# Strategic ICO Launches and Ethereum L2 Pivot

**Podcast:** The Milk Road Show
**Published:** 2026-02-09

## Transcript

It really calls into question the whole vision of Ethereum for the last like almost 10 years, right?
Started to think about okay.
How do we how do we scale this out?
How do we give more bandwidth throughput to the network?
And Ethereum kind of aligned on the on the L2's vision.
What's up, everybody?
It's LG Du Set here, and welcome to the Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show that isn't afraid to admit we were all wrong about Q4 2025.
Today is February 9th, 2026.
Listen, last week was insane in a good and a bad way.
We kicked off the week thinking 70k for Bitcoin was the bottom, and we finished it thankful to be back at 70K.
This week we have an absolutely loaded lineup.
Tomorrow we have Scott Melker, the day after that, Matt Hogan, and even Jamie Coots are all back on the pod.
Some of our favorites are coming back to analyze the market.
So make sure you tune in, like and subscribe, do all that stuff to not miss an episode.
But before we do any of those deep dives into the market, we are gonna zoom all the way out to something that is honestly maybe a little bit smarter and and a much better, more passive opportunity.
You see, months ago when I used to do the DGen podcast, my friend B check came on and told us publicly, and even more so in private to me that he was making way more money, or rather was having more success, let's say, in private markets than in trading.
He was out of the DGen game, he told me.
And he's like, Listen, I'm just looking at investing angel investing wherever I can.
Not only did I take that word to heart, but I also set out to learn a lot more about that space and about the platforms that are available to us to do that kind of investment.
And today we have Matty O'Connor, the co-founder of Legion, who does a lot of these ICOs on the podcast to tell us all about it.
Today's episode is brought to you by Sum Turn Crypto Tax Chaos into Confidence and bridge, send stable coin payments instantly, simple, global, and friction free.
Maddie, welcome to the show, man.
Thanks, LG.
Appreciate it being here.
Okay, listen, we want to learn all about the ICOs.
We we don't have founders like you on the show very often, but but listen, it's a Monday morning in crypto, dude.
So I think stocks are ripping.
I haven't checked.
Stocks are flying.
Crypto is not.
Maddie, what in your opinion, man, from your desk, what the hell's going on in the market these days?
What what is happening?
Yeah, I mean you see a lot of rumors you know circulating of like exchanges distributing uh BTC and people dumping them.
Um I think what happened with that is that a true rumor that somebody just airdropped like 5000 BTC to users or something?
What is that?
Yeah I've seen some headlines about it uh you know investigations starting into it more formally so I think there's a kernel of truth there to something going wrong.
Can that explain all the price action?
I mean you've also got you know um the narratives at least about quantum resistance you know jitters and um and uh you know these sorts of aspects uh gold selling off precious metals selling off so bitcoin also selling off a bit yeah I mean I think important thing important to keep in mind that we've been through these cycles many times before right and I think this cycle is different than previous uh for for most coins for altcoins right like we you didn't see uh a big uh alt season this time around um but I think for Bitcoin, if if there's any token where the cycle will you know persist, it's Bitcoin.
We've seen these kind of moves before.
They're nothing new in the grand, you know, the grand scheme of things, the great the the overall history track record.
And so I think this shouldn't change.
If you're a bullish Bitcoin before and you think it's going to become, you know, uh the the the new dollar, the new gold replace uh things as a as a as a treasury as a central bank treasury asset, then nothing that happened this week should really change that hypothesis.
Uh I think that's an important perspective to keep in mind because it's very easy to uh to freak out and see 50% uh drawdown in uh you know in a blue chip asset.
Yeah.
I think it was the speed, Maddie.
It was also the speed last week at which it happened, especially on Thursday, February 5th, where it's just like, why are we just cratering so intensely?
Um, but it's funny you use the word cycle because I feel like a huge debate we've had on the show for months is like, oh, it's a different cycle, the cycle doesn't exist anymore.
