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Episode 30 - mitchell amador
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riptide & mitchell amador (CEO of Immunefi) discuss the IMU token, it's flywheel effect, and how you can invest in security researchers, why L1s are back in fashion, mitchell's view of 1000 blockchains, security and the future of our industry, the story of Steemit from the ICO era, deep thinking and the bigger picture, cosmology and finding a greater purpose, nicotine maxxing and much, much, more ...
Recommended![Episode 19 - 0xe4669da [SPECIAL n00b EDITION] image](https://media.zencastr.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=112,quality=85/image-files/677fcded3f04b4e1c3f96cfc/1b4f61b7-5c8c-48b2-9d61-66ec9549c632.png)
Transcript
Episode 30 Milestone & Sponsors
00:00:06
riptide
I hope everyone likes it. i cranked I found out how to crank up the intro to match my volume, so now it really kicks your ass when you turn it on. Welcome back to Bounty Hunters, episode 30.
00:00:17
riptide
thirty We are on 30 episodes of talking to elite Chad researchers and kings of the security industry. And it's really cool to to have made it this far.
00:00:29
riptide
ah We are brought to you by ImmuneFi, the biggest bug bounty platform in Web3.
00:00:31
Mitchell
you.
00:00:34
riptide
If you're a white hat, this is where you can earn real money and make crypto safer. But you don't know where to start? Hit the feeling lucky button and let the hunt choose you.
00:00:45
riptide
We're also brought to you by Rare Skills, rareskills.io forward slash Riptide. Get 10% off a boot camp. You want to be a bounty hunter? You need to know how DeFi works, how the math works, how contracts work.
00:00:59
riptide
Get started. Go to rareskills.io forward slash Riptide and get
Interview with Mitchell Amador
00:01:03
riptide
some. Today we have the CEO of ImmuneFi, Mitchell Amador. Am I saying it right? Amador?
00:01:11
Mitchell
Well, it's close enough.
00:01:11
riptide
Good morning, sir.
00:01:14
Mitchell
I'm with order, but props for trying.
00:01:15
riptide
Amador.
00:01:17
Mitchell
You're gonna be Latin in no time, don't worry.
00:01:19
riptide
Dude, where where are you from? If you can divulge this info, where did you grow up?
00:01:24
Mitchell
It's complicated. The name.
00:01:26
riptide
I have no birthplace. It's complicated.
00:01:28
Mitchell
I do have a birthplace. You know, I wasn't born in some UFO. Okay.
00:01:36
Mitchell
look I'm from Canada.
00:01:36
riptide
fucking guy.
00:01:43
Mitchell
I'm from Canada, West Coast. Please don't judge me too harshly for it. I didn't choose where I was born.
00:01:48
riptide
Mm-hmm.
00:01:49
Mitchell
It just happened. Okay. It just happened.
00:01:50
riptide
Mm-hmm.
00:01:52
Mitchell
But the name is Portuguese. I'm a Dordid. It's a Portuguese name. And that's where I am today.
00:01:56
riptide
Aha.
00:01:56
Mitchell
I'm in Portugal.
00:01:58
riptide
Aha. That is the Portuguese link. Very interesting.
Portuguese Influence in Cybersecurity
00:02:03
riptide
My other favorite Portuguese guy that I know, actually I have two favorite Portuguese guys, my man Magellan.
00:02:09
Mitchell
Nice.
00:02:10
riptide
And of course, Mr. Marco. Are you aware of this amazing, bald security researcher resembles Magellan?
00:02:18
Mitchell
Are you, you i assume by the first one, you mean the great Fernando Magellan, the brilliant explorer who also like chatted his way around the whole world only to get killed by Filipinos at the last moment, that one?
00:02:24
riptide
Exactly.
00:02:32
riptide
That one. I just read the book.
00:02:33
Mitchell
Okay.
00:02:34
riptide
Yeah.
00:02:35
Mitchell
Funny story. my My co-founder at Immunify, Traven Keith, he is from the specific tribe of Filipinos in Sabuano that killed Magellan.
00:02:48
riptide
And I bet that he lets you know that he let like, that is a big pivotal moment in their history.
00:02:52
Mitchell
Frequently. Frequently. He makes sure I understand at any moment, you know, if I don't give enough high quality trading goods, I'm goingnna get it. So um I'm watching watching my back, okay?
00:03:02
riptide
ah I love it.
00:03:06
Mitchell
Now, Marco, are you thinking about the hacker who broke into a bunch of famous Portuguese legal firms and institutions and then leaked all the data to the media? Are you thinking of that guy?
00:03:15
riptide
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. We are talking the king of Axlar and Wormhole. Different hacker.
00:03:20
Mitchell
Okay.
00:03:20
riptide
Different hacker.
00:03:21
Mitchell
There are so many Portuguese hackers. Like the whole Portuguese security world is actually quite large and and extremely talented, and I don't think that's really well known. So let's think of different, Marco.
00:03:31
riptide
I don't know. It isn't. Yeah. That's the first time I've heard about Portuguese SRs. Usually it's the, the, uh, Bulgarians that get all the credit or, or the Russians or the French, you French for the defy, but the hacker, the SRs are usually Bulgarian, but I don't hear anything about the Portuguese.
00:03:45
Mitchell
Only.
00:03:51
Mitchell
that's, that's because you're, that's, that's the, the, the crypto bias, but in the, in the broader cyber world, you have a bunch of legendary firms that have these Portuguese, Portuguese security researchers and Portuguese hackers.
00:04:05
Mitchell
And even some of the, like, you know, out systems is one of the Portuguese unicorns and they're all cyber. And then even some of the big you know Portuguese or I should say Portuguese founded businesses like Anchorage Labs was created by Diego Monica, also Portuguese.
00:04:19
Mitchell
And there's a bunch of different characters, different Portuguese security firms you can point to. If you're curious, by the way, about why that is, I find that it's because the Portuguese have this kind of natural paranoia where even though they're some of the nicest, most trustworthy people in the world that you can really rely on, they're super hospitable, they're constantly convinced that the world is out to get them in in ways that don't really make sense.
00:04:44
Mitchell
And this gives them the perfect mentality to be a security researcher as they stress over things that are actually super safe.
00:04:51
riptide
And where's what's the root cause?
00:04:52
Mitchell
So...
00:04:53
riptide
what Where does that come from? This paranoia.
00:04:57
Mitchell
Oh, I don't know. i mean, look, historically speaking, did it come from, you know, 700 years of warfare with the Moors? Did it, you know where it came from? It probably came from the women.
00:05:08
Mitchell
Because when the Portuguese began the age of exploration in the 1400s, they had no manpower, effectively. You had less than a million people in this whole state.
00:05:19
Mitchell
And they had to ship double-digit percentages of their men abroad in order to sustain their massive trading empire. And they could never conquer their way. It wasn't like the Spanish or or what the English did. They had to do it almost strictly through um basically nomadic intermarriage and And not quite piracy, but a little bit close to that.
00:05:39
Mitchell
But the result is all the women were left behind waiting for their husbands to return who would come after year or multi-year voyages. And that could have made the Portuguese women exceptionally paranoid about what their men were up to.
00:05:53
Mitchell
And they would have been right if you've ever seen the Brazilian or or Portuguese colonies abroad, you would know that they would have been a right to be paranoid. So it could have been that.
00:06:02
riptide
Hmm.
00:06:02
Mitchell
That's my best guess.
00:06:03
riptide
And vice versa, the men worried about their women.
00:06:06
Mitchell
That's touche, but the you know the Portuguese women were famously conservative, famously Catholic, famously chaste, right up until i would say the modern times.
00:06:10
riptide
Hmm.
00:06:15
Mitchell
So I don't know you know how, like my my own grandmother, you know when my my grandfather died, for the rest of her life, she only wore black.
00:06:27
Mitchell
And that was not unusual.
00:06:27
riptide
Okay.
00:06:29
Mitchell
Like they are famously all in. So it could have been it could have been both sides. I think that's fair. But I would bet it was mostly the women.
