Okay, we're rolling. Daniel Jacobs, co-founder and CEO of Thrive Protocol. Welcome. Good to be here. How's your day, Peter? Hey, good. I want to begin with a nostalgic post that you wrote on X a couple of days ago in January, on April 8th. And maybe that could be a jumping off point or pulling a departure for getting into Thrive Protocol. Does that sound okay? Yeah, sure, that sounds fine. So on April 8th, you wrote, I ran past an old train station today. For 18 months, I've passed it hundreds of times, abandoned or so I thought. Yet today a train had pulled in, people were getting on and off. I was stunned. I'd spent so long wondering how it used to be. I never imagined it was still working. And then it hit me, maybe it had always worked. Maybe I just never noticed. The train station reminded me of people. Sometimes we get used to seeing someone as stalled or we see ourselves that way, but the tracks are still there. The engine still runs. One thing I want Thrive Protocol to give crypto is this, a way for people to remember they're not abandoned. was taken aback by this post. It felt nostalgic, but felt that there's some insight here that I wanted to tease out a little bit. Can you explain to us what you're trying to say in this post? Yeah, the first thing that is important to know is that was exactly my experience. I live in Lisbon and I have run by that train station hundreds of times. The picture that I took is a picture that I took in that moment. So there's a picture in that Twitter post. And one of the things that you'll notice is that there is this abandoned train car in the foreground of that picture. And in the background, you see the train. And, you know, it's so interesting often, right? It's the foreground of our lives that oftentimes dominates the narrative, but the background of our lives that may provide a deeper truth. And as it relates to this idea of thrive, hopefully being a place for all people and for people not to feel abandoned, I have a vision in crypto, but also in terms of the work that I do in my life of building a world where real fairness, real equity is possible, where it doesn't matter who you are, where you are, what your background is. If you create value, you're rewarded proportionate to the value you create. And the reality is in this world, that's often not the case for many, if not most people. they may create lots of value in their lifetimes, but it's not recognized. And I've believed for a long time that the blockchain is a place where that can be different. And Thrive is building some core technology and infrastructure and a community of builders and people around that infrastructure that I believe step-by-step is helping to significantly change them. Let's get into it. Let's maybe describe what Thrive Protocol is to the audience that might not be familiar and some of the key target audiences that it aims to serve and how meritocracy, which seems to be a key value that you're trying to put forward, how that plays into it. Sure. At this point, Thrive is powering more and more of crypto GDP. And what we seek to be as we imagine ourselves into the future is the GDP layer for crypto. that's exactly right. Real value is another way of thinking about it. And we also... are the biggest what we call builder protocol in the space. We now are supporting easily over $100 million in committed capital token allocations from many of the top ecosystems across crypto. Our clients have been like everyone from Polygon and Arbitrum and Sui and Hedera and a lot of the top new chains that are launching will also be supporting their ecosystem funds. And there are two things that I think are really unique about the work that Thrive does. The first is our technology, which is that we built something called Thrive protocol. And what the protocol does is it validates when people create value. So if a builder creates anything of value, when they create that value, they can submit evidence for it through the protocol. And that evidence is routed to some number of certified reviewers, people who are capable of evaluating that evidence. If it's data, it's people certified in reviewing data. If it's code, it's people certified in reviewing. that kind of code and also some number of AI agents that have an extremely high accuracy rate. And when a threshold of those reviewers, which we call guardians and AI agents agree that value was created in a way that was promised, immediately gets paid whatever was promised and attested to on chain. And what this allows for is it allows ecosystems to invest in dozens, hundreds, in the future, thousands of projects. at a time and ensure that they're paying them out when value is created. The other thing that allows for is it allows for builders to build on their terms. One of the biggest problems with crypto is that builders in crypto often have to be many things that are not builders. In order to be a builder in crypto, oftentimes you also have to be a salesperson, a diplomat, an insider be willing to go months without being paid if you're going through a grants program and so on and so forth. And the reality is if you're making 150 or $200,000 a year at Slack, why would you do that? And the other reality is if you're an emerging builder in an emerging part of the world, you don't know how to be that often. Right. And