Danning 0:06  

I'll start at the beginning. Welcome to a new episode of the Weekly Wizard. Although it's not a weekly episode, this time we’re providing background on this one. Boxer is a well-known and beloved community member and wizard educator. 

And he's super active on the Dune discord. It's always been him interviewing other wizards in the weekly podcasts. And I'm sure a lot of people are curious about you, Boxer, where you are and who you were before crypto. What's your story about crypto? 

We got this episode to get to know him. Yeah, we decided to do a reverse podcast for me and Bobby to interview Boxer. I guess I can start with the first question. 

What's the city you were born in? And what was the person named? Joking. Introduce yourself.

Boxer  1:06  

Yeah. First of all, this is this is going to be fun. I feel like it's a bit weird being on our podcast and being at the bottom here and not the one interviewing people. 

But to get to the actual question…also, thanks to both of you for doing this. It's gonna be fun. 

So, my life before crypto…so basically, I dropped out of university to join Dune. Hey, man, like how you doing?

Danning 1:41  

Your undergrad or…?

Boxer  1:42  

Yeah, I didn't even finish my bachelor’s thesis. So, the whole story is I was studying business administration. I started that in 2016, I want to say, and then crypto pretty much dragged me down the rabbit hole in 2017. 

So, I was studying for a year and then crypto happened. I was basically trading a lot of Bitcoins. I had accounts on a lot of different exchanges. I even traded on the first decentralized exchange in 2017, which was Shapeshift, I think. 

Yeah, so those were wild times. You actually had to deposit your money into Shapeshift and then wait for somebody to pick up your order. Yeah, really wild, but I made a lot of money. And then I lost a lot of money because I was scared of Texas. 

I was like, “I'm never gonna sell, so I don't have to pay taxes.” It was a very good strategy, of course. But yeah, so spend a year in crypto like I pretty much like learned of this early 2017. 

And then I saw some random YouTube video, and I was just like, oh, I actually bought Dogecoin in 2014. But just like as a joke, and then I got wind of crypto in 2017. There's this eco and decentralized world computer and the theorems to share and that whole narrative. 

And my biggest winner in that cycle was Neo, which is the Chinese Ethereum. Very, very exciting times. But yeah, so pretty much I spent a year there, and then I had still made some good money. 

So, in the following years, I backpacked a whole lot through through Asia and Europe and kind of did a lot there. I was always officially a university student, but I never quite took my…I think I was studying business administration. 

It's useful now, I guess. I have a lot of context for a lot of things. And a lot of my professors were actually still working in the industry. So, in Germany, you quite often have people who are not just professors. They're like…that's basically their hobby to be like a professor. 

So, from some professors, I learned a lot. But, in general, I distinctively remember one class was Business Information Systems. And I had to show the guy how to run the terminal on Windows, and I was just like what are we doing here? And, yeah, it was just they were good and bad things. 

So yeah, eventually, I figured out that I needed…our university was advertising semesters abroad. And I figured out that I needed a certain amount of credits to be able to get a semester abroad. Like to do that. You have to qualify with a certain amount of EC TS credits. 

That's like a dream. The European credit system in a university…a bachelor's is like 100. A bachelor of science is like 180 credits, I think. So, you needed a certain amount of credits. And then I was like, “Okay, let's do this.”

And then I studied for like…I actually went back to university for like two semesters or something to like gather all my credit. 

And then I signed up for a semester abroad in Taiwan. So yeah, that was that was very insightful. I don't know…very interesting to live in that different culture. I also tried to learn Chinese. 

I wouldn't try. Every time I tried to speak Chinese, real Chinese speakers just looked at me like, “Excuse me, bro. What are you doing?”

But yeah, I did that for like…I guess I was there like seven months or something? And then afterward, I stayed out backpacking a bunch as well. 

And then, I was almost finished with the university because I had so much credit. I had just wanted to do that semester abroad. 

So I had gathered a bunch of credits, and from your first semester abroad, you get a bunch of credits. And then we have like one semester, which is like a mandatory internship. And then I did my mandatory internship at Daimler, which is a big German car manufacturer. 

And they spent that in the treasury of Daimler, and I, coming from a crypto background, it was hell, it was literally just like, how inefficient are all of these systems? Basically? Did I sign an NDA? I don't know. 

But basically, there was like one software that was being developed that connected to all of the international banks. And that software was like proprietary. I don't know…software development by some solutions provider who does this for like Treasury Departments of like global corporations and the whole world. 

And it was a fucking shit show. Nothing worked. The project was two years overdue. Like, it was horrible. So yeah, I picked up a bunch of SQL and data analysis skills in that project. 

And, yeah, I worked with like a bunch of consultants there, who really taught me how to properly work, I guess. And I think I picked up a lot on their work ethic, the actual diamond employees, I wouldn't really recommend working there. 

It wasn't too inspiring. But the consultants kind of taught me a lot. And then I was done with that. I stayed there for like, I want to say 10 months or something, just to get to the finish line of that project. 

Like initially, I'd only plan to stay there for six months, but then I stayed like a while longer. Just because like the project was actually like…for being an intern, I have quite a lot of responsibilities. 

I don't know. I gained a lot of not…I would I don't want to say influence. But I felt like I was doing an important job. So, they were like, “If you want to stay, you can stay,” and I was like, “Yeah, let's do that.”

Yeah. And then my studies were almost finished. I had kind of struck a deal with one of the consultants that I was going to write my bachelor thesis at the consultancy he was working at. 

But then it coverted, and basically, the whole consultancy industry grinded to a halt. A lot of projects were thrown off and one of my like…I would have written my bachelor thesis within the project within that consultancy within another company that got called off my bachelor thesis. It was basically trashed. I couldn't do that anymore. 

And then DeFi summer started. So, when DeFi started, of course, then I was supposed to write just like a classic research bachelor thesis about whatever. It's not in my blood to sit down and just research for purpose of researching. 

Writing a bachelor thesis seemed like a impossible task because it's just like…it's useless. It's not something that is relevant like ever. 

And like maybe my stance on that might have changed today where it's like…maybe I could have produced some interesting research, but at the time, it was just like, these professors, they just give you a list of topics that you can choose from. 

It's like, I really want to write my bachelor thesis about…I don't know? Sustainability initiatives in like mid-sized corporations in Germany. Yes, this is really exciting. I was just like no. 

So yeah, thankfully, I found crypto or got back into crypto. I never really left the space. I was always actively looking through forums like East trader and the Reddit sub when it was still good. 

I was hanging out there a bunch and then eventually migrated over to Crypto Twitter. First, with my actual account, and then after a while, I started Xerox Boxer. Yeah, I saw in DeFi summer that like, a lot of projects were picking up contributors. 

So I tried my luck with like a few different projects. I think I yeah, I submitted a governance proposal proposal for rari. Like the variable once that was there was an interesting experience, I guess. 

And then, eventually, though, like DeFi, I guess that was like the very beginning of NFTs. And like, DeFi was way bigger. So eventually, I found this Yearn fork, pickle.finance. 

And just starting out, there's like kind of a discord helper like building a bunch of spreadsheets. Eventually, through, just being on Crypto Twitter, you get exposed to Dune. You only need to be on Crypto Twitter for like a week or so. 

And you'll see a Dune chart. I was like, “Well, how does this work?” And then I had picked those skills up during the internship, and during my time at Daimler, like SQL,  data analysis, and how to properly track metrics and everything. 

And I couldn't believe that nobody had the data. We don't know how much our TBL is…we don't know how much we're earning in the day. Like, this is impossible. This can't be right. 

So I was just like, “Yep, let me try this.” 

I wrote a grant proposal to the pickle finance, like governance, whatever thing, and people actually voted on me like getting a grant. And I think at the time, I want to say 2500 or something.

