AudioCutter_INSIDE_WEB3_podcast_ft._Apreamio(3)[1]

The transcription involves a podcast where the host introduces guests Tyron and Lumi. Tyron, the marketing director at Kula, shares his journey from being a dentist to joining Kula, which focuses on asset tokenization using blockchain for community benefit. Lumi, founder of Axiom Recruits, discusses their Web3 recruitment agency and the growth of their services since 2019. Tyron reflects on the evolution of the crypto space from speculative meme coins to a focus on blockchain technology and tokenization for efficiency and broader market adoption. He emphasizes the positive impact of blockchain on governance and transparency, citing an example of equal pay decision in a DAO-governed mine in Zambia. Both guests foresee blockchain technology shaping daily lives and industries. Okay, moving on, I guess we move straight to our introductory episodes for today. And I've got, as I said, incredible guests here on the show. I've got Tyron, you know, from Kula Dao, for some of you who may have come across such a project like that. And with me also is Luke Cleats, he is also the founder of Axiom Recruits. So this time I'm going to do it quick and very fast. We'll start with Tyron, Tyron will give us an introduction, a very quick introduction about himself, what he does in the space, I mean, his journey in the space. Let's say three minutes would be cool for that. So Tyron, if you can hear me, the mic is yours. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Can you guys hear me? Yes, I can hear you. Firstly, thank you for the introduction and the invitation to space. Yeah, so my name is Tyron, Tyron Dylan, I'm based out just in the UK, and I'm the director of marketing for Kula. I guess a bit about myself just personally is, I was actually, you know, it feels like a minute ago now, I think maybe five, six years ago, I actually studied dentistry, so I was actually a dentist. And then I came across one of the founders in Kula, mainly Mikey Yatey out in the States. And what he basically spoke to me about was this vision of if you can use blockchain to provide, on one hand, a very serious and very tangible wealth creation model, so a means of investing into, you know, some mines and different regional projects around the world, or while actually benefiting the communities that live around the particular regional projects. And so that then was the kind of the vision of Kula at the time. And from there, you know, it's transplied into now, you know, I'd argue one of the most strongest and most powerful use cases for asset tokenization, and that's currently in the market. Okay, thank you very much for that quick introduction, Tyrone. Really appreciate it. Marketing director at Kula. Can't wait to hear what you have to say and all you have to share with us here on the show. So I'll move quick to Lumi. Lumi is here too. Yeah, she's been pretty amazing things also in the space. So Lumi, if you can hear me, you just unmute yourself and give us your own introduction about yourself, your journey, what you do in this space. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. Awesome. Thank you so much for the invite. It's great to be here. And yeah, it's great to share this with Tyrone and with yourself. So yeah, as a quick intro, I'm the founder of Axiom Recruits. We're a global Web3 native recruitment agency. In fact, our new website landed today, which is a huge coincidence. So if you are a fan, go check it out. It's www.axiomrecruits.com. So I guess we start from the beginning. We have been in the space since 2019. We come from recruitment background. We were working corporate jobs, huge passion for tech and for what it can do. And we also thought that the recruitment space needs more professional services. And we were absolutely confident that we can offer that to the space. So that's how we started Axiom Recruits in 2019. It's been a really, really crazy journey since then. In fact, I posted on my LinkedIn a little short timeline of our Axiom Recruits stories, where we came from, how we kind of mirrored the Web3 market, and we advanced with it, and we learned from it, and so on. So yeah, it's been an exciting period ever since 2019. And obviously, we love the space. We love the innovation. We love matching the right talent with visionary projects. So our main scope is helping early-stage projects and scaling Web3 companies to build their world-class teams. That's about it. Yeah, thank you so much, Lumi. You guys, of course, are doing very big, big, big work here in the Web3 space, trying to bring people or help people in their career. And I believe this is one of the most important, very good place to talk about things like this, because we have, even here in the premium, we have individuals, we have community members who are so much interested about the career in Web3, and will be happy to learn what you have to say, in fact, and even go check it out, what you guys are doing, and see how they can connect and make the most of it. So, yes, just really, really, really happy to be here on the show, and thank you for this wonderful introduction. Thank you. I will move directly to Tyron. Tyron has said also some