Talking Crypto #77 - Devops199fan
Primer: In this episode of Talking Crypto, Devops199fan/Sunil Srivatsa walks us through his crypto journey. He shares about the origins of his username, how he took the plunge to work full-time in crypto, and his twitter activity. He is also the Founder and CEO of Saddle Finance. Learn about what inspired him to create the protocol here.
Background
Founder and CEO at Saddle Finance
Blood Mage at MetaCartel Ventures
Member of eGirl Capital
Has a double major in computer science and finance
His career path:
Square —> failed startup —> Uber —> Saddle Finance
Before the bear market hit, one of his friends invited him to start a fund. Thought about the opportunity very deeply but did not make the jump
This time round, when the opportunity to work full-time in crypto rose, he took it with no regrets
Origins Of His Username
Been a lurker since 2017/2018
In 2020, he decided to create an account and be more of a participant
Had to choose a name and wanted it to be a good joke
In the past, people used the Parity Multisig wallet to secure funds
There was an individual called Devops199 who broke a contract that the multisig relied on and ended up freezing 500,000 ETH in these multisigs
"He [Devops199] posted on like GitHub, like, oops, I accidentally broke it, or like something to that effect. And, yeah, it just kind of lived in infamy, since like, that happened originally." - Devops199fan
At that time, people were unsure whether the Ethereum community would do another hard fork. A hard fork did not materialize
How He Got Into Crypto
His friend messaged him back in 2011 asking whether has he heard of Bitcoin
Didn't do anything at that time but continued to follow crypto
In early 2017, the market started to get more attention and he finally bought some crypto. Decided to get involved in various community groups
To participate in an ICO, people had to send ETH to the smart contract. However, ICOs are heavily subscribed and gas wars would ensue, pushing smaller investors out of them
Someone came up with a concept called ICO buyer, which allowed people to pool their funds and achieve economies of scale to get into the ICO. A community spun out of this
That community eventually fragmented into a couple of other communities. One of them is known as Cluster, which is very close to his heart
Cluster
Similar to MetaCartel ventures and other larger investment groups
Comprises of a community of like-minded folks that were trying to figure out the ropes together
A lot of people that started out there are his nearest and dearest crypto friends today
His Experience At Uber
First 2.5 years, he worked on real-time analytics
After that, he went over to the Advanced Technologies Group where they worked on self-driving cars
For a little under a year, he was building an analytics platform for the group
For the next 2 years, he worked on infrastructure security to prevent people from trying to takeover the accounts of other users
Near the end of his stint, he was a full-time degen doing yield farming
Got into YFI/Yearn really early and tipped off Degenspartan and CryptoCat to it when it was under $1 mil TVL
What Made Him Confident Enough To Take The Leap Into DeFi?
Crypto has always been on his radar
Watched an interview where Robert Leshner mentioned that it's not often that a new technology with a step function improvement would appear. DeFi is one such example for finance
Wanted to be part of it
Code Reviews
Have been following Andre Cronje since 2017/2018 for his code reviews on Crypto Briefing
Thinks that Andre would evaluate the repositories of new protocols against a template that he has
After which, he would write his findings in a digestible format and publish them
A lot of the alpha he has gotten is from diving into projects and getting a sense of how good their engineering team is. This is still relevant today
His Twitter Activity
Was really active on Twitter and then he took a long break from it
Writes in-depth tweet storms on more technical or advanced topics that he found interesting
These tweet storms take up a lot of time, ranging from a few hours to a day or two — drafting the whole thing, running it by a couple of his friends, and then launching it
Was really fun and he enjoyed it
At some point, he realized he only have a finite amount of time and cognitive bandwidth, so he deprioritized his Twitter activity
How Did Saddle Finance Get Started?
💡 Saddle is an automated market maker (AMM) designed to enable efficient trading between pegged value crypto assets. Pegged value crypto assets (pegged assets) are tokens having their value pegged to an underlying asset. For example, the value of a stablecoin or tokenized bitcoin is supposed to be $1 or 1 BTC, respectively.
Pegged assets fix this value using different mechanisms:
- Some assets, like Synthetix sBTC or sUSD, maintain their peg synthetically (in this case, via collateralization of Synthetix’s SNX tokens)
- Other assets maintain their peg by being backed by and redeemable for the actual underlying asset, either permissionlessly (e.g., tBTC) or through a centralized custodian (e.g., WBTC, USDC).
Because of the different approaches and the associated risks, the prices of pegged assets of the same type may vary slightly.
Messaged Matt Luongo, CEO of Thesis and Keep. Managed to get along and began to ask him a bunch of questions regarding mechanism design, tokenomics, etc.
After a few months of chatting, Matt shared with him that he's working on a potential idea and wanted to hear his thoughts on it
Matt had the bad experience of swapping from one stablecoin to another and paying exorbitant fees for it
Synthetix has a feature where traders can trade between any synth with a fixed cost up to the size of the global debt pool. He suggested to Matt to make a bunch of different pools that have a synthetic asset in them
Synthetix could then be used as a bridge to trade between these different pools
💡 Synths: Synthetic assets minted through the Synthetix Protocol
Became the first team to present the idea of using synths as a bridge to enable large trades between pools
Has recently launched this functionality
Went through 3 separate audits before launching the protocol. He comes from a security background and values user funds as their top priority
Curve ended up announcing the same feature 1-2 weeks before they launched. Was disappointed by this turn of events
Involvement In DAOs
Founded his own DAO 15 months ago
Initially, he was thinking of starting a staking business where they run Keep Nodes for people and take some commission
His friend, Damir Bandalo, suggested that they start a yield farming/liquidity mining DAO as their first project
Ended up with 25-30 people. This was where he first connected with pet3rpan
Raised between $2-3 million dollars to supply as collateral for tBTC to run these nodes
Project ran for 1 year. Failed to reach exit velocity as Damir and himself got busy
This experience kickstarted his interest in DAOs
Someone floated the idea of a pseudonymous investment collective. Hence, pet3rpan, Lex, and Ameen started MetaCartel Ventures. Everyone has to undergo KYC and be compliant with regulations
There was a group of people who were thinking whether is there a way to make it fully pseudonymous. A Telegram group got started and it evolved into eGirl Capital
Some of the members of eGirl Capital are doxxed
Recently, they brought in different interns to help out with research
They put a lot of work into coming up with original content. Conducts deep dives into new or upcoming phenomena in the space
Approach things from a long-term perspective
Has a very strict set of criteria for investing under the eGirl brand
Thinks that the future will be multi-chain. Hence, their investment into Connext, which ties these different chains together
Is It Possible To Have Some Sort Of Setup With Anonymous Members?
Currently trying to figure out the best way to tackle this. Has brought on a counsel to work through these issues
If a DAO is raising money, it would be acceptable to take money from a multisig or another DAO
It would be much harder for anonymous investment groups to invest in protocols who file documents with the SEC
Trend is moving towards Web3 native fundraising where there is no formal legal entity
Opportunities In The Area He Is Living In
Is based in San Francisco
Strong crypto community here
Saddle Finance has been fully remote, but they are trying to get together every 3 months in person
If He Has A Billboard, What Message Would He Put On It?
Probably gm and maybe some pepes or other good crypto memes
How Can Listeners Take Action?
Use more DeFi protocols and play with stuff
Get active in the community
Join Discords and start posting on Twitter
"I think people forget this sometimes it's like, we're all on the same team trying to make Web3 fucking awesome." - Devops199fan
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