And at that point, I had built queries, which were like total supply, and where are the totals? Like simple stuff. 

And then I was like, “Yeah, I'm gonna build like a whole like bookkeeping system…” Yeah, no, no worries, like I'll do this. Turns out, it's really fucking hard. Because like, pickles, a Yearn fork, and Yearn forks are integrated with a bunch of different protocols. 

So, I had to figure out, how does kompot work? How does the Uniswap liquidity mining thing work? 

How does sushi swap where…there were so many different things that I had to suddenly figure out, and it took me like…I was like, “Oh, God, like my newfound reputation is on the line.”

I have this grant now. Like, I need to finish this. I told myself I have three weeks to finish this. I had to learn a lot, and it was pretty much like I was working probably 10 hours a day or something. 

But I got it done. And afterwards, it was pretty much like I released that dashboard. And the dashboard made quite some rounds on Twitter. I think at the time it had like 40k impressions or something, which is a lot for that period of time in crypto Twitter. 

That's a lot for an account. It literally had 50 followers or something. People were just like, “Oh, this is the accounting that you can do with this public blockchain data.” 

So yeah, and then afterwards, it was pretty much like Bonbeach reached out to me. A bunch of VCs reached out to me. 

I participated in def hackathons for harvest and yearn. Yeah, I worked with a bunch of projects. And meanwhile, I also hung out in the Dune discord and started answering questions there just because, in the pickle discord, I still picked it up to this day. 

And I still talk to the founder sometimes. And the atmosphere, there was very much like, “Hey, we all don't know what's going on. We're all gonna figure this out together.” 

But people were very helpful to each other. And that's still something that I see in a lot of developed — more like Developer Focus — communities today. It's like, yeah, we're gonna figure this out. 

Ask your questions. We're gonna we're gonna try to help you. The actual developers of pickle…they gave me lessons in how smart contracts work, almost. Like I asked him a bunch of questions. They were very open and helpful and answering those questions. 

So pretty much, there was another data analyst that was working with Graph QL and pickle. We kind of figured this out all as a group. It was very interesting. I just shared that spirit and brought that spirit forward into the Dune community. 

And yeah, I just started helping out people in the Dune community on the Dune discord. And that way, I became one of the cornerstones of the Dune community at that time. 

And eventually, Frederick saw this, and he eventually just reached out to this man. This is amazing. Like I don't know. I think initially, he was like, Do you have any feedback for us? 

Or he basically…we had a call, and he was like, “Do you want to do this as a freelance job?” 

I was like, “Yeah, okay, sure.” 

And then I did that for two months while also working on a bunch of side projects. 

And eventually, Fredrik reached out and said, “Hey, don't you actually want to do this full-time? It seems like this is working very well.” 

So yeah, that's a very long story of how I ended up working at Dune I guess.

Danning  15:04  

Right, in talking, you covered our next three questions. And I guess that's your life before crypto and also your crypto origin story, the first steps into crypto. So, if I may summarize, you are actually a degen, like trading Bitcoin, back then during school, and then I guess you wrote your graduation thesis. Was that whole analysis on people finance? 

Because you need to look at the DeFi yield farming protocol…you need to look at all the DeFi, like Lego protocol…that data aggregating. So, I guess that gave you a super comprehensive collection of knowledge there. And that's amazing to hear. Awesome.

Boxer  15:47  

Yeah, I would hope I can go to one of my professors and be like, “Hey, my bet is a Dune dashboards.” Yeah. Maybe less accepted? Yeah.

Hildobby  16:00  

Because I have a similar thing with the dropping out right before the thesis. So, I relate a lot to what you said. Like most of it. Yeah, we have a lot in common which is pretty cool. 

I think it's a lot of people discovering you, and realizing, okay, there's actually stuff to be done. What's the point of my studies if I can get started using Dune stuff, which is pretty cool.

Boxer  16:24  

Yeah. And what do I want with this piece of paper? I've always been…I didn't know, even as I started university. It's like…you do this for the piece of paper. It’s like…you can learn everything by yourself. 

It’s like…it doesn't really matter. I think there were a few influential professors that I had, where they shared knowledge. And some of them I actually had personal relationships with where they were helpful and shaped me as a character. 

So, for that experience, I think it was helpful, but for the actual content of like the information that they presented, I think…especially in the Business Administration field…it's a lot of those studies that are on very wonky feet. 

And it's like, I think, whatever you end up doing with your business administration degree, like you learned on the job. It doesn't really matter. There are no principles of business administration that you can always refer back to like in computer science, physics, or biology or something like that. 

It's a very dynamic and good for contextualized information. It’s like…if you have heard a lot of stuff. I know some like aspects of finance. I know some aspects of legal. I know some aspects of accounting. I now interface with those people within Dune. I have a better framework of voicing my problems and concerns to them. 

So, for that reason, it's actually… it was kind of useful. But at the same time, when I was in the position that I was in when I was freelancing and doing Dune stuff, and just like within this winter in this area, that trading ship coins and doing this whole like decentralized finance, decentralized casino thing. 

I was just like, yeah, what does it really look like? What's the expected value of my bachelor's degree? It's pretty much zero. Like my monthly salary doing freelance work on Dune was higher than anything I could have expected. 

Going into a real job with my bachelor's degree, I was like…I don't know. I feel like if you do that in trading…if you do that like yield farming or whatever that was at the time…it's like, yeah, that's a temporary thing. 

Like it's a bull market. Everyone's a winner. You basically…everyone's a genius. But if I can actually command those kinds of salaries and rates with my skill set. Maybe that skill set is like a bit overinflated right now because there's very little people who actually know this. 

But still, I feel like there was something there. Whatever I would have done for my bachelor’s thesis, it wouldn't have contributed anything to this career that I ended. I always knew that I wanted to work in Web3 eventually. So, at the time, I still think of it as crypto more. 

It's just this new term Web3, which also encompasses social and NFT stuff. But I always knew that I wanted to work in crypto since it's always like I was just cruising until your East deck is enough to retire or something. That was always my approach to life.

Hildobby  19:45  

I think the only thing is I don't think we should say at all that people should drop out. I think it's more of a…it's more of a measure that you do once you have figured out that’s where you're gonna go, and you're pretty confident that’ something you should do. It's more like don't drop out and then start looking into things. 

It's more, “Okay, you figured out where you want to go next and then you probably drop out if it makes sense. And you have more to gain by doing so. But I think it's more the exception than the norm.

Boxer  20:19  

Yeah, absolutely. Like I wouldn't have dropped out if I didn't have this opportunity lined up. If you're out there, you're a university student, and you're just like, “I don't want to do this anymore.”

But you're doing nothing else. You don't have a side hustle. You don't have a business. You don't have any skills that you could reasonably within one month earn money from. You shouldn't drop out. Like university is actually a great place to learn, shape your character, and network and just become an adult? I feel like it's a very good experimenting ground. Yeah.

Danning  20:50  

I guess like only drop out when you have 1,000 stars on doing right.

Boxer  20:55  

I think 500 might be enough. I think that's fair.

Hildobby  21:01  

For me, it was like when I realized that I was just an unknown on Twitter, and people were giving me job offers just based on my gene profile. They didn't even give a shit about my CV, so what's the point of my CV? 

Yeah, I want to work in this industry. I'm guessing it's the same for you. So yeah, it does make sense. If you're in that position…but it's a lucky position to be in for sure.

Boxer  21:27  

Yeah, and a lot of people don't even get into this position, right? Where they're just like, Yeah, I'm a university student, and that's my life. Like, I do this one thing, and maybe they have like an actual job as a working student or whatever. And that's their thing. 

But there's very…I don't know…there are many students or friends who kind of did this freelance or hospital like…it’s not very…especially in Europe. I feel like it's even less common than it probably is in the US.