00:06:38
riptide
ah Very interesting. You're quite the history buff, Mr. Mitchell.
00:06:41
Mitchell
Yeah, well, I'm a nerd. I deserve it. You can judge me.
00:06:44
riptide
i just yeah i I love this stuff, and i I feel like I don't have enough time. like you end up working too much, and it ends up taking over the things you're passionate about. And when I do get to sneak away with with a good book, something I really enjoy and dig into it, it seems like it's ah it becomes a rare event, and i really I really treasure that because the older you get, the more responsibilities you have.
00:07:07
riptide
It's just, ah i don't know if you find it the same way, but but being able to do that and retreat back into your hobbies and interests is is so
The Importance of Reading & Philosophy
00:07:16
riptide
valued. it's such It's such a great time to just to just sit and think.
00:07:21
Mitchell
hundred percent 100%. But let me let me add something to that. And I'm like an avid reader. You know, on a good year, when I'm not slaving away, this is a busy year. I'll be lucky if I read, you know, 30 books this year.
00:07:34
Mitchell
know, God willing, I get to to even that. But on a good year, I'll go through at least like 80 to 100, long form, almost strictly.
00:07:41
riptide
Mm-hmm.
00:07:42
Mitchell
And The thing that you gotta understand, I think with reading especially, is it's such a powerful, in addition to being soul nourishing, like you feel happier.
00:07:54
Mitchell
I can tell the way you talk about it, like there's such joy that comes from learning and and nurturing your soul and and expanding it in that meaningful way that your your soul kind of sings, but it also becomes a competitive advantage, right? You know, I can look historically,
00:08:10
Mitchell
Yeah, sure, you know, Immunify is a particular business and there there are the particular rules of tech. But the rules of business have been played out a thousand times over in a thousand different places. And they're mostly the same.
00:08:21
Mitchell
Right. They're mostly the same stories, the rules of leadership, the same. The rules of great men and great achievements also the same. And so they act as this, you know, they let me live extra lifetimes. They let me learn the lessons the easy way. They give me a competitive edge.
00:08:37
Mitchell
And I still don't read enough for my liking, right? Of course, I get like slammed with work, you know, especially recently. It's been nothing but like 12-hour days. But if you can, if you can, if you can,
00:08:46
riptide
Mm-hmm.
00:08:50
Mitchell
You try to book, you know, half an hour, an hour in a day and read and that's instantaneously just that small amount, an hour a day, not that much is going to put you into the top 1% of readers in the modern world. And it's going to compound over the rest of your life.
00:09:02
Mitchell
Totally worth it.
00:09:03
riptide
and And in 2025, I would even argue you're in the top 0.1% because so many people just dismiss reading. they
00:09:12
Mitchell
Yeah.
00:09:13
riptide
yeah There's too many distractions. like and And I promise listeners, we will get to security. Yeah. ah On that reading topic, and and this is maybe this is me getting older, but I feel like you can eventually you get tired of of certain things.
00:09:29
riptide
You get tired of watching TV, movies, and you're looking for something else to satisfy your brain.
00:09:32
Mitchell
Thank you.
00:09:34
riptide
And so you should go to books and then you should go to, you know, deeper levels, you beyond, ah say, a fiction book. Someone, something written by a human eventually kind of gets gets tiring. And yeah i know my dad listens to this. I know he he he knows what I'm going to say, but he's basically been a scholar of this Urantia book, which I'm sure you've heard of it, but it's basically like 2000 page text.
00:10:02
riptide
that blends science, religion, philosophy, and it gives this extraordinarily detailed and expansive cosmology that encompasses the entire structure, organization, ah evolutionary purpose of the whole cosmos from um infinite realities of eternity.
00:10:03
Mitchell
Thank you.
00:10:26
riptide
to the finite realms of time and space. Like it's, you go so deep. And once you read that before bed, it'll, it'll knock you out, but it also lets you think deeply about yourself and what your position is in this world outside of just the typical run of the mill book that you might find somewhere.
00:10:45
Mitchell
I agree with you 100%. I haven't read ah you're the Urantia book, right?
00:10:51
riptide
Your ranch a book. Yes.
00:10:53
Mitchell
I know a little bit about it because that that book struck a lot of people in the Anglosphere in its time. It may entertain you. I actually went on a similar journey. You're going to judge me for this and I accept it. i deserve it.
00:11:07
Mitchell
But I actually grew up in my in my late teens reading a similar book by another you know crazy philosopher, if you will, that had a similar scope that starts with the beginning of the universe and the challenges God himself faces in constructing it, maintaining it.
00:11:24
Mitchell
the nature of time and how to deal with these things and uses that as a foil, as kind of a the structure of an allegorical tale to explain how human beings came to be in their fundamental challenges and difficulties. And and it's also a tome, it's 1400 pages, it's called Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson.
00:11:42
Mitchell
And it ended up having a a really dramatic and and formative effect on how I see the world. It kind of forces you when when you bathe yourself in these types of ideas. And it doesn't have to be, you know, that your auntie doesn't have to be Beeselbooks Tales. It can be, there's lots of stuff that'll do this, right? Some people read David Deutsch's ah books and they get a similar kind of vibe. He's a little bit more modern, more modern physicist. So it kind of appeals more to the materialist angle that dominates most people.
00:12:08
Mitchell
But when you when you dive into this kind of stuff and you try to grapple with, you know, what is the nature of reality itself? What am i as a human being?
00:12:14
riptide
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:12:16
Mitchell
Where do I come from? Where am I going? Your mind becomes saturated with this big picture thinking. You can't help but look at these, you know, apparently small and and mundane moments of everyday life and and situate them in into a grander context of, okay, well, you know, what is this going to make of me?
00:12:38
Mitchell
Where is this going to project and my soul and how, what am I going to become as a result of these little things? And yeah, it can put you out. It's it's heavy reading. It's it's going to be costly.
00:12:50
Mitchell
But, you know, day after day, if you do that, if you engage with that, I think you inevitably become much better person as a result.
00:12:57
riptide
Mm-hmm.
00:12:59
Mitchell
Because you're always thinking of, okay, you know, how does this fit into my life's purpose? How does this fit into what I am and what I could be and what I should be? And that is really, really healthy.
00:13:11
Mitchell
I think I feel.
00:13:11
riptide
Yeah, wholeheartedly agree. And a lot of this comes with age and comes with, and it could come earlier for some, like once you hit a material goal, you realize that, you know, the the number going up is, doesn't really change anything. And you start to look deeper and ah about all the things you mentioned. And there's some trigger event,
00:13:33
riptide
I think not all people get that trigger event, but when you do, you start to look deeper and and really think about yeah know exactly what you say. What are we doing here? What is life about?
00:13:44
riptide
And it's fascinating. It's it's really fascinating. And
Big Picture Thinking in Security
00:13:48
riptide
I think it's something that people should pull themselves away from their screen sometime and just just feel free to dive deeper.
00:13:56
Mitchell
They should. And you know, it's also, and here, you know, we have to we have to feed the crowd. It's also really useful from a security perspective, right? Because,
00:14:08
riptide
Tell me, tell me, link it into the token.
00:14:09
Mitchell
yeah um well, hold your horses there. Hold your horses. Yes, of course. You know, yeah you know, security is ah as a technical detail oriented field by necessity, right?
00:14:22
Mitchell
The nature of security is grappling with specific and particular technologies and how they interface with, you know, whatever your attack surface it is, whatever purpose you're trying to achieve. How do you protect the integrity of whatever system you're looking at?
00:14:36
Mitchell
But just as you can take a really detail-oriented approach, for example, in reviewing smart contracts where you're going line by line and trying to find the weaknesses that people are looking at, you can also take a much more meta approach, looking at the whole system.
00:14:50
Mitchell
And a number of the best security researchers, and certainly you know thinking beyond just researchers but also security leaders, They make a whole career out of looking at the big picture view. How do you protect the whole system, inclusive of all the potential risk factors that could be striking?
