Gordon Frayne: Tao Ecosystem Insights, Bittensor Subnets vs ERC20 Tokens DeFi Liquidity | Ep. 81

I think this is a little bit of a paradigm shift that you have to have. And I think I had it with Bitcoin and I think that's why so many people that have been immersed in Bitcoin, Bit Tensor is able to click with them a little bit quicker because they understand the fixed supply. They understand the tokconomic structure and then you can see how that begins to apply to Bit Tensor and Subnet Alpha tokens.

I started in Bitcoin in 2017, got into Ethereum and Salana with everything happening in DeFi. And then when I came across Bit Tensor, everything just clicked and the opportunity was very apparent and so I think that's a journey for a lot of people and if I can help continue tapping into other ecosystems like Ethereum and Salana and a few others to bridge those people into tow or taill them, then I want to keep trying to do that.

What we're doing on Bit Tensor is we're providing what most people refer to as proof of useful work. So, Bitcoin's proof of work is just pure hash power, compute, and energy being wasted, but ultimately being used to secure the network from bad actors. For Bit Tensor becoming proof of useful work means that rather than just providing pure hash rate, we are providing in some cases hash rate but in some cases intelligence.

Welcome to the Ventura Labs podcast. Today we're joined by Gordon Frame, one of Bitensor's most prolific content creators. He shares his journey from crypto's 2017 ICO boom to launching a YouTube channel in 2024. Gordon compares Ethereum tokens and Bit Tensor subnets, discusses high staking yields and investment strategies, reflects on dynamic TAL's net positives, explains Bit Tensor as an incentive layer for proof of useful work, and offers advice on contributing via staking, mining, or trading.

Now, back to Gordon with the 81st Ventura Labs podcast.

Okay, Gordon Fry. Frame. Damn it. I mispronounced it. It's all good. My apologies. But one of the most prolific content creators in Bit Tensor to date. How you doing today, Brad?

I'm very good, Grant. Thank you for having me. Thank you for the compliment. I don't know about being prolific, but I try my best. I try to spread the good word of Tao and try to get more people involved in the ecosystem. So excited to get into our conversation today. It's an honor to be here. I know you've had a lot of high-profile guests in the past. So really appreciate you reaching out and excited to dive in.

Yeah, absolutely. Let's start with what was your start in the world of content creation because you don't have a background professionally in content creation. What motivated you to start the YouTube channel that's now 12,000 subs strong?

Yeah, good question. So I guess maybe to give a bit of background even before that I studied business. I did a masters in digital innovation which is kind of like that intersection of technology and business and I started working as a as a technology consultant. So that was like my professional background. I've always been kind of interested in that intersection of business and technology.

And so that was kind of my first foray into Bitcoin and crypto. And I got into Bitcoin in 2017. I started investing just DCAing and kind of getting immersed in the whole world of Bitcoin and crypto. Back then we had the whole ICO boom in 2017. All of the ERC20 tokens and ICOs being spun up on Ethereum. So that was a roller coaster obviously because it was you know today is still the wild west I think in many regards but back then was even crazier.

But because of that interest in business and technology I started my own business in 2020 and that was an e-commerce consulting business and e-commerce is also kind of a nice intersection of business and technology and I scaled that business for the past few years. I still have it as well. But it was the end of 2023, Grant. I'd spent, you know, I'd been in crypto for kind of five or six years at that point. And even though I was doing my e-commerce business, I still couldn't get away from the fact that Bitcoin and crypto in general was just something I continued to be obsessed about.

So, at the end of 2023, I made a conscious decision that I wanted to be full-time doing Bitcoin and crypto. And so, January 24, I started the YouTube channel and just began posting consistently because I was, you know, I'd never done content creation before. I definitely was not someone who would typically post a lot of content on social media before that. So, it was definitely out of my comfort zone, but I committed to wanting to do, you know, pretty much posting every single day on YouTube.