Hildobby  21:54  

Yeah, yeah. It's weird. You're the wet one of the group now…kind of…but yeah. So, you started with your main and then eventually forked and created 0xBoxer? Why 0xBoxer? Why the profile picture? Can you give some context here?

Boxer  22:19  

So, at the time, it just felt right. I like still people who as clear faces on Crypto Twitter are like…I don't know…they don't really belong here. Like, what are you doing here? I think like we are all dogs, right? 

We're on this podcast right now. But I still feel just AI-generated people here. That deep fakes. So, at the time, I actually…I didn't plan on doxing. And I was just like, it's a level of comfort where I don't like…put my public persona out there. But rather, you can actually… you can try something out. 

And then if that doesn't work, you've just shut that account down, and you pop up somewhere else, which is actually really cool. Because you're allowed to be more courageous, or it allows you to do fast iteration or experimentation without a lot of consequences. 

And it was not like I was trying to start some rock pool talks or something. But I don't know. I feel, in general, it is actually not that easy to work in public. You're open to be scrutinized, to be criticized, especially in a field where you don't feel like you have mastery yet. 

So, putting all of those Dune dashboards out or even starting to write governance proposals and trying it to see how this works. It's a lot easier if you're in this pseudonymous economy, so I didn't need a second try, or maybe that was my second try like you guys will never know. 

But yeah, my first pseudonym was kind of so successful that I was actually cool with merging it into my real life. I think that's kind of a good way to think about that. So yeah, and 0x Boxer 0x. Just because Boxer was already taken on platforms, of course. So  @0x is good. 

Of course, I knew Denning at the time…of course then breaks project. Of course, not just the standard, like I don't know. I think it's just because all Ethereum addresses because are bytecodes that start with a 0x. It's become this meme in the Ethereum community to start like preface your name with like Xerox. 

So, Xerox box, very naturally. And Boxer is a character in the book Animal Farm and is a horse that is working hard. And the horse dies during the duration of the book. It’s not the best Association. 

But I think if you have read the book, and if you think back on it, you just think like, “Hey, that was the horse that worked out.” 

And I think that's a common topic in my life where I think that other people are just like them beaming. They're Grifters. Not a lot of people actually do serious hard work. 

My whole intention of joining the space was actually to do work and produce work and actually get it done. That's always like a vibe that I very much have. I don't know. I feel like I get shit done. 

That's for other people to judge probably, but at the time, there's a lot…I don't know, governance proposals where it's just like total bullshit. I'm gonna produce like five PR videos for you. Just like these crappy animations. 

I'm just like, dude, this is not…maybe it's work. But is it really the helpful work? I don't know. I felt like Crypto Twitter and like these governance proposals and stuff at the time were overrun with people were just grifting. 

They were just trying to siphon off money from these dowels just because everything was very new. And I was like, “No, I'm actually gonna get shit done.” 

I also think there's a lot of merit to trying to build a brand while you're starting off a pseudonym. So, it's like Boxer. That's a very recognizable name. Having this pink horse…that's also very recognizable. 

The reason why the horse is pink is actually that I played around in Photoshop. So, I don't get copyright strikes by whichever artist created this. Sorry artists…like I should probably mean this. 

So, there's a meaning. This picture isn't empty, and I will buy it, but yeah, that's kind of the story behind Boxer and like why I started working under a pseudonym. 

And also my stance on why pseudonyms are actually super cool. And why I don't discriminate against students ever. 

Like I love that the Dune Discord is still like all mostly unknowns, and mostly frogs and horses, and I don't know, fishes. Layers. Yeah, right. It's fun. 

Hildobby  27:27  

Yeah, I think we all agree. I mean, we all have like NFTs or ourselves as profile pictures. So, I guess we're on the same page there. So, it makes sense. Then, if you want to go…

Danning  27:42  

Yeah, yeah, just a small follow-up. So, what's your current role and job at Dune?

Boxer  27:51  

Yeah, that's a good question really. So, my official title has always been Committed Community Success Manager. And I guess in larger like…if you want to break that down…I do a lot of developer relations. 

So, just making sure that every wizard is able to do the stuff they want. So, connecting them to the right people within the company, trying to help them out with my knowledge, trying to give them feedback, trying to encourage them, at the moment, not hosting a whole lot of bounties. 

Making sure that the developer team, like our backend developers I guess you could call them and our engineering teams (that's the word that like), they get the feedback. And they know of all the boxes. 

Also, a lot of internal help to coordinate. They're helping to, I don't know, try to make my voice heard. So yeah, just a lot of things. And like, during my time at Dune, I've done a lot of things. 

I've also done the podcasts My early YouTube video tutorials actually have something like 10 or 12k views now, which is like pretty crazy to think of like. If you had asked me like two years ago…when did I start with this like two and a half years ago? 

So, would you ever have a YouTube video of you yourself talking about something which has like over 12k views on YouTube? No way. What should it be about?  And now here we are, and a lot of people in the Dune community have kind of learned Dune using my really early videos. 

So that's pretty crazy to think about. So yeah, I was basically trying to make sure, if you want to summarize in one sentence, like helping the Wizards succeed.

Hildobby  29:46  

I think you're doing well because you helped me quite a bit. I mean, I harass you probably daily so you've been of great help. And I'd say you're doing a really good job, but I had a follow-up question on this, so you used to be like the sole community guy at Dune. 

But now the team expanded quite a bit over the summer. And it's kind of curious, like, what's the structure, and how does that change things?

Boxer  30:18  

Well, it's nice that I don't have to do everything myself anymore. So, for example, writing documentation, that's also something I did for a long time where it's kind of hilarious. 

Whenever somebody was like, “Who is behind this?”

This was me behind the Dune mails. It was me in discord. It was me in the Dune docs. It was me on the YouTube channel. It's like all the public surface touch points to do were me. It was a very interesting experience. 

And now it's like, yeah, somebody else takes care of the less important stuff, and I can direct my energy more toward looking into the future strategic planning, doing things that are this bounty program. 

I always wanted to build something like that because I think it's a huge unlocker for the US economy. And now, I actually find the time to start projects myself and finish them and maintain them and progress them. 

So yeah, before that, it's pretty much I was always just spent with requests. I couldn't really do a lot of things myself. It's just I was busy enough as is, and I couldn't really start developing new things. 

And now I know I can…I have a lot of ideas like just from these two years of experience, I can start like implementing those things. 

Things like the Git POAPs like bounty system. That’s thinking a lot about the reputation of Dune. Like those things. It's gonna be fun.

Hildobby  31:42  

Yeah. So, your backlog expanded quite a bit. And now you’ll have time to actually clear through it, basically.

Boxer  31:50  

I wouldn't even say backlog. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like a backlog is something that you have to do. And now I can actually go out and explore ideas and…Yeah, I made things instead of fixing things basically.

Danning 32:08  

Right? It sounds like from hands-on business and administration to higher level business and administration.

Danning  32:18  

Well, does that mean you're during the transition? Your day-to-day in your routine also shifted a bit. I guess you used to also write documentation I use, maybe also writing a lot of like SQL as well for illustrating how these things can be done. 

But nowadays, maybe you're more in meetings and talking to different partners or whatever. How does that look like for you now? Do you still write Sequel?

Boxer  32:43  

Of course, I'm still quite active in the Dune discord. That's actually something I really liked doing and not a task I'll ever stop doing just because I don't know. It produces good feelings for me if I help people and and if I see them succeed over time. 

So, for a lot of people, it actually makes me really proud that a lot of the people that I've invested a lot of time in now are like cornerstones of the Dune economy or the Dune sphere. I never stopped doing that. 

And, actually, I don't write a lot of queries myself, but I fixed a lot of queries. And that's how I keep my sequel sharp. I always kind of know what's going on. Like  I can scroll through any query, and I'll figure out what's going on in a relatively short amount of time. 

