I've been working full-time in crypto for 7 years now. This has included everything from figuring out how Ethereum worked with no documentation while starting a blockchain analytics startup, getting acquired by Coinbase pre-IPO, participating in the wild shenanigans of DeFi summer and even building a DEX (as an anon).

A few months ago I ended a 4-year chapter at Coinbase to embark on a new adventure. I thought it was a neat checkpoint to document some of my time so far "in the trenches".

Cyclical comfort

I initially dove in head first into the industry in 2017 when I started TokenAnalyst with my cofounder Jai in the heat of the 'ICO' era - a wild era of global crowdfunding (with questionable due dligence) fuelled by ETH. We started out as a blockchain analytics company that mapped out the entirety of Ethereum and all the flows happening on the chain.

Raising our seed round at the pico top of the 2017 bull market, we then had to navigate the idea maze of building out a sustainable business in crypto during the utter drought and industry contraction of the brutal 2018 bear market. The contrast was stark: from the rush of initial traction to the uphill battle of finding product-market fit in a contracting industry. After exploring various directions and expanding the scope of our product, our team was acquired by Coinbase in 2020.

My 4 years at Coinbase was another wild ride through raging bull market (2020 and 2021) and a depraved bear market (2022). When I initially joined CB, the company had 700 employees. Through 2021, as demand ramped up and new product verticals were rolled out, the firm scaled to over 5000. My job effectively went from building analytics product to becoming a part-time recruiter. At one point, I was interviewing five candidates per week.

Then 2022 and the ensuing bear market hit, and Coinbase had to adapt. Multiple rounds of layoffs, leaner processes, tough decisions. A good lesson on corporate resilience. One of my favorite Brian Armstrong quotes from the time: "In crypto, nothing is ever as good as it seems, and nothing is ever as bad as it seems."

A great book for anyone in a high volatility career is “The inner game of tennis”.

In crypto, the outer game is similar to the back and forth of the tennis ball - the spikes and dips of asset prices and the resulting swings between overt ebullience (”we’re so back”) and abject nihlism (”what am I doing with my life”) that plays out across the collective psyche of participants. The inner game in this space, for me, has been a gradually growing level of comfort with the inherent uncertainty and volatility present in all areas of the space.

Crypto’s infrastructure obsession

At its core, a blockchain is just a global shared database. In the early days of TokenAnalyst, we went all in on infrastructure to parse what was happening on-chain, even running 95 full archive ethereum nodes at one point (burning through $50K a month in AWS costs). It felt crucial then, but timing, as they say, is everything.

Substantial, complex on-chain activity in general didn’t kick off until mid-2020 when DeFi took off. We had built a Ferrari for a world still learning to ride bikes. It's a parallel story to the plethora of chains (L1s and L2s) that we have today - tons of roads and highways but not enough cars to ride them.

What's next

In crypto (as was true for the web), there’s a good historical record now of product ideas that were built before their time but got traction later when infrastructure + market demand and crypto penetration levels globally was ready for them.

Some examples:

• Augur (prediction markets 2017) -> Polymarket today.

• Steemit (social network with tipping in 2017) → Farcaster (with degen tips today)

So this brings me to what's next. I think as an industry we’re at a turning point:

• High-throughput infrastructure is largely not a blocker

• We have growing, indexed on-chain social graphs

• LLM tooling is continually evolving at breakneck speed

That’s why I’m excited to be building something new. We’re calling her “Gina” (askgina.ai).

The goal with Gina (@askgina.eth on farcaster) is to create the ultimate onchain companion that you can summon directly within your social feed. We're leveraging all of the infrastructure that's out there, along with the latest in LLM tech to make interacting with Gina genuinely spark joy.

We are rolling out Gina in limited beta now. Sign up for the waitlist at askgina.ai today or get in touch if interested.