The Next Big Social Media Network Will Be On the Blockchain. Nader Al-Naji Tells Us Why.

Sam Parr

And I was like, "Wait a minute, Sean. So you're telling me that there's a website that you invest money in, you don't know who made it, it doesn't work a lot of the times, and you can't get the money out, right?" And he's like, "Yeah." I was like, "Oh, okay, got it. Just making sure we're on the same page here."

Shaan Puri

What's up? Sean here. We have Sam, and we got a guest. His name is Nader. I said it right because it's Nader, like "ladder," but people know you as Diamond Hands if they've been following. We did a section on the podcast, I don't know how many months ago, where I was like, "Hey, there's this thing that caught my eye. It's called BitClout, and it's this crazy idea of a social network where it's almost like Robinhood meets Twitter." It's like everybody's got their own profile; every person has their own coin. You can invest in people, and you can buy their coin. People's pricing goes up or down as they get more famous. I said, "You know, there was a couple... I don't know if this is gonna work, but I do hope that someday there's a decentralized social network." So, a social network that's not super top-down controlled the way Facebook is, the way Twitter is. This is the first credible attempt I had ever seen. I had seen some other experiments, but this is the first credible one where I said, "Oh, they have a growth hack." The growth hack is that when I saw my profile, my profile was already created for me. It was a clone of my Twitter profile, and I think it had like $60,000 sitting in the piggy bank. It just said, "Claim it, verify your account, like claim it, and that money is yours." I said, "Oh, that's gonna work. People are gonna respond to that kind of incentive." Sam did it too. Sam, you had, I don't know, $50,000 of your thing. Sam claimed it and withdrew within a month or something like that. He bounced out of there. But so people will remember BigClout. You were the creator of BigClout at the time. You were an anonymous account only known as Diamond Hands. Now, BitClout has been renamed to DeSo. Essentially, that's the new brand, and you've come out in public, and now you're doing podcasts. So, that's where we are. Welcome to the show!

Sam Parr

name it bitcloud's awesome that's a great name I love that

Nader Al-Naji

Name. Yeah, man. I mean, so just for context, Sam and Sean, thanks for that awesome intro, man. Yeah, I mean, since early 2019, I've been working really on a blockchain that can power social networks. You know, not just BitCloud, but many other apps. Now, there are actually over 100 apps being built on the actual blockchain itself, which we call Decentralized Social, or DeSo. So, BitCloud was actually just the first app that we launched on the blockchain. After working on it for almost two years, from early 2019, we were like, "Hey, you know, now let's kind of put all the features together that this blockchain can support into some kind of product." So that was BitCloud. It was really just a prototype and was intended to kind of exercise and test a lot of the functionality. But the biggest one is the storage and the indexing of posts, which is a very hard problem for blockchains to solve. I don't think anyone other than DeSo really has had a good solution to that. But yeah, obviously, we launched it.

Shaan Puri

So, let me give a little layman explanation to this. Sam, I don't know if you know this, but there are actually a bunch of different types of blockchains because the apps that you're building on top of them have different needs. For example, Bitcoin has its own blockchain, and its main goal is to store value and be super secure. It doesn't need to be the fastest because Bitcoin is not about speed; it's about security, really above all else. Then, Ethereum came along and said, "Okay, we're going to make a blockchain that's more programmable." It may have less security than Bitcoin because it's more programmable, but it can do all these other things. As a result, apps emerged on top of Ethereum, like CryptoKitties and NBA Top Shot, which are basically the first kind of NFT projects that gained significant popularity. They immediately overwhelmed the Ethereum network. The team that built NBA Top Shot was the same crew that created CryptoKitties. So, when they set out to build NBA Top Shot, they actually made their own blockchain called Flow, which was optimized for the use case of trading NFTs and can handle higher volume. So, they all have different trade-offs. What you're saying is that you made a blockchain that is good at doing one thing, which is social networks that are basically about posting photos and videos. However, today, if you try to embed a photo or a video on top of the Bitcoin blockchain or Ethereum blockchain, it wouldn't work because they are not made for that. It would be either too big, too slow, or whatever, just to render one news feed. So, you guys built your own. Is the name of the blockchain DeSo, and is the app called Being Cloud? Is that the idea?

Nader Al-Naji

And BigHub, by the way, Sean, it's really interesting. It's actually just one app. There are over 100 now that are built on top of it, so you could actually see the same data.

Shaan Puri

You say that, but like, does anybody use any of these apps? You know, I got 100 items on my desk; they're all worthless. Does anyone care? So, like, does anyone care about these 100 apps?

Sam Parr

top of these servers stuff like that yeah

Nader Al-Naji

Sean, what's really interesting is that DiamondApp.com is actually more popular than BitClout already. I think it just passed it, even though it launched like a week ago. Polygram.cc is the app that people go to for NFTs. So actually, when people share DeSo NFTs, they usually share links to Polygram, not BitClout. Pulse is really good for trading coins, and CloutFeed is actually a mobile app. By the way, CloutFeed might already have more users than BitClout as well, which is kind of crazy. Oh, nice!

Shaan Puri

I use CloudFeed because... well, because there's no mobile app, right? So I think that's one of the challenges. Why isn't there an app? Because you're almost sort of playing with one hand tied behind your back. Twitter, Facebook - they could send you push notifications. They're a normal app. For CloudFeed, I had to save something to my... I had to save a website onto my home screen to make it look like an app. But I still can't do push notifications. So is there a rule that Apple's blocking? Or Google Play's blocking?

Nader Al-Naji

A lot of digital apps... There are apps like Cloud Feed and Flick. Flick is actually another one created by the former CEO of FanDuel, and it's also very, very popular. But really, like Sean, you're touching on our strategy, which is we actually don't want to build any products at all. I didn't even want to launch BitCloud. Ideally, I think that with this kind of next wave of social, what we're going to see is a separation of concerns. You have this blockchain, which is the DeSo blockchain, that powers the back end of all of these things. Then, people who are much better than me at building products actually go out there and build them. For example, if you look at Diamond App or you look at Polygram... You know, again, Polygram.cc. You go to them and you're like, "Whoa, this looks way better than that crappy Craigslist-like thing that Natter built," you know, which is BitCloud. So, it's really the strategy for us to not build anything and to let the... We call it the app layer to be owned by other people. To give it away, actually.

Shaan Puri

So, I think we should do two things. First, we should explain why this matters. To most people, when you mention "Polygram" and "Diamond App," these are things they've never heard of. They should go check it out, but I think it's more important to get the idea to click in their heads first. For example, if I went to Facebook, let's say I was a bad guy, right? I would go to Facebook and I would want to take the most valuable thing I could take.

