Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of Living on Blockchain. Today we are speaking to Akshay. He’s the CEO of ChimpExchange which they’re building on 10 blockchain.
They are also building another cross-chain DEX on Lenia which is live already. So he’s basically working a lot in the DeFi space and he had a lot of interesting insights about the DeFi space in general and how we see moving ahead of this particular bull run. I can’t wait for you guys to hear this.
Let’s deep dive right in. Hi Akshay, thank you so much for making the time to speak to me today. How are you doing? I’m doing great.
Thanks for inviting me. It’s been a pleasure. Awesome.
For our listeners and just to add some context to the rest of the conversation, can you tell us a little about yourself and how you got into Web3? So I guess I’ve been working in a corporate job for, you know, the last five, six years, and I was around that time, 2016, when I got to know about blockchain. I heard of Bitcoin but never dived into it. So in 2016 my interest peaked and that’s when I, you know, bought my first Bitcoin and, you know, started exploring Web3 and also at the same time DeFi was just getting started with a lot of things.
So at that time I thought, okay, this is the industry that I want to move in and in 2017 I started working with a couple of projects while I was still working and at that time it just grew on me. Maybe you can say I was into marketing and Web3 marketing is one thing that I started exploring more and since then I’ve been into blockchain and full-time started working around 2019. All right, so there were some projects that you were consulting with earlier? Yes, that’s correct.
I was working with a couple of projects because at that time I was just testing my abilities, how much I can, you know, put in from my side. So consulting a few projects in marketing and then I learned a lot as well from my mistakes and then kept advising until 2022 to a lot more projects. I’ve worked with more than 10 plus projects, advise them with marketing on quest platforms, how they can grow their user base and such.
Lovely and now can you tell us a little about Jim Pickstead and what you’re building currently and how did you go from being the consultant to starting something of your own? What was that inflection point? Yes, so in 2022 around I was also working on my own marketing agency. I had set up my own marketing agency where I was helping other projects but then it turned out a lot of projects in the 2022 year was just raising money and just dumping it out and just getting out of the market and we thought, okay, as a team we have been experiencing crypto for the last four, five years and we can provide value to the community as well. So we were thinking on the idea in 2022 but we took our time.
We and my co-founders Raul and Saurabh, we were three guys who were working on the idea what could be the one thing that we could work on and provide value to the users and 2023 around June of the same time like it’s been a year when we started working on creating an ecosystem where DeFi can become simple. So what we saw was that DeFi was getting complicated with a lot more blockchains. When we started there was just a couple of blockchains in hand but by 2023 it has 100 plus blockchains, so many DEXs, so many bridges so we thought it has become complicated.
So when the new user comes in it should be easier for them to you know on board everything. That’s when the Chimp ecosystem idea was born where our vision was to make DeFi simple, safe and secure. So that’s when we started ChimpExchange and about ChimpExchange I we are building the first encrypted DEX and we are doing that by building it on 10 blockchain which is the first encrypted L2 blockchain and Chimp is the first native DEX on 10 blockchain.
By that we provide users complete encryption in terms of trading so that their transactions are never being recorded, their private balances of wallets are never being tracked so they can trade in complete confidentiality. All right okay so this is like now that you know you’ve given me a little more context I think you met my co-founder yesterday at the pivot brunch. Absolutely.
Yeah he told me a little about what you guys are doing. Okay so can you tell us a little about this is this is a wonderful coincidence that he met you yesterday and he was telling me yesterday in the evening sometime that you know you guys are building on 10 blockchain. Can you tell me a little about this chain because I think my information here is a little foggy.
Can you tell me a little about the chain what is the advantages of this particular blockchain? Yes so there are many there are if you see right now there are 100 plus blockchains which are leading and most of them are EVM compatible but those are all public blockchains. As you know that bitcoin was started because we wanted to move away from the the centralized authority that was there like banks and such. So public blockchains are formed so that you can keep a track of where the transactions are going.