And I basically in my head I thought if I can post, you know, like 365 videos a video per day, the 365th video has to be better than the first video. It was basically I'm going to try brute force this and if I can be consistent, I'm just going to have to improve over time. So, that was the genesis. That was the idea behind it and yeah, just kept going for the past couple years and built up a bit of a following.

Okay. So 2017 ICO, the boom in Ethereum, how do you relate that to what you're seeing with subnets? Do you see any correlations between the two?

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a great point and we have 128 subnets on Bitensor right now. a temporary hard cap in the number of subnetss. And I think one of the big things that when it clicked for me, Grant, became, you know, super solidified in my mind that subnets are kind of this next evolution of startups and, you know, value acrruel vehicles.

I think ERC20 tokens and all of the ICO boom on Ethereum was phenomenal and smart contracts are still, you know, a very important innovation in the world of blockchain and crypto. But the big thing that clicked for me and the big difference between subnets and ERC20 tokens is that subnets are denominated in tow.

When you look at ERC20 tokens, you can anyone can spin up an ERC20 token. Same thing on Salana. With Salana contracts, anyone can create a token on Pump. Fun and those tokens will be denominated in US dollar terms and the creator of those tokens can effectively decide to completely inflate away the value of their token with the tokconomic structure. You know, they could have 10 billion tokens of their ERC20 token and they could just keep inflating that at infin item.

And so one of the big things that clicked for me with subnets is that Bit Tensor is a fixed supply asset similar to Bitcoin, 21 million tokens. You know this and I'm sure most people watching know this. But then you have alpha tokens and the subnetss that also have a fixed 21 million token cap supply.

But because the alpha tokens are denominated in Tao terms first and foremost they have that value acrruel mechanism in Tao that is fundamentally different compared to Ethereum or Salana. The ERC20 tokens and tokens on Salana are denominated in US dollar terms and can be inflated away. But with subnet tokens being fixed supply and the asset in which they're denominated also having that fixed supply, it's almost like a zero sum game where if shoots has, you know, a 250 300,000 tow market cap, another subnet has to, you know, compete and ultimately take value away from the other subnets in the form of TAO to increase their market cap.

So I think there's a lot of similarities because we're seeing a little bit of a boom in subnets right now being built on bit tensor and I think it's the purest form of innovation that we have in the world of decentralized AI but it's even better than ERC20 tokens in terms of fundamental structure because you have subnets using as their currency denomination and that is a fixed supply asset. So that's what makes me even more bullish and even more excited about subnets.

So is it safe to say when you're trading subnets, you have the the towel toggle on and not the dollar toggle on for what the?

For sure. For sure. I think it's always good to to have the dollar reference, but you know, even the past couple weeks here in the market, you've seen the dollar value of TAO going down so much. And I think I think this is a little bit of a paradigm shift that you have to have.

And I think I had it with Bitcoin and I think that's why so many people that have been immersed in Bitcoin, Bit Tensor is able to click with them a little bit quicker because they understand the fixed supply, they understand the tokconomic structure, and then you can see how that begins to apply to Bit Tensor and Subnet Alpha tokens.

But denominating and thinking in you know bitcoin first terms was something you know I had to do like I want to get 0.1 bitcoin I want to get 0.5 bitcoin I want to get to one bitcoin and translating that over to tao you start thinking okay I want to ultimately acrue as much tow as possible and being able to you know stake subnets and earn staking yield but also allocate to subnets that are going to outperform tow on a percentage basis also allows you to acrue more TOAO.

And so, of course, in the short term here, we're going to see dollar fluctuations with the value of TOAO as it as it enters price discovery, you know, and as it retests critical levels of support like we're doing right now. But I think I think the people who will win in the next few years are the ones that understand it it the game is about you know accumulating as much tow as possible and subnets can be a vehicle to do that which we can get into but yeah thinking in terms of tow is is very useful and just to bookmark this conversation it's February the 6th yesterday on February the 5th we saw to price below $150 I think we hit like 146 6 or something.

