First of all, let’s get the important stuff out of the way… GM

My fav piece of ‘merch’ all week 😂 thank you Slope & the dude walking around with these in his hair.

I was lucky enough to attend Sol Breakpoint in Lisbon this year. I was there on a personal and professional basis both as an angel investor and to represent New Finance :)

I wanted to write a bit about my experience, to share my views with others and also, for my own sake, document the event. To share some of the interesting companies and people I met. It was a real whirlwind week, I met so many people and had a ton of fun.

This was my second in-person crypto event since DAS London in Feb 2020 right before COVID hit! So I wasn’t sure what to expect. I have to say the energy was the first thing that I noticed, there was a real buzz and everyone felt excited to be there. People were friendly and open to chat, and it wasn’t full of people giving you elevator pitches or hard sells. People just wanted to talk crypto, exchange ideas and, if you asked, tell you about their project.

Serendipity is a word I use a lot. I went to this conference with no formal agenda. I wanted to meet people, learn more about what was happening in the Solana ecosystem and see what happened. It is hard to beat in-person events for this.

The event was held across 3 different venues: LX Factory, SUD Lisboa, and Estufa Fria (an absolutely incredibly botanical garden and such a cool venue). They had these awesome tuk-tuks to take you between the venues.

S/O Slope for the sponsorship

Here is an example of the friendly nature of the event and serendipity at work: I hop in a tuk-tuk and another ser decides to join. We get chatting and it is no other than Skynetcap. They shared with me their crazy story of how they went down the rabbithole and got involved in the whole crypto space and developing the SolanaJ Java library. It was friendly, interesting and just one of those things you cannot replace online. Their enjoyment and passion for the space shone through the conversation and that is energizing. I loved it. I won’t go into any more detail as I am not sure how doxxed they are :)

I finally got to meet some of my ‘internet friends’ in real life. Shout out to legends Javier from Atani and Austin Barack from Coinfund & Hamza Diaz of Aigora, whose team is working on cutting-edge trade facilitation technology that could be HUGE in the space, particularly the NFT realm. I had a blast discussing the state of venture & angel investing in this space with Austin and what projects were interesting. It was also cool to see a friend leading some panel discussions and killing it. I also got to meet Vanessa Grellet an ex-Consensys OG who is now at Coinfund too.

I was gutted that Matty Graham couldn’t make it, but I did get to meet one of the Sino Capital team, far too briefly, but no surprise he seemed like a legend who lifted heavy plates.

Side note: Coinfund recently raised another $83m focused on crypto start ups. If you want to speak to people who really care about the space and will actually add value, speak to Austin or Vanessa. Getting people and a fund like them on your cap-table is a win. Every time I chat with Austin I learn something.

Go Austin! 🙌

I got randomly introduced to Ultan Miller, who it turns out was backed by my CEO for his first company out of University. Small world! We had a great chat about the New Finance thesis and the space in general. He put me on to some protocols in the space I wasn’t familiar with, thanks :) I saw the wonderful Ajit from Aave, albeit all too briefly ser! I then got talking to Nikhil from Solana Labs and hearing the excitement coming from their squad was really engaging.

I especially enjoyed a very deep dive conversation on NFTs with Alexander Barrett. We had a blast discussing some of the issues in the space and also the fun of collecting and the wider appeal NFTs can have outside of the financial communities. He included me in some Sol NFT degen discussions 🙌 I mostly collect on Eth so it was really fun to get a cross-chain collectors insights and more of an introduction to the Solana NFT realm.

Here are some of the interesting companies I met or discovered (not an exhaustive list, there were so many!). Descriptions are based on my understanding:

Pulse: a KYC framework, in conjunction with Civic Pass that allows DeFi products to remain completely decentralized while significantly reducing counter-party risk.

Hubble: Borrowing, lending and structured products on Solana. They also offer collateralized, self-repaying loans a-la Alchemix. The platform looks really useful.

