Austin Federa on bringing blockchain to the people with Solana (Episode 335)
Austin Federa joins us to discuss on bringing blockchain to the people with Solana.
Austin Federa is the Head of Communications for Solana Foundation, where he works across communications, marketing, strategy, and product.
Introducing Validated, the weekly podcast focused on expanding discussions with web3 industry leaders to cover a wide range of topics for those who are eager to learn more about blockchain and crypto.
In each episode of Validated, host Austin Federa (the Solana Foundation’s head of communications) tackles some of the big questions people have about the world of web3 — including NFTs, DeFi, decentralized governance, games, and more — alongside some of the world’s leading experts. Perfect for fans of Decoder and Acquired.fm, Validated looks at the big picture ideas and research about the decentralized future, as well as the trending news of the day.
Links
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The following transcript was created using artificial intelligence. There will be some grammatical errors below.
00:00:17:13 – 00:00:44:24
Richard Carthon: Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Crypto Currant, your host here, Richard Carthon. And today we got a special one for you. We are talking with someone that is at the ground floor of a lot of things that have been going on in the space that I am excited for this conversation to learn more about this ecosystem, but also see where things are headed post ATX and everything else that’s been going on. So today we have Aziz Bera, who is the head of communications at Solana Foundation. How are you doing today?
00:00:45:12 – 00:00:47:28
Austin Federa: Hey, Doing all right? Good to be here.
00:00:48:25 – 00:00:59:22
Richard Carthon: Well, happy to have you. I’m excited to dive into all the things that Salon is now focused on. But before we do that one, to first learn a little bit more about you. Give us some background on yourself.
00:01:01:05 – 00:01:34:13
Austin Federa: Yeah. You know, I have been with Solana Foundation and Solana Labs for about two years at this point. Started off working on a bunch of like product and marketing stuff and kind of, you know, I have an interesting role at the organization. I work across a bunch of different types of strategy comms, obviously, but a bunch of the work we do too, on like where we should be building next and kind of some of the theories about how we approach growth in the ecosystem. So it’s a super fun place to work. Before this, I was at Boston Trials where I was running product marketing for them by Sun.
00:01:34:15 – 00:02:01:12
Austin Federa: Charles was a blockchain infrastructure company that ran proof of stake and archival infrastructure and all sorts of that for about 20 to 30 different protocols before they were acquired by Coinbase at the very end of 2020. So yeah, before that I actually was working for a bunch of other types of startups and worked as a journalist for a few years actually originally coming out of college. So it’s kind of a strange path into Web3, but it’s great.
00:02:02:02 – 00:02:21:09
Richard Carthon: Now. It’s helpful though, you’re able to get all the useful information from the web to world and bring it over into Web3 and help accelerate at the different companies that you represented. What was that first introduction to Web3 for you? Like? How did you get first introduced to crypto and blockchain and what made you decide this is the path I want to go?
00:02:22:03 – 00:02:55:21
Austin Federa: Yeah, I mean, I think as a lot of folks like I had like bots and Bitcoin moment, but you know, honestly, like I think I probably don’t own Gox and like I lost my keys at some point and you know, that whole early crypto story and then was out of it for a while and then at the mid 2017 I moved to New York for a job with a fintech company. That was, it turns out, rapidly failing and trying to pivot into what now we would call Defi, but they were trying to issue a borrow lend token on Ethereum in kind of mid to late 2017.
00:02:56:15 – 00:03:26:29
Austin Federa: The project never really went anywhere. The company shut down and, you know, failed about two months later. But, you know, this was the first time I had to actually sit down and learn like, okay, like what’s a smart contract and solidity? Like, what can we actually use a theorem for, you know, in some sort of like thing for work and you do something for work. And like even personally, I was crypto skeptic at that time. I was like, I don’t really get what the application for all this stuff is, especially like a lot of the early terminology was just so bad, like a smart contract.
00:03:27:07 – 00:04:05:15
Austin Federa: Why couldn’t we just call them programs, right? Like the whole the whole model for me, for like Ethereum, just it made absolutely no sense. Initially it was like, okay, so there’s this platform you can run smart contracts on. And like, none of that terminology ever made any sense. And I was like, Oh, it’s just a giant distributed computer that runs very simple programs. All right, cool. This thing makes sense now. But for whatever reason, all of the terminology we use in this industry is just for me. It’s always like it’s totally backwards of what the actual thing is people are trying to build are. So that was my kind of thing that got me reintroduced to the space and kind of excited about what this technology could do.
