Thomas opens this episode of Solana Weekly with Gaius, CEO of The Vault and founder of The Library, describing him as an OG in the Solana space and an angel investor. Gaius humbly pushes back on the “OG” label, explaining he only arrived during the 2021 NFT season—late compared to true veterans.
What brought Gaius to Solana wasn’t speculation but infrastructure. Coming from a traditional finance background working in derivatives on trading floors, he was drawn to crypto’s potential as superior settlement infrastructure compared to legacy systems like Euroclear. After experimenting with PancakeSwap on Binance Smart Chain and Uniswap on Ethereum in July 2021, he tried Raydium on Solana and immediately recognized it as the superior product. He still has a spreadsheet called “The Solana Pivot” documenting his initial research and first purchases.
The NFT Era and Community Building
The conversation turns nostalgic as they discuss the 2021 NFT boom on Solana. Gaius describes his strategy of building a personal index—owning a few NFTs from every major collection, tracking floor prices on Solana Floor. Projects like Okay Bears went from 1-2 SOL to 100 SOL in days. Thomas shares his own origin story: minting a neon Gecko (his first Solana NFT), selling it for 10x within an hour, and becoming completely hooked on the ecosystem.
They reminisce about legendary moments: someone buying the Monke DAO King for $1.3 million during a live town hall, another collector “sweeping the ceiling” by buying all the most expensive Thugbirdz instead of the floor. The same faces appeared across every Discord, creating tight-knit social bonds. Gaius notes that by late 2021, you could predict a project’s success by seeing which known collectors were buying—and when those faces were absent, it was a red flag.
These communities became crucial during the post-FTX collapse. While SOL dropped to $8 and the broader crypto world wrote off Solana, the Discord communities kept showing up, making memes, supporting each other through the trauma. Gaius identifies two groups that kept the lights on: these engaged communities and the validator operators who continued running nodes despite collapsing activity.
The Philosophy: Stop Trading
A central theme emerges repeatedly: most people should stop trading. Gaius acknowledges buying books on technical analysis when younger but now dismisses it as essentially meaningless in crypto. He argues that if you can hold a chart upside down and the patterns still “work,” something is fundamentally broken with the methodology. Price should ultimately connect to business performance, not patterns like “golden crosses” or “rising doji.”
His recommendation is straightforward: DCA into SOL, stake it, and leave it alone for years. He references “Cobie’s triangle” (from Crypto Cobain)—70-80% in your L1, some allocation to other conviction plays, and only 5% for speculation. The hardest part isn’t making smart trades; it’s doing nothing. Sitting on your hands while an asset appreciates 7-10% annually through staking yields alone is incredibly difficult for crypto participants who feel compelled to constantly “make moves.”
Gaius expresses frustration at seeing people lucky enough to be early in Solana waste their position chasing leverage trades and meme coins. The opportunity to build generational wealth exists simply by holding infrastructure through a decade-long adoption cycle. What feels “slow” to crypto natives is already breakneck speed compared to traditional markets. He wishes more people would stop posting P&L screenshots and just appreciate the golden opportunity in front of them.
Thomas agrees, noting his Twitter feed has become nearly unusable—dominated by people making and losing fortunes overnight on meme coins. They both acknowledge the entertainment value of throwing small amounts at speculation, but emphasize keeping those bets to amounts you’re comfortable losing while the bulk of holdings remain staked and untouched.
The Vault: Community Validators and Token Innovation
The Vault launched in 2024 (roughly a year ago, though Gaius admits the timeline gets muddled) with a clear mission: stake to community-operated validators. The team recognized that the communities and validators who survived post-FTX deserved support, so they created a liquid staking token that directs approximately 9,000 SOL per validator to community-anchored nodes. Currently managing 1.6 million SOL in TVL, communities can apply through a decentralized board that verifies legitimacy.
Beyond staking mechanics, The Vault is experimenting with token distribution. Rather than airdropping free tokens—which Gaius views as treating equity carelessly—they award points that grant the right to buy tokens at a discount. Users still need skin in the game, essentially turning early participation into a fundraising mechanism. The first expiration window arrives at the end of September.
This approach reflects Gaius’s long-held belief that tokens must reward holders through cashflow or the promise of future cashflow. Without connecting business performance to token value, you’re left with “branded paper”—worthless unless you believe in an “attention economy” where tokens appreciate simply because others might buy them. He’s been tweeting about the necessity of dividends, buybacks, or revenue sharing since 2021, insisting protocols need to take their token economics as seriously as equity in traditional companies.
The Library: A No-Price-Talk Community
Founded in 2022, The Library operates under one strict rule: no trading or price discussion. The Discord focuses on tokenomics, product strategy, go-to-market execution, and helping founders build. It’s become a refuge for protocol founders tired of “wen token” questions, traditional finance professionals who find the culture familiar, and anyone exhausted by constant speculation.
By explicitly defining what they’re not—a trading chat—The Library created a stronger sense of identity than most communities achieve through positive statements alone. When newcomers try discussing charts, they typically leave quickly because nobody engages.
They’re launching a 1-of-1 NFT collection with Utopia, auctioning pieces to raise funds. Proceeds get staked through The Library’s validator, with earnings reinvested into companies via a syndicate structure. Rather than a traditional fund where a group makes collective decisions, individual Library team members invest in deals and write up their thesis. Other members can opt in or pass based on their own research. It’s angel investing with built-in community support—though Gaius emphasizes most angel deals go to zero, so this is play money territory.
His role has become listening to talented developers explain what they’re building during weekly meetings. For someone who came to crypto for infrastructure, getting front-row access to builders working on Solana’s next generation of products is more exciting than watching charts.
Developer Culture and the Next Wave
Both hosts celebrate Solana’s developer-first culture. During the bear market, many developers kept building in their free time—nights and weekends—because they genuinely cared about the ecosystem’s success. This passion can’t be replicated by corporate development teams working for paychecks. The protocols dominating today—Jupiter, Tensor, Kamino—were heads-down throughout 2022-2023 when everything felt hopeless.
Gaius mentions the Backpack team specifically: they lost 90% of their treasury on FTX and kept building anyway. Now they operate one of the largest centralized exchanges. They deserve every success coming their way.
The challenge ahead is maintaining this grit as the ecosystem matures and early builders gain wealth. Solana must avoid becoming like Ethereum—too expensive, too elitist, where having money makes people stop hustling. The tone gets set from the top: Anatoly (Toly) constantly challenges developers on Twitter about technical details, pushing everyone to ship meaningful improvements rather than incremental updates. When Solana announces something new like Firedancer or Agave, it’s not 10% better—it’s 100x better.
With changing government attitudes toward crypto and regulatory clarity improving, real talent is now willing to risk their reputations building on Solana. These new developers are being welcomed by veterans who spent years tinkering on the side, creating a powerful mix of fresh perspective and institutional knowledge.
Ecosystem Maturation and Looking Forward
The recent Accelerate conference in New York symbolized Solana’s transition. People wore suits without irony. The Stripe crypto executive spoke on stage. It felt like a traditional finance conference that happened to be about blockchain—mature, professional, legitimate. This stands in stark contrast to 2021’s scrappy NFT community vibe.
Gaius believes mid-2025 isn’t “early” anymore—it’s the end of early. Institutional buying, mainstream attention, and global recognition mean the window for positioning in foundational infrastructure is narrowing. But the upside remains enormous: traditional finance represents roughly a quarter of global GDP, running on 1950s technology. The addressable market for better settlement infrastructure is massive even without considering moonshot scenarios like Bitcoin replacing the dollar.
Thomas reflects on the psychological difficulty of holding through 2022-2023. Solana at $10 felt devastating. The slow grind from $20 to $30-40 took nearly eight months. Charts don’t capture the sentiment—other ecosystems mocking Solana as the “poor chain,” the constant pressure to capitulate. Yet those who kept DCA-ing through the darkness are now positioned perfectly for the next phase.
They discuss dollar debasement briefly, with Gaius mentioning reading about Weimar Republic hyperinflation where people needed wheelbarrows of cash to buy bread. The early signs were just rising house prices—a parallel to today. But he doesn’t get deep into monetary theory, preferring to focus on the practical reality: crypto infrastructure works better than legacy systems, adoption is accelerating, and owning foundational assets through this transition creates wealth.
Final Thoughts and Life Balance
Gaius reveals he has three kids, joking that his six-year-old daughter tells neighbors his job is “taking his phone and saying good morning to people for money.” She’s not wrong—though he clarifies it’s “GM,” not “good morning.” The logistics of three children are “horrendous,” he admits, but they keep him grounded.
His routine balances The Vault’s operations, angel investing through The Library, supporting founders, and family life. It’s a full 168 hours per week. Despite the intensity, he maintains his core message: be kind, support builders, stake your SOL, ignore influencers, and take advantage of this unprecedented opportunity to build generational wealth by simply holding infrastructure while the world adopts it.
Thomas wraps by praising Gaius as one of the few reasonable voices on crypto Twitter—someone focused on fundamentals rather than hype cycles. The conversation reinforces that while trading content dominates social media because it generates engagement, the real wealth gets built by people who tune out the noise and stay focused on the long-term thesis playing out in real-time.
The episode opens with Thomas welcoming Oh Me from Kyzzen, who announces their upcoming NFT collection called “Kai-aka” (Japanese for “the world”). The collection features anime art supported by AI and will be a fully utility-focused project, giving holders premium exclusive access to Kyzzen’s data aggregation and analytics tools.
Kyzzen’s Three-Year Journey and Evolution
Oh Me explains that what users see today on Kyzzen represents three years of “blood, sweat, and tears” with constant learning and community feedback. He initially thought he knew the right way to onboard people to crypto, but slowly realized his assumptions were wrong. The platform started primarily focused on the NFT space, and when they finished that build last year, Oh Me took significant time to reassess their direction.
The Fundamental Realization
After deep reflection, Oh Me arrived at two critical conclusions:
Everyone wants to come into crypto to make money
People are motivated to learn and explore if it presents a money-making opportunity
This led to a major pivot: they stripped everything from the website that didn’t directly correlate to making money and transformed from a standard data aggregation platform into an opportunity aggregation platform. Now 80% of links on Kyzzen connect directly to different ways of making money on Solana—tokens, NFTs, DeFi, DePin, airdrops, bounties, and more.
The NFT Meta and Solana’s Evolution
Thomas and Oh Me discuss how Kyzzen started focusing on NFTs because that’s what Solana was in its early days. A couple of years ago, there wasn’t much DeFi or many tokens—everyone wanted NFTs and detailed information about every aspect of projects and rarities. As Solana shifted and grew with different metas, having all those different sections became necessary. Oh Me notes that his biggest problem now is how congested the navigation bar has become due to all the opportunities blossoming on Solana.
The Steep Learning Curve
Oh Me joined Solana at the start of February 2021 when things were simple—you could spend a couple of days and get a rough feel for the ecosystem. Today, the learning curve is steeper than ever with so much to explore. Kyzzen’s job is to hold users’ hands through the process, not just with explorers but also through Kyzzen Academy courses.
Onboarding Philosophy and Discovery
Thomas raises an important challenge: new users always come toward the end of the current meta. People arrive at the top of the meme coin cycle, buy the top, and experience losses. Oh Me calls this “tuition” that almost everyone pays. He emphasizes that Kyzzen isn’t trying to give users generational wealth or point out 1000x tokens—plenty of platforms claim to do that.
Financial Freedom vs. Generational Wealth
Oh Me reveals Kyzzen’s new vision and mission (just released on their About Us page): “To empower users with the knowledge and opportunities to achieve financial freedom on Solana and beyond.” The keywords are “financial freedom”—a very different concept from “generational wealth.”
