Zima Red ep 134: Tor Bair - Secret & Stashh: Private Blockchain & NFTs
Primer: Today, Tor Bair is going to let you in on some secrets of Secret Network. Why are people missing out on Secret Network, a privacy-focused blockchain, and Stashh, a private NFT marketplace built on top of Secret? Find out as he shares with host Andrew Steinwold in this episode of Zima Red.
Background
Former trader
Led Growth at Snapchat and Enigma
Founded Secret Network, a privacy-focused blockchain protocol
Founded Stashh, a private NFT marketplace built on top of Secret
Secret Network
Introduction
A layer 1 blockchain that is private by default
The project dates back to MIT in 2015
Launched their mainnet in 2020
Private smart contracts went live in Sep 2020
Secret is one cycle behind other blockchains, but many tech cycles ahead in terms of privacy
Currently, dozens of apps are launching on their mainnet
Their Go-To-Market
Their community has people that are passionate about different things (e.g. DeFi, NFTs, metaverse, gaming)
What interests the community gets built
Transparency And Privacy
Are two sides of the same coin
In a public blockchain solution, every piece of data is public
You could make something fully transparent on Secret as well
Secret is still open and auditable
Encrypted data can still be auditable
Public VS Private Blockchains
Every implementation of privacy has trade-offs
Usually the trade-off is about performance or cost of computation
A private blockchain dominates a public blockchain when it comes to security
Why Are People Missing Out On Secret Network?
It comes back to timing
They launched during a bull market
In a bull market, people are concerned about making as much money as fast as possible. There’s no thought to security and to the downside
At the last hype cycle, people could not bet on Secret
Now that the DApps are live, it is more of an awareness issue instead of a timing issue
They have a very sticky community
Thoughts On Attention Driving Success In The Web3 Ecosystem
Attention = time * people
When he worked at Snapchat, he coined this metric called total addressable social hours — how much time the people in a given country spends on social media/social platforms
Brazil has more total addressable social hours than the US
Certain people have different degrees of obsession that they are willing to give to something
The obsessives in crypto were obsessed in making as much money as possible, as fast as possible
A lot of TVL came from the obsessives, and projects began optimizing for these people
Turned out that these people do not have a lot of funds as they just rehypothecated user funds and it collapsed on itself
Your attention scheme has to be sustainable, creating real long-term community
Do People Care About Privacy?
They don’t care
Grateful for Apple because they ran a multibillion dollar campaign on the value of privacy, which benefitted them
Credits the Zcash team for pushing the line that privacy is normal
“The reason people probably think users don't care about privacy is because it is so normal. It is so much like the oxygen we breathe, that you don't find yourself constantly talking about it.”
- Tor Bair
People do not realize about the importance of privacy until it’s gone
They don’t want to market privacy by fear
Users are undereducated about their privacy, right to privacy, and their options for privacy
Best Way To Get Users Into Web3
Growth can be separated into 2 aspects:
Acquisitive part of growth
Retention part of growth
In Web3, every product is networked and social
In his experience, the retention part is harder
Projects are not thinking enough about retention. There needs to be some kind of value past the initial point of interaction with that product that users continue to get
NFTs tend to be more social:
Provide an emotional experience
Need to meet like-minded people
Need people to stick around
If influential people leave the NFT ecosystem, the whole system could collapse
DeFi is more of an engineering problem than a social problem. Certain products are architected in a smart way where the yield is sustainable
A successful DeFi project is one that serves its purpose — getting capital to show up
Future Use Cases
Two main categories of apps:
Things you can build on other blockchains
Things you can’t build on other blockchains
For the former, they want these apps to have a great UX
For the latter, they offer privacy-as-a-service applications
Imperfect information games are a broad use case for Secret
Data marketplaces would work well on Secret. Only the buyers would have access to the dataset
Have a project called ALTER that’s building a private messaging platform on top of Secret
Rewrapping Secret NFTs
💡 If someone revealed their Secret NFTs, are their NFTs revealed forever?
Can rewrap your NFTs and send them to a new address
Their Stashh marketplace is a multi-chain application
The marketplace currently supports Ethereum, Polygon, and Solana
Want to educate the market about how much more is possible with Secret NFTs
Any NFT collection could theoretically migrate to Secret and just issue a whole new set of NFTs on Secret and burn the NFTs on the other side of the bridge
Another option is to have a custodial bridge to send the NFT to Secret, while the original is locked within the bridge contract and is never burned
Working with Axelar, a bridge provider
Thoughts On AI-Generated OnlyFans
Have a team building OnlyFans on Secret
There’s a Not Safe For Work (NSFW) category on Stashh
Legal Contracts Use Case
Access control is a major vertical for Secret apps
The contract is public to everyone but only the parties have access to the data
If He Had To Choose One Singular Use Case
In 2 decades: Secure computation in a distributed setting
In next 6-12 months: Onboarding a lot of users through Stashh
Gamers hate NFTs because the average person talking to them about NFTs focus on their commercial aspects
Gamers need to be educated about NFTs
Blockchain Adoption
A lot of people just do not like what blockchains do and the people who represented blockchains publicly
There’s also no killer app for blockchain. People think it’s purely speculation
As more people get deplatformed from social media, lose their gaming assets and identities, they will seek for alternatives like Web3
What Is He Bullish And Bearish On?
Bearish
Commercial real estate, because people are working from home
Bullish
On public discourse on hard questions concerning AI, social media, and technologies
What Do People Misunderstand About Him?
People only seeing one side of him
His Biggest Failure
Tried to change the culture at Snapchat but failed to convince others with his thesis
As an active user of their product, he wanted it to work differently
Realized it’s easier to get things done if you are the CEO
Defining Success
Strong friendships and connections
Want to see Web3 succeed and users empowered
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