00:04:05:25 – 00:04:16:21
Austin Federa: I went to work for Republican Republic crypto running marketing for them, the launch of the Republic, crypto brand and all that kind of stuff. And you know, from that point on I was really hooked on working in the space.
00:04:18:00 – 00:04:48:16
Richard Carthon: Yeah. So a great journey, being able to first get in and learn about Bitcoin, buy some, unfortunately go through the Mt. Gox situation. But then as you get reintroduced by looking at what’s happened in early fintech play and starting to really dig deeper into it, you saw the future of what this could be. So you start doing the marketing, you start to get into these different opportunities and then you fast forward and you land at Salon ahead of time. So a lot of people would have been like, Oh my gosh, this is a really cool opportunity. ET cetera. And you’ve had a unique pathway to getting here.
00:04:48:18 – 00:05:04:20
Richard Carthon: So for the person who’s listening and they’re like, I’m trying to figure out how do I get into one of these big foundations, get what these opportunities, even through these like various times, Like how would you see what is an approach that a lot of these people could do to at least start a path to getting some type of opportunity like that?
00:05:05:12 – 00:05:37:25
Austin Federa: Yeah, I mean, so for one thing, you know, I joined Solana in January of 2021, so it was hardly hardly a huge thing back at those days. It was still pretty pretty up and coming protocol. I think there were 35 programs that had transactions per day on the network. It’s over like 1100 now. And obviously it’s a much different organization then than the foundation was beforehand. But, you know, I would say so many folks I talk to in the space, they seem to just be waiting for permission from someone else, like they want to go through some training program or they want to do something.
00:05:37:27 – 00:06:08:16
Austin Federa: And they think like, oh, if I just get this credential, then somehow I’ll be like, qualified. And the truth is like, no one’s really qualified to work in Web3. It happens so quickly, the industry changes so completely. If I went on a nine month sabbatical and came back and someone was like, Go be head of comes at a foundation, like there would still be a solid 2 to 3 months of catching up I would need to do because this industry moves so quickly. So you know, there’s folks who six months ago knew nothing about blockchain and now they’re running marketing for like a protocol or something along those lines.
00:06:08:18 – 00:06:39:11
Austin Federa: I think really, like we’re in such early days and the technology changes so rapidly, it isn’t like trying to get a job at Google or Facebook or something like that where like you have to go to the right schools and then you have to have the right kind of career path, and then maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll end up, you know, it’s like it’s just a very different world getting into into crypto. So much of it’s like self-education. The biggest thing though, for me that’s like helped me in my career, weirdly, is like not doing anything related to this at all.
00:06:39:13 – 00:07:13:05
Austin Federa: Undergraduate like I did political science and environmental studies and like econ undergrad at like a liberal arts college. Nothing at all to do with this stuff. But like the the, the, the place I see people make a mistake in crypto is they get too tribal too quickly. They stop looking at the underlying technology. They start like there’s a huge amount of like cultish echo chamber in this space and like, it’s fun. Sometimes it’s useful, right? Like, I don’t I think you have to have a hell of a lot of grit to stick around through the Ethereum 2018 bear market where everyone stopped building and everyone left.
00:07:13:07 – 00:07:45:00
Austin Federa: Like the cult is the thing that gets you through that. But like if you drink your own Kool-Aid, you lose sight of the point of this technology and what we’re actually doing here. And so that’s one of the one of the harder things about the space is you tie philosophy and technology and economic interest all at once. And that trifecta is like the power, the what makes the space so sticky. It also makes it very easy to just like, get radicalized the same way folks get radicalized on YouTube about anything else in the world. They get radicalized about a specific implementation of a technology.
