Lukas Seel: 0:00

This is Helios Horizons, episode 38, with Eno Sim, now of Sanctum, but formerly of many other things, and we'll talk all about that. Welcome to the stage, eno. How are you?

Eno Sim: 0:12

That was a very stellar intro. And also I just want to say, if you're on episode 38, clearly you have a lot of experience under your belt and I'm not quite so sure what insight I can share here because, uh, I'm a fucking idiot. So I don't, I don't know what I'm doing, I'm just figuring out, like everybody else. Um, you know, but if there's any, uh I don't know. I look, Lukas, I just want to have like a, like a, just pretend we're at a bar, you know, or we're like having a glass of wine or just chilling, and like we're just kind of have like a nice little neat conversation. We don't have to put on airs or pretend to, you know, I don't know, have some sort of special insight, let's just talk, man.

Lukas Seel: 0:52

That's kind of the idea of this, this episode and in the space in general. I think here is like we really want to learn about the people behind brands and behind products and all of these things, and I think you're such a great person to talk to because you share this journey in such a unique way. And, yeah, I'm looking forward to hearing a little bit more. We've had our private conversations that went on for hours about like single topics. So I'm trying to, we'll try to cover a range of things and I want to start with you and your background a little bit, because it's always interesting, you know, seeing people grow and change and thrive in the space. How do they discover the space to begin with? I know you went to Berkeley, then you started at Samsung, so tell us a little bit about how you started and then kind of like how you transitioned and found out about the whole Web3 thing.

Eno Sim: 1:50

Before we get into that, I just want to say you've never been this polite to me before. I mean, you're a super nice guy, but you're always giving me shit, man.

Lukas Seel: 2:02

Look, this is recorded is giving me shit man. Look, this is recorded. Obviously this is a podcast that is mainly that is live recorded but then goes, you know, to all of the platforms. So you know there's a little bit more pressure here to be nice, but you know.

Eno Sim: 2:15

Wait, do I? Am I allowed to?

Lukas Seel: 2:17

cuss. No, you can cuss. Cussing is encouraged. Cussing is encouraged, oh but cussing is encouraged, cussing is encouraged.

Eno Sim: 2:24

Oh, travi's here, travi Mustache down, what's up bro?

Lukas Seel: 2:26

Shout out to Travi. We'll talk about that later. That's on my agenda as well. But yeah, let's start with you and how you got started. Before you got started, Sure.

Eno Sim: 2:42

So like I'm allergic about talking about you know, allergic to talking about myself, but here goes Um. But yeah, uh, Lukas is right. Um graduated from uh, from a college in the Bay, uh, and then first job I ever got, uh was in Seoul, South Korea, uh, working for Samsung electronics. Um, I started my career in mobile payments, uh, so I worked on a product called Samsung uh wallet, uh, which then evolved into something called Samsung Pay, which was our answer to Apple Pay, so contactless payments. We had some really cool tech there, actually called like one piece of tech called MST that was proprietary to us, where we could literally shoot magnetic waves into a credit card terminal so that the sensor in the credit card terminal would read the. I think it was called I'm forgetting what the name is, but I think it's like type one and type two data from a card, which is interesting because you didn't even need NFC. So it was contactless payments without using NFC. It was literally the magnetic waves that would shoot into a card reader, which was quite cool. So that's where I cut my teeth and I learned more about payments flows.

Eno Sim: 3:46

I got an interest in finance at all, and then one of my best friends at Samsung. He started a boutique market maker, so quite small prop trading firm, and I had built out my career kind of more on back office operations, so more on the accounting and legal side. So I'm not a lawyer, I'm not an accountant, but I know how, know a budget and how to redline a contract and I was doing a lot of translation work for them because I'm not fully bilingual but definitely speak passable Korean and English. You curse in Korean.

Lukas Seel: 4:19

When cats attack you, you speak Korean. That was one of my the most interesting insights I learned from one of your videos. Like when he gets slapped, you switch to Korean.

Eno Sim: 4:30

Yeah, um, so well, correction here. I didn't cuss at the cat, I said ouch, that hurt. Um, when I feel pain, I think I express it in Korean, for whatever reason, and I was born in California, so that makes absolutely no sense. But yeah, so worked on the market maker and you know, I was abstracted from the crypto side for a very long time. It's just kind of like I was like okay, they're making money. I don't really know how and I don't really know what market making is, but who gives a shit? Crypto is all a scam. And it turns out I was right. But there is some gold in here, right? E -gold anyone, anyways.

Eno Sim: 5:14

So then my co-founder had this idea for a yield-bearing stablecoin collateralized with an inversely correlated basket of assets. We can go into that, if you want, later. No need to really translate that now. And that's when I fell in love with crypto, specifically with stablecoins. Because even now, although I do appreciate DeFi, if you were to ask me what companies will survive past a decade, I believe the majority of the crypto industry will be in stablecoins.

Eno Sim: 5:37

Right, it's either as an issuer of stablecoins, infrastructure for stablecoins or businesses built on top of stable coins. So, for example, like partnering with amex to um, use the yield from stable coins, uh, to pay the interchange fee, so that, essentially, credit card transactions become free because they're just using defi yield, um, so, uh, that's yeah. I mean, stable coins are literally the only product in crypto that I think has real pmf. Like some people might look at pumpfun and say like oh, that has PMF with like gamblers and degenerates, and like that's true. But if you look at the broader world, right, the only product that has true product market fit is stablecoins. In emerging markets, whether it be Turkey or Argentina or anywhere with horrendous inflation, they're getting exposure to the US dollar and more stable currency through stable coins. Capital controls don't allow them to access the US dollar via traditional methods like a bank or some sort of app. So, yeah, that's how I fell in love with crypto and that's when I really took it seriously is when I started working on our yield-bearing stable coin.

Lukas Seel: 6:41

I want to go back to one thing you said there ingest maybe. But also you said, like when you first started working for this market maker, you were just like it's all a scam anyway. But let's see what it is Like, what was your first impression of the space and what it was good for, until you kind of learned how to interact with it and kind of made up your own mind about what the true value proposition might be and even started working in that direction with your own company yeah, at that time, um, you know, tokens weren't as hot it was, it was nft season, right, and like everybody was printing um, and so this is like 21 we're talking about.

Eno Sim: 7:19

Yeah, right, and I I just kind of thought to myself like this, this is bullshit. Like I love art, like that's my number. One thing I like to do when I go to a new country is try to find a local museum, and this idea of digital ownership just did not resonate with me. I do think that there is something to the physical ownership of an asset that makes it feel more valuable and real and, no matter how much you try to psych yourself otherwise like it, just it didn't hold true for me. However, I still continue to believe that NFTs are very powerful as a community building mechanism.

Eno Sim: 7:52

So, like I, only with the exception of MonkeyDAO and perhaps MadLads, which are the exception to the rule, you know, the Drakes, lucid Drakes, boogle, dead King Society these are the types of nfts that actually matter, because the nft is it's not really all that important, right? It's like the nft is just a way to gather people to a common cause, whether it be investing, um, I mean, in fact, that seemed that remains to be the strongest use case for these like one-to-one communities they all have, like investment syndicates, right, um, but also just like if you can afford the nft and if they allow you to buy it or let you in, then usually there's top notch builders or thinkers in the space that are in those communities. So that's kind of the only value I I really saw at the time and that has held out to be true. Like all the other nfts have tanked because they fucking suck and they have no purpose except for to be a speculative element, speculative, speculative asset. And tokens are a speculative asset specifically because they're fungible.

Lukas Seel: 8:50

Like the non-fungible asset is actually the unattractive part, because it's hard to find exit liquidity yeah, that's an interesting point, and I want to talk about creator coins later a little bit, which, uh, you're doing with sanctum, because I think that's an interesting way of actually um turning that, that nft concept, or taking it and developing it in an interesting direction. But first, um, like the coming into the space, was it bitcoin and ethereum? And like, or was it solana right away, how did you kind of, what was your first touch point with um, not just the um currency or the coins, but what was your touchpoint with the community as well?

