DeFi Kingdoms Special AMA with Klaytn — September 22, 2022

This was a special announcement outside of the typical weekly Thursday AMA cadence! As you know, DeFi Kingdoms will be migrating Serendale from Harmony to the Klaytn blockchain sometime later this year (at least that is the estimated time they’ve given).

This AMA is scheduled with Klaytn’s head of global group, previously head of global adoption. David Shin’s linkedin bio: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shin-novation/

Not everyone has time to listen to the recording or wants something they can just read instead so I’ve been writing these written summaries. You can find summaries of the prior AMA’s in my index of DeFi Kingdom’s Articles.

You can find a link to the recording of the live session of this AMA here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpjoOgma_Ss

If this is your first exposure to DFK and you are looking to learn how to start participating in the game/economy, you can check out my unofficial beginner’s guide here and index of many other DFK articles here.

Opening

Bolon — David has a long history in crypto. He has appeared with CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg, NYT, Swiss TV and the Economist in various forms related to crypto. Comes from banking industry. Previously the Asia head of global equity derivatives and repo sales for TD bank helping to develop their strat on digital assets. David also drafted TDs response to Canadian regulations in response to Crypto regulation in Canada. Since then he has held key positions with Bitcoin.com, the Tezos foundation and is now the head of global adoption for Klaytn.

David Shin — Thanks for the intro, great to be here. So impressed with this community. Great summary on bio. One thing I will add is that I’v been in crypto for a long time. You hear a lot of people say that, but you generally hear people that say that mean they got in during the IPO boom in 2017. I got in in 2012, I was one of the first ASIC miners, based in Hong Kong at the time. At that time there wasn’t much of a community in Asia, much less Hong Kong, for Bitcoin. I felt it was important to get something up and running at the time. I pulled in a few people who were Bitcoin babies at the time to form the Bitcoin Association of Hong Kong, and those people are now bitcoin giants like Arthur Hayes from Bitmex and others. Lots of history there and it all started in Hong Kong.

Bolon — What brought you to Klaytn?

I was at Tezos at the time when I had one of the cofounders of a very large web2 platform called Kakao in Korea reach out to ask if I could help globalize their blockchain. Having someone that senior and that powerful, because Kakao is a very large company in Korea I was (a) humbled and (b) I took it as a challenge to help them with some sort of global strategy. It’s worth footnoting that I’ve always tried to be in crypto for the right reasons at least in my mind. I’ve always believed in the tech of web3 and decentralization but I also believe in communities and having communities really drive the technology agenda in terms of developing requirements in terms of innovation and distribution. I saw it as a challenge and was humbled to have them ask me to do that.

Dreamer — You mentioned 2012, however your traditional finance streak didn’t end then. There was a bit before. Several probably pulled up your LinkedIn and you have a pretty golden stare list of employers from Morgan Stanley, Standard Chartered Bank, Barclays in a pretty demanding division to be in. What has kept your draw and interest to be so dedicated to the industry, movement and innovation of Blockchain but also be so connected to the traditional finance industry? Seems like a very interesting story.

David Shin — Being born and raised in Canada, I’ve always had a libertarian chip in me. I dropped out of highschool for a year to go follow the grateful dead. Loved that community feeling of the dead heads. Having said that, being an Asian guy, my parents still really wanted me to get into banking. In my generation the Asian parents were strict on education but also on what types of careers they thought you should have. There was a side of me that thought I should be the good son, husband, father and continue a career with a banking job. But there was a side of me, the passionate side of me, knowing what I did about Bitcoin and decentralization that I thought the banks didn’t have a chance. So for me it was a matter of timing and making sure I left at the right time. It required me to be mentally ready and spiritually aligned so that I could push and drive all of the things that I wanted to do in Crypto. That was in 2019, it took me 7 years of playing the batman drama, during the day I was Bruce Wayne and at night I was the batman.

Bolon — I’ve mentioned to our community before, but wanted to reiterate that many of our departments at Kingdom Studios are meeting with counter parts at Klaytn, and one of the marketing people said that if we do an AMA with you we have to ask what your favorite story is as a crypto OGG.