so what Thrive provides is a direct line for builders to get funded for creating value. Like really that simple. The other component of Thrive that is really interesting and meaningful for me is that we funded an enormous, at this point over 1,700 of the top builders and projects in the space across many of the top ecosystems. And so we've built this implicit kind of builder social graph or community. of builders who are creating enormous value in all kinds of different ways. And that continues to get bigger and bigger and more and more relevant for the ecosystems we serve and for the builders who trust us. Now, Thrive is a protocol in this proof of value that you're describing. It's milestone based. And I'm assuming it gives the opportunity for the project to describe or define what value is to them. Is that correct? That's exactly right. wait, let me take a step back. It gives the opportunity for the decentralized ecosystem to define and describe what value is for them. And then builders have the opportunity to suggest a project or understand how their project relates to that. So I can give you a couple of examples. If an ecosystem really values TVL, not rented TVL that comes through short-term liquidity, but long-term TVL, then a project can suggest to that ecosystem how and why they can drive it. And an ecosystem can be really clear about what kind of numbers they need in order to fund that project. So there is the opportunity for the builder to be creative about what they're delivering. within the context of parameters that are valuable and clear for the ecosystems that they support. I see. Now, having led a couple of grant programs at three different layer ones now, I've seen the pros and cons of grant programs as a way to acquire developers and applications for your chain. And I think grant programs are great, but I think calling it just a grant program is, I think, does thrive protocol a disservice because it's quite a bit more than that. What else does thrive provide that traditional kind of no strings attached grant programs provide right now. I'd love to have a deeper conversation about your experiences connected to the grant programs that you've led. But I want to touch on the first piece that you mentioned, and then we'll talk about sort of the second piece. So the first piece is there's a really big problem with grant programs, with grants, with ecosystem allocations. in the space, which is that historically there hasn't been a really efficient way for ecosystems to allocate out their tokens so that they can create value for their communities, for the builders that they're allocating tokens to, and ultimately so that they can create sustainability for the ecosystem. They have tried a number of different sort of well-trodden paths in crypto. some of which become hyped or like the recipe of the day, but haven't demonstrated any kind of long-term impact. Examples of these include, as an example, airdrops, Quadratic funding, which is fairly easily gamed. Retroactive funding, which is fairly easily gamed, right? That doesn't mean that these approaches can't inherently provide value, it's just to say that there needs to be deep thought and consideration when we're using these approaches to make sure that they provide the value that we hope that they'll provide, because the reality is that often they don't. And so we exist in an industry that has attempted to create value through grants programs and largely failed, like largely failed. And so the real question I think is, what does it mean to drive sustainability, medium and long-term sustainability within ecosystems? And then what is an appropriate way to allocate out tokens that supports and serves that end? And if the answer to that is through grants, great. If the answer to that is through various types of, let's say, investments in the future of that ecosystem, then great. So as an example, with the Apecoin community, every builder that gets funded commits something back to the ecosystem. And with an Apecoin, that's different. Sometimes it's revenue, sometimes it's tokens. It can be a whole range of things. They figure out what it means to effectively have some sort of exchange of value that's significant and relevant for the near term and for the long term. In other ecosystems, it can be lots of things, right? What does it mean to have projects commit to launching tokens in those ecosystems? What does it mean to have an equity piece of a project, depending on the type of project it is, and so on and so forth. But the real question is, again, How do we create medium and long-term sustainability? And then if we want to go a little bit further, it would be, how do we do it in a way that is directly aligned with the fundamental needs and values of the communities and the foundations that we're serving? The way I've always viewed grants, if you imagine a marketing funnel, the very top of the funnel would be activities like hackathons or hackathons. And then potentially below that would be maybe middle stage of the funnel would be like accelerators. I've always viewed grants as kind of the bottom of the funnel, but I've seen other projects use it as a top of the funnel, which almost never works that way. Because what that tends to produce our projects that just, they kind of parachute in, they