Eno Sim: 9:30

Yeah, so actually my first crypto purchase ever was XRP and this was like I don't even remember when this was 2016 or 2017. And I forgot about it. I had it in my ledger and I just completely forgot. And then when it came back it was like down 50% and I was like whatever. But that was the first money I ever put into Solana different L2s to issue on and this is right after FTX. And for whatever reason I mean, I can explain the reasons, but for whatever reason, we decided that Solana was the best, despite the fact that it just experienced a catastrophic Black Swan event, and so we.

Eno Sim: 10:19

I think my first Hacker House was right after FTX. I believe it was like Singapore Hacker House 2022. So that was the first time I ever. It was Singapore Hacker House 2022. So that was the first time I ever went to a Hacker House. And then we launched our stablecoin in 2023,. I think March in the Vietnam Hacker House and the Hacker Houses were really my gateway to Solana. I realized that even in the depths of the bear, with the most bearish sentiment and legitimate reasons to hate Solana, you know the builder community was still there chewing glass and the DGens were still there having fun, you know, like it was still bull market vibes in a ice ice, cold bear market, and that's when I knew that Solana could not be killed Like that.

Lukas Seel: 11:01

That was my conviction at that time, and I mean like there was doubt for sure, but that was the bet I was placing and I'm very happy that that bet played out yeah, very interesting, because I think it's also interesting to think about when you're saying, like, okay, the only pmf that crypto has and perhaps will have for for some time being is stable coins. Do you feel that they are like they need a home on a specific chain? It's certainly something that really consumers don't care that much. What the infrastructure layer is, was the conviction with the community or was it with the technology that was able to process these transactions? Was there something that came first or did they go together?

Eno Sim: 11:46

On its face. We disagreed in principle with two things in the Ethereum ecosystem. Number one first of all, stablecoins will be multi-chain. Every single issuer should be multi-chain. As a matter of go-to-market, you should definitely focus on a single chain first to get adoption. But it's a no-brainer to me that in its ultimate form, for any stable coin issuer, you would want it to be multi chain. That's just like a just duh, right. But still, the reason why we didn't pick any L2 or Ethereum is because number one, on its face, like having to pay $20 for a simple, you know, stable coin transfer is ridiculous, right. And if you're trying to build a currency of the future and like again as a yield-bearing currency that's what we were trying to build at the time it just seemed ridiculous to go to Ethereum, right. And then the counter-argument is like well, you can go to an L2.

Eno Sim: 12:32

Well, all the other L2s I mean like we went to a bunch of ETH events as well, like Aptos and SUI, and we were the vibes were off, I don't know, there was just the foundations are completely like. You can tell a lot about how competent a foundation is based on how well they throw their events right, and it's very clear that Solana was very well organized. You had direct access to foundation members who were flying out to be there with the community during the lowest of lows, whereas, like Aptos and Sue, I just remember going to the events and be like, oh, these guys are dumb, like they don't if they don't even know how to throw a proper event. And I'm not talking about fancy stuff with parties and alcohol, like that's not what I'm talking about. I'm just like basic organization of what's the agenda and like what are we doing here? And like is there a mc? That's like properly bringing the vibe.

Eno Sim: 13:19

So it was just all completely off, um, and like it just didn't pass the sniff test for us. And furthermore, when you go to an ETH conference, the first thing that you argue about or you talk about it's not even about the protocol or what you're working on. Like the first conversation you have is this philosophical debate about like why my L2 is better than yours, whereas when you go to a Solana Hacker House, the first conversation you have is like what are you working on? And it's just it's. You might not vibe immediately, but you can just get straight to the meat and potatoes, like I don't have to wait in line, uh, you know, to get into the restaurant. So it's just, uh, yeah, that that's.

Lukas Seel: 13:53

That's largely the reason why we picked. I think, yeah, such a good point. I also had any other conference. Anybody who's on ease, like whenever you talk to them there's so many, I don't know. There's so much structuring of the conversation that needs to happen first. Like, which layer two are you building on? Like, what in the ETH are you even doing? And yeah, I think that's actually a good point in terms of like you want to talk about substance and to even get through to the substance. There's so much digging uh, to do often with other um, you know, with these ponzi altus, you really need to sort of like, uh, get through a lot before you can even talk about what anybody is building and then assess whether that's interesting to you or in general or not. Um, so, yeah, that's, that's super interesting. So let's talk about um you about going from.

Eno Sim: 14:46

Actually sorry, just real quick reverse question to you. I mean, what has been your experiences going to and I'm not asking you to kiss Solana's ass or anything, I know that you have a lot of builders and friends in space but I'm just genuinely curious what's your own personal experience with conferences, and especially in the beginning, for you, like, did you see a stark difference, like I did, or was it? Was it kind of like a different experience for you, I started going.

Lukas Seel: 15:11

The first events that I started going to were Algorand events. Actually, they were like in Berlin in 2021. I think it was like the only thing that was local. So this, for whatever reason, was the first chain that I interacted with at an event. There were some ETH events that I went to there as well, and then I went to the ultimate office, ultimate finance now acquired by your friends at Jupyter the wallet there and that was the first time I had like, oh, this is like a proper, like local sort of Berlin party, like they understand what they're doing here, and that was Solana. And that was sort of the intro to Solana at the time and I think you know, like fast forward into 2023 or like the really the bear market.

Lukas Seel: 16:01

Solana was doing an exceptional job with keeping builders' companies as a foundation right, like not necessarily holding hands but empowering them and really keeping up the investment in the community, and I think it's what makes Solana exceptional in terms of the environment they've been able to foster for um, for builders, and that's also why, you know, perhaps, despite limitations or or flaws of the architecture, um, and you know there's there's so many things that that some chains do well and others don't do so well, and solana does a lot of them well, um, uh, like, despite all of that, they've they've always been able to connect very directly to the community, and we'll talk about that in a bit as well.

Lukas Seel: 16:49

Where I want to talk about it is this idea of handing over the events very actively to the community. Now, that's super impressive, right, going from hosting all of your events and really building this from the ground up to then factually decentralizing it or at least in like this idealistic sense, saying like, okay, we're done hosting hacker houses, right, we've retired them. It's up to you now to host your events and really make them local. And I think that's always been a strength through the super teams and, yeah, through the foundation in the beginning as well to really be able to connect locally and empower locally. So that's, that's, that was kind of my impression and that's also, you know why I'm still a big um supporter of the ecosystem yeah, and I'd love to share a little bit of kind of insider context here about the strategy behind the events.

Eno Sim: 17:39

I've been very fortunate to uh make friends with the events team, um, which is run by Ellie Platice, asia Fox and Amy Don't know her last name, asia's no longer at Solana Foundation, but she actually was one of the first hires at Solana Foundation, working directly under Toli and Raj as her personal assistant, but she's a woman of many. You know she's jack of all trades really. So she eventually transitioned to the events team, but it's led by Ellie and Ellie is a you know, ex Netflix. She used to run all the events for Netflix and if you know anything about Netflix working culture, you know that they only hire like NBA class talent, like we're talking S tier the killers. She's very confident and good at her job and strategy and thinking behind the Hacker Houses was okay. We need to create hype in local hubs around the world.

Eno Sim: 18:31

So in the first year they did 24 Hacker Houses and you have to appreciate how difficult that is. You know that means 24 different cities around the world, two cities a month. Right In the second year of Hacker Houses they did one per month, so it was 12. And last year was the last year they did Hacker Houses. It was once every four months, right. So it was a very strategic kind of pullback. And now they've retired them, as you've correctly mentioned.