We as a community we wanted that to be implemented within the government but that didn’t happen till now. So but still it poses a threat instead instead of providing a blessing it becomes a threat for the users because as a user if you are trading regularly and your wallet you know gets a hold of someone who can find it on blockchain explorer they can track your wallet balance how much balance that you have there you have multiple blockchains how much you’re trading where you are trading so for a for a new entry-level user who is not that much tech prone so they can get targeted by hackers easily which is happening right now. If you see right now billions of dollars already stolen within within just six months of red 24 and why that happens is because hackers can see your wallet they can go to the blockchain explorer and find these wallets which are trading more and they can just target it like let’s say for instance you as a user you trade on a particular exchange and then you take out the funds and go to a social platform let’s say and connect your twitter account for there and they’re able to see okay somehow that okay this this wallet is connected to this twitter account and or maybe this twitter account has posted about this wallet transactions so they can track who your real identity of that person is and they can target you they can target your emails they can target your phones which is happening on a daily basis so that was a reason this from public blockchain 10 was formed 10 is trying to build the first EVM compatible L2 blockchain which is completely encrypted from pool so like if you go on 10 blockchain and make a trade which is our right now testnet your transaction is traced only visible to yourself nobody will be able to see your transaction is there anyone else so that what they’re just you know taking ethereum and making encrypted and you know scaring okay so it’s completely end-to-end encrypted that would be like its greatest usb and it is EVM compatible yes all right okay and uh so you’re building the uh the one of the first exchanges on 10 yes ours is the first one also the native dex on 10 all right awesome so now uh you know obviously you’ve mentioned it yourself there are many chains there are many dexes uh and your usb is end-to-end encryption can you tell us a little about that end-to-end encryption uh i i understand obviously that it’s not solely your encryption it’s the chain’s encryption but if you could show you know shed some light there so that the user feels a little more at ease because what you said does make sense that hackers do uh you know target certain wallet addresses depending on the kind of transactions that are happening so this would put traders minds at ease and if you could tell us a little about that in perhaps uh not so technical way it would really yeah yes so i’ll put in the simple words like chimp exchange works as the basic trading platform and then obviously the encryption the core encryption feature comes from 10 but as chimp exchange we also try not to store any data so uh once the mainnet goes live we will be will not be storing any of the data so by by design 10 doesn’t provide any data to us as well so when a user makes a trade on chip exchange uh we don’t store any information of that particular user how much they’re trading it all goes to the smart contract uh which has the data in it but it doesn’t store any of it yeah the 10 does have a data revelation method in terms of like if there is any illicit traders or funds that comes then it can be you know uh going to go through a DAO if someone challenges that okay this particular funds are not uh you know come came from a right source source so that can be tracked but uh that goes through data revelation but the basic trading that happens is where we don’t store any data and that creates an amazing platform for the traders as only they will be able to see what they’re trading and how much balance they have plus even if they have a wallet of anyone else let’s say the 10 explorer doesn’t allow anything to be tracked like they don’t allow to add any wallet even if you are able to somehow get the wallet and try to find which transaction it is the transaction details show encryption encrypted so you cannot read that transaction details at all by the way not just a trading platform we are building a lot more features right now we have just launched a basic version of the text and the testnet we are working on a lot of features which will provide like previously launchpad is one other thing that we have provided uh we are building a drug proof launchpad for projects where people let’s say if you are a project if you want to do a token ideal sale public sale for users and you want to do it uh completely encrypted and also users want to invest but they don’t know what their wallet to be shared where they’re investing so any anything that happens on the previous launchpad will be completely confidential as well both for both projects and users and we have a mechanism for the confidential kyc for the projects as well so that that it doesn’t happen drug for the users as well so but there are other features are in pipeline as well in time we reveal those features but right now we are at a position where we don’t want to reveal those features and being the first text so i understand uh but this kind of leads me to two questions i’ll start with the first one you mentioned that if there is some sort of a disparity or somebody takes a particular transaction then there is a dow mechanism to figure out the details can you tell us a little about that yeah so so uh because as you know if we go completely uh you know on the encrypted side if you are not able to get the data somehow then then it becomes a problem as well which happened with couple of projects in the past