Kyzzen isn’t here to show speculative opportunities where you risk hard-earned savings. Instead, they focus on sustainable opportunities that work in both bull and bear markets: DeFi yield, DePin opportunities, and other ways to earn that don’t require extreme risk. Their primary target audience includes people from Asia and Latin America, where these “smaller” opportunities can be extremely meaningful—like during the play-to-earn era when people stopped driving Uber because they made more playing games.
The Stablecoin Use Case
The conversation shifts to real-world assets and stablecoins. Oh Me explains that stablecoins aren’t just pegged currency with no upside—many new stablecoins incentivize liquidity provision with their own tokens, airdrops, and questing opportunities. Thomas notes that stablecoin yield is roughly 100x better than traditional savings accounts (later correcting this as an exaggeration, but still significantly larger). This represents a clear path to financial freedom, especially for people in countries with unstable currencies.
The Six Ways to Make Money in Crypto
Oh Me shares a breakthrough framework he developed while waiting for a flight in Dubai. He spent three hours writing down every way he could think of to make money in crypto—over 100 different methods. Then he realized all of them could be categorized into just 6-7 fundamental ways:
Liquidity Provision – Supplying liquidity to pools
Staking – Locking tokens for rewards
Airdrops – Receiving token distributions
Universal Application
This framework applies to every sector—gaming, meme coins, NFTs, DeFi. Most projects ultimately aim to launch their own cryptocurrency, so the ways to make money follow these same patterns regardless of sector. Oh Me argues this perspective makes life much easier because you stop limiting yourself by sector. The DeFi maxi who ignores meme coins is denying themselves opportunities since the earning mechanisms are fundamentally the same.
Thomas connects this to Anatoly Yakovenko’s perspective that “it all comes down to tokens.” Oh Me offers a different take: it all comes down to wanting to make money—users don’t care which tokens they get, they just want to get paid.
The Project-User Mismatch
Oh Me finds it shocking that two parties exist in crypto: retail users looking to make money and projects wanting to reward users for participation. Yet somehow these parties struggle to meet. Over the past 3-4 years, Kyzzen has featured 140+ Solana projects, and many contact Oh Me about contests or incentives that aren’t getting traction. Some offers are incredibly generous—paper trading competitions with no risk and real rewards—but lack visibility. Kyzzen’s role is to matchmake projects that want to incentivize users with users seeking those incentives.
Early Protocol Usage and Airdrops
Thomas emphasizes that using protocols early is the best way to understand the industry and potentially receive rewards. If you’re launching a protocol, you’ll likely incentivize usage through rewards. He shares that being an early user of Solana protocols and continuing to use them led to really good airdrops—not necessarily farming, just genuine usage.
Oh Me’s advice: crypto works weirdly. Random protocols you casually try can reward you significantly, while heavily hyped projects can disappoint. He shares participating in a hyped airdrop where he invested 100 SOL and received less than the gas fee to claim. Meanwhile, Jito gave people who staked 2 JitoSOL around $8,000 or more—life-changing money for many.
Research and Portfolio Strategy
Oh Me’s best advice:
Do as much research as possible—research pays off
Stay aware of opportunities
Spread out your portfolio—don’t concentrate only on super-hyped projects
Super-hyped projects are usually oversubscribed anyway
Stay safe first—it doesn’t matter how much money you make if you get drained
Handle your security properly
Risk Management in Early Protocols
Thomas notes that early protocol usage comes with risk. When you provide liquidity to new protocols with small TVL, that’s a honeypot where people try to exploit vulnerabilities. Crypto is adversarial—if someone can exploit a protocol, they will.
Oh Me identifies the real enemies: Your number one and number two enemies are your own greed and your own carelessness—not scammers. Scammers can’t get your money if you’re not greedy and not careless. When people get scammed, they should learn: “Was I too greedy? Was I careless? What can I do better next time?”
Personal Behavioral Indicators
Oh Me shares his background in the investment industry doing stock trading. Early on, he developed a behavioral indicator: if he starts losing sleep at night, he’s too greedy. If he’s checking his portfolio constantly while working at night, he needs to sell some positions. You should only invest amounts you can let go of completely—in crypto, you could lose everything tomorrow.
Thomas adds his personal “greed index”:
Taking screenshots of your portfolio = sell 10-20% immediately
Explaining protocols or coins to his wife excitedly = time to sell (he caught the local top of BONK this way)
Oh Me confirms this is a meme—when influencers share profits on Twitter, they’re likely about to lose it because they can’t bring themselves to sell while in “greedy mode.”
Know Thyself
From Kyzzen Academy’s first 40 courses (written by Oh Me), the first tip for evaluating projects is: Know thyself. You must thoroughly understand your behaviors, thinking patterns, strengths, and weaknesses. Know what you have fundamental understanding of and what you don’t. This makes life much easier in crypto.
Oh Me only joins communities where either:
He’s learning a lot, or
He feels he’s contributing a lot
Personal development is the most important thing for long-term success. Near-term wins don’t matter—what matters is learning to trade long-term.
Current Market Cycle Position
Thomas expresses cautious bullish sentiment, feeling we’re getting ready to go up more—not quite at the top yet but with significant upside potential. He keeps a small “gambling amount” and has a plan: when it exceeds a certain threshold, sell it for Bitcoin or stable assets.
Oh Me’s advice: Make your wife your accountability partner. Tell her the plan and update her regularly. She’ll be better at disciplining you than you are yourself. Having friends in the space is important not just for alpha but for mental health—people who relate to you in good times and bad times. Use them as a sounding board: don’t ask “should I buy or sell?” but rather “I’m thinking of buying/selling for these reasons.”
The Value of Financial Advisors (or Not)
Oh Me reveals he doesn’t rely on traditional financial advisors despite coming from investment banking. The people he values are those who have been burned many times and have intrinsic knowledge of how projects act—telltale signs you can’t get from balance sheets and reports. Financial advisors entering crypto thinking they’re great stock-pickers “know nothing.” Oh Me only relies on his experience. He’s quite cynical but emphasizes: it’s not about stereotypical financial advisor friends, it’s about people with real crypto battle scars.
Thomas agrees—stock picking wasn’t the difficult part in investment banking; portfolio management and risk management are what create sustainable growth.
NFT Launch Strategy and Timing
Thomas notes that launching an NFT during the token/meme coin meta seems contrarian. Oh Me explains this is a nuanced decision with multiple factors:
Selfish Reasons
Oh Me’s personal desire to experience founding an NFT project. He joined the Solarians community (second-ever Solana NFT, first on-chain generative collection) in April/May 2021. He loved the community—there was no fighting because Solarians was alone for three months. Everyone genuinely wanted to experience and explore together, sharing lunch photos and playing Discord games. Many are still his best friends in Web3.
When the Solarians team finished their roadmap and said they were done, Oh Me proposed continuing. He led one of the first community takeovers (CTO) on Solana, hand-picking four community members for his team. They built out the project for two more years. That team also built Digital Eyes, the first open NFT marketplace on Solana (launched August 2021, before Magic Eden). Oh Me took over Digital Eyes at the start of 2022.
Lessons from Running Projects
Oh Me restructured the Digital Eyes team to focus on onboarding and education rather than trading (which had 20 marketplaces solving it). He created Kyzzen while working on Solarians for 2-3 years, taking on the Singapore Ambassador role for Monkey Kingdom. He observed founders’ mistakes and experiments firsthand.
He feels there’s untapped potential in NFTs that he wants to explore. It’s partially selfish—he wants to test ideas he’s always thought about but never had his own project for. He wants to push the space forward, fully aware he’ll make mistakes.
Practical Reasons
Kyzzen has finished base builds for exploration, discovery, and onboarding, plus aggregating basic opportunities. They’re now working on advanced analytics and alpha—portfolio analysis, alpha sourcing, notifications, and optimizations. Some tools are too advanced, complex, and intensive to offer at scale for free. They can’t serve 100,000 profiles with high-performance products, but can handle maybe 3,000-5,000 in real-time.
Rather than uncertain subscription models ($25/month for up to 10,000 accounts), limiting to a controllable NFT holder size ensures they can deliver the highest-level experience. It’s not about cost—it’s about delivery quality.
Community Building
NFTs help build community among users who support Kyzzen most. Even though it’s not the best time to launch an NFT, it makes sense for them.
NFT Community vs. Token Community
Oh Me explains a key difference: if he launched only a token, it would attract people who just want to trade the token. NFT communities are fundamentally different—they’re more fun. This stems from NFTs’ non-fungibility offering an additional identification layer. When you see another Monkey holder, you get excited about their traits. Even though you’re all monkeys, each has unique identity. This creates more fun trading dynamics with rarity concepts. Oh Me prefers having an NFT community over a purely token community—it’s more fun.
Token Launch Economics
Thomas raises the challenge of good protocols launching tokens wrong—the token drops 90% while the business thrives. There’s misalignment because you can’t directly tie business value to tokens (that’s a security). You need buybacks or burning mechanisms. Maybe the solution is allowing companies to give out actual securities.
Oh Me notes this happens more often than people realize, usually because teams rush planning (not necessarily launch, but getting deliverables). Once you announce something on Twitter, people hold you to it. Many protocols fall into this situation. He’s very cautious about regulations as a Singaporean—he plays it safe, is “by the book” by nature. Regulations exist for good reason: to protect users. They may limit gambling ability, but your gambling ability isn’t in anyone else’s interest.
Oh Me appreciates protocols that play safe because it shows the team is knowledgeable with long-term mindset. He’s not supportive of any protocol with a “fuck it” attitude—those founders don’t stay long.
Regulatory Environment and Market Volatility
This cycle has been more volatile and surprising than expected due to political upheavals. Oh Me thinks it’s been good for degens because volatility creates trading opportunities (though he’s not a degen himself). This cycle requires paying much more attention to news—not just crypto news but executive orders, lawsuits, ETF approvals, and geopolitical events. Last cycle was simple: China bans crypto = sell, Elon tweets about crypto = buy.
Thomas notes that from the US perspective, the regulatory environment has been incredibly bullish. All lawsuits against major crypto companies have been dropped (some legitimately, some not), ETFs fully approved, companies loading Bitcoin and ETH into treasuries, now moving to Solana. He feels Solana was particularly held back by regulation—named a security in the Coinbase lawsuit. Many Solana businesses couldn’t get bank accounts or function as normal businesses. Now those regulations are being lifted, allowing more money to access the ecosystem and businesses to move onshore instead of offshore. Thomas expects this to escalate things significantly over the next 1-2 years, independent of macro factors.
Oh Me refrains from commenting on US politics as a non-US resident, but acknowledges the US takes a leadership position—the SEC and Federal Reserve significantly influence crypto cycles. People entering crypto must know it’s not just about tokens going up or down; macro factors have never been more significant.
International Regulatory Developments
Thomas asks about Asian regulations. Oh Me refrains from commenting on Singapore specifically but notes Vietnam is opening up—huge because they’re a massive dev resource, especially for Solana. Superteam Vietnam and McDAOs Vietnam are huge; many Solana devs are based there. Japan’s Solana scene is also building up, though he’s uncertain about their regulations.
Unfortunately, politics and regulations seem to shift with the cycle—now that we’re in a bullish cycle, governments are more incentivized to pay attention and find ways to help their countries benefit while keeping citizens safe.
Responsibility and Market Maturity
Oh Me emphasizes: The onus is not in the government’s hands—it’s in ours. The way every one of us acts, especially founders and prominent figures, directly impacts how governments react. The less scams we support, the less reckless gambling we do, and the more we show the space has matured over time, the easier things get. You can’t want to be fully degen then cry to regulators about being scammed.