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

it wouldn't you know it wouldn't be the engineers it wouldn't be the sign out front it wouldn't be mark zuckerberg I couldn't even mark zuckerberg is less valuable than the one most important thing basically the database right so facebook would guard with its life access to the database which is basically a whole bunch of rows that says sam parr here's his date of birth here's his his profile picture here's who he's friends with and that information they keep under lock and key and they give out little tidbits like when they created a platform or you could build a facebook app on top of facebook or you can do login with facebook they give you a little bit of access because it's so valuable right if I'm an app I don't wanna make you go through a full registration form and upload a photo and then ask you to name all your friends and add them if I could just let you push one button and boom I grab your facebook profile and your facebook friends that was a really powerful idea but facebook obviously keeps it under lock and key and what's cool about this is the same way that like you know what's the most valuable asset that the us government has it's either the the guns or the money it's one of the 2 but let's just take the guns out for a second the money right the right to to sort of print the money and say we get to collect taxes in this currency therefore we have a monopoly on money and bitcoin kinda broke that monopoly in a way it said hey here's money without the government if you like the money part but you don't want the government you can use bitcoin and what you're kinda doing is the same idea which is you're turning a social network inside out the thing that facebook and twitter would never do they would never just give you account root access to its database what you're saying is here's a social network and the database is fully open and available to all if anybody wants to build any app you can use this database it is fully transparent and accessible that's the main reason it exists and so you're kind of taking a social network and you take the thing they protect at its core and you're turning it inside out you're putting it right at the surface for other people to use that's the big idea for this stuff and what does that mean that means today if you don't people are complaining about the facebook algorithm right fake news or I I don't like that facebook censored donald trump or I don't like that facebook did this well you're shit out of luck you can't go use facebook too you can't go use facebook red which has a different algorithm but with with this idea of deso that's what could happen somebody could just make a new app with a new algorithm that says I'm only gonna show pictures of hot girls I'm only gonna show I'm not gonna algorithm that says I'm only gonna show pictures of hot girls I'm only gonna I'm not gonna censor anything or I'm gonna highlight things that you you get to decide how your feed is curated and so you could build another app that people could use without starting all over from scratch so it gives people choice I I think that's the big idea did I get it wrong or did I miss something

Nader Al-Naji

Nailed it! And maybe just to put a slightly different take on it: today, you know, Facebook and Twitter are really about monopolizing content. Like you said, they keep it under lock and key so that they can show ads on it. If they allow anyone else to build an app—if they allow another company to build an app on that monopolized content—they lose those eyeballs, and they can't show ads to them. This impacts their bottom line. So really, the fact that their business model is driven by ads is what kind of forces them to say, "Okay, this content's under lock and key. We're the only ones who can build apps on it. We're the only ones who can curate it and show a feed." We can't let anyone else aggregate eyeballs other than us. We're the only ones. So really, what DeSo is about... yeah, right.

Shaan Puri

And there's one other component you just mentioned, which is the users. The people creating all the content are essentially doing all the work. We are the "dancing monkeys" that sit on Twitter all day, coming up with interesting ideas and providing them with engaging content. Yet, we get $0. If I check my Twitter ad split or my Facebook ad split, Facebook made, I don't know, tens of billions of dollars on ads this year, but I get $0. So that's the other component: their business model is to keep all the eyeballs and retain as much of the revenue share as possible. That's their natural inclination. Game theory would lead them to do that. With something like DeSo, I can make a post. I can post on Big Cloud, and if my post goes viral, I will actually benefit from that virality and the value of my content. If all this works right—forget the blockchain, forget how it works—if it works, that's one thing that's going to change: the creators who make all the content will get a much larger share of the revenue. What do you think that share ends up being? Is it more like 50/50? Is it 90/10? Is there even a revenue share? How much do you, as the maker of the DeSo blockchain, get?

Nader Al-Naji

from that well that's that's the funny thing is that today the way facebook makes money is with ads and like you said it doesn't share very much of that with the creators because when you have a monopoly on something you know you can be pretty greedy about it and so deso we're really all about opening up the content so instead of monopolized content it's open content so when you make a post on bitcloud for example it actually shows up in the in diamond app in cloudfeed and all these other apps because again the content is open it's kind of like a utility rather than a monopoly and the question then if you if you have all the content open is like okay wait but like how does anyone make money if all the content's open like can't like show ads you know on you know when all the content is open you know that's why facebook is the way that it is but the interesting thing is when you put all of the content on a blockchain you actually get 2 things you get openness you know that that you know all the content's open anyone can build on it which we've been talking about but you also get access to kind of a new set of of features that involve money in a very direct way and so you know for example right what you were talking about earlier is the fact that you know someone can have a coin associated with their their profile that anyone can buy or sell right that was that was one of the features that you know the the deso blockchain supports that feature is very difficult to do in a centralized way both because kind of the traditional financial system is very kludgy so to have it for example be that anyone in any country can like throw tens of 1,000 of dollars around left and right you know the traditional financial system isn't really built for that and then aside from that right it's all open so people can actually build on it and iterate and create new experiences off of that same that same kind of money feature set that we haven't even thought of before and so going back to how does anyone make money right the deso blockchain has a native coin called deso right and so by holding it similar to how anyone holds bitcoin right as more usage comes onto that blockchain the the you know people the demand for deso should go up which should cause the price to increase know and then everyone who holds deso does very well but aside from that you know because that's how you know I and anyone who's bought deso makes money you know the creator can basically keep the rest and so there might be small fees charged by the apps that kind of enable the creator to to do like you know for example cloudfeed or diamond app might charge small fees in order to to earn an honest living and and to to make good money and so I think we might see you know basically a splitting of the market by a bunch of different apps that kind of charge small fees to allow the creators to do what they do but that's competitive as as opposed to monopolistic and will hopefully result in a lot more of the value accruing to the creator as a result so that's kind of the way to

Sam Parr

think about it

Nader Al-Naji

I think

Sam Parr

Just a couple of quick questions because Sean is deeper in this world than I am. I actually think that there are a few more interesting stories here than just the technology. So, how many people work there right now as full-time staff?

Nader Al-Naji

yeah so we have about a dozen people how

Sam Parr

much yeah go ahead

Nader Al-Naji

And yeah, what's funny is that team, we're now focusing mainly on the blockchain. But if you count all the people who are working on apps, you know, they're not actually 100%.

Sam Parr

you know they're just using your

Nader Al-Naji

right

Sam Parr

and and totally oh so only 12 people that's crazy so you raised you raised funding to do

Nader Al-Naji

this I

Sam Parr

think $100,000,000 right

Nader Al-Naji

yes it's actually 5,000 bitcoin which you know has appreciated a bit and

Sam Parr

And yeah, when you raise money... but besides that money, can you tell me how much money has been spent? So, Darmesh, who we've had on this pod, I think... I don't know, but if I had to guess, I wouldn't be surprised if he spent over $1,000,000 buying other people's coins, roughly.

Shaan Puri

I I think he said it publicly I think he said it on on bitcloud

Nader Al-Naji

he's been

Shaan Puri

investing over a $1,000,000

Nader Al-Naji

in time out

Sam Parr

how much has been invested on the platform

Nader Al-Naji

Yeah, well, what's really cool is because it's a blockchain, it's open, and all of this data is accessible. You can go, for example, to **prosperclout.com** or **bitcloutpulse.com/stats** or any of these websites, and they'll tell you. I think right now there's about **$80,000,000** invested in people's coins, which...

Sam Parr

to me is actually low

Nader Al-Naji

That's so confusing. I think we actually... yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. It's awesome and all that.

Shaan Puri

Does that count the money you guys invested? Because when I showed up from day one, you guys did a smart growth hack. You sort of pre-bought a bunch of coins from Naval, Chamath, and Kim Kardashian, and whoever. So you kind of bought coins at a very low price for Aldi, so that their accounts had some initial value, which would attract those people to come claim their accounts. So does that $80,000,000 count the money that you...?

Nader Al-Naji

Guys bought coins. It does, but I don't think it was very, very many coins that we actually put in. It was like maybe tens of thousands of diesel, you know, that went into it. So I'd have to look at actually how much of it is that appreciation of that. But yeah, there's definitely a piece of it.

Sam Parr

that for the people wait let me say one more thing the we're and for the people listening now watch

Nader Al-Naji

go ahead tim

Sam Parr

We're looking at you now. You're in a dark room with the shades pulled down. We had Balaji on here a while ago, and he had the same thing. It was very dark, and he was like, "You know, I don't..." and he said it on the pod, "I don't really like talking about my location because I say some crazy things. I make crazy predictions. I'll speak out against powerful people, and I don't want to take unnecessary risks and let them know where I am." Are you in the same boat?