And yet all the evidence so far is pointing to this cycle.
But like, dude, you sound like you're pretty experienced in this space.
There's no way it's that simple that we're still just in these four-year cycles that come down to almost the day every year or every every bear market of when it reverses, which is now what everybody's saying, right?
Like, oh, sometime in Q3, we'll have this reversal.
What's your take there?
Um, yes, you you're right.
It's not, it's definitely not that simple.
Um, but I think even even TradFi is cyclical in a nature, right?
It moves different cycles, you know, the the macro business cycle expanding and contracting to interest rates.
But um, I think there's all there's definitely a cyclicality to it of just the the money flowing in and out, right?
Bitcoin is largely a function of capital flows, right?
You have a supply that's coming online, you have inflation um as miners mine blocks and you have demand, and then it's relatively simple in that regard.
Um, and so as capital has flown out to other assets, you've seen kind of the price decline.
But I think we'll have you know cyclicality reversing the other direction.
I think the big question to keep in mind is one, this quantum quantum resistance, quantum proofing aspect, which is a little bit of a you know of a scaremongering tactic for now.
And but you also very much have a legitimate uh legitimate concern to think about in regards to these data's uh unwinding, right?
That could be very, very volatile.
If for nothing else, I would expect to see a lot of volatility with kind of the altcoin data and some more, some more explosions to come.
Um, how much that will blow back to Bitcoin?
Hopefully, not too much, but that's that's what I'm current.
I'm personally watching, is less the less the quantum stuff and more more when do these uh dats become forced sellers.
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When do they become forced sellers?
Because isn't Tom wasn't the headline last week that Tom Lee is down like seven billion dollars on his ELIs?
Yeah, when does he does he even become a force seller?
How does that work?
I don't I don't I don't know about it.
It's a separate episode.
So there's a wide variety of uh quality of debts, right?
So it really depends on the specifics of what you know assets that basically how they finance their purchases, right?
Um, and like when that when that bill comes due.
Um, and so it it if you're people like Sailor, where you've kind of structured them as long, you know, term convertible notes, and you can kind of service the debt, and there's no kind of uh specific catalyst to to trigger um the debt coming due, then you can survive a long time.
But in terms of the overall market, in terms of the overall asset, we have to really look at like what's the weakest link, right?
And all it takes is the weakest data to get liquidated, and that triggers you know this cascade.
So uh the systemic risk is hard to fully appreciate until after the fact.
No, please don't.
Oh man, no, let's not let's not even entertain these ideas.
But we we we must, we must as a crypto show.
Um, I'm gonna jump forward a little bit because there's a few things I wanted to chat with you today.
I feel like you've got a really great opinion on um Ethereum and the L2s because you guys also uh field a lot of these potential ICOs that we've seen come to the market lately.
Yeah, so we're I want I definitely want to discuss that.
But while we're talking market right now, Maddie, um, for someone like Legion for a company like Legion that's launching ICOs, how are founders who are looking at launching an ICO soon, how do they play this market?
Because whenever I look on X and I see like hey, I think like Rainbow Wallet launched their token over the weekend, and I was like, God, you've been around for so long.
Why wouldn't you just wait?
Like, why just wait for not terrible conditions?
What's going on behind the scenes?
Yeah, that's a great question.
So, I mean, in terms of long-standing projects that have been, you know, talking about TG or it's been an option for years, and like they choose now.
Honestly, I don't know why they would uh, you know, what what specific catalyst would would compel them to launch at this moment?
That being said, I think now's like a great like the bear market can be a fantastic time to launch your token, but generally it's going to be for like smaller, you know, younger, younger projects.
We'll get into that in a second, I guess.
But yeah, for the for the big projects that that have been delaying for years and could delay, maybe they had some terms with investors that said you had to launch by this date.
Maybe they've locked the usual culprit is you lock in like a listing date with an exchange, you know, a big exchange that you want to list you, but that doesn't make sense in these cases you're mentioning.