amazing things. So Tyron, I would like you to give us some insights. You've been in the space for years now. Definitely, you've got your own perspective of what Web3 means to you as a whole. I mean, your perspective on its evolution. I mean, you started by saying something, you know, with the introductory part. So just go deep. For you, what this whole space is all about, what does it mean to you? Because you are fully immersed in this space, so it has to mean something to you. What's your perspective? Yeah, sure. So, I mean, my perspective on that, I think, has definitely changed over the years, and I think it's been the case with anything, right? I think when, you know, if we were to look at, for example, cryptocurrency back in 2019, 2018, just before COVID, I think it was very speculative. I think that, you know, meme coins were the leading things, and there was a lot of question marks, even around, for example, some of the leading assets, like, for example, that Bitcoin ETH, and, you know, at the time, XRP, and even now, to be honest, XRP as well. And it's interesting, because, you know, that moves in, as with any type of technology, right? You have something that brings the hype, and it brings the user base, and I think many, many years ago, that was meme coins. It brought the hype. It brought the user base. It brought the eyes on. And then, all of a sudden, what happened? And it's similar to the dot-com boom. You know, you had this whole idea of a new Internet, and you had all these new people that come on, and with anything that's new, there's a lack of regulation, because it's such a new space. People don't really know how to use it, so there's not much education around it. And so that's why, I think, over the years now, so going back, you know, five years, over the course of crypto, what we've actually seen now is a huge influx of different types of marketing, whether it's, for example, influencers or people coming into the space, and all of a sudden, you have a lot of people getting scammed as well, and through meme coins, through Red Bulls, and all of that sort of stuff. But then what's interesting is crypto has now started to change. I'd say over the past, especially over the past couple of years, especially, there's a lot more projects now that are coming out of the woods that are actually focused around the underlying technology, that's blockchain. So how can that actually be used? And I think people are starting to realize now that it's far more than just something that's speculative and has no intrinsic value. And that's where the conversation around tokenization, I think, is really kind of quite interesting. And, you know, even, for example, with meme coins, I mean, there's people that would argue that meme coins is essentially this bindage to, you know, tokenized community. But putting meme coins aside, I think my perspective on the space is that this technology exists, i.e. blockchain and the use case of it, that you can use, whether it be, for example, in governance, whether it be in transparency, or whether it be through kind of efficiency, you know, that's part of the reason why. You know, you mentioned, for example, bonds and the tokenization of bonds. That's just the reason these things now exist because more so they have efficiency, the efficiency in market, the liquidity they can provide, and so forth. It's interesting to now see how that's, if you like, transpiring into a wider market, so not just retail. So, you know, it's no longer just, you know, myself and yourself, for example, now interested in cryptocurrencies. All of a sudden, you've got, you know, governments, you've got wealth funds, you've got family offices, you've got pension funds, you've got schools and institutions that are now looking into cryptocurrencies as a viable asset class to diversify their portfolio. So, yeah, just to round up, I think, for me, my perspective on the space and my perspective on Web3 is that this technology is genuinely going to change our lives, and I think it is changing lives. I mean, if I speak from pool of the hearth, we invested into a limestone mine and secured equity in there in Zambia, and it was one of the first DAO-governed mines in all of Africa, and this is, I think, maybe last year now. And what was really interesting out of that, actually, was when that whole governance protocol was given to the community, so the workers of the mines and the local community, one of the first decisions they made out in Zambia was actually to say that they wanted equal pay between men and women, and that was now marked as, I believe, one of the only limestone mines within the particular area that actually pays men and women equally. So it goes to show the power of governance and also the power of blockchain in enabling those types of decisions and those types of voting methods to actually take place in a transparent and an actual actionable manner as well. That's my take on it. I think that we're going to start to see blockchain really become a new part of our daily lives. But I'll pass you over to Axia. I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch your name. It's Lumi. Lumi, well, I'll pass over to Lumi, and then, yeah, see