Nader Al-Naji

okay not not at all

Sam Parr

well you know we're reporting the melon melon day it's dark

Nader Al-Naji

I I

Sam Parr

wanted I was curious like are you are you a yeah unlike yeah

Shaan Puri

do do you have security

Nader Al-Naji

I'm sorry, but it seems there was an error in my previous response. Here is the cleaned transcription: Bond villains? I know, I'm just curious. Yeah, no, no, I'm very open. I'm in LA, you know. I have a house here.

Sam Parr

people just don't

Nader Al-Naji

I have a house. I'm a very open person. Well, I don't know if you're supposed to talk about your security because, you know, there's security.

Sam Parr

for security dude it's like saying

Shaan Puri

like I don't I don't kiss

Sam Parr

And tell when someone asks if you hooked up with someone. Like, you've just acknowledged it by that. Yeah, but yeah.

Nader Al-Naji

you know I'm I'm yeah I'm I'm safe I I I like the well

Sam Parr

let let let me ask this last question this is the last final you just

Shaan Puri

had a

Sam Parr

Crazy! The last final, I love it. So, you told me you're 29. I looked at your LinkedIn, and you've had some really great jobs. All your jobs have been fancy and high-end. But compared to the job that you have now, were they normal? Is working at Bitcloud or Deso at all a normal job? Are you going to run this like a normal company, or are you going to be a little eccentric? If you had to explain to your parents how your staff works and things like that, would it appear as though you have a normal company, or are you doing some eccentric stuff that would be intriguing?

Nader Al-Naji

Yeah, well, that's funny actually. So, just to go into some eccentricities of the project, you know that 5,000 Bitcoin I mentioned? All that money actually came in before there was any corporate entity set up to do anything. Essentially, the way it worked was the blockchain was running, and if you sent Bitcoin to this treasury wallet, the blockchain would basically watch that treasury wallet and give you Deso coins when it saw that there was a deposit there to a corresponding key. So, it was all automatic. There were over 44,000 purchases, and I don't even know 99% of who they are because they could just send Bitcoin to that wallet and they would get Deso coins on the Deso blockchain. We didn't set up a corporate entity, and that was for kind of two reasons. There's a big reason that we don't want people to rely on it, to feel like this is a centralized thing that's going to own everything. You know, when you have equity holders, they have to kind of fulfill their fiduciary duty, which forces them to milk everything and to be like, "Hey, we should close this down at some point."

Nader Al-Naji

And really, we want to make money off of it in a different way. That was important. From a regulatory standpoint, there was no issuer of anything. You just kind of threw Bitcoin in and got DeSo back. This made it very difficult to hire and even talk about who we are. However, very recently, the platform has become decentralized enough. There are now thousands of nodes running things. As I mentioned, there are over 100 projects, many of which are pretty legitimate. We felt comfortable setting up a corporate entity and normalizing how we hire. As of a couple of weeks ago, there is now the DeSo Foundation. I’m on the board, and I’m currently the only member, but we hope to bring on some really legitimate people to join me. This way, it can actually be a well-governed entity where everyone works for that organization. Going forward, it will look very normal. It will be a nonprofit organization where people are paid with cash. We will develop the blockchain and fund others to build apps. As I said, we’re giving away the app layer, so that’s kind of how we’re thinking about it.

Shaan Puri

So early on, I remember the story was that nobody knows the creator. But I heard kind of through back channels, "Oh, we kind of know who it is." It seemed like you went out fundraising because it was like, "Hey, should I send my Bitcoin to this random wallet and get back this coin that I don't know if I want? What is the value of it?"

Sam Parr

this coin what would that be work half

Shaan Puri

The time was unknown, and it was... no, no, these are... yeah, the site barely worked. It looked like a virus. Then, you know, it was like, "Well, no, no, no." So I texted some people. I said, "Hey, do you know who's behind this? Is this legit?" They said, "I think it's legit. The guy behind it is legit. The people behind it are real builders." They mentioned that Andreessen and Social Capital, along with a few tier 1 VCs, are backing it. That gave people a lot of comfort, and that's why people like me and others put in money. I sent $100,000 into Big Cloud or whatever; it wasn't even called Deeso at the time.

Nader Al-Naji

I was going back to cloud or something

Shaan Puri

same currency

Nader Al-Naji

yeah

Shaan Puri

And so, are you saying it now like, "Oh, I don't know, these strangers on the internet started sending us Bitcoin"? Like, definitely, I'm pretty sure you did some kind of roadshow or somebody was doing it.

Sam Parr

something else to bridge those

Shaan Puri

two gaps with that

Sam Parr

dennis look you're not no

Nader Al-Naji

no

Sam Parr

You're way sharper, and you're playing us a little.

Nader Al-Naji

No, no, no, no. I don't mean playing anyone. No, totally. Just to give a little more detail, I love it. I love it! So, what's funny is, you know, I worked on this blockchain for almost two years, since early 2019. I met a lot of investors through my last company, which was called Basis, where I raised $140 million. Then it didn't work out, and I wound up deciding to do what I think is the right thing: give all the money back. So, what happened with DeSo is that I kind of worked on it for two years, you know, alone by myself. I brought on a couple of good friends, and then I talked to a bunch of the big names that are now involved, like Social Capital, Andreessen, Sequoia, all of them. What's funny about that is that I, you know, obviously, I talked to those people. Of the 44,000 purchases, it's probably a few hundred where I kind of told them, "Hey, this is what it is." So, what's interesting about it is...

Shaan Puri

but those were the big purchases right so yeah they might be a few 100 but they were yeah 1,000,000 each

Nader Al-Naji

now it's

Shaan Puri

like you know so it might make up 80%

Nader Al-Naji

Of that, about $30,000,000 worth was, I think, not a huge percentage. No one owns more than 5% of the supply from that. I actually care a lot about keeping it very well distributed, like any good cryptocurrency. But importantly, all of them do not own equity in anything. All of their interest is in the same asset that you or I hold, which is DeSo. Some of them used corporate entities to convert dollars to Bitcoin in order to do this weird thing, but they hold DeSo like those entities hold DeSo for them. They’ll take delivery whenever they want.

Shaan Puri

So that's cool. I think at the beginning, you had a bunch of things. Sort of like, we just retrace this story, right? So you do, basically, you have this idea for a stable coin. You end up giving back the money when you decide it's not going to work. Then you have this new idea for a decentralized social network. You raise some money from legit hitters, and other people pile in. Like you're saying, it's all pretty "fair," which is that we're all owning the same thing. Then you get to the launch. You decide to be anonymous; you try to go the Satoshi route, but it doesn't work. Why did you want to do that, and why didn't that work? Too many people.

Nader Al-Naji

Just found out... So yeah, basically, you know, I've been working on this blockchain, the Deso blockchain, for almost two years. We were like, "Hey, we should really launch kind of a prototype app to start testing it, like in the field," so to speak. That was Bitcloud. We wanted to not really have it go mainstream until at least the middle of this year, like the middle of 2021. But, you know, we obviously thought launching earlier is better. So we kind of accelerated and said, "Okay, in March, we're going to start sharing these password-protected links with some people, just to get a few hundred users and see how the blockchain is holding up with this kind of activity." So, what ended up happening was it kind of went out of control. The links got way over-shared to the point where I had to go out there and start saying, "Hey, this is what this is, and this is what's going on." For me personally, I've always admired how Satoshi kind of launched Bitcoin without creating a centralized person that everyone relies on or looks to as "our guy." I wanted to do the same thing. So, I launched with a pseudonym, "Diamond Hands," and immediately it was very hard to get press. It was hard to get people to listen to the real story versus making up their own. We had a lot of press saying, "Hey, this is a scam." And by the way, because it was just a prototype, there were a lot of things we were missing. You couldn't cash out your money; you couldn't actually convert your money from crypto into dollars.

