Ryan Wyatt: Polygon’s Quest for Scale

[Music] hold up [Music] hi everyone and welcome to the metacast by novik a podcast in which we explore the business and future of video games I'm Aaron Bush and today I'm excited to be joined by Ryan Wyatt Ryan is the CEO of polygon Studios a venture partner at bitcraft and of course comes from a background of being the global head of gaming at YouTube as well as leadership roles at Major League Gaming and Machinima Ryan as I mentioned before we started recording I've admired you from a distance for quite some time and I'm really looking forward to our conversation today Welcome to the metacast yeah thanks for having me man I'm excited to be here glad we finally got

this thing on the books and can chat yeah absolutely so I guess before we dive into the details of anything specific let's let's set the foundation could you let everyone know what what exactly is polygon Studios what does the org do what's its Vision yeah how does it tie into the the broader ecosystem yeah it's a great question you know uh we really try to have a little bit of like church and state if you will at polygon and so we've got kind of a product and engineer engineering team that's focused on the pro of the protocol right and there's like a number of things I'm sure we'll touch on right you know our ZK work our POS chain super nuts and that team you know that's that's focused on those efforts polygon ID there's a lot going on right like we've got a lot of efforts very intentionally so and then you've got kind of the business side and really what does the business side do it's pure focuses on the advancement of the protocol right and in these early days a lot of people you know there's a lot of conversation and Partnerships and collaboration that needs to happen and effectively that's what polygon Studios is so I I always find it the most

simplified way to describe it is it's the the business team for polygon and so what is the business team it's everything from you know finance and Partnerships and BD and marketing and there's a lot that kind of goes into it um but yeah that's that's the that's the studios Team Awesome and we'll we'll dig into most of those specifics a bit more in the conversation but uh something else I just wanted to hit on before doing that is you're actually pretty new to polygon Studios you joined earlier this year and obviously a lot has changed over you know just a few months but I'm curious what what has polygon achieved since you started and what sorts of changes have you made to help set the company up for more long-term success yeah there's a lot to unpack there are probably a number of areas we could chat about so even taking a step back you know I had always so basically I add YouTube I ran the gaming vertical and that was really working with game developers and content creators in gaming and I love that right and and I

love that so much because you're you know you were at service to the Creator economy you're helping people think through how they can be content creators how they can monetize how they can grow their business how they can get success and then also what you're doing is you're like building the user audience you know you're trying to really build uh the total addressable market and scale that out and so there's some similarities there um that I you know that that got me interested in really going full time and leaving Google and going into web3 and so I come over to polygon right and I think you know I loved polygon for a variety of reasons and uh not to like tease too much I'm sure we'll want to talk about some of this stuff but the tldr was like okay I'm all in on web3 love it right now going over to I want to go somewhere like I'm thinking about like the decision making of going to polygon do um and I think all this matters in the context of the question it was like there's already risk in the space that's the fun part about being in a space Innovative it's risky we don't know what we don't know it's this like blank canvas that's why we're all here

it's exciting we're like gonna figure it all out and we don't have the answers to all these questions but one thing I wanted to bet on was where users and developers already in like ethereum had that and that's not to say like other alt ones won't find that one day you know I'm sure that they they will but you could just check that box off of ethereum and knowing I was like okay well how are you scaling ethereum and you don't have like a a lot of options that are big players in the space and so I looked at polygon was really excited particularly about the ZK Acquisitions they had made in the previous year and I thought you know okay like how can I leave an impact on polygon and I think the one thing that you know I wanted to bring to the table was kind of like organizational Excellence around scaling you know polygon had this incredible Scrappy team didn't take no for an answer like really achieved so much great things from a startup in 27 17 to like raising 450 million dollars led by Sequoia right I mean incredible organization incredible Founders and teams and when I came in February it was