Eno Sim: 19:01

And the cost of the builds at first the hacker houses were a week and they eventually got whittled down to like two or three days, um, but in the beginning the cost of the builds were half a million dollars each. You know, that's, that's the, that's the estimate. So, like, the amount of money that was being poured into having like an all week event, um, you know, 24 times a year is an extraordinary investment, um, and even 24 times a year is an extraordinary investment. And even now the strategy has shifted in year four. What they're doing now is they're tacking on to. They look at the ETH travel calendar, they find the biggest events and then they basically make sure that there's a Solana conference that's just as big, if not bigger. So it's quite cutthroat, but it's extremely smart and that's all, I'd argue, one of the reasons why, like, the vibes in ETH are so bad and we're siphoning off so many people. It's like we've strategically made ourselves very available in every major city, every major event and, yeah, the strategy has been paying off.

Lukas Seel: 19:58

Yeah, that's super interesting and I want to talk about this emceeing that you do as well, like later, because you're on the road basically all year at these conferences. Now, before that, let's quickly touch on ISC and like getting into the I don't know the market, the industry, as a full-time founder, right, so what was sort of the problem you guys identified, what was the solution and how did it pan out? Just give us a little bit of an overview of what made you take that step and really the belief it took to jump into it full time and then how things panned out.

Eno Sim: 20:41

Yeah. So we are largely inspired by the writings of Ray Dalio, who's a hedge fund manager in the United States I don't know if he's currently the CEO, but he was the CEO and founder of Bridgewater and we were also inspired by ETH's stablecoin protocol called Reserve. Huge fan of Reserve, love Nevin, really really nice guy and just a great thinker in the space. And what Ray Dalio and both what Ray Dalio and Nevin kind of espouse is that the US dollar is not actually a great store of value. Fiat currencies are inflationary by design, right, that's not a bug, that's a feature. And that's because you know monetary policy I mean sound monetary policy dictates that you need net positive, just a little bit of inflation, so that you can keep up with the growth of the economy, right, and then make money easy to borrow, so that businesses can, you know, borrow at a cheaper rate and then be able to grow their businesses. This is kind of on the more macro scale, right. So that's why all fiat currencies by design are inflationary.

Eno Sim: 21:49

And so our thesis was that the US dollar is not stable and that in its face it usually raises eyebrows and people tune us out and they just don't listen to us beyond that sentence, but think about what stability means right. Beyond that sentence, but think about what stability means right. True stability means that you should be able to buy the same amount of things with a dollar the day that you earned it versus 10 years later, like that's real stability, right. But the problem is now that, in terms of branding, the United States dollar owns stability right. Like when you think of the US dollar in relation to other fiat currencies, the first word you'd probably think is stable right. Like when you think of the US dollar in relation to other fiat currencies, the first word you'd probably think is stable right, because it is the strongest fiat out there In relation to eggs less stable, but yes.

Eno Sim: 22:36

Exactly, exactly my point right. Like because inflation is a feature, not a bug Like the US dollar will, by definition, over decades, buy you less and less and less eggs, and so it's strictly an inferior currency. So most people know we had the gold standard in the United States after Bretton Woods, which essentially pegged to the US dollar, to an ounce of gold at a fixed price, and that worked very well for a period of time until, like you know, we had massive economic growth and so we needed to grow the money supply. But we didn't have enough gold to collateralize, you know, the US dollar and so, like that's that's when we went to, you know, instead of the gold standard, we'd switch to just beyond you know, it's a, it's value based on, I guess, global perception of a currency and what the markets dictate.

Eno Sim: 23:31

But the failures of the gold standard had less to do with it was not a sound idea and more to do with the fact that there's not enough gold. So we essentially thought of ourselves as gold standard 2.0. And what that means is, like you actually can meaningfully grow money supply, you know, to the trillions if you include other assets. So you can collateralize a currency with not just a you know gold. But you can use stocks, you can use bonds, you can use cash. You can use like a basket of cash, right, like you could use T-bills you could to collateralize the currency and grow the money supply meaningfully.

Eno Sim: 24:12

And so that's why we call it a yield-bearing stablecoin. It's yield-bearing in relation to the US dollar, but really it's just hard currency, it's a currency collateralized by a basket of RWAs. So we thought it was strictly better. We thought it's more stable if you judge stability by what you can purchase over time. And the market did not buy this thesis. They didn't buy our marketing, they didn't buy. I mean, it was just an uphill battle for two years. It was hard. So I guess we were wrong.

Lukas Seel: 24:44

Well, I think that's an interesting thing, like ideas and their times, right, and timing and just market sentiment, right. Like you're battling a lot of things at once here, right. Like I mean, the first time I ever saw you anywhere was like you. I think you had like 100 followers or something and started, just like you know, yelling about stable currency, and it was awesome. Like you did a great job, I think, in selling it and the story is very much legitimate. But it's something that, one, people in general are probably not ready to hear.

Lukas Seel: 25:09

And two, that being built, not like in a Web2, as a Web2 payment provider, but having the additional burden of being in the existing, in a Web3 space. That is, by design, at the moment at least, like a speculative market that is going up and down, or like a better alternative to a flat coin I think you call it to the dollar on a casino infrastructure, right, and I think so that might have been something. But so what do you kind of take away from that? And I mean, give us a quick update on where ISC is now, because I think it's still going. Update on where ISC is now because I think it's still going. It's just sort of the active development is stalled or you minimize the team, and what kind of the lessons were that you took from it?

Eno Sim: 26:04

Okay, so a lot of different questions there. So number one category is like no, no, no, it's fine, it's fine. What's the current status of ISC? The second question is like what are my takeaways from my time there? And then, sorry, I think there was a what any lessons learned is that, yeah, same same.

Lukas Seel: 26:19

I'm sorry, similar thing.

Eno Sim: 26:20

Yeah, those two things are good. Oh, cool, cool. So current status of isc. Um last, I think october or november, um, our team won the payments track. Uh, for the coliseum hackathon. It's a. It's a's a huge hackathon run by Coliseum. That's self-evident in the name.

Lukas Seel: 26:40

Coliseum being on Solana and being another example, actually, of how Solana is now decentralizing or passing on the job that they did before, namely sponsoring hackathons through the foundations to startups and other entities. So that's an interesting thing to think and talk about, too as well.

Eno Sim: 26:59

Yeah, yeah, correct, correct. Thank you for that, sorry, but yeah, so we won the payments track there, but we didn't win with the stablecoin. What we actually won with is a product called FXSwap, and FXSwap is a stablecoin, dex. And if you're wondering why we need more stablecoin infrastructure or why we need stablecoin infrastructure at all on Solana, it's because providing liquidity for a stablecoin on Meteora or on Orca is a pain in the ass.

Eno Sim: 27:29

You have to constantly manage your positions, especially if we're talking about, like, a Euro USD pool or a Brazilian Real USD pool. And the reason why you have to constantly be managing your positions is because, for a stablecoin, you need to keep your liquidity in a very tight range, right, because otherwise there's just a lot of wasted capital there. You wouldn't want like a spot, like a wide spot strategy where you cover price ranges from 50 cents to a dollar. 50 like that would make no sense, right, like the euro in relation to the dollar. I actually don't know the exchange rate, but the the euro in relation to the dollar is always going to hover within, like you know, a five percent range, right? Um, but you want to maximize your liquidity exactly where that exchange rate is, and so that's why you have to constantly be moving the monitoring your position in Meteor or Orca to provide any meaningful liquidity into a stable coin. What our stable coin decks did FXSwap is. It uses a curve model Are you familiar with?

Lukas Seel: 28:24

curve I am, but maybe explain it to the broader audience.

Eno Sim: 28:29

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like curve, or, even more accurately, Liffinity, right? So what you have is the ability to concentrate liquidity at a very particular price point that's determined by an oracle, right? So the oracle actually determines where the liquidity is distributed, and so, therefore, you can have close to 100% concentration of your liquidity exactly at the price point of the exchange rate between, for example, euro and US dollar, and it's completely hands-free. So that was kind of the innovation that we were.