i won’t name them but it happened with the projects which were targeting previously in the complete sense but what happened was uh there was no way to get the data but there are always malpractices that happens on platforms like these people try to uh bring funds which are illegal or some way you know to uh maybe let’s say try to launder money or something that happens as well we are living in the web three world where this happens so 10 has a mechanism called data revelation which balances this whole thing so let’s say uh they have a doubt and through that if if if someone’s uh mentions or some someone comes in to 10 okay these these source of funds we have tracked from this blockchain and which came to 10 and these these are not uh correct source of funds these are illegal so what they can do is can raise a uh you know issue in dow and the community can vote on it and they have a year to disclose the data of this particular if the dow agrees with it they can move forward and release the details and which makes a healthy balance so that they can they uh make sure that no illicit funds comes to the platform and being traded on it as well right so for this mechanism to actually work you would uh perhaps you you know the chain itself does have access uh to that data it’s end-to-end encrypted but it is end-to-end encrypted uh for the public perhaps but the entity the chain itself they are able to read these transactions and they have all of these uh details like it’s not like a complete end-to-end encryption in that case no it is it is encrypted even the team cannot it wants it they cannot see it it goes to the smart contract if it gets voted out by the dow and that that gets that gets raised within the dow as an issue okay that this data is there and this is the transaction details i i haven’t gone through the complete technicality because how it works because can only introduce it a few months back and they’re still working on it by the time they go to mainnet they will have a complete uh procedure or a process of how it will work but uh i’m sure about it because i got in the conversation with the team a couple of times about data revelation and they said uh nobody will have access to the data uh until it’s uh you know disclosed through the data revelation to the smart contract understood okay uh so considering you know you’ve mentioned that you’re not entirely clear on the technical details maybe we can share some documentation in the podcast description absolutely you can go through it right because i’m sure that there are some nerds pretty much like me who have some follow-up questions and they can go through that so now the question um yeah i think you know if you could you share it or you pick it up from the website and we put it in but um the other question that i had was about the compliance or the legality uh like is how are you sort of is is there something uh which is legally uh you know in a little in a gray area when it comes to this and how are you sort of skirting around it see i i know the entire decentralized tech in different countries there are different issues and uh most of it like the policymakers are still you know trying to uh still still catch up right so i understand that a lot of it is in the area but do do you have uh any compliance like you know uh issues that you have kept in mind that you know you’re actively trying to uh work towards so that you won’t fall on the other side uh and go with the policymakers yeah so uh we do this there’s a lot about this and uh as a decentralized platform uh the major thing is that there’s no particular law about it not in india nor in other countries uh so it has because the issue happens is when uh when you connected with the any of the uh local currency of that country let’s say ir or let’s say usgt so this happens with centralized exchanges a lot because they start dealing with these currencies and and a lot of scams happen and then centralized authorities is exposed but obviously being a decentralized exchange i can speak for ourselves where we never touch fiat in any manner and it all the trading that happens is we will we’ll always be 100 on crypto and uh coming to the confidential and encrypted aspect of it uh as i said we are just a platform which which which provides an access for people to trade on 10 blockchain using the encryption that they provide so we won’t be storing our single data for users so even in in a case where any of this comes from the authority side when they require data they can just directly go to 10 and ask for the data if it’s required uh i cannot speak for 10 but as a we don’t uh we doesn’t come under any of these gray areas because uh if there are any rules in the future about uh defy then surely we will discuss it but right now it’s it’s all uh it’s all in the air it’s it’s you can say we haven’t come to uh fix amount of legality on it let’s but we are registered uh in a couple of countries let’s say and uh we are we have rules in place where when any of these things happens from the authority side we are pretty prepared okay can you tell me a little about the countries that you have registered yourself in considering you are a text that seems a little unusual yeah so we do have to like we have to launch a token as well i cannot reveal as of now we do have to release a token chimp in the future and i cannot disclose the country of per se but yeah for for that to go hand in hand we have we have to go through a foundation and dow model uh for that we do need a registration to launch that all right okay so considering this is something that cannot be disclosed you don’t deal and then fall into that but i would i would love to understand uh you mentioned that you don’t want to deal uh and touch with fiat at all so there’s not going to be any on-ramp or off-ramp