David — when I was mining, I was running a lot of spreadsheets on where the difficulty rate was, how many more chips we needed to buy. It dawned on me that this is a means to the end, feeding capital in if you wanted to play the game. I took a step back and said to myself, there has to be more to crypto than mining bitcoin. That’s when I found ripple, in 2013. I sold my part of the mining operation, took my bitcoin and decided I wanted to try my own startup and maybe that is what takes me out of Barclays. I started Paywise in 2013. Back then, Ripples strat was to set up XRP gateways around the world and to basically have fiat onramp and offramps with XRP through those gateways. I felt like looking at Ripple they had enough there in terms of their tech stack and blockchain. For me it was about the tech. I felt like banks and SWIFT were taking the piss out of everyone. It was very difficult to move money with the government controlled SWIFT. I came up with Paywise. Paywise was the first co in the ripple system. Rather than build gateways, the point was to use ripple as the backbone to go after SWIFT to get large cross border transactions. It ended up coming across the desk of Gary Cremen in silicon valley. He is the founder of Match.com and ultimately sold it. He is a venture capitalist very well known. He reached out and asked when I could get to SF and meet Chris Larson and the team (at Ripple). I went out there and met Chris and the whole team. Still have a line into Chris. Just before that time in HK, I had someone contact me on linkedin, Mathew Melon. He said I hear you are the bitcoin guy in Asia so I’m going to fly out and see you. Turns out he is Mathew Melon, the main trust child of the Melon family, Carnegi Melon, Bank of Melon. Google him, you’ll see how big of a profile he is. He comes and sees me, got on his plane and met me. We became very good friends. I was a trusted friend of his. Came to the point where he met with Chris to connect with ripple. What happened is that I introduced Matt to Chris. They became very close. Matt wanted to invest in Ripple but they were just closing their series A so couldn’t get his investment in. He asked me to speak to Chris, I did, and so Chris gave Matt a portion of his own equity. He became involved before passing away and you can read how the connection that I made with Matt and Chris ended up making quite the impact for Ripple.

Dreamer — In Web3 there’s a certain amount of innovation but a lot of imitation. I imagine that your own interests, the interests of other prominent individuals that look at businesses and opportunities all day. Even in their sleep they see good opportunities its in their blood. When they do see good opportunities they do put their money where their mouth is. I think the innovators in the space are so important and that’s what we’ve been trying to do since day 1. I think there has been some imitation on the back of DFK innovation and we welcome that and look to welcome anyone to join us. I’m curious with those that you have seen be successful or maybe with some that slipped a bit and weren’t successful, has innovation played that key role in interest and success?

David Shin — For me, life is all about people. Whether online personalities or IRL personalities. Everything we do, all the impacts both positive and negative is somehow related to a person transaction. I think that for me everything happens for a reason. I do believe that. I’ve been very fortunate int he past 10+ years. I’ve met a lot of people and they’ve done really well. Another person I’ve met is Brendon Bloomer, founder of Eos. He was curious as to why I was so into Bitcoin and he would ask why I would risk such a well paying job at a great bank, and I was 36 when I was involved with this, so I wasn’t a spring chicken at the time and I had wife and kids. He would come up to me at meetups and ask why I would risk so much. I told him I loved the community and the people involved. The average person in Bitcoin not only has high IQ, but also have high EQ and low PQ (political quotient). People in banking had high IQ, but low EQ and there PQ was high, it was just about profit and loss on the trading floor. You get to sense the kaleidoscope of personalities, regardless of how smart people are, and what that creates. This experiment with decentralization and web3 wasn’t just about tech, but also the people and the community.

Bolon — how did you and Dreamer meet?

David Shin — NFT NYC over breakfast. Peter from the Harmony eco introduced us and asked if I could meet with Dreamer. For many reasons, having a banking background we gave up for crypto is one of them. Had a long convo, went over time. Dreamer did a great job expressing very sincerely how much he cared about the project and the community. How engaged they are, how he wanted to do something great for them. That sincerity and the genuineness stuck out to me and I explained why I thought Klaytn could be could for not only DFK but also the community.

Dreamer — I’m seeing some reactions to the connection. For those unaware, the person that made the connection has since left Harmony and is now at Findora. We strive to make the most healthy connections we can with the people we work with. It’s all about people. Peter was always supporting DFK. He didn’t fully represent the decisions that Harmony made, but Peter was always very supportive. This introduction and others he provided show his love for DFK.