So um, I don't know, it could be could be just uh they've planned for it so long they just want to get it out of the way, or it could be some kind of you know early VC uh deal uh term that they signed years ago.
Um, but I think if you to answer your kind of your original question, like if you're a founder, you know, navigating these C's, navigating this market and wondering how, when do I launch my token?
It all comes down to you know relative terms, right?
Um, now could be a fantastic time to launch bear markets.
There's a lot less noise, right?
So you can actually stand out more.
You can build a community, you can scale that up from there.
Um, you can grind out positive price action over time, right?
Instead of this like launch high down only price, you can launch reasonable and grind up.
Uh, because a bear market, right?
You you have the opportunity to do that, and market conditions will improve.
Um, but or or I should say all of that is given that you're launching at a reasonable valuation, right?
And so looking at comps, looking at, you know, oh, our last raise, or a competitor raised in the heat of the bull market at 500 million, therefore we should be 700 million, right?
Like, no, that doesn't fly.
Be realistic, right?
Assume the worst case, assume assume everyone who's been farming your points is gonna dump the token, right?
Get that cell pressure out of the way, find a way to recycle the blood and launch at a reasonable valuation that leaves upside on the table for your community.
That's how you succeed in the long term.
It remains to be seen, you know, which builders are here for the long term or not.
But that's an easy way to determine who is just trying to extract and who is who's building.
Listen, man, I've met a lot of founders and a lot of them have that insane optimism that you're talking about, where they're like, these guys who are kind of like us launched at this valuation and that was in the best conditions possible.
Now I'm launching in the worst conditions possible.
Surely my token will do better.
And right, right.
That's I know so many people I've met so many people like that.
Relentless optimists, if you will, uh, who really believe that.
And that's I imagine that puts you and your team in a pretty challenging position.
We have people coming to you being like, okay, we're ready, let's launch.
And you're like, I don't know if we should do you do you ever advise people to be like, maybe you shouldn't launch your token right now.
Is that is that something you do or comfortable doing?
It's uh yes and no, it's less about the timing, it's less you know, I mean, maybe in extreme circumstances, we've said, okay, let's you know, do it, like let's let's delay a week or two.
Um, it's more about if we simply can't get to the terms that make sense with that project, we'll just have to, and sometimes it's painful, right?
Like all else equal, it's a great project, it has traction, it would have a lot of interest for a sale, but we know that like this isn't gonna give the best uh the best chance of success for Legion or his users, just have to pass.
Um, and so there's been a couple cases of that, you know, over the over the years we've been operating.
It's uh it's frustrating, but then very, very rarely.
I can't really think of an example up top of my head.
Do that does a team go through that process.
We have the conversation, then they launch, and and we were like, oh wow, we we we should have launched the method inflated valuation anyway, right?
If anything, it's always like, oh, thank God we didn't pull the trigger.
So um, yeah, it's a it's a it's always a negotiation.
You look at the comps, you try, you try and beat you know, stubborn founders over the head as much as you can, seven different ways with different slices of the data, but uh but people are um are stubborn and optimist for better or worse sometimes.
Yeah.
Totally.
We've seen a lot of uh interesting ICOs in the last couple of years, right?
And I I came up in the NFT streets.
I was formerly running a podcast on this network called Milk Road DGen, where we kind of studied some of these things and looked at some of the opportunities.
Pump fun, probably one of the biggest ICOs, right, in recent memory, and quite a few others.
There's been Monad, a lot of other ones that have been publicly available.
In your opinion, Matty, like what is the holy grail of this kind of combining, you know, an ICO with maybe kind of like airdrop for users of a platform or people who have grinded to air to farm it or whatever.
What is like what is the right way to do these things?
And who, for in your opinion, is kind of the golden child in this current time to do that?
Yeah, fantastic question on airdrops versus sales, you know, those mechanisms.
Um, in my opinion, airdrops used to make sense as a general marketing expense, right?
Um, you know, the first the first popularized airdrop ever, at least Uniswap, came with no one was expecting the airdrop.