solution on your platform right no yeah because i’ve seen in the past as well with couple let’s say where the trouble starts basically yeah yeah basically the trouble starts there and i’ve seen in centralized exchanges which are registered within the country have complete documentation and then uh then uh then they start offering on-ramp and off-ramp solutions and then that’s where the trouble starts because because users uh or maybe let’s say people who do these illegal practices they find a way somehow let’s it is can be p2p trading or any other way if you provide them a link between fiat and crypto they will try to find a way to you know cause trouble so that that happens and we we as a decent let’s say we never want to get involved in fiat and everything okay can you tell me about the you know two major challenges that you guys faced while you were building chip exchange uh i would say because before this we have we have a we have two versions we have a cross-chain text we have a encrypted text cross-chain is already deployed on linear blockchain and we intend to go towards more blockchain as well and over cross-chain as well as encrypted text there but uh the major challenge that we faced on building chip was uh on 10 uh because at that time there was no other text that was building on it so we knew that it was difficult to build on 10 since there is no data that comes out of it so there is no subgraph for any of the d5 projects to build on it so uh it it took us a 10 team itself uh that was one of the technical challenges that we faced and it took us about a couple of months just figure out that and launch and uh that was one of the challenges second challenge is uh you know there is so much competition in the text space let’s say d5 space dexes are launching here and there and most of them has a similar product and that’s that that is where we’re currently working on we are trying to work on some tools and features that can set us apart and help the real user out there so a simple user let’s talk about in a d5 space they don’t want to deal with 100 of the texts they just want to trade funds so like let’s say if you are a user and you want to trade ethereum or let’s say matek and you don’t want to be shown 10 different texts there just just has to be simple interface where you can trade any of these funds and that where we’re currently uh targeting because there are so many old points coming in every day you cannot list every old point on the text because it requires a lot of capability so we are uh trying to uh build a platform where we can offer most of the old points in a manner where it is uh the the ui ux feels like a centralized exchange and also provide these tools for them to make defy and trading easier we will be coming up with a lot of trading based tools as well which will create an entire ecosystem in itself which will make it the whole process of defy and creating simple for the end user and anyone coming from web 2 to web 3 also can feel the same so this is the current of the second problem that we are currently solving and it is still under process i won’t say that if we have solved it they are still under process yeah it’s a work in progress i think it’s yeah you mentioned that you know your uh cross-chain index is already live on uh linear you’ve mentioned right that’s ck ebm correct yes can you tell us a little about that and why did you uh sort of choose two different chains okay if you could throw a little light on that as well i think it will help some entrepreneurs who have this a little bit of a hang-up that you know when they initially want to get into a particular niche they don’t want to touch two chains right at at times they do have that issue maybe because of resources eventually people do that but uh initially they don’t and because you guys have done that i i would love to know your perspective as to why uh you’ve chosen this path yes so it was a difficult choice for us but when we deployed on medium i remember the time it was around july when we started building on it and september we were ready with the testing so what we did wrong was i guess in the beginning we were very fast with the development and marketing and launch projects take six months eight months to build the product and take feedback and then launch it again and do some marketing it is a bootstrap exchange like it’s a project for us and we did everything very fast we built the exchange uh and we took up we made a balance of four and we implemented the ui ux and the whole ecosystem in so that launchpad exchange and everything can be accessed by the nft so that was the initial concept we launched it in september and october uh by november we were live on the main net and we were very you know uh early and there’s a fast in terms of deployment so that we didn’t take time to really focus okay where the blockchain was going at that time linear was uh solving the uh in this in november and uh comparing to other blockchains uh when linear went on to the main net they were targeting anywhere around 20 cent to 30 cent around fee but later when the mainnet went live the fee was around two to three dollars per transaction and that was very high for the initial users and we we were we got in touch with the linear team couple of times around that and they told us that okay it’ll be taking a couple of two to three months to solve that issue which they eventually did but recently they haven’t been able to solve that issue until i guess uh june so uh yeah so that was a tough call for us where we wanted to expand but uh due to lack of support from the linear ecosystem at that time and you know the trading fee issue we couldn’t move ahead with linear and we thought okay let’s let’s take a pivot and uh go go somewhere offer users something that that is not available in the