I don't write like…I don't actively go out and start building dashboards or something which is extra. That’s something that maybe I should do again. But yeah, I still like helping out and you underscored that a lot. 

And then yeah, a lot of internal things where, I don't know, it’s like looking at design documents, trying to like align strategies. This bounty thing is taking a huge chunk of my time where it's like, oh, yeah, suddenly, there's like a finance and legal team that has to get involved with like…can we take like custody of funds and can we not? 

And like, oh, we need to set up a multi SIG, and how does that work? And how do we implement that in a legal way? And yeah, just like suddenly it's no longer just like…I don't know, when I joined you, and it was like, six guys and then element channel, right? It's like almost 60 people.  

Things have grown quite a lot. So yeah, my day to day is really still very diverse. It really depends on what's happening in that week? 

And what are the current projects that I'm working on? But it's more like, yeah…it's a bit of like mini project management. Like I don't have huge projects. I don't have a lot of budget, but it's like, yeah, just moving things closer to the finish line.

Danning  34:58  

Right. Here's something interesting there. So, what seems like your biggest motivation, or you know, one thing you enjoy is making things work to help people as are heard. So, for example, if I talked to some data engineers, they said, what's the biggest motivation for them, it’s like make a pipeline or make a thing that works. 

Or one of our data engineers says, his motivation is to make things optimized, you know, like, he's from industrial engineering. And so that's why he's doing things like improving the database. So I'm curious, what's your motivation? Because what I heard is…it seems like helping people is one of them.

Boxer  35:35  

I think, on a kind of small scale, it's helping people. But in the end, it's making Dune the product better. That's optimizing but through like my own means. Like I also really enjoy processes and planning out things and that kind of stuff. 

And by helping a lot of individual people and nudging them into the right directions and showing individual, I still take calls with individual people where I'm like, “Hey, I'm gonna show you the spell book because I think it might pay off.” 

I make that mental calculation for myself where I face shoulders guide to spell book. He starts building a bunch of cool spells. 

That could be like a huge…that's an EV plus action, basically. I think it's a good bet. So yeah. But it's like, yeah, I'm not that much of an extrovert. I don't really love meeting a lot of people. 

Although. the Community Success Manager role, or the Wizard Relations role certainly forces you to kind of become more like that. So, I've certainly become more outgoing in the last three years. But it's not what drives me. I would say I think it's like making the Dune product work and getting shit done. 

And it's like…I want things to be right. I think that's one of my…I oftentimes see things that I just think aren't like…then they're not sufficient.

That's not enough. And I go in there, and I tried to fix them. And then if they fix them, if there's a new system in place, I'm like this is cool. This is nice.

Hildobby  37:18  

Awesome. Okay, yeah. So, I feel like Dune has a certain ethos around like the wizards building on it, which is really cool. Like everyone, we're all kind of on the same wavelength of wanting to produce public goods and everything. 

And also, I feel like it's a thing that regularly moves. It used to be that the top few wizards were super active. The top three wizards are probably also busy with other things whereas you have a lot of new wizards who are coming into light and are really fucking good. 

And I think it's pretty cool. It's constantly like a cycle around the most active Wizards. There's constantly new people, which is really cool. 

Yeah, I want to do like…what do you think about this ethos and  the values I think. I generally, think it's pretty cool. And everyone I've met who works on the Dune dashboard has been really cool to talk with and always has a particular point of view. They are usually… I don't know…good people. 

I don't know how to voice this, but you know, public good contributors are generally like this. And given that Dune doesn't necessarily have direct incentives for people to contribute. 

I think that means people are generally doing this for the sake of releasing public good, which I think is a strength of Dune. And maybe, do you have some thoughts on that? I don't know.

Boxer  38:48  

Yeah, I actually I had a call earlier with just a community member, and I hope I explained this like he was like asking, “Are there any conflicts in your community ever?” Like something like that? 

I was like, dude, you gotta be so deep into all of this stuff that it's the amount of asshole filtering that just goes on by. Like us being in this very small niche of like…you’ve got to be into crypto, then you got to be into data. You’ve got to even be interested or invested enough into the space where you're like me actually looking at data. 

And then you need to be on Crypto Twitter. I don't know. That's Reddit…like look at Dune charts. I don't know, maybe. I don't know. But you need to be so deep down the rabbit hole that not a lot of…I don't know…unfriendly people arrive down here. 

So, I think that's a huge contributor to everyone being so nice. You really got to be interested in this topic. And it's always exciting to talk to someone who's also interested in the same topics as you. 

I think that's part of the thing, of course, that there will probably be human conflict, and I think that has been human conflict like nothing that would be super rememberable for me, but I think, like public goods. I think that ties into this but is everyone on Dune really like producing public goods? 

I feel like a lot of people are also doing this for…I don't know…because they want to. They analyze their like investments or help contribute to one project, which is actually…that's more like business development stuff, right? 

Where it's like if somebody builds a dashboard on their own, is that really a public good? That's just a business asset for your own? 

Yeah, it's interesting that data is out there for free. But that's due to it being on a public blockchain. So, exactly the data might as well be surfaced like in a in a public way. 

Since the Dune Pro accounts where you can actually have private content costs money, it ends up that everyone is kind of producing public goods and a lot of things on Dune are actually public goods. 

But I wouldn't say that everything on Dune is a public good in some lens on the crypto ecosystem looking in from the outside. All of this is a public good. 

If you're actually embedded deeply into the ecosystem, and all of these projects have their own motivations, and everyone wants to earn money, and everyone wants their token to accrue in value or the project to be successful…

So, a lot of these are just like business assets. And I think more and more work on Dune is actually sponsored by someone, or there are more professional people who actually start working on Dune who might work at VCs, crypto projects,research organizations or university students. I guess university students are not really paid. But they're doing this to like, do science research. 

Hildobby  41:48  

Yeah, no, I guess there's definitely a lot of people who do it because they have an incentive. But if you look at what’s usually trending on Dune, for example, the SPF fall out last week, it's mostly like…I'm pretty sure other than like…probably that's no fun getting, uh well…then probably not getting me back if they have someone there. 

I don't know. But you see all these trending dashboards, and those are all public goods that people were just sharing. I think also because the incentive is that you probably get some stars if you serve the news well enough. But that's pretty much it. Otherwise, it just boosts your profile.

Boxer  42:30  

Yeah, but look what you made out of this profile. And look what I made out of this profile. We both work at really good companies now. Yeah, it's Korea building. You build a public good. 

But that also pays into your personal cloud account. Oh, yeah. No, 100% yeah. And you build up a portfolio of work pretty much. I think I forgot to talk about this changing garden in the Dune ecosystem. 

Which is actually yeah…you are like…there are some people who are very consistent, and they've been around since I started. But there's also quite…there's an influx and outflux of people. 

And it's the markets..people come and go, things go up and down. As long as the overall trend line is people come in, we are all good. I can't really influence what people do. 

It’s actually, yeah, we're churning people out at the top. I feel like it's like people are successful data analysts, then they get hired by some company. They do a bunch of data and analytics, but then people recognize, “Hey, we can actually use this guy for other things as well.”

And then he kind of starts doing less Dune work and more…I don't know…organization management work. And yeah, that's sometimes how things pan out. But then they might hire a new data analyst as soon as they have more budget or more funding or whatever. So, things kind of balance out. 

And it's always all those people who have gone through being active community members. They will always look at us favorably. So, I don't really mind. 

And, in the end, it's about surfacing the data in all kinds of ways, and the more people have the skill set and can kind of throw something together on a quick notice that's really good for the space.

Danning  44:19  

I think that also echoes back to the topic of like building a platform and community as what you do is like…I think two things there. One is people come to build about dashboards, so to get started or get their data spreaded which means it's a successful, you know, reputation platform where it is mining people's talents value. 