00:07:46:12 – 00:08:22:12
Austin Federa: I don’t think if you if you talk to anyone high up at on Foundation or the Ethereum Foundation or, you know, any of these foundations, they’re not single chain maxes. They really see this as like technology that will change the world. And like, yeah, they believe in the implementation that they’re working for. But it’s not like I think in order for Solana to succeed, Ethereum needs to fail. Or if Ethereum or if Solana failed, it would mean Ethereum was more value. Like all of that kind of stuff is very shortsighted, especially when we have at most, 20 million daily active users of all crypto combined.
00:08:23:08 – 00:08:55:23
Richard Carthon: Yeah, I mean, a lot to unpack with that. The biggest being that you don’t need permission to, like, go for something that you’re looking for. And a lot of the job is learning while you’re there and then being able to add value to whatever you’re bringing into. Totally don’t get so narrow minded that you are only focused and very shallow and what you’re seeing and be able to take a you know, a bigger a step back and get a bigger view of everything else that’s going on in the market so that you can be more informed and help drive something forth.
00:08:55:25 – 00:08:56:13
Richard Carthon: But you’re going to.
00:08:56:29 – 00:09:04:25
Austin Federa: It’s a hard thing to stay both optimistic and skeptical at the same time. And that’s like, I think, the best attitude you can bring to the space.
00:09:05:21 – 00:09:39:03
Richard Carthon: Yeah, I think that’s well said. So you now fast forward, it’s 20, 21. You get into this a lot of foundation and it’s a roller coaster ride. So like, yeah, Oh yeah. Come out of basically come out of nowhere. Gone is absolute terror of everyone knowing about it all. And all of a sudden you have an NFT platform that’s being, it’s competing with a theory. Um, you have all of these other amazing things that roll out and then 2022 happens. It’s been a roller coaster on the other side of this, this journey. Yeah. What are you think are some of the biggest takeaways through the experience that you’ve just encountered?
00:09:39:27 – 00:09:50:06
Austin Federa: Yeah, you know, one of the, the funny things to do is like, you look at like what happened in early November, right? And I think the first thing everyone’s going to think of is like.
00:09:52:04 – 00:10:29:24
Austin Federa: But the first thing that happened in November is we had over 3500 developers come to Lisbon for break point. And like the annual Solana conference, this is the second year we’ve done it, you know, in the middle of a bear market to get, you know, over 3000 developers out to Lisbon for a hacker house into a slot two games day, which is all about like games being built on the phone network. And then to go into, you know, four days of break the break point conference itself. Like I think you saw just an amazing number of people show up for that and then completely imploded two or three days later.
00:10:29:26 – 00:11:02:15
Austin Federa: And I think that was a real shock to to be looking at these two things at the same time, which is like there’s never been more interest in development on on a network. You know, it is it is it is the most developed network after Ethereum in terms of projects built on it and, you know, ecosystem adoption, reference implementations, all that stuff. At the same time, the bottom of the market falls out, right? Like the FTC’s imploding, you know, there was a there’s a there was a strong view there. Like FTC’s is very closely aligned with Solana and Solid foundation.
00:11:02:22 – 00:11:35:08
Austin Federa: That’s not really accurate. FCX had, you know, been an investor in this space and they built a few projects like Serum. But you know, for the most part what we were seeing is we were seeing a huge amount of value get tied up in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. And so that’s the thing that, like so many folks are going through right now is is funds that are maybe still locked on that exchange, you know, and trying to figure out like, what’s that process look like? You know, we’re talking Tuesday, which is the Thursday of the same day the House hearings started on stacks.
00:11:35:12 – 00:12:01:17
Austin Federa: And they’ve been really interesting to watch and to see how, you know, we still don’t really know exactly what happened and what really led to the downfall of the exchange at this point. But there’s a lot of people who are obviously hurting pretty bad from that. The foundation itself, you know, had about $1,000,000 of cash and cash equivalents on on international. But, you know, from an organizational standpoint, it hasn’t really affected the roadmap, but the resiliency of the community.
00:12:02:20 – 00:12:33:28
Richard Carthon: Yeah. And I appreciate you speaking of that. In just to echo how resilient and different I think this bear market is compared to even 2018 when going through the 18 to 20 low. A lot of people that were in the space were really here and saw the future. Like, it doesn’t matter what price fluctuations are. We’re here to build and we believe in this future. Now you have the bear, the bull market that just happened, you know, 20, 20, 20, 21 about November. And now we’re back into this in this bear time.