kind of like three thousand four thousand apps you know we're at forty thousand right and so you could see you could see the theme of we're gonna have to scale this organization we're all betting that web 3 is going to be successful our organization is definitely betting ethereum is going to be a critical if not the critical most core player into the future right and so we're like we made these bets let's get ready to plan for a company that's going to be able to take on and and by that like take on hundreds of thousands of dabs all of the big web 2 companies big gaming companies right there's a lot that you have to do to set up the framework of that I also think so that was like a big thing I love doing that I have fun doing that I like building that out I have a very clear Vision on that because props to Google I think they're probably the best company in the world when it teaches you think I mean they will beat it into your head on learning how to scale efficiently right and so through this you know I was at Google for almost eight years so learned that and I was like okay you want to bring that over to polygon but you don't like nobody wants to work at polygon okay you

could just go work at Google right you want to work in the space because you're not Google you're Scrappy you're the new wave you're web three right um and so you kind of got to marry these two things of like the the the web three Scrappy speed and the Polish of doing and conducting business in web 2 and you kind of want to find the middle ground of both like you don't want to operate on either side of those I think either side of those it would actually lead to failure long term and so we're constantly finding that Balancing Act but I would say starting to implement that within our organization on the business side has started to actually yield I think really good results for us in particular Landing really large Partnerships because I think we have a really good narrative where we can come to the table on a clear product Vision into the future it has some questions and again we'll talk about it but like a Clear Vision of where we want to go and how we are going to support those partners and so time and time again I think far and away we are the like the leader on you know web 2 adoption big game adoption right all of this and I think that's more of a of us finding a

middle ground and I think the last thing I'll say which is really awesome we have a good we have like a good mix of backgrounds and I mean like diversity in every sense of the word where people live uh gender what their background is what do they do like we have web two we have web three we have gaming we have uh you know fintech like all these different backgrounds and so being able to Wrangle those people together around a unified vision and collaborate together has allowed for some of the you know it it has its pains as well but has some of the coolest collaborations that you know I've ever gotten to see in the space awesome that's a great answer so let's let's dig into that a little bit more I'm really curious how you compare leading polygon Studios to YouTube gaming you mentioned excellence in scaling so I'm curious you know maybe just in a bit more detail like what's the same and different in like being able to carry that over to web3 but also I'm just curious if there are any Oddities of web3 that you weren't expecting that you've been trying to get

better at working with and the the organization yeah but I have to even almost break that up into a couple there's a lot even there um so the first part of like similarities between between kind of YouTube or like YouTube web 2 Google web 2 versus kind of polygon web3 world I think the similarities have been have been interesting in the sense that there's this clear like a polygon there's this clear focus on community and developers it's like very very clear to our company and that that's like what we need to be focusing on like help support developers build community that's very true to YouTube only swap out developers with creators right content creators um same ethos you know content creators are the backbone of YouTube you need to make sure that there's a Vibrant Community there you know you're helping those uh content creators build sub communities YouTube doesn't have this like overarching Community it's got like two billion people three billion people but what it does a really good job is is

like a content creator empowering them to create a community within it and that's kind of what we're doing on our side with developers and you have this broad polygon Community but then they're in you know operating and activating across individual nft projects daps so forth now the thing that's really different about web3 and like my role at polygon is um serving is kind of like a GM on this side you you're not spending a lot of time in you know things like um uh you know legal side and people and kind of company structure in this like regulatory environment and all these different things so these are kind of new things that you've had you know you have to adopt as part of the process the other thing with um with this space too is you know you there's a lot that always is changing to say the least right you know I think like I find myself glued to Twitter sometimes because the the space is so Dynamic and I love that it's fun about it um but it's Dynamic is the key word there I think you know at YouTube very clear what we have to do over the next like five years right you know and it's

like you can kind of move towards that yes things change in the markets and stuff but nothing deviates so much this phase I kind of like there's a famous Bill Gates saying and I won't even try to like I won't even try to paraphrase it but the the spirit of the quote was like you've just actually I always have to kind of operate a little scared to stay on top of what's happening in the space yeah and I kind of like that right it's state we stay we never get complacent we stay on top of where we need to be you know Refresh on our feet we're really mindful our opinions change very dynamically dynamically as new information comes and I think that's all good and necessary but very different you know not something uh not something I was doing before that I like doing now though got it makes a lot of sense well let's go ahead and zoom in on what what's going on with polygon right now I'm curious maybe to kick things off what is having the most success on polygon right now and um you know what types of projects are you expecting to be the most successful more in like the near term the midterm yeah I mean there's a lot okay so what's