00:15:00
riptide
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:15:06
Mitchell
Because the attack surface is is much larger than just code. I mean, you know, classically, when you're looking at most organizations, the the major attack surface that is most vulnerable and hardest to protect is the people themselves, that they make such constant errors.
00:15:22
Mitchell
But that big picture thinking allows you to really step outside the box, outside the expectations and outside the rigidity of the the models that most people use and thinking of, okay, well, how do I keep this safe? And be like, okay, well, are there attack vectors that I could never even think of here.
00:15:37
Mitchell
right And then you know when we're looking at, say, the rise Deep High Summer and how that led to all sorts of ah of attacks and hacks, that was really the introduction of a whole new class of attacks that were basically financial engineering, say, flash-lone attacks, which were very popular for a few years there.
00:15:39
riptide
you
00:15:54
Mitchell
And there are still bug hunters today that are primarily looking at the system from a holistic perspective. you know I think of, for example, Joran as a good example of that. who are targeting, you know, really using a much more meta perspective to look at security. And I think you can go a lot wider than that. Certainly the attackers like Lazarus Group and others are are thinking from a much more meta perspective, and that's how they're able to engage such mega heists, not to our benefit, but nonetheless
Caffeine, Meditation, & Performance
00:16:20
Mitchell
happening. So there is a lot of advantage in this kind of view, even though I think it's quite uncommon in our industry.
00:16:28
riptide
Very, very good advice. It reminds me of of just thinking about problems, always to step back, look at the broader picture, and you do kind of reveal some things that you would have never seen.
00:16:39
riptide
And it's as simple as that, to be honest, to pause, don't drink coffee that day, kick back, and just just look at the whole picture.
00:16:48
Mitchell
I like how you bring up don't drink coffee because, right?
00:16:48
riptide
i agree.
00:16:51
riptide
Uh-oh.
00:16:52
Mitchell
And I look, I am a caffeine max, well, maxi, maybe not. i amm I am a caffeine appreciator, okay?
00:16:59
riptide
Also, yes.
00:17:00
Mitchell
right? But caffeine also destabilizes your mind in the same way that it makes you more rapid to respond. It makes you more reactive. And if you're really trying to crack a hardened system, what you need sometimes is be able to to go into a dark room and just to think out the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth order consequences, following the chain of reasoning, the chain of logic and see, okay, where did where did the the creator, the architect of the system, where did he stop?
00:17:09
riptide
Mm-hmm.
00:17:28
Mitchell
Because he probably you may not have gone to the fifth order consequences you may not not have anticipated all the ways that people may have used ah particular function or a a particular system or he might have made you might have had some assumptions that he never reflected on and that could be your opportunity at the end of the day so can't seem amazing but doesn't always help right it can block specifically those types of moments
00:17:44
riptide
It's absolutely right. Yeah.
00:17:51
riptide
Yeah, if if every SR is is looking for bugs on caffeine, well, do the opposite. That's my strategy with everything. Do the opposite. take Take some mushrooms. Go for a big walk.
00:18:02
Mitchell
Thanks so much.
00:18:02
riptide
you know I forget who I talked... i Dude, I think it was Obrant. was Obrant on the podcast, and he's like... He was doing the optimism competition one time, and he's like...
00:18:14
riptide
He went out for a little mushroom walk and it unlocked this this pathway. And he was able to, i think, confirm a high bug after two of the after doing the mushroom walk. And it just, you know, you have different pathways that can open up based upon...
00:18:31
riptide
I mean, what are the common ones? Obviously there's drug use, there's exercise, meditation, all these different pathways open and close in your brain. And so being able to leverage that, who cares how it's viewed? It's like, that's that's a superpower if you know what you're doing.
00:18:48
Mitchell
i like Totally, totally, totally. By the way, you you lift, right?
00:18:54
riptide
I do.
00:18:55
riptide
And I put it down. I lift it up. I put it down.
00:18:55
Mitchell
you and You lift a lot too, don't you?
00:19:00
riptide
I don't actually. I, I switched a lot of calisthenics, outdoor stuff, body weights, but I, I do still lift heavy weights.
00:19:09
Mitchell
Thank you.
00:19:11
riptide
And that is because I, I know for a fact that, I feel better afterwards and it triggers your testosterone production ah in a way that calisthenics does not. Just like running, you have to sprint.
00:19:26
riptide
You have to do heavy weights to trigger that that testosterone kind of flywheel. and And that's healthy. that That makes you feel like a man. If you don't do those very difficult physical things, you don't feel the same way. You don't feel as good.
00:19:42
Mitchell
hundred percent. I'm jealous of you there. You know, I mostly, i mostly lift heavy weights. I would love my, my dream is to get, you know, the body weight stuff to the point where I can get on the rings and get more into the gymnastic side of the equation, but I'm not, not yet there.
00:19:54
riptide
Mm-hmm.
00:19:58
Mitchell
The, let's say the accumulated effects of immunify have left its toll on, on my body. and So step by step, you know, we're, we're trying to get back, but as a fun little note,
00:20:10
Mitchell
if i had to If I had to build a, a hypothetically, a financial portfolio of you know security researchers, if I could take bets on security researchers, and there may be something a little bit in there when the
Physical Fitness & Security Success
00:20:23
Mitchell
token conversation comes up.
00:20:23
riptide
Uh-oh.
00:20:24
Mitchell
If I could take bets on security researchers and their performance, I would absolutely want to create a portfolio of security researchers who lift or who do you know very physically demanding things. Because I am quite convinced that that is a predictor of ultimate performance. I think that gives like such a mental supercharge. And I think you see that panned out in and people's ability to find incredible vulnerabilities and create value for the community.
00:20:51
riptide
Yeah, that's a very good point. i think you have to take care of the body as well as the mind. And unfortunately, you know you've seen the meme with the the shrimp, the prawn is sitting on the chair in front of the laptop and people that's, that's a lot of these guys lives. Like they are just, they, they dig so deep and yeah it's great that they do. Everyone has to dive in. You can't not spend this amount of time in front of the computer, but you have to find a balance.
00:21:23
riptide
Like you have to literally crowbar yourself out of there and just go sprint up a hill. You have to do something. You can't sit there eight hours a day and expect to do this for, for more than ah couple of years before you get smoked.
00:21:37
Mitchell
you you you You make a funny point. like I don't know this prawn meme, so you'll have to send it to me later. have to hook me up. But when you say that, the the thing I'm immediately thinking of is, you know you know the movie Starship Troopers?
00:21:50
riptide
Yeah.
00:21:51
Mitchell
So you know there's that meme where you know people will put the the caption, of they'll respond to a ah tweet And they'll put the the but chat bubble into the image.
00:22:02
Mitchell
And then underneath, it'll show the insect from Starship Troopers at the laptop, typing it in to pretend like someone else's t tweet came from from this message to basically say, this is coming from the aliens, the aliens, the bug aliens want you to do this.
00:22:13
riptide
right
00:22:19
Mitchell
And so I'm just thinking of like, oh, we have to spend eight hours at the computer, which we totally do. I get that. But I'm thinking, OK, that's what the aliens, that's what the bug aliens would be typing onto Twitter right there to get us. When secretly we just need the mushroom walks.
00:22:33
Mitchell
That's when we need to rip type. We need the mushroom walks and the caffeine doses and the darkroom meditations and, of course, copious amounts of tobacco. That's truly the way. That's the way.
00:22:42
riptide
Uh-oh, he's got the nicotine link. You know who has, we're going to dive into that. You know who's got this figured out though is the the guys from Blockian. ah One of them has like they injured their back. And so this guy is doing his audits with one of the Apple Vision Pros.
00:22:58
Mitchell
Oh my gosh.
00:22:58
riptide
And he's just he's like in a recliner and he's got this Apple Vision Pro and he's fucking knocking it out of the park with these audits. Like he's he's kicked back, man.
00:23:07
Mitchell
and
00:23:07
riptide
he's He's matrixing the whole thing. i think he's one step ahead.