market and that’s when we came up came to know about 10 blockchain and the encryption and we said okay are are there any other taxes that are providing uh encrypted trading and there were there weren’t there wasn’t any there wasn’t any so we we decided to move against uh move along the 10th all right understood so um can you tell us a little about the traction that you’ve seen and the cross chain decks so far because i i’m assuming that you know chimp exchange is still because the chain is on testnet will be on testnet correct and if you could shed light a little on uh both like the traction that you’ve seen on the on both the the sides that would be that’d be good absolutely so uh when we lost chip on on the main net uh it was swinging around uh let me just get the data in front of me right now oh yeah so we have done a cumulative of uh we were doing an average of four to five thousand dollars a month a daily volume and a monthly volume of let’s say five four hundred to five hundred k uh and that that was not that good but yeah we were doing a pretty good volume in terms in just within one month of launch and till now we have we are also have gotten a tbl of 25k which is nothing of that sort but comparing this was the tbl that we got in the first week itself and after that we stopped promoting ourself on linear but yeah it is currently live and still it is still doing volume on a weekly basis and we plan to uh revive it again on linear itself but this is the current stat on linear we we got around 40 000 users on the cross-index at that point of time uh when we in december we’re talking about and it currently stands to around 10 000 plus users who are trading on chip exchange on a daily basis on the cross-index uh coming to 10 we launched the testnet in may on may 27 it’s been almost uh around almost two months it’s going to be completed in 27 july and we have already gotten 60 000 plus uh wallets that are transacted on it and out of which 50 000 are unique wallets and the number of uh signups that we have received to try the mainnet product are over 20 000 plus so we are increasing at a rapid pace uh last month we were at standing at around 25 000 right now we are 60 000 and we intend to complete 100k users by august end and the idea is to reach 500k users upon mainnet and this is for the chain not for no this no this is for the chip exchange chain has around 700k all right okay awesome uh and uh in terms of community building because you know you’re in testnet here uh there’s these some like wonderful numbers and i think as as you mentioned that it’s work in progress right and it will only increase so kudos to you guys but um touching upon how are you building the community how are you educating the user how are you creating brand awareness around your products absolutely so i i wanted to do from the beginning of chip exchange i didn’t want to spend much on the marketing because i was following a project called pixels uh before building chip exchange pixels is a very good game that started the marketing with a budget of just five thousand dollars for the whole campaign and they increased exponentially uh towards an amazing community uh via their tasks their game and stuff but obviously there was a game so it was easier for them to get players on board if because they had a good product so the problem with us was that okay there are so many taxes out there how should we get that good so we started we started with a budget of thousand dollar only initially and we uh i basically asked my team okay let’s not spend any money and try the best we can to create an organic ability so and obviously linear team did help us in you know re-tweeting and everything and poor marketing but what we did was we did two things and that that is a advice for all the entrepreneurs who are building uh web3 projects what they can do is we started with the first of uh partnering with all the major projects that are building in the that current same ecosystem we did that once we started with the core marketing a couple of educational campaigns and then we started second thing was ambassador and influencer program so we rewarded uh these embassies from influencer program in the form of xps and future tokens uh so that was the part we got at least 600 plus applications in that ambassador influencer program and we onboarded around 150 plus uh influencers and ambassadors which helped us who’s the entire thing uh or shipping change we i remember it it only been two months and we saw our discord just blowing up and we were like okay this is uh we were not expecting this this good of response our uh discord was around 5000 and then it went to 8000 in the second month itself art and everything that has been on twitter till now uh the number of followers that we received in december to jan was completely organic 12k of twitter and 8k of community on discord so that was a really good thing and also third thing that i would like mention is chimp drop so we started our own which was not a you know let’s say uh how how do i put it uh in terms where you have to just guess about how how much you’re going to get so it was a fixed air drop model which we call chimp drop and it it is currently active on the chimp website where
This file is longer than 30 minutes.
Let’s say, how do I put it? In terms where you have to just guess about how much you’re going to get. So it was a fixed airdrop model, which we call ChimDrop. And it is currently active on the Chim website, where people could just have to reach a rank of 15,000.
And if they rank based on the tasks that they do, based on the transactions that they do on the testnet, how much volume they are doing, how many NFTs they’re doing. So based on that, they get a rank. And if they are able to get a rank under 15,000, they will be part of the ChimDrop.