going on at kind of polygon there's a I think a number of really key things that we're focused on uh one we have you know a separate product from our POS chain which is the is the core chain for polygon is our supernets product which is allowing people to kind of what we call you know spin up their own dedicated chains there's a lot of appetite around this in demand you know we're excited to get this product out and Market just to meet the demand for it so that's a big focus of ours the other is we announced our ZK evm chain which was really exciting right and that is you know the test net coming out of that people starting to spin up the apps on it really have fun Tinker with it we'll learn a lot within the test net environment and that's a huge milestone for the organization and honestly some of the people like the engineers that have worked on that product you know this has been close to their heart for years right and so them coming it's not the end but just the idea that you can kind of like cut the ribbon and get a test that environment up and like start to work and play in it super exciting excited for all of them we're going to learn a lot it'll what we learned from

this will certainly inform like our product strategy long term which I think a lot of people have been anticipating you know it's no surprise that like the POS chain in its current environment is not our long uh like our long BET right I think it's perfectly fine chain and does a great job with where web3 is today but if you know we're being honest as you think forward looking two three four years out the PO chain is not it right and so we're super excited that we have all the answers to scaling that um but we got to kind of go through the motion so that's a big thing that's happening now um the other is look you know we we have to think about where we it's it's all fine in these early days and and you know this year to kind of place bets and all all over the place like again we don't know what we don't know I think we need to start having a little bit more like conviction around certain categories right there will always be the unknowns and we're gonna have to kind of adapt and that's that Dynamic part I was talking about but I do think it's like okay we've learned a lot so where are we making our bets we place one on ZK good that's that's going to pay out for us long term super excited

we've placed one on gaming that one's starting to turn out well like we're excited you know Midnight Society and Doctor disrespects game and that had a great initial mint and and you know you've got kind of um Horizon and so forth who just fundraise great project on polygon crypto unicorns like these things are starting to look good and then and then this next one is loyalty and reward right I'm kind of just generally at a high level think that you could do more with loyal and rewards that I think loyalty and rewards that blockchain has kind of you you unique specific use cases that it can activate and that was why I was fun to do the Starbucks partnership right um you know I think that that really shows their appetite you know not like the largest Rewards program in the world polygon again and so I think that is actually a use case category is pretty interesting and so these are the like if I had to tell you like the things that uh you know top of Mind are most exciting I think that's it um also too just the evolution and maturation of you know the reality that the company is not a startup right the expectations are

higher on polygon you know it can't you know yes we want to kind of operate with the the Moxie of having a chip on your shoulder but you also have to balance that with like you've arrived and the expectations are high now it's like you're you are not perpetually an underdog at some point you're perceived as one of the big dogs and you've got to like carry yourself accordingly and I think there's a lot that comes with that both internally and externally that we need to keep focusing on gotcha yeah thanks for for breaking down some of those those big bets that you're taking how you're thinking about um you know building out your you know tooling and infrastructure and in new ways part of why I asked about um like what projects are seeing success like where like where do you expect it is because you know obviously you know novik and most of our audience comes from like very much a gaming bet but yeah you guys at polygon have also done a really phenomenal job I think locking down Partnerships with companies like you mentioned Starbucks but also meta

stripe Disney DraftKings Etc um and so I'm curious I mean you know like like where are you expecting polygon to go like in the sense of like you know it's not just for gaming but like it like over the next year or so like how like like what is going to be active on polygon like where is the excitement going to be in terms of like how people are going to be interacting with it in some ways that you're building for in the near term um so I'm curious about that so but maybe we'll start there that'll follow up I think high level just to answer your question people it's that almost going back to that line of thinking I was talking about on how I made the decision to even like go work at polygon right it's I think a lot of people are going to make a very similar decision in just the way that they operate from an activity standpoint right it's I want to be on ethereum because there's like users and developer ecosystem there there's liquidity there there's like a lot of great stuff and you know I would say a lot of people are pretty bullish about the long-term future of ethereum and I