Sam Parr

And I was like, "Wait a minute, Sean. So you're telling me that there's a website that you invest money in, you don't know who made it, it doesn't work a lot of the times, and you can't get the money out, right?" And he's like, "Yeah." I was like, "Oh, okay, got it. Just making sure we're on the same page here."

Nader Al-Naji

Yeah, rightfully so. Any other time, I would say that's a complete scam. Also, none of the code was open. So even though it's a blockchain and it was running on a few dozen nodes, no one could actually audit it or be like, "Hey, this is a real thing." We were just not prepared at all. So let...

Shaan Puri

me let me tell you something there was a whole bunch of criticisms like what you're talking about right the code is not open source you can't cash out oh they scraped our twitter profiles oh there's you know there's a big pre buy people got in super cheap you know all this stuff there was all these criticisms of it we don't know who the founders are you know they're kind of anonymous but my theory and you tell I wanna know what you think about this so I have this phrase which is I think emotion commits the crime and then logic does the cover up so all these logical complaints I don't think are the real reason why people were so like up in arms about this new project that actually is like a really net like it would if something like this existed it would be a huge net positive in the world and those same people hate facebook well this is the antidote if something like this could actually get off the ground and work and so I was surprised that the emotion was there and I think I at least this is my theory I think that people don't like when someone gets rich without quote unquote earning it and I think what people saw is that the insiders so the people who created it or maybe the early buyers they bought so early on the bonding curve they got so early on and wow $100,000,000 has come into this thing these coins have run up in price or the the profiles have gone up in price and there was this feeling like like I don't know I don't know how well you did but here's my guess I think you've made tens of 1,000,000 of dollars already liquid without at the minimum and your project is like under 10,000 dau or something like that right so under 50,000 let's say so like in already in the tech world this tech gets backlash because people will raise at like a $100,000,000 valuation and people are like oh I've been running this restaurant and laundromat for years and how does this little app with you know with with no business model be worth a $100,000,000,000 right there's already people who get upset about that but the but the one saving grace is that they're not liquid so it's not like the founders running around in a lambo just living in a mansion in la but in crypto you're liquid too so you you get the early hype and you get the liquidity of the lambo in the mansion and I think that that is actually what triggers people about crypto in general bitcoin in general you know people who buy an nft and they get rich you know they're they make a $1,000,000 off this random image to I think to other people that feels inherently unfair and so do you what do you think is my theory what do you think of my theory and then what's your kind of response to the people who do feel that way

Nader Al-Naji

I think there must be some validity to your theory. If you read, there's a great book called *The Infinite Machine* about Ethereum. It catalogs what happened to Ethereum, how it launched, and all this stuff. They got major backlash from Bitcoin people because of the way they raised money. They were like, "Hey, projects aren't supposed to take Bitcoin for another shitcoin. This is bad." I read that book right after everything that was happening with BitClout, and I was like, "This is eerily similar." So, I think part of what you're saying has to be a factor. That said, since then, DeSo is listed on exchanges. You can trade it on Blockchain.com, AscendEX, and a couple of really big ones are coming soon. The code is all open, and people have gotten really passionate about it, contributing to it. The last couple of people we've hired were open source contributors, and we hired them. I think that if I saw someone who was very clearly a scammer making lots of money, I would be upset. However, I wouldn't be as upset if I felt there was a shred of evidence that they weren't a scammer. We didn't have that because I was anonymous, you couldn't cash out, and the app was going down a lot. So whatever theory there is, it's probably exacerbated.

Sam Parr

Can I give you some feedback? It's a compliment. When you first launched, I was like, "Diamond hands." When I think of diamond hands, I think of finance bros. You know, when I think of this anonymous thing, I was like, "I'm actually not on board with this." Although I agree, I think it was wise for you to launch anonymously. I actually think it's wonderful that you're coming out because your personality, even though we've only known each other for 45 minutes now, gives off very trustworthy vibes. I think you've made the right move by coming out and discussing things. It actually makes me like BitClout more. Before, the way it looked and the diamond hands name made me think, "I don't know if this screams trust." But you... I think it's good to... What's the name of the founder of Ethereum? How do you say it?

Nader Al-Naji

yeah so I found it with connor

Sam Parr

And I watch a lot of his interviews. He screams trustworthy. I buy what he's saying. I'm like, "Oh, you're really young, but you're wise beyond your years." He says a lot of intelligent things that I agree with. He seems good-natured. You have a very similar quality, so I think it's smart that you're doing it.

Shaan Puri

And let's not lie, Sam Vitalik looks like a boy genius, like an uber nerd. We're like, "Oh, let's just invest in this guy. He's probably gonna make it."

Sam Parr

But you know, you're the perfect mix of like an intelligent nerd, but you also look pretty slick. You're good looking, yeah, you're smooth. You've got a good... I appreciate it. Anyway, this is a compliment. I think it's good that you're doing what you're doing.

Nader Al-Naji

it's so so you're too kind man I appreciate it

Shaan Puri

Let's do a thought exercise because I think most people still aren't going to fully understand. Okay, if a social network is decentralized, blah blah blah... Let's think about it from the perspective of the user who doesn't care if a database runs on SQL or the blockchain. They’re going to use something because it provides some new value to them, right? Even the idea of it not being a monopoly... I think most people are inherently fairly lazy. They're probably just going to go with a default app anyway for a social network, even if there was more choice. So, let's just take the actual fun bit. On Bitcloud, there was this idea that every creator and every user had a coin. I had a coin, and you know, you give me a number, I want it to go up. I'm like a monkey; I'll immediately start playing whatever game is required for that number to go up. My coin started at a certain price. I remember at its peak, it was like $5,000 a coin. My market cap was like half a million dollars. I was on top of the world! Now, I stopped using it, and it's crashed. I'm down 4x and all this good stuff. But what is the actual purpose? Aside from the pure gambling side of speculation and just the joy of seeing money go up, whether as a holder or the owner of the coin, why should individuals on a social network have their own coin? What would you do with that? Why is that a good idea? Just walk through a use case. No theory, but like, here’s Joe, here’s Sam...

Sam Parr

guys here's why sam would want this

Shaan Puri

and why that's good

Nader Al-Naji

for sam

Sam Parr

Like the idiot of this podcast, I'll take it. He was like, "Sam, do you know that there are different blockchains?" Yeah, go ahead, Nader. Go. I'll let you lead us.