We took a snapshot back in March, and the ChimDrop campaign too will be starting next. So based on these organic activities, we were able to create a good amount of community. And now we have just started our paid marketing to increase it exponentially.
I hope it’s not too long. No, no, it’s absolutely wonderful that you kind of touched upon two campaigns that you’ve done, including KOLs, as well as doing an airdrop campaign. These are tried and tested good ways to ensure that there is some engagement in the community.
So that’s wonderful. And now in terms of the next big milestone for you guys, is there something that you can point us towards in terms of the two products? Yeah, so on the encrypted deck, so what we would be proceeding with is onboarding as many Ethereum blockchains. We are already talking to a couple of them.
So the idea is before we go to mainnet on 10, we have a couple of blockchains in place ready to deploy with ChimpExchange and offer both cross-chain and encrypted trading models on their particular blockchains and provide their users with a taste of a platform where they can do normal trading, but if they want, they can also use the encrypted decks trading as well. We will also be launching at the same time after the TG, obviously, when we go live in mainnet, we will be launching a series of products and tools that will make it a trader-centric platform and make the whole life of a trader very simple. So that is the second goal that we were targeting, which is simple, safe and secure.
Simple is already in process by the UI that we are creating, UI UX and the whole ecosystem around NFTs. It will make it simple. Safe is via the encrypted that we are providing and secure also.
So that is the target that we have around with numbers. I’m talking like I’ve already told you, around October, we are targeting around 500k users that we want to reach. I know that’s an ambitious number, but the pace that we are running at right now, we can go near that number and reach that amount of users who will be trading on chip exchange.
And with the help of being the native Dex on 10, I think we can achieve that. Plus on the social side, we are right now doing our paid marketing on PR. So we are hoping to get a good number of traction in terms of onboarding users from all different markets.
So I will just give you a hint of what is coming next. We are launching Chimtrop version 2. The last Chimtrop got us 40,000 users through that campaign. And we are targeting a 10-fold campaign compared to the last one in end of August.
And I think based on that, we can easily achieve our targets. Okay. No, I think to be ambitious is a good thing, especially in web three, considering you guys are doing well, you’re catching momentum.
Nothing like it. And it’s good to aim high there. So now let’s zoom out a little bit and talk a little about the DeFi space in general.
What is your outlook on the market currently? What are your thoughts like with this? Obviously a centralized exchange getting hacked is very different from perhaps a Dex. But in general, where do you think does the market stand currently? And what is your outlook on it? Do you think better things are coming? On DeFi, absolutely better things are coming because I remember the last time these kinds of hacks started happening like with Zdex. So I think it was 2022 when DeFi startup, I have the data with me, right? So the total value that increased in DeFi skyrocketed in 2022 when most of these hacks that happened regarding Solana and FTX and everything, a lot of exchanges being going down and that.
So at that time, I think users started noticing, okay, it is not as safe as they thought storing their funds and trading on these centralized platforms. Even if they do KYC, even if there are so many audits, even if there are so many checks in place, authorities being involved, KYC being done, that there are still hacks. So it is like users started noticing, okay, if you do some safe practices, we can also store our funds ourselves in self-custody wallets or ledgers and then they can start using these decentralized platforms.
That’s when the volume in DEXs and lending protocols skyrocketed as well. So now this happening again, I think boosts the user’s trust in DeFi and I see it going even up further and you can see the difference in trading volumes when these hacks happen. Centralized exchange volumes on these particular platforms decreases exponentially while decentralized being stable.
So I think that’s a milestone for DeFi in general where we are progressing right now. It is just blue skies ahead. Brilliant.
Any particular products or niches you feel would do splendidly well in this upcoming bull run? I think AI is absolutely gilded in 2024. It has been the projects that are building on AI. Obviously, there’s a trend there that people, obviously, it’ll always be there that as soon as one trend hits, most of the independents start building on it to get the juice out of it.
That has always been there. Apart from that point, I think AI has been doing good, really well. RWA, I’m still looking forward to it, that it will perform better but I haven’t seen something out of the box or extraordinary out of it.
