Vibe Check with @dawufi ep8 :: interview with @tldr /bracket

intro is great i love to hear you pronounce your handle that's you you know that's like near and dear to my heart of how do we pronounce the wufy

yeah man i'm just i would love to hear your we're we're so much like in the building right now and like within our community that i'm not even paying as much attention to like the narrative and vibe around consumer crypto so i would actually love to hear like kind of when you say that it's popping off like kind of what what is the what is the vibe what is the narrative around it right now

i mean my

it it's interesting as you were talking i i i thought that it's like consumer crypto seems to kind of like mean something different to crypto natives than what i think it maybe should mean and like it seems to me like you could think of consumer crypto as like crypto people who are using consumer like consumer applications so like i think that's kind of where farcaster is actually is like crypto people are finally like in an organized way using something that feels like a genuine you know normal consumer experience and i do actually think that it's like interesting and important i think you can also like flip that and think about but like the it it seems to me that like the real thing that we're going for and by the way like farcaster is amazing like i think that's super important but there's like also a different interpretation of it which is like not crypto people using consumer but like consumers using crypto and that like that is a different orientation and in a certain way like a different a different problem to solve

yeah i think that like i feel like in the long in the longer view you're right that it's all one thing like it doesn't matter who you it's like make make make applications better by using the genuine value propositions of crypto like the genuine properties that allow for truly new behaviors right and and new ways of interacting with each other and the things that we have right like new value proposition make products better doesn't matter who's using it i think that that's like the longer view i think the reason it kind of matters in the short term is that like the way that you actually make something usable for for people before you get to that longer view it is totally different if you're approaching crypto natives versus if you're approaching people who have never used crypto before right so like that that's kind of what i mean is that like if you're building and you're assuming and you're okay with serving crypto natives primarily you can actually make a totally different product and a totally different product experience and a totally different distribution you know strategy whereas like if you if you want to actually attract serve and and retain people who haven't used crypto before i would argue it's like it it's it's an entirely different it's an entirely different product strategy like like through the entire stack of the product so that that in the long run i think they converge but like how how do you do it right now you know

it it seems like it it matters a lot and i can go into some of the things i think matter like you

yeah yeah

so i think it it it begins with you know

it it begins with the the difficult decision to resist the temptation of of finding like the capital where it already is right so like that i know that that's kind of abstract but like to give a to give a quick example it's like when when a user makes their account right and with their account they're making a wallet right what does that experience feel like what options are available right like what what's it gonna look like what's that experience that first time they interact with what you've built and i think that it's really really difficult in crypto like there are tons of people who have tons of capital in these specific places most of most of the time external wallets that they're comfortable with right so like a very early decision that we made in bracket which was which was a painful decision at you know is are we going to support that at all right like think about that like it's it's hard to leave behind people who say hey why aren't you letting me connect rainbow like i can get $10,000 in like in ten seconds if you just let me use walletconnect like we made the decision to actually not support walletconnect at all right like and so i think one's product strategy is like give every give everybody their preferred option right and so you end up having you can create you know with with your email more control your own wallet by using dynamic a lot of people are using privy and and also you can connect your wallet we decided yes that's where all the capital is but we want to challenge ourself to make an experience that is going to be compatible with people who don't have an external wallet and never will which is like every every other purse every person who hasn't used crypto yet they're unlikely to ever have an external wallet in my opinion like in in the in the future of crypto i think like external wallets are probably going away so like you know that that's a painful decision it makes it harder for us to onboard the capital that makes the game interesting but it's like we decide we need to challenge ourself to make that experience good enough that it's like consumer grade so that when we want to bring in people like like dale's friends that you that you mentioned when we wanna bring in people who have never used crypto before they're not going to have like a friction full experience and so like that's just a small example of and i think people can have different takes on this like i'm not dogmatic about how you have to treat a wallet but it's more indicative of like making tough decisions to like leave some things behind that are that are natural and accepted and convenient within like crypto native use to leave some of that behind to create a cleaner experience and a less scary experience and a less less friction full experience and also to like i think of it as like challenging yourself as a team to make that experience compelling you know which takes investment it take if we're messing as a team with like how to manage onboarding by creating an embedded wallet and how to manage onboarding by external wallets like as a small team we're now splitting our attention and splitting our building resources on these two different ways that you can come into bracket and so like i think part of it like part of what we've done i don't know if it's right or wrong but part of what we've done is like we're trying to we're trying to make those tough decisions and not say both and but say like what's the decision that we can make that will allow us to figure out how to make a truly frictionless experience for people who have never used crite