Eno Sim: 29:01

And why would you need such infrastructure? Well, if you're a market maker, or if you're an issuer or you're a whale that wants to earn some just nice stable yield for FX pairs, it's a hands-free solution to that. And currently, on Solana, no whale wants to be actively managing their positions on an AMM or, furthermore, no whale really wants to build up that infrastructure themselves. So that's why stablecoin liquidity on Solana, for the longest time, I believe, was not growing because we do not have that basic infrastructure. Now we have plenty of companies that are working on it. The poster child of this would be Perenna. So, anyways, long story short, we won the hackathon, and you were like what does this have to do with how ISE is doing?

Eno Sim: 29:48

Because we won the hackathon, my co-founders decided to stop working on IAC and pivot to the stablecoin decks. And then I had the option of continuing to work with them or gracefully bowing out. And since we were riding on a high from the hackathon win, it was a great feeling. But I was like, ok, this is a really nice time to leave. It's not at a low and IAC still exists. It's fully collateralized, still pegged to the inversely correlated basket of assets. But you are correct, we are no longer actively promoting it.

Eno Sim: 30:20

I actually someday, like my kind of dream in five or six years to go is to go back to ISC after we've built up enough of a Lindy effect so that people feel safe holding the token. It's like, see, we could have rugged any time during the last five to six years, but we didn't. We're good for it. Maybe give it another try. Trust is the most important thing for stablecoins. So if you could build up enough of a Lindy effect to kind of show, look, we stopped active development of the project and we could have rugged everybody if we really wanted to and we just didn't right, because, like, that's not what we're about and we were just cooking on the stablecoin deck. So my co-founder ex-co-founders are still working on that, and I kind of just took a break for a little while and now I'm at Sanctum, but that's a whole other story.

Lukas Seel: 31:01

Well, should we go into that story right now? I mean, it's interesting, right, like trying things out, and this is also what I appreciate is like you get. You know, like you're barely exposed to crypto. You know you buy some XRP, you forget about it. You come back to it to see it's 50% down. Then randomly start working for a market maker. They have this idea. You're like, OK, this makes sense, we're solving a problem. Perhaps the world isn't ready for this particular problem to be solved at a bigger scale.

Lukas Seel: 31:35

But now you know, like you must have learned so many things along the way, and this goes to from certainly, the marketing and community aspect of what Web3 is about to so many very practical and business things. So when you decided to step back from ISC, did you think about taking a longer break, quitting crypto altogether? What was sort of the takeaways from it and how did you feel? And then, how did you get in touch with the Sanctum team and why did you decide to go there? I know I did another large question basket here. I have not collateralized it, but you know, just kind of touch on the things that you want to touch on there.

Eno Sim: 32:14

Yeah, no, no, no. I actually do appreciate a multi-stage question. It's a nice mental exercise. So I was burnt out, quite frankly, because, like, I had spent two years on the road advocating for yield-bearing stablecoins and you know, quite frankly, in my estimation, nobody gave a shit. Like, yeah, we had a community and we had some hardcore fans, but as far as the broader Solana ecosystem was concerned, like, yes, they knew who we were and no, they did not give a shit. Um, there are so many different treasury swap conversations I had. That just amounted to nothing. Um, so I was, I never, but I had found my home.

Eno Sim: 32:51

I knew for a fact that I wanted to stay in Solana, but I had found my home. I knew for a fact that I wanted to stay in Solana, but I had no fucking clue what I was going to do. And so I had written this post. That kind of semi blew up and it did go viral, but it just kind of a recap of, like, the last two years that I had spent on this, on this project, and I was feeling very dejected, quite frankly, and I was, I was quite certain that people were gonna you know, the anonymous crowd was gonna get on this post and tell me how much of a failure and a loser I was and like how would? I, don't know? I just I don't know why. I thought that I mean, in my experience, everyone in Solana is very nice, but I just kind of had this fear that that would be my reputation. Like I was. This really loud, obnoxious stable coin guy that you know said that he was going to kill the U S dollar and it didn't pan out and people were going to realize that I'm just this huge fraud and I guess to some degree I am um, maybe we all are, but especially me, um, especially me and I just felt like a dumb, stupid piece of shit and a failure as a founder and I kind of had this come to Jesus moment where I realized that I am not built to be a founder. A founder has to take care of things from A to Z for every single aspect of the company. We're talking hiring, we're talking the finances. We're talking the fundraising. We're talking the product. We're talking the community. We're talking the governance. We're talking about stablecoin architecture. We're talking about maintaining the peg.

Eno Sim: 34:21

I mean, just like the number of things that you have to do as a founder was overwhelming for me and does not fit my temperament right and kind of, the come to Jesus moment that I had is, like you know, I'm a shitty founder but I'm a great number two, I'm possibly the best number two in the world and if it sounds like hyperbole, I'm sorry, but I mean it and I believe it. Like I am an attack dog and that's what I'm good at. Like I'm not good at covering anything, everything, but if you give me a specific mandate like this, I need you to crush community for this specific thing, I need you to align everyone on governance. If you just give me like a few silos to work on and perhaps even a little BD on the side, like that is something I can totally manage and I excel at.

Eno Sim: 35:00

And that was a very tough realization for me because, like, growing up, I always thought that I was going to start my own company and be this big success and, by the way, I have a couple of failed web, two companies that I don't talk about, but it's I just have like a graveyard of projects that I never succeeded at and it just it ate at me and it made me feel like shit. Um, but again, much to my surprise, the, the. The post I wrote about me leaving ISC was received quite well. Everyone was super supportive and, um, as a result of that, I I had literally 12 teams reach out to me, um a varying size, like asking if I wanted to join, and one of those teams was Sanctum. So I'll take a pause there. But yeah, that's kind of I mean, I could talk about that, but that's kind of in a nutshell, what I took away from that experience of leaving ISC.

Lukas Seel: 35:44

I think that's very interesting, because I think these realizations where your own niche is right, we're always talking about like, okay, what's the PMF, or whatever, but there's such a thing as like a personal PMF and things that you're good at and that you excel at, and this is something you know, like I've I've worked with a lot of like young, young kids over the years, um, through various uh ventures, but it's it's like finding out, finding that one, that area of gifting, um, and enabling the people to work in that gifting, and that's the area where things just come much easier to people than to others.

Lukas Seel: 36:20

It's like they can get them done in a heartbeat and they can struggle with a lot of other stuff. But if you find these two or three things that they just can do and excel at and be better at than anybody else in the world, and excel at and be better at than anybody else in the world, that is such a that's such a great gift to give to someone. It's also, you know, such a great gift to realize what is that area for me and what are these areas for myself. And you know, like, I've certainly been searching there too, but it's really I don't know. Do you feel empowered, or is there still like this lingering disappointment and also like, is there, is there any sense that you have that you still might want to go back? I mean, you were saying, go back to ISC in five years and make it, make it great again, Like, is that something that you still kind of dream of there?

Eno Sim: 37:11

I mean that's more of a joke. No, I mean, practically, I'm very practical, I'm a pragmatist. So like in all actuality, like no, that's not going to happen. I mean there is some version of me in the multiverse where that happens, but like if we're just talking, you know pure stats, like no, that's not going to happen.

Eno Sim: 37:29

But actually I'm going to kind of throw this question back at you because I think this is the more interesting. Sorry, I just, I personally just think this is a more interesting conversation. It's like I perceive and I don't mean to pub quiz you, by the way, but I perceive you to be and I'm not trying to kiss your ass but like a great thinker Right, which is quite rare to find in the space, depressingly space, depressingly right. Like I feel like you're very well considered and that you also are able to look at your multidisciplinary and multidisciplinary people are able to look at problems from many different angles and kind of consider all the different sides that stakeholders might have and like how things might turn out. So I'm so that's kind of how I view your personal PMF Do you do what, do you what? And again, you're searching, and I'm not trying to put you on the spot. But just genuinely curious where do you think you found your personal PMF?