But now everyone, you know, and their mother expects the airdrop, right?
And so you have uh almost every airdrop, it's not a question of if it's being, you know, farmed by Sybils, it's how much it's being farmed by Sybils, right?
And some teams go to great lengths to design like a very uh like lighter, for instance, did a pretty good job of designing a points program that's like not too transparent where you can game it, but also kind of feels organic and like rewards users.
But a lot of projects don't put much time and effort into their points program and just say, okay, do this action, you get 10 points, right?
And then you just make it.
Can I just interrupt you for one second, Maddie?
I just want to interrupt you just to clarify what a Sybil is for people that are not freaks like me.
Uh a Sybil, which also is used when people talk about um if you were to uh uh hack the Bitcoin network and you would be able basically to take over 50% or more of the validators or whatever.
And we have a lot of you you discuss quantum fears uh for most chains, and that's one of them is that a realistically an AI could figure out how to do this.
Um, but when it comes to airdrops, I probably explained that last part really terribly.
So don't kill me for that part, folks.
Anyways, but for airdrops, the idea of Sybils is that where somebody is running like a bot or an AI or whatever, and they're creating thousands of wallets that go to these chains or protocols and do all the very simple, you know, one-on-one actions required to qualify for the airdrop so uh uniswap I think is a good example where it's like that was one of my first airdrops and you got a nice airdrop even if you just did one swap on unit on uniswap and my airdrop was I don't know even at the time it was like 2000 bucks which was amazing.
But people took that and they're like I must now create thousands of wallets that will all do a handful of transactions a day across every protocol possible and they automate that so what you're saying when you say Sybil is that you're you know you have a lot of um protocols now trying to take steps to prevent that yeah I mean we still you you effectively have one person pretending to be multiple people right yeah is and so yes you have you have thousands of people yeah exactly exactly and yeah hundreds or thousands of people in some cases and so um going back to kind of the the point like airdrops it's just how much are they being farmed is really the question right and so um there's you can you can distribute tokens to what you think are 10,000 unique holders could be like three people you know in North Korea and then they just dump your token.
And so, long story short, I think airdrops, um, unless they're very, very carefully designed, right?
Where to be exploit resistant are are really tough.
Uh, one of the one of the many advantages of a sale is that you have a non-zero cost basis, right?
People are kind of putting their skin in the game, putting their money where their mouth is, especially if there's some kind of vesting associated.
Doesn't mean that you know you get uh none of the tokens that unlock, but maybe it's 50% unlock at TG, 50% vest over three months, six months, or maybe you even make that an element of the sale and you bid on how long you're vesting for as part of you know to win to win allocation in the sale, which I think is a really interesting mechanism.
Um so all these aspects kind of add up to um the the wise teams, the wise you know, people approaching token distributions are really thinking critically about we know that an airdrop is going to be industrially farmed.
We know you know it's it's a business, it's literally a business, it's an industry to farm airdrops.
And so, how do we design our token launch holistically to resist to that, right?
To be to be ready for that that abuse and actually get into the hands of real users, real people who are gonna hold the token, real people who are gonna use the protocol.
Then increasingly, um, these are like widespread airdrops, so like everyone out there um are gonna go the way of the dodo.
Although, of course, you know, high profile projects like Monad, sometimes you know, the the the super tier S-tier ones are the ones that can kind of afford to break the rules, right?
But for most most projects, you're gonna want to avoid like a super wide distribution via an airdrop and go a much more calculated, much more kind of um data-driven distribution.
And and that ties into why we built Legion the way we did, focusing on sales and focusing on what we call merit-based allocation and kind of the reputation system that we built out.
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So who's the golden child?
Who's done the best airdrop slash ICO?
You can't just say airdrop, it has to be one that had some form of ICO.
Oh, so form of ICO.
Um, I think uh I think yield basis then I'd have to go with.
So uh we're gone on your own platform.
