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How BNB Chain's investment director is planning on deploying their $1bn+ ecosystem fund
163 Plays2 years ago
I speak with Gwendolyn Regina, the Investment Director at Binance's BNB Chain. We discuss how the current macro environment is shaping her investment strategy, which sectors Binance is looking to continue to invest in, and what she's most excited for over the next 9-12 months.
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Transcript
00:00:05
Speaker
There are a good many ways that institutional investors are taking best advantage of this versatile market created by broad public participation.
Introduction to Gwendolyn Regina and BNB Chain
00:00:15
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Decrypting Crypto Podcast. I'm Matthew Housebarbie, and today I'm speaking with Gwendolyn Regina. She is the Investment Director over at Binance, specifically focused on B&B Chain, the layer one blockchain that's been growing in size and demand pretty dramatically since its launch in 2016.
00:00:39
Speaker
About two years ago, I believe, you'll formally know it as Binance Smart Chain, which was then rebranded at the end of last year to B&B
Managing a $1B Fund in SocialFi, GameFi, and DeFi
00:00:50
Speaker
Chain. So one of the reasons why I wanted to have Gwendolyn on the show in particular was the fact that she runs and leads a $1 billion plus investment fund through B&B Chain.
00:01:04
Speaker
is someone that is responsible for, along with the team, making decisions on where they make investments into the ecosystem across SocialFi, GameFi, DeFi and everything that's surrounding in terms of infrastructure. And I thought with the current market conditions for anyone out there looking at building in the space or just you're curious as to how funds are thinking about investing in protocols, in teams, in Web3 as a
How is Binance Investing in Protocols and Teams?
00:01:31
Speaker
whole. This is just going to be an amazing
00:01:34
Speaker
Kind of insight into how all the mechanics the risk tolerance the things that these big funds are looking for Play out and we had a great interview with with Gwendolyn She shared a ton of information about what they're looking for the kinds of things where they're really keen on big areas of growth and how they're gonna hit the lofty goals of helping to onboard a billion people into the whole of web 3 and I think a
00:01:59
Speaker
with the scale that Binance is at today. If anyone's going to be able to help drive that kind of level of adoption, I think they're going to be one of the ones leading the pack. We're obviously a little bit away from that right now, but I thought some of the things we discussed really helped to see where the future could be going and
00:02:22
Speaker
Gwendolyn was very optimistic about the future of teams building and some of the projects in particular that she's been focused on. So we'll dive straight into the interview with Gwendolyn right after this.
00:02:35
Speaker
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00:03:03
Speaker
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Growing BNB Chain and Project Collaboration
00:03:17
Speaker
Welcome Gwen, it's great to have you here on the podcast. Why don't we start our conversation off with just a little bit about your role at Binance, what you're responsible for, and maybe kind of a story so far of the growth of the BNB chain.
00:03:34
Speaker
Yeah, thanks, Matt. Thanks for having me. So my role at BNB Chain, my official title is Investment Director. But as you know, in like, you know, now that all the Web3s so new, all of us wear several hats at the same time, right? So really, it's about the growth of the BNB Chain ecosystem, but also crypto in general. I mean, the way we look at it is that the industry is still small, we all have a part to play.
00:04:00
Speaker
So as investment director, really, that means day to day I talk to many new projects, builders and entrepreneurs, understanding what they're doing, what problem statement, what problem they're solving for and what solution space they're dealing in. Because really here we're aiming to onboard them into the BNB chain ecosystem
00:04:21
Speaker
but also figure out how can we help them accelerate their growth, be it through introducing them to other projects, distributing some capital in terms of grants or investments, slash incubating them in a more dedicated way through, for example, our BNB chain incubation program, Most Valuable Builder.
00:04:43
Speaker
where we take them through an eight-week program, where we bring in community leaders, builders to kind of talk to them, you know, kind of like, you know, small fireside chats, mentorship sessions. And yeah, ultimately the goal is to grow crypto to 1 billion users.