00:23:12
Mitchell
I'm going to have to ask him about that because i would there was ah There was a point when when the Vision Pro came out where I was like, can i finally abandon my monitor?
00:23:23
Mitchell
Can I finally leave my desktop experience behind and just go straight to like walking in the garden and doing what I need to do right then and there on a phone call? Is that what I can do?
00:23:35
Mitchell
And then I saw all the the memes that apparently it's heavy and you can't you can't do that and it sucks for that. And I was like, oh
00:23:40
riptide
You can't leave your house.
00:23:43
Mitchell
Yeah, man I'm trying. I mean, I dream of being able to move my office outside entirely and be able to do all my stuff there, having my you know hippie bare feet, you know grounding on the grass and sitting in in the Portuguese sunlight and and soaking it all in.
00:23:58
Mitchell
But I haven't quite figured it out yet. And if you figure that out, given your unique advantages, which I know you have, then ah do share the secrets because God knows the rest of us, you know, we need to touch grass more. And if only we could work while touching grass, that would be the best combination.
00:24:14
riptide
i I agree. We still need to figure it out, but I will give you a life hack. Are you, are you in an apartment or a house?
00:24:21
Mitchell
I'm in the house.
00:24:22
riptide
Okay. You're probably in a castle. Anyway, you're in your Portuguese castle and what you need, this is simple.
00:24:26
Mitchell
ah um
00:24:28
riptide
Everyone could do this. Just put a pull-up bar, any spot where you could do a pull-up bar and you always have something going on. Like you're compiling something, you're waiting for something to load. Just get your ass up and then knock out five, 10 pull-ups.
00:24:42
riptide
and have it nearby and just, it's a simple body weight thing and then have a dip bar, but just like integrating that in all the time, man, you could knock out hundreds during the day.
00:24:42
Mitchell
That's brilliant.
00:24:51
riptide
If you just, just jump up like that's the easiest hack to kind of don't turn into the prawn, which I sent you to me, but anyway, ah Mitchell, I want to ask you, and I didn't, I didn't dig too deep into your background, but something interesting came up and I'm, I'm a crypto OG, right?
00:25:08
riptide
I started 2009 building Bitcoin miners. Uh, I saw this project that I thought was really cool back in the ICO days called steam it. Did you work with them?
Steemit Experience & Blockchain Evolution
00:25:20
Mitchell
I did. Well,
00:25:21
riptide
What the hell happened? That was such a cool idea. ah ICO mania. And it was like, if no one knows what steam it was, you could basically get paid for, for posting things. And everyone thought, well, that's so cool. And then it vanished from cyberspace. So what happened?
00:25:36
Mitchell
but it didn't vanish. It was exited.
00:25:39
riptide
Oh, really?
00:25:40
Mitchell
Yes, yes, yes.
00:25:40
riptide
Okay.
00:25:41
Mitchell
So for context, I was the the first growth executive for Steemit. I was the guy when when they were starting and they were trying to get it going.
00:25:47
riptide
Mmm.
00:25:50
Mitchell
This was really the first consumer crypto product at the end of the day.
00:25:57
Mitchell
This was the first crypto consumer product. Sorry about that. Phone calls coming in. People want to chat. It's like, no, no I'm busy. And When we were so we were starting that out, it was just a crazy idea.
00:26:10
Mitchell
you know Can we use the inflationary mechanics that central banks have have innovated on? it and that was a real social technology innovation, in my view. Can we use that in order to drive content creation, specifically create a superior high-quality content compared to what was available predominantly there on places like Twitter, Facebook, on Reddit, and the like?
00:26:29
Mitchell
And the answer is yes, we could, but we know what started when I joined is just basically a few hundred actives. We managed to get that over the course of 2017 into thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of users.
00:26:41
Mitchell
I think at their peak, there were million of accounts engaging there.
00:26:42
riptide
Wow. I didn't know it was that big.
00:26:44
Mitchell
yeah It got really big. It got really big and it had quite a ride. I mean, when I started there, the the market cap of that thing was 15 mil. And by the time I wrapped up most of my my strategies, it was 600.
00:26:57
Mitchell
six hundred And at its peak, it got to about two bill.
00:26:58
riptide
Wow.
00:27:01
Mitchell
And that was in 2017.
00:27:01
riptide
Jeez.
00:27:02
Mitchell
This was the third largest coin. It was just ah Bitcoin, Ethereum, and then Steam it for a time.
00:27:06
riptide
Mm-hmm.
00:27:07
Mitchell
So it was quite a ride. Now, ultimately, you know, Steemit was kind of the victim of its own success because we created this incredible decentralized proof of stake blockchain.
00:27:19
Mitchell
And it really worked. It worked well at scale, but it got so big because we were writing all the content to the chain and we had none of the scalability technologies that we had today. I'm sure you'll remember also then that the Ethereum blockchain, I mean, you know, we're basically only doing ERC-20 transactions for the most part, and ICOs, particular use case.
00:27:36
riptide
Right.
00:27:39
Mitchell
But even that was leading to gas costs that were extremely high at the time relative to what we could absorb. And this is a pre, you know, pre-crypto market of any size, right? when When Ethereum was huge in those days, people were like, oh my God, it's worth hundreds of millions of dollars. It's incredible.
00:27:54
Mitchell
Oh my God. and Like now that's nothing. But at the time we all thought that was massive and that was creating enormous server costs because you had basically 21, 21 stakers, 21 validators who were processing the whole chain.
00:27:59
riptide
Yeah.
00:28:10
Mitchell
And so that, that led to a a challenging growth problem. Now, the way out of that, there are there are two ways, right? The way out of that was was ultimately going to be, okay, do we want to go ads or do we not?
00:28:22
Mitchell
And in the final conclusion, we we concluded we didn't want to go ads, which in hindsight was definitely a way forward. We should have done ads, even though it would have been lame and uncool, it would also have been scalable and would have monetized the whole business.
00:28:35
Mitchell
And we didn't want to go that direction. And in the end, the CEO there, Ned Scott, he took a different route and he ended up selling Steemit to Tron, to Justin's son. And ah that's right.
00:28:44
riptide
Tron, Tron bought it. Oh, I recall this.
00:28:47
Mitchell
baby
00:28:48
riptide
Okay. It's all coming back to me now.
00:28:50
Mitchell
That led to a whole you know little drama because even though Steemit had all the IP and had the right to sell it and they they didn't need sell the business, the community didn't necessarily want to go to Tron. And this led to a a hard fork where you had the original Steemit on Tron and then you had Hive operating separately. and That's where Hive originally came
00:29:13
riptide
Okay.
00:29:13
Mitchell
So the business was sold. mean, it was a very successful exit at the end of the day. Didn't become, unfortunately, the the new Reddit or the the new major social media that that I was hoping for. And I think that opportunity still exists, by the way. I think those mechanics could work.
00:29:31
Mitchell
Like we have figured out 80% of it, but the last 20 ended up being critical. And I think sometime over the next few years, someone's going to come along and they're going to put all that together and work magic out of it once again.
00:29:43
riptide
Wow, very cool. ah that's yeah I mean, a lot of projects like that, you just because the hype cycle ended and everyone, if you didn't sell at the top, and you just kind of forget about these projects. But hearing the backstory on that is is actually very, I should be like ah you know an early blockchain historian.
00:30:00
riptide
um I actually, i was going through some photos ah recently, and and I have this graduation photo from my my MBA, whatever I did. it It was free. Don't, don't mock me.
00:30:12
riptide
And I looked at the back and there was a private key on the back.
00:30:13
Mitchell
I remember pure coin.
00:30:16
riptide
And I was like, why the hell would I have written this on the back?
00:30:17
Mitchell
and
00:30:19
riptide
This is from 2018. I'm like, what the hell would I, and I, I'm using Grok and I'm like using LLMs. I'm like, what the hell is this private key? And the best, the best idea that I can guess is that was from pure coin.
00:30:33
riptide
If you remember pure coin,
00:30:34
Mitchell
remember purecoin
00:30:35
riptide
And i was like, oh, yeah, maybe i have some fucking pure coin. Dude, trying to spin up like these old L1s, trying to like find out and derive it from early wallets.