Twitter Spaces: Educational Initiative
Kyzzen runs Twitter Spaces twice weekly (Tuesdays and Thursdays) with 140+ Solana projects featured across 34 sessions this year. There are six or seven rotating topics:
Sector topics: DeFi, DePin, AI, NFTs
General topics: Builders, State of Solana (current affairs), Community (vibing)
They try to find the best subject matter experts for each topic. The spaces are popular because every project in crypto is starving for visibility—there’s so much noise. Kyzzen tries to pick projects with unique insights to educate on specific topics.
Volunteer Hosts
When co-host Sunny had to step back, many people volunteered to help including Thomas, SMS Easy, Simple, Andre, and Treats from Capybara. Oh Me found it heartwarming that so many volunteered for this educational initiative because it has positive impact on the community.
Thomas notes these spaces are valuable—hearing technical AI and DeFi conversations where even Oh Me admits he has no value to add and just learns. Oh Me always attends even when not speaking much because he wants to learn from the experts he personally invited.
Favorite Crypto Content
Oh Me built a tool aggregating top Twitter Spaces in Solana and broader crypto. His two favorite spaces (with shoutouts):
Crypto Eight – Weekly Twitter Space on Wednesdays at 3-4pm UTC with stellar panelist casts on-topic discussions
OL’s Team Daily Bone Podcast – Oh Me’s daily gym listening, featuring Easy, Clemente, and Peel with very good market commentary and opportunity discussions
Thomas used to listen to Daily Bone 2-3 years ago when there wasn’t much Solana content—they had spaces at 5am and midday. He loved it but stopped because: (1) timing was tough, and (2) they’d discuss real-time info that would change by their later space, requiring corrections. This inspired him to start his researched podcast where nothing needs retracting.
Oh Me respects Thomas going alone—with spaces, he gets help from volunteer hosts, but Thomas sources speakers and pushes educational content solo. In education, we’re not competitors—everyone wins together. They both support anyone wanting to do podcasts, blogs, or courses.
Streaming and Creator Monetization
Thomas asks about new streaming services like Pump.fun streaming and Bonk partnering with Kick—the creator capital markets where creators supposedly monetize streams with tokens.
Oh Me admits upfront: he’s a boomer and doesn’t do much streaming, so he’s not well-versed in market intricacies. He understands the attention economy but isn’t hyped about it. Crypto unfortunately is predominantly based on attention. While there are worthy experiments and innovations, he has very little faith the space can conduct itself responsibly in streaming. Last cycle saw people locking themselves in cages and even suicides on stream.
Skepticism About Streaming Investments
Oh Me struggles to understand investing based on streams. He won’t say “no” because he has no right to tell anyone how to spend money, but questions the investment thesis. He’s not a fan of “tokenize everything”—this whole cycle has been about tokenizing everything, but not everything is worth tokenizing. He jokingly asks if he can tokenize his fart.
There could be opportunity if you can sustainably pick winners from streaming and identify the meta, but he lacks that skill. He acknowledges some friends may have this skill—it’s research in a sense. Research isn’t just reading whitepapers and economic studies; “do your own research” means taking time to understand something and deciding if it’s worth investing.
The Personal Fit Question
While Oh Me isn’t a fan of the tokenize-everything or streaming meta, he acknowledges there could be alpha and competitive advantage for those who develop the skill. But returning to “know thyself”: there are many opportunities out there, so you don’t have to force yourself to understand everything. Focus time on opportunities you understand better.
Thomas admits this is somewhat personal—he feels there’s something interesting in monetizing audiences. Top podcasts take ads for protocols with no listener alignment just for money. From an investment perspective, if you’re looking at streams, you need to develop an edge in identifying opportunities and have fast fingers to enter positions for maximum return. There’s lots of room for error when you’re late or make wrong decisions, though Oh Me understands the excitement—it’s more interesting than charts on TradingView.
Encouraging Experimentation
Oh Me encourages experimentation despite disagreeing. Last cycle’s experiments made users much more savvy. This cycle is different because many are from the 2021 cycle, and 2017 cycle people learned even more. The industry’s users and investors are becoming more intelligent and savvy—not just about meta changes but about themselves. Oh Me encourages experimentation; this particular topic just isn’t for him.
The Value of Good Content and Research
Thomas notes he’d pay for good content with good alpha. He also thinks people have it easier now for research—good sites exist like Kyzzen, and AI helps (though it has crypto limitations). You can ask ChatGPT how wallets work or best ways to protect seed phrases—basics that previously had huge barriers are now quickly accessible.
Thomas shares his 2016 Bitcoin experience—his security was terrible and he’s surprised he didn’t lose anything. Now there are hardware wallets, Solana phones (functioning as hardware wallets), and multisig everywhere. More products, more information, and more people who’ve been through cycles talking about the right approaches.
Kyzzen’s Research Approach
Oh Me clarifies Kyzzen doesn’t do research in the traditional sense—they don’t research the best tokens or opportunities for users. Their approach is two-pronged:
Data Identification and Presentation
First, they identify all relevant data that’s significant in opportunity decision-making. When looking at DeFi, what information matters most? They present it in the most accessible, visually understandable manner, trusting users understand what they’re looking at.
Education
Second, if you don’t know what to look at, education comes in through courses giving basic layouts (like how DeFi yield works, what to look at) and Twitter Spaces with subject matter experts answering questions and providing deeper insights into developments.
No Claims of Best Research
Kyzzen doesn’t presume to be the best researchers because no one is. On Wall Street, if fund managers are honest, their analysts are wrong 50% of the time. There’s no research catering to your personal strategy, portfolio, and style. What Kyzzen can do is give strong fundamental understanding of how opportunities and products work and present the best data in the fastest, most reliable manner.
NFT Holder Utility: Customization
Without revealing too much, Oh Me wants to build an experience where NFT holders can customize what tailors to them in terms of opportunities. Different people have different approaches.
He gives an NFT lending example: Early days offered 180% APY at 70% loan-to-value for seven days—insane numbers. Within his team, approaches varied: Oh Me (the boomer) only took 75% APY seven-day loans for safety, while teammates would chase 240% APY 14-day loans on blue chips like Mad Lads, accepting more risk.
The same data can be interpreted completely differently by different people. Kyzzen spent all year aggregating data; now for NFT holders, they want to create a customizable experience where you decide your interests and create dashboards and tools that make you more efficient—hopefully surfacing opportunities catering to you specifically.
The Alpha Myth
Oh Me states clearly: Any startup telling you they’ll give you alpha for 100x returns is lying—or they control the market or are inside trading. For Kyzzen, staying safe comes first. If users feel they can contribute or learn a lot in the community, stay there. Personal development is most important for the long term.
Community Value and the Ducks Chat
Thomas mentions he likes being in chats where he’s the dumbest person. The chat he returns to repeatedly is the Ducks chat—specifically the Nobles chat requiring 20+ Ducks. When conversation gets going and something’s happening, really smart people say important things. He gets more knowledge from that chat than anywhere else—the community side is incredibly important, which sounds like what Oh Me is building.
Oh Me fully agrees and only joins communities fitting two criteria:
Where he’s learning a lot
Where he feels he’s contributing a lot
In the onboarding field, there are communities of newcomers where if he can contribute meaningfully, he’ll stay. But personal development is most important—all these near-term wins don’t matter. What matters is understanding how to thrive long-term. We are all early, even now with Trump as president. We don’t have to rush. When we rush, we make the most mistakes.
Four Key Takeaways
Oh Me offers one key takeaway from the conversation: Don’t rush, don’t be greedy, and don’t be careless. If you can do that, and if you’re lucky enough to find reliable friends in the space, those four things mean you’re pretty much set.
Long-Term Mentality
Thomas emphasizes: Play long-term games with long-term people. This is so hard in crypto because there’s constant news—every day is life-changing, seeing someone post about making a million on a meme coin makes you want to chase. But long-term, none of that matters. Long-term is: protect your assets, stick with quality assets, think long-term. Take small gambles—we’re in crypto, so have fun. Thomas keeps a burner wallet with fun SOL and will throw a SOL at something fun, but not making life-changing decisions on incredibly speculative plays. Sticking with long-term mentality in crypto has incredible upside, so even just sticking around is half the battle.
Oh Me agrees, noting most people don’t share this mentality, but it’s human instinct. One conference speaker said something that rang true: “You make all your money in the bear and count your money in the bull cycle.” If you’re not positioned during the bear market, you’re just chasing gains in the bull, risking everything to make something. Long-term is better. Bitcoin at $120K might not drop back to $50K, but from cycle history, it’s a possibility. If you’re patient and manage risk proportionately, maintain some liquidity, you’ll almost definitely find better buying prices. Obviously Bitcoin could go to $150K tomorrow, but different strokes for different folks.
Sector Rotation Strategy
Thomas notes that when Oh Me mentioned different site sections (DeFi, DePin, meme coins, NFTs), his mind instantly went to checking sections that aren’t hot right now. Meme coins are probably saturated—maybe skip heavy research there. But what are hot DeFi protocols? If DeFi comes back because people suddenly care about fundamentals, brushing up on DeFi and seeing what you lack exposure to could have big potential. Big opportunity exists in what’s not hot right now.
Oh Me agrees and emphasizes having multiple educational resources. Kyzzen is a small team with limits. He shares reading an interesting article (possibly by Milk Road) about a potentially smarter play: instead of buying Solana with ETF approvals and digital asset treasuries launching, buy protocols benefiting from this—the banking sector. ETFs and treasuries must stake or lend somewhere, so protocols like Kamino or Jupiter benefiting from higher TVL could be plays. For Oh Me, this wasn’t obvious—he hadn’t considered it. It’s always good to spread educational resources and updates widely; there are lots of interesting perspectives and thoughts.
Echo Chambers and Twitter Algorithm Problems
Thomas notes he gets too caught up in particular ideas, starts liking certain things, then creates his own echo chamber. You need to get outside it because it’s too easy to get caught up. He asks about Oh Me’s Twitter algorithm—his is bad these days, seeing no tweets he wants, barely any crypto content, just insane stuff. He doesn’t get alpha off Twitter anymore unless in Oh Me’s spaces.
Oh Me thinks all the questing and engagement farming somehow made it too easy for bots to dominate the noise. The toughest thing in crypto now is finding clean signals. This is why crypto is powerful—on-chain data is incorruptible and factual. Kyzzen pulls purely from on-chain data and protocol APIs to cut through noise. With aggregation, they provide context: seeing attention on a specific protocol isn’t useful unless compared with competitors. Are they all going up simultaneously? That’s one of Kyzzen’s biggest value-adds through aggregation—showing all best USDC yields, not just the loudest platform, based on objective metrics like best utilization, over-collateralization, and consistent APY.
The NFT Collection: Final Details
Launch Timeline
The whitelist and launch details will come soon. Oh Me can’t say much more, but promises the whitelist will be very fair—anyone who deserves a whitelist will likely get one. They know who they want in their community:
Anyone supporting their vision to improve onboarding, discoverability, and education for Solana
Anyone supporting the NFT space
Anyone meaningfully contributing to Solana
If you firmly fall within one of these three categories, odds are very high you’ll get whitelisted.
Not a Hype Project
They’re not a project going for extremely limited supply to pump floor prices to 20 SOL. To be clear: they’re building many tools requiring controlled group size. People with NFTs will hopefully really enjoy the utility experience. If you’re a Solana maxi, always looking for opportunities, or enjoy data-driven decisions, this will probably be the most useful NFT for you. They’re looking at data, analytics, and opportunities from a unique perspective—something no other platform does (if they were, there’d be no value-add).