00:05:02
Speaker
And yeah, so then to your other question as to kind of the growth of BNB chain, we've been very lucky to have been a part of the growth of the crypto ecosystem over the last few years where
00:05:17
Speaker
EBNB chain was actually kicked off about two years ago, so September 2020. And today we are the largest blockchain with about 1 million daily active wallet addresses on a daily basis, which are very, very happy that a community is so engaged and more than 1400 dApps and counting. So yeah, so really kudos to everyone who's been building in this space. Yeah. I mean, it feels like especially through
00:05:48
Speaker
the somewhat still recent DeFi summer that we had. And then in the run up through the large kind of bull run at the end of last year, it felt like BNB chain in particular was constantly in the headlines and was someone that was constantly growing and seeing a lot of value. How much of that growth do you attribute to
00:06:13
Speaker
Kind of the existing brand recognition and giant user base that Binance as a whole managed to pull in. And how much do those kind of two teams tend to work together? Do they feel like very different inside the organization, those that focus on the centralized exchange work and those that are focused on the actual blockchain?
Binance and BNB Chain: Brand and Community Growth
00:06:33
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great question. So Binance kicked off BNB chain again two years ago. And today BNB chain is, you know, it's not owned by anyone as with any decentralized blockchain, public blockchain, right? So there is a large community.
00:06:48
Speaker
Binance is a large contributor, right? I'm part of the core team. So how the teams work together is that we draw a lot from the Binance ecosystem. We do introduce the Binance ecosystem to BME chain projects as well, right? I mean, that's one of the beauty of being here, right? Where I see my role myself and the core team as bridging
00:07:14
Speaker
the centralized side and decentralized world, but also, of course, a larger picture of Web2 to Web3. But to return to your question, Binance for sure has such a huge brand name. And B&B Chain, when it first started, for sure it drew upon a lot of that branding and initial boost that Binance gave. I think today, I would like to say that we have established a brand on our own,
00:07:42
Speaker
Right? I mean, you're the external person here, Matt, so maybe you should tell me, right? Yeah, so I think we've established a brand on its own. Again, you know, the largest community and we've done a lot of good work, you know? And I think like with everyone else, we, we still have a lot of room to grow. I think we would like to try to be humble still, right? Like technology wise, we are still doing a lot to make sure we support the multi-chain world.
00:08:04
Speaker
Even though, you know, we're very proud of our tech, you know, we haven't gone down on main in two years. Can you believe that? And, and yeah, it's supporting such great growth, right? All time high was like 2.27 million, you know, daily users one time in 16 million transactions on one day.
00:08:21
Speaker
So we're proud of that. But yeah, we've been, you know, we still want to grow a lot. And so I think on that note, you know, the BNB chain ecosystem exists in its, in its realm, I guess, right. And it's continued to kind of reap rewards, you know. So yeah, we're proud of that.
00:08:38
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's definitely been interesting to watch someone, as you mentioned, like someone who's outside of the organization looking in. One just like kind of random question that I'd wondered a little bit about, I think you did this at the end of last year, maybe the start of this year. What was the thought process behind the rebrand from Binance Smart Chain into B&B Chain?
00:09:01
Speaker
Was there any particular reason just because it seemed to happen quite quickly from when initially BSC chain launched and then shifting into BNB chain?
Rebranding to BNB Chain: Why?
00:09:12
Speaker
Yeah, everything happens quickly in crypto, Matt, right? And especially also from a startup perspective, right? I think we cannot forget that Binance, the company, is five years old, right? And being the chain, as in a sense startup-ish, I guess, depends on how you call it, right? It's also, again, two years old. So everything moves super, super quickly.
00:09:36
Speaker
Yeah, so to your question, how did the thinking kind of evolve is that when BME chain was first started, as you rightly pointed out, it was called Binance Smart Chain because that's the origin of it, right? But as we developed through the first year, and again, we went to all time high. So BME, BSC back then slowed but never went down. But in the question we asked ourselves is this, if
00:10:05
Speaker
Crypto and Web3 and blockchain, which we strongly believe in all Web3 natives here, right? We know that our tech, while it's amazing now, there's robustness, there's resilience, right? But it will not be enough for the future, right? We're asking ourselves the hard questions. What tech is needed for real crypto mass adoption?
00:10:28
Speaker
So when we think about that and we look at how the space has been developing with so many interchange, so many other use cases really popping up and really realizing that what we had, you know, like close to a year ago or something was not enough. So the rebranding came about, it's not just a mere rebranding, right? It's really also was a signal
00:10:50
Speaker
or rather internal, there was the actual real tech development roadmap that was announced as you rightly pointed out last year and also early this year. And now some of that tech progress have been executed, implemented already. For example, with sidechains and we are rolling out also ZK sidechains soon as an example, right? Yeah, so all of these have to support different use cases
00:11:16
Speaker
You know, and use cases that we know exists now, like for example, GameFi, but also new use cases that maybe we haven't even thought about, right? Because again, we're just so nascent.