i i i think the farmer your your point about farmers is actually also like super interest and you keep going but like that's a topic that's also interesting

yep

what i mean i i i love that and i think that's like a that's a great way of putting like what what drives us in our design is that we don't want

to distract or complicate a user's experience both in onboarding and in playing and in being there right like

don't wanna complicate it with things that are that are irrelevant to them you know and irrelevant to the action that they may be interested in and i think it's one of those things that like there are people in crypto who who want it to be more crypto and more defi when they get into bracket which is totally cool and for for us we're just sort of like we we literally just tell them like we're not the best place to do that you know that's that's not what this is for like this is this is built for another type of thing and i think the the type of thing that you're looking for with like alpha and and being able to like arbitrage and farm and all that it's like there's there's better places to do that in crypto and better places to do that with crypto and sports related you know that and so like what we're trying to build is like very very much focused on that like core experience and i think that you know the an interesting question for every product team is when if at all do you want do you want your user to become conscious that they're in crypto

like you know that's like a really interesting question of like when if at all do you want them to become conscious that oh i guess i'm using crypto right like and i think there's no right answer to that it has to do with like there is no right design like the way that we think about it is we we think that the only time that a user absolutely needs to become conscious that they're that they're dealing with crypto is when they on ramp like when a user when a user gets funds into bracket they they do need to know that this isn't a dollar anymore this is a digital dollar like we we just did our first usdc game like they don't need to know that that's on base they don't need to know that usdc is like necessarily back like we wanna take care of that for all them and like make choices that we believe in you know for for our user that's gonna be safe it's gonna be cheap it's gonna be like as frictionless as possible but like there is that moment where it's like okay like i guess to play bracket like i'm using a digital dollar and like if if they get into a game and they're like i'm in bracket and i'm using dgen token you know we have some games on usdc some on higher some on dgen we'll do games with other tokens right like that's something where we have some users who have never used crypto before and they're like i don't know i don't really wanna play around with this money that i don't understand yeah but they like usdc you know and so there are moments where they become conscious and they start to sort themselves out into like people who wanna be more experimental with crypto there will be you know places for them to play around with that and grow into that and there's versions where it's just sort of like okay yeah i got digital dollars through coinbase but like otherwise i'm just like playing this game and i go in and out of like digital back to real dollars and it works smoothly and that's what allows me to play bracket

it's a magic i do think it's a one of the best ways to become comfortable with crypto is convert your real dollars into something that's not dollars could be usdc could be you know eth bitcoin dogecoin whatever

warps right like convert convert your dollars right that you're familiar with that has real value into something else use them and then go back and see that like wait i just i did a whole cycle right like i converted my dollars into something i used it i saw how it changed and then i went back in their dollars again okay like this works right like i think yeah

you that's a huge i mean that's like 80% of feeling comfortable with doing like everything else in crypto is having that first cycle of going all the way through of seeing like oh yeah this all works like i'm comfortable with that right like

i think we underrate that now that like we've been in the space for a while but like i think i remember even my first time you know buying these things let alone using these digital assets like the first uses that i was having was really like nfts and i think like the the whole process of like i bought it you know i used it i held it i got back out my dollars are where they were like even for me that like gave me a ton of confidence to do like more and more and more you know within the space

speed ran you speed ran like i don't

i anyway like i think you know part of it is i just i think we're we're we're sensitive or we try to remain sensitive that like to what crypto feels like when you first use it and in remembering that we all went through that in some way and like creating experiences for people that allow them to like both ease into that to have a great experience like which is on our end to make decisions where we're not we're not trying to you know hide things from people or push people to do things that are risky you know that's also one of our design decisions it's like we don't want our non crypto users' first experience to be some like super high risk thing that they may not even be aware of how high risk it is you know like because that's not a great first first time doing something

do it for themselves i mean

you you've been on the cutting edge of like seeing this even like at e even like a little bit sooner than we were seeing it like just to give you credit like i remember some conversations we've had like in person like outside of outside of farcaster like i think you were feeling that social element like even a little bit faster than we were feeling it internally as a team and the cool thing about it is that it was like