00:12:34:05 – 00:12:56:12
Richard Carthon: But the amount of people who are sticking around is drastically different. Like, you could see that consensus. You could see things like NFT and y’see, even at your own conferencing, 3000 people show up during this type of environment, like it shows how much the market has changed and how resilient people believe in the future of of what Web3 ultimately is building.
00:12:57:15 – 00:13:06:24
Austin Federa: Yeah. You know, it’s it’s such an interesting thing because like, it feels to me a little bit like March of 2020, right where it was like, you know.
00:13:08:28 – 00:13:43:17
Austin Federa: So I graduated high school right around the economic crash of 2008 2009. Right. And that was like something was deeply, fundamentally wrong with the U.S. housing market and that. Ripple effect took down huge amounts of financial institutions all around the world. March of 2020 was different. March of 2020 was, I don’t want to call it artificial because that makes me sound like some conspiracy theorist, right? But like the economy was humming and we had to press stop on that thing because of a global pandemic. And in some ways, like this bear market feels very similar to that, especially when you look like the fallout.
00:13:43:23 – 00:14:14:07
Austin Federa: Nothing fundamentally has changed about the nature of the sort of network running these other networks. It’s just that the confidence in the macro structure of the system is shaken at this point. And, you know, I think it’s also important to remember, like when these exchanges fail, they’re not actually web3 products. They’re not actually blockchain products, Right. They could have been trading pork belly futures for all we for all we care. They did something that’s like very likely illegal. And they broke the bank there. And, you know, they they created a huge amount of damage to users.
00:14:14:19 – 00:14:37:22
Austin Federa: But that wasn’t a blockchain thing. That was a centralization thing. Any centralized exchange could have had the same issues that they did. And so I think that’s one of the hardest things to reconcile, is that that sort of idea that like there’s never been more developers building in the space, like things are actually going very well from a technology and adoption standpoint. And then, you know, these these sort of incidents like the bear market just come out of nowhere.
00:14:38:19 – 00:15:03:12
Richard Carthon: Right? So let’s let’s talk about that. So unfortunately, with RTX and everything else that happened, the Solana got drastically impacted by all of that fallout. However, had that not happened, there’s still a lot of really amazing things. Salon is building, working towards and has on the roadmap. Are you able to talk towards some of those things that you know you currently have in the pipeline?
00:15:04:04 – 00:15:40:16
Austin Federa: Oh yeah, certainly. I mean, one of the biggest ones is fire Dancer. And so Fire Dancer is a second implementation of a validator clan coming to the Slammer network. Currently, only Ethereum and Bitcoin have multiple validator clients. These are this is a, you know, an implementation of that core software that runs the network. And it’s really important to have multiple implementations of the client because, A, they have different dependency trades, right? So if there’s a bug in one piece of code, it’s very unlikely that bug exists in the second implementation of the validator client because they’re built in different programming languages.
00:15:40:18 – 00:16:13:14
Austin Federa: The idea of like the same piece of code is going to be problematic and both like the chances are just very, very, very small. So it’s a hedge, right, to make sure that the network can stay both online and secure that has been benchmarked in, you know, synthetic testing environments that represent sort of a proxy of real world load. But it’s not real world load to about 1.2 million transactions per second capacity, which is nuts. And, you know, I don’t think we’ll ever see I don’t think in I don’t think in the short term we’ll see anywhere near 1.2 million transactions per second once fire dancer ships into production.
00:16:14:05 – 00:16:45:12
Austin Federa: But it’s a good indicator of what that theoretical upper bound of performance looks like. You know, on top of that, there’s just a ton of, you know, work being done in the community to sort of repair and replace some of the things that FDX was involved in. So Serum is the first central limit order book built on chain. This is different from an automatic market maker, an amp like Uniswap is or something like that. A central limit order book is the same order system that like, you know, the New York Stock Exchange uses or something along those lines. And so serum was one that was built on Solana.
00:16:46:03 – 00:17:10:04
Austin Federa: It’s been re it’s been redeployed and forked as open book. And so open book now is a whole totally community run project, which is a core piece of defi infrastructure for Solana. And so you can see that like folks throughout the ecosystem are kind of rebuilding and expanding a lot of these components that maybe FDX was involved in before. So it’s really exciting to see all that come together. And then of course, we have the on a phone that’s now shipping.