00:11:28
Speaker
One thing I want to point out also is that, you know, 40% of BNB chains users are gaming, are using GameFi. So, and as we all know, GameFi specifically requires high TPS, right? And so even though we didn't go down again, like for future games, where the games we assume will get even more sophisticated, and we assume will require even higher TPS. So we needed the ability to allow these games to
00:11:58
Speaker
have their own super robust chain. So that's why you know part of the reason why for side chains as well. So really BNB chain today is a multi-chain system on its own. So it yeah for us it's a very important step in our journey actually so it's not just a pure like name change.
00:12:17
Speaker
Yeah, well, it's interesting here and I definitely the investments that you've made on BNB chain in the game five space have been something that I paid a lot of attention to and have seen that there's clearly like a big area of focus for you all. And I'm sure that's only going to kind of grow over time. I want to talk a little bit about
00:12:37
Speaker
the BNB chain ecosystem shortly. And we'll come into this because I think it's really interesting to understand a bit better on like why builders and users should be excited. But what I want to touch on a little bit first, which I guess as someone who's leading a billion dollar plus investment fund right now inside BNB chain, like how?
00:12:57
Speaker
Let's talk about the elephant in the room, which is the macro situation. How has your approach to making investments in your ecosystem fund, if you like, how has that shifted in the past three to six months in light of the recent market conditions?
00:13:19
Speaker
Yeah, a great question, Matt.
Investment Strategies Amid Market Conditions
00:13:21
Speaker
So for us, when you think about from a pure investment perspective, or when you say investments, it's like investing for the future, right? When you invest, you're really investing in a few things.
00:13:33
Speaker
You're investing in innovative ideas. You're investing in hopefully scalable ideas and products. You're investing in new use cases, but fourth and most important, you're investing in a team. All of these do not change regardless of market conditions. All of these have to stay constant. So we still keep those, you know, those criteria, so to speak, when we look at projects. However,
00:14:00
Speaker
In the bear market, definitely a lot of things have changed. Valuations have gone down. Some projects realize that their treasuries have run low because they've been involved in, unfortunately, in some of the larger crypto mishaps slash the recent events in the space.
00:14:22
Speaker
Yeah, so what we're seeing right now is that some projects have been in a sense overly bullish during the bull run and we're not planning well enough for winter essentially.
00:14:35
Speaker
So they're looking at runways being cut really, really short. So right now, we're looking at projects. I mean, again, always, we always, when we talk to projects, it's always important to understand their thinking about runway and financials anyway, right? But especially in this bear market, because really, we don't know how long this will last, right? This upcoming recession, slash recession, however you'd call it.
00:14:58
Speaker
And so I think it's more important for us to make sure that the projects, the builders, entrepreneurs out there that we're talking to have a really firm grasp and realistic, you know, in terms of the preparation for this perhaps prolonged winter.
00:15:15
Speaker
So if there are two, you know, what I like to say is that entrepreneurs and builders, you have to be optimistic. If you're not optimistic, then why should I be believing in your vision of the world, right? But at the same time, as an entrepreneur, it's almost like you're walking paradox, because you have to be optimistic. Yet, don't say pessimistic, but realistic at the same time. And you have to almost plan
00:15:37
Speaker
you want to plan for your vision to be like 10x, 100x of the current paradigm. But at the same time, you need to be prepared for the 10x or 100x of the negative side of things. Prepare again for the worst, mitigate the risks. So again, all of these haven't changed. But right now when we talk to projects,
00:15:56
Speaker
We do have a bit longer conversations about some of these. We do, as always, ask questions about team building and stuff like that. But now it's also like, okay, so there's many more layoffs in the market, for example. Are you finding it more difficult, harder to hire? What kind of skills are you looking for? Are you thinking about changing some of the things, the roadmap?
00:16:17
Speaker
You know, how are you basically pivoting and trying to adjust your go-to-market strategy with the climate, right? So all of these questions really allow us to get even stronger insights, deeper insights into how the teams think.
Bear Market: Filtering for Longevity
00:16:33
Speaker
And that is most important. Again, it's always about investing in the team, the quality of thinking, quality of strategy, and quality of execution.