And then the second is that people will definitely come with different purpose. Like say someone is here just digging alpha from on-chain data. That data might be kept private as queries, but it's amazing. 

It's even greater that you can build a platform to be inclusive of all purposes, you know. So I guess, there is like…so through all these interactions in this journey…what's an example or a story or person that inspired you the most?

Boxer  45:09  

I'm still the absolute GOAT. Michael's sibling…he just came in one day, and I think 14 days later, he was better than me. Dune was just absolutely crazy. 

And I had him on the podcast as well. And he doesn't even have a data science or computer science background. He's an actual like atom…like a coffee is coffee. He’s not a bits engineer, but he's an actual atoms engineer. 

And like Microsoft willing was…even though I think he worked at Amazon before, but yeah, Miko was really impressive and all the work he did. I referred him to a bunch of freelancing jobs. 

And usually you would expect that to be like, “Oh, in two weeks, I'll maybe see some results.” I refer to him to Llama DAO, and like three days later, there was a giant dashboard up. And it was just…it was…this guy…like this is crazy. 

Yeah, he's really good. Yeah, it's just…I did the efficiency that works…this is pretty amazing.

Hildobby  46:12  

I remember one day, we were discussing ENS and trying to fix it to or try to have an abstraction for DNS. And Michael just comes into the chat says, “Here, I'll just speed run DNS.” 

And then in two hours, he had four Query and ENS. Pretty damn hard to work on. And he just made it in two hours. And yeah, that was pretty fucking impressive.

Boxer  46:35  

Yeah, yeah. Another one is definitely Andrew, who just one day, he turned up in our Discord dropped an article…like a full-blown article about how to do whatever on Dune. I think it was like Introduction to Data Science or something. 

He was writing on Medium. Great article. And yeah, just randomly came in. And then that development for him, like doing their own network course. And now, he actually works at Dune. So, it's like making advertisements for Dune employees here, but yeah, if you hadn't ended up working at Dune…

That’s just crazy that people just do this like out of their own curiosity and for the community, basically. Then there's like JH who is the unsung hero of the Dune community. I feel like JH is a freelancer that has been working for us for I think like 810 months now. 

And he's just in the discord every day, answering every question. Whatever the question is he'll figure out the answer. It's also like…he's just amazing. And I still haven't seen his face. The most ridiculous thing. He's such a good contributor. 

He doesn't need any management. I just like sometimes update with some information if something changes, and we want to phrase certain things in a certain way. 

This is the news around the API. And this is how we view certain topics. But in general, he's super self-sufficient. And this has been a really…he gets paid. 

He does work for us. Like it's working super well. And he's also doing like…still doing great dashboards and ecosystem if you go on to his account. It's actually legit good queries.

Hildobby  48:20  

Yeah, JH is killing it. I fully agree. He's extremely active in the Dune discord, which I don't know. He's been useful to me as well like so many times. I’m pretty thankful for this.

I guess it's like you were at first…you landed a job thanks to Dune, but you didn't start working on this…expecting to or seeing probably roadmap in your head. You know that probably wasn’t the goal to eventually have this Dune profile turn you into your job resume. In a way, you know, you're already…

Boxer  49:06  

Your Twitter profile is like…I always viewed my Twitter feed…kind of what I would get hired on eventually…it’s like my squat reputation. 

But yeah, nowadays Dune profits can do exactly the same, but JHS just like… he was like me. He just started doing this and Discord without anyone asking him to do this or even expecting any value from it. And eventually I was like…I gotta get this dude a job with us or like a freelancing gig.

Hildobby  49:39  

Yeah, on another topic. So decentralized decentralization is like at the core ethos of this space. And so Dune is a very decentralized platform with spellbook contribution and everything and openly having this availability for everyone. 

Do you see more changes related to like…I don't know? Decentralization regarding Dune or anything that you currently see that you probably aren't happy with but would like to see move into a decentralized manner or something?

Boxer  50:18  

Well, I actually like…Dune is quite centralized, you know. I wasn't in a good coin…what it was a data hacker…there was some bitcoin Twitter space that I was in, and there were some hardcore people in there. Everything needs to be on-chain. 

And we can only like vary with your node, and everything needs to be decentralized. And it's like…there are levels to this, man. If you want to query your own transaction history, you should be able to do so with just your own node. You shouldn't have to rely on a third-party service provider to do this. 

A lot of these tech services are like that, where right where you have to pay to access your own data, which is really stupid because you can't interpret your data if you just download your CSV files from Etherscan and rotki, shout out to them, they are doing great work on this front.

We really enjoy kind of looking at the product and progress. But there are levels to this. So, if we abstract data on an industry level or on the project level, it doesn't really matter where it lies because we assume…what's our incentive to falsify this data? 

There's zero incentive. Our whole reputation is built on “Why are people using our product?” Because we offer data…that is correct. Like in its raw and decoded format. If we ever start fucking with the data, we're done, we can close job. 

There are levels to this where it's like…yeah, it probably should be like, on an individual level. It should be very accessible, and you shouldn't have to rely on third party service providers. But then if you get into like project and sector, and I don't know, even whole chain level analysis, it's like, how could you have done this on your own computer? 

It's terabytes of data. Not possible. So, in that sense, yeah. I like the nature of Dune. It’s something that drew me to the project. It's like our mission is make crypto data accessible. For me, it's the second line there is to uphold the promise of the space of transparency and auditability. We saw last week that those should be things people should consider. 

You should do business with old mentors, parent companies in the space. Where's my train of thought? Um, yeah, how do we further decentralized Dune? I think we're pretty good. I think like our like…what else would you add to the stack weights? That's something that you would want. 

I guess, I think something that I've thought about is the decoding. I mean, the decoding process, pretty simple, right? Like, we just take an API, ABI, and decode the encoded byte, the bytecode. 

That comes out of like…that's on the blockchain. We use the ABI to decode that. Sometimes we stitch together like two API's when there's like smart contract changes and stuff. I think that should be documented somewhere, probably, because that could become confusing in the future if we have three GMX routers, which had slightly different API's. We still like union them in the same table, and we should probably find ways to like make that more transparent. 

If there are edge cases and decoding is currently not super well-documented. But that's about it, where I think other than that our whole spell book (like it's an open book) is an open source repository. Anyone can add code out of there and do whatever they want with it. I think it's really old. And we have an open labeled data set. 

Looking at your Etherscan, please open your labels dataset. I feel like we can make more public goods but also, being a for-profit company, basically, if we give away our entire data pipelines and all of that infrastructure, and if we open sourced that, we can close up that's like….

And then nobody profits because it's actually expensive run the servers, and it's hugely expensive to run the service actually. 

And to have these gigabrain data engineers and data architects and whatever their titles are working on these things to so that all wizards can enjoy this infrastructure that we're building… Dune is fundamentally an infrastructure company where anyone can come a tool where it's like anyone can come into Dune, and on the free tier, that can vary for all the crypto data they want. 

And that really massively increases the transparency of the space. Just because it's easy to do. Dune is a magical project…no product for people who know SQL and blockchain, where it's like you can just go in there, and you can actually in almost real-time. The Dune database is behind by the blocks that are potential reorg. Right.

It's like…we don't want to deal with the whole reshuffling. So, that's why we left behind…I think it's three minutes on Ethereum mainnet…six minutes on Polygon, Optimism, and Abidjan. 

For example, they're like half a minute behind where it's like just the time for the data pipelines to complete. So yeah, pretty much in real time or in reasonable real time, depending on how you define that. 

You can analyze the blockchain data, and you can see in real time what's happening, and especially for these like DAO decentralized projects, even now in the centralized exchange, people can make actionable decisions based on this data. 