There hasn't been much talk recently of this, but some of subnets, what is your take on sub of subnets?

Yeah. Well, I think over the past I I just tweeted about this the other day. We've seen a lot more TOAO flowing into subnets over the past 6 months. So what we've seen is some of subnets rising because more TOAO is flowing into subnets but we've also seen more and more TOAO flowing out of route.

And so I think it's interesting Grant because we're still like you said we're on February 6th we're technically less than one year into DTA and subnet alpha tokens even being a thing. So the the flow of tow into subnets and that sum of subnet number you know slowly increasing here over the past few months. I think we're at just below 1.2 right now. 1.18 was what what it was when I checked it a couple days ago.

I think what people are beginning to understand is the opportunity of having exposure to subnets. And there's there's kind of a three a three-pillar approach that I think about when it comes to that. I call it a bit of a a trifecta of opportunity where first of all you obviously have the ability to stake into a subnet.

The first piece of the trifecta is that you by default you're earning staking yield and the staking yield for most of those subnets right now is between let's call it 30 and 150%. I know there's some that are slightly lower, some that are slightly higher, but you know, being able to get at least kind of 20, 30, 40% staking yield from simply holding a subnet alpha token is phenomenal. When you compare it to traditional decentralized finance and even, you know, staking Ethereum, you get 2%. Staking Salana, you get 6%, staking to root, you get five or 6% as well in tow.

So that first component that you can simply get 30 40 100% APY on certain subnets it's a phenomenal opportunity and I think part of the reason for some of subnets slowly increasing is that investors and maybe some of the OG people in Bitensor are starting to allocate slowly towards subnets to capitalize on that opportunity because if they don't there's an opportunity cost.

The second piece of the trifecta is can I allocate into those subnetss that are going to outperform Tao on a percentage basis. And so if I put you know 50 Tao into a subnet today and it outperforms Tao by 100% over the next 365 days I'm going to have 100 tow in 365 days plus any staking yield that I've earned as well. And that's another opportunity that I think as we begin to mature in the detail ecosystem, we're going to have a handful of of true winners, I think, that begin to outperform and and last over the next few years with consistent outperformance versus.

And then the third piece is what you referenced. The third piece of the trifecta is den dollar denominated price appreciation. So, we've obviously had a pullback in the dollar price of TA right now, but over the next 12, 24, 48 months, where does the dollar value of TOAO have the potential to go? And I think again, there's lots of speculation here, but I I think TOAO can go into the thousands of dollars if you're looking out over the next 2 4 6 years. I think that's a very real probability. We've had all-time high prices above $700 in the past.

And so I think it's reasonable to assume with total crypto market cap going into you know the 5 trillion 7 trillion 8 trillion area that TAO would have the ability to capture a lot of value in that runup. So that's the trifecta I think about because there's so much opportunity and I think the reason some of subnets is slowly increasing and has the potential to continue to increase is because people are realizing the opportunity cost of not having exposure to that opportunity.

And you said a lot of thought there about APY and yields on these subnets. you're someone that does work a lot with liquidity provisioning outside of Bit Tensor. So just in crypto in general, do you draw any correlations between the two for staking yields for a subnet and liquidity provisioning on some other protocol?

Yeah, there's definitely similarities, but I think there's there's some fundamental differences as well. So I can touch on them but in typical DeFi let's talk about let's say the Ethereum and Salana ecosystems. If you want to provide liquidity as a market maker, what you're effectively doing, and maybe this is a bit new for some people watching, Grant, but effectively what DeFi has allowed us the ability to do is is be the market maker where traditional brokerages or banks have historically been those market makers.

So you know that if you go and you want to swap the United States dollar to the Japanese yen, when you do that, you typically pay a very small transaction fee or brokerage fee for to the person or the or the business who's effectively helping you do that currency conversion. And so in decentralized finance you have people trading on decentralized exchanges like unis swap like Orca on Salana like radium on Salana where they are trading you know US dollars for Salana Ethereum for US dollars etc.