Yeah, but but seriously, you had you had the co-founder of curve right you have the co-founder of curve launching a new project curve multiple billion dollars TVL right you probably think oh they could they could easily do an you know an uh an ICO at a billion dollar FTV right but they intentionally didn't they intentionally did an FTV of 200 million leaving some upside on the table for holders so I think that one was uh was a good example.
Okay here it is we're on the we're on the Legion site right now uh legion.cc so amount raised for yield basis what was yield basis I remember reading the white paper and like it was a little bit beyond me uh yeah yeah I mean it was a little complicated for me you guys raised 7.2 million on the platform and there was a hundred and eighty three million deposited so a massively oversubscribed route so clear oh I have to verify my account damn it anyways uh I'll go do that later but that was so what was yield basis 60 000 people holy oh 600 accounts wanted that and and and to go back to our earlier point some of those were definitely Sybils right some of those were definitely bots and people trying to fake you know allocation, we we did a lot of them out.
But um, yeah, I mean yield basis, not to belabor it is or get hung up on it, but uh but yield basis is a is a is a tool, a protocol to basically monetize earn a yield on the volatility of uh Bitcoin itself.
And so we all know about an impermanent loss, right?
Um, where if you provide liquidity to an AMM pool and the prices change, you kind of end up worse off that if you just held those assets.
Well, not to get too in the weeds, but yield basis says does some clever things and says if we constantly rebalance our LP uh position in the in the liquidity pool, and we leverage up our our liquidity position in the pool, we can actually eliminate mathematically impermanent loss, and so we're left with making uh fees.
And so if the fees collected outweigh the kind of costs of like rehedging all the time, then you make a native yield, and and just empirically it works out that way where most of its life, or almost all of its life, people have made like a 20-ish percent APY on their Bitcoin simply by providing liquidity in the in this you know clever AMM pool.
So um, yeah, it's a pretty it's a very cool project.
Yeah, it was a cool project, clearly, clearly worth the the popularity as well.
The other one that stands out to me here on your on the page, uh Giza.
I remember I remember that was a pretty big deal.
Um I think you guys looks like you probably did the raise a little bit before it kind of landed on my radar, but that that's a good one.
But the one that stands out to me, uh probably a little bit a little bit more consumer product was sports.fun, which was football football.fun craze back in August.
Um everybody went totally ballistic over.
Now they're launching other products.
So that's another one.
Five, five X over subscribed as well, 4,500 participants.
So that's that's pretty cool.
Matty, who are the people that are that are coming on and buying these things?
Um, like who like I just want I want maybe maybe give our audience like a a profile that they can kind of relate to uh in terms of who the participants are in the ICO because we're getting a good view of of the companies doing it, but who who are the buyers?
Yeah, it's a great question.
Um we've got people from all over the world.
Uh some of our biggest markets include uh Asia markets, you know, Korea, Vietnam, Turkey's a big market, Ukraine is a big market.
Um and so they generally, you know, thanks to the SEC, tend to not be Americans, right?
Tend to know non-accredited Americans, uh, although that might be changing soon.
But um pretty pretty international uh base of uh of buyers, which is um you know helpful if you're trying to if you're trying to reach a lot of uh a lot of people and not have your your token kind of coordinatedly uh farmed and dumped.
Well, are they are they are they what do you have like an average contribution from users?
That's what I'm kind of curious, right?
Are like people coming to this and being like, um, okay, I've got I'm gonna put 200 into yield basis or into sport fund, or do you have like a slightly higher average spend?
Like are people coming and be like, I've got, you know, and I've got a couple grand for this or more.
And do you have like larger organizations also using lead?
Yeah, so we we have a mix.
Um we have you know, people investing as little as like you know, 10 bucks.
Uh again, you know, some some sales are on like ETH L1, in which case a minimum would be higher because of gas fees, but uh, but on kind of L2s, and that's a great topic for us to chat about.
Um, you know, uh minimums can be very low and people can invest as a little 10 bucks.