00:30:39
Mitchell
but
00:30:46
riptide
Even if you have an early Bitcoin wallet, it's not easy to do. It's a pain in the ass. and uh i i eventually just gave up i'm probably like okay pure coins trading at what a penny okay who gives a fuck but it's like those things man it's uh it's always interesting to look back in time you know not even less than 10 years ago and and see how different the space was
00:31:08
Mitchell
Totally. Everything has changed. we It's like it became a ah ah whole new world. it's It's crazy how things have developed.
00:31:17
riptide
yeah
00:31:17
Mitchell
as it As a side note, if you're curious, you know my foray into security also began dealing with those kinds of projects myself, because in those days, I'm sure you remember, everything sucked and it was pretty unsafe.
00:31:33
riptide
Mm-hmm.
00:31:33
Mitchell
It was a pretty unsafe environment.
00:31:33
riptide
Mm-hmm.
00:31:34
Mitchell
So in order to survive, in order just to keep it going and not get robbed, and there were so many different ways to get scammed, you had to learn security for yourself.
00:31:45
Mitchell
You had to learn you know your own private key setup. You had to learn how your wallets worked. You had to be pretty pretty judicious, pretty careful about your choice of machines or operating systems and how you were engaging with the wider world. I mean, now it's it's also a landmine, but at least we have better protections built into the various products that we use. We didn't have any of those back then.
00:32:05
riptide
Mm-hmm.
00:32:05
Mitchell
So that ended up being you know a very convenient for you. I'm sure in hindsight, you look back and and you weren't expecting necessarily that to be the start of a security career. But all those those pivotal moments and those adventures that you had ended up being the foundation for your security skill sets to come.
00:32:21
riptide
ah Isn't that strange how things evolve? And you know what else is strange when think about that is that was the age of the L1, right? And I'm curious what you think about that because L1s have had a resurgence.
Layer 1 Blockchains & Future Predictions
00:32:33
riptide
You have hyperliquid. You have Baruchane.
00:32:38
riptide
Is Baruchane L2 or L1? I don't know.
00:32:39
Mitchell
Oh, wonderful.
00:32:40
riptide
L1, yeah. and But you have these L1s that have now popped out they could because you can you can bridge to them. I mean, you could do atomic swaps before using like BlockNet and some other early solutions, but L1s have come back in fashion.
00:32:53
riptide
what do you What do you kind of see about this? And I know you have have a thesis I'd like to hear on on you many blockchains in the future versus just a few. So maybe you could expand on that a bit.
00:33:05
Mitchell
Sure. So I was part of this early push. You know, the way I met my co-founder for Immunify, Trayvon, was by working on NXT. Do you remember NXT?
00:33:14
riptide
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:33:15
Mitchell
So that was the first, you know, I think that was the first proof of stake blockchain, certainly the the the the first really extensible proof of a proof of stake blockchain with a lot of financial functionality on it.
00:33:28
Mitchell
And even at that time, I was like, okay, you know, how much room really is there for L1s in the market? Like, are we all going to use one single mega database at the end of the day? and And is that going to be how it goes? Or are there going to be many?
00:33:42
Mitchell
And I grappled with this question for years. And in that time, of course, we saw all sorts of layer ones ah get launched. and And the vast majority of those were total failures. And you're like, you your pure coin is still out there, but it doesn't do anything.
00:33:56
Mitchell
And there's clam coin, and there were some weird machine coins, and there's like denti coin, and all sorts of just stupid things.
00:34:03
riptide
The coin only for dentists. Yep.
00:34:04
Mitchell
Right.
00:34:05
riptide
Still going strong.
00:34:05
Mitchell
And remember trigger coin, you know, just there's the
00:34:08
riptide
No.
00:34:10
Mitchell
It was a coin for unlocking triggers for guns, the dumbest idea.
00:34:12
riptide
Oh, fuck.
00:34:14
Mitchell
But, you know, whatever. they they They took a shot. you know, they tried. It was something. That's for sure. And I eventually cracked, you know, why I thought this was working or not.
00:34:26
Mitchell
And, of course, when you think about why there are so many L1s, there are two things that drive this. Number one is the speculative side and number two is the fundamental side. And both of them trend towards the mass proliferation of L1s, regardless of the fact that the death rate of an L1 is pretty high and the odds are against you by default.
00:34:46
Mitchell
This also applies to L2s, by the way. Any blockchain is going to be facing this kind of challenge. And on the speculative side it's everybody dreams of being the next Ethereum. Okay.
00:34:56
riptide
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:34:57
Mitchell
It's an incredible outcome. And even if your odds are only, you know a single digit percent, low single digit percent, the upside of creating a L1 or L2, say like an arbitrum that is worth, you know, 15, 20 billion dollars.
00:35:10
Mitchell
And that's incredible. That's an incredible opportunity. And so it drives people on the speculative front to go and innovate on technology.
00:35:14
riptide
of
00:35:19
Mitchell
even though the odds are against them by default. I mean, it's incredibly difficult to build a platform business where you have a self-sustaining economic network that subsidizes all these compute costs and makes it viable for for builders and entrepreneurs to really stick with the business. That's super hard.
00:35:34
Mitchell
But the dream is so large that the expected value of that payoff is positive. So people do it anyways. So that's one that drives it. And that's what's driving, say, a lot of these new L1s that we're seeing emerging last year and this year.
00:35:47
Mitchell
And they're going to be new L1s that are following this thesis, trying to be the next Ethereum or now the next Solana next year and the year after that. That play is going to continue to unfold. It's not going to stop, even though it's lame.
00:35:59
Mitchell
It's not going to stop. It's going to keep going because people want that opportunity and a few of them are going to take it.
00:36:06
riptide
It's true.
00:36:06
Mitchell
Now, the The other side of that is the fundamentals base. And there's a completely new class that's been emerging over the last few years that is not connected to the speculative premium per se, or rather is connected to that speculative premium only indirectly.
00:36:21
Mitchell
And that opportunity is based on, Hey, look, I have a ton of users. I have a ton of capital. I have a real use case that works for me. Why should I go and pay all this compute costs and, you know, lose control of my user base by putting it on an Ethereum or even someone else's l two Why do that when I can launch my own blockchain for which the marginal costs of launching a blockchain are going down by the year?
00:36:48
Mitchell
It's cheaper than ever to launch a new blockchain riptide for, know, you can spin something up for
00:36:52
riptide
Mm-hmm.
00:36:55
Mitchell
for a few million dollars or less depending on how light your burden is. And if I'm a Sony, if I'm a Stripe, if I'm a MoneyGram, if I'm a Western Union, I can afford, if i'm if I'm a Robin Hood, right? If I'm any of these businesses, if I'm a Coinbase, right? If I'm a Kraken, I can afford to spin up my own blockchain. It's cheaper than any number of other projects that I might do.
00:37:18
Mitchell
and I can put my user base there. okay I can funnel them into this environment and then find new ways to monetize them over a whole you know suite of DeFi or CD5 services while keeping them in my partially walled, partially open garden.
00:37:35
Mitchell
And on top of that, at any point, I can decide to put a token on that thing and maybe I can capture and multi-billion dollar speculative premium. And you can see players like Tempo, you know, Tempo raised $500 million dollars at a $6 billion dollars valuation a few weeks ago.
00:37:49
riptide
Jesus.
00:37:51
Mitchell
I mean, yeah, right. And they're making that exact play. And you can see something like BASE. I mean, there's rumors around that BASE may launch token. Coinbase doesn't need to do that. They're farming base, they're earning tons, they're keeping their users locked in their ecosystem. It's it's a really, really great opportunity for them. and they were able to create a ton of value while pushing crypto as a result.
00:38:10
Mitchell
But they can also capture a speculative premium that they can turn, they can take that token value as a result and use that to drive even further growth without diluting their underlying equity.