00:17:10:13 – 00:17:22:17
Richard Carthon: So let’s go. Looks like that was going to be one, because I know that was supposed to be a big drop. And then the timing again, timing is is is wild. But yeah. Can you talk to a little bit about this? A lot of phone.
00:17:23:22 – 00:17:56:05
Austin Federa: Yeah. So, you know, this is a really, really cool piece of of both hardware and software that are this team at awesome. Oh so when that’s been developing that’s the same hardware engineering team that built the essential phone. So they’ve they’ve built and the iPad pro and bunch of that awesome stuff in the past so the sort of phone called Saga is now shipping you go to sort of mobile dot com and you can sort of take a look there at kind of what that looks like, but it’s built on top of Android except it does two things different than any other phone or crypto platform in the market.
00:17:56:22 – 00:18:29:05
Austin Federa: The first is it stores seed phrases on something called the secure element inside the phone. Is that the same place that like face ID is stored or your credit cards are stored? It’s a really super secure piece on the phone. That’s it’s not quite as secure as a ledger, but it’s the closest you can get without dedicated hardware to being as secure as a ledger. It’s way more secure than a software wallet or a browser extension. And the second piece is this. Decentralized App store that’s built on Solana as well. The cool piece here is the underlying operating system, as is Android.
00:18:29:07 – 00:19:02:27
Austin Federa: So you still get Google Maps, you still get Google Play Store, you still get all that good Google stuff you like. But much like when you get a Samsung phone, it comes with a whole Galaxy store. The designer phone comes with a whole decentralized app store for folks who want to build applications on Solana. So there’s NFC marketplaces there, there’s games. And you know, with all of this, as you see both Apple and Google and especially Apple starting to restrict what you can do with and apps on their platform so you can restrict the in-app payments. This is really an alternative direction to counter Google and Apple’s moves here.
00:19:02:29 – 00:19:29:00
Austin Federa: And you know the end results the end goal, I hope, actually is that, you know, this line of phones in some ways stop being sold eventually because it’s just been integrated into core. And you’re writing core Apple right the same way that like NFC and like 5G started out on features that only a few phones had and now every phone sold has it. We’d love to get to a place where this open software stack is integrated to most phones that are sold.
00:19:30:03 – 00:19:56:21
Richard Carthon: Yeah, I think that’d be excellent. I think we’re pretty good result from that, just from looking how history repeats, unfortunately, and especially as Apple still doesn’t understand how fees work on blockchain. But, you know, we’ll get there with, with, with enough time. But I remember when the news dropped about this, a lot of phone came out and I was like, Man, this is really cool. And it’s going to be a disruptor. So happy. See that that shipping out?
00:19:57:16 – 00:20:04:27
Austin Federa: Yeah, definitely. I think it’s one of those things where it’s like, I’m sure Apple knows exactly how fees on a blockchain work. They just don’t really want to admit it yet.
00:20:05:21 – 00:20:46:13
Richard Carthon: Yeah. Yeah, they got they got somebody in there. So a lot of amazing things coming out for Solana and. Obviously, there’s been a lot of lessons learned from just all the things that have occurred this year. Do you think as the general populace looks at the world of web3, all of crypto, all of blockchain, and just sees the three black swan events that happened this year that kind of put us in this extended despair that we’ve seen so far? How do we start to get on the other side of that and rebuild that trust for mass adoption to start taking form? What do you think are some of the ways that that can start to happen?
00:20:47:10 – 00:21:20:26
Austin Federa: Yeah, you know, I think it’s going to take a while before the retail trading activity really comes back. I think you can argue that that was never what the whole place was about anyway. I think what we’ve started to see, and especially you saw this at the tail end of the last cycle, was applications that users barely knew were on blockchain that were bringing folks to the network. So Step In is a great example of this, right, as a as sort of a move to earn game built on Solana. You know, most people who downloaded it initially set it up. I don’t think they were deeply aware this was a blockchain based game at this point.
00:21:21:09 – 00:21:27:09
Austin Federa: There’s about 15 or so really high quality blockchain games rolling out in Q one on Solana.