And it really levels the playing field, where tradefi data is hugely expensive, it's siloed. Every hedge fund has their own data team, so it's pretty much impossible as a common investor to have good insights. 

And here, it's just like…yeah, it's just like a community of 1000s of wizards just producing these, I guess. There's this open source aspect, again, where it's like… I don't know…if public goods…if you’re making better…if I give you the tool to make a better investment decision…if that already qualifies as a public goods. 

I don't know. They're producing public research. Let's call it that wave if that equals public good is like a matter of whatever we're looking at the moment. But basically, it really levels the playing field. 

And I think that's beautiful, and also like, it gives you safety, not safety, but I don't know. There are no systemic risks in DeFi. Basically, just because it’s not allowed in the smart contract. 

And if the system is about to fall over, we saw with UST depeg, for example, the three kerf pool. There was a lot of depositors in there who were basically stuck with…it's not that depth. It's just like one of the total things like went down to zero. 

So, you were so like…you could have monitored in real time how much liquidity was available in the three cough pool? Or I think it wasn't the three curve pool, how did they call this? The three curve pool is USDC. You'll see USDC and di…what was the USDC pool?

Hildobby  57:48  

I think it wasn't finalized. But it was a four…it was a 440. 

Boxer  57:54  

I know the form will never made it to production. That would have actually been in that pool. It would have been so huge. That would have been such a big damage. But yeah, basically like the whatever pool was like on curve with like USDC in it. You could have monitored that in real time. 

And like investors could have taken the right measures based on the data that was freely available on Dune. And of course, you could also monitor this three through Etherscan. Or by carrying this contract directly via your own node or whatever. 

But if you can actually like do this on a nice infrastructure, you can have the historical analysis and everything. It just makes things a lot more actionable and insightful instead of just having one number or like an excellent Excel sheet or something.

Hildobby  58:40  

Yeah, I think like what you're saying is like…I wasn't saying Dune is fully decentralized. I think it's decentralized where it matters. And obviously, you can't have the whole infrastructure decentralized, that would be just be dumb at this point. 

Or maybe in the future, that's possible, but I don't think it’s even remotely possible right now. But like, the whole contribution factor, and the fact that I can see everyone's code and can easily forget, it's also a big reason why a lot of wizards… 

It taught me how to use SQL by looking at other people's code and forking, and you can like…a ladder where you progress and add on to other people's code, which is, I think, fucking cool.

Danning  59:18  

Yeah, I think a comment on that is that decentralization of a data product, like we saw in the graph, and it could be, you know, like a lot of holiday. It's very tricky. 

You need to have a really good plan of token economics, and once you release the token economics, you can go back because everything is in like government voters hands. 

You can't like have any correction by like a central power anymore. And also, decentralization only works when there's a network effect when there are enough people to actually participate in deposit or running the node right. 

And I guess, what I'm hearing from Boxer because I want to argue like Dune is decentralized to a certain level…at least from the date A curation site. But I guess what I'm hearing is like the infra hosting site is…we don't see a need for decentralizing it yet. So, it has to be a balance there.

Boxer  1:00:10  

It's also, from my understanding of the engineering challenges, it's just plain impossible. Like you would always need a legal entity at least to pay AWS servers and the GitHub repositories? 

I don't know. I'm not that versed in how you could sufficiently decentralize this, even over a network state or something like that, where it's like I don't know…if you think about the Tornado Relayer notes or something like that…even Ethereum notes. Could we host your notes or something like that? 

I don't know. I don't think so. But yeah, I think the point of centralization currently is basically our reviewers. So, like Jeff Davis, the guy with the keys of the entire Dune universe. 

But even there, he doesn't produce…it's not like the PR gets stashed away in the dark corner. Once it is done, it stays open. It's just like a measure of basically, I don't know. I don't want to say defending against malicious attacks because Jeff mostly checks that the code is actually…like it runs and it's correct. 

And it's performance. And then it's up to the other analysts to really figure out like is this the correct way to implement this? And if there's mistakes, we as a community can discuss about how to solve certain challenges. 

As we've seen in the last, I don't know…I think there's always discussions around what is actually the correct data here? And what is the trading volume of certain NFT marketplaces, which seems to be a very hard question to figure out? Where it's like, yeah, if we asked like the community… it always sounds. So, community is such a mean word sometimes. 

But yeah, if the Dune community or like the greater crypto sphere can figure out how do we correctly calculate these things? And what is the…yeah, what I don't know is constitutes as a wash trade. 

Just as a very specific example. That helps the whole space because then we can actually accurately shape a good view of reality, and then take learnings from that. 

And then a menu because like…if you have a inaccurate picture of reality, then you will make dumb decisions. So, I think that's what Dune is all about. It’s just like providing a picture of what's actually going on on the chain. 

So, we can all make better decisions as investors and as builders and as…I don't know…as bystanders, hopefully, regulators. There's like a huge beautiful thing going on where it's like this data is for the first-time in history. All of this is basically…there's a lot of public experiments. 

And there really isn't any other datasets where you have so much economic data in real-time. There isn't such a period, I guess, if you have access, to the MasterCard servers, you have to stick to it. It's not open.

Danning  1:03:16  

Right? Right. And I guess Dune is not really like curating it by the team but more like providing a tool to inspire people to do it himself. Right? 

I guess there's an old saying from Chinese is, if you help people, if you teach people to fish is greater than giving them fish? No. I guess that's what Dune does. 

Next question is. So like we’ve seen, I feel like there was like a boom of data projects in the crypto space in the past two years, I would say. 

And there are so many projects working on building a query engine, building a ETL pipeline for a lot of them. Maybe…is this pretty Web2? Or maybe Web2.0 or 2.5? And what do you see as an observation of the data? Like crypto data space? 

And what's missing there? Do you think people are not building? Or what direction you think people are overcrowded in the building? And yeah, what is the direction you're seeing?

Boxer  1:04:17  

This is tricky. So, I think there's a lot of companies that have chosen quite dissimilar approaches to Dune, where it's like, we will just build a platform people will be able to see, like query the data with SQL. 

If they think they can execute better than we do, feel free to also do this. I trust in our team to execute the best, and yeah, I don't know what…like, of course, like competition. 

Competition is good, but maybe I think what has been really interesting to see is the rise of DeFi Llama. This is where it's like they also do a lot of open source stuff with like, you can just like build an adapter for your project on DeFi Llama. And then you will at least have like the top level metrics of your project. 

And DeFi Lama is undoubtedly the winner in this whole…if I want data where I'm just like…I want high-level metrics and not like granular metrics like on Dune, I will just go to DeFi Llama because it's just like the best space. 

And that really shows you like the power of this. We built the community. We open-source differently. I'm a fully open-source, and do they have some proprietary?

Hildobby  1:05:35  

I think it's just…you probably could theoretically fork that code and just figure out the node provider thing. But that's from my understanding. I may be missing a lot, but it's very…the code is completely public.

Boxer  1:05:50  

Yeah. So, I think they've chosen a very…that's a good approach. And I think this created data together with the community while making it open and being very transparent about like, what trade-offs you make, and how we implement this being very open and transparent. Like, that's just the nature of how things work? So, I think that's a very interesting thing. 

Huge props to them. Definitely. I think there's this one…is it coin metrics? That one data project, where the Twitter account has recently gone full CT mode? I think they have that…

Danning 1:06:32  

I mean, talking terminal?

Boxer  1:06:35  

Terminal? Yeah, yeah, they suddenly I think they have like a new social media person or whatever. Like, suddenly. Very, it's hilarious. I think they're doing a lot of good for the revenue side of things of DeFi. 

And bringing that narrative forward. I think that's very…it's a good mission that they're on. I don't quite agree with…I think most of the terminology so far has been like very close source. 