gotta but I gotta scale right like no matter what even like with the merge even with sharding as we scale over time like you're gonna no matter what and this is at least you recognize I think universally by everyone you're gonna have to have a scaling solution I just think polygon will be you know the primary scaling solution for ethereum there will be others like and it should this is like a the beauty of web3 is this multi-chain world there's a lot of optionality you get you know you give people freedom of choice and autonomy like I'll dig that about the space so I don't mean in absolute terms but like that's what we strive to be like we want to be the primary choice for when you want to scale on ethereum right like that's our goal that's like what we're aiming to do that's like why we wake up and get out of bed every single day um and I think there's you know gaming is like a really important vessel to do that um for a lot of region reasons I think digital ownership is at the heart of like polygons core ethos and and gaming can resonate with that and even if gamers are reluctant right now I think long term people will come around

with the idea of I'm spending billions of dollars in the games industry I should have some additional or more freedom around like these these prop or these purchases than I do uh today and so I love that my background's in gaming too so it's like it you know plays close near and dear to my heart as well too and I think as a gamer when you come in you want to be inside the polygon ecosystem and you want it to be like vibrant with users you want to be able to like move around that environment really freely and the way that you really do that and by that I mean like just the chain right you know you know kind of going bouncing back and forth is you don't make it just gaming it's like let's just bring literally the world to polygon and I know it sounds it's hyperbole sure but like that's like what we're doing so you know why does Starbucks and Midnight Society both make sense for polygon it's because of that reason and so long term then we have a you know we have a lot of users they're just operating with inside of polygon right you know and inside of our ecosystem and you know we want to we want to be this platform that kind of

opens our arms to again all developers and so you've got to cater not to being vertical specific it's just it's you got to cater to developer needs and when there's a huge demand for gaming then you've gotta you've gotta work towards making sure you support it love it love the ambition the the follow-up I was going to ask is how the heck have you built such an effective Biz Dev team so quickly um because you know there you have competitors out there you know making moves but but you guys are working with some of the several of the largest companies in the world how have you been able to pull that off yeah you know I kind of touched on briefly like I think the the team that's been at polygon too like the existing BD team that's been here even before my like before my time just people that are Scrappy and passionate and that takes you a really long way and so many of those Partnerships were forged by that kind of like tenacity that that team has and now we have that that group right

like our polygon ogs and now we've been able to partner and bring on this year a bunch of great industry experts across traditional web 2 Facebook Google Amazon all these folks who are they've dipped a foot into web3 which is why they're ready to make the jump and like we are bringing them over and now you've been able to pull these people together and literally you're just it's just like great learning and there's friction too right there's different opinions thoughts backgrounds that's not a bad thing I think when everybody has respect and admiration for each other you can have those disagreements and different opinions and it creates better than anything there's some amazing learning environment for everybody right and so education is kind of like bouncing back and forth in a really meaningful way and I think that gives us a significant leg up like I think it makes us very very unique and I actually I don't think and I really mean this just from like the type of DNA that the company has not just like just that objectively I I think nobody even comes close it has

yielded us the results that we've had but I do think we've got a a an interesting DNA and makeup within the organization gotcha all right well let's switch gears and talk about gaming and maybe a good segue for this since we just talked about you know how you how big your mission is um how effective you are uh working with other teams I'd love for you just to make your case for why a game Studio should pick polygon as its choice of level two what what makes polygon uniquely awesome um is what's under discussed about it that should get more attention would love to hear your thoughts on that foreign yeah I mean I kind of mentioned some of the more macro reasons already on why people should start to gravitate more towards ethereum and polygon I think with gaming is there's a couple different things one I think with gaming um people really use it as like a like a a blanket category like it's almost as like oh movies right like gaming is so nuanced so many different ways to make

games so many different Avenues types of games categories how you want to execute right and so you really then need people on the other side as in like if you're the game developer you really need people on the other side that understand like game development and appreciation of it and then on top of making games is hard right it's very hard and then you've now out like truly added on these kind of like free economies which is very difficult and and not ones that you can now truly meaningfully impact right and fine-tune because they truly are so that makes it and that's hard right you know tokenomics and all that's hard its own right and so if you're taking the perspective of a game developer in this question you're like what are you looking for it goes back to I think first and foremost I I need users and I and I want a vibrant developer Community to be surrounded by cool okay now I need to make a decision is this product a product that I can build a quality game on yes and I think you know polygon definitely does that now in POS and certainly addresses a lot of any of the