Not all people from the traditional finance world have the same personalities that David has. Being very well rounded and looking for innovation and hard work and success while finding that balance in your back story. That all came through in a sincere and genuine way. Which are great building blocks for a potential partner to build a real relationship in a growing space. Happy we connected and happy for the rapid follow ups that came after.

David — Truly, just to add to that. I see this more as a marriage than a date or experiment. I strongly believe there are very strategic opportunities for both sides to grow together. I’m a firm believer of connecting the east and the west. There’s so much to be gained if we have teams in the west and teams in the east. W/r/t to the two teams work and share more, there's a rhythm and cadence there. I’m really looking forward to this marriage.

AMA Questions with Klaytn

What do you feel set Klaytn apart from other L1s int he industry, generally, but also specifically in metaverse/gaming

David — Probably the only active L1 left in Asia. There are other L1s, but not very active, and I’m talking about L1s that originated out of Asia. Ziliqa comes to mind, but they aren’t very active. There are still pockets of NEO developers supporting that eco, but they aren’t that active. With Tera Luna and that no longer being there, we are really the only active native based Asia L1. That puts us in a huge advantage. One thing to highlight that is worth noting is that outside of the U.S. a large swath of liquidity comes out of Asia. Used to be highlly concentrated out of China, which is now closed for the most part from regs, the largest market is Korea. So witt these two things we think there is a big opportunity here, that’s how I would see the differentiation generally.

W/r/t gaming and metaverse, we are also the only L1 with AAA game studios that have built web3 games that are live and active on chain. We have Net Marble who have built one of their traditional games they brought over to blockchain called Nino Kuni. Massive game, you can download it on apple or google. The game is connected to Klaytn and you wouldn’t even be able to tell.

Then we have Mir4, a game that we made and many more coming out. No other chain that I’m aware of has currently live AAA games on mainnet.

What do you feel Klaytn lacks compared to L1s and plans to improve?

David — Probably lack in open source developer community, and let me be more specific, a lot of our OS community is in Korea, my goal is to globalize the platform. We are actively rolling out our hackathon strategy called Klaymakers. you’ll see this in social media feeds, we are actively rolling this out since Korea blockchain week where we did the first Klaymakers hackathon. Doing one in Singapore for Token 2049 and are doing more elsewhere to build out a broader open source developer community rather than having mostly Korean developers.

Do you feel that Klaytn has a strength or focus in one specific area of Web3?

David — We do. One thing that differentiates us is that we have a strat and we stick to it. The focus to us here is NFTs as the enabler for converting Web 2 to Web3. We want more mass adoption. We don’t think fighting for the same users at every Crypto conference is the strat. We don’t just pay the biggest grant fund to bring in big names. What we are trying to do is take a step back, look at what we are good at, what we aren’t, and how can we drive adoption, not just stealing the same crypto users, but how to convert traditional WEb2 gamers, developers, and putting them into a place where they feel safe, building, playing, investing, and we feel that NFts as an asset can drive that.

I wanted to touch on the fact that we are in Asia, but when it comes to gaming, Asia leads the way in many avenues when it comes to gaming. Particularly, the gamers in Asia are quite sophisticated. Also Asia leads the way in mobile gaming, which I see as the next focus for web3 gaming. We’ve been quietly working on Japan. We feel that Japan will have massive upside to the gaming part of Web3. We also love that its full of content IP in Japan. With NFT being the enabler for converting web2 to 3, we think we can bring in some of that content, and wrap it up and have it benefit the entire ecosystem. So with focus on Japan, having Korea locked in, we feel strongly. We aren’t going to go tackle Latin America and we aren’t going to go blindly into India.

Dreamer — That’s what we are thinking along with Serendale 2.0. We have changes and flavor related to the region. We have things cooking up on the hero class side and other aspects that cater to the Korean, Japanese and other communities in that part of the world.

David — I’m really excited about some of the stuff I’ve heard on the roadmap with this marriage. Excites me for the community. I know the gamers here, they are a bit more sophisticated, and interested in looking at games from an economics perspective. It will be a very easy transition to get DeFi Kingdoms integrated into the markets that we feel would be strong.