So like, you're not not ever sure…what are they actually doing? Sometimes you end up trusting the centralized data provider, right? And I don't know how they calculate the daily revenue, but I gotta give them credit for the execution. 

That's definitely a model that seems to work when people want created data. Yeah, Nansen. Obviously, like can't discount, but I'm constantly impressed with like the breadth of data that they're able to put out.

Hildobby  1:07:40  

I think it's Dune as a thing that I don't see much in others. It’s strange now that you're going to try to link external data to on-chain data and have that available, which I think is huge. 

For example, the reservoir data is crazy to have. It's really cool to have all these. You have a listing for NFT which is not on-chain. And so many people were asking for it. I made some NFT dashboards and like people were asking me like, “Why don't you have listings and stuff like this also?” Like metadata. 

And all these, which I do see a lot of future in tying off-chain data to on-chain data, especially as well with ZK probably becoming a thing where you'll have only the proofs on-chain, and then you have the actual data you can verify with the proofs that will be, I think, really cool. 

You're going to be able to verify that the data from an off-chain matches with the proofs and stuff like this. And yeah, I do. I do see like so many platforms, basically being a Dune alternative in the space, especially lately, and I don't see many really…I haven't seen any others really taking that route. Which is cool.

Boxer  1:08:59  

Yeah, don't give them ideas. No, I like, in general, I think dataspace from when I joined…my Dune dashboard was the only proper accounting method for any of the yields farming, agri like yield farming aggregate, no yield farming protocols, I guess. 

Not aggregators. Since then, we've come a very long way in data accessibility and transparency. And there's a whole wave of NFT projects, which like doing NFT data, I think the success rate of those will be very low. 

They will be like…I think it's pretty much going to be a winner takes it all kind of thing where one of them will just outperform the others. And then it's just a done deal. I don't think like I wouldn't recommend anyone to go into that area of business. I think it's hugely overcrowded. Don't think that's a good idea. 

So yeah, being a generalist and more of an infrastructure company like what we are doing now with our API's also like you can ingest Dune data into your API, and you can use Dune data to feed your internal Python models or whatever. 

I think the infrastructure aspect of this is basically a superpower. But then also the platform aspect where it's like making Dune more of a social layer and enabling even more coordination and working together. 

I think that that will be key drivers. I think that's the most interesting part that you can enable as a company.

Hildobby  1:10:37  

Yeah, I fully agree. What time do you have a hard stop, by the way?

Boxer  1:10:44  

I don't…it's Friday evening. Maybe another hour or so.

Danning  1:10:55  

But you can drop that last question like what's some alpha leak for the things you're working on right now?

Boxer  1:11:03  

For me personally or for during the company…?

Hildobby  1:11:06  

Or you know…what are you working on?

Boxer  1:11:11  

Sir, if I would have time? You know, me personally, I'm not working on that many things. Because I'd be off the entire December after two years of no proper vacation. I'm just going to be done, which is going to be very good. 

But for Dune, we've just released new paid plans, which enabled you to query Dune with even more speed. That's very exciting. And we are obviously still optimizing all the systems and trying to internally make our database faster. There's quite a few things in the pipeline regarding that. 

Obviously, we're always working on new chains. Solana decoding has been revealed at Solana breakpoint, probably not interesting for you to guys, but I think it's going to be exciting. 

And I like personally…I think this Ilana community will come back. I think there's sufficient network effects in that ecosystem. So, basically, if they get their problems, in regards to the base layer, base layer, chain fixed, if it doesn't go down as soon as like something bad…I don't know if something happens. I think it will bounce back. 

The times I've been at Swan events were very inspiring, honestly, like a lot of good energy in in there a lot of very earnest builders. So yeah, Solana decoding for Dune is going to be huge for the Solana ecosystem. 

I think the data accessibility in that ecosystem is basically…yeah, it's really bad. There's basically no other thing that the centralized providers…like token terminal or something where you have to trust them and even they, I think, to a large part struggle to keep up. 

So yeah, that's gonna be really cool. I didn't know what else…certainly Alpha can leak. Yeah, no, I haven’t greenlighted Alpha…greenlit Alpha. Yeah. Yeah.

Hildobby  1:13:25  

No token announcement on stream? Yeah.

Boxer  1:13:28  

I don't think a total was a good idea for Dune. Not at the moment. I agree. I think it would it would be. I agree. It's not a good idea. 

It just introduces noise into the system. What else are we working on? Yeah, there's quite a few big developments, but I can't. I can't talk about them publicly. Okay.

Hildobby  1:13:56  

I have a follow-up question. It's not necessarily related to Dune but also probably just your opinion on. 

So, where do you think scalability goes in the future? Do you think it's gonna go more toward the Layer 2s and the Optimism or Arbitrum decays and this space? 

Or is it? Or do you think that the Solana Aptos…you are probably going to take that scalability problem down? Which do you think?

Boxer  1:14:31  

I think the EBIT? I think the network effects of EVM chains is basically…it's infinity like there's just escape velocity on the EVM. Kind of meme. 

So, I think it's going to be very hard for Aptos or Sui or Solana to ever overtake those systems. Just because the most important part in your ecosystem are developers, right? Developers deploying smart contracts and really bring utility to a chain? 

That's the whole criticism of the Charles Hoskinson chain calls. I don't even like Cardano. You actually need smart contracts, and the economic activity on your chain matters…not how many stakers you have, or how many  other tokens are being moved? 

Imagine that's the whole case. Like Bitcoin is something different because they also have this. I haven't ever, like really thought deeply about this whole like, and like Bitcoin is good for like energy grids or whatever thesis, I think there's some merit to it, but I can't deny or confirm it, like, no insights. 

But basically the economic activity…that's what really matters. And the VM chain meme is so huge. And there's already so much infrastructure that's built, that I think it's going to be very hard to overtake that for a couple years. 

So, I think some things like Optimism, ZK Sync, Arbitrum Nova… I know Polygon is working on some ZK Sync as well. I think those are probably going to be the scaling solutions that we're going to use for the near future. 

And then in the more longer term. I mentioned earlier that I think Sudan also has network effects where it's like maybe we'll be fine storing our personal wealth on the blockchain that's not 100% decentralized, but it's almost all the way there. 

But yeah, I don't know, I still don't feel comfortable about this one. I think because, as I understand, most of the nodes actually run in data centers. 

And it's just like, different people are renting, virtual computers in data centers, and then running them, and still, you could be FBI wanted or the CIA or whoever's, like, after the blockchain space. It's like, yeah…they could probably shut them off. 

Yeah. If suddenly like 95% of Solana validators go down because they're hosting data centers. that's not a good look. And like Ethereum, I could literally have a node right there. Of course, I don't because I'm lazy. I should really set up a node one day. 

But yeah, I think because of that, especially solutions that integrate with Ethereum and submit their call data. So like, I guess, Arbitrum, Optimism. I still like in this middle stage where they run on one sequencer, and they're not that decentralized. It's kind of sketchy. I mean, you can always prove that things are correct. 

But still, they don't have they don't have a decentralized sequence or network, right? So, if they managed to sufficiently decentralize, then those seem like very promising solutions to scale Ethereum’s main net, and by that,  inherit the secret. I don't know, basically, you want to inherit the security of Ethereum main net, but increase the throughput. 

And how you do that is with optimistic roll=ups and maybe Zika roll-ups? I haven't looked into that…yeah, not maybe, probably, but I don't know how. Like the casing has been saying KVM in three months since the last two years. I think so. 

We'll see. I think there's now an extra test net and like they actually they're actually doing stuff. But we still haven't seen that because the KVM is in production right.

Hildobby  1:18:24  

Now, I think they're all releasing very soon, actually.

Boxer  1:18:28  

Yeah, but I have heard that for…

Hildobby  1:18:31  

Yeah, well, that's okay. That's actually the big thing with decentralization. It takes time to figure out correctly, and those centralized systems, by having shortcuts towards having blockchains out there, often take a bit of decentralization away. 