issues long term with kind of the ZK Roll-Ups for example it's like if you wanna you know you're playing like an MMO and you pick up an nft item you can't wait seven seconds for that to like show up in your inventory it's a terrible game experience right and so the things that we're doing across the board like remedy a situation like that for example and that's working with middleware providers it's stuff that we do at a protocol level so forth but I think understanding this stuff comes from people that have been in game development and we've got a bunch of people that have worked you know our CEO was at EA for 20 years you know we've got people that worked on variety of different Call of Duties and titles right so like we've got those folks in-house who can think about it now no longer is developing themselves but with that kind of pedigree and background that understand it and then you want that really strong relationship and because we then also know web 2 web 3 really well you as a game developer come in with polygon you're like great you have users you've got great Network effects other people are here with developers you understand game

development you understand what we're trying to do here let's do it like let's partner this gives me the confidence you know it takes all the risk out of the equation you know or as much as you possibly can and gives confidence for us to build and I think that's what makes polygon incredibly unique right it's why we we don't do vertical specific it's not like we're yes we're known as gaming being a big category but we don't want to be just a gaming company because I think gaming companies really need to be like who else are you bringing in this ecosystem because rewards users are going to be really valuable coming over to the games platform and how everything is interacting within the ecosystem as well too so there's a lot of that goes into it but I do think that makes us pretty unique if I had to like pitch why a game like why game developers continue to choose polygon nice it makes a lot of sense one one minor thing that I just want to hit on for people who might not understand what it means you mentioned ZK Roll-Ups a couple time and uh and how polygon works with them could you just unpack that a little bit for people who don't know it ZK yeah you know I think the way like the simplest way to kind of talk about

you know our our zero knowledge roll ups is it's speed right it's speed in and some level of security right and so it's speed to ethereum is like a checkpoint and so really the way you should think about it is grading kind of our product capabilities to be faster and process more trans uh transactions per second and do so uh at quicker speeds and so I think that's the the main takeaway for what we're doing on the ZK side right okay cool uh well let's go ahead and talk about what's going on in the market right now so obviously there's a lot of experimentation um both good and bad and the blockchain gaming space we've seen the evolution over the past year alone from play to earn to play and earn play to own now free to own is a thing and and we'll see what's next but I'm curious from your viewpoints as a platform provider that that also provides Venture funding to to teams out there what types of games or

economic systems are you most excited about and bullish on um and maybe it connected to that like like what do games teams really need to unlock that'll take this industry you know in partnership with polygon on to the next level I think games that are going behind like past kind of just like the the Pure nft Play and think of uh composability long term is pretty interesting and like how games can kind of live in like perpetuity with people forking instances of them and working on them and like creating kind of communities around decision making trees like there's some interesting stuff happening there I mean I love like the the basic concept too I still do love of the idea of like I pay for this stuff I should be able to own it but there's things that are happening now that kind of are taking more advantage of beyond that and like thinking a little bit more thoughtfully about end what can I do if I actually build a game on chain right outside of just like throwing the digital items on a Marketplace scarcity and some of the stuff we've spoken about at length for you know years now

um so I think that's been pretty interesting too I also have generally been pretty excited and uh optimistic that even with the downturn of the markets there's still a lot of web 2 traditional uh players very enthusiastic about building on-chain experiences I know it's a little bit of different like a diverting a little bit of the question of like types of games but I would say if I had web 2 games or like large web 2 games is like a category in this conversation it's good to see that they're still like a part of this and moving this forward and I say that because I think they'll be they will provide unique learnings as well too um and how some of this works um and yeah I think like the on-ramps too in general there's been some pretty cool stuff as far as like reducing friction and on-ramps you know like setting up a metamask account and all that stuff in order to and then like you know getting liquidity and how you get into a game like there was some there still is a lot of ux UI challenges but I think a lot of the games are doing really cool stuff I called out uh Horizon already earlier you know they just you know they just raised as well