social is a huge part of bracket and i would describe it as like

you know when it's fun to watch to be like in an event with your friend you know with your friends and that could be a concert or that could be a show that you're watching together but it's like not that easy to create the context and experience of like we're all in this like did you see what happened like that was crazy right like i can't believe this they did this or what was going on in the game and i think that that experience the social element is the is one of the probably the thing that makes it way more fun and it's like imagine watching imagine every a lot of people have had this experience like you're at a family christmas party your uncle has like a hundred dollar bet on the ravens and all of a sudden like everybody's just kinda bored at the party and he's like really into it and then everybody who doesn't have a bet they just start cheering because your uncle is so into it and it's like okay we're all on the beat for the ravens then you get somebody else who's kind of like you know maybe antagonizing or trolling him who's not gonna like root for the other team and it becomes like this really fun engaged thing where now like everybody's into the game and they don't even have to have any money at stake and i think that's like when you look at that experience it's like it's a value add able to like get into these live events that are unfolding in front of you

a lot of bracket like a lot of bracket is that that social element and it emerged so much because of farcaster right like farcaster i mean it was absolute like it it was a magical element of i can't even talk about it in the past tense like it it is such a magical element and has been such a magical element of what we're building because when you bring so in bracket like everybody can get their purple check they connect their farcaster right like we run a big group chat for everybody who's active you know in bracket and so people are talking about what's going on and and when people are trading you can see like you know that oh my god like redux like rug rugged me again right like i get in he sells it's like basically i'm his exit liquidity and it's funny right like it's actually it's it's a fun experience to have with each other like i got one over on you or we're in it together or you know like you know mike is like never selling you know the the panthers right like it's just sort of like these these things that form new contacts to our relationships that are happening like in sync with these events it's because people have purple check it's because they know each other from farcaster it's because we have this big group chat all that stuff for our community building farcaster has given so much context to what's happening in this fun game and we've realized that like that's the really sticky that's the really sticky thing about what we're building right

in essential right it's essential and and you know i think that that is everybody what everybody is building is different but i think i would encourage more builders in crypto and in farcaster i think like taking the social piece and like taking it less literally right like you don't have to build a card trading game it's like that's like making the social element like the centerpiece of your whole product in a very literal way i think like from what we've experienced i would encourage people to like make something fun and see how the social context of farcaster see how it will change and amplify the experience like discover it by using it and it might surprise you like that's that's what's happened to us like it surprised us we didn't set out to build a social app we're basically building a social app around sports like we did not intend to build that primarily it was totally emergent from farcaster so i think that that's like a a thing that other people might enjoy trying and leveraging farcaster for

i mean come come like i mean just come come play right like we're we're putting a bracket out for like every major sporting event or or nearly everyone like we're pretty rhythmically like putting brackets on the major things that are happening so like olympics will have different bracket games for different you know olympic events it's gonna be super fun us open tennis f one right and then we launch into like a lot of major major sports brackets so it's like i think the thing is is you know you come play around like hang out in the group chat if there's an event that you're like going to be watching it anyway that's when i suggest playing bracket right like it's like if you feel like you're gonna be watching like the women's soccer in the olympics come play that game because you will get to watch it with other people who are having fun and it's it it's not even about making money it's about getting excited about about the event itself so that that's what i would encourage people is like if there is some sporting event that you already like and already will be watching casually come use bracket dm me like make sure we get you like in the in the group chat we're excited to like bracket two point o like everything that we've learned from launching quickly and iterating quickly the the new kind of version of bracket that builds on all of that will be released early in the fall and it is going to be like heavily around creating those social spaces that are like maximized and as as like native to bracket and as fun native to that event as possible so like super excited about that but like continuing to like do events for all major sporting events till then and we'll also be doing some more like flash brackets on real like we did for farcom pickleball like we have more of those more of those experiments planned

we should do another one i love your questions like it it it it's a fun chance to to reflect and you've got such great such great taste and and really i i super appreciate how when you see something the seeds of something special like you you encourage it and make sure that the builders are noticing it i really appreciate that because when you're building you don't always see what's fresh and special and like you're amazing at that you've like literally helped us a lot

good to see