Our community is excited about coming to Klaytn, is Klaytn equally excited and why?

David — Absolutely. DFK feels like a family. I’m looking into my screen and I can see all these profile pics up here and I feel like the attention is in the room. The community aspect of DFK really intrigues me. That was the most interesting thing for me initially. The game is great and so is the team, but the community is really something else. and they are vocal in a net positive way. And I’m excited that I think your community will like what we are doing and if not I trust they will be vocal and net positive. That feedback is vital. If we care enough about it and if we are putting in the right amount of feedback and the people listening are ready to make changes and listen. I feel like your community is perfectly placed because this is what they do.

Bolon — I agree with that because that is pretty much my whole role. They are a very unique community which we’ve talked about many times before in that they are invested not just financially but also in that feedback loop.

Dreamer — the net positive is the right choice of words. Some people misunderstand that a good community is one that is never negative or constructive. The relationship with the Kingdom studios team, third party developers and the community and we listen to the community is great. When people don’t listen or make changes things can go negative. When a community gets negative its hard to shift that sentiment. We’ve seen a lot of success from Bolon and our mods identifying problems from the community and the solutions suggested and we’ve seen a lot of success acting on that.

David — One of my favorite quotes on communities from Margaret Wheatley:

“There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.”

When you thinkg about that and how it applies to DFK and Crypto, it says a lot about the valuation of a community. Its not just a valuation of the project or the tech, its the valuation of the community that gives that value to that project.

Obviously L1s have a big incentive to drive Tx volume. Are there other substantive benefits one in your role is looking for when to expand the chain other than transaction volume and which ones do DFK meet?

David — I look for if there are opportunities to connect dots. Specifically, if we are bringing DFK in and that marriage works. How can I go and connect DFK to other dots in the eco so that there is a thriving network effect. We call this our partnership model. We try to provide this concierge model to all projects we bring in. Its not just about success of the project, but the success of the marriage. We put in not just Day 1 effort but after that. That’s how we accrete value long term and connect the dots. An example, earlier this week I was speaking to one of the larger gaming guilds in India. In addition to that, they were telling me that they are looking for some of the great games to be a part of in Klaytn. I told them we brought on DFK and that I wanted them to speak with DFK. I have pushed the whole org to think not just how great projects are, but what is the go forward plan and how do we execute that go forward plan. We have to think about connecting dots and how to create that network effect.

What initiatives, financial collab, etc, are between DFK and Klaytn for launching continuity.

David — We are committed to you guys. We want to make sure we have that go forward plan. Just to share a little bit of color on that. We are very large, very bullish on not just bringing in good projects, but also bringing in good communities. I have this venn diagram where there are three circles, the three focal domain points (1) gaming, (2) content and IP and (3) communities. In the middle of all of that is an NFT. What we are saying is that there are these three domains we focus on and in each of these, the overlapping asset that will connect all of these is the NFT. The one domain I want to highlight here is the community domain. We’ve invested in and brought in some of the biggest esports teams in the world. The biggest one I can talk about is the one with LOUD, the biggest esports team in Latin America. We’ve also invested in Southeast Asias largest esports team called EVOS. They also are working on a guild strategy. All of these things, if you think about why are we investing in esports teams? We feel there is a natural connection between games being built on our chain and the communities in these esports and connecting the dots. This is an example of some of the things we thing about when bringing on good games and projects and how we can connect that dot to the community dot.

DFK Chain has recently been celebrating our daily transactions. Sometimes as much as 4M in one day. Is Klaytn network prepared for that?

David — Yes, I would address this by saying that if we weren’t confident or able to provide that level of support, I don’t think the AAA studios would be building on our mainnet. I’ll use the example of NinoKuni. When launching on app store, they were the 3rd most downloaded app on the app store. 3–4M on the first day. I am very confident and I work with our CTo and technical team every day. In fact, one of the sub teams, called the eco development team within the engineering divison, I put that team to gether. I’m very confident in them along with the core developers that we have one of the most scalable blockchains. Otherwise we wouldn’t have these AAA billion dollar gamig companies. We have Goomy as a partner. I just got back from the Tokyo game show, we had all these meetings with partners. We did an after parter with kokonay connect, another gaming company in Japan. The gaming community is excited about building on Klaytn. I don’t think they would be comfortable post due diligence building on our mainnet if they didn’t think we could handle the volume.