00:21:28:27 – 00:22:06:00
Austin Federa: I think that the the goal for the bear market really now is to both build the fundamental infrastructure that you need to make sure that the network is ready to support that, and developers are ready for that next cycle. And at the same time bring users to discover all the power of stuff built on blockchain that you don’t even necessarily know is built on blockchain. And I think this is kind of one of those things where, like, I think when people are using an application in the real world, they don’t really care what the underlying technology it’s built on is like, Do I really care if the web service I’m using is built on Amazon or Google Cloud? Like, no, I don’t.
00:22:06:02 – 00:22:36:16
Austin Federa: I just care that it works, right? I think that’s like we’re starting to see blockchain technology deliver the same type of experiences that centralized applications can deliver except with much more flexibility and obviously openness for for users and all that sort of thing. So I think that’s what I’m really looking forward to, is that it’s sometime in the next 12 months we’ll see a few different breakout applications, maybe on Solana, maybe on other networks that are bringing in, you know, multiple millions of users to these networks.
00:22:38:04 – 00:22:49:28
Austin Federa: If we can see, you know, three or four of those in the first half of next year, I think the market’s going to come back much more quickly than it would if we don’t get that sort of use case really built out for users.
00:22:50:25 – 00:23:28:13
Richard Carthon: Yeah. And games have been a great bridge in a lot of ways to get people more and more involved on trying out some of these new applications because people can instantly like recognize what’s going on there. But the move to earn, it’s like a unique concept where, you know, imagine when the first like Pokemon game came out, Pokemon Go and everyone was doing it and you could get all these different creatures. But imagine if you could, you know, collect the pokemon and be earning while you’re doing it. Like, man, there’s just so many different like elements of, of things that I think with enough time combine a lot of different unique.
00:23:29:29 – 00:23:48:14
Richard Carthon: Pieces that would like to have more people receptive to participating in it. Like you said, it doesn’t matter that the underlying technology is blockchain if it works and functions as a Web two application. And now you just can do more things like the end user does not care. Like you said, they don’t care. They just want it to work and work well or.
00:23:48:16 – 00:24:19:11
Austin Federa: They’ll care later, Right? Like, you know, you get I think like folks didn’t originally care about a smartphone unless you were a business user, right? You had a reason to get a BlackBerry and suddenly, like, more people had a reason to get an iPhone. And like, the camera became the feature that, like, made everyone get a camera phone. They wanted to send photos to each other, right? Like these little things. Like, I don’t think anyone looked at the original iPhone and was like, this device will change dating forever. But like, you couldn’t have built Tinder without the iPhone.
00:24:19:15 – 00:24:31:01
Austin Federa: And like, we don’t even know what the pieces of software and technologies and user facing applications people are going to build. Yet on blockchain that can’t be built on Web two. So I’m really excited to see what that stuff is.
00:24:32:00 – 00:24:45:21
Richard Carthon: Yeah, I know. I am, too. And I know that you and Selena have a lot that’s going to be dropping in 2023 and are going to be exploring a lot different things. So much so that you have a podcast that’s dropping. Do you mind telling us a little bit about that?
00:24:46:10 – 00:25:13:18
Austin Federa: Yeah, we got this. We we used to run a podcast that was really focused on like deep tech of what was going on in blockchain. We’ve changed it up a bit. The new show is called Validated. It’s really focusing on like honest conversations on what’s going on in the blockchain space with a focus less on specific projects and more on the technology. And the paradigm change is taking place in this industry. So. Chip. Yeah.
00:25:14:00 – 00:25:45:08
Richard Carthon: I think that’s awesome. And I think it’s. Especially for the people who are in it. And you’re trying to see like what was the efforts that were being built back in the last year in 2018, and how much of those dynamics have shifted with how the market is now adapting and seeing like where people thought, Oh, if I build this thing, people will come, everybody be happy. And oh, that actually didn’t work. It fell flat on its face and people are having to pivot. So I think having those types of honest conversations about lessons is important.
00:25:45:10 – 00:25:47:00
Richard Carthon: It also helps with innovation.
00:25:47:27 – 00:25:49:15
Austin Federa: Yeah, things can be a lot of fun.