Fair and Responsible Launch
The launch will be very fair. They know how to execute but want to give the wider ecosystem breathing room to understand what they’re achieving: what art looks like, what utility provides, who the team is, what they’re doing—before hyping. It would be irresponsible to announce “we’re minting in one week” and create FOMO. Their intention is: understand what Kyzzen is doing, support them, their partners, and Solana, and if you do, they want you.
Four Years Bootstrapped
Oh Me emphasizes: they’ve been bootstrapped for almost four years now. This isn’t so much about raising money as finding a community of users who will support them and can benefit from what they’re building. If users don’t benefit, they’re more disappointed in themselves than anything. They’ve spent enormous effort and will be very careful and fair.
The Art: Hand-Drawn Meets AI
Oh Me is excited to discuss the art’s unique concept. About nine months ago, he saw many projects launching purely AI-generated NFTs. It saddened him because he really enjoys NFTs for supporting creators—artists who always struggled in the real world finding galleries, paying ridiculous fees, doing their own marketing. NFTs offered secondary royalties on-chain, fair launch platforms, marketplaces with visibility.
AI as Tool vs. Competitor
Then AI came in, and AI does art pretty well. Oh Me has always been a big fellow of artists and debated with them: Why haven’t you explored AI as a tool instead of a competitor? He went to ComicCon specifically looking at anime/manga art (he’s a big fan), speaking to almost 25 different artists at an Asian comic con. About 15 artists told him to fuck off when they heard he worked on NFTs. The remaining ten were angry about AI. There’s obvious hostility between machine output and human creators.
Oh Me wanted to understand if AI could provide value-add. Coming from the NFT space, he understands how art is generated—different traits drawn and layered on top of each other. He identified two obvious restrictions:
Limited Variation – Because traits layer on top of each other, there’s limited diversity. A tall skinny character’s t-shirt won’t fit a short fat base character—they obviously wouldn’t fit, restricting collection diversity.
Detailing Issues – Things like shadows: Afro hair creates different shadows than a bald head.
The Hybrid Approach
This is where AI really helps. Kyzzen commissioned artists to draw all traits in the collection—base collections with different facial shapes and body sizes. They trained AI models purely on those hand-drawn traits plus some finished works. They created a collection completely believable as drawn by the same artist in his style, except it’s incredibly diverse—5,000-7,000 different characters of all shapes and sizes.
The World of Kyzzen
“Kai-aka” is an “isekai” genre (the other world/another world) in anime—could be virtual reality or fantasy world series. The World of Kyzzen features digital avatars in that world. They wanted a collection so diverse that there’s literally something for everyone—whatever race, size, face shape, or clothing style. Oh Me spent weeks going through fashion shopping websites and homeless blogs picking the most relatable accessories and clothing items so anyone in the world can look at Kai-aka and find something representing them—”that’s fucking me, right?”
Rarity vs. Popularity
Rarity will play less of a part—there aren’t many rare items. But there will be more popular items by nature (polo t-shirts, headphones). More sought-after items exist not because of rarity but because people want them. This makes the collection more accessible.
Technical Innovation
Oh Me thinks they might be one of the first to have custom shadows for a hand-drawn collection—every character has a different shadow behind them, which is the main differentiation from other anime collections. Users can check out samples at world.kyzzen.io.
Utility Deep Dive: Portfolio Management Layers
Beyond art, Oh Me spent years in banking and investments, giving him fundamental understanding of portfolio management and investments. Looking at average users’ portfolio management workflows, he identified an input-output model:
Input: Alpha Delivery
How do they present alpha in a timely manner? Kyzzen has proven they can—they literally aggregate everything across every sector (tokens, NFTs, airdrops, DePin, DeFi). They have the data; it’s about getting that data to users through alpha alerts and portfolio tools.
Output: Portfolio Management Layers
Most people might not be conscious of different layers within portfolio management:
Tracking Portfolio – Seeing overview statistics
Portfolio Updates – Being notified of changes
Analyzing Portfolio – How it’s been trending, risk factors, audits
Risk Alerts – Being alerted on risks (token liquidity drops, lending pool liquidity decreases indicating potential bank runs)
Portfolio Optimization – Finding ways to stay safe, optimize returns, stay updated, and find new ways to take advantage
The Ultimate Utility Promise
Oh Me states: as a utility player, without doubt they will be the most useful NFT for your journey. They might not be the one where you make the most money from—that’s not the desire. They’re not trying to make mints 3x. But they’re trying to build community—if you believe their utility is useful, that’s what matters.
Eight Blurred Roadmap Items
Big alpha drop: On September 1st (last Friday before end of August), they tweeted eight different roadmap items that were blurred out. All eight will be revealed before the NFT launch. If you ask “wen mint?”, pay attention to that—once all eight are done and reviewed, that indicates timing.
Many of those eight will be for NFT holders but will be opened to the public first to try and battle-test before making them holder-exclusive. Try those tools, and if you think they’re useful, that’s when you should decide to mint. Oh Me is very convinced they will be because these are his own personal wants—tools he wants that no one else has, so he’s building them for himself and the wider community.
The Team: Four Years, Zero Attrition
One last note on the team: Oh Me shared his history, but reveals his team has been the exact same team since four years ago—zero attrition. They have a pretty decent, sufficiently-sized team, and they’re like family. When he recruited the team, most were new hires. They’ve really bonded and delivered. After four years in crypto, it’s hard to find a team that can say it’s been the same team for four years.
Oh Me loves them so much and is really proud of them. The pride and joy that they’re finally doing this after four years—two and a half of which were bear market, absolutely depressing, with team members surely considering leaving many times—but they stuck through it. Now they’re finding it’s launch time.
Oh Me would love to introduce these people to the community once they launch. If you’re looking for a safe project that can sustain itself long-term, they check many right boxes: team, art, utility, marketing power (140 projects featured), and sustainability. They’ve never raised a dollar in four years—think about that.
The Ask
If this sounds right, reach out—Oh Me’s DMs are open, the team’s DMs are open. They’d love to share more. Stop into one of the spaces Tuesday or Thursday.
Upcoming Content Tease
Oh Me got excited about one more thing he forgot: they’ve been experimenting with AI and training for about a year now. The content users are about to see across the next four weeks is going to be really interesting—short of streaming (a whole different ballgame). It’s going to be really fun.
Oh Me was playing around creating all kinds of crazy content—AI generated and hand-drawn. A big question he’s trying to solve: Can they avail those tools to NFT holders so they can have fun with the avatars as well? If you’re buying a digital representation of yourself and can have the tools he’s playing with—it’s mind-blowing, he’s having so much fun. The art you see isn’t necessarily limited to just what you see—you might be able to have some fun with that, though he can’t confirm yet. He’s probably teasing more than his team is comfortable with.
NFTs Excel in Community and Long-Term Value Over Meme Coins: While meme coins dominate for quick speculation and liquidity, NFTs like Saga Monkes build genuine camaraderie, collectibility, and legacy status. They appeal to those who enjoy art and communities rather than impulse flips, with Solana’s low fees enabling ethical airdrops and onboarding (e.g., Saga Monkes were airdropped to 8,505 early Saga phone holders, creating instant sentiment without sunk-cost fallacies).
Solana’s UX and Speed Revolutionized Crypto Adoption: Solana’s intuitive, affordable design (e.g., transactions under a penny) contrasts with Ethereum’s high gas fees, making it welcoming for newcomers. This enabled revolutionary experiences like self-custody, DeFi experimentation, and hardware integrations (e.g., Saga phone’s Seed Vault), drawing users from art collectors to DePIN participants.
DePIN and Hardware Like Saga/Seeker Signal Sustainable Utility: Projects like Helium (decentralized wireless with over 1M hotspots) show DePIN’s potential for real-world impact, but token sell pressure and saturation pose risks. The Saga phone (initially $1,000, later $599) and upcoming Seeker ($450–$500, shipping to 50+ countries) highlight Solana’s push for accessible devices, blending crypto with everyday tools like hardware wallets, though airdrop farming could dilute value.
Episode Summary: Solana Weekly with KRTV from Saga Monkeys
This episode features host Thomas Bahamas interviewing KRTV, creator of the Saga Monkeys NFT collection on Solana. They explore NFTs’ resurgence, Solana’s ecosystem advantages, meme coins vs. NFTs, DePIN challenges, the Saga phone’s history, and Saga Monkes’ origin. Recorded amid Solana’s price surge past $200, the discussion emphasizes long-term conviction over short-term hype. (Episode date: inferred pre-August 2025 based on transcript; Seeker phone not yet shipped.)
Market Sentiment: NFTs Catching a Bid Amid Meme Coin Dominance
KRTV notes NFTs are rebounding after a prolonged bear market, with collections pumping but retracing quickly due to holders cashing out liquidity tied up since 2021–2022.
Contrast with meme coins: Meme coins capture mindshare for fast gains but lack community depth; NFTs attract art lovers and collectors (e.g., replacing impulse buys). Solana’s early NFT scene was welcoming, like “Christmas morning” in Discords, fostering camaraderie absent in meme coin “hold/don’t sell” vibes.
Broader crypto evolution: Both guests trace their journeys from early Bitcoin/Dogecoin buys to Solana NFTs in late 2021, drawn by art, community, and global currency potential. Ethereum’s high fees deterred them; Solana’s affordability sparked interest.
Additional Context: Per searches, Solana NFTs differ from ETH ones due to meme coins siphoning SOL spending, leading to higher dilution but leverage opportunities for holders.
Solana’s Appeal: Speed, UX, and Onboarding Advantages
Solana’s low fees and instant transactions made blockchain feel “incentivized” vs. Ethereum’s gas optimization struggles. Guests recall sending $50 instantly without loss, feeling like an “extension of your hand” akin to Apple’s intuitiveness.
Onboarding via NFTs: Served as friendly intros to self-custody, staking, and DeFi; communities taught blockchain basics through fun interactions.
Reliability growth: Despite past outages, Solana improved rapidly, focusing on speed/UI when crypto lacked it. Recent updates (e.g., compute unit increases) fuel optimism.
Security and paper hands: Solana’s quick exits are a “feature, not a bug” for liquidity needs, contrasting slower chains like Base.
Additional Context: Solana’s ecosystem now includes 150M+ active addresses, with tools like Phantom Wallet evolving from clunky prototypes to seamless NFT displays.
DePIN, Tokenomics, and Real-World Utility
DePIN excitement: Projects like Helium offer decentralized cell networks ($20/month plans, over 1M subscribers globally), life-changing for underserved areas. Guests praise Helium’s free plans aiding single parents or villages (e.g., similar to Oxylabs powering Philippine electricity).
Challenges: Constant sell pressure from mining rewards creates “more sellers than buyers”; need better token sinks. Risk of saturation with fake DePIN (e.g., Alibaba-sourced hardware claiming utility without network contribution).
Token structures: Often designed to “go down only” via incentives to sell; contrasts with stablecoins’ PMF for cross-border transfers in regions with banking barriers.
Future: DePIN could evolve like NFTs/meme coins—egalitarian starts, then oversaturation. Top Solana DePIN include Render (GPU computing), Grass (AI data), Hivemapper (mapping), and Roam (WiFi).
Additional Context: Helium migrated to Solana in 2023 for scalability; other projects like Nosana (compute) and Dabba (networks) highlight Solana’s DePIN growth, with $10B+ market cap potential.
Saga Phones: From Bear Market Launch to Cultural Artifact
Saga history: Launched post-FTX crash (initial $1,000 price, dropped to $599); specs include 6.67″ OLED, 512GB storage, Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, Seed Vault for crypto. Poor initial sales; Bonk airdrop (30M tokens, ~$14–$20 value initially) made it “free,” selling out 20K units.
Cultural impact: Genesis Token (soulbound NFT) targeted early adopters, enabling airdrops. Guests view it as obligatory for Solana maxis, like owning the original iPhone.