And we have people on average, I think it's around you know, 10,000, maybe, maybe like, you know, uh, eight to twelve uh, you know, varies from sale to sale, but on average in that ballpark.
Um, and then yes, we do also have um you know tie-ins to to OTC desks and institutions that want to participate.
Um, so one of the things we've really focused on is being the world's first ICO underwriter, as we put it.
And so you know, for those who don't know, an IPO underwriter is someone who works with a uh a company when it goes public, right?
When it has its stock market IPO.
And things they do is like price the the shares, right?
Find the right buyers, make sure you're talking to the right, you know, market makers listed on the right exchange, going on road shows to institutional buyers that will be buyers not just in the IPO itself, but afterwards.
And so all of those aspects of what we do with projects we work with at Legion.
Um, you know, getting into the weeds of their arrangements with market makers, make sure they're not, you know, getting ripped off or getting set up for failure, um, helping them negotiate the very intimidating, you know, exchange listing negotiation process, right?
Um, not all the exchanges out there necessarily worth the bang for the buck of what they're trying to charge you.
Um, and so working through the teams with that, um, and also you know, uh getting them in front of liquid funds and helping them find you know the buyers that are gonna be um supporting them not just in the ICO but afterwards.
And so, yes, we've had institutional buyers, VCs, hedge funds participate, we've had uh retail participate.
It all comes down to um, you know, transparency and kind of and kind of indicating like, okay, this portion of the sale is for retail, this portion of the sales kind of you know set aside, can be done via OTC or you know, OTC desks J or retail uh institutional and buyers.
So as long as there's transparency up front and people kind of know what they expect, know the split, similar to a token distribution overall.
You know, people just want to know what the what the what the splits are, have the have the transparency.
We found that's a it's a recipe for success, right?
It sets up the project for success because they have buyers, they have institutional buyers as well supporting price after TG, and they have retail coming in.
Um, and these tend to be the strongest performing projects.
Got it.
Okay, thanks for sharing.
That's that's really helpful.
Um I'll be keeping an eye out for sure because I had signed up for yield basis, and then I think I got scared away by how oversubscribed it was.
That's fair.
I was like, you know what?
I don't know, but 200 million dollars in a smart contract in like 24 hours.
Yeah, it was wild.
I could get five dollars of this token.
Yeah, that's another lesson we've learned really quickly.
It's like people uh they would most times rather get no allocation than get dust, right?
And so we yeah, I don't know why it's that way, but it just is like I got like a small monad airdrop just from like my on-chain activity, and I've been watching it go from $50 to $80 to $100 back to $50.
And I'm like, cool, man.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm happy.
Yeah.
It's a nice dinner, a nice little or a cheap dinner or a nice lunch or something like that.
That uh where I live.
So um, but I do like, I will say, and and one thing that we're gonna talk about in a second is is the role of L2s and L1s and how that relates to you guys, and also what Metallic um said last week that has really caused ripples and probably uh will affect you guys as well.
Really quick, one feature that I do like on your product is this uh social score, which is good for me because I have a decent Twitter following uh that you've got me here.
Uh yeah, I have a good on-chain store score, but my social rank is 169 on your platform.
So that's pretty good.
That is pretty good, man.
Like my I have a lot of smart followers who unfortunately have tricked into following me uh years ago over the years.
Um, anyways, let's chat about this tweet, dude.
So um Vitalik, founder of Ethereum, um, tweeted this out last week.
It's a huge essay and it caused ripples through the industry.
And he was just basically saying that, you know, years ago I was open to L2s coming out because we need to help scale Ethereum.
Ethereum was just like too slow and expensive.
And now he's saying specifically, the original villa vision of L2s and their role in Ethereum no longer makes sense, and we need a new path.
Maddie, let's step out of the out of the Legion talk for a second and just think about the broader industry.
What kind of re what kind of uh ripple effects is this gonna have on everything that's being planned?
Because um, you have another L2 that's about to come online in Mega ETH, which has a ton of funding, a ton of great apps being built there.