quickly change the chain ID to the new chain, port an old project to the new chain, get the grant, and then they leave. And they never stay to build a community or to help grow users on the application on that new chain. And so these have come to be called like grant hoppers. And there's also kind of hackathon hoppers and grant. I guess that's what that's I guess I'm highlighting kind of like the way I view how grant programs have gone in the past. But the ones that have done I think have have done really well is where they they strategically position the grant at the bottom of the funnel. And then they have a number of activities to get people and developers and applications into the funnel through hackathons and hacker houses, etc. Is that how you view grant programs? And if not, you know, maybe tell us how you view grant programs. I believe that it's very aligned with how we view grant programs. It is often that we partner with hackathons or even accelerators or incubators connected to ecosystems to help to ensure that the hackathons, accelerators, incubators, actually support projects and creating value within those ecosystems. And the way we think about the work that we do is that we're builders and teams into ecosystems, or if they're already in ecosystems, we're helping them to create real, again, medium and long-term value within those ecosystems. We're not interested in short-term anything. We're not interested in marketing automation that drives some short-term hype. We're not interested in short-term liquidity. We are interested in medium and long-term value, which means that we have to, frankly, we have to provide it. I'm going to oversimplify here. There are two ways to provide medium and long-term value. One is to attract builders who are going to be devoted to an ecosystem, are going to build on that ecosystem, bring something new, build it effectively from scratch. And hopefully they find product market fit and are able to scale it. That's one. The other way. is there are builders who have demonstrated that they can drive significant TVL to an ecosystem, as an example, or significant DAUs to an ecosystem, or significant interaction with various protocols, or whatever the core metric is. And then we support them in redeploying within another ecosystem, but committing to medium and long-term value. And there are lots of examples of know, projects that can exist across chains and, and see success, right? Like real success. But what you're talking about is that in-between, which historically has been the majority of grant programs and the in-between are these grant, what you call grant hoppers. We call them grant farmers, right? And, they understand exactly what they need to do to extract value from ecosystems rather than to add it. And the extractive nature of crypto, which I think has largely become a part of crypto's identity, right? It just needs to go. I theoretically and practically have no problem and encourage great founders who want to be cross-chain to be cross-chain and win, right? In different ecosystems and different chains. But... the idea of kind of extractive commitments to ecosystems, that just needs to stop. I mean, it's very, you know, it's another form of, I mean, I already said extraction, but pain, I think that exists in crypto that has held the industry back and has held the ecosystems that we work with on an ongoing basis back as well. And as I think back on my experience, I actually don't blame the grant hoppers. I think the root cause is just poorly designed grant programs from foundations and treasuries. And to that end, Thrive Protocol really serves the builders that are looking for a home in which to build, and also these foundations and treasuries. Tell us about, and these decentralized protocols. Tell us about the, I guess, what is your messaging to these two very distinct audiences? Because on the one hand, you're trying to partner with these treasuries to work with, to allow Thrive Protocol to be the go-between or the, not necessarily the mediator, but the platform in which these builders kind of work with and through to make sure that value is created so that the protocol benefits and then the builder benefits. What is the messaging to each of these audiences? Okay, I'll answer that question. I also want to double down on what you said right beforehand. You said you don't blame the grant hoppers. And I agree. Every system is perfectly designed to get the results that it achieves. And when effectively these poorly designed grant programs are incentivizing people to grant hop, then it makes sense that people will do so. Mm-hmm. on the other hand, we incentivize people to create medium and long-term value, it makes sense that what we're going to get is more creators of a value of GDP, right? For the future of crypto. And this is really important. I mean, I've, I've seen teams who, when they understand that what's being asked of them is something different, they change their behavior, right? They fundamentally change their behavior. So, you know, I encourage frankly any team that historically has been grant hopping, right? Not because they were trying to be bad or extractive for crypto, but because that's sort of what the industry provides for them to recognize that there's something more and greater for them