00:25:50:06 – 00:26:14:07
Richard Carthon: Yeah. And and, you know, I think you’ve dropped a lot of really good information for us today, Austin, but I always like to, to wrap up these interviews with a couple of fun questions. And the first one I always like to start with is with all the information you’ve been able to learn throughout the years, especially during your time at Solana. If you could go give yourself one or two pieces of wisdom. When you first started your crypto journey, what would you tell yourself?
00:26:18:27 – 00:26:51:25
Austin Federa: I was intimidated at the beginning, like back in 2017. I was definitely intimidated by how much it seemed like everyone else knew. And I still talk to people now who are like, How do I how do I learn as much as you? How do I get into this space? I think the answer is like, pay attention for 3 to 6 months and you will be just as up to date on that stuff. I think that’s like there are way fewer gatekeepers in this space than you could possibly imagine to the point where there’s pretty much zero. So just dive in, learn what you’re curious about, and the rest will work out.
00:26:52:24 – 00:27:15:16
Richard Carthon: No, I agree. The access information is there. The ways to participate are way more open. I mean, between Twitter spaces and this court channels. Telegram like you can get great access to a ton of really rich information. Now, yes, you have to be able to sift through and figure out what’s quality information versus the other. But the the access, the accessibility is is amazing.
00:27:15:18 – 00:27:40:02
Austin Federa: Yeah. The biggest thing I would say is start with the tech. Don’t don’t try and figure out what’s going to make you money. Like, if you actually want to learn something about this space, start by learning a piece of tech and kind of work out from there. It doesn’t really matter what you pick. You can start learning so on. You can start on a theorem, you can start on Cardano, you can start on polkadot. It doesn’t matter like learn the terminology, adapt it to other chains like and figure out what’s interesting to you.
00:27:41:05 – 00:28:01:15
Richard Carthon: Definitely. Someone gave me the advice of like find a technology or a ecosystem that makes a lot of sense to you. Go deep in that and you can start to expand elsewhere. And you, because you already have a foundation built, you’re able to build a lot faster. If you try to go to every place all the time. All at once, this can be chaos. Yeah, I think that.
00:28:01:17 – 00:28:02:02
Austin Federa: Is.
00:28:02:12 – 00:28:09:24
Richard Carthon: Definitely a good takeaway. But Austin, as we wrap up here, man, what is a final thought that you want to leave with all of the listeners here today?
00:28:12:01 – 00:28:29:02
Austin Federa: You know, I think it’s just like. This technology isn’t going anywhere, and that doesn’t mean you have to pay attention to it. But don’t don’t fall for the crypto’s over doom and gloom narratives like this technology. It’s too disruptive to be going anywhere.
00:28:29:29 – 00:29:03:14
Richard Carthon: Yeah, and I think that is always an amazing reminder of the FUD, the fear, uncertainty, doubt that people are always trying to like get you to go online and panic and all that kind of stuff. Just put that aside, focus on what’s being built. And I mean, you can hear it and just go back and listen to this conversation. There’s a lot of really amazing things being built. It sounds like it’s salons continue to build out amazing things, and I’m excited to see what continues to happen within that ecosystem. So, Austin, what are ways that people can learn more about everything going on over at Solana and also be able to connect with you directly?
00:29:04:14 – 00:29:19:02
Austin Federa: Yeah, for Solana and Salon.com has a bunch of the new exciting stuff that’s going on at Solana on Twitter is the main handle. Lots of great stuff shared from there. For me, Twitter Austin underscore Fit era, That’s probably the best place to find me.
00:29:20:00 – 00:29:36:26
Richard Carthon: Perfect. Well, you’ve given us a lot of amazing information. We really appreciate you spending some time with us. And as always, for everyone listening, stay cryptocurrency. Thank you for joining us for another episode of cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrencies, a cryptocurrency and blockchain education platform that’s bridging the gap between.
00:29:36:28 – 00:29:40:29
Richard Carthon: Curious newcomers for just discovering the space and the thought leaders who are shaping its future.
00:29:41:16 – 00:29:53:15
Richard Carthon: All opinions expressed by Richard Carson, the current team and their guests on this show are exclusively their own opinions. This show and any other captive print production is exclusively for informational purposes.
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