Nader Al-Naji

no I do talk talk talk

Sam Parr

to me like I'm fine

Nader Al-Naji

totally well like yeah I mean it look it's a great question I mean so there's a deeper story to you know and so by the way the deso blockchain supports all kinds of money stuff right not just coins but also nfts and and diamonds which are like tips and people can build other things too but the the the coins having a coin associated with your profile is kind of what I think to be kind of you know this this wave was about nfts I think the next wave is going to be about creator coins also known as social tokens and the reason why I got really excited about them as a as like kind of an asset class is actually a cash flow story so essentially you know with with deso right when you use any app right to access deso you can do a lot of the the same things you do on a traditional social network like you can post and you know all that kind of stuff but you you know you can also do stuff with money and you have new ways to monetize that kind of arise and so what's interesting is that essentially you can have creators making money through these other features and then take a percentage of that cash flow and send it back to that creator's coin holders as a dividend long term and so just to give an example right today when you sell an nft on any deso app you know like polygram or diamond you can actually set a percentage that's like what we call a creator coin a coin holder royalty and so so every time that nft resells a percentage of that sale goes back to the coin holders and so I think that essentially the coins if you if you play this out right and you have like for example promoted posts where someone can give you an you can have an inbox of posts that people pay you to like repost to your followers and and a percentage of that can go to the coin holders you know you kind of have all of these new kind of like money native you know blockchain native business models for creators making money and if you allow a percentage of that to flow to the coins then suddenly it's kind of like you unbundled the equity of of a company like facebook into like each creator's coin and therefore the fans or or the holders of of that creator and so to me the coins are exciting as a means long term of like democratizing kind of like the cash flows of a social network into the fans of of a particular creator and if you play the all of that out suddenly it makes it a lot easier for really awesome smaller creators to get discovered right because when you create that that kind of loop of like oh if they become big cash flows will flow to their coin from their monetization on the platform right and those cash flows will be big if they're popular suddenly you want to back the smaller creator who you recognize as awesome but that nobody else really knows about and so to me kind of democratizing the ownership of a social media platform is like what the coins are about and creating that incentive for smaller creators to get discovered get invested in and have people kind of grow with them is the kind of the long term of it but I obviously it's early so a lot of people don't well what's a good outcome of what's going

Sam Parr

to look like in 5 or 10 years how

Shaan Puri

big is this going to be what do

Sam Parr

you think your business will be like

Nader Al-Naji

Yeah, I mean, even in a couple of years, let's say we have like 10,000,000 daily active users. There are a lot of ways that we can build monetization for creators into the blockchain. NFTs are already there, and creators have made hundreds of thousands of dollars off of that—like tens of thousands. I think for one of them, they had over $100,000 flow to their coin already through the creator coin royalties. But there are other features too. For example, there's that "pay to promote" or "pay to repost" kind of mechanism where an advertiser can say, "Hey, repost this to your fans, I'll give you this amount of money," and then a percentage of that can flow to the coins. So basically, any new ways that we create for creators to monetize on the platform, a percentage of that can flow to the coins. Suddenly, the coins become not just about pure speculation, but about, "Hey, what kind of cash flows is this creator going to generate?" And it's going to be a lot—not just because the platform is more efficient. I do think things like NFTs and pay to repost can be more efficient than the traditional model today, where we have a centralized company just showing random ads. But also, just because there are so many more things that you can do that could earn cash flows that end up going to the coin that we haven't even thought about yet.

Shaan Puri

so you did the thing that I was hoping you wouldn't do which is you you did

Nader Al-Naji

the theory

Shaan Puri

So, you know, anytime... this is a tell in the tech world. Anytime somebody starts talking about "democratizing" and so... democratizing the...

Sam Parr

it's the new

Shaan Puri

it's the smart guy way of of this true

Sam Parr

like I can't stand that word

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. You know, you want your company to be disruptive and democratizing at the same time, right? Also, if they say there's a new asset class, it's probably a good idea. But they're giving you kind of like the grandiose vision. I shouldn't say Steve Jobs because he was great at basically saying "1,000 songs in your pocket" and leading with the killer hook. What I was hoping you would say, and so I'm going to kind of say it here, is I don't know if you know this, but Sam is an aspiring fitness influencer—a rising fitness influencer.

Sam Parr

right

Shaan Puri

And so, those who are... yeah, rising. I should say, not aspiring. He's aspired. Oh, perfect.

Nader Al-Naji

I got my 2 magazines

Sam Parr

you wanna plug your other brand

Nader Al-Naji

that's it

Sam Parr

Good Bitcoin. My niche is like the guy next door. Your niche could be like... I love it! I'll be...

Nader Al-Naji

like the nerd who you know started really frail and then made his way there's no

Shaan Puri

Need... So, you know, someone like Sam. Basically, I know Sam. I see his videos and I'm like, "Oh, these are great videos." He's only getting, you know, a couple thousand views right now. But basically, what this world would let me do is, as an early believer, I can bet on Sam. I could say, "I like this guy's content. I think this guy is gonna blow up," and I can kind of vote for his success. I can give him some support. I can buy his coin, which gives him money to make better content. It gives him a little boost of morale to keep going. But it also lets me go on the ride with him. Because I think we've all been there before. We discover a band early, or a brand early, or an influencer early. And then, sure, you believe in them, and you're so right—they actually do take off. They never knew you; they never had a real relationship with you. And you didn't benefit from the fact that, you know, if you knew Kim Kardashian back when she was just Paris Hilton's closet organizer and you thought she was great, you missed out on the ride. And so, this lets your true fans go on the ride with you. It turns your fans into sort of shareholders with you. So, oh bro, I study this stuff. You know, Kim Kardashian—where did this come from? I have to know; I must know. And sure enough, there's a story. So, you know, let's say I would bet on Sam. Sam would get that cash flow. Sam could use that to make a cooler video. And when Sam makes that video and he gets more followers, they have to buy in at a higher price.

Shaan Puri

Than I did because now Sam's more established, so my stock is going up. I'm earning instead of just following. I own instead of just following, which is the way the world works today with Twitter and Instagram. You just follow; you don't earn. Furthermore, Sam could say, "Hey, you know what? How do I make my coin really valuable to hold? What if I kind of 'OnlyFans' it and I said I'm going to do some exclusive stuff with only my coin holders who hold over 100 of my coin?" So it's up to him to decide if he wants to make his coin more juicy, more enticing to hold, which again will make my stock go up. If I know Sam's the kind of guy who connects with his fans, he's going to put in the effort that's going to make these coins more valuable. It takes this idea that's been around for a long time: the 1,000 true fans. It's something that any artist knows they need—those real believers—and it turns them into people who actually benefit from your rise. So that's what I think. That's the good thing that I believe will come of this, aside from, you know, destroying Facebook and all that good stuff. I think the good thing that will come of this is that it will make being a tastemaker and a curator like a job. You can actually get paid for having good taste, for following, for believing in somebody early on, which is the way that things should be, I think.

Nader Al-Naji

Yeah, Sean, how are you better at explaining this than me? Also, I'm kind of... I'm not offended, but that's awesome.

Shaan Puri

well dude when I first shouted out big cloud

Nader Al-Naji

yeah I

Shaan Puri

I got a lot of stuff. I was like, "Okay, I gotta come up with a reason that I like this besides I think this is gonna make a lot of money for me." So I started thinking about what the appeal is here, and I had to defend myself. In doing so, I...

Nader Al-Naji

had to

Shaan Puri

come up with a case of

Sam Parr

why does this show matter

Shaan Puri

at all besides it just being a gamble

Nader Al-Naji

Yeah, that's true. I did remember it. But yeah, Sean, just to add, which is really interesting, like you said, there's actually never been a way to invest in someone when they're small and make money on their rise like this—so easily and efficiently. What's really interesting is there's yet another layer to it. Once you invest in someone, your bias is to be supportive. Your bias is actually to say, "Hey, I want this guy to succeed. I want this person to be something." You can align in a way that you can't really do without that mechanism. Being able to buy into someone creates an incentive that doesn't exist otherwise. What's crazy is that even BitClout, you know, BitClout Diamond, and all these apps, they actually foster very positive discourse. A lot of it, even though there's less moderation than traditional social media, right? The reason I think is basically you're investing in people. You're going long. When you give people the ability to move money around, they naturally go long. When they go long, they actually get aligned and want to support you. So, weirdly enough, I love when people say, "Money is the root of all evil," you know, "Money is bad." I think that's part of why people reacted weirdly to BitClout, because they think, "Oh, money, prices, whatever." But if you just look past that for two seconds, you'll see that it's actually being used as an alignment tool that's making a lot of positive things happen that haven't happened before.