00:16:42
Speaker
Do you think in some ways that the bear market that we're in right now and all of the wider macro issues and many big projects that probably nine to 12 months ago would have not even been thinking about them worrying about runway over the coming 12 months, do you think that that's helped a little bit when you're trying to go in and
00:17:07
Speaker
figure out kind of the projects, the new ones that are coming up that are much more likely to be here to stay when we're kind of out of the kind of hysteria and frenzy of all the bull market where it kind of felt like it was very hard to see behind whether something was actually a truly great project or it was just riding this just wave of retail investment.
00:17:32
Speaker
Yeah, I'll answer this topic a bit across a few angles. So, you know, some projects during the bull market were, I would say, again, overly optimistic, right? It's like they assume it will be bull forever, correct? Super high valuations and just, in a sense, not spending like crazy, but just again, just not realistic in terms of trying to think about management and scaling properly.
00:17:59
Speaker
So in a sense, the optimism is good because then maybe they will be raised more than expected, which allows them then a bigger stash to help extend the runway, especially during the bear market. But when you come to now,
00:18:18
Speaker
You know, you kind of alluded to that, right, Matt? So in terms of signal to noise ratio, you know, we're having so much, so much less noise now, which is amazing, right? So the builders that we see remain in the market right now. I mean, it's a mixed bag, right? But ultimately,
00:18:33
Speaker
It's so much, like, it's just so much, I don't know, easier now, I guess, to talk to projects, because literally the less noise to filter through, which is great, right? Yeah, because I mean, even though, you know, you know, I think I can, I can look at a deck and judge really quickly whether I think this is, you know, a scam or not, or whether just overly, you know, indexing on token price and stuff like that, right? I can judge it fairly quickly.
00:18:58
Speaker
But when you have many to look through, it still takes time. Right. And, and so it's, it's better now, I feel like, you know, talking to builders and entrepreneurs and you just have more time to talk to them. And so I get to that topic of, of kind of the, the kind of builders and entrepreneurs. Um, yeah, like, you know, those that remain, you know,
00:19:22
Speaker
we think there's a higher quality basically.
Supporting Projects with Hands-On Involvement
00:19:25
Speaker
So those that were wiped out from the bull to bear in a sense is good because as a market, right, individually is a terrible news, right? Because it could be either over-optimistic or just, you know, inexperienced founders and scalers and builders, and that's okay, you learn, right? But over as a market, we always have to have
00:19:45
Speaker
such I would I would say lows and and in a sense projects failing people failing because you need to recycle talent right people from quote-unquote failed projects should then go on and join other more successful projects or projects that still exist in this bear market are still building because then you consolidate talent you consolidate teams way more you consolidate efforts and that's always good
00:20:12
Speaker
Yeah, so where do you see when you're speaking to some of these teams and projects that you think could be great investment opportunities and things you want to support in the wider ecosystem? How do you think about ways of supporting those teams? Is BMP chain quite hands-on? I know you mentioned you do like an accelerator in some cases, but are you working very closely with the teams or is the approach much more about kind of capital allocation and then you're a lot more hands-off
00:20:42
Speaker
And are you funding projects that even aren't on, say, BNB Chain just yet, or are you a lot more exclusive to your own chain? Yeah, we are much more exclusive to our own chain. So generally from BNB Chain, as you said, it's an ecosystem play, right? So for us, it is imperative for projects to build on BNB Chain. We like it more, you know, it's more of a fit if a project's already at least on mainnet or testnet BNB Chain.
00:21:11
Speaker
If you're not yet on, you know, we're still open, definitely, to working with you in several ways, which I'll go into shortly. But essentially, you know, if you're building and you have a very solid roadmap to come to BNB chain in the next two months as an example, right, then yeah, you know, it's very clear that you're committed to the BNB chain. We would love to figure out how can we accelerate your launch, right, by amplifying your launch when it comes about and introducing you again to other projects.
00:21:41
Speaker
So in general, I would say that we are quite hands-on, but again, hands-on is a relative term, right? Because it's just so many projects, we cannot realistically, the core team cannot realistically be hands-on of every single project, right? So we do have to make sure that, you know, we, you know, do a few things, right? One to many assistants, one to group assistant, and some one to one.