00:38:20
Mitchell
And so this is this is the second wave of L1s and L2s that's going to be emerging. And it's going to be the predominant one, in my view, over the next five or 10 years. that's going to get really, really, really big. And this is how we get to what I call the world of a thousand blockchains, where you have infinite, you know, an infinite you know an infinite web of partially permissioned, somewhat permissionless, different value props, blockchains, all bridging, all connecting to one another, and all creating real value for users, some with the fundamentals that can sustain themselves indefinitely, that pushes back, that kind of obviates and eliminates the need for everything to centralize on just one single chain.
00:39:01
riptide
Mm-hmm.
00:39:01
Mitchell
That's where, you know, all these L1s, L2s are coming from and why they're going to continue to keep coming, even though, you know, from a distance, it doesn't look like it makes sense. But when you actually, you know, look under the hood and see the financials, you're like, no, no, no, no this is a great bet to make. And they're just going to keep doing it.
00:39:16
riptide
Thank you. Very good take. And I want to offer ah my opinion on this. So the why, because you said it's, I know, because it's lame. Right. And, and the context on that, if the listeners don't know is it's lame from people,
00:39:32
riptide
people that have been in the space that see what's going on, which they view these chains as like, okay, this is max extract, money grab, um VC's trying to exit, this and that.
00:39:43
riptide
they They have a narrow viewpoint at looking at this because because I know, because I've been in that camp. And what that viewpoint is, is it's like, hey, Ethereum already does it all, or my favorite chain already does it all.
00:39:52
Mitchell
I'm sorry.
00:39:56
riptide
Why do we need Unichain? Why do we need this other one? and And so, but you get trapped into that and you expanded on a beautiful point of view there where you're looking at the whole, ah ah from ah as we discussed before, you're stepping back, you're looking at the bigger picture and seeing how this kind of has a multiplier effect.
00:40:15
riptide
And so I had a chat with um a VC a couple of days ago, since we we're doing our raise for our AI tool. And we had a little disagreement because his view was that There's only going to be like we have Aave, we have these big protocols and that will centralize because my argument was like there's going to be many, many protocols, many, many blockchains that will constantly need security audits and this whole security ecosystem will massively multiply.
00:40:35
Mitchell
Thank you.
00:40:47
riptide
And his view was kind of like, ah everything's going to concentrate into parties that already exist. and I said, well, that's true. You're always going to have those. These big names will concentrate. But the sheer permissionless nature, and like we you explained, it was a good point, was the speculative nature as well, will just cause this whole ecosystem to continually expand.
00:41:08
riptide
In my view, there's no there's no limit to it. So the demand is is infinite.
00:41:14
Mitchell
There is a risk there. I'll throw you something to think about.
00:41:17
riptide
Mm-hmm.
00:41:18
Mitchell
And for all of our other colleagues who are thinking about building security businesses of any kind, And i'll I'll note yours is exciting. I'm excited about that thesis. I'm excited about that pitch. I think what you're doing can really work out in a big way. And God willing, other people come in and also want to create value in the future in that same way.
00:41:35
Mitchell
But one challenge that we have is, yes, on the one side, the permissionless nature of the crypto economy means that it's a huge growth opportunity. um And especially like the way to imagine the crypto economy to contextualize it is not as, oh, you know here's a particular industry doing stuff. No, it's to understand it more like as a somewhat akin to a nation state economy, but a nation state economy that started from a finance and compute first perspective.
00:42:09
Mitchell
And this economy goes into new markets, including, for example, you know, the vast majority of the third world with its less mature and less scaled financial service economy and says, hey, look, I have I have better currencies that I can offer you.
00:42:23
Mitchell
And now, not only do I have better currencies that I can offer you that are safer than what you can find at home, but I also have better financial products that I can offer you. And it vampire attacks the financial economies of those smaller countries that can't afford to operate at similar levels of scale, and it attracts more and more capital. And this is how the crypto economy is growing fundamentally, the combination of investment into these currencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum or Solana.
00:42:49
Mitchell
And then on the other hand, once that money is there, then circulating it and making it more and more useful. And it's growing and growing and growing to compete with ultimately the most financialized economies of the world, which are the Western world led by the United States and China and the Eastern economies as well.
00:42:59
riptide
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:43:05
Mitchell
Now, while that's happening and that does create this incredible kind of permissionless growth vista, imagine accessing, you know, the financial markets of the majority of the world, right? In 10 or 20 years, you could see the crypto economy on a financial basis being larger than the financial economies of most countries and competing directly with these heavyweights.
00:43:24
Mitchell
But due to this same open and permissionless nature, you have this power lot effect. Okay. And also due to that but the nature of how protocols are considered secure, you have this power law effect that pushes TVL, that pushes value into the larger and larger protocols disproportionately.
00:43:43
Mitchell
And so a good example of that is, for example, in the lending markets, right? Why did he say, oh, Aave is going to concentrate things? Well, because Aave has as much lending ah volume as basically the rest of the lending industry combined in crypto.
00:43:57
Mitchell
At least the public.
00:43:58
riptide
Mm-hmm.
00:43:58
Mitchell
I mean, there's there's lots of OTC stuff and private stuff that you never see on chain, but that's a slightly different market. And this creates a power lot effect when it comes to security budgets.
00:44:10
Mitchell
And so the central challenge when looking at how the security market is growing that we all have to face as practitioners in this field and that we have to grapple with is there's a small number of customers that have extremely large security budgets.
00:44:26
Mitchell
You know, think of like the big Immunified customers like a Lido or a Sky MakerDAO or Aave, right?
00:44:28
riptide
Mm-hmm.
00:44:32
Mitchell
And they can afford to spend many millions on security year. And then you have a long tail of customers which must with much smaller security budgets, and they don't have millions of dollars. They have like a few hundred K if they're mid-sized and if they're small size, they have less than And in order to make successful businesses in crypto, we have to find a way to thread this needle where we can penetrate, you know, either starting with the big customers with a few marquee deals or going after the long tail of customers with much smaller budgets. And so they can afford much less on a per contract or on ah on a per per technology price and then make that work and expand across the rest of the stack towards the the larger and larger and larger players.
00:45:15
Mitchell
And that has been a problem that few businesses in crypto security have cracked to date.
00:45:23
riptide
Exactly. And and that's kind of our objective, not to not to put our thing out there too much, but we're trying to help secure this space and and being able to offer high quality security ah for you a small sum of money where basically anyone that wants to deploy a protocol is able to afford it.
00:45:43
riptide
And I think that's the only way this space is taken seriously and it grows to the size that I see it growing is is fixing the security problem.
00:45:53
Mitchell
hundred percent hundred percent
00:45:55
riptide
ah Mitch, we have to talk about the token.
The IMU Token & Crypto Economy
00:46:00
riptide
The IMU token. What is going on? Everyone wants to know. You you put it out there.
00:46:07
riptide
You told us in Singapore. And now you have us hanging on the edge of our seat. Give us the details, man. what What is out there? What can you share? What is the hunt? What's happening here?
00:46:19
Mitchell
Okay, there's a lot of different things to that question. But the simplest answer the core is the IMU token is going to be the value creation asset powering the entire immunofoic system.
00:46:32
Mitchell
And if you know about Immunify, then you know that we're much bigger than just bug bounties. Of course, we cut our teeth providing bug bounties that secure the entirety of the ecosystem.
00:46:43
Mitchell
If we look at TVL on a percentage basis, 93% of TVL is secured by Immunify, mostly with bug bounties, but also with our other solutions today, which is crazy.
00:46:56
Mitchell
But the token is here to sit at the center of that because we are also uniting many of our partners, many of the best security firms in the industry into one aggregated product, which is the Immunify Magnus platform, so that you have every possible layer of security, best in class, known, proven, curated, validated to stay safe in a world that is getting more and more hostile. And the token is the key for unlocking us to do that.
00:47:27
Mitchell
It gives us the way to align everybody's interests in the same direction so that we can all focus on doing what we do best to create something marvelous. And remember in security, no one player, right?