Seeker preview: Successor (shipping Aug 4, 2025; $450–$500 preorder, 150K+ units); lighter, entry-level design for global access (e.g., impoverished regions). Aims for breakout apps exclusive to Solana Mobile stack, disrupting Apple/Google duopoly.
Advice for builders: Focus on Solana Mobile versions for optics and ecosystem push; avoid airdrop farming dilution with 150K supply.
Additional Context: Seeker supports dApps in payments/DeFi/DePIN/NFTs/AI/gaming; earned Solana ~$67.5M from sales, shipping to 50+ countries.
Saga Monkeys: Origin, Distribution, and Community Strength
Inception: KRTV created in Dec 2023 as a free airdrop to 8,505 activated Saga Genesis Token holders (pre-Bonk pump). Inspired by customizing Phantom Wallet avatars; used 16×16 generative art base for mobile optimization.
Design philosophy: Engineered to look proprietary (like Facebook defaults), scalable for thumbnails; compressed NFTs enabled cheap/free distribution.
Impact: Became #1 traded NFT cross-chain briefly; injected fun into bear market NFTs. Wave 2: 101 one-of-ones in Apr 2024. Future waves use “monkey merits” algorithm favoring active holders (e.g., boosted by Seeker tokens).
Community: Strong raiding culture, group chats; represents “class of 2021” conviction. No Discord initially; Twitter-focused. Avoids extraction—pure airdrops vs. paid mints.
Trading/Collectibility: Safe swap protocol for compressed NFTs; traits like crowns/halos drive OTC swaps. Checks all boxes: legacy, providence, culture.
Challenges: Death threats post-airdrop; dilution risks with larger supplies (e.g., no 150K Seeker Monkeys planned).
Additional Context: Floor price ~$316 (as of recent data); first generative collection for Saga holders, symbolizing Solana Mobile’s cultural zeitgeist.
Future Outlook: Resurgence, Events, and Advice
NFTs’ path: Shift to collectibles/communities over flips; like Counter-Strike cosmetics or Drip. Avoid “shitcoins with pictures”; focus on legacy (e.g., SMBs, Geckos).
Personal advice: Increase time horizons (5+ years); use NFTs as luxury flex post-wealth acquisition. Balance crypto with life—guests emphasize real friends from events like Breakpoint.
Where to connect: SagaMonkes on Twitter; sagamonkes.com for details.
Crypto’s Core Problem with Value Storage: Sid emphasizes that while blockchains excel at transparent ledgers (e.g., Bitcoin’s proof of work), they fail at securing value itself. Nirvana addresses this by making value algorithmic and tamper-proof, creating a “proof of value” where tokens like ANA have intrinsic liquidity and a floor price, preventing rug pulls or extreme volatility common in crypto.
Safety Rails for Speculation: Speculation isn’t inherently bad—it’s part of all assets, from gold to meme coins—but crypto amplifies risks due to 24/7 liquidity and hidden mechanics. Nirvana adds “seatbelts” like protocol-owned liquidity to ensure no catastrophic losses, allowing volatility while guaranteeing a minimum sell price, leading to emotional tranquility for holders.
ANA Token Mechanics as a True Store of Value: ANA is bought and sold directly from the protocol, not peer-to-peer markets, with 100% protocol-owned liquidity providing an infinite bid at a rising floor price (currently ~$3.68, up from $1 at launch). This unifies liquidity and value, turning euphoria into permanent gains without inflation or pre-mined tokens.
Yield from Real Usage, Not Inflation: Unlike most crypto assets that rely on emissions or giveaways, ANA generates yield through fees on buys, sells, and usage (e.g., borrowing), distributed directly to holders. This mirrors a thought experiment where Bitcoin fees go to holders, making ANA productive and aligned with long-term holding.
Disillusionment with Crypto Tokenomics and Future Expansions: Sid’s inspiration came from seeing behind-the-scenes grifts in token launches (e.g., VC deals, pre-sales). Nirvana avoids this by being grassroots and fair-launched. Upcoming Samsara will extend floor price mechanics to any asset (e.g., BONK, SOL), across blockchains, feeding fees back to ANA for sustained growth.
Full Breakdown of the Podcast
The podcast episode of Solana Weekly, hosted by Thomas (a.k.a. Thomas Bahamas), features an interview with Sid from Nirvana Finance. Recorded around early 2025 (based on references to recent Solana developments like ETFs and meme coins), the discussion dives into the Solana ecosystem’s growth, challenges with token value, and how Nirvana aims to revolutionize stores of value in crypto. The tone is casual and enthusiastic, blending humor (e.g., references to “fart coin”) with deep technical and philosophical insights. Sid shares his background, critiques current crypto practices, and explains Nirvana’s mechanics in detail. The episode runs long, reflecting genuine engagement, and ends with teases for future developments.
Introduction and Casual Banter
Thomas opens the show with a standard disclaimer (not financial advice) and excitement about Solana’s momentum, including the recent ETF approval and meme coin hype like BONK.
Sid is introduced as the guest from Nirvana Finance. They joke about owning Tesla stock in a Phantom wallet, meme coins like “fart coin,” and the absurdity of analyzing such assets technically.
This sets a lighthearted tone, contrasting the “madness” of Solana’s speculative side with Nirvana’s focus on stability and transparency.
Core Philosophy of Nirvana Finance
Sid describes Nirvana as providing “seatbelts” for speculation: It embraces volatility and growth but prevents disasters like bank runs, cascading liquidations, or rug pulls.
He argues speculation is neutral (even gold and USD are speculative), but crypto exacerbates risks due to 24/7 trading and lack of transparency in value mechanics (e.g., concentrated supply, hidden leverage).
Nirvana applies crypto’s principles—algorithms over humans, transparency, immutability—to value storage, not just ledgers. This creates “proof of value,” where assets have guaranteed liquidity and no “sword of Damocles” hanging over them.
Emotional benefit: Holders can “sleep at night” without constant monitoring, unlike meme coins where positions can evaporate overnight.
Critique of Crypto and Inspiration for Nirvana
Sid recounts his entry into crypto in 2020-2021 while at Google, building DeFi apps, winning a Solana hackathon, and attending Breakpoint 2021 in Lisbon.
He was disillusioned by VC pressure for unnecessary tokens, market maker deals, and the “ICO swerve” where projects launch to trap retail and exit scam.
Tokens like SOL and ETH struggle as stores of value because they’re “printed out of thin air” with no cost basis, leading to insider dumps. Bitcoin comes close due to its purity (no pre-mine), but even it separates network security from token value.
Solana-specific issues: Over-reliance on USDC for stability; Toly (Anatoly Yakovenko) publicly stating SOL isn’t a store of value; early protocols ruined by bad tokenomics and exploits (e.g., FTX farming and shorting tokens to zero).
Nirvana’s genesis: Focus on commoditizing value like digital gold, without equities, pie charts, or inflation. Every ANA token must be bought fairly through the protocol, ensuring real cost basis.
ANA Token Mechanics Explained
Floor Price: ANA has a true floor (currently ~$3.68, up from $1) backed by reserves. It’s not like NFT “floors” that drop; it’s infinite liquidity at that level—sell the entire supply, and the last token sells at the floor.
How It Works: Protocol-owned liquidity (100% algorithmic, no human market makers) acts as counterparty for all trades. Buys push price up (and floor eventually); sells can’t go below floor. Fees from transactions go to holders as yield.
Rising Floor: As demand swells reserves, the floor ratchets up during highs, locking in gains permanently (e.g., early buyers at $2 now have a floor above entry).
Risk Asymmetry: Near floor, downside is limited (e.g., 10% max loss), upside infinite, creating “bouncy ball” economics instead of “falling knives.” Built-in stop-loss feel without caps on upside.
Yield and Productivity: Fees (from buys/sells/borrowing) distribute as dividends, making ANA yield-bearing (currently ~20%) without inflation. Analogous to if Bitcoin fees went to holders.
Proof and Testing: Sid ran a “Temple of the Floor” campaign on DevNet with fake tokens, offering bounties to break the floor—none succeeded, proving the math.
Comparisons and Thought Experiments
Vs. Bitcoin/Solana: Networks prioritize security (fees to miners/validators); ANA prioritizes value (fees to holders). If Bitcoin paid fees to holders, it’d be yield-producing without dilution.
Vs. ETH: Ultrasound money (EIP-1559 burns) is flawed; better to stop inflation/emissions entirely and direct fees to holders.
Vs. Meme Coins/Stablecoins: Avoids rug risks; worst case, ANA becomes a high-yield stablecoin if volatility flattens.
Unification of Finance: Merges liquidity and bearer assets; value is a “property” of ANA (coded in), not dependent on market moods.
Challenges and Launch Details
Launched December 2024 on Solana; grassroots, no ICO/pre-sale/treasury. Liquidity builds organically, so not instantly on all exchanges (e.g., visible on BirdEye via Raydium, but best on Nirvana’s site).
UI/UX hurdles: Early adopters are “brave” like Bitcoin’s garage tinkerers; redesign incoming for intuitiveness.
Broader Critique: Crypto’s reputation as a “casino” stems from grifts; Nirvana zigs toward principles (algorithms, no fraud) to rebuild trust.
Future Developments and Expansions
Samsara: An open-ended extension applying Nirvana’s mechanics (floor prices, protocol liquidity) to any asset (e.g., BONK, SOL, JLP, even fart coin) on any blockchain. Backed by the asset itself, fees feed back to ANA.
Upcoming: Community crowdfunded a pitch to Toly on X Spaces (~1 week from recording); Samsara demo launch, then mainnet for “Samsara Summer” and “floor season.”
Ambition: Global reserve asset scale (trillions), suitable for sovereign funds, flipping Bitcoin’s scope with better guarantees.
Closing Thoughts
Thomas praises ANA’s positioning amid market fatigue from volatility; Sid stresses pride in building something principled for Solana.
Episode wraps with Thomas’s sign-off, encouraging subscriptions, reviews, and long-term thinking in crypto.
Overall, the podcast highlights Nirvana as a principled innovation in a speculative space, blending technical depth with accessible explanations. It’s optimistic about Solana’s future while critiquing systemic flaws, positioning ANA as a potential “number go up” technology with built-in safeguards.
Episode Show Notes: Solana Weekly” – Tokenized Assets, Crypto Cycles, and Nansen’s Role in On-Chain Analytics
Episode Summary: In this episode of Solana Weekly, host Thomas Bahamas welcomes Alex, CEO of Nansen, a leading crypto analytics platform often dubbed the “gold standard” for on-chain data and analytics. The discussion dives into the evolving crypto market, the convergence of traditional finance (TradFi) and crypto through tokenized assets, reflections on market cycles, Solana’s positioning in the “chain wars,” and an in-depth look at Nansen’s tools, features, and future AI-driven innovations. The conversation highlights the shift from “toy world” speculation (e.g., meme coins, NFTs) to real-world asset (RWA) integration, regulatory challenges, and how Nansen democratizes advanced analytics for retail and institutional users alike.
Guest Bio:
Alex: CEO of Nansen (nansen.ai), founded in late 2019. Alex entered crypto in 2017 as an Ethereum enthusiast after initially encountering Bitcoin in 2013. He moved from Barcelona to Hong Kong to immerse himself in the space. Nansen specializes in blockchain analytics, labeling addresses, tracking on-chain activity, and now expanding into AI agents, staking, and portfolio management. Alex holds a degree in AI and emphasizes building tools for the “future of finance.”