00:22:07
Speaker
So the one to many is we do a lot of education, talent development, where we work with education platforms, you know, deaf education platforms, both Web 2 and Web 3. We sponsor hackathons, we organize our own hackathons, we do master classes, right? We do specific topic AMAs, you know, everything from like Music 5 to DeFi, for example. And so
00:22:31
Speaker
Those are one-to-many, so to speak, right? So one-to-group is where we have MVB, most valuable builder, BNB chain incubation, where we have seasons, right? And we ask the community to apply for the chance to be incubated. And this is where, you know, in small groups, and this small groups means about 30 projects, right? I selected from like hundreds and hundreds of applications. I think this time it's like, something like,
00:22:56
Speaker
600 or something like that. So it's a very small group that's selected amongst a lot of applications. And we then curate a six to eight week curriculum where we bring in community leaders to speak to this group of builders and to answer questions about what they're building and how to scale and questions like that. And we also have some aspect of one-to-one where we are doing the B&B chain incubation.
00:23:26
Speaker
one-on-one mentoring. But one-to-one also happens outside MVB, the BNB Chain Incubation, where we do individually talk to projects. A lot of them are in MVB, but also outside MVB, where we really spend time to
00:23:42
Speaker
talk to them, have regular updates, and we find out what their needs are, their asks are. And sometimes they suggest like, hey, I want to talk to XYZ, can you introduce me? Other times we are the ones who suggest something, right? Because we as an ecosystem team, right, we see most likely a much wider range of projects and both new
00:24:03
Speaker
and about to be launched on BNB for example and so then we make those introductions or we ask them whether they want to be introduced such as ideas perhaps and then we make introductions. So yeah so there's a range of like a range of ways in which we work with projects. And so what's getting you most excited right now? I mean we've got we mentioned already that
00:24:28
Speaker
You've been doing a lot in the GameFi space. I see obviously with B&B Chain there's quite a lot on the D5 side, maybe some SocialFi stuff. What are you personally very interested and excited about for where you're going to be scaling and growing on the B&B Chain side of things, as in projects coming into the ecosystem that you're going to be funding as
Focus Areas: SocialFi, DAO Tooling, and DeFi
00:24:49
Speaker
well? Yeah, I love that question. So from the kind of use cases perspective, we like a lot of SocialFi.
00:24:58
Speaker
Because BNB Chain's goal is to onboard 1 billion users to BNB Chain and the crypto ecosystem, we think that this 1 billion users will come about sooner than we think. And how to get 1 billion users is important to think about.
00:25:18
Speaker
And we think will be large scale real life use cases has already been proven by the traditional web to markets. Right. So when you talk about social fire, you're talking about say social media, basically, right? So the next Facebook, the next Twitter, the next Instagram and stuff like that. As an example, we also, as part of the, I guess sub category of social fire, music fire, right?
00:25:37
Speaker
So Core Right is one music project that's on native on B&B Chain where musicians can, in a sense, work with their fans to launch their next album. So one project that one artist that Core Right worked with is Alan Walker, world famous DJ. So that's one example. We have Melos as well, Melos as well, another music-type project on B&B Chain.
00:26:02
Speaker
And just more social fi, we're interested to work with more social fi projects. You know, we have some projects looking at social graphs, for example, we have web tree identity. All these are important building blocks for a very good social fi ecosystem, right? Because ultimately to build anything, you need the infrastructure and tooling first before the applications can really come in. So these are some stuff.
00:26:27
Speaker
Another aspect of stuff that I'm personally interested in is also DAOs. So DAOs, in my opinion, is really amazing because the question it asks is that, how can we best and most efficiently organize how to work, literally, in this new world, across borders, across strangers, across time zones? And how do you allow people to have a say in the organization?
00:26:54
Speaker
and slash the community. So right now, we're also looking for more DAO tooling and infrastructure, because again, you need that base. And at BNBJ, we are lacking some of those infrastructure tooling right now. So we are looking for more of that. A third aspect of it is DeFi, right? As DeFi definitely is the
00:27:13
Speaker
core of crypto slash web3, we are looking for a more advanced DeFi projects, right? So for example, we're looking for more real world assets play, synthetic assets, an example, we're looking for even more bridges, we have already like quite a few, we're already working a few bridges, like seller C bridge is an example, but we're looking for more
00:27:34
Speaker
We also work with a multi-chain and layer zero. We also want more stable AMMs. We want more security. For example, security is always top priority for us. And we work with external parties like CERTIC, Zocchio, Pack Shield to look at some of that. We recently actually launched Red Alert on that bay where we try to highlight potential scammy projects for the ecosystem. But we know that we're going to define
00:28:03
Speaker
Yeah, so security is very important, right? And part of it's security side, for example, is like risk management as a whole, right? And one thing we want to look out more for is also insurance, right? So what does DeFi insurance look like? You know, we're still missing some of that and we want to see more of that. And arguably, you know, insurance in DeFi is a very tough problem to solve, right? Because how do you really best price your risk, correct? So we're looking for more innovation in this space as an example. Yeah.