You have base, which is Coinbase's L2, that is supposed to have uh likely have a token this year.
Uh planning and they are an L2, they're part of scaling Ethereum, and they are the fifth or sixth highest TVL chain uh across all chains, including L2s and L1s.
How does this how does this new direction from Metallic affect the market and how people are planning their their tokens?
Yeah, this is uh this is something I think a lot of people didn't expect to see, right?
Uh Metallica's been a long time supporter of L2s, and so kind of a reverse reverse uh about face for him.
Um it reminds me of what Kyle Simani has kind of said.
I mean, he you know, he he famously leaving multicoin also last week, but uh he said like the future of Ethereum is base, right?
Because you have this massive L2 that is increasingly growing to be a portion of the network and has you know very, very small gas fees compared to ETH, and also like has the support, of course, of Coinbase, which has all kinds of uh additional benefits, they can drive all sorts of usage to it.
So it really calls into question the whole vision of Ethereum for the last like almost 10 years, right?
Uh, ever since like this first scaling problems kind of showed up back in the original ICO craze when people couldn't get into sales, the the chain was jammed, wait times, gas prices just exploded, and you know, started to think about okay, how do we how do we scale this out?
How do we give more bandwidth throughput to the network?
And Ethereum kind of aligned on the on the L2's vision.
Is that gonna happen in the future?
I don't know.
Like I I it the the one thing that's clear to me is the economics don't make sense, right?
Um, you know, lots of people have said that L2s are kind of parasitic to ETH as an L1.
And it's hard to argue when ETH L1 block space is not full, and yet you have you know uh gas prices on these L2s that are fractions of the cost, right?
It doesn't feel like it's conducive to usage on Ethereum or the best interest of Ethereum in the long term.
At the same time, I think Ethereum's got to be careful that it doesn't get out competed by some of these L2s, right?
Um, that are faster that have a decent, you know, mind share, decent TVL.
Ethereum's been a long time player, has that advantage to it.
But is it is it unthinkable that another smart contract chain overtakes Ethereum?
I don't know if we're to that point yet.
Um, I think it's still on the on the table uh that somebody could flip Ethereum.
And if we're not careful, if if Vitalic kind of doesn't like somewhat make sure to bring along, you know, everybody uh in this, uh could easily happen.
But yeah, I think personally I'm a fan to see L2s kind of change or the the L2 tokens that have no purpose for a centralized you know sequencer.
Everybody knows that doesn't make sense.
It's been a dirty kind of not actual secret, but an open dirty open secret of the industry for years now.
And um we definitely need a change.
So in that regard, it's positive of what he's doing, but it definitely spells volatility for Ethereum uh in the in the short to medium term.
Matty, are there too many chains?
Yes, there's definitely way too many chains.
Yeah, but at the same time, it's it's kind of like standards, right?
Like there's that XY uh XY C D, X K C D.
Well, why am I blanking on the comic strip?
Do you know what uh you know the comic strip I'm talking about?
No, no, so too many chains, it's it reminds me of that XK CD comic strip where it says, you know, you see two developers and they're saying, oh, there's 19, you know, standards.
Why are they 19?
That's way too many.
We should make kind of an aggregator standard.
And oh, news next day is there's 20 standards now, right?
So chains are a little bit similar to that, where everyone's keeps trying to solve the um the splintering and also almost by doing so makes the problem worse.
I think we we of course haven't reached the most performant possible blockchain architecture out there, but we have way too many chains being funded at massive valuations that simply can't defend them, right?
I think one of the one of the issues is that the market structure that we're facing right now is just kind of screwed up, right?
Uh it makes it hard for people to know what to invest in, know what tokens to hold, know what tokens to buy.
So one of the reasons you saw no real alt season this cycle is that there are too many coins out there that are trading at valuations that were bloated up in kind of private markets and are now just metabolizing all the float that is coming to market.
Um, and there's not too much activity, let alone revenue, let alone buybacks to support the price.