Key Topics and Highlights (Organized by Approximate Discussion Flow):
Market Excitement and Tokenized Assets (Opening ~10 minutes):
The episode kicks off with enthusiasm about recent developments like Robinhood’s announcements on tokenized equities (e.g., Tesla, OpenAI, SpaceX). Alex and Thomas discuss how tokenized stocks allow 24/7 trading, fractional ownership, and collateralization, blending crypto and TradFi.
Highlight: Thomas shares buying tokenized Tesla shares, noting it’s “just like swapping tokens.” Alex is bullish on this marking the end of crypto’s “sandbox era” and the start of real asset integration.
Quote: “Crypto up to now has been kind of a toy world or a sandbox era, and then we’re kind of moving into like the real assets now going forward.” – Alex
Crypto Cycles and Chain Wars (~10-25 minutes):
Reflections on past cycles: Alex joined in 2017, saw Ethereum’s rise, but admits being proven wrong by Solana’s outperformance in metrics like transactions, addresses, and fee revenues.
2025 analysis: Bitcoin and Hyperliquid dominate, while Solana has underperformed price-wise despite strong fundamentals. Discussion on macro factors (e.g., U.S. debt, wars), altcoin pessimism, and Bitcoin’s institutional appeal.
Solana’s challenges and potential: Fee revenues peaked in January 2025; Hyperliquid’s success noted as “apples and oranges” due to its exchange-chain hybrid. Optimism for Solana ETFs (e.g., Osprey staking ETF) and regulatory easing under a pro-crypto administration.
Quote: “Solana is probably the first chain to really solidly prove me and other ETH maxis wrong because it basically flipped Ethereum on a bunch of on-chain metrics.” – Alex
Solana’s Positioning and RWAs (~25-35 minutes):
Solana as “NASDAQ on-chain”: Built for high-throughput trading, hardened by meme coin speculation. Excitement about wrapped Bitcoin, RWAs, and stocks on Solana to provide better stores of value beyond USDC.
Broader vision: Democratizing finance (e.g., collateralizing Apple stock in a Phantom wallet). Critique of regulations pushing retail into low-quality investments like meme coins/ICOs instead of high-quality private equity.
Quote: “Meme coins as like the testnet almost, or like the sandbox… that’s where you harden the infrastructure.” – Alex
Regulatory Ironies and Positive-Sum vs. Zero-Sum Games (~35-45 minutes):
Irony of regulations: Retail investors funneled into “valueless” tokens to avoid securities classification, while protocols can’t issue equity-like tokens. Examples: FTT, BNB as “pseudo-securities.”
Meme coins as zero/negative-sum (casinos like DEXs profit most), vs. stocks as positive-sum (value creation). Crypto’s “Darwinian” innovation requires messiness.
Quote: “It’s kind of a clever scheme… letting people go crazy with all these speculative assets that hardens the infrastructure.” – Alex
Nansen Overview and Evolution (~45-60 minutes):
Founded late 2019, launched April 2020 pre-DeFi Summer. Initially Ethereum-focused for yield farming insights via address labeling (e.g., spotting Alameda in pools).
Solana integration: Added in early 2022, upgraded in Nansen 2 for better speed. Now supports token analytics, address lookups, entity tracking (e.g., Multicoin holdings), smart alerts, and a “Nansen Score” for assets.
Staking expansion: Acquired a provider in 2024; grew from $60M to $2B staked. Top validator on Hyperliquid (besides foundation), top 60-70 on Solana; also Sui, Tron, Near. Offers “Nansen Points” loyalty program.
Quote: “We have about half a billion addresses labeled… now we’ve added ‘Deep Research’ where AI agents figure out who’s behind an address.” – Alex
AI Innovations and Future (~60-70 minutes):
Building AI research agents with real-time on-chain data access (500M+ labeled addresses). Two parts: (1) Model Context Protocol (MCP) for integration with LLMs like Claude/Grok; (2) AI-native product for portfolio tracking and asset discovery.
Addresses AI’s crypto blind spots; benchmarks show massive improvements (e.g., 93% vs. 23% accuracy with MCP).
Other features: Tax tools (exports CSVs for tools like TurboTax, plans for automated filing); “Deep Research” button for unlabeled addresses; upcoming permissionless wallet creation.
Customers: Retail traders, crypto-native funds, market makers (e.g., Wintermute). Inspired by Chainalysis but democratized (“Palantir for crypto, accessible to all”).
Quote: “Imagine talking to ChatGPT or Grok, but it has access to real-time on-chain data across every chain that matters.” – Alex
Closing and Use Cases (~70-end):
Practical alpha: Use Nansen for quick token lookups, wallet analysis, and Telegram bots for group chats. Encourages checking nansen.ai for free sign-up.
Host’s take: Embarrassing tax stories from meme coin trades; excitement for Nansen as a “cheat code” for Solana users.
Quote: “It’s literally never been a better time to be a Nansen user.” – Alex
Resources Mentioned:
Nansen Website: nansen.ai (free sign-up for portfolio tracker and basic features).
Marcin – Co-founder and GTM lead at Redstone, crypto veteran since 2017 with background in quantitative economics. Previously worked at Google Cloud before founding Redstone in 2020.
The Oracle Infrastructure Revolution
Redstone’s Modular Architecture Redstone built a fundamentally different oracle system designed for scalability from day one. Unlike traditional models that were difficult to scale across networks and assets, Redstone uses a modular architecture with four modules—keeping three off-chain to minimize integration complexity. This design enables rapid deployment across new blockchains and virtual machines.
Multi-Chain Pioneer
First oracle on many non-EVM networks including TON (Telegram), Starknet, and Fuel VM
Strategic expansion philosophy: “Go where people want us, not where we force ourselves”
75% of company are engineers, maintaining 100% reliability with zero mispricing incidents
Why Solana, Why Now
Perfect Timing Convergence Redstone’s Solana launch aligned with a critical market moment. Their partnership with Securitize to serve major tokenized funds (BlackRock BUIDL, VanEck, Apollo, etc.) coincided with Solana’s emerging RWA momentum through protocols like Camino, Drift, and Jupiter.
Foundation Support Meeting Lily (Solana Foundation director) at Binance Blockchain Week in Dubai catalyzed the expansion, providing technical resources and ecosystem connections for smooth integration.
Real-World Assets Explained
Two Flagship Products
Tokenized Treasury Bills (T-Bills)
Low-risk, yield-bearing government securities
Principle should always appreciate (barring systemic USD issues)
Considered equivalent to cash in accounting (0-3 month bills)
Apollo’s Diversified Credit Fund (Tokenized as ACRE)
Private credit outside traditional banking system
Example: Entrepreneur needs $10M for factory railway, banks reject due to complexity
Apollo intermediates: lenders provide capital at 8%, borrowers pay 12%, Apollo manages 4% spread
Involves real risk of default, but diversified across 100-1000 loans
Access Revolution
Traditional minimum: $5-10 million
Tokenized minimum: $50,000 (100x reduction in barrier to entry)
Global accessibility without complex traditional finance onboarding
The Technical Innovation: sACRE
Security vs. Utility Challenge ACRE is a security token, making it non-transferable and unsuitable for DeFi liquidations. Securitize created an elegant solution:
sACRE: Non-security wrapper around ACRE
Enables DeFi integration while maintaining regulatory compliance
Liquidators interact only with sACRE, never touching the underlying security
Vault system allows redemption back to USDC when needed
DeFi Use Cases and Looping Strategies
The Looping Mechanism
Deposit $1M worth of sACRE as collateral
Borrow $500K USDC (50% LTV for safety margin)
Buy more sACRE with borrowed USDC
Repeat process until hitting minimum investment thresholds
Amplify exposure while maintaining liquidation safety
Risk Considerations
Platform risk (Drift/Camino vulnerabilities)
Asset price risk (private credit can decline unlike T-Bills)
Liquidation risk if looped too aggressively
Need for proper risk management and position sizing
Institutional Adoption Pathway
Baby Steps Philosophy Unlike crypto’s “10x or bust” mentality, institutions take measured approaches:
Current: Basic tokenization and custody
Next: Simple lending and structured products
Future: On-chain hedge funds and complex derivatives
Benefits Driving Adoption
Broader Access: Geographic and capital barriers removed
Secondary Liquidity: Instant swaps vs. 90-day redemption periods
DeFi Composability: Integration with lending, looping, structured products
Transparency: On-chain visibility vs. opaque traditional systems
Market Lessons and Risk Management
Learning from Terra/Anchor
Size caps prevent systemic overheating
Transparency requirements for risk assessment
Multiple audits and conservative approaches
Recognition that 20% yields were unsustainable
Current Systemic Risks
Staking derivatives pose the largest potential systemic risk
Liquid staking tokens widely used as collateral across DeFi
Any major exploit could cascade across ecosystem
Future Roadmap
Immediate Developments
Additional Solana-native stablecoin feeds
More yield-bearing asset integrations
Jupiter’s “Drip/Plant” lending protocol (partnership with Ethereum’s Fluid)
Long-term Vision
Yield-bearing stablecoins as mass adoption driver
4-6% yields as the “sweet spot” for user interest
Cross-chain collaborations and composability
Gradual expansion of on-chain institutional products
Builder Ecosystem
Testing available at app.redstone.finance (Push → Solana)
Open communication channels via Telegram/Discord
Custom data feed development for specific use cases
The Bigger Picture
Adoption Paradigm Shift Traditional crypto adoption focused on retail users buying NFTs and meme coins. RWA adoption brings institutional capital seeking familiar products with blockchain benefits—better access, liquidity, and composability.
Global Financial Rails Redstone’s vision extends beyond individual assets to creating seamless global financial infrastructure. Current traditional systems are siloed by country/region, requiring inefficient bridges. Blockchain technology enables truly global, instantaneous settlement.
Competitive Collaboration The Jupiter-Fluid partnership exemplifies healthy ecosystem growth—established players collaborating rather than zero-sum competing, recognizing the early-stage nature of the overall market.
An extensive conversation exploring the intersection of storytelling, community, and the evolution of Solana’s NFT ecosystem
Introduction: When Passion Meets Purpose
TBoh’s journey into writing “The Greater Fools” began with a simple but profound question from a childhood friend: “When are you gonna write about something you actually care about?” After 15 years of ghostwriting true crime and other people’s stories, despite having a #1 Amazon bestseller that appeared on Howard Stern and Saturday Night Live, TBoh realized he wanted to put his voice behind something meaningful to him. The answer was immediate: Solana.
“I just spent so much of my own time messing around with Solana NFTs in the communities and the art,” TBoh explains. “It was a no brainer, bro. It was the first thing I thought of.”
The Vision: Crypto Education Through Fantasy
“The Greater Fools” represents an ambitious attempt to bridge two worlds: the 300 million fantasy/sci-fi readers globally and the crypto-curious masses. TBoh identified a massive opportunity in the market – 86% of people want to learn about crypto, but only 16% claim to know anything about it, and most people see crypto and NFTs as scams.
“Why don’t I go after the fantasy and science fiction readers of the world and educate them on crypto as best I can? Introduce them to it, give them crypto for dummies, but in story form,” TBoh explains his strategy.
The book follows digital collectibles inside the Solana blockchain on a “cheeky degenerative adventure ride.” By the story’s end, readers understand:
How wallets and exchanges work
What blocks and chains are
Bitcoin, Solana, and Ethereum fundamentals
Most importantly, how to identify and avoid common scams
Revolutionary Funding: Seed Investment for Fiction
Perhaps most remarkably, TBoh pioneered something virtually unheard of in publishing: raising seed funding for a novel. “I’d never heard of people getting investors to give them money for a chunk of a novel,” he admits.
