.

Cooper Emmons: 34:13

The EVM is a big piece, but the network effect within crypto is probably the coolest concept, right, and it takes me back to the internet and kind of the story of the start of the internet.

Cooper Emmons: 34:25

Right, if you create this open source platform that anybody can come on and build incredibly novel assets, you create this flywheel of you don't just have one team shipping and creating new and you know incredible use cases. You have thousands of different distributed folks creating applications in their own silos with no bias and all competing against one of one another and all kind of you know with a higher mission and goal of you know building the right and most effective thing. So that is my personal note in terms of you know why we're excited on the ecosystem side and why kind of how a broader network is so important in building a layer one ecosystem, and you know, I think, that really you'll see things like our hackathon and many other initiatives that we're moving forward on, you know, moving forward that are really all really just. You know the purpose is to onboard and bring as many new you know, prospective users into our ecosystem as we possibly can.

Lukas Seel: 35:29

And on that too, is there something like, specifically, the foundation hopes to see people build and come for, or is it more of creating the network effects of as many products deployed on Injective as possible? You guys had, for example, a pretty bigft search for a moment and then some meme tokens and all of that. Now, of course, like with this specific, like finance approach, um, all of that is is interesting, perhaps for the community and all these things, but maybe not the, the focus. But do you guys want to sort of give out, um, I don't know, some metrics and North Stars or something for people to focus on? Or is Injective like just an open invitation for anyone to build anything?

Cooper Emmons: 36:21

Well, injective is an open invitation for anyone to build anything, and we'd love to support any builders, so please reach out in any way, shape or form. Also, go take part in our ai hackathon right now, which you can find on the injected twitter. But, yes, there is a north star and it's not kind of just like you know these. That's why we are a sector-specific blockchain and I think that the north star really lies on, you know, volume across our ecosystem. So volume that kind of you know is pushed through all different types of applications, whether whether that's a lending protocol like Neptune processing a liquidation on our order book, or a user using a trading grid bot on Helix, to a user depositing into a vault on Black Panther the entire kind of distributed ecosystem and bring more liquidity on-chain, which will allow, with that volume, we'll get more liquidity throughout the ecosystem and that liquidity will then bring in inevitably more users, which will create that flywheel and volume prospectively will just keep going up.

Lukas Seel: 37:32

Yeah, I want to touch on Helix real quick because you had some exciting developments. I think this is something like one of the flagship products, obviously that has brought so much volume and also attention to the ecosystem. Is that something where the foundation, I think, is a little bit, or Labs, is involved with the project? How do you guys see that specific order book and platform develop over the next few years?

Cooper Emmons: 38:01

Yeah, so we see a lot of enhancements in the order book. We're also working with a lot of different teams across the Eject objective ecosystem to make optimizations right. Cool things like you know cross margining and cross collateralization and a lot of different. You know exchange. You know technologies more long term. I think that'll be super interesting. So you know that I would say that is kind of you know, something to look for as we continue to mature here into 2025 and for all builders to be aware of.

Lukas Seel: 38:39

And also lastly and I want to also start inviting people to raise their hand if they have any questions this is sort of an open forum for some thoughts. If you have anything for Cooper specifically or Injective in general, one of the interesting things about Injective is also the tokenomics right, and you've gone through several iterations. Yeah, I don't know. Talk to us a little bit about the adjustments you've made there and how you see the long-term prospects of Injective as a coin in particular, you see the long-term prospects of Injective as a coin in particular?

Cooper Emmons: 39:18

Yeah, great question. So Injective Tokenomics I think we have some of the most novel tokenomics across crypto. I think that people don't really worry about revenue to a chain. I think we fall in terms of revenue to market cap as, like a top 10, you know contender across the space. You know pretty regularly in terms of you know where we fall on those metrics. But essentially the way it works is all the markets that are a part of injectives exchange module are offered on a chain level and the fees that are a part of Injective's exchange module are offered on a chain level and the fees that are generated through that, you know, through you know trading through our central limit order book and our exchange module are all kicked to Injective auction and that auction occurs every I believe, friday currently, but once a week and users bid on that basket of funds in INJ and then they send their INJ to the burn and that INJ is burned. So that creates really, at scale, a deflationary flywheel which we're super excited to continue to see how it plays out into the future.

Lukas Seel: 40:27

And another one before we start talking a little bit about the future. Again, invitation Please raise your hand, we'll bring you up to the stage if you have any questions. But kind of starting to look ahead a little bit, we've talked about several things, from regulations to sort of like the AI hackathons and developments there, taking Injective and the rebranded injective to into like not 2025 and 2026, but into 2030. Um, is there something that you guys are particularly like excited about in terms of like the long-term developments where you see things going? I think we haven't really touched for, for example, on RWAs, beyond the fact of tokenizing things. I think with IAX, you just managed to bring both equities and tokens into the same index funds. So talk a little bit about the long-term outlook that you see for both Injective in particular, but also Web3 in general.

Cooper Emmons: 41:33

Yeah, great question.

Cooper Emmons: 41:36

I mean I think that, like offering democratizing access to interesting financial products for users and globally, is really the goal and the mission and nothing has changed about that.