and their contribution to the industry can be significantly more significant. Okay, I think your question was, what's the message to builders? What's the message to builders? And then what's the message to message to the ecosystems that we work with? Is that right? That's correct. And I think that the subtext there is builders can work directly with the protocol in which they are wanting to build on. So why work with Thrive protocol instead? how, guess, yeah, maybe explain kind of like that relationship because it's essentially a two-sided market and Thrive protocol aims to serve both sides through this value added service. by having guardians and also verifiers to make sure the value is created. And so what is the message to both builders and to protocols? My message to builders and even more broadly to people is you deserve to be rewarded for the contributions that you make, for the value that you create. And I believe that when people are fairly rewarded for the value that they create, the impact is extraordinary value for them, right? Because they're being fairly rewarded and for the communities and ecosystems that they support. Right. So my message to builders is, is, is, is that simple. You deserve to be rewarded fairly. And that's what thrive provides to builders. We provide a path whereby they can literally within a week of application. No, whether they've been accepted to build for an ecosystem. and they can feel confident that when they create the value that they've promised, they will immediately be rewarded fairly. And that will be attested to on chain. Additionally, builders have the opportunity to build a relationship with Thrive, as well as with ecosystems that are helping to move and create the future of crypto and to get into those ecosystems in effectively a fast-tracked, simple, straightforward way. That's it. It was that simple years ago when we started Thrive. It's that simple today. There are only 7,200 or so full-time builders in crypto. There are only 20 to 30,000 even full or part-time builders in crypto. And if you compare that to the world, as an example, there over 30 million developers in the world. I believe that the blockchain is one of two fundamentally future changing innovations in the world today, the other being AI. And there are way more builders in AI. And so then you say, why? And the answer is because there is not a direct path for really talented individuals to understand that they can be fairly rewarded. for the value that they create. And I believe very strongly that as more people recognize that that direct path exists and we're providing it, more people will come in and create enormous amounts of value. Our message to the ecosystems that we support is that we believe very much in the future of crypto and in their future. in the future of GDP and crypto and the future of GDP and their ecosystem. And it is a requirement if they're thinking about medium and long term value. And that our commitment to any ecosystem that we work with is that we will truly work to understand the needs of that community. And we will both via our protocol, which basically ensures 100 % capital efficiency, token efficiency, like If you're allocating out tokens to builders, they're creating value in alignment with the allocations that you're making. We will be able to attract and fund great builders who will create value aligned with their needs. And we'll be able to do it at a scale that without our technology and without the work that we do would be extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible. You make the statement, attract developers to build on your ecosystem. How is Thrive Protocol doing that? Because that's tremendously valuable in a very competitive space for developers. Most of how we do it has been an accident. So we didn't set out to build an implicit... No, not right now, you're fine, thanks. I can start over if that's... So most of how we do it has been an accident. We didn't set out as an example to build a really powerful social graph of builders. Can you hear me by the way? Because it's, I might tell them to, can you hear me? Because I can't hear me right now. It's a little loud. Okay, one second. If you can re-ask the question, Yeah. Let me try to... You use the statement, attract developers to build on your ecosystem. And that can be tremendously valuable to projects because it's very competitive for developers. There's so many chains competing for developers. How's Thrive Protocol doing that? Yeah. We didn't set out to figure out how to attract builders to protocol. It was an accident. What we set out to do was build a piece of technology that could validate when value is created and then attest to it and make payments that are connected. to the value that was created, because we believe that that technology would drive fairness. What's happened is that that technology hasn't just created transactions that are fair and easily understood. It's created an experience for builders that is far easier to understand. and to interact with and engage with than the experience that existed before us. So before us, if a builder wanted to build full-time in crypto and they wanted to go through a traditional grants process, then here's what the process looked like. They would make an application either to a foundation