Lukas Seel: 38:19

This is what happens when you invite a podcast host to a podcast. No, it's great. I think there's various areas that I think about and that I also excel at, and I think one of the things is I am actually quite good at coordinating teams and finding out what other people are good at very, very quickly, and so that's something where I can just look at you know, I know he's going to crush this and I look at I'm just going to say people in the crowd here. I look at Cornish and he's like, okay, he's going to be great at this. I look at Travi and he's like, okay, he's going to be great at this. I look at Travi and it's like I know exactly what Travi can do.

Lukas Seel: 39:02

So these things like deploying talent is, I think, what one of these areas and I think that speaks to the sort of multidisciplinary thing which is very true, right.

Lukas Seel: 39:07

Like my background is in the arts and then I came through nonprofit to like building my own businesses and then ending up, you know, in Web3 sort of randomly and figuring out what that meant and how it could help here, and so like that's one of these things where I really what I enjoy most and what I think, therefore, I'm best at is like finding and developing talent and figuring out how they best thrive in the space and like one of the reasons we have this podcast here and these things is just like talking to people, figuring out what they're good at, how they figured that out, and like what they built because they're good at this thing, you know, and so I think that's one of the things that I enjoy the most and that's also why I enjoy the spirit of this space a lot, because you just get to experiment and figure out who you are and what you are and what you want to be and what you want to build. So I think that's one of these things that I enjoy most. Can we go back to you?

Eno Sim: 40:08

Yeah, no, we can. But before we do, I see that we have a very special guest in the crowd Patty. What's good, patty, if you're listening, love you very much. You're doing a great job with Superteam Germany. Thanks for joining, by the way.

Lukas Seel: 40:20

You're such a good host. So let's talk about Sanctum a little bit and why you decided. You said you had 12 offers on the table, more or less that's a lot of offers for anybody to consider. Why did you join Sanctum out of all of them?

Eno Sim: 40:40

So I mean, another core motivation that I had for wanting to take a break from ISC, aside from the fact that it had no PMF was, of course I was burnt out. There's that. But my wife and I are trying to start a family right, so trying to have a kid sometime this year and so really my intention was to focus on the wife, travel with her, spend time. I mean, I had very much neglected her over the last two years, which is another reason why I'm a piece of shit, but she very bravely and graciously, kind of let me pursue my failed dreams.

Eno Sim: 41:11

She's so great I can vouch for your wife.

Lukas Seel: 41:14

I mean really what a pleasure. And and also like traveling with you and really being open to what you do is is such a great. You guys are great together. I'd love to see it.

Eno Sim: 41:25

Yeah, yeah, um, I, I, I definitely married up, as they say, um, but, yeah, uh, she, uh. So the intention truly was just to take a year off, focus on starting a family and then, like, uh, definitely gonna stay on salon. I have no idea what the fuck I'm gonna do in the space because, uh, I'm a mess right now, but we'll figure it out right. But and you know lots of interesting projects. I mean, like everyone is working on something cool. In some regard, there's there's something beautiful about every project, um, but it really started with a bottle of soju, a lot of things do in your life yeah, a lot of things do start with a bottle of soju.

Eno Sim: 42:06

Uh, it gets much to my chagrin. Um, but all the sanctum co--founders are Singaporean, except for one special man and his name is Jesse. And Jesse invited me to have a drink and it was more of a social thing Like I've always—it was friendly with Jesse just by way of the fact that he's Korean. I mean, I don't know if that's enough to really build a friendship, but it was at least enough to have a drink right enough to really build a friendship, but it was at least one enough to have a drink Right. And throughout the course of that conversation I got to know him much more as a person. And, quite frankly, what do you do when all the offers are kind of equally attractive? Right, you have to filter somehow.

Eno Sim: 42:46

For me, I did it through vibes, like and that might be the most moronic answer, but it's truly how I made the decision it's all like I vibe with this guy super hard. I could see myself working with him for 10 years, which is the question I ask myself very often, like with this hire, could I imagine myself theoretically like getting along with this person for 10 years? And even Richard and Anish, my previous co-founders. I had known them for at this point fuck, like 12 years, right. Like I've known them for over a decade, like I've known them since like I was like a 21 year old, right. So you know, that's the level of relationship I'm looking for with people I work with.

Eno Sim: 43:23

And no disrespect to any of the teams that I was speaking with, but like I just really vibed with Jesse and that snowballed into getting to know Jay a lot better, which snowballed to getting to know FP and Hanyang and CW I know that these names mean nothing to you, but they mean everything to me that the founders of Sanctum and they've and you know, just really really hardworking, earnest people, if not a little silly. And the thing that really sealed the deal for me is I went to an offsite in Singapore with the entire Sanctum team, including the working level, and I just fell in love with the team, the entire culture, the vibes, how fast they ship, how bold they are, the risks that they're willing to take, the risks they're willing to not take, the people that they work with, the standard that they hold themselves to. How could I not fall in love? And so that was when I asked my wife like can I do it? And she's like part-time and I said okay, and now I'm working 60-hour weeks. I don't know what happened.

Eno Sim: 44:21

Yeah wow, I mean, I think this is really you're touching on something that's very much underappreciated.

Lukas Seel: 44:26

When building a team, I think a lot of people deploy like the best talent they can find, but it's such it's so important to find people that work together and work well together on both a personal and professional level, and having and establishing this company culture is something that is, I think, appreciated in some sense in the legacy corporations that you know. That's why we have all of these retreats and whole businesses that are built on building these retreats and make them nice and have these powwows. But to really align a vision and to really align a team and personalities on the team that work well together and that want to work well together and that support one another, that's something that is really really underappreciated and really really hard to do. It's something that we did this great experiment not to talk too much about, like what Helios and whatever is doing, but something that we tried last year was this thing that we call the collabathon right, like an idea to take a hackathon but make it collaborative, and we had different ideas of what it could be, but what it turned out to be was really a team building and team finding exercise.

Lukas Seel: 45:42

These were like 10, 12 people that didn't really know each other had never worked together. You throw them in a room and you figure out okay, what are the teams that are working together? Who are the people that are working together? And this is also an interesting way of leveraging such a concept for hiring right. Like you just have people, instead of trialing them for six months in your company, you throw 10 people in a room or in a house together, have them work on something, a shared goal, and see who delivers what and how they work together, and you just skip so much bullshit and you come out with a team that's like tight and like can deliver.

Lukas Seel: 46:19

This is something really like we didn't really plan on this, but that's kind of one of the main takeaways of how we want to do this in the future too is like product building but team finding and team building at the same time. And you know, like you were saying so important to have that team and like that ethos aligned around certain things. And it's like what did you say stands out to you in the Sanctum team and how they kind of built that working culture.

Eno Sim: 46:49

You know FP also like, so I think the thing a lot of like, especially if you worked in corporate before. If you're just kind of used to the old style of working, it's like very much kind of resume based, but even FP. When he pulled the trigger on hiring me, what he told me was look, I perceive you to be an honest person and it seems like you work hard. So I want to build a relationship in which we can compound trust with each other over time. Um, and I, I think that approach to building teams creates the best vibes, quite, quite, quite frankly. Um, so I, I get that's. It's not that I think that sanctum has a particular strategy, it's just that it's like I know they say opposites attract, but also like attracts, like right. So I just think that's kind of what happened, like FP, optimized for vibes or people who kind of have this same.

Eno Sim: 47:46

I don't know if people perceive me to be an honest person. I certainly try as much as I can, but I'm not going to go out and say I'm like the most honest person in the world, but I would like to think that I hold myself to a higher standard and so that's kind of the group of boys that we have is just kind of honest, chill dudes. I'm like there's only two people on the team that really talk. It's me and Jesse, the two Koreans, and everyone else is much more of an introverted, very chill and and relaxed and reliable and smart devs.

Lukas Seel: 48:16

Um, so that's kind of the culture you do lie about having a mustache, so I mean like I'm not sure how honest, oh fuck you, you asshole, no, you know has a very respectable mustache. It only took four years to grow it. It's beautiful.