00:47:40
Mitchell
No one player can create the best technology in every single category. Security is specialized. People have their own unique talents. The problems get very nitty gritty.
00:47:51
Mitchell
As a simple matter with auditing, there's no auditor there's no one auditor that is the best at every single stack, right?
00:47:52
riptide
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
00:47:59
Mitchell
You have some guys who are great at Solidity. You have other guys who are masters of Viper. You have other guys who are much better at the Solana stack. You have other guys who have mastered the Cosmos stack. The people who do Bitcoin stuff are completely separate from everybody else, and so on and so forth.
00:48:11
Mitchell
And that's how everything in security works. So if we want to stay safe at scale, then we have to bring all these tools together in order to create an impenetrable layer, an impenetrable stack of kind of security in the Swiss cheese model, right? If you know how that works, you stack one layer of cheese in front of the other, and each layer has holes that ah attacks can get through.
00:48:34
Mitchell
But your bet is that by saying, hey, we don't just have one layer, we've got four, we've got five, we've got six, that no attacks can get through. And that's what we're doing. That's what we're uniting, pulling every part of the stack from you know pr reviews and protecting at the level of the GitHub pipeline to audits, of course, themselves, formal verification, fuzzing solutions, bug bounties, where, of course, in Munify, we've been doing this forever, monitoring solutions down the line, and even firewalling solutions.
00:49:01
Mitchell
You may have seen our announcement there. We created something really unique on that front.
00:49:04
riptide
Mm-hmm.
00:49:05
Mitchell
bringing all these together and even more that we haven't announced yet into a single stack that is effortless for a protocol to adopt. that's a lot of different moving pieces.
00:49:17
Mitchell
That's a lot of different parties. We're not doing it all ourselves. We're doing it with the security researcher community on Immunify to do this, right? They're the ones who are going in and doing the PR reviews to keep people safe. They're the ones who are going in and doing audits, us and our audit partners of various kinds, not just us.
00:49:35
Mitchell
They're the ones who are building bespoke monitoring solutions. We have three monitoring solutions. integrated into Immunify Magnus and Immunify builds none of them. We integrate all of them, right, in order to do that.
00:49:46
Mitchell
And the token unites us, the token aligns us, the token helps us push in the same direction in a way that we can maximize long-term growth and success. So that's a very high level overview of the token.
00:49:58
Mitchell
Of course, there's lots of particulars like, okay, what are the utilities and how did the mechanics work?
00:49:58
riptide
Mm-hmm.
00:50:03
Mitchell
And what is the Hunts program? We can dive into that, but you let me know what's going to be most interesting for you.
00:50:07
riptide
Sure. I think give me, maybe give me a high level on the mechanics on, I love to hear different use cases for tokens and how, how that'll integrate with, you know, bug hunters already looking for bugs.
00:50:19
riptide
Okay, great, Mitch, we can, we can earn a token on top of this. um And then what I use the token for is just, is this like a farming token? ah yeah High level mechanics, I think it'd be very useful.
00:50:31
Mitchell
Sure. So the first thing to keep in mind, and the center of all this and is, again, this term I used in the beginning, value creation. Okay. The IMU token is the central value creation asset, which means the better that we can do in providing security value to customers and driving ultimately, like any business revenue through that at scale and immunifies hundreds and hundreds of customers. We've secured almost 600 protocols to date.
00:50:58
Mitchell
Okay. and driving them to this huge, this whole stack of solutions that are ultimately going to keep them safe, the better everything is going to ultimately run with the token. All the utilities, in terms of how I think about the utilities, I think of them as enhancing the security flywheel or enhancing the growth flywheel.
00:51:18
Mitchell
Okay?
00:51:18
riptide
Mm-hmm.
00:51:20
Mitchell
The first angle on that, let's talk a little bit about enhancing the security flywheel. We've created mechanics around how the security researchers themselves can work on Immunify to give them extra rewards for doing the security work that is most valuable.
00:51:36
Mitchell
And so, for example, we're going to be taking a bunch of tokens and we're going to say, Hey, look, there's these tokens that are available for security researchers. If they're going to do the most important challenges, be that hunting on specific programs, participating in specific competitions, working on specific technologies, whatever is needed to drive the best possible security outcomes, there's going to be extra rewards for that.
00:52:02
Mitchell
So this is one side of the equation where it's like, OK, I can participate in the overall growth of the Immunify ecosystem and the security ecosystem growth by extension, right, since Immunify covers so much of it already, if I am doing the most important work as a security researcher or as a security technologist building the most critical solutions.
00:52:25
Mitchell
But we we wanted to do more than that. We wanted to draw attention to these things. We wanted to to show people how valuable this is and encourage it. So there's going to be ways for token holders, for example, to stake their tokens to security researchers in order to increase the potential bonuses that they might get for hunting on a munifying contributing security value, however they might do that.
00:52:44
riptide
Mm-hmm.
00:52:48
Mitchell
OK. So, you know, I talked a little bit in the beginning. Okay, if I could create a portfolio of security researchers who lift, I would do that. Well, you're going to be able to do that. Okay.
00:52:59
riptide
What does this remind me of? is Was it called Friends Network? What was the one?
00:53:04
Mitchell
There was, there was, there was something like, right.
00:53:05
riptide
Was it Friends? Something like that. Yeah, you could buy tokens of various X personalities or whoever, and I don't know what happened.
00:53:07
Mitchell
And, and...
00:53:14
riptide
I think it died, but I think it's a great idea though.
00:53:14
Mitchell
right and
00:53:17
Mitchell
yeah Yes, yes. And it like this thing is positive some at the end of the day, because when you are going out there and you're hunting and you're finding the amazing vulnerability, you're creating that security value.
00:53:28
Mitchell
That security value is what underwrites this whole staking mechanic and makes it work. Right.
00:53:34
riptide
Mm-hmm.
00:53:34
Mitchell
You're going to get paid real money for that. You're going to create immense security value that keeps a project safe when they could have otherwise suffered serious harm or been hacked or otherwise.
00:53:45
Mitchell
And then on top of that, you're going to get IMU tokens for your work. And the more people who support you in doing that, the more people who want to sponsor that activity, the more people who want to give you patronage for that, the more that you will earn.
00:53:58
Mitchell
So that is one way that we're going to drive the security flywheel. Another one. Oh, well, go for it.
00:54:06
riptide
Well, let me ask you one thing, just just a strange thought. Is there any thought about if you have IMU tokens and say you're a great SR and you've reviewed a protocol every which way and you're like, hey, I'm betting on this protocol. Like I couldn't find any bugs.
00:54:24
riptide
I think it's secure. Where you could stake with that protocol through Immunify, stake your tokens and be like I'm betting that, you know, you're I'm basically vouching for it, that it's secure.
00:54:37
Mitchell
We have big plans in this direction, Riptide. We have big plans, but things start step by step. So the first, we're going to have some version of this. The first version of this is going to be a simple way where if you have IMU tokens,
00:54:52
Mitchell
and you want it back, a particular protocol security, you can stake to that protocol. And as a result, they're going to get direct security benefits in the form of discounts and premium features available via Munify and its ecosystem of partners.
00:55:09
Mitchell
This is the first step in the direction of what you just described.
00:55:12
riptide
but Mitch, this this could go bad that you could see a bunch of SRs get wrecked like everyone stakes it on balancer then everyone gets wiped out with some super edge case that no one ever saw. And you have SRs getting essentially liquidated from their IMU tokens, a first of its kind.
00:55:31
Mitchell
That's why this needs to go step by step. So the beginning, we're just going to start with the staking side in order to secure those benefits, right? So it's not going to have the same loss potential that would be implied if your stake was, say, underwriting some type of insurance mechanic or if it was underwriting some kind of you know bet on the other side.
00:55:51
riptide
Mm-hmm.
00:55:55
Mitchell
that won't be there in the initial versions. But that's absolutely something I'm exploring to the future. At the end of the day, Riptide, all of this is around how do we make the ecosystem safe?