Superposition: Super cool. I won’t do this one justice but you can tokenize and trade future yield. Separate the principal and the yield as individual tokens. I was lucky enough to meet one of the founders, a google engineer Thomas Ruble, super nice guy and incredibly bright. They came second in the Solana Hackathon and won quite a few other prizes there(Solend, Raydium and Marinade). It looks like a team of beasts. We got talking because I asked about the name and the quantum reference…serendipity :)

Atani: They have built a DEX aggregator on Solana. They bring a ton of stuff to the table: trader-friendly terminal, including Technical Analysis, Portfolio Tracking & Price Alerts, and brings Advanced Orders to Serum-based DEXs (Stop Loss, Take Profit & more). They also have a CEX Aggregator, non-custodial and a bunch of other features like; portfolio tracking, advanced technical analysis & tax reporting across a bunch of the largest centralized crypto exchanges. They also raised $6.25m in their seed.

Neon: EVM machine on Solana!! Awesome. They also just raised $40m to keep building…nice. Bringing chains closer together is in my book = good.

Far/Ocean Flares: I finally got to meet my friend Far in real life! He is an artist that I am a big fan of, we met after an argument on Twitter…😂 but the guy has put out some amazing works on Eth and Sol, including Infinites AI & his Ocean Flares which Solana commissioned for the event. The guy is a builder and he is working on more cool stuff, so keep your eyes peeled 👀.

Art Club 88: No idea where this one will go, but I enjoy seeing experiments between RWA (real-world assets) in this case art, and blockchains/fractional ownership. I haven’t looked too deeply into the mechanics yet, but there was an Egon Schiele up for sale which I thought was pretty cool! The founder I met was Roman Slysh who is also the founder of Rundax.

Slope: Building a mobile dex and wallet for Solana. They also had some top-draw merch, I did enjoy the !vibes.

Exotic Markets: On-chain structured products built on Solana. Being built by some ex-Tradfi structured product guys. Still in development, but will be keeping an eye on this! Also, they had the best shirts on during the whole event, Pineapple vibes.

Flow Traders: I met Matt Batsinelas of Flow Traders, whilst already established and not a pure-play crypto company, I thought it was great to hear about other liquidity providers entering the crypto space and trying to figure out how they can fit in.

SolanaCove: Not a protocol, but I met the founder during one of the panel discussions, seemed super cool, so I subscribed and listened to a few already. Always stuff to learn!

There were a TON of interesting talks and panels going on every day. I was actually really impressed by the variety and quality of them. So much so that many times I didn’t know which venue to go to, I was torn. The speakers were of extremely high quality and it was nice to see many cross-chain participants. I particularly enjoyed the ‘DAO or Die’ panel with Julien Bouteloup, Gustav Arentoft, Maximillian Schneider and Joe McCann. It brought home many of the realities and challenges of DAOs. That we still have a long way to go, but there are paths forward, also that it isn’t a panacea or solution to everything, but can be amazing. (Especially fun in the wake of the Constitution DAO!).

Some examples of the panels below:

DAO’s, Gaming, Asset Management & more….

Regulation was also the topic of a great panel, and speaking to many people at the conference it struck me how much it was on the mind of many of us. It wasn’t so much a fear, just a recognition that we need to be involved in the conversation and to try and participate to shape policy in a positive way.

There was an excellent panel involving Michelle Bond, Jed Halfon & Greg Xethalis covering exactly this issue. Michelle suggested a self-regulatory organisation as a great starting point. All the participants shared their views on engaging with regulators going forward and the reality of the challenges ahead of us. Regulators can’t keep up with the space (neither can most of us) and so it is important to try and prevent damaging and heavy-handed regs that restrict innovation while also offering helpful guidance and clarity to builders and investors. It is a delicate balance.

Overall I left with an enduring sense of optimism, not just for Solana but for the crypto ecosystem. There were a lot of bright minds here all eager to share ideas and to build. There were many who were willing to recognise problems and not bury their heads in the sand. I felt excited by the atmosphere and the challenges people were attempting to take on. There are mountains ahead to climb, bumps in the road & there is no point in pretending everything is perfect, but I felt it was 4 days well-spent. Looking people in the whites of their eyes, shaking hands and exchanging conversation is a refreshing change. Not something to do every week, but certainly a nice pattern break!

I was gutted to have missed ETHLisbon just before this and whilst this is a different platform and community, I saw more overlap than I expected and it broadened my perspective as both an investor and a participant.

We are all particles bumping into each other, chance can be a wonderful thing.

Cheers everyone!