The Investor Network
His funding came from within the Solana NFT community itself:
Jordan and Barage (DTP founders) – “Here’s the money. If we ever see it again, that’s great, but we just wanna support what you’re doing”
Monterey Rice (Pandas CEO)
Nana Trades
EJ the Cray
Exalt DAO – A sub-community of Pandas that provided treasury funds
The Exalt DAO funding story is particularly touching. When TBoh created “DTP Origins” (a collaborative art project), Jordan and Monterey asked him to donate a percentage to the Exalt DAO treasury to “promote Solana wide good guy stuff.” When TBoh later pitched his book, the DAO unanimously supported him, even though “NFTs were kind of dead already.”
Solana Foundation Recognition
The validation reached official levels when the Solana Foundation offered TBoh a booth at Breakpoint Singapore 2023. Despite being broke, he “sold off guitars and shit” to attend, printed the first 69 pages, and distributed them for free. The response was overwhelming – he tackled MERT in the convention center, got approval from Armani for Mad Lads inclusion, and returned “so jazzed” about the project.
The Historical Tapestry: Solana’s NFT Evolution
DGen Apes: The Catalyst Moment
Both TBoh and Thomas agree: the DGen Apes mint was Solana’s inflection point. “Raj says the same shit you do – it was the DGen mint that launched Solana to the world,” TBoh confirms.
The mint was a perfect storm:
Network-breaking congestion that essentially shut down Solana
“Pixar-level” 3D art quality that impressed even skeptics
A community focused on IP development and entertainment aspirations
The moment Solana NFTs gained legitimacy outside the ecosystem
Thomas describes his introduction: “A buddy of mine came over to play music and opens up his laptop and there’s this three dimensional ape with this fierce look in his eye and his stupid clothes. He’s got a fucking cigarette in his mouth, he’s got a rice farmer hat and a business suit. It’s super well executed. It’s like fucking Pixar.”
The Great Migration from Ethereum
Both hosts shared identical experiences moving from Ethereum to Solana:
Buying first ETH NFTs where gas fees exceeded the NFT value
Discovering Solana’s sub-penny transactions
Facing ridicule from Ethereum maximalists who called Solana “the poor chain”
The revolutionary realization that high gas fees weren’t a feature, but a bug
“I bought my first ETH NFT and just like you, the gas was more than the thing was worth. And I was like, what am I doing?” TBoh recalls.
Collection Deep Dives: The Tribal Structure
Degenerate Trash Pandas: The Artist Incubator
TBoh found his home in the Pandas community, which stood for “supporting struggling artists.” The collection became a launching pad for now-legendary Solana artists:
Scum Basket
Blinks
Scuba
Jake Whiskey
iNE
“So many artists started out in the pandas and then the apes, and then the rest of Solana,” TBoh notes.
Famous Foxes: The Innovation Engine
Thomas credits Famous Foxes as the infrastructure builders of early Solana NFTs:
Created the first multi-NFT swap tools
Built essential marketplace functionality before Tensor existed
Offered direct developer access faster than tech companies
“If I was to swap an NFT to this day, I’d say, all right, send me the Foxy Swap”
Solana Monkey Business: The Professional Network
Described as “the LinkedIn of Solana,” SMB holders included protocol founders and builders:
Tax specialists available for community questions
Networking hub for serious builders
Professional, organized DAO structure
Custom monkeys created for major Solana projects
“Most of them were like the builders of Solana. Whatever you’re building, you might have like a custom monkey for soul flair or for whatever,” Thomas explains.
Okay Geckos: The Resurrection Story
Originally created by Gossip Goblin, the collection was later revived by Articles:
One of the most hyped early mints (2.5 SOL when SOL was $200+)
Thomas minted a neon one and flipped it for 10x same day
Articles took over after original team issues and transformed it into one of the strongest ongoing NFT communities
Maintains active “immortal journey” traditions where community celebrates major collection moves
DeGods: The Controversial Fraternity
The conversation reveals complex feelings about DeGods:
Initially dismissed by both hosts for “frat boy” culture
Thomas attended a DeGods golf tournament with 50+ attendees, complete with videographers
Despite Frank’s controversial departure from Solana, individual holders remained loyal community members
Recognition that different collections attracted different personality types, all valid
The Psychology of Digital Ownership
Why NFTs Created Unprecedented Loyalty
TBoh poses a fascinating question: “I love guitars and I have a guitar collection… I wouldn’t fly to Singapore to meet Fender fans. What is it about NFTs?”
His theory centers on shared values amplified by financial investment:
Decentralization and democratization philosophies
Ability to directly support and invest in young artists
Community bonds strengthened by financial stakes
Shared experience of volatility and risk
“Maybe it’s really about the philosophies of decentralization and democratization and tokenization. These things really meant something to me as a slap in the face when I started looking into crypto.”
The Country Club Model vs. Telegram Chaos
The hosts identify a fundamental difference between NFT and meme coin communities:
NFT Communities (Discord Era):
“Country club model” – pay entry fee, stay for community value
Long-term relationship building
Structured governance and development
PFP-driven tribal identity
Innovation hubs for tools and infrastructure
Meme Coin Communities (Telegram Era):
“Come make money and feel free to dump on me”
Short-term profit focused
Less structured community building
Higher volatility, faster turnover
“NFTs were set up as better set up as communities. The best explanation’s kinda like a country club, right? You pay the fee to get in and then you make it in and hopefully it’s valuable enough for you to stay in the community,” Thomas explains.
The Shared Trauma Bond
Surviving the FTX Collapse
A crucial insight emerges about community resilience. When SOL dropped from $200+ to $8 and NFTs became nearly worthless, something remarkable happened:
“We all kind of had this shared trauma of our NFTs, everything was worth nothing. We went from $200 to $8 and we were getting trashed on by every other community. But the community was still there and it only got tighter. We lost some people, but maybe they were the people that were here for the short term flips.”
This “battle-tested” community became stronger through adversity, creating bonds that persist even as SOL approaches $200 again. As TBoh notes, referencing Jordan’s thesis for the Pandas: “Communities are gelled together by shared trauma.”
Market Dynamics and Innovation Cycles
The Minting Frenzy Era
Both hosts nostalgically recall the peak minting period:
Big Brand’s DOS spreadsheet-style mint calendars
20,000+ collections minting daily
Salon Art marketplace unable to handle volume
Discord chats moving too fast to read
Refreshing floor pages hoping for steals
10x-100x gains happening regularly
“I just would stare at the floor of a lot of these collections and refresh it, refresh it, come on somebody floor something cool. That was so much fun,” Thomas recalls.
The Innovation Through Necessity
The conversation reveals how infrastructure emerged from community needs:
Famous Foxes tools filled marketplace gaps
Artist collaboration platforms like DTP Origins
Community treasury management systems
Staking and utility mechanisms
Current Market Analysis and Future Predictions
The NFT Revival Thesis
Both hosts strongly believe NFTs will return to prominence:
Thomas’s perspective:
Existing communities built lasting infrastructure
Utility models like Quacks’ tiered access prove value
20 Ducks = Access to venture deals and alpha chat groups
“Those are experiences, those are communities that I can’t get anywhere else”
TBoh’s perspective:
Collections that adapt and offer value will survive
Monkey DAO “will never go away – too much talent, too well organized”
New collections will emerge copying successful models
“What happens when we bring in a thousand times more people? That stuff will live again”
Technology as Equalizer
A critical insight: both hosts believe technological advantages will eventually equalize across blockchains. The lasting differentiator will be community and culture.
“I don’t think the TPS isn’t really in the way of anything right now. Solana is fast enough for the current demand. But once we get to five years in the future, everything’s gonna be going super quick. It’s gonna come down to the vibes of the blockchain or the community that’s on there,” Thomas predicts.
Price Predictions and Bullish Sentiment
Thomas boldly states his $1,000 SOL prediction, noting the community has become hesitant to express extreme bullishness despite strong fundamentals. TBoh advocates the “stack and forget” approach for Bitcoin, Solana, and BONK as his highest conviction plays.
The Book’s Narrative Structure
Blending Reality with Fantasy
“The Greater Fools” employs a unique dual-narrative structure:
Human story: 19-year-old artist navigating the crypto world
NFT story: Digital collectibles having adventures inside the Solana blockchain
The approach allows TBoh to:
Introduce different collection cultures through hacker house scenes
Explore the “homeland” of various NFT communities
Mix timelines to include the most exciting historical moments
Create new characters while respecting existing IP
Character Development and Community Representation
TBoh feels “a sense of responsibility to portray them correctly,” spending time with collection leaders to ensure accurate representation:
Jimmy and CC from Monkey DAO helped develop monkey holder characterizations
Created “Bernie” – a charcoal-skinned, flame-patterned Clay character for comic relief
All major collections get their moment, from pandas to apes to geckos
The Publishing Timeline Challenge
“Everything moves so quickly that you move from one meta to the next, you move from NFTs to meme coins in a second. Everything I write tomorrow is sort of yesterday’s, last year’s news already.”
This challenge led TBoh to adopt a “historical blender” approach, mixing timelines to capture the most exciting elements of Solana’s evolution while creating a cohesive narrative.
Marketing Innovation and Web3 Distribution
The Distribution Dilemma
TBoh faces a unique challenge: how to market a crypto book when “nobody reads” and NFTs aren’t trending. His strategies include:
Traditional Approaches:
Six-figure publicity budget requests to major exchanges and wallets
Multiple NFT cover editions for different communities
Compressed NFT distribution to subscribers
“Stake-to-read” partnerships with wallet providers
Community reading spaces and testimonial building
The Drip House Opportunity
Thomas suggests Drip House as the ideal distribution platform:
10,000+ creators, hundreds of thousands of users
Video (founder) actively promotes new creators
Recently acquired by Jupiter for expanded reach
Successful model: Thomas has 30,000 followers, significant download numbers
Built-in tipping and premium content mechanisms
Community Approval and Intellectual Property
The Ethical Approach
Despite owning NFTs that could legally justify their inclusion, TBoh seeks explicit approval from every project mentioned:
“There’s what is legal and then there’s what is right”
Got approval from MERT, Armani (Mad Lads), Articles (Geckos)
Still working on Clay approval from the team
Refuses to proceed without community blessing
This approach exemplifies the collaborative spirit that defines Solana’s culture.
Broader Implications for Crypto Adoption
The Education Gap
The conversation reveals a massive market opportunity:
86% of people want to learn about crypto
Only 16% claim basic knowledge
Most view crypto/NFTs as scams due to media representation
Entertainment typically shows crypto in negative contexts
Onboarding Through Story
TBoh’s approach addresses a fundamental problem: crypto education is often too technical or dry. “From Jesus Christ and his parables straight up to kids who make a living ghostwriting – it’s storytelling. That’s how people learn.”
The Accessibility Revolution
Both hosts note how far accessibility has come:
Onboarding now takes minutes instead of hours
5-10% fees comparable to real-world sales tax
If someone wants an NFT badly enough, they can get it quickly
The barrier isn’t technical anymore – it’s awareness and education
Looking Forward: The Next Chapter
Predictions for 2025 and Beyond
Immediate Catalysts:
Trump administration crypto embrace
ETF approvals and mainstream integration
Meme coin listings on major platforms
Continued infrastructure development
Long-term Vision:
Mass adoption through invisible integration
“Most people won’t know they’re using the tech”
Community and culture as lasting differentiators
Tokenization of creators and artists becoming standard
The Greater Fool Philosophy
The book’s title reflects a deeper truth about markets and human nature. As Thomas notes referencing a Newsroom speech: “America’s success depends on the greater fool. Everyone’s willing to take these irrational risks and that’s the American spirit. That’s what crypto is – it epitomizes the American dream.”
This philosophy embraces the speculative nature while focusing on the underlying innovations and community building that make the risks worthwhile.