you then. Yeah, awesome. Obviously, I really agree with the things you said, and they really resonate with me. You know, I always approach blockchain from a recruitment lens and from my journey in it, and, you know, in regards to what you said, the same for us. It's been wild to see, you know, DeFi identity, RWA, just go from ideas to adoption in this short few years since 2018-2019. So all this has been very exciting. When we started the business, it was just after the 2018 boom, you know. Bitcoin at the time in 2019 was sitting at between $3,000 and $10,000, and, yeah, that's obviously quite a few years ago, and things have evolved really fast. From my point of view, what's exciting about the industry, and I think also I forgot to mention that my background is sociology, so I've always kind of been drawn to what's happening, you know, in the society, the human layer, and so on, but I've been really drawn to systems that challenge the status quo, so I think this is the main reason why I was pulled into blockchain. The same thing for me. It's not about hype or price charts. It's about the fundamental idea of this technology, that it is a decentralized, transparent infrastructure where everyone can participate without any permission. I think this is the main driver for us and the main passion that comes with this sector, and the concept of reimagining trust, I guess, that's really struck a deep chord with me, so whether it's reshaping finance or ownership or identity, I really do trust that blockchain really has the potential to build so much more, and it has the potential to build a big, fair, and open, and resilient system that we are after, and this is what I want to be part of. So from my point of view, I think Web3 and blockchain is more than a tech shift. It's a cultural movement, so everything that's been happening, the fluidity of the sector, the speed of the innovation, you see things moving at a crazy pace, and I think this is the most exciting thing about the sector, and I think what needs to be done now is that education, and I guess making it all really accessible, like you mentioned, Tara, and I think making it accessible to everyone so that we don't go to it, but it comes to us, and it's becoming seamless. I think that's when we will be winning as a sector, when we can use it without a headache. That's my view. You know, I really like the fact that you said that it's this whole idea of, if you like, a trust enabling society. I think it is, and I think that's going to be one of the largest things as we go into, I think, the next five years, is this idea that it doesn't mean that trust doesn't exist. It's just a case of operating in a trustless nature, and that's, I think, more important in particular areas where there's a lack of infrastructure to support. For example, banking or to support certain transactions to ensure that there's no safety net, and we've seen that personally. For example, one of our main points in our brand narrative is we invest in particular areas where traditional finance refuses to go, or we empower community members in particular areas where otherwise their voices weren't heard, and a lot of the reason we're able to do that, quite frankly, is because of blockchain, and that's why we're able to go into areas where typically there might have been, for example, a mining company, and the local community were, quite frankly, quite annoyed, and all of a sudden we can come in and we can actually align the interests of these particular stakeholders from the local community to the actual mining company all the way through to the actual partners in the ground, allowing the community members to have a say, just because of the trustless nature and the efficiency and the transparency of the technology. I really like that point. Exactly. I think that, you know... Sorry. So the one thing that we learned is that the technology is here to stay, and crypto is here to stay, so I think this is the main point, apart from now with the hype. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so I totally agree with everything you guys have been saying. Sorry, I went out a little. It's all about this whole technology disrupting the entire space. I mean, not just the financial space. We're looking at the blockchain itself, which is the core technology on which there were three... There were three ecosystem systems that were disrupting communities, disrupting institutions. So many things have happened all over the place, and no one is taking it for granted. Not even the USA and not even those countries that at some point, I mean, in the past, were so close, I mean, so warled against what they felt was a threat to them. Even Pakistan now is opening up to innovations, and you've seen a lot of things happening, even in the US, in African countries and Asian countries. So Web3, of course, which is the passion of the Internet, we've seen 44 hours, just like other passions, we've seen its evolution of Web3 and its core values and all it stands for is yet to stay democratized in Pakistan and so, so much more. And just like what you guys are doing at Kula, and we can also lay down the premiums, so with what our premiums are doing as regards