Kieran

First of all, let’s get the important stuff out of the way… GM

My fav piece of ‘merch’ all week 😂 thank you Slope & the dude walking around with these in his hair.

I was lucky enough to attend Sol Breakpoint in Lisbon this year. I was there on a personal and professional basis both as an angel investor and to represent New Finance :)

I wanted to write a bit about my experience, to share my views with others and also, for my own sake, document the event. To share some of the interesting companies and people I met. It was a real whirlwind week, I met so many people and had a ton of fun.

This was my second in-person crypto event since DAS London in Feb 2020 right before COVID hit! So I wasn’t sure what to expect. I have to say the energy was the first thing that I noticed, there was a real buzz and everyone felt excited to be there. People were friendly and open to chat, and it wasn’t full of people giving you elevator pitches or hard sells. People just wanted to talk crypto, exchange ideas and, if you asked, tell you about their project.

Serendipity is a word I use a lot. I went to this conference with no formal agenda. I wanted to meet people, learn more about what was happening in the Solana ecosystem and see what happened. It is hard to beat in-person events for this.

The event was held across 3 different venues: LX Factory, SUD Lisboa, and Estufa Fria (an absolutely incredibly botanical garden and such a cool venue). They had these awesome tuk-tuks to take you between the venues.

S/O Slope for the sponsorship

Here is an example of the friendly nature of the event and serendipity at work: I hop in a tuk-tuk and another ser decides to join. We get chatting and it is no other than Skynetcap. They shared with me their crazy story of how they went down the rabbithole and got involved in the whole crypto space and developing the SolanaJ Java library. It was friendly, interesting and just one of those things you cannot replace online. Their enjoyment and passion for the space shone through the conversation and that is energizing. I loved it. I won’t go into any more detail as I am not sure how doxxed they are :)

I finally got to meet some of my ‘internet friends’ in real life. Shout out to legends Javier from Atani and Austin Barack from Coinfund & Hamza Diaz of Aigora, whose team is working on cutting-edge trade facilitation technology that could be HUGE in the space, particularly the NFT realm. I had a blast discussing the state of venture & angel investing in this space with Austin and what projects were interesting. It was also cool to see a friend leading some panel discussions and killing it. I also got to meet Vanessa Grellet an ex-Consensys OG who is now at Coinfund too.

I was gutted that Matty Graham couldn’t make it, but I did get to meet one of the Sino Capital team, far too briefly, but no surprise he seemed like a legend who lifted heavy plates.

Side note: Coinfund recently raised another $83m focused on crypto start ups. If you want to speak to people who really care about the space and will actually add value, speak to Austin or Vanessa. Getting people and a fund like them on your cap-table is a win. Every time I chat with Austin I learn something.

Go Austin! 🙌

I got randomly introduced to Ultan Miller, who it turns out was backed by my CEO for his first company out of University. Small world! We had a great chat about the New Finance thesis and the space in general. He put me on to some protocols in the space I wasn’t familiar with, thanks :) I saw the wonderful Ajit from Aave, albeit all too briefly ser! I then got talking to Nikhil from Solana Labs and hearing the excitement coming from their squad was really engaging.

I especially enjoyed a very deep dive conversation on NFTs with Alexander Barrett. We had a blast discussing some of the issues in the space and also the fun of collecting and the wider appeal NFTs can have outside of the financial communities. He included me in some Sol NFT degen discussions 🙌 I mostly collect on Eth so it was really fun to get a cross-chain collectors insights and more of an introduction to the Solana NFT realm.

Here are some of the interesting companies I met or discovered (not an exhaustive list, there were so many!). Descriptions are based on my understanding:

Pulse: a KYC framework, in conjunction with Civic Pass that allows DeFi products to remain completely decentralized while significantly reducing counter-party risk.

Hubble: Borrowing, lending and structured products on Solana. They also offer collateralized, self-repaying loans a-la Alchemix. The platform looks really useful.