Eno Sim: 48:32

Okay, now you're okay. Look, I know the mustache has been great, but you're gonna call me out on the goddamn episode, bro. God damn it. Jeez. I mean it's true, but it's like bro, let's let's talk quickly.

Lukas Seel: 48:43

I mean, we've only gotten through half the things that I wanted to get through and we're already, like, uh, touching on the hour mark and I won't keep you for that much longer than that. Um, let's talk quickly about Sanctum and Creator Coins and what you're doing there, or broadly, what you're trying to do with Sanctum, maybe first, and then let's touch on the Creator Coins, which you guys introduced at Breakpoint last year and something that I think is very interesting and kind of goes back to the conversation we had about creating value in Web3. And it's maybe not a stable coin this time.

Eno Sim: 49:18

Yeah, so creator coins are one of the first experiments in what I like to call the pay-fi narrative. So pay-fi is a term that was coined by the president of Solana Foundation. Her name is Lily Liu. What it's about is unlocking the time value of your money. And, like, what the fuck did that mean? Right? What that means is that a currency like a dollar, just as an example, is worth more today than it is tomorrow. And we're not talking about inflation, like, let's just assume there's zero inflation, right? And the reason why a dollar is worth more today than it will be in, like, let's say, one year's time, one say one year's time even though, again, assuming zero inflation is because what you could do with that dollar today, right? So just a very simple example of this is if you provide those dollars into LULO, let's say, maurice, if you're listening, I love you. You're not here, but I love you anyways. We love another member of MustacheDAO but you earn yield on that dollar. So, logically, of course, a dollar today is worth more than it would be a year from now, even assuming zero inflation. And PayFi is all about how can we use the time value of that money. Time value you can just translate to yield, right. So how can you use the time value of that money? Time value you can just translate to yield, right. So how can you use the time value of that money to unlock all sorts of use cases? Right, and creator coins essentially do that. But not with a dollar but with soul, right. So with soul you can, like, put it in the LST and LST will earn you yield. It's not like borrowing lending yield like you would do with the USDC, but you will earn yield on staked soul and it's worth more to stake your soul today than it would be just a raw dog soul, just assuming that soul price doesn't even move at all. Because you earn MEV rewards, you earn block rewards. You also earn perhaps even a share of company revenue and also emissions. So, like Solana, inflation right. And you can use that yield to pay for things, right. So another way that pay-fi is described is buy now, pay never. So imagine this.

Eno Sim: 51:36

In a traditional model, you have to pay like a monthly subscription to a creator right. Traditional model you have to pay like a monthly subscription to a creator right To get access to their exclusive content. But what if you could put down like, let's say, 10 soul or 20 soul. So you buy once but then the yield from that 20 soul ends up paying the subscription fee for that creator and at any point in time you can just pull your capital right and you still have the 20 soul.

Eno Sim: 52:01

But if you had put it into a creator coin, you're earning that yield. That yield that comes from MedRewards, the yield that comes from BlockRewards, the yield that comes from sharing company revenue, the yield that comes from emissions or inflation of the Solana network that's paid out to validators. Like all that yield goes to paying for quote, unquote payfile right which, again, like creator coins, are just an example of this. So it's like if you give 20 soul to your favorite creator, it unlocks a certain amount of premium content and for as long as you have your soul in this creator coin, it generates yield for that creator and then you don't have to pay ever. So it's like buy now, pay never.

Lukas Seel: 52:40

Yeah, very interesting. How has the rollout been? How many creators are onboarded? And you mentioned this is just one application of this idea. Do you guys have ideas of developing this further and in which direction are you going with that?

Eno Sim: 52:56

Yeah. So this is where my inexperience is going to betray me. I just joined the company a month ago, and so there's a lot of stuff that I totally should know that I don't. So if you ask me, like, how many creator coins we've issued, it's probably less than 20. When I, if I were to give a rough estimate, but like, don't hold me to that. And in terms of other applications, have you ever drank Flojo? You ever tried Flojo?

Lukas Seel: 53:24

I have yeah.

Eno Sim: 53:25

Yeah, so Flojo is a low-calorie, natural caffeine energy drink, right? So if you drink a Monster, it's like you know, monster energy drinks are like fucking, like I don't know like 300 calories per can and the caffeine is actually synthetic caffeine. I could be mistaken about this, but I actually think that Flojo's caffeine comes from mushrooms, which kind of blows my mind. I'm like what the fuck? You can make caffeine out of mushrooms, but whatever, um, and it's it's like 20 calories, right. So you get all the benefits of drinking an energy drink and the caffeine is not synthetic so it doesn't give you a headache or any other whatever cancer you'll get from drinking synthetic caffeine.

Eno Sim: 54:03

And they have a creator coin. What they're using the yield for I don't know. Again, my inexperience is betraying me. Maybe it's like free Flojo or something like that, but it's like, yeah, if you stake enough soul or another way of putting it, if you buy enough Flojo creator coins right, you're buying once and paying never. The yield from those creator coins actually pays for free energy drinks, which is kind of sick. And again, don't hold me to that, but I'm just saying that's another version of an application.

Lukas Seel: 54:28

I mean, really, it was one of the more impressive things to me that stood out actually as innovation at Breakpoint last year. It's like, oh, this is an interesting idea that really does something that in traditional finance is just impossible or very, very difficult to arrange. Here you just buy this creator coin, you can withdraw at any time, get your money back that you paid, lose, of course, the subscription or whatever benefits you're getting, but you never paid for it in that sense in the first place. So very, very interesting, I think, exciting. What you guys are doing and what Sanctum also does so well, I think, is connect or like enable different companies to play with this idea of having liquid staking in different forms, right Like, and building on top of it. So it's like, yeah, really, really interesting.

Lukas Seel: 55:15

I know Drip did a collaboration with you guys, I think with the Drip House coin I hope that was Sanctum guys, I think with the drip house coin I hope that was sanctum. But so, I think, many interesting experiments happening in the space, and that's really something where I think these protocols can significantly advance features that just aren't possible in traditional finance. So, yeah, shout out to you guys Before we close it. I just want to get quickly back on community and the importance of it, because you now have earned yourself the title, with that soju, of Chief Vibes Officer. Cool. What does that mean to you personally and also to you guys as a company? Um, this idea of involving community in in which ways are you thinking about, in which ways are you developing it and how do you hope, um, community kind of gets involved?

Eno Sim: 56:11

yeah, um, so how do I answer this? It's, it's. I had a bunch of things I wanted to do at the stablecoin company that I just was not able to do because I didn't have the reach, I didn't have the scale, I didn't have the experience. I still don't have the experience. I'm figuring it out every day, and coming to Sanctum was a little bit of a shock for me because they have, despite the token price, like really, really, really, really diehard fans, um, and like it's just been a joy to to kind of just make friends, like it's a whole ecosystem of because there's this, there's this Louis C I know Louis CK is canceled, I'm sorry, but there's this Louis CK joke that really resonated with me, which is like you know why I don't give a shit about breast cancer, because people who care about breast cancer only care about breast cancer. They don't care about my shit, right, um, and it's, it's, it's kind of how I feel about the space. It's like people who care about stable coins only really give a shit about stable coins and nothing else. Like people who care about validators, um, you know, they only care about validators and nothing else. Um, and so the reason why I'm saying this is because it just kind of illustrates this larger point that, like this is the whole universe of people that I was not exposed to because I only ever cared about stable coins and I only ever talked to stable coin people. And now I'm in this like LST staking validator world where it's like I'm meeting a bunch of new players. Like there's a lot of familiar faces but plenty of new people I've never met before, never talked to before, never had any interest in talking to before, and so like the whole process of building community to me, at least from a almost like a experiential I don't know like just in terms of an experience, is it just feels like making a bunch of friends right. Like I frequently do things that don't scale with community. Feels like making a bunch of friends right, like I frequently do things that don't scale with community. Like I make it my business Whenever I see someone saying something negative about sanctum, like I reach out to them and I very publicly just say, like yo, like you want to jump on a call, like you can yell at me on a call and I'll try to understand, like why you're so angry.