it loved Peter in that company and what they're doing and like how they think about sequence like kind of their end experience is really interesting so I don't know I just feel that there are we're now in a stage where people are start like smart people that are well funded are really tackling some of these issues that were pretty big barriers and I think like onboarding friction is one of them I almost I strive for the day where like polygon is so passively happening in the background that it's not exciting to even talk to me uh anymore because like polygon is just you know it's like AWS or Google Cloud you know like use an experience you're like is this on Google cloud or AWS because like I'm only gonna play Call of Duty if it's on AWS right and so I would like to see polygon get to to that to that point soon as well and I think the Improvement of like uh some of the on-ramps that are occurring is is that that's naturally happening which is great because obviously the the focal point should be the great consumer experiences uh that are coming out of you know being built on polygon not actually polygon itself

right yeah there's a ton of innovation happening out there right now despite the winter and both web 3 companies but as you mentioned also web 2 which is really important but despite all of that there still is a lot of fud around the around the industry especially from mass-market Gamers around blockchain games so I'm curious how do you think polygon and the rest of us can help contribute to better educating and winning oh I don't know if that's even the answer man to be honest with you like I'll be I I really don't think about it or spend much time caring about it and I don't mean that in like an arrogant way I think the I think where people where their concern is and push back on it like a large majority of Gamers is really valid and warranted in the current state of the environment and it is not their job to be Forward Thinking or to make bets on where things are going they don't give a and they should it's like is there a really cool game experience for me right now yes or no the answer is largely no like yeah we're tinkering and some are coming out is not their job to care or align

with us long term of like listen bro you can own your digital items and sell them just put it on Chain nfts man it's the future like get out of here with that people come around when great experiences are built full stop right and you don't need to explain it I'll give you a great example of why I tune this out people on YouTube gaming in this first year it's like twitch twitch twitch and then like boom you know over like four or five years YouTube gaming is the biggest gaming platform in the world people are like twitch stocks like go to YouTube gaming it's better rev share model better for the Creator and you just see this Non-Stop and so like if you literally listen to like people the large you know population you should hear from them and what you should hear from them is you have not given me a good experience for me to adopt yet and that's all I hear and I'm like fair and so what do we need to do like we need to solve for that and there's a bunch of stuff that we need to do and we're solving for it it's just not happening today right and so um the stuff that we're launching is like early versions of What will be really exciting future Tech you're already seeing it continue to iterate you're actually even seeing games like

my like crypto unicorns as well they're iterating in real time like doing cool stuff and innovating along the way uh I love it this is what it's all about this is why we're here they don't owe us anything as in those that are skeptical um and pessimistic about the you know web 3 blockchain games whatever you want to say and I feel good on the flip side of that is we as a space and Industry are going to deliver some cool ass over the next two to three years that they'll be like word I was wrong and I like it now and that happened all the way people hated free to play then they love it's a big amount of people hated mobile games then everybody's on it it's a recurring theme and so you can't I again going back to the tldr like you can't be emotionally concerned about it because their points are valid and they don't have the vested interest in us long term they are they are purchasers of the present and there's not a lot to offer right now Fair that's a that's a refreshing take and um I guess related to all this and since you mentioned uh YouTube gaming again and yeah congrats on all the success

there by the way I've I've always been I've always admired your willingness and ability to engage with the community um you know even back at YouTube so I'm curious what advice or Lessons Learned would you give around how a how a leader should best listen to its users I just think it is literally impossible to be a quality leader and not highly engaged with the community I just maybe you can like maybe you can't I don't know I think I have seen so many leaders like managers if you will let's not call them leaders I think leaders like a little bit more of an ear and title managers that are responsible for significant parts of a business who are completely out of touch with what is happening on the ground and it's sad right it's sad to see it's almost like a waste of time it's because like it might not even be like an individual that has an issue it's like they have now become disconnected with reality and so it is like a part of the body dying not to be

too exaggerated because it's like you have all this talent and experience that you've earned over the years but you have now become disconnected with something that you are overseeing and responsible for and and so like that's sad right and so for me and in this space especially things are moving constantly right and so you have to stay on top of it you just have to and look like the only way any of this stuff works is like if Community is fully leaned in and embracing it so it can't just be fluff marketing at the core of you it like genuinely needs to be the backbone and quarter of your business full stop you don't have a protocol nobody is on it right um and so you've got to have this great Community you have to listen you have to respond but you also have to be able to filter it because you can't just like take all of your direction from the community or else you'll be sitting with them you know in due time so you've got to be able to process information be empathetic be honest with yourself and like adjust accordingly but dude I I I