Individual people who have liquidity have the ability to be liquidity providers. So instead of the traders paying those transaction or brokerage fees to a centralized middleman, DeFi has decentralized the ability for you and me and anyone who has liquidity to be the market maker. And we get paid that fee for providing liquidity instead of a centralized middleman.

And so that's what I consult and help a lot of people to do basically with regards to, you know, taking $10,000, deploying it into liquidity pools. And then you take that a step further where you can you can execute on concentrated liquidity market making where you're defining a specific concentrated range in a pool so that you only earn fees for transactions that are happening between, you know, $1,400 per ETH and $2,400 per ETH. It means that you can earn even more yield because your liquidity is concentrated in a very tight range.

And so that's a whole world. That's a whole skill set. That's a whole, you know, narrative in and of itself. And when you do that, you have to play the market maker and you have to have exposure to both. I I'll use the Ethereum example. If you're providing liquidity in an Ethereum USDC pool, you have to have exposure to both Ethereum and USDC.

And so you have the ability to incur opportunity cost because you're holding USDC and Ethereum, but you also have the ability to incur impermanent loss if Ethereum moves lower and you have to rebalance your pool and you go out of range and you have to sell some of that Ethereum at a lower price to get more USDC. So there's a whole bunch of variables that come into play.

And when you translate that into traditional subnet staking yield, it's actually a little bit different because and it's there there's pros and cons, but with subnets, what you are doing is you are staking towo to receive the subnet alpha token. And that's a little bit different compared to the ETHUSDC example I gave you a moment ago because you're not holding both TA and the subnet alpha token in the liquidity pool. you are staking the tow to receive the subnet alpha token and you're getting in most cases pretty phenomenal staking APY.

You know, I'll take Bitcast as an example because that's one of the subnets I've been staking on and and mining on, but you're earning I think about 60% APY in in pure staking yield from just owning and having exposure to the Bitcast subnet alpha token. And so that's that's different compared to what I referenced on ETHUSDC because with ETHUSDC and providing concentrated liquidity, you have to monitor your position. If you go out of range, you have to rebalance. You have to tweak things. You have the ability to incur that impermanent loss.

Whereas in subnets, it's a little bit more set it and forget it from just a pure staking yield perspective. Now the downside you could argue is that you have full exposure to the price fluctuations of that subnet alpha token versus TAO. That's a little bit more shielded in ETHUSDC, for example, because if ETH is dropping in price, you're slowly getting converted into ETH, but that US dollar that you have exposure to is helping minimize the dollar losses that you're experiencing. Whereas in a subnet versus Tao, if the subnet drops 30 40% versus Tao, you're having to eat that that drop in in price on a percentage basis.

Obviously, you're hoping that the staking APY is going to make up for that over time. But this also hearkens back to having to do fundamental research on subnets you're allocating to because the staking yield is great, but I think people should only be investing in subnets that they fundamentally believe in and then the staking yield is like a secondary benefit because there's no point in investing in something that's giving 200% staking APY if the subnet is trash.

So hopefully that explains it a little bit, Grant. There is liquidity provision for certain subnets. We can get into that a little bit as well, but that would be the fundamental kind of difference I would I would communicate.

Yeah. No, that was I think spoton for a tutorial on what is liquidity provisioning just generally. Bit sensor used to have liquidity provisioning on a per subnet basis. They've recently took that away because there was some gamification happening there and manipulating admissions with it. But did you ever participate or what were your thoughts on the liquidity provisioning within subnets?