where it would go into a black box or to a DAO. If the foundation went to a Dow, sorry, if the application went to a Dow, it was public and they would have to defend it and have lots of conversations about it over the course of weeks. Some of those conversations would have to be on Twitter or discourse or discord, lots of different places. Right? And then they would have to convince a wide ranging audience of people that the work that they're asking or committing to doing is worthwhile or valuable. And that's a really hard job. We know because Thrive in 2023, 100 % of the initiatives of the work that we did was through doubts, right? Was going through those same processes. And the average time to get a grant was three to four months. And it wasn't just one person that needed to work within the ecosystem just to try to communicate our value. Right? was a couple of people who needed to really understand the needs of a wide ranging group of people. Right? So we didn't just need to be builders in order to create value. We needed to be all kinds of things. Right? And all kinds of things that builders aren't. And so the big accident of Thrive, which I feel so grateful for, is when we created a straightforward way for builders to get paid when they create value, it actually allowed for builders to feel comfortable working with us and working through us. And the impact of that is that we've grown this implicit social graph of builders. an example of how powerful it is, one of our partners is Polygon. And we've really enjoyed Working with them, we've together created a lot of value. We support consumer crypto token allocations for Polygon. And when we first started working with them, the feedback that I got was, we're really excited about your technology, but you're not really going to have to worry about attracting builders because Polygon's got a big, well-known brand. Fast forward to when we looked at the first impact report with Polygon, 78 % of the builders, they were attracted and approved, not by us, right? But by this process, 78 % of them actually came, sorry, 78 % of the builders actually came through Thrive. 22 % of those builders came through Polygon. So, Even in the case of large ecosystems with really big brands, what we've noticed and we feel so grateful for this is that we've been able to attract sort of a growing set of builders and teams that are creating enormous value and that trust the way in which they can get paid and supported through us. And that's tremendously valuable for ecosystems to get new blood into the ecosystem that's not currently in it. And it sounds like Thrive Protocol was able to do that for Polygon. I think what you did is incredibly helpful in being able to contrast the current grants program that most foundations and ecosystems have versus what Thrive Protocol provides. I think that contrast is both illustrative of the value that Thrive provides builders as well as to these ecosystems. I remember when I ran a couple of grant programs, I saw really kind of two ends of the spectrum. The first end of the spectrum is what you described of how painful it was for builders having to put in a proposal in some forum and having to banter back and forth on this proposal and answer hundreds of questions from the community. I think on the one hand, that's really helpful because it gets the community involved in the grants program. And it also gives them a voice on who will receive these grants as well as be able to provide some feedback on what ought to be built and what maybe features shouldn't be built in this proposal. And then on the other hand, when during the bull market, I saw kind of the other end of the spectrum where the treasuries of these foundations were really amassed a lot of value. And then that's kind of when I saw a lot of very kind of permissiveness and just kind of handing out free money everywhere. And so on the one hand, it's like very stringent. On the other hand, it's just too much money flowing, which reduces the quality of the projects. On the other hand, too much, it's too stringent and maybe there's maybe could detract potentially good projects into the ecosystem. And so I think that contrast is helpful in describing what Thrive does in making it more streamlined and making it also more balanced in a way by focusing on some of the key outcomes like value. Am I right in understanding Thrive that way? Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I think you described it really beautifully. There is, you know, a major problem in this industry that is unfortunately still largely driven by speculation. And... You know, what happens is that because largely of speculation, prices go through the roof. And then the question is, what do I, how do we do this? We do this by effectively encouraging more speculation. How do I do that? I do that by giving away more. No value was created. But then when prices come falling back down, which is what happens in speculation cycles, then it becomes really clear that giving away tokens for nothing didn't actually create any enduring value. And so then there is this realization that maybe I shouldn't do this and there's nothing in between. And the reality is if we're going to build a sustainable crypto, like a sustainable future for Web3, it's going to be because we were able