But yeah, privacy and maybe encryption is one thing that is upcoming and I think we are right on time. So we will be seeing the next year because now apart from these acts and being done, people are now more mature compared to the people who have been in the market. Let’s say who are there in 2016 and 2024 now, they’ve seen two market cycles in blockchain.
So now I think they are more mature. They know when to take profit. They are getting out.
So you see these mini bull runs coming in, mini bear markets coming in, in between, that’s when the market is getting mature. People know when the market has taken a significant run, they take profit now. So they’re not sitting idle.
So they’re getting smarter because most of the people like myself, in 2017 and 2020 bull run, we didn’t take that much profit. We thought, okay, the Bitcoin will go higher in a decade. I think these targets are what made people think, let’s not measure Bitcoin’s price movement with targets.
Let’s see it with percentages. And with percentages, every bull cycle or these four year cycles, the percentages are decreasing. Not for the newer old ones, but for the matured ones.
So I think people are realizing that, okay, where the market is going. I think they will really soon realize that, okay, where they have to trade, which platform they have to choose. And I think encrypted platforms are one thing that will take the lead in 2025.
And I think AI and RWA are still good to move ahead in 2025. All right, okay. Because there has been a lot of folks who are perhaps very skeptical about AI tokens, because again, because perhaps it’s very new and there’s been a lot of noise around it, but people want to wait it out and see if there is an actual PMF.
But you seem to have a very positive outlook towards it. Because what happens with general market users out there is, most of the people want to just make money in crypto. Very few percentage of people is out there for the tech.
It’s the actual truth. So if you go there, if I’m, let’s say I’m investing in a token right now, I also want to see if it is providing, if it has hype, if it has traction. Even in the VCs they see right now is, then I’ve taken a lot of meetings with VCs recently, and very few go and deep dive into the tech.
They see more about, okay, what the traction is all about, how the economics are, because they want to get the money done. Same with the retail users as well. They are just running on behind, which is this trending, which is AI right now.
So any project which has AI in its name, they do very, very well. Because the end user, I might say DJs really buy into that hype on the token launches. But I would say if any project is, I’ve seen a couple of projects who are building on AI and Supra and other blockchains.
They’re using AI to make life simpler. And that is the core purpose of AI. Artificial intelligence is born to make the human’s life easier.
And I think if we can incorporate that into many of these projects coming up, and if they can utilize it properly, they will really take a lead in the AI game. But yeah, I would say it is still upcoming and new. It is a trend right now, but it has to evolve into a mature market, which is still pending.
Right. It’s still yet to sort of find its niche and be a map. Right.
And I totally agree with that. Are there any books or thought leaders, podcasts that you would like to recommend to our listeners? Books, I read a lot of books only, like Startup, Lean Startup, Mock of the Ferrari I just read recently, I’ve done a Shoe Dog I’ve done recently. But podcasts, I have no particular podcast that I listen to.
We have a couple of YouTubers and a couple of thought leaders on Twitter that I follow. And I keep track of them. I can share a list of them, but I don’t remember most of them by name.
Most of these are Twitter profiles that share a lot of valuable insights. ZackXBT, I follow most of the time. That is one of the inspiration I got into learn more about encryption and how the wallets kept being tracked.
So a couple of them, Elon Musk I follow on a regular basis. And I get influenced by the journey and entrepreneurship and how they are able to move ahead without being expert in it. I think reading and I think learning is one thing that is ongoing.
And I have no specific interest. I’ve been like that since my childhood days. I guess I have never focused on one particular person who I’ve been following.
I just get whatever information I can. I subscribe to topics on Twitter and whatever comes in that feed, I just keep absorbing. Or I’m a very avid Googler.
So like just keep Googling everything. If I come across something that I don’t know, I just Google it, read about it and just make my notes. That’s what I do.
That’s wonderful. I think you should be a constant learner and whatever works for you. As long as you’re able to keep the wheels moving and not getting rusted, it is absolutely fine.
So Akshay, this has been a wonderful conversation, but we are running out of time and I would love to ask you two things. How to perhaps, if somebody wants to get in touch with your team or they want to work for you or they want to contribute to your project, how do you wish our listeners to get in touch with you? Absolutely. They can go to our Twitter, which is ideastreamexchange.