Eno Sim: 58:13

Um, and I'd probably say that the amount of people who take me up on that offer is less than 10%. But of the 10% of people that I take it with, I did this at IHC as well. That's how we built our community. I have 100% conversion rate.

Eno Sim: 58:26

I've never had someone who's taken a call with me and left that call hating the protocol more, and that 30 minutes to one hour of your time. You know it might feel like I mean, why the fuck would you do that? Why would you talk to this random person on the internet that was saying horrible things about you? It's like well, because if they do decide to take the call, it means that they're probably willing to talk in good faith and they'll see that I'm a human being and that and they might not agree with everything that I'm saying, but at the very least they'll see that I took time out of my day to try to understand and again we might leave that conversation agreeing to disagree.

Eno Sim: 58:58

Uh, but usually it's they become fans. You know like, oh shit, like the somebody who works on the protocol like is willing to talk to me, so like that's. That's like kind of. I guess an approach or just a general philosophy to community building I take is like I just create community members like potential friends or people right um and in terms of like what we can get out of community um $22 visuals.

Eno Sim: 59:28

That's the inside joke. We'll keep between us, um, and probably $5 visuals. By the way, I made that graphic myself, which I didn't tell you, so you know, screw you, um, but yeah, it was free. Thank you very much. Uh, guys, you have no idea what we're talking about. It's fine, um, just Lukas give me more shit, but yeah, it was free. Thank you very much, guys, you have no idea what we're talking about. It's fine, just Lukas giving me more shit. This is what it's usually like talking to Lukas he's just constantly giving me shit. That's not true. Lukas is actually very nice, and I mean that.

Lukas Seel: 59:53

Thanks for the clarification. I hope that's on the record as well.

Eno Sim: 59:56

Yeah, yeah, no, it is on the record. You actually are very nice. I'm just, you know, busting your balls, uh, but like what, where I've been trying to direct community and currently failing, by the way, is sanctum governance. Right, we're attempting to do something, uh, with sanctum's governance that's never been done before. On solana, I believe, right, um, which is, I mean, like metadata has this to a degree and we are building on top of Futarki, but essentially, like, forget Futarki for a second, you need a PhD to understand.

Eno Sim: 1:00:29

Is this meta process of how ideas become proposals that people actually vote on. Like, not even Jupyter allows for this, right, like and I love Jupyter, you know, I'm very'm very Jupiter aligned and I'm arguably a part of the cabal, but it's like very much, the team decides what proposals are put up, period, right, and we imagine a world where and we're taking our first real step towards decentralization where anybody in the community can put up a proposal and then there are other community members and or the team that will help clean it up and, like, put it in a format that's easily readable and easy to comprehend and anybody with enough staking score. So by staking cloud right, you earn a staking score, which is essentially amount of cloud staked over time. So anybody with enough of a staking score can promote a proposal from draft into deliberation, and deliberation proposals that are put up for deliberation are put on a fast track for voting. So that's what I want to see from the community. I want to see really, really high quality proposals, and we judge high quality by the amount of economic value that can be added to the company. So, like the better the idea, like a good idea will add high amounts of economic value.

Eno Sim: 1:01:52

To illustrate this point, in the inverse, an example of a bad proposal that has low economic value to the company would be let's spend 1 million cloud to throw a party at my house. Like what is the economic value of that to the company would be let's spend 1 million cloud to throw a party at my house. What is the economic value of that to the company? It's nothing. It's negative. Actually, you just spent 10 million cloud on throwing a dope-ass party, but that does nothing for Sanctum. So, yes, we're looking for cloud-sourced proposals from the CloudFam and we want to translate those proposals into a permissionless system where anybody with enough staking score can promote those into proposals that are then put up for a vote. So that's kind of the general thought there and what I would like to do with community.

Lukas Seel: 1:02:33

No, I mean, that's so interesting too, right, because I think one of the things that I had an interesting discussion was at a conference here in Bucharest in Romania at the moment, cooking at 28.1 degrees in this conference room, but in this side it's Celsius Like there was this interesting thing like the promise of Web3 and the lack of delivery of Web3, like versus like. Okay, what do we think of? Like Futurkey you mentioned right, like governance, daosos and all of these things that we kind of wanted to wish into existence, but we need to work them into existence. I think is what we're slowly realizing, and it's interesting to hear that.

Lukas Seel: 1:03:13

You know, the governance is very much still a work in progress, and how to encourage that and how to incentivize that and how to really make it work is, I think, something that nobody has really figured out yet, even though there's some interesting experiments, and I I take it that yours will probably be one of the most interesting things, uh, happening in that space. So so congratulations on on doing that. Um, yeah, kind of want to. I guess we have to wrap it up it's been an hour um, with a little bit do we have to wrap it up.

Eno Sim: 1:03:43

It's been an hour, do we have? To wrap it up. Is there somebody with a stopwatch or something? I'm good If you really want to be driven about the time then fine.

Lukas Seel: 1:03:54

No, I want to bring it back to you personally, because I think this is also something that why are you doing this?

Eno Sim: 1:04:02

Why are you torturing me? Because you're good at this.

Lukas Seel: 1:04:07

Because what you're saying is interesting in these realms, because I think one thing that I really like and you started this is what I was saying I saw an account that a bunch of my friends followed, so I followed you as well and I was just yelling about stable currencies and stable coins and flat, flat coins and all of that, and I was like this guy's cool, like he's certainly there's conviction and you have a good way of putting this across too.

Lukas Seel: 1:04:30

But you've also been open in this conversation too about, like, the sort of struggles you go through, both personally, professionally, like finding a space, carving out space for yourself and for your talents and finding what they are. Like, what, um. You posted something the other day that struck me, that wrote down here. It's just like I I've, you know, used myself to a lie, which is I can do it all, um, like, just talk a little bit about your like, your mindset and your mindset shift um, and how you try to harness that to like I don't know, I don't want to be the best version of yourself, but like to really do productive, good work and keep going when you don't feel like it.

Eno Sim: 1:05:16

Yeah. So I hate when stories go all the way back to childhood, but we have to start there. I hate when stories go all the way back to childhood, but we have to start there. So so I was born on no but my father. I have a great relationship with my parents and you know there's so many stereotypes about Asian parents being tiger moms or tiger dads and they're really on your ass and they want you to get great, good grades and to a degree, that was true with my parents. But, um, my father specifically, uh, is just like an eternal optimist and was just always telling me that I could do it and that, you know, if I just tried and applied myself, like everything would be okay. And there's this piece of advice that my dad gave to me very, very young that I've just carried with me forever, which is like uh, and you know my dad only graduated from elementary school. I mean, he eventually graduated from college, but you know, when he came to the United States, he only graduated from elementary school.

Eno Sim: 1:06:06

And I remember he told me the story like the day I was born. It was it was the worst day of his life and it wasn't because I was born, it was because he had nothing to give. He had $0. He was fucking broke, I mean just just hadn't accomplished anything Like was like almost hitting 30, like just felt like a complete, abject failure. Um, and and, and he, he just told me like, look, I mean like, and they're stable now and they have a house and they have a pension. I mean like they're they're not wealthy by any means, but but they're certainly like not starving and they're, they're comfortable and they can take care of themselves. And like they can travel if they want to. You know, and he said you know, son, if I had known how life would have turned out, it would have just saved me so much heartache and stress, right, and he just always impressed on me like how things will always be okay and like the worst case scenario was never really all that bad, unless it's something super catastrophic, like I don't know, like someone dies in a car crash or something, but like that's like super extreme.