Conclusion: Documenting History in Real Time
“The Greater Fools” represents more than just a book – it’s a time capsule of a transformative period in digital ownership and community building. As TBoh puts it: “Will we ever have mints like that again? I don’t know. But it did happen, and it was pretty fun. Why not at least mark that moment in time for those of us who went through it?”
The conversation reveals how Solana’s NFT era created not just digital collectibles, but genuine communities, lasting relationships, and infrastructure that continues to benefit the ecosystem. Whether through fantasy fiction or podcast discussions, documenting this history helps preserve the lessons learned and the bonds formed during crypto’s wild west period.
As both hosts agree, the fundamentals haven’t changed – if anything, they’ve strengthened. The technology is better, the community is more resilient, and the infrastructure is more robust. The only question isn’t whether adoption will accelerate, but how quickly the next wave of users will discover what early Solana adopters have known all along: this is something special.
“The Greater Fools” is available for pre-order at greaterfoolsbook.com with discount code “RAYISTHEDEVIL” for 25% off. The first 69 pages are included immediately as PDF, with the full ebook delivered upon release.
How Simon is using providing a safe platform for digital identity where they can connect people through their transaction history to protocols looking for users like them.
“DApps don’t have users; they have strangers.”
— Simon, founder of Solana ID
Last week I caught Simon—better known across Crypto-Twitter as @solbrother—literally inside Solana Labs’ New York headquarters. He’d just landed for Solana Accelerate NYC and still had his suitcase parked next to the mic. What followed was a 75-minute masterclass in:
Why identity is the missing piece in crypto’s consumer puzzle
How Solana ID converts fragmented on-chain footprints into a single, monetizable reputation
What’s shipping next (an “ID Display Network” and a Foundation-backed upgrade)
Below is the full deep-dive for the wonks: tech rationale, token economics, privacy trade-offs, and the macro tailwinds that could make 2025 the year Solana graduates from “meme-coin chain” to Web3’s default consumer stack.
1. Origin Story: From Chain-Agnostic to “All-in on Solana”
Year
Milestone
Why It Matters
2022
DSID (Decentralized Self-ID) formed as chain-agnostic research project.
Early exploration of ZK proofs + wallet linking; no clear go-to-market.
2023
Pivoted at Renaissance Hackathon → re-branded Solana ID.
Won category prize; chose Solana for dev tooling, on-chain volumes, and community openness.
Dec 2024
Launched $SOLID token (peaked at $70 M FDV).
Token = second “product” that funds dev and aligns users; later slammed by altcoin liquidity drought.
June 2025
Live with 45k+ ID holders, 80+ partner DApps, and first cohort of perks (fee rebates, NFT allow-lists, etc.).
Real-world traction & data network ready to monetize.
2. The Core Product in Plain English
a. SOLID Score (0 – 1,000)
Rolls up every connected wallet’s on-chain actions (trading, minting, staking, lending) into a single numeric reputation.
Yes/No flags that surface what you actually do on Solana:
“DeFi Power-User” = $50k+ cumulative volume.
“NFT De-gen” = ≥50 mints across ≥5 collections.
“Staked Since ’22” = ≥12-month uninterrupted stake.
Badges let DApps target campaigns with surgical precision instead of blanket airdrops.
c.
ZK Vault vs. One-Click OAuth
Path
UX Cost
Privacy Level
Ideal User
ZK-Proof Browser Extension
Install + confirm
Max (protocol never sees raw data)
Crypto privacy purists
Web2 API OAuth(coming)
Two taps
Moderate (data hits Solana ID DB)
Mainstream users who just want perks
Key quote: “UX first, privacy second. If you invert that order you fail, because nobody onboards.” —Simon
3. Why DApps Care (and Pay)
Problem: A growth team at, say, Drift is budgeting $50k for user acquisition. Today their options are:
Spray $TOKEN rewards on a Zealy quest—95 % goes to low-intent wallets or Sybil farms.
Hope for organic Twitter virality (good luck).
With Solana ID they can:
Filter wallets with DeFi_PowerUser = TRUE AND SOLID > 700 AND No prior Drift TXs.
Drop a targeted “0 % maker fee for 30 days” perk that appears the moment those wallets connect to Jupiter, Birdeye, or any site in the upcoming ID Display Network.
Pay only for redemptions, not impressions.
Result: acquisition CAC drops, user LTV rises, and the user is the one paid to show up—not the ad network.
4. Token Economics Crash-Course
Ticker: $SOLID
Genesis Supply: 1 B
Utility Today: Staking → boosts max Tier cap and unlocks premium badge groups; revenue share from B2B API calls.
Simon’s fix: More on-chain sink mechanisms + cross-DApp staking benefits (teased but not disclosed).
Personal take: the dual-product reality (token + protocol) doubles execution risk but also creates a built-in evangelist class—token holders want every DApp to integrate Solana ID.
5. Tech Nuggets & Builder Insights
Topic
Simon’s Take
Rust vs. Solidity
Rust is harder but yields safer, longer-lived contracts—mirrors Web2’s shift from PHP to Go/Rust.
Data Indexing
“Pulling full_wallet_history in real-time on Solana is non-trivial; we abstract that out for DApps so they don’t rebuild The Graph in-house.”
“Solana is a Privacy Chain” meme
Comes from the practical difficulty of parsing high-throughput ledger data, not actual privacy guarantees.
Multi-Chain Future?
Possible white-label spin-outs (ETH L2, Sui, Monad) but focus remains on Solana until network effects plateau.
6. Upcoming Releases & Dates to Watch
Solana Foundation Collab (late-June)
Rumored protocol-level identity primitive (think ENS-like but cross-wallet).
Could feed directly into SOLID Score and the ID API.
Identity layer becomes indispensable once PoS-payments hit retail.
8. Big-Picture Takeaways
Identity isn’t an “NFT avatar”—it’s behavioral metadata. Wallet activity, social clout, and even KYC proofs can coexist without doxxing the human.
Marketing efficiency is crypto’s next unlock. Airdrops aren’t going away, but precision airdrops will out-compete blanket ones.
UX vs. Privacy is a spectrum, not a binary. Solana ID bets most users will trade some privacy for a one-click experience—while still letting die-hards go full ZK.
Tokens still matter—but require active product management. $SOLID’s price lull is a case study in how liquidity cycles can distract teams; the fix is baked-in utility, not tweets.
Network effects decide the winners. Solana’s dev velocity and consumer lean give identity projects here a head-start other chains will struggle to match.
Gold on Fast Forward – Usman & Oro Bring Bullion to Solana
Quick Episode Summary
Gold has served as money for two millennia, yet it has never been this fast or productive. Usman, CEO and co-founder of Oro, joins Thomas Bahamas to explain how Oro tokenizes fully audited bullion on Solana, delivers 3–4 percent yield through the traditional gold-leasing market, and lets users redeem as little as one gram anywhere from Dubai to Los Angeles. The discussion covers macro drivers, token mechanics, redemption logistics, and why a non-USD store of value could be the missing piece of Solana DeFi.
Timestamps & Topics
Time
Segment
00:00
Welcome – the market meltdown and why gold timing feels perfect
03:40
Macro gold setup – forty percent YoY gains and the path to 3 k USD/oz
08:15
Solana’s store-of-value gap and stable-coin saturation
Gold-leasing explained – how 3–4 percent real yield is created off-chain
24:30
Staking workflow – mint GOLD, stake for GOLD+ and compound with LP pools
29:50
One-gram redemption – retail jewelry pickup, logistics for large bars, global network goal
34:45
Comparing wrapped BTC, ETFs, and Oro’s instant redemption model
39:30
Launch status – private beta, final entity formation, upcoming fundraising round
43:10
Rapid-fire with Usman – favorite macro resources, biggest misconception about gold, best use-case he can’t wait to see
47:50
Closing thoughts – DeFi’s next super-cycle is user-driven not token-driven
50:15
Call to action and show wrap-up
Guest Bio – Usman
CEO and Co-Founder, Oro
Fifth-generation gold-market insider (family business dates back more than one hundred years)
Mission: Make bullion as liquid and programmable as stable coins
Building the world’s largest on-chain gold redemption network
X/Twitter: @theusmansal
Key Takeaways
1. Macro Gold Boom
Gold is up roughly forty percent year-over-year. Advisors who once recommended half-percent allocations now suggest five to ten percent. A move to three-thousand dollars an ounce would not be surprising given geopolitical uncertainty and persistent inflation.
2. Tokenization Done Right
Oro sources bullion in Dubai, London, and Singapore, stores it with independent insured custodians, and publishes monthly third-party attestations. Tokens are minted and burned against real inventory in a structure that remains solvent even if Oro disappears.
3. Real-World Yield
Gold owners traditionally pay storage fees. Oro flips that paradigm by leasing the metal to refiners and jewelers who need working capital, generating 3–4 percent yield that flows back to stakers. The result is a savings-account-style product called GOLD+.
4. Redemption Flexibility
Redemption starts at one gram—about ninety US dollars—and scales to million-dollar bars. Options include in-person pickup at partner shops, insured shipping, or swapping tokens directly for finished jewelry.
5. DeFi Utility
Users can stake GOLD for yield, provide liquidity, borrow against holdings, or simply park a portion of their portfolio in a historically stable asset without leaving Solana.
6. Solana Edge
With sub-penny fees and block times under one second, Oro enables near-instant transfers, 24/7 liquidity, and settlement speed legacy gold markets cannot match.
Highlight Quotes
“Gold is basically the original meme coin with two thousand years of culture telling you it’s valuable.” — Usman
“Solana users need something besides dollars to hide in when the memes crash. Gold might be that life raft.” — Thomas
“We are not here to copy-paste CeFi. We are here to make gold do things it’s never done.” — Usman
Host: Thomas “Thomas Bahamas” (Solana OG, pod-obsessed Degen)
Guest:Jorge – Gaming-on-Solana lead at the Solana Foundation, long-time Web3-gaming evangelist and architect of the brand-new Solana Game Pass.
Episode Overview
“Good games take years. We’re finally at the point where Solana titles are hitting players’ hands—and the community is about to feel the network effect.”
— Jorge
For years, Solana builders have teased AAA trailers and ambitious pitch decks; now they’re shipping. Jorge walks us through the Solana Game Pass (mint live on Magic Eden), explains why trustless assets fix black-market skin trading, and makes the case that Solana’s speed + near-zero fees + global payment rail will pull millions of gamers on-chain—often without them even realizing it.
Thomas pushes the conversation into regulation, taxes (50k+ TXs a year?!), fully-on-chain experiments like DeFi Dungeons, and what the community can expect at Accelerate NYC in May and Breakpoint Abu Dhabi in December.
Detailed Show Notes
0:00 – 1:10 | Warm-up & Disclaimers
Thomas welcomes listeners, reiterates “Nothing here is financial advice.”
Sets intention: highlight trends, use-cases, people behind Solana growth.
1:11 – 9:50 | Meet Jorge & The State of Web3 Gaming
Jorge’s back-story: traditional marketing → crypto rabbit-hole → Solana Foundation.
Why combining “Solana + Web3 + gaming” in one sentence finally makes sense.
AAA timelines comparison: GTA VI & CoD take 5-7 yrs; same for blockchain titles.
9:51 – 17:30 | Who’s Building & How Long It’s Taken
Active Solana titles ⤵
Star Atlas (space MMO) – Unreal Engine 5 demo live.
Aurory (turn-based RPG) – Production build + staking economy.
MIXMOB : Racer 1, Honeyland, Decimated, Ian Heroes, Rory, EV.IO.
Games are beyond white-papers: playable alphas, asset sales, live economies.
17:31 – 25:00 | The Visibility Problem → Gaming on Solana
Solana Weekly 