Um, no. I wasn't doing that directly on the Bit Tensor network. No. But I do know that what you're now seeing is certain subnetss like Void AI Zerox Markets which is launching with subnet 35 Kartha and even the Rubicon bridge they're spinning up liquidity pools for subnets on other networks like Bass and Salana. And even with Kartha, what you're going to be able to do on zeroax subnets is be a market maker on their decentralized exchange and you can earn yield from doing that. So that's what I'm more familiar with. I'm not familiar with what you're referring to, but happy to kind of go a bit deeper on on any of those if you want.

Yeah, we can we can get into the liquidity provisioning subnetss specifically. I think the ones that still exist are 35 Ca, 77 liquidity, and then 106 void. Maybe there's some more. If I'm missing you, please forgive me, but there's been many over the years that have attempted this feat.

Yeah, for sure. I mean well I think the first thing to state would be the role of those subnets I think cannot be overstated because if Tao and Bitensor is going to grow as an ecosystem we need we need more liquidity to keep flowing in and part of what Void is doing and part of what Kartha is doing and even the Rubicon bridge from the guys at General Tao Ventures they're helping to also bridge liquidity from other ecosystems and the TFI bridge is the same which was recently acquired by Astrid 127 but the role of those bridges and decentralized exchanges in the TAO ecosystem is very important because if we're continue to grow if we if we're going to continue to grow we we need to get more capital but to state the obvious maybe there's already billions tens of billions hundreds of billions millions of dollars in ecosystems like Ethereum and Salana that people have invested and they are obviously somewhat cryptonative if they are already deploying billions of dollars into those ecosystems.

And so I think we have to commend the role of those subnets and those projects in wanting to further the growth of the TAO ecosystem by creating those bridges. And then what those bridges do is they create opportunities for individuals to speculate maybe in part because some of those projects like Kartha and Void have their own alpha tokens, but they also allow individuals to participate in a in a kind of decentralized finance way to earn yield from providing liquidity as well.

Because I'll just take Void 106 as an example. What they're doing is they are creating liquidity pools on networks like Salana and Bass which is the fastest scaling layer 2 solution for Ethereum and they are allowing people who have USDC or capital already on Bass and Salana to very easily bridge it into subnet tokens via liquidity pools that they're creating. And so that's obviously very important.

But if I'm thinking about it as an investor or a liquidity provider, I can provide liquidity and then when you or someone else, let's say, who has a whole bunch of USDC on Salana, you want to bridge and swap into some alpha tokens because you start learning about Tao, you start understanding the value of subnets. When you begin swapping into those alpha tokens using the void bridge and the pools that void are creating, then I can earn yield from you executing volume and transaction volume, you and thousands of other people.

When you're executing transaction volume to swap that USDC from Salana over to Subnet Alpha tokens, I can earn yield from providing liquidity to those opportunities. And so I think that's it's definitely a more niche type of opportunity because again when you think about the we we were speaking about this beforehand, but when you think about the the amount of people that are active in crypto, then you think about the amount of people that uh, you know, are are active and aware and understand Bitensor and Tao. And then you think about, you know, even further down, how many people truly understand subnet alpha tokens and that you can invest in in subnets. It's a very very small fraction of of the overall population.

So, it's definitely niche, but it's a growing niche. and the ability to provide liquidity and earn yield. Again, it's similar to the example I gave a few minutes ago where if you're swapping from US dollar to Japanese yen, you're paying that brokerage a very small fee for the luxury of executing the transaction. It's the same opportunity with those bridges that are allowing us to transfer from Salana or Base into Subnet Alpha tokens. you can act as a liquidity provider and get paid a very small fee for all of those transactions.

And then it comes back to the volume grant. How much volume is going through those pools right now? And it's not huge at the moment, but it is growing. And again, if we think about the next 12 months, 24 months, 48 months, and the growth potential there. It's a it's a it's a growing opportunity and this growing opportunity is less than a year old.

Dynamic TOW happened I think February 14th of 2025. Yeah. What is your thoughts on Dynamic Tao as a whole? You've been in the ecosystem prior to Dynamic Talo. Do you think it was a net positive change overall? And what were the biggest surprises for you for the adoption of dynamic tal?