00:28:33
Speaker
So it sounds like there's a whole host of different things. And what I'm getting the sense off here is you want to have all of these, as you mentioned, kind of building blocks, whether it be identity, bridging, DeFi, the social layers that are going to connect people together, gaming, doing a similar thing, and everything around all that. One thing I'm kind of interested in, because
00:28:56
Speaker
Bridging has been a much discussed topic for a lot of different reasons, mostly of late and negative. I think one of the things we were talking in a previous episode on the podcast that actually binances the central exchange is probably one of the best bridges that we've actually just seen for people to use to pop money into.
00:29:20
Speaker
And, you know, I'm kind of curious because it feels like one of the things that has just been missing in defy.
00:29:28
Speaker
is a seamless experience of bridging from in the wallet in particular and not having to necessarily, as much as I love things like multi-chain and seller, like you mentioned, being able to have that in. I'm curious, does B&B Chain have like any plans or any focus on the wallet side? I know you didn't mention anything there in your list, but having kind of a
00:29:53
Speaker
a let's say a Coinbase wallet, MetaMask wallet type competitor that can be a bit more DeFi and BNB chain centric. Do you think that's something you would ever explore? Yeah, that's a great, great point, Matt. Actually, wallets is definitely important for a few reasons, right? They're really one of the first points of contact literally a person has with the Web Free World, right? You literally need a wallet to access the Web Free World. So one product that
00:30:20
Speaker
Biden's house actually is Trust Wallet. So Trust Wallet is actually very well used already. So we do partner and work with Trust Wallet. We do introduce Trust Wallet if it makes sense to projects as well. But others, we also work with a lot of others, you know, when looking at a few potentially to work more deeply with. But one example I can give you is that, and this is, it crosses a few topics, because we also work with Opera,
00:30:46
Speaker
and Brave as an example. So Opera is, as we know, is one of the largest web tool browsers with 350 million users. So they have a crypto wallet across the different browsers because they also have a gaming browser as an example. So they integrated BNB chain several months ago
00:31:07
Speaker
And, you know, we think that this is interesting because, you know, the Web 2 users of Opera, most of them would be super new to Web 3, right? And Opera that is doing beliefs in the future Web 3, and that's why they're doing all this.
00:31:23
Speaker
So they are executing their own strategy on building, bringing more dApps, bringing more integrations, bringing the Web2 world to their Web2 users. So that's why we're working with someone like Opera. So that's a bit for the wallet side. That's of course browser slash wallet side. And we are talking to also
00:31:44
Speaker
a few more wallets, you know, with slightly different focus, right? So for example, you know, wallets that are a bit more focused on NFTs, you know, and stuff like that. So there is a emphasis for sure. And also what's important is that wallets these days are so user-unfriendly, right? For retail user, right? So that's definitely important. We want definitely more user-friendly wallets, you know, wallets that don't have to confuse you with which chain do you want today, right?
00:32:14
Speaker
If you go to a website, it asks you to connect your wallet. We want it to be smart to automatically connect you to the right chain, as an example, correct? So I think there's a lot of innovation that still needs to happen. Also, another thing in wallets that is missing is security. I mean, not missing in general, but I would like to see more innovation there. Because right now, as you've seen with a few stuff, like, for example, the OpenSea thing, approving all transactions and stuff like that, some people lost stuff, right?
00:32:42
Speaker
So we want to see you know like I think a lot of the security layer can be solved with wallets. So we want to see more wallets think about how can they really protect the user even more. So I'm not saying that all the responsibility is on wallets because there also needs to be user education and you can't point all you kind of can't put all the owners of one party right.
00:33:05
Speaker
Um, but yeah, ultimately it's, I want to challenge the builders, entrepreneurs of say, as an example, wallets out there to, to, yeah, just really think about not the web tree native users who knows how to manage our private keys or sometimes not, but also of the, yeah, the web tool user right now who will be a bit confused. You know, I mean, sometimes I look at stuff and I'm like, wait, what, where am I, where am I supposed to press? Right. And I'm internet native and web tree native. Right. So yeah.