So more pain is in the future, more consolidation.
I definitely see a future where we have way fewer, obviously there's gonna be tokens out there, but way fewer tokens that people actually follow, people actually care about, that are actually performing.
You'll have Bitcoin and you'll have a very shorter tail of assets um that are actually that are actually relevant.
Last question for you, Maddie, just to wrap out is one an ICO or I don't know if they'll ICO, I don't know what they're gonna do, but one that I've been watching for a long time is polymarket.
Oh how would you, and maybe you have insider no, I don't know.
I actually have no idea.
I'm not even seeing that as a wink wink.
I don't know.
I I hope they launch on your platform in some way.
That would be, I feel like that'd be really awesome for you guys.
Oh, start a polymer.
If you if you were in charge, how would you design their token release?
That's a great question.
I mean, um, what matters to them is obviously uh liquidity provision and just usage, right?
So they have these very they have the fortunate position of they know that there are these specific metrics that they need to keep, you know, keep rewarding.
And so I think they would I I would borrow a page from LIDER and really look at, you know, uh retroactively, of course, applying their points program, but design a point points program that is engineered to reward organic behavior rather than rather than um rather than bot you know bot activity and these sorts of things.
And uh don't make it fully transparent.
Don't say if you do this, you earn 10 points, right?
Because then you're just gonna make it abusable.
And then let those points feed into uh exposure or allocation in a limited kind of access uh sale.
I think that's the best way to do it.
Uh, you you know, no one says points programs have to lead to an airdrop, right?
That's just this this is kind of entitled, to be honest, right?
Opinion that kind of we've all grown used to that, like we had just free stuff in our wallets, but we don't we know we dump it, right?
So if you wanted to launch a project and kind of get you know the best supporters, get the best holders long term.
Um, maybe a small airdrop to your highest, you know, highest most valuable people makes sense.
But I think uh a big sale that is gated by you know, the more points you have, the more allocation you have in the sale is how I would is how I would go about this.
Nice.
I hope so.
I hope they have a sale.
I'd like to participate.
And I will say that I I I rarely share my own opinion on the show, but I will say that for polymarket, the big difference to that for them versus a lot of the other things that I've farmed in the past, sure, is that if I've been using polymarket, and this is where I would compare it to hyperliquid.
Yep.
If I've been using poly market and I'm one of the higher, I'm one of the higher volume users, I'm probably in the green.
And I probably make money using polymarket, right?
Versus, you know, maybe or maybe you've spent $50,000 in the red farming it, but then you know what I mean.
What I'm saying is that it's clearly a valuable product for some people, and I think that those people should get the token, similar to hyperliquid, right?
Whereas like, well, that's probably one of the most successful airdrops ever, right?
From from the point of launch to today.
And perks are also similarly, you know, zero sum, right?
You got your winners and your losers.
It's zero sum.
That's it.
So people who got that token are people that were already benefiting from the platform, most likely, and they wanted to keep using it and therefore probably more likely to accumulate the token versus a lot of these other things that we're talking about that I've farmed where I'm like farming.
I'm just gonna sell it.
Because it's been fun to click buttons, you know, for 30 times a day, but when I get the token, yeah.
Yeah, and that's and that was the state, you know.
I did really do think that like things like Uniswap and DeFi summer kick that off.
Yeah, of course.
Um that it was just like back then we didn't you didn't expect it, right?
You didn't even know you know, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, you didn't even know.
Now it's now it's expected.
You have people that do this for as a job to air to airdrop farm.
Um, and that's the natural evolution of how that things those things have worked out.
So so better to have higher value uh users and reward them.
I I agree with you.
Um great.
Well, Maddie, thank you so much for coming on the show, man.
Great to chat with you on this Monday as that as the market uh does its best to climb back up.
Um, and we'll be watching Legion, man.
I I really do think that that's one of the better opportunities that there are out there right now is to watch these types of sales.
Um, and best of luck to you guys in the future.
Of course, appreciate it, LG.
Thanks.
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