Yeah, look, I think it's it's still early. You know, we're less than a year old. I think it's it's maybe unfair to say or, you know, I think it's it's an absolute net positive. If I'm if I'm just thinking about it in the in the grand scheme of things, we have so much more people being attracted into the ecosystem because of what's happening on subnets and I know it hasn't been completely smooth sailing and we have had things like the toflow update that happened in October November and there's always going to be tweaks that need to happen along the way but I still think it's a it's an overall net positive and I think you and and many other analysts have spoken about this But I I think that subnets are kind of the the new model for for private equity where imagine being back in in Silicon Valley in the early 2000s or the mid200s when you had startups like Airbnb and Uber all looking to raise funding and you had early investors being able to capitalize on these growing startups.

I think that subnets are that new wave and they're decentralized so that anyone can participate and yes there's a learning curve and yes you have to dive a little bit deep into to kind of understand the underlying mechanics but I think what Tao and subnets are doing is democratizing the ability for anybody to participate in in value speculation and not all subnets are going to win. We know that we've seen deregistrations over the past year with subnets and DTA and uh you know there's there's actors who are you know maybe more nefarious who understand the technology very well but they are able to be extractive and create subnets to effectively just get a whole bunch of tow and and get out again. So, it's not perfect, but I still think the opportunity and the growth potential outweighs any of the short-term speed bumps that I think we're overcoming along the way.

How much do you emphasize trading in subnets versus purely investing? Are you a buy and hold or you in and out?

I'm I'm much more of a buy and hold. Yeah. So, you know, I think this goes back to when I came across Bitcoin in 2017, just taking that DCA long-term approach. Look, I I'm not a day trader or a swing trader. And I think that approach can definitely work because there are people in in Tao and DTO who are able to trade subnets almost on a daily basis and they're getting in and out of positions and they're using that as a way to accumulate more TOAO.

I've tried day trading in the past. It it's not something that suits my personality extremely well. And so I'm definitely more of like a growth investor allocator. And what I try to do is do the fundamental research on the subnetss that I feel can outperform over the next 12 24 48 months and strategically allocate to those subnets in order to ultimately acrue more tow compared to what I invested in the first place. And then like we said earlier, the the staking APY is like the cherry on top, but doing doing the research and approaching it from more of a fundamental standpoint is what is what I personally do.

But again, if you're good at day trading, you can uh, you know, subnets are volatile and you have the ability to capitalize on that volatility to to make some good tow.

What does your investment framework look like for the research that you do on these subnets at a fundamental level? What are some things you look for?

Yeah, great question. I mean going going deep into understanding the business model like what what is the subnet trying to solve from a problem perspective? You know, asking the question of why why does this need to be a subnet on Bit Tensor is important as well. what is the incentive mechanism? How is the subnet incentivizing miners to provide proof of intelligence or proof of useful work and how does that fit into the ecosystem as a whole?

I think the people behind it are important as well and understanding the personalities and you know the track record to a certain extent but I can also appreciate we've got some young subnet founders and ambitious people that are very very intelligent. So, you know, knowing that on a technical level, which I'm not overly technical, there's people who are, you know, savant when it comes to being able to write code and do amazing things.

So, all of those together I think are very very important. Understanding the um you know the the burn mechanism, if there's a burn mechanism, do they want to be creating an alpha treasury? what are they doing with the alpha tokens? So, I think all of that is important to understand at a fundamental level. And then I try to try to allocate accordingly.

So yeah, that's a little bit of a flavor. I can double click on any of those if you want, but some of it it it comes down to like just being and making a judgment call as well, Grant, when you when you weigh up all of those, uh, those fundamentals.

Well, you're someone with a a breadth of knowledge in crypto. Are there any other crypto projects at the moment that are peing your interest?