And then they can join our Discord link is in our Twitter. So they can join our Discord. We post most of our updates on Twitter itself, but if they want to get into a personal conversation with our team, they can definitely go to the Discord, go into general chat.
We have active modes. They are 24-7. They talk to people, listen to their concerns.
And if they have a problem around it or maybe they want to get in touch with the team, they can raise a ticket there. We are available to solve it as well. And we post most of our latest developments on our Discord as well.
Plus we are coming up with a couple of more weekly updates for our audience that will be starting within this week itself. And we are very active right now on Twitter. We have every week, we have multiple AMAs where we target our listeners about different topics, encryption, tracking, doxing, trading.
So we do these AMAs regularly on Twitter as well as Discord. All right. Okay.
Wonderful. So basically reaching out to you via socials would be a good idea. Absolutely.
Excellent. Can you tell us a little about the team that is behind Cupid Stage? So we are right now an eight-people team. As soon as I am the CEO, and Tejas is the CTO, and they just changed.
Right now we have two of the co-founders, Raul and Saurabh. They have been also after we started the Cupid Stage together. And we have been in touch since 2016.
We have done multiple businesses and the Web3 agency that I talked about initially, we founded it together as well. We were working on multiple projects together. They were handling finance and operations.
And right now, even in Cupid Stage, they’re handling finance and operations. And Tejas handles all the tech that goes behind chip exchange. We have Nadeem who takes care of marketing, takes care of content, and a couple of more teams in the social media side as well.
Excellent. And your team would be remote, right? Yeah. So right now we do have an office here in Gurgaon, in Delhi, but we have most of the team.
Let’s say half of the team works remotely. Okay. Awesome.
Again, Akshay, this has been a wonderful conversation. And thank you for telling us so much about Linear as well as TEN and what you’re building on top of these chains, the chip exchange, as well as the cross-chain X that you guys have built. This was very enlightening.
And I’m sure that many builders will take inspiration from your journey. Now to my last question, which is something I ask everybody who comes on the show. You are somebody who has been in the Web3 space for like seven, eight years now.
But before that, you were not primarily in Web3 and you happened to get into Web3 because your interest got peaked. If there are similar, a similar dilemma is faced by other people, what would be your advice to them for them to start living on blockchain? Okay. That’s a very interesting question.
I guess, of course, for people who stumble upon blockchain, I would say get a mentor first, which was one mistake that I did. I think that was one mistake that I haven’t followed ever in my life. I relied on knowledge and reading a lot.
But I would say, if you want to fast track yourself, get a mentor in the blockchain space. Do work for them for free. Go work in the organizations for free.
But get a person. First of all, finding a mentor is very important. You are choosing the right person who won’t just use you, but also help you with your career, understand you, what your goals are.
So if you are able to find a mentor who is a leader in the blockchain space and can guide you, so your journey can become 4x the speed that it has initially gotten. So I think that is one advice I would say to anyone who is getting into blockchain. If that can be for starting a job in Web3, that can be for starting a project in Web3, that can be only for trading or maybe getting started with buying altcoins, NFTs or stuff like that.
If you have someone who has done it, just go ask them, tell them, okay, I’m ready to learn. I’m happy to help in your personal projects if that is required. I think that would really make someone’s journey a lot faster.
And I think a good example is the teams that I’ve worked with in Web3 in the last seven, eight years. I’ve worked with so many interns who started with Web3 without even knowing what blockchain is. And after their internship was over, they were just starting a job which initially would have taken them two to three years just to get into that position.
So I think that really from experience, it really gives you speed. Right, absolutely. I think people who’ve been there, done that can lend you a helping hand.
And this is a small ecosystem. After all, in its infancy, you can always find some right people who can shed light on that path that you have undertaken. So that’s wonderful.
Thank you so much, once again, for taking the time to speak to me. Before we wrap this up, any parting thoughts? It’s nice connecting. This is my first podcast.
I guess I’ve done a lot of interviews, but podcast, I think this is one of the first ones. So really thankful to you, Tarusha. The questions and everything was streamlined and never faced a challenge there.
So kudos to you. And likewise, thank you so much.
This file is longer than 30 minutes.
**Go Unlimited at TurboScribe.ai to transcribe files up to 10 hours long.**