Superposition: Super cool. I won’t do this one justice but you can tokenize and trade future yield. Separate the principal and the yield as individual tokens. I was lucky enough to meet one of the founders, a google engineer Thomas Ruble, super nice guy and incredibly bright. They came second in the Solana Hackathon and won quite a few other prizes there(Solend, Raydium and Marinade). It looks like a team of beasts. We got talking because I asked about the name and the quantum reference…serendipity :)

Atani: They have built a DEX aggregator on Solana. They bring a ton of stuff to the table: trader-friendly terminal, including Technical Analysis, Portfolio Tracking & Price Alerts, and brings Advanced Orders to Serum-based DEXs (Stop Loss, Take Profit & more). They also have a CEX Aggregator, non-custodial and a bunch of other features like; portfolio tracking, advanced technical analysis & tax reporting across a bunch of the largest centralized crypto exchanges. They also raised $6.25m in their seed.

Neon: EVM machine on Solana!! Awesome. They also just raised $40m to keep building…nice. Bringing chains closer together is in my book = good.

Far/Ocean Flares: I finally got to meet my friend Far in real life! He is an artist that I am a big fan of, we met after an argument on Twitter…😂 but the guy has put out some amazing works on Eth and Sol, including Infinites AI & his Ocean Flares which Solana commissioned for the event. The guy is a builder and he is working on more cool stuff, so keep your eyes peeled 👀.

Art Club 88: No idea where this one will go, but I enjoy seeing experiments between RWA (real-world assets) in this case art, and blockchains/fractional ownership. I haven’t looked too deeply into the mechanics yet, but there was an Egon Schiele up for sale which I thought was pretty cool! The founder I met was Roman Slysh who is also the founder of Rundax.

Slope: Building a mobile dex and wallet for Solana. They also had some top-draw merch, I did enjoy the !vibes.

Exotic Markets: On-chain structured products built on Solana. Being built by some ex-Tradfi structured product guys. Still in development, but will be keeping an eye on this! Also, they had the best shirts on during the whole event, Pineapple vibes.

Flow Traders: I met Matt Batsinelas of Flow Traders, whilst already established and not a pure-play crypto company, I thought it was great to hear about other liquidity providers entering the crypto space and trying to figure out how they can fit in.

SolanaCove: Not a protocol, but I met the founder during one of the panel discussions, seemed super cool, so I subscribed and listened to a few already. Always stuff to learn!

There were a TON of interesting talks and panels going on every day. I was actually really impressed by the variety and quality of them. So much so that many times I didn’t know which venue to go to, I was torn. The speakers were of extremely high quality and it was nice to see many cross-chain participants. I particularly enjoyed the ‘DAO or Die’ panel with Julien Bouteloup, Gustav Arentoft, Maximillian Schneider and Joe McCann. It brought home many of the realities and challenges of DAOs. That we still have a long way to go, but there are paths forward, also that it isn’t a panacea or solution to everything, but can be amazing. (Especially fun in the wake of the Constitution DAO!).

Some examples of the panels below:

DAO’s, Gaming, Asset Management & more….

Regulation was also the topic of a great panel, and speaking to many people at the conference it struck me how much it was on the mind of many of us. It wasn’t so much a fear, just a recognition that we need to be involved in the conversation and to try and participate to shape policy in a positive way.

There was an excellent panel involving Michelle Bond, Jed Halfon & Greg Xethalis covering exactly this issue. Michelle suggested a self-regulatory organisation as a great starting point. All the participants shared their views on engaging with regulators going forward and the reality of the challenges ahead of us. Regulators can’t keep up with the space (neither can most of us) and so it is important to try and prevent damaging and heavy-handed regs that restrict innovation while also offering helpful guidance and clarity to builders and investors. It is a delicate balance.

Overall I left with an enduring sense of optimism, not just for Solana but for the crypto ecosystem. There were a lot of bright minds here all eager to share ideas and to build. There were many who were willing to recognise problems and not bury their heads in the sand. I felt excited by the atmosphere and the challenges people were attempting to take on. There are mountains ahead to climb, bumps in the road & there is no point in pretending everything is perfect, but I felt it was 4 days well-spent. Looking people in the whites of their eyes, shaking hands and exchanging conversation is a refreshing change. Not something to do every week, but certainly a nice pattern break!

I was gutted to have missed ETHLisbon just before this and whilst this is a different platform and community, I saw more overlap than I expected and it broadened my perspective as both an investor and a participant.

We are all particles bumping into each other, chance can be a wonderful thing.

Cheers everyone!

Kieran