Twitter has been my number one tool for Success on a personal level because of my ability to literally have short quick conversations with folks publicly DMS or otherwise and it's made all the difference to be honest with you and I I can't stress that enough how important it's been awesome well let's go ahead and shift gears and and talk about the future of a bit about the industry about polygon um and let's go ahead and start with with polygon so I guess I'll I'll just ask the general question what's next for polygon Studios I know you mentioned some things that the team is working on but um what's in the pipeline that you're excited about or things that you know more people should be excited about that isn't getting enough attention yeah I can't share too much but what I will say is there's like a couple key themes one of them that we haven't touched on that I'm really excited about is we continue to improve well I guess we briefly touched on it but continue to improve like the onboarding and on-ramp experience into the ecosystem so you

will see some stuff that comes out from us that leans in because you know I don't want us to just be like oh yeah apologize on for like closing web two players we're gonna keep doing that that's not gonna stop but you know we got to keep kind of reciprocating those efforts on the native web 3 side because that's where like that's where all the the magic is going to happen and allow for that like fluidity um and so real big focus on that closing out the year into the new year and then Studios continue like we'll have a lot of work to be done on supporting all these you know product upgrades if you will as we roll into like ZK Tech and you know our kind of new product stack that allows us to have like an you know Layman's sermon upgraded chain that can move faster right and do more uh so yeah and and supporting that is actually like it's a it's all big undertake right you know from how you show up with you know hackathons how you do developer resources how you go to market all these different things so that's what you'll

expect from Studios over the next couple of months uh a lot of work to do excited we actually you know we're you we're all these conversations tis the season of these conversations too right as you think about next year and so forth uh but yeah we have we have some fun stuff to still share with the polygon Community these next couple months like we got more tricks in the bag still don't worry awesome well how about this let's let's go even more radical with the question let's let's say it's you know October of 2027 so five years from now any any bold predictions um or bets on the future of polygon studios around blockchain gaming in general what like what is the ultimate Vision that you're you're building for over that period of time the ultimate Vision I don't know if it's 22 27 or what when the year is but if I had to think about like the real world like the ultimate vision is this protocol just like drifts off and operates autonomously you've got the ecosystem there you've got the middleware there you've got the developer Community there like you've

got implementation Partners like it's just operating right you know you've got people like you've got kind of governance from you like honestly hopefully in five years you know I'm like you know it's like there's no longer this this early like advancement part is no longer needed right I mean it obviously is needed right now you know but it's going that's the that was is the beauty it's like why we're doing all this right and I do think if you you kind of like on board the right Partners to build the right things that's the end that's the that's the end game you know um I I don't know five years is it three years or ten years right you know your guess is good as mine yeah but actually I look at that and so there's a lot of things that have to happen to get there I think having these like you know Capital continuing to go into the space so that there's like the experiences that continue to be built right the developers can do that end to end experience you know users are able to so easily onboard into the ecosystem ton of stuff that needs to get done but man wouldn't that be beautiful it's just like seeing something that run that is

um doesn't need kind of any outside assistance right it's like everything it needs is is within the protocol yeah no that's a great answer I just had to ask uh even though I know it's a it's a really hard hard question um maybe no it's a good question and it is like I feel like that's the that's that's our North Star like that's what success looks like you know there's that what happens how we get there who's building on it but I think you know you've got basically you've got now at that point you also have like daps that are you know like worth hundreds of billions of dollars that are driving real unique consumer value that are like unique blockchain app experiences like in the games category and other categories and I I think you do see that as well too um and that's when I think you get to that transition point I was talking about where people spend time talking about those companies like you're not talking about kind of polygon is this like base layer of operation from a protocol perspective you're talking about you know the cool like new age apps that are being built that are you