Cooper Emmons: 41:47

And AIX is an incredible opportunity. We ran a lot of different correlations and we see that a lot of the AI based tokens, like, let's say, bittensor, operate and perform very similarly to a lot of the different AI based stocks like NVIDIA or NVIDIA and Palantir, and we created a very novel product that we've seen a lot of retail usage and demand for, which takes the largest names of crypto tokens and also combines them in a structured product for the first time with equities, and by doing so, that has been an incredibly useful and optimal product offering that we've been able to create and we're super excited about. So I think that expect to see many similar, different types of products coming in the future. We're very excited about those things. Stay on the lookout and get ready. We always have plans that are coming for later into next week or early into next week of new products that we hope to offer on Injective or Cbuilders offer on Injective that we think people will really like.

Lukas Seel: 43:00

Do you have any things that you can hint at?

Lukas Seel: 43:04

Yeah, I think really access to real-world assets and real-world markets is really the main kind of theme really the main kind of theme, and this is also something I think we touched on a few times, but it's something that I think is so important in terms of, let's say, the general vision of the space right, where Injective has a very particular vision. But this is also such a strong vision for finance in particular, because this democratization of access to financial instruments for everybody, essentially with an now opening up to a much broader market, is very exciting, and I think, like there perhaps a question too, is like, obviously, us market is very important. Is there any like sort of emerging markets that you are specifically targeting as well in in a strategy? Um, as as you, yeah, look at the coming we're working on a ton of emerging markets.

Cooper Emmons: 44:23

I think those are the most exciting places to take a look at. Um, you know we're very excited by growth in south america. We're very, you know, uh, excited about growth in strategic places like Turkey, as well, as you know, across Southeast Asia, and you know we have developed strategies to really roll out. You know, the right products and the right kind of, you know, hackathons and, moreover, builder houses moving forward with those things in mind.

Lukas Seel: 44:50

That's actually something we should also talk about for for um a minute, and then I will kind of get to the closing parts of this. I don't see any hands up. Um still an invitation if you have any questions, um, come up. But the sort of on the ground, um networking and also um, let's say, building communities on the ground, in in local places, how, how do you guys think about that type of development? What are the efforts?

Cooper Emmons: 45:15

What are?

Lukas Seel: 45:16

the kind of next hacker houses and things happening.

Cooper Emmons: 45:19

We have a whole growth strategy and team based on you know, essentially building out, you know how we can get new and innovative builders and users on our platform. And we've done a lot of really cool stuff in the past year did a really cool builder house in brussels. We did our first ever injective summit in bangkok. We've announced that we'll be doing another injective summit. I'm not sure if we've shared the details. I I can't, you know, share too much there, but just share them I'm sure you did just fear them again uh, we will be doing, uh, another injective summit this summer, which we're super excited about.

Cooper Emmons: 45:55

Um, and, and you know, get ready for an announcement coming soon with regards to that um give us a continent at least, sir.

Cooper Emmons: 46:04

Yeah yeah, yeah, nor the the northeast of the us. So you know, take, take that with what you know, what you will, um, and we're super excited about continuing to build those different growth strategies. I would say, definitely stay tuned to our Twitter and definitely stay. It's the co-host here. Stay up to date as much as possible for everything that you can potentially take part in. Please join us as a developer or an ecosystem builder, from wherever you are. We see incredible communities. You know incredible ambassadors within our community. Take a look at our ambassador program. Join our discords and see how you can make Injective as I noted kind of 1% better today, because we're really excited about where we're going and, you know, excited to have so many you know, incredible builders you know, probably, that are listening here today, taking part into what we're doing and all that type of stuff.

Lukas Seel: 47:00

And sort of last question, bringing it back to you personally You've been with Injective we talked about it since 2022, you've gone through a kind of a pretty brutal bear market. You mentioned it wasn't always easy. But now, today and in the next year or so, what are you kind of personally excited about, both for Injective and this space?

Cooper Emmons: 47:23

Yeah, what am I most excited about? I'm most excited about getting regulatory clarity and seeing this go from a landscape where the only thing that cares about is people seeing token prices going up and down, to an innovative economy of new product offerings across the world that create and add value to people's everyday lives, and there's a lot of different ways that that can look. That's a very vague statement, but I think it's a massive paradigm shift that we've been needing for a long time and I'm excited to see really how it ends up shaking out.

Lukas Seel: 48:01

Is that something? By the way, we also touched on this, but, like with this recent let's say, let's call it shake up, it really was a market collapse in some ways and it exceeded in magnitude by far, actually, the FTX collapse of of a couple of years ago. Is that something like? These moments do they still phase you at all, like do they? Do they make you?

Cooper Emmons: 48:21

excited. They make me excited, they make me excited. I think that you know we we have a lot of change. You know moving forward and everybody needs to be ready. And you know moving forward and everybody needs to be ready. And you know, and we need to continue to innovate and offer cool products and just be ready for volatility at all times.

Lukas Seel: 48:39

Wise words. Yeah, thank you so much, cooper. Really insightful and exciting, I think, what's going on in Injective and lots of things to look forward to and, yeah, thanks for sharing your insights there.

Cooper Emmons: 48:54

No, of course. Thank you for having me Looking forward to doing this in the future as well.

Lukas Seel: 48:59

Great. Thank you everybody for listening. Thank you so much for Cooper Emmons, thank you, injective for co-hosting here, and also congratulations, of course, guys, on the rebrand. And also congratulations, of course, guys, on the rebrand. It's been very, very impressive to watch everything grow and everything that you're building come to fruition over the past years, and looking forward to seeing what's next for you guys. Thank you everybody for tuning in, closing out today with episode 34 of Helios Horizons, this time with Cooper Emmons on Injective its past and future. Thank you everybody so much for tuning in and we'll see you next week.