Sam Parr

What are your netter? Let me ask you a couple of personal questions real quick. What do your parents do for a living?

Nader Al-Naji

Yeah, so my dad is an engineer and my mom is an associate engineer. What city? So, my mom was in Virginia, where I grew up for a long time. She actually moved to San Francisco. My dad passed away a few years ago, but...

Sam Parr

Yeah, looking at your LinkedIn, you've always been a freak. You went to Princeton, you studied Computer Science and Applied Math there. You worked at a management firm. Yeah, that's a compliment. That's a compliment.

Shaan Puri

by the way

Sam Parr

For being high-frequency trading, but also, it's like that's where I think Jeff Bezos worked. And the founder, I forget his name... Shaw? Is it just Shaw? David Shaw?

Nader Al-Naji

david shaw yeah

Sam Parr

He's, you know, a wizard. You worked at Google as a software engineer, and then you raised $125 million for a startup, which is crazy. Or was it $133 million? You mentioned in this blog post that you gave the money back because, you know, it didn't work out so well. What does your mom think about this? When you're trying to explain to your mom, who's a social worker—my mom's a teacher, so she doesn't really understand—and I'm in tech too. When you're explaining to your mom what you do for a living, or your aunts and uncles, or your brother and sister, friends who aren't in the tech field, what do they think about the fact that a 29-year-old, although you were 25 when you raised $133 million, is living this life? What do they think of it?

Nader Al-Naji

Yeah, I mean, my mom watches every single video that comes out. She's going to watch this and call me about it to tell me all her thoughts. So, there's that. But yeah, man, I just live a modest life. I don't think anything really has changed for me personally. And look, to your point and to Sean's earlier comment about how someone made so much money without having produced something, I’m very serious about this: mentally, I don't think of myself as having any money until we've really made it. I'm talking millions of users and people really getting value at a large scale. To me, it's very important not to think, "Oh, I've made it," when we still have a lot left to do. By the way, funny fact about Basis, my last company where I raised $140 million and returned it: I actually had less money in my bank account after that than when I started. That was basically about three years of runway from my Google and D.D. Shaw savings. I'm very lucky to have had that because if I didn't, I would have had to go back immediately to working at Google, which, oh my god, that's so bad! It's the best company in the world, and I'm very lucky, right? But yeah, it's funny. I've been through very high highs, and while the lows aren't very low because I'm very lucky, after Basis, I was like, "I'm going to try and do something else that's really impactful," not in the context of working at a company. If I can find something before I run out of money, that's great. But if not, I'm going to go enjoy my life at Google, which I love. I really love being an engineer.

Sam Parr

At Google, I like to talk about human issues. I have a feeling that this... I was not, you heard the last podcast, I was the hater of the two of big clout. My opinion is likely changed as of now because of how, you know, Sean's like this, my good friend Neville is like this. You're incredibly emotionally stable, and because of that, I actually think that that can make this business incredibly successful.

Nader Al-Naji

Well, I mean, I appreciate it, man. I think that it's really important to keep perspective, right? You know, I mean, also, Sam, just to emphasize, I'm really lucky. So, it's not like it's a lot easier for me to be emotionally stable. I feel that way compared to someone who's actually having it pretty hard, you know? So, I think it's genetic.

Sam Parr

I think it's genetic, and I think it's upbringing. If you're surrounded by love when you're growing up, and for some genetics, you're just going to be pretty stable. I just like... now I understand. Now I understand. Now I want to buy your coin on Big Cloud.

Nader Al-Naji

Oh nice! That is like the biggest compliment you can give me this entire podcast. I actually own some Sean already, but I don't know, Sam, if I found... What's your handle on Diamond? Well, that's all I had to do. I haven't.

Sam Parr

logged in for I haven't logged in

Nader Al-Naji

we'll find it after this

Sam Parr

Yeah, I think you've converted me now. Like I said, I don't think I was a complete hater, but of the two, I was definitely the more of a hater for sure. Sean was like, "I probably made fun of Sean because he was like, 'This is the greatest thing ever.'" And we'll see who's right, but you could miss me.

Shaan Puri

well I I think I I I kind of I don't know if I fully said this the first time but basically I think that whoever can can break through and create a decentralized social network social network well that'll be one of the most important changes in the world over the next 20 years like self driving cars I think is gonna save a bunch of lives I think ai is gonna introduce a lot of like productivity gains and like you know kinda cause some labor like changes in the way that labor works and I think that whoever can take social networking and make it an open do it the crypto way with the crypto values I think that that person or that that group of people is gonna have done a lot of great in the world and I think it's gonna be a huge project I think it is gonna be a multitrillion dollar project when it whenever it works and I think I said this early on which is I don't I'm not saying that this one will work I think there's still probably a sub 5% chance that this works and I said but if it works the payoff is huge so I that's the type of bet you make in the tech world low probability high payoff and when you when you go at it with an enthusiasm you're gonna learn about it and you're gonna go for that ride with a bunch of early adopters and even if it crashes and it doesn't end up working out we're gonna all have learned a bunch of lessons so that when the right one does come around you say ah that one makes sense this solves the problems of the last one or this feels different and so I know that this is the real one but you never know unless you go in with you know sort of a belief mentality towards these things because it's easy to just say this is not gonna work and you'll be right 99 out of a 100 times it's just that the one that a 100 matters you'll have also said is never gonna work and you wrote it off and therefore you didn't benefit from it in any way that's like you know optimism pays in the tech world and so even though I got a lot of shit you got 10,000 times more shit for for for doing the project I just feel like that's such a misguided way of living and like you know again optimism plays in this business so I I find skepticism is useful at certain points but you know you wanna default to optimism and then go in and find the things that don't smell quite right and but but you know even then you'll just have learned a bunch and gotten a bunch of experience and played with all the new things so that you know when the real one is

Nader Al-Naji

Here and, yeah, I think it's really awesome that, for me, I get to do the thing that I love in the world, which is to build cool stuff. That’s helpful to people. Even though, like you said, it’s only about 5%, you can do that, and it actually is something that, at least the expected value, can help.

Shaan Puri

Give us the craziest story! I remember I was on Big Cloud, and it's like, "Oh, Pamela Anderson joins!" She's a huge fan. Then, I don't know, whoever it was—there were all kinds of crazy characters joining this thing. I was like, "I haven't thought about Pamela Anderson in like 20 years. This is amazing!" She's, you know, creating all these incentives for her coin holders. You, on the inside, must have just been seeing all the random stuff and getting threats from one side and praise from these random people. Give us a war story or a crazy story that is just kind of fun!

Nader Al-Naji

That, that... yeah, totally. I mean, what's interesting is that it did attract a lot of pretty famous people to join or create profiles. You know, I think like Diplo, Blau, Tyga, and Antonio Brown are still posting there and stuff. But I think probably the craziest story is that at some point, I went to a dinner in LA. I don't know if I'm even allowed to say, but there were a lot of famous people there, and I got to kind of tell them about it.

Sam Parr

give cat give

Nader Al-Naji

give categories pat

Sam Parr

like you're talking like like fast and furious actors

Shaan Puri

are we talking yeah hollywood no no

Sam Parr

like I am the bad hoobastank

Nader Al-Naji

How do I even... There were billionaire tech CEOs and then also the biggest celeb, like someone's name who Sean mentioned earlier, who was a closet organizer.