know upending and uprooting kind of web 2 and you know different different Tech sectors right um obviously thinking about the long term is really exciting but but not all teams um probably at all times feel like they they have the luxury of of thinking that long term um just because they're they're currently struggling to make it through the the so-called crypto winter right now and they're trying to find product Market fit in a rapidly changing environment or whatever their case may be I'm curious how is polygon thinking about coming coming out stronger on the other side and maybe the more interesting question here too is like how should other teams in this space be thinking about that too how do you make the most of a downturn and come back stronger on the other end yeah I mean it's tough right like you know the reality like polygon although we have to account very much for these market conditions because it's just a reality of things that impact businesses yeah we did fundraise almost a half

billion dollars in in February right um and so there's a lot of capital and we are in a you know we have a unique opportunity and our our uh fortunate enough that you know we we have a game plan that allows us to be conservative and and you know hunker down for years right years and I recognize that not everybody's in that same situation too right and so I think the reality is It's just tough decisions right now you know in a bull market everybody's smart making decisions easy now you know for these companies that might be well capitalized it is make tough decisions make them fast rip Band-Aids off and go right um it's tough because you never want to be rash in these decisions because they're they impact people they impact you know there's a lot of money emotions in them and it's unfortunate and you'll never be able to take any of that stuff out in the process it's just the human reality of it but one thing you can control is speed and you do have to move fast on that stuff and so iterate quick

you know make decisions quick do all of that quickly before we wrap up I want to spend a couple moments um talking to you from less the the polygon lens and more your investor lens you know as I mentioned your adventure partner at bitcraft you've done um you know Angel Investing you serve as a board member advisor um I'm I'm just curious you know apart from what all polygon is working on what else are you excited about um in the games industry these these days what what trends are you you know looking to to invest in yeah so I think uh you know as an investor one thing that like really excites so I kind of have made you know on a personal Angel level I've made like a lot of bets across the board I think the one that I'm like personally really interested in both on the The Venture partner side and Angel side is middleware right like I think particularly with game developers we

kind of talked about it earlier like some of the challenges of building specific games on chain um that people haven't really thought through of some of the back end service tooling that's going to need to be offered in order to actually launch and do some of these very Creative Visions around games is important and so I've I have a really big interest right now in middleware so like third web was a is an investment that I did as well and I love that company and I think you know they're solving for a lot of those problems and there's other ones even I have and I haven't invested in that I love like pragma is a great example as well back-end service they're not really doing anything blockchain games right now but like I think inevitably they'll have like very good tooling Suite to help people on board Forte you know pretty pretty cool like what they were thinking about and like their thesis so yeah I do feel there's that's going to be like a really critical part and even immutable right as like as a competitor is why you know I invested in immutable is interesting right like gaming specific vertical specific category how are they going to help tackle unique challenges of onboarding games into the ecosystem and so I keep an eye for that

I think people the reason too I keep an eye on that is like I think people really underestimate the the necessity and and uh um desire for tooling support in web 3 games uh we just have focused on web 3 games and not like okay how are we gonna do these the right way you know and I think that question continues to come up more and more awesome well those are great answers final question for you Ryan um how can listeners who are interested in all that we've talked about today best follow along with polygon Studios and also best follow along with you yeah so my Twitter's twitter.comwiz follow along there and then uh twitter.com polygon Studios as well and uh we that you know between that you'll get plenty of polygon information awesome well well thank you again Ryan for joining me today I genuinely can't wait to to watch to see where both you and polygon Go From Here lots of exciting stuff we're in a really exciting time so so thanks again for joining me today

I love it thanks so much for having me good luck good luck with everything and uh excited to talk again in the future awesome and so all of our listeners if you enjoyed this episode please make sure to give us a like subscribe five stars it would it would mean a lot and we'll put the links to all things Ryan and polygon in the description below for you to check out and of course if you want to check out all the things that novik is up to too we'll put some links down there as well thanks for listening and we'll catch you next time [Music] hold up [Music]