00:33:35
Speaker
Yeah, the user experience side of things is, I mean, I'll admit it's getting better, but something you touched on there right about, you know, switching between chains, stuff like that. I mean, it confuses even Web3 natives a lot of the time, and it's not the most intuitive thing. One of the kind of final questions, I guess I'd love us to dig into, because we talked a lot about
BNB Chain in the Layer One Blockchain Competition
00:33:59
Speaker
the investment approach that you're taking here at BNB chain, the areas of focus that you see value for growing in the ecosystem. But, you know, there's this other piece around all of these other chains. I know BNB chain is like an EVM compatible chain and
00:34:15
Speaker
Uh, you've, you've kind of build it in a way that it, it connects to the likes of Ethereum and code, but how do you see BNB chain kind of competing in what seems like this growing, uh, layer one blockchain battle that that's playing out. And, you know, I think with the current narrative around the, the ETH merge, everyone's obviously talking a lot about Ethereum right now. And I think once we get through the merge.
00:34:44
Speaker
there's probably going to be the narrative shift back towards all of the other kind of growing layer one spaces with the likes of Solana, again, a huge market share and it sounds like BNB chain doing a similar thing. Where is it that you would say BNB chain kind of has its unique advantage over others and why would users and builders care about building on and utilizing BNB chain over other major L1s?
00:35:12
Speaker
Yeah, great question. So I think first I will talk about the point that we are still super early in a web tree, right? Again, estimates are like what 300,000 people right in the wall or something like that in web tree. So it's still super early. So the way I look at it is that
00:35:26
Speaker
I don't want to focus on short term, short term, right? I always look very long term. That's for me, that's been my entire life in terms of tech and really how it changes society. So the pie grows, everyone grows. That's one point I really, really want to make. Second point
00:35:44
Speaker
is that when you look at technologies and how they evolve, you definitely need some, I guess, friendly competition, so to speak, right? You help make one another better. So that's always, always good. Third, to really answer your question, Matt, is that how we see ourselves as how we think, you know, what we think our strengths are is the fact that
00:36:05
Speaker
In the two years that we've been around, we have not gone down, right? Zero, zero downtime. At our highs of 2.27 million daily active wallets and 16 million transactions in one day, we slowed but never went down. So we think that our tech robustness has been really very strong. And as I mentioned earlier, we are continuing to improve that. So I think that the reliability has been one of our strengths.
00:36:34
Speaker
And that answers the question a little bit more about the technology and product side of things. The second part is that, as we know in Web3, community is very, very important because the whole point about Web3 is that
00:36:49
Speaker
you are changing the tokenomics, right? You are now able to share with your fans and have your fans and your community share in the growth of the product and the ecosystem as well. So I think that's very important. So on a PMB chain, we already have one of the largest web3 communities by in terms of users, but also by a number of dApps, right? So web by no means the largest because, you know, I love Ethereum, for example, right?
00:37:14
Speaker
OG, you know, and they do really really well. I'm very excited for the merch myself. So, you know, there's a lot of good things right there and ultimately when we bring back to BNB chain, we're just heads down focused on what we're good at and what I think we're very focused on what more we need to do as a core team to really usher in again 1 billion users. So,
00:37:38
Speaker
For us, it's great that everyone is doing different things. Everyone is doing even more things because we are inspired by what our competitors, the different chains are doing as well. For us, again, it's always friendly competition is amazing because you work on yourself, but you learn from others and that's always amazing.
00:38:01
Speaker
Yeah, well, the ambition for kind of getting to 1 billion Web3 users across the ecosystem is definitely something that I'm looking forward to. It seems like what you're all doing over at B&B Chain and Binance as a whole is certainly contributing positively to the ecosystem.
00:38:20
Speaker
I'm going to be following what you're all doing really great, really closely.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:38:24
Speaker
Thank you so much, Gwen, for coming on the podcast. Been really interested in talk about what you're thinking about and how kind of the recent market conditions have shifted and changed things. We'll be sure to share out some links to a load of interesting information around B&B Chain with the show notes of the podcast. But thanks again, Gwen, and really interesting talking to you today. Thank you so much, Matt.
00:38:48
Speaker
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00:39:13
Speaker
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