Shaan Puri

okay shimshark ass you

Nader Al-Naji

Yeah, all of them. I think just being able to explain our vision to all these people was really awesome. What's cool is that when you really get to explain it, everyone gets excited about it. Even in spite of all the initial concerns, like "Oh, you can't cash out" or "this and that," when you say, "Hey, this is what it is," it's inspiring. And like you said, Sean, if we can actually use these features—these new money features like the coins, the NFTs, the diamonds, all that stuff—to decentralize social media, it's going to do a lot of good. You know, independent of the fact that they make creators more money and align with fans.

Sam Parr

We were at a high school in Virginia. You'd be a crypto nerd hanging out in LA at a mansion dinner with Kim Kardashian.

Nader Al-Naji

I mean, what's funny about it is I was really into Bitcoin in college, in like 2013. I built a miner and met Mark Karpeles, who's the CEO of Mt. Gox. My friend and I went to Japan and randomly tweeted him, and he was like, "Come by our office." I met him. So, I was really into Bitcoin and crypto. When Bitcoin crashed, I was like, "Okay, I guess I'm going to go do my hedge fund thing or whatever." But it's funny. I think if you told college Natter that this is what he'd be doing, I think he'd be like, "Yeah, that's awesome! You know, that's cool." I think that's about right. The Kim Kardashian part, like, you know, maybe not. No, I...

Sam Parr

mean that's a badass and

Nader Al-Naji

can what yeah

Sam Parr

I'm going to... it's like I'm asking you for stock tips. I'm on Big Cloud; I'm on the site now. What? I could see this. I mean, I could just go and find it, but what creators do you own? Which one are you going to be making any purchases from anytime soon? What do you like?

Nader Al-Naji

Yeah, definitely. I own Active Creators. So if a creator is active and posting, doing fun or interesting stuff, I buy them. But really, the thing that I, you know, like my hedge fund side of me really likes is NFT artists. Because for NFT artists, even today, not theoretically, all of them set royalties that go to their coins. So there's real cash flows there that are often totally disparate. Like, you know, their coins are not correctly priced for how much money is actually going to flow to their coins. And so I've been... yeah, I bought like Spookies and Kloutpunk. You know, early Illumina Minotti is like another one. And those, like, just the cash flows are above what it was when I, you know, those have made up for what it was when I invested in it. So that's kind of like, I think that's a strategy that, like, just traditional... like, I get it. And then as we create more cash flows going to the coins, there will be even more. But aside from that, because I know that, you know, creators who get big are gonna have ways that cash flows go to the coins, the smaller creators who I think are active and are gonna do cool stuff.

Sam Parr

anyone in particular

Nader Al-Naji

you know that's who

Sam Parr

you enjoy

Nader Al-Naji

That's like the other one. Oh, there are a bunch. Well, Dharmesh has been crushing it. He's not a smaller creator, but he's just been super active and doing well.

Sam Parr

a lot

Nader Al-Naji

of stuff worth creating

Sam Parr

all the time right now

Nader Al-Naji

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's very big on the platform. I'm trying to see, like, there's Matreshka, who's a woman who's very active there and does a lot of stuff. Tijin is this developer who does a lot of awesome stuff. Yeah, it's a DTA.

Shaan Puri

You want to know my strategy that worked on Big Cloud? At least early on, this worked pretty well. I was thinking about, like, "Okay, who do I buy?" Do I buy the famous people that are not on yet? There are people building scrapers to try to figure out if someone is thinking about it or if they tweeted it out and it hasn't gotten verified yet, so I could go front-run that. I figured out there's a very simple way to win. I said, right now, with any early project, I've built a bunch of social networks. I know anytime you build a social network, at first, 70% of the conversation on that social network is about the social network itself. This happened with the stuff I built. It's happened if you go to Clubhouse; 80% of the rooms end up talking about how great Clubhouse is, or what it's going to be, or what's bad about it. They're just always talking about the platform itself. So I knew, okay, if people are going to be interested in the platform itself, I invested in all of the analysts who could go through the on-chain data and report how what prices were working, you know, how many new users there were, and all that good stuff. I bought all the analysts dirt cheap, and they went up like crazy because, again, they were talking about the platform in a way that was differentiated. The normal person didn't know how to analyze the blockchain. Then the other one was basically rich, active people. I saw Dharmesh was just going to buy his own coin, and Whale Shark was just going to buy his own coin. Craig Clemens was going to buy his own coin. It's like a company that does a share buyback. It's like, "Oh, okay, this person has enough funds where they could dramatically move their own coin price." So all I had to do was just buy them and wait for them to do their buybacks. Sure enough, they did. Dharmesh even said it publicly, "I'm going to buy for every follower I get, I'm going to buy back for every coin holder I get, I'm going to buy back 10x of my own coin," or something crazy like that. I was like, "Well, that's a Ponzi scheme that I love. That's perfect, great! I'll just hitch on to that." This guy's guaranteeing, and I know he's a man of his word. He's going to buy back his own stuff, and I could just front-run that. So that worked amazingly at the beginning. I don't know if that would...

Nader Al-Naji

Still working now on the strategy of forecasting what content is going to be popular and then investing in the people who are producing it. I mean, that's like the name of the game. I think that's pretty awesome. Yeah.

Shaan Puri

There was a guy who would do fake designs, like mock-ups. He would say, "Oh, this is what the client could look like," or "If they added NFTs, this is what it could look like." It's just kind of like **design porn**. I was like, "Oh, that's gonna work!" People are again talking about the platform in a differentiated way because this guy's a designer. He's going to just design mock-ups all the time. This is going to go viral. Great!

Sam Parr

yeah

Nader Al-Naji

Buy this new coin. That's genius, honestly! Yeah, and it'll be interesting to see how it works at scale, especially because Diamond App is so mainstream. I think it can actually get some bigger people to join and start using it. I honestly wonder how it's going to play out. By the way, another fun thing we didn't talk about is there's actually an algorithmic feed that's open source now, built into the blockchain. So that would probably play into your strategy, where you can look at how the feed works and then try to figure out what's going to get to the top. It's pretty hard to game, I think, but that's another interesting aspect.

Sam Parr

have you talked

Nader Al-Naji

to dharmesh thanks

Sam Parr

So, for the people listening, Dharmesh is one of the co-founders of HubSpot. As of today, he's probably worth just off HubSpot stock—it's public, you can go and look—probably like $1.5 billion. So, very, very, very successful. He was part of Big Cloud very early. I mean, he was telling us very early on that he was buying a lot. He wasn't an angel investor, but he was an early investor in Coinbase. He was an early investor in crypto. He obviously has HubSpot, wildly successful, and he's like, "This is my thing." So, have you hung out with him? That guy is interesting as hell.

Nader Al-Naji

Well, what's crazy is I think I met Dharmesh pretty late in the game. I had a short call with him where we just talked about, you know, life and what Bitcloud and DeSo is, and all that stuff. So, what's funny is I think Dharmesh just really independently kind of saw, "Whoa, you know, like you said, Sean, in the 5% where it works or whatever, this is huge." And so, what's funny, yeah, I have had a very short conversation with him. I'd love to hang out with him more, but you know, he's busy and obviously we have lots of business using Bigclub.