What do you think are the most important levers to activate to promote blockchain adoption.

David — (1) have a good strat. I look at peers, won’t mention names, and I don’t see their strategy, especially for gaming. I feel like its pulling straws. We are very focused on converting Web2 to Web3. Part of that is asking how do we do that and how do we work with our partners to do that. Something we’ve discussed with the AAA game companies is stake to play. Create the ability to earn and gain assets from a game, but then use those assets to stake to activate new parts of the game. Things like this to evolve away from just play to earn. Or things like compete to earn. Creating very rare NFTs and giving people access to those NFTs and then using those to put into a loot box that people can play and compete for to win that loot box. I think these models have a lot more gumption and you can build good economic models around these rather than just play to earn. In order for us to convert gamers from web2 to web3 we have to have good games and have to have better economic models in those games.

How would you describe south Korean blockchain gaming market and what do you see as DFKs main competitive advantage in that market?

David — this market knows games. its a massive gaming market. If you are on Korea you could be on the train going to work and the average person will be on their phone playing a mobile game. Its a more sophisticated market in terms of GDP and gaming. People spend quite a bit of time on games. Its hard to try and slide into Korea without having a well thought out game product and a well thought out economic model and succeed. Obviously we know DFK in the industry is well known and well established. The team has worked hard to make an economic model and working to make a fun game and I think the Korean market place will appreciate that and like DFK.

How do we endorse large adoption of DFK when we may have cultural and language barriers to overcome?

David — I remember playing Japanese games from my friend that he brought from Japan when coming to Canada. I figured out how to play it. I think theres a little bit of that. If you have a good game, whether its in a language you don’t know, it will have a draw. Having a good global support team, which is what my team does, to help transition the language. On my team, the average person generally speaks three languages. We have a lot of people who are in and out of Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia. We work with onshore support teams when we need language support as well. For instance, when we are in Indonesia, there is an onshore partner we work with closely that helps us with community and language issues. There are many ways to ensure that there is support where you and the community aren’t feeling to much language friction and we on the same page need to work together in terms of us understanding where there could be language gaps and the global team, my team, needs to be there to support that 100%. If there is a requirement that isn’t in house then we are all in on getting that language support to make sure DFK is a success in a particular market whether that’s Japan or somewhere else.

Closing Remarks

Bolon — thank you for your time, and hopefully this isn’t the last so that we can schedule one to hear about your life which seems very interesting. I look forward to doing more and wanted to give Dreamer an opportunity for any last thoughts the we’ll let you close it out.

Dreamer — I was in voiceless chat in discord. Than you for going through these questions. There were questions on whether some of the AAA game studios would be wiling to meet with DFK. One of the reasons we are going to Token 2049 is to make some of these connections. We will not only be high fiving with David and others but hopefully getting some intros to other awesome people in the industry. I’ve seen some interest there offline, and excited to continue that. Meeting in person, talking, seeing like minds to come together allows for that to flourish. Grateful we are being invited to the event and booth but also the side events, telegram chats, etc. We are also excited as a project to bring value to Klaytn. There is a lot that we can do. Some have asked if this will cause cannibalism to Dex and defi protocols. Our answer and approach is and always has been to welcome all to gamify their protocol. Maybe there are games that aren’t as strong and have cross chain compatibility. We are hungry for that. We say Bullish after every AMA and even on stage at some events. I’ll hand it over to you, but when you are ready to close, if you are comfortable we’d love to hear a “bullish”!

David — At around the 20 min mark into this, we went from about 150 to 200 people in the audience. The last 40 minutes, we have not had people drop out. I’ve done enough of these to know that you are a serious community. You care about this place. It’s incredible. It says a lot about why DFK as a family has succeeded. I really want to commend you guys for that. Community is what drives and thrives great games. I wanted to say thanks and to close it off, here it is. BULLISH! Thanks guys I enjoyed this and hope to do it again soon.

Check out my Index of Samichpunch DeFi Kingdoms Articles for a list of all of my other articles. You should definitely bookmark this index. Follow my medium account to get updates when they go live!