to build core infrastructure, a core group of builders. an industry that functions the way that society has historically understood all industries to function, which is that we will build projects and businesses that are self-sustaining, that drive GDP forward, that have revenue, right? That can demonstrate the value that they've created. And when we do that, What we'll notice is that the boom and bust cycles start to soften, right? Because it's not speculation anymore. It's real. I believe very strongly that there must be, and hopefully there's beginning to be a flight to quality in this industry, a flight to real, right? Because when together, we can make a commitment consistently to real, then there is a burgeoning future. But if we keep making stuff up, then life is really hard. And so for Thrive, we've made a commitment to fund real, to consistently fund real, create value, get funded, create more value, get funded, create more value. get funded. And it's one of the reasons, you know, Thrive has grown and grown and grown kind of almost silently in the background. For most of the time that we've been around, we didn't have a marketing team. We still don't have a salesperson. We have one BD person. And yet we support, you know, nine figures in capital and token allocations from a lot of the top ecosystems. And we've grown just as quickly through bear markets. as we've grown through bull markets. In fact, whatever's going on the market has very little relationship, frankly, to what's going on on a day-to-day basis, both with Thrive and the ecosystems that we support. Because our commitment is to medium and long-term value, which means that the quality of a builder or a team doesn't change based on where the market's at. The quality of an idea and the ability to execute does not change based on where the market's at, which means that our business behavior doesn't change either. We're committed to continuing to fund in alignment with vision and values and in alignment with the value that's being created. And I think that long-term thinking is incredibly valuable and building in the bull as well as the bear. And in fact, based on my experience, there's a lot of building in the bear. And I actually enjoy bear markets because of that, right? Because there's very few distractions. In the last five minutes that we have, could you give us a rundown on the ecosystems that Thrive Protocol has partnerships with? to give builders an idea of the ecosystems that they could potentially build on through working with Thrive. Yeah, so right now we have active funding programs going on with Polygon, with Hedera, with Apecoin and Apechain, with Zion, with Swell, with Metis. All of these are really wonderful ecosystems. If we had more time, I'd spend more time talking about them, but it's worthwhile checking them out and hopefully we can give some links later so that you can see them. But in addition to that, a lot of really wonderful pre-TGE projects, some of the biggest, and I don't know if I can name them yet, but we'll be supporting a large part of their ecosystem funds. And so what you'll notice is that every couple of weeks, there's going to be another major ecosystem that we're supporting, at least for the near term and probably longer. So there are a lot of opportunities to get funding with Thrive. And the other thing is, if you're a builder and you submit an application, here's our commitment to you. You will have a response within a week. Within a week. Right? And then after you get a response, you can be building within three days after that. Right? If the response is that an ecosystem has decided to fund you. So we've really streamlined the process for you to make it as clear and simple to create value and to be rewarded proportionate to the value that you create. I appreciate you sharing that. was meeting with a team yesterday and we were talking about this idea of a white glove support for developers and that in the Ethereum ecosystem, most developers are kind of left on their own. But in the Solana as well as other ecosystems, there's a very kind of hands-on coaching and mentoring. And what I'm seeing is a lot of developers really appreciate that. And I think the... The quick turnaround, the streamlined approach that Thrive Protocol provides is not only helpful to both builders and to the ecosystems that it serves, but it just makes things just more efficient overall. And the turnaround time of a week or less, and I imagine there's probably back and forth in between also if there's additional questions based on their application, like that matters. Like those qualitative subjective aspects really matter. helping the developer feel heard, helping the developer feel important. Regardless of the outcome, if they end up getting the grant or not is super important. It sounds like that's one of the key aspects based on this meritocratic approach that Thrive takes. Daniel, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. I'll definitely share all the links that you want to so that the audience, both builders as well as ecosystems, if they want to learn more, and want to work with Thrive protocol, can do so through these links. Yeah, thanks so much, Peter. This has been a lot of fun for me and look forward to spending more time with you in the future. Thank you.