to what I said, like gold and all this stuff. So, I mean, your points are very, very powerful, and I know that many of the listeners are really getting so much from what you guys are saying. So thank you so much. I will move quickly to what I have next year on my list. Looking at, okay, personally, I think I should go with Taiwan. So, you're in the space, Chelsea. I know you've done some introduction, but let's just move on to what you do at Kula. I mean, what you guys do, what you focus on, even if you're doing other things apart from Kula, just tell us if you're currently building something or you're working for a company, which, of course, we know you're working for a company, and just briefly tell us what this whole thing is all about, what you do there. Yeah, sure. Kula, by definition, is a decentralized impact investment firm, and I think just before we even go into kind of what Kula does, it's probably just important just to break that down. So, decentralization is important because it puts, you know, essentially power back into individuals. You know, it empowers us more by impact. So, because wherever we go, whether what investment we make, we always look at what impact we can make. So, what positive social impacts can we actually make on the ground? So, if, for example, we're investing into a gold mine, the first thing that our team can look at is actually, well, can we actually benefit the local community? Can we make a school in that area? Can we, for example, build roads? Or does that local community need, for example, systems or whatever that looks like? And investment, because, well, I guess many of us, many people might look at us in a traditional sense, a bit like a private equity firm, but with a big spin on social impact and a big spin on governance through use of blockchain. What we basically do at a fundamental level is we invest in different projects. So, a gold mine, a limestone mine, and hydropower plants. And what we then do is we tokenize the governance that sits around these assets. That's essentially a fancy way of saying that we invest in these projects. As those projects become profitable, i.e., you know, we invest into a gold mine. That gold mine then starts to, for example, extract gold and it sells it on the market. And when it makes a profit, that then goes back into the treasury. That reflects in our token. But then what we also do is then we allow the local communities to vote on decisions and we allow them to actually participate in decisions that actually affect them as well. So, we offer a really strong governance model that allows decision-making and participation across the board from investors to even local community members. And I guess just to explain that one step further, and Alex, I guess I'll just explain it from an investor point of view all the way through to a local community member point of view. An investor's going to benefit because, let's say somebody's, for example, a cooler token holder, they're going to benefit because they can be a steward of their funds by actually participating in decisions at a cooler level, a cooler governance level that will be, for example, fundamental in deciding where resource allocation goes. So, for example, by me holding a cooler token, I can then participate in, hey, you know, we think we should invest into a hydropower plant, as an example. I think that we should invest into this for this budget for a marketing proposal, as an example. But then what we do is we create a really, using our double DAO structure, we create a really different, a really layered approach to governance through basically allowing the local community members to be protected per their asset. So, as an example, if I'm a cooler token holder and I'm voting on things like marketing proposals, I shouldn't be really voting on, for example, John who lives a road away from the limestone mine in Zambia, and I shouldn't be voting on what time the trucks come in at night because, you know, that's affecting John. It's not really affecting me out here in the UK. John's kids can't sleep at night because of the trucks, and he's going to put a proposal in at that local level to say that, hey, I don't like these trucks coming in and, you know, it keeps waking up my kids at night. And so what we do is we actually create these, you know, a bit like sub DAOs. We create these different structures to then allow the local community members' voices to be protected, and they actually then, not only just to be protected, they're also to ensure that they actually get to have their say as well in a way then that, yes, we invest into regional projects, but then also we can ensure that the local community voices are protected, and then also all the meanwhile, we actually allow the local community members to participate in profit sharing as well, and our general rule of thumb is a 40-20-20 split where, sorry, a 40-40-20 split where cooler has 40% equity, 40% equity goes to, for example, the mining company, and then 20% actually goes to the local community. So we're really strong in this idea of using this technology and using these investments to really make a difference on the ground. Thank you. I think, Chuck, are