Shaan Puri

I honestly think you know

Nader Al-Naji

I don't he does post a lot

Shaan Puri

I think 99% of people will say they're not doing it for the money, and then they totally are. He's like the one person I believe that is not actually doing it for the money. So, I genuinely believe he's doing it because he wants this to win. In order for this to win, we need economic activity; we need positive energy in the system. So, I'm going to literally, almost in a philanthropic way, put a bunch of money into just kickstarting this because it's going to take enough people doing that. Right now, it's small. It's really small. With crypto, there are these hype cycles at the beginning, but there's a vicious other side, which is that if it doesn't just keep magically going up, people get disillusioned for a bit. Then it has to get another thing that picks it up. So, I think he was genuinely trying to kickstart activity and enthusiasm as a whole.

Nader Al-Naji

industry another thing to your. Sean I I have you know good news to for you like with regard to if we can do like a social media you know decentralized social it's gonna be really awesome which is that I actually think I won't say the word it's inevitable but I think it's actually very asymmetric like in favor of decentralized platforms actually winning the main reason being that I think when all the content is open and anyone can build on it I think that the speed of iteration that you can have and the like caliber of product is just a lot higher so you know just like you know on that 5% you know it's like if you know for example just because all the content is open right we can have like all this over a 100 teams that like we didn't even hire just go out there and build way better apps than we were capable of building internally but then it's even bigger which is like you get like once you get a little bit bigger you know let's say you have like a 1000000 users now you have like traditional publishers basically looking at the open content being like hey like with 1 engineer we could spin up like a a feed like espn or something can spin up a sports feed for sports influencers right and be like hey like this is cheap like we should do this and get into the social game and make marginal money and then you know in other countries this is I think something that dharmesh really likes you know for example in a country like india or russia or something like that today they use twitter a lot they use they use basically apps built predominantly by people in silicon valley and the reason is that you know silicon valley has a monopoly on the content and you know they because they have that you have to use their apps but when all the content is open you can actually have people in the native country build the apps that you use and tailor it to their to their user base you can read stories about how facebook was just horrible in japan for a really long time and like nobody you know they had to make all these optimizations that were like kludgy to to you know that they were just leaving on the ground like no one was doing them because they're centralized kind of centrally planned organization so I I think once you have a blockchain that can actually handle posts and data which hasn't really has not existed until deso I I think it just kind of opens the floodgates for this like number of innovators and an amount of energy that wants to build that is it just has to beat the central plan model like I just don't

Sam Parr

See how it doesn't, though? I know that it always works this way. You make a big splash, and then there's either a downturn or it plateaus, and then it needs to go up. Right now, you guys had that massive splash. It went away for a minute because, as it does, everything novelty always goes away. Then you're going to have your comeback up. So, I hope that you can pull this off. You have to make it so that I want to go there, and all of us want to go there on a consistent basis. Because if you can't pull that off, you're not... and I want you to kick ass!

Nader Al-Naji

Totally! I have a funny story for you, actually. I think the crypto side of things helps us a lot because it's really hard to kill something that's crypto. I've learned that. Just to give you an example, CryptoKitties was this NFT project that got really, really big and then died, or whatever, right? What's funny is during the CryptoKitties hype, I gave a talk about my project, which is different. It's like a stablecoin. The co-founder of OpenSea, Xander Tala, was at the talk. He came up to me afterward and was like, "Hey man, you know, I'm thinking that I like this NFT thing. We're going to make a marketplace for things like CryptoKitties." I was like, "Dude, really? What are you doing with your life? These NFTs are dumb. That's never going to happen again." But you know, crypto has a way of, when there's a really interesting concept—which I think NFTs were—it kind of plays dead for a while. Then people realize it comes back; it gets back down.

Sam Parr

and that's a that's a good strategy crypto you know look many things

Nader Al-Naji

Yeah, absolutely. From my standpoint, obviously, we're doing a lot of fun stuff. We actually just rolled out a referral program that anyone using the app can utilize. If someone shares a link, they get $25, and you get like $5 or something. So, that's the first money we've invested in growing the user base, and I think that's going to do well. But I really think a big part of it is, you know, when you have a really good concept—which I think creator coins alone are interesting—not to even mention diamonds and stuff. Sometimes it just takes some time for the market to figure it out. The initial hype kind of showed me, okay, this is something that, once people maybe get a little bit bored of NFTs, they're going to look at the next thing, and this is just going to be waiting. So, I don't know. Obviously, not it's all 5%—like Sean said, I love that—but that's kind of my view on it.

Sam Parr

this is awesome man

Shaan Puri

Well, listen, I appreciate you coming on. I think you did great, and I think that for people who like trying new stuff, they should go check it out. So what's the best starting point for them now? Is it Bitcloud still, or is...?

Nader Al-Naji

It’s a better starting point. It might change, but right now, **diamondapp.com** is awesome. The developers basically wanted to make it a 10x version of Bitcloud, and I think they achieved it, so that’s great. If you like NFTs specifically, **polygram.cc** is a really awesome place to browse NFTs if you’re into that. It’s just a great way to look at them. But yeah, man, thanks for having me. I mean, this was incredible. Like I said, I’m a little bit afraid of how well you explained it and how much better it was than me. But yeah, I gotta work on that, I guess.

Sam Parr

just send people like this like a clip or something we have jonathan on the line with the clips

Shaan Puri

It's okay. When you were in college, like mining Bitcoin, I was just sitting there trying to... I have no skills, so I'm just sitting there trying to convince people to buy, you know, random objects in my room. So, you know, you get good at what you get good at. You got good at something that was extremely valuable.

Sam Parr

it's something tells me

Shaan Puri

I got good at this other thing like explain what things for you

Sam Parr

I just... I know, I know. I know this is an easy bet that I'm making on you, but something tells me you're gonna be okay.

Nader Al-Naji

Alright, dude. I mean, look, the upside of all this is that if DeSo works, it helps a lot of people, man. And honestly, not even DeSo—if anyone figures out decentralized social, and if we helped in that, like really, my mentality is if we instigated something really good, we've done a good thing for the world. I sleep very well at night knowing that no matter what happens, I'm pushing this forward.

Shaan Puri

let me ask you

Nader Al-Naji

you know is has helped you know

Shaan Puri

Well, let me ask you one other thing I've always wondered. You had all these big people invest in buying the currency before you guys launched. Then you launched, and they didn't all use it. Where are they? What's up with that? Did you hit them up and say, "Hey brother, it would be nice if you're the number one or two person on the network. You own the coin, you invested in this before we launched. Can you go, like, you know, use the thing?" Or did you not pull that card? What's up with that? That must've...

Nader Al-Naji

Must've been something that's actually mostly me. We have a lot of people who are really big names, not just in VC but also in Hollywood and all that stuff, who bought DeSo. They asked me, "Natter, is now the time to really bring this in and do it?" I just didn't feel like BitCloud was quite there yet. Now with Diamond and Polygram, I think it's a bit different. It was mostly me because I didn't want them to join, bring all their users, and then have people think, "This isn't good enough. This looks weird," and we lose half of them right out of the gate. So, like I said, we're playing the long game here. The longer we wait to really bring in the big people and tell them, "Hey, now is the time," I think the better it's going to be and the more users we'll have. But we're there, I think, with Diamond, so you'll probably start seeing some of the bigger people using it and being part of it.

Sam Parr

For doing this, we're like, "Yeah, our schedule got all screwed up." Sean was late because his house is flooding. We were tinkering with the timing, and you overstayed with us. We really appreciate that. You've been very generous with your time. This is badass, man. Awesome!

Shaan Puri

Yeah, this was fun! Good to meet you. Where should people find and follow you? So, are you still under Diamondhands or are you on a different account now?

Nader Al-Naji

I'm at Natter now. You can follow Diamond Hands, and Natter is where I post from. So, yeah, awesome! Alright, sounds good. Thanks for coming on. Incredible, just incredible!