Eno Sim: 1:07:06

Um, and so like, my dad always instilled in me that things would be okay and that I could do it, and so, like that's why I carry with me this just feeling of like um, some would call it this American, very American quality, which is unearned confidence. It's confidence for no reason there's no evidence to back it up Like 19 year old trying to build a nuclear power plant, kind of kind of confidence, right, um, just this feeling of you can do it, you'll figure it out, like yeah, it's hard, but you know it's the fucking job, right, um, and so like. That's why I always kind of carried the sense of like I can do it all, but to a to a degree I always felt that was a lie, right, and the reason why I felt like it was a lie is because of just math. It's like common sense logic. It's like how you can't possibly actually do it all. It's like you only have 24 hours. Like how the fuck are you going to do everything? Um, and then, you know, quite recently I had an inflection point and that inflection point was that cat stem bull. Um, I, I got to work, uh, directly with with meow and Cash organizing the event and lots of advice from Meow, but also just seeing how he operates in real time, being able to go from thought to asking someone for something instantly without any friction or lag time, like that amount of responsiveness and that amount of aggressiveness towards the work and throwing away all other considerations, like it's 1am or it's a Sunday, or like you should be considerate. Like certainly people will respond when they respond, but making work the primary focus and it's all about the work. It has nothing to do with ego, it has nothing to do with you.

Eno Sim: 1:08:38

That mode of thinking, for whatever reason, just unlocked something in me, and so the biggest change today, even compared to three months ago, like I am a much more complete person. I'm not complete, but I'm much more complete than I was, like three months ago. And it's it's directly from that energy and inspiration. It's like not being afraid to ask for what you need, um, and like being okay with letting cause'm a massive control freak. Like I want to do everything on my action item list, like by myself I don't want anyone touching it. But like finally freeing myself from that and being willing to let other people help and to make it very clear what you need help on and then to be uber responsive when people are helping you. Like these have all been mega unlocks for me.

Eno Sim: 1:09:19

And like now I'm working on Sanctum, I'm organizing Solana's first technical stablecoin conference.

Eno Sim: 1:09:27

I have a podcast sponsored by Jupiter Soul Brothers, I'm volunteering around the ecosystem hosting different events, flying to Japan literally tomorrow to volunteer for their Winter Arc program. So I'm mentoring teams for the Coliseum Hackathon, since I was a previous winner. Like I'm doing all of those things concurrently at the same time and it's only possible because I've hired out great, great talent and I've gotten very, very lucky to get sponsorship and I have a great team that I'm working with. Like I'm not saying that I earned all of these things I certainly got very, very lucky. But like I'm not saying that I earned all of these things I certainly got very, very lucky but like I'm able to accomplish all these things and do more than I ever dreamed of. Uh, and everything that I just because I was willing to ask for what I needed, be very serious about my work, um, hopefully, treat people kindly, find the right people that are high energy, and so, yeah, that's that's kind of how. Yeah, that's kind of how life has been recently, but I'm fucking tired.

Lukas Seel: 1:10:22

Yeah, that's amazing, and I think it's also such a good reminder that the support system around you is something that you can build, and it's something you've certainly built and, in that sense, really earned, and I think the way that you've applied yourself over the past couple of years has been admirable, to say the least. Um and and amazing to watch. Um, so I'm so glad you, uh you shared some of that with us today. Um, yeah, I want to thank you so much for for coming out and and spending the time with us yeah, I, I won't be coming in, I just no, sorry, I'm kidding, of course I.

Eno Sim: 1:10:58

I this was actually really really fun and, um, I it feels awkward that there's an audience. I've actually had my phone off, um, for most of the time because I, I don't. I was trying to treat this as more of just like a like what, what if I just jumped on a call um with Lukas and we're just to have a normal conversation, um, but at the same time, the way you're asking the questions just makes it feel like a fucking interview, bro, and it kind of is. But no, I really enjoyed this and I don't know, I just I like hanging out with Lucas, like we just it's like this, but less formal and for hours.

Lukas Seel: 1:11:31

I appreciate that and I'm sorry about the interview format. I try Maybe I should adjust that and going forward, but it's more appropriate with with most guests and, yeah, you've been a great one. Thank you so much for sharing the insights and, yeah, congratulations on everything you're doing. Where can we see you next? That's Japan, and then what's your world tour.

Eno Sim: 1:11:55

So the current schedule is Japan for Winter Arc, then Sri Lanka for the Solana Economic Zone, run by Forma. After the Solana Economic Zone, I think I'm going to Istanbul to host Crossroads on the technical stage, after Crossroads going to Dubai. I can go on and on. I have a full travel schedule for this year.

Lukas Seel: 1:12:18

Maybe I got to go back to Istanbul to hang out there. Sri Lanka also sounds good. Who's located in Sri Lanka? Is that Jupiter? No no they're in Kuala Lumpur.

Eno Sim: 1:12:33

They have offices in Vietnam, malaysia and Singapore and certainly probably other places in the world. At this point they have like over 100 team members now, which is crazy, because when I first met them, it was like 10 dudes and I'm just kind of like what the fuck happened to you guys? It's just weird to think that this behemoth grew out of just like 10 normal chill devs, which just blows my fucking mind. Meow is the only insane one. Everyone else is actually really, really down to earth. Yeah, that was crazy, um, but yeah, for, for, uh, for solana economic zone. Yeah, it's just run by the farmer team. So they do. They did this in buenos aires, uh, in um partnership with the buenos aires local government, um, and then they did it in dubai, uh, in partnership with super team uae, uh, and now they're they're running that same playbook in Sri Lanka. So no one's really based out of there. It's just kind of more of a co-working, co-living type of situation.

Lukas Seel: 1:13:28

Nice. Yeah, very interesting experiment, something we definitely need to do more of. I talked to the Radiance. I think you gave them a shout-out recently In Bali. There was a very interesting property that might be used in the future. In Bali, there was a very interesting property that might be used in the future. But there's some very interesting experiments, I think in these future society network, state directions and I think certainly the Solana economic zones are something to keep an eye out for and to go to. I'm excited that you're going there.

Eno Sim: 1:13:59

I've never been but thinking about hosting something quite similar, um, in a very different country. Um, but I'll share. Can I just say network States are the dumbest fucking idea I've ever heard in my life. They're so dumb. I mean, it's like the thesis is that okay, first you acquire community and then you acquire capital by pulling it from the community, pool and pooling and not pulling, but pooling from the community, pooling not pulling, but pooling together with the community and then you acquire territory and then you build infrastructure and then you have a network state Like.

Eno Sim: 1:14:29

The reason why that idea is so fucking dumb is this idea that a sovereign nation is going to respect the property rights of a network state. Like, what the fuck? Like, if you actually tried to build out your own society within a sovereign nation, like. I know that Solana, economic zones are somewhat of a, but I actually have no idea what the pharma team thinks about what's the economic zones? I think economic zones make sense, right, like in the current scope, right, but then if you're trying to tell me that, like, like, this economic zone is going to turn into a sovereign territory within a sovereign nation, it's just like you, what are you smoking like? I want some of that. That is crazy. Like, of course, the argentinian military is going to come. Like, as soon as you try to have your own tax system and financial regulation and your own like town halls, you guys are done. So muerte, you know what I mean. Like it just mean, like it just makes no sense. Um, so yeah, that's why that's my little rant about network States. I think they're absolutely ridiculous.

Lukas Seel: 1:15:28

I love that. There's yeah, I think there's, that's what I'm calling them experiments there there's. There's some interesting things that could come out of it and conceivably, you know, like using the, the currencies, as actual tender and experimenting with a sort of governance form. That's something that I think is very interesting. But you know, there's been some independent experiments in the Web2 world that have gone terribly wrong in that direction and, yeah, tend to agree there. But we'll leave it at that for this time. Hopefully we can get back together and maybe we'll stream the conversation.

Lukas Seel: 1:16:03

I'll ask less interviewee questions and we can just have a conversation rather than this podcast, but for now, thank you so much, eno, for coming on. This was Helios Horizons, episode 38, with the great Eno of Sanctum, formerly of everything else, including Samsung. And yeah, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you, everybody for listening and see you and hear you next week. Thank you so much, ina.