And I, like you, really thought (especially going into this past bull market) that like EVM was definitely the future and probably almost the exclusive future. But then I was proven wrong with Solana getting so big. I didn't personally expect it to happen. 

I also think EVM can also be quite centralized. If you look at Vine and small chain, it's one of the probably the second or third biggest, I don't know…probably neck and neck with Polygon or something. 

In terms of EVM and it's huge, and people right now are ready to sacrifice…a lot of people already sacrifice decentralization if that means they get lower fees, basically. 

And it's probably like…those aren't much necessarily in my echo chamber and not like I'm a bit of an Ethereum Maxi, but there is like the Asian community, for example, who is huge with b&b. 

So yeah, I think both have a future. It's just slightly different in their future use cases.

Boxer  1:20:00  

I don't know if your government wants to issue a stable coin. You're not going to issue that stable coin and b&b. You're not going to issue that stable coin on Binance or Solana. Yeah. 

If you think about where we really want to go where I personally would want…I don't know…all my personal documents to be blockchain assets that I have the private key to…

I don't know….this is a weird way to phrase it. But yeah, you need sufficient decentralization for that. So, I think they will always like…of course, there's a scale of decentralization. 

And it always depends on the use case. So, if you're just like one, the decentralized casino, you can go to binding smart chain, and you can go to Solana. And not to discredit those ecosystems, but I think that's totally valid, where it's like, if you want to do a high-frequency trading, you're probably…if you want to build an application for that Savannah is probably a better bet. 

Just because the system is more readily designed for such use cases. But if you want more, yeah, I don't want to say long-term use cases because you can probably also store assets on Solana for a long time, but would you trust that blockchain to always be this neutral actor? I don't know. 

There's technical and philosophical arguments which are kind of intertwined. 

Danning  1:21:32  

Right. I think also, like, it's probably hard to say which one will go further and the other one is gonna die, or which one is correct or wrong? It's more like etiology preference for different people. 

There are people way more about decentralization and don't give their custody out, and there are people who don't care and trust the government, right? 

And like, the Chinese government is issuing their digital currency and I'm sure they are not issuing that digital currency in like a public chain but rather their private chain. But yeah,  the reason why I see probably Asian communities chose and trust Biance (which has less validators) is more coming from the cultural and etiology choice that will say…

Hildobby  1:22:15  

Yeah, but it also could happen like those right now. Quite centralized systems eventually end up decentralized, you know, it's like it was a great way to bootstrap a lot of users and get activity going. 

But once the technology catches up with what they're trying to do, move over to that. That's a move. That wouldn't make a lot of sense in my eyes. But I also see that there's demand for central…decentralized systems. 

And that's completely fine. It's just different kinds of applications that are going to be on there. And I think it's going to be interesting over the course of time to see how those spaces differentiate themselves. 

That makes sense, you know, very decentralized system versus the more centralized and cutting corners. Yeah, I think those are two valid futures that are going to be interesting.

Danning  1:23:17  

Cool, we should end this. We can chat forever. Okay, ending question…two choices for you. One is what's life outside crypto for you? And then unsafe one is kiss, marry kill: SBF, Do Kwon, Su Zhu. Okay, first of all, which question do you choose for this one?

Boxer  1:23:38  

What is life? Like if crypto wouldn't exist? What would I do? Is that the question?

Danning 1:23:43  

The first thing is like…what's your current life outside of crypto? Like, what do you do outside crypto?

Boxer  1:23:48  

Okay. Yeah, fair enough. My brother has bought a flat, and we are currently renovating that flat. So, that's a big time consuming project. For me personally, I hope that when I buy a flat, he also will help me renovate my flat. Acquiring karma points. 

So yeah, it was pretty much like we totally tore the place down, and we know we're building it back up. That’s where I currently spent my weekends. And other than that, it's just sitting in front of the computer all day. 

It's always good to go out. So doing mountain biking, going for runs, going for walks, just doing doing some bodyweight fitness and stuff on my terrace. Like trying to spend time with friends. 

Those are the real important things in life. So all of this is just…I don't know. Like working from home, unable to have like such a lavish lifestyle where I meet my friends, and they're like, “Oh, I gotta travel to my office, and tomorrow I have a meeting one hour away.”

And I'm just like, “Yeah, man, I'm max chilling,” even though…I don't know…working, especially this job, it's pretty much like I made my own dream job right where it's just like I hung out in Dune discord, and I recruited myself into this company. 

Like, I really enjoy this. I like spending time here. I think it's the most…some of the most interesting problems in the world are being discussed and solved here. I meet tons of interesting people, it has opened a lot of doors for me. 

So, yeah, I could work less, I guess, and still get good performance reviews. But I also enjoy this. So yeah, it's always a balance.

Hildobby  1:25:50  

Yeah, I also like that you're quite as much as possible, like an async Maxi, if that makes sense. Like, trying to…which makes a lot of sense to me. 

But if you compare it to the outside of crypto, it's just not…I don't know…it's just not the reality. And so many, like useless meetings and stuff. 

And I don't know…for me, it feels essential to get actual work done to not be cluttered with shitty meetings. And it seems to be the ethos of Dune as well. So, that's cool.

Boxer  1:26:27  

Yeah, I always say I can never go back to like a quote end quote real job. Like, I would have to work at a consultancy or something. I would probably make it for like two weeks and be like now this is not working…like this is fucking horrible. 

So yeah, I think in crypto in general, everyone…we're also inventing new ways of work. 

And new ways of collaboration across companies across the industry across…it’s the most exciting industry to be in. If you're young and smart, what are you doing if you're not working crypto? That’s my best advice that I got. I'm trying to show all my friends to learn this stuff. 

But yeah, they're very resistant. But they have also seen me when the portfolio was up a lot and on days when the portfolio was down a lot, so I can't blame them.

Hildobby  1:27:28  

Did many reach out to you in the past few days asking if all is good? If your industry isn't gonna go to shit?

Boxer  1:27:34  

In Germany, the FTX thing is actually not like that. It’s not national news or something. I think that's like very much an “us” topic. Where are you based in? Amsterdam?

Hildobby  1:27:46  

I mean, Amsterdam, but I got it. I got a few questions, but like people following major global news, I guess.

Boxer  1:27:58  

Yeah. I didn't get too much. It’s very much like a crypto and finance-specific topic. So, if you're not in that bubble, it's like some company went down.

Hildobby  1:28:09  

Yeah, yeah. It's been an hour and a half. Maybe we shouldn't get questions in the chat.

Boxer  1:28:19  

It's just a good comment. Because it would be encrypted as young and dumb.

Hildobby  1:28:26  

Yeah. I mean, the more or less side of the curve, you are the eft side of the curve is crypto is good. The middle is like Kryptos, this gamma and then right side is God like crypto. 

Boxer  1:28:33  

Exactly. I think that sums it up. Yeah, there's no real other other questions.

Hildobby  1:28:47  

I mean, someone asked for the AWS cost. I don't know if that's a good question. 

Boxer  1:28:50  

It’s not something I want to disclose and not something off. And he wrote me. Yeah. We had that yesterday already. I don't know. That's not on me to decide. 

Cover Cosmos data, especially FMOS. I guess fmoS should be like relatively simple to implement, and they must run some kind of just EVM. FMOS sounds very much like an EVM. But I don't know where it's on our priority list. 

We'll see. This has been great. I guess you rise up to say this because you are the hosts, but thanks for doing this. It's been great. Thanks for having me on.

Hildobby  1:29:37  

Of course, of course.

Boxer  1:29:40  

Yeah, this has been fun. Yeah. All right. I'll see you guys around. And yeah, thanks to everyone who endured this. Bye-bye.

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