Um, nothing nothing as close as to no. No. I mean, when I created my my channel on YouTube, and this was one of actually to go back to your previous question very quickly, selfishly, one of the reasons why I started interviewing Subnet founders and people in the TAO ecosystem is to go deeper, you know, and understand what they're doing. So, you know, I I definitely want to spread the good word about Tao and subnets, but selfishly like getting on an interview with a Subnet founder and being able to have an hour to ask them questions, you know, that's a phenomenal way to truly understand what they're doing. So, from a selfish standpoint, you know, that that is that is something that is very helpful in my own journey to evaluate and assess subnets and the people behind them.

But when I started my channel on YouTube back in January 24, I started posting, yeah, general crypto content. And I've been doing DeFi for a number of years, as we mentioned. And I still post about other ecosystems and other opportunities in DeFi, like how to generate yield in liquidity pools, how to use perexes, and how to, you know, earn yield from, you know, hedging liquidity pools with perpex long and short positions, etc. But nothing is nearly as exciting to me as as Bitensor and Tao.

And I think everyone when they get into Bit Tensor as they go deeper, it's almost like a it's like a gravitational pull that you can't get away from when things start to click and you keep going deeper. I think now the the role I see myself having is as I continue to post and share content about other ecosystems, I'm trying to maybe indirectly towill people from Ethereum and Salana and and get them into Bit Tensor. And so again, I think if we want to grow as a as a protocol and as an ecosystem, tapping into cryptonative audiences is is useful to get more people into tow.

That was the journey I had myself like I started in Bitcoin in 2017. I uh you know got into Ethereum and Salana with everything happening in DeFi. And then when I came across Bit Tensor, everything you know just clicked and the opportunity was very very apparent. And so I think that's a journey for a lot of people. And if I can help continue tapping into other ecosystems like Ethereum and Salana and and a few others to bridge those people into tow or pill them, then I want to keep trying to do that.

What is your bull and bare case for Bit Tensor as a whole? Like what would you say are bullish changes or indicators like say a DTA upgrade or a Talow upgrade or a subnet a new subnet coming on? And then the inverse the bare case. What things could we see happen in the ecosystem to where you're like ah this is falling apart. everything's going downhill now?

Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I'm sure people looking from the outside in, when they look at the dollar price over the past few weeks, maybe they're saying, you know, things are falling apart because, you know, we shot up to $550 there in October, November, and we are back down at we touched 144 yesterday like you mentioned earlier. So I think to the untrained eye looking from the outside in, you know, things might look like they're burning, but you and me and a lot of other people in the ecosystem, we can see the phenomenal amount of fundamental building and work that is happening with subnets behind the scenes.

And every week there is a phenomenal pace of innovation and updates and real world building happening across the entire subnet ecosystem. So, you know, I think that that has only continued to accelerate since the beginning of ZTO in my opinion and we are seeing phenomenal founders and builders continuing to push the limits with what's possible and continuing to upgrade and and push updates within subnets.

The way that I look at it, Grant, is I think other ecosystems like and again maybe not Salana and Ethereum so much because they are pretty well established but maybe to a certain extent but you see other other protocols and other crypto assets where I think the valuations of their tokens or protocols are way overstated. like the the fundamentals are not there to underpin the highly inflated valuations that they have in the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. Whereas I actually think Tao is the inverse. I think there's so much fundamentally sound building and innovation happening under the hood, but the market cap and the valuation of Bit Tensor as a whole does not reflect the phenomenal amount of of building and innovation that's happening under the hood.

And I think part of that again is because it's not easy to understand. You go to the Bit Tensor website and you're still like what the heck is Bit Bit Tensor? like I faded it for the first 6 months cuz I went to bitscenter.com and I was like I I I don't understand this. I I'll come back to it later you know and it's not until you dive into, you know, to stats or tow.app and you begin to evaluate individual subnets and you're like oh there's actually 128 legitimate AI startups building here and I can dive in and I can see the tokconomics and I can check out their GitHub repos and I