00:56:06
Mitchell
How do we make it to that DeFi and on-chain finance and on-chain financial infrastructure is safer than the traditional financial industry. And so where we go in terms of using these mechanics, whether we integrate some other things, so like you can imagine a world where we might explore prediction markets, right, in the future for this type of thing, where you would have such kind of risk, that is all going to be driven around and only going to come about insofar as it directly drives protocol security.
00:56:33
Mitchell
And security researchers are going to have a front row of seat to all of that.
00:56:36
riptide
Mm hmm. Very interesting. And do you have a date? Do we have any sort of range that you can give?
Nicotine Discussion & Podcast Closing
00:56:43
Mitchell
Soon.
00:56:43
riptide
When you are being a soon? I love it. I love it.
00:56:46
Mitchell
Imminently.
00:56:46
riptide
We got to we got to bring back the old the old memes, the when moon soon. ah miss when moon.
00:56:52
Mitchell
When moon was a good one.
00:56:52
riptide
That was a good one. When moon was good, man.
00:56:54
Mitchell
When moon was a good one. We'll get there.
00:56:56
riptide
Bitch, I capped this at an hour, but I want to, and I'm i'm sure you got other important things to do rather than talk to anonymous people and on podcasts, but we need to talk about nicotine.
00:56:57
Mitchell
We'll get there, everyone.
00:57:10
riptide
Okay. You're smoking a cigar right now. I am a cigar fan. I lived in Miami, got some good cigars down there. I have one occasionally. And now I've switched to the occasional nicotine patch to what I think.
00:57:24
riptide
I think it wards away the evils. like it it I travel a lot internationally and I feel like it keeps sickness at bay. Give me your pro nicotine thoughts.
00:57:35
Mitchell
Okay, I'm going to be possibly the first, possibly the last person, suppose, on your podcast that is allowed to to to give this heresy. But I am probably one of the only people who say that nicotine for some people, possibly even for many people, is good for you.
00:57:56
Mitchell
And there's a few different things that fit into that. You know, when I was young, i was like an anti-smoking zealot.
00:58:02
riptide
Oh, same here.
00:58:03
Mitchell
Right?
00:58:03
riptide
Exactly. Yeah.
00:58:05
Mitchell
I came from a puritanical Canadian family. And you know whatever we did, we were puritanical about it. you know North Americans, they have it in their blood. You don't notice it when you're growing up. But you know that's kind of how we are.
00:58:16
Mitchell
And I was about that. And I got challenged by randos on the internet that that wasn't true. And in response to that, I was studying medical statistics at the time. I deep dove as much of the available evidence that I could.
00:58:28
Mitchell
And what I found shocked me which was that a lot of the flack that smoking gets is not actually true. And if you look and try to unwind the data, you can't validate it. You can't find the sources.
00:58:41
Mitchell
You can't find the claims. And a lot of the statistics, what you can find are poorly done and they don't show what they say they will.
00:58:48
riptide
Now, smoking what, though? Cigarettes?
00:58:52
Mitchell
Even for cigarettes, even for cigarettes, okay? And I would say cigarettes are toxic.
00:58:56
riptide
but Are we talking manufactured cigarettes or hand-rolled? Like, you you really have to be specific.
00:59:01
Mitchell
even Even the worst shit, okay?
00:59:04
riptide
Okay.
00:59:04
Mitchell
And I think hand-rolled, sorry, I think like normal machine-rolled cigarettes with tons of chemicals are garbage and you shouldn't smoke them, okay?
00:59:11
riptide
Mm-hmm.
00:59:11
Mitchell
but even those are not the villains that they're made out to be. And when you look at hand-rolled cigarettes, and when you especially get into the world of organic tobacco, whether you, I used to buy the leaves myself and and cut them and process them, or whether you look at fine cigars, then you see the opposite things in the data. For example, life extension, life longevity of cigar smokers is higher than the average person in basically everywhere you look.
00:59:38
Mitchell
And not only that, it does seem to have effects against particular diseases as well. So I made this this famous bet here in Portugal with a friend of mine, a brilliant technologist and philosopher who who helped create Brave many years ago during COVID.
00:59:52
riptide
Mm-hmm.
00:59:52
Mitchell
And I said, well, look, I'm going to smoke up because i think that smoking will have a protective effect against COVID. And I back that because in the course of a long series of plagues and diseases, smoking has proven to be advantageous in those times.
01:00:07
Mitchell
I mean, you You see that even going back to the earliest records around the Black Plague, where tobacconists did not get sick as a result, which was shocking to people at the time. They used to make children smoke in order to deal with it.
01:00:18
Mitchell
And of course, what happened in the course of COVID is we discovered that smokers had a dramatically less prevalence lead to get COVID and also have to severe symptoms.
01:00:23
riptide
but
01:00:29
Mitchell
And you would see these results all over the world, China, Greece, Italy, South America, everywhere.
01:00:34
riptide
Oh, 100% true. my My brother smokes like a chimney, never got it.
01:00:39
Mitchell
Happened to lots of people, man.
01:00:41
riptide
Mm-hmm.
01:00:41
Mitchell
Happened to lots of people. And all of that, that's here. We're just talking about health. That doesn't even get into the the primary benefits of nicotine, which is in my view, nicotine is the drug of choice for priests because it is the one, the very few things in this world that increases not just IQ and memory in a significant way, almost half a standard deviation. Almost nothing does that.
01:01:06
Mitchell
Almost nothing does that. Okay.
01:01:09
riptide
Mm-hmm.
01:01:09
Mitchell
But in addition to that, it gives you more willpower. And you've seen this, you've gone to the end of a long day you're struggling with a heart problem and you know you have a cigar or you put on a patch and that gives you 40 minutes, an hour of extra room to boost, to go, to push hard intellectually.
01:01:28
Mitchell
And there's almost nothing in the world that does that, that nicotine does. So I think it's just, it's, it's something everybody has to be careful with. It is not without its risks. It's not without its downsides, but in some, it creates a value that almost nothing has.
01:01:44
Mitchell
And if you're really looking to perform at the top of your industry, at the top of your field, then smoking is something that you should entertain. If only a cigar every once in a while.
01:01:55
riptide
yeah but Very good points. A couple things. The delivery mechanism is, I think, the point of contention, right? Like I'm doing ah the nicotine patch every now and then, which I think is the cleanest way to possibly deliver it to yourself.
01:02:09
riptide
However, there are other side effects with if you smoke, if you inhale the smoke, there is a deep breathing going on, which I think there's there's an ancillary positive benefit to that.
01:02:21
riptide
But there's, I think, a clear negative of inhaling any sort of burnt ah material into your lungs. how do you How do you kind of get around that?
01:02:32
Mitchell
I think that that's like an intuitive thing that people feel and there is some truth for it, especially if it's prolonged. So, for example, when we look at the archaeological studies of natives in the Pacific Northwest who used to live in pit houses and they're stuck underground with these fires that are putting soot in the winter and they have to breathe that in all the time, you do see kind of prolonged negative effects.
01:02:54
Mitchell
But it's not as much as people might say. Human beings have been dealing with this for a very, very long time. And unless you're really chain smoking each day, every day, something really nauseous, you probably don't have serious effects. If you're doing a cigar every few days, I doubt the effects are serious.
01:03:13
Mitchell
I haven't seen any data support that. And of course, the classic example is when you look at smoking in other contexts, whether you look at vaping or you look at marijuana smoking and similar things, you don't really find super compelling evidence of long-term harm from casual smoking.
01:03:30
Mitchell
Not that I've been able to find in any material amounts. Of course, if you want to, you know, ramp up the dosages, I think it could become harmful. But in small amounts, I think you're probably going to be good.
01:03:41
riptide
Very interesting. I like to hear that. I love the the different takes. After all this stuff um happened with with COVID and all the news, this and that, I mean, you really just have to kind of figure things out on your own.
01:03:46
Mitchell
so
01:03:54
riptide
So on that on that bombshell, Mitchell, thank you for joining and we will see everyone next time on the blockchain.
01:03:55
Mitchell
hundred percent