you able to leave the room? Yes, I'm here. Yes, that was super interesting. Yes, very exciting, the space that you're in, absolutely. Yes, so from our side, we are a global recruitment agency. What we always say is that we are more than recruiters. We are strategic hiring partners to the sector. So I think the points that make us different from your other recruiters is that first and foremost, we are only senior recruiters. We bring a lot of experience. We have a huge recruitment background. My partner, Andrew, has been in recruitment for 25 plus years, and so on. So I guess the way we work is that we are trying to be a consultative partner to our clients. We are trying to really understand their product, what they have done around it, the infrastructure that they're building, and so on, and then serve that in the best way we can. Over the years, we have tried to stay away from the noise and really work with companies that are building meaningful things on that solid infrastructure of the sector. So that being said, we work with a lot of DeFi projects, again, RWA tokenization projects, AI-infused infrastructure. We have been working throughout the years with a lot of launchpads, with VCs, again, the same, like you were saying, the type of companies that are really, like we always say, when you're in the sector, you're for the sector. So we are trying to position ourselves as partners that know what's happening in the sector and can advise accordingly. All our recruiters are super senior. We work in a really professional way, and we were very lucky throughout the years to have amazing partners that we have been helping out. So from data analytics platforms, now more recently to quite a few AI projects that are taking off, I guess you could say that our work is never boring. We have placed roles like engineering, engineering product managers, growth, community leads, marketing, social media, compliance, AI, ML, pretty much we cover everything, mostly at the senior level, but of course anything that is pushing the sector forward, we really give our attention and our focus on. So now we have made a move to Dubai. There's a lot of things happening here, obviously a lot of events, a lot of innovation. There's obviously Token 2049 starting next week. There's the Sui base camp. Lana is here. There's a lot of things happening here in Dubai, and we're really well positioned to serve this sector a lot better from where we are here. Yeah, there was a lot, and you guys did say so much. I believe the business are taking, you know, paying attention, and obviously take advantage of what is being said here. So I would like to do something very fast before I move to the next question for you guys. Please, everyone listening, you can do well to follow our guests, follow them up, follow them on ads especially, follow them and also follow up with your contents and even on LinkedIn, which a number of them are. So that would be very good. Also, please do want to retreat this space, very important, so we could have more listeners come in. If you haven't, you do want to retreat this space so quick. So, okay, moving on to the next. Moving on to the next, we just want to give time because of our schedule, and this is Friday weekend. So, yes. So, Diamond, over to you. You said a lot on what you guys do at Kula. You bring in, you're trying to benefit the community as you guys are decentralized, you know, organization. What you guys do is definitely what should benefit the community or what should, you know, more emphasis placed on your community, obviously. So, in all you're doing, in what you guys do in Kula, what are your challenges? You must have faced big challenges, small challenges, whatever it is, but what is a challenge that you can never forget you faced in your career, in what you do at Kula, for instance? Yes. Yeah, yeah, sure. And I think this is going to be very similar to, I think, I believe what Lumi's probably facing as well. Because the technology is moving so fast and because we're in such a, I think, we're past the point of early adoption, I think. I think we're now going towards, you know, kind of, we're in that mid-stage now between, you know, early and, I'd say, you know, more widespread adoption. I think that the most challenging thing at the minute is actually marrying up efforts and marrying up structure with regulation and ensuring that everything's being done above board and making sure that it's actually airtight for years to come. And I think that that's the, that's really challenging the state of Sky Web 3. I'm sure Lumi's probably has to advise on very similar things for recruitment. And, you know, even, for example, when you're offering, for example, marketing services, as an example from my perspective, it's very, it's very important to make sure that, you know, what you're doing is essentially all above board and it's all done in a very airtight and a very kind of, if you like, non-questionable fashion, which I think is very different to many of the Web 3 projects out there. I like the fact also that Lumi's just, you know, she's leaning towards the idea that, you know, she's only essentially employing both senior people and also the fact that