Proof of Coverage Connor Lovely, Escape Velocity Ventures

This week, Sal is joined by Anon Morpho, Neuratic and DNB from the Ator team. Ator is building the largest global anonymous-routing ecosystem, leveraging a decentralized privacy protocol, on-chain incentives and signature hardware to rapidly scale its network. 



The team discusses why privacy is so important to them, how Ator is advancing decades-old privacy concepts, the first-party benefits their hardware provides to customers straight out-of-the-box, why privacy is still critical in web3, and the importance of token taxes in ATOR’s early fundraising.



00:00 Hello Ator!

01:27 Why Privacy? 

04:16 What is Ator? 

05:52 How Ator is architected for privacy

07:08 The history of Onion Routing and how Ator is iterating on the concept

14:17 How ATOR’s hardware provides rewards and first-party value

17:35 ATOR as a value-add for other web3 developers

21:19 Why privacy is still critical in web3

26:08 How ATOR bootstrapped their early token liquidity with token taxes

41:33 Where to find ATOR



Disclaimer: The hosts and the firms they represent may hold stakes in the companies mentioned in this podcast. None of this is financial advice.

Sami and Connor are joined by Andrej Radonjic, Founder of Grass Network. Grass is a network of over 2M+ people incentivized to assist AI developers in accessing data on the internet. Grass creates a more equitable and inclusive future for the development of AI.



00:00 Connor lives in a Resort

00:34 Grass merch coming soon

01:20 Catching up with Andrej

03:15 Open source datasets for AI

06:40 Why Andrej doxx’d himself on Twitter

09:30 Deep dive on Grass and the web scraping/AI market

17:11 What has contributed to the fast growth of Grass?

20:25 Implementing points in DePIN

22:19 What goes into becoming a data layer?

34:02 Layer 2 sovereign data rollups

40:20 Discussing monetization

43:50 Grass’ future partners and competitors in the AI space

52:27 Lightning round!

1:01:44 Where to find Andrej and the Grass Network Team



Disclaimer: The hosts and the firms they represent may hold stakes in the companies mentioned in this podcast. None of this is financial advice.

Mahesh and Sal are joined by Alireza Ghods, CEO & Co-Founder of Natix. Natix is a global mapping network of smart cameras. Natix’s 100k drivers have mapped 30M km across 170 countries. 



Alireza takes on the great DePIN mapping hardware debate, making the case for smartphones over dedicated hardware, lays out the long-term vision for Natix as a camera network beyond just road mapping, and illustrates how Natix could eventually enable a wide variety of use cases, including facilitating the use of drones in forest fire rescue.



Disclaimer: The hosts and the firms they represent may hold stakes in the companies mentioned in this podcast. None of this is financial advice.

Mahesh, Connor, and Sami are joined by Neil Chatterjee, CEO of Andrena and Ani Pai, Partner at Dragonfly Capital. Andrena is working to deliver affordable broadband to buildings by partnering with real estate owners and property managers through a revenue-share arrangement. They currently have 10,000 customers across 10 US states. Neil and Ani talk about the launch of DAWN - the first decentralized autonomous wireless network, how Andrena aligns incentives for both their employees and their customers to drive growth, and how they’re going to use their token to coordinate supply and demand across the entire wireless value chain, and their long-term views of the use cases of decentralized wireless.



0:00 What are new token launches doing to Ani’s hair?

1:12 Why is Martin Shkreli talking about Bittensor now?

4:15 Andrena’s growth in the last 12 months

5:27 How Andrena aligns the employee incentive with financial KPIs to drive growth

6:44 Does Andrena consider itself a WISP or an MSP? Or something else?

7:36 Who are Andrena’s customers and how do they fit into the broader internet provider landscape?

9:46 How Andrena is creating a better experience for both owners and residents of multi-family living buildings

12:16 How Andrena used customer referral incentives to bootstrap its earliest stage growth

13:40 How the FCC releasing 1.2 gHz of spectrum in 2020 encouraged Andrena to launch a DePIN

16:04 What is DAWN, and how does it look different from the traditional web2 internet business model?

19:29 How will Andrena fit into DAWN’s ecosystem?

22:41 What has Ani and Dragonfly seen over the past year as an investor of Andrena?

25:30 What does Ani view as what Andrena is fundamentally trying to do?

30:36 What synergies does Neil see between Andrena and other DePIN projects?

35:20 Wen Token? And what is it going to be used for



Disclaimer: The hosts and the firms they represent may hold stakes in the companies mentioned in this podcast. None of this is financial advice.

This week, we’re still recovering from ETH Denver. Mahesh gets Sami, Connor, and Sal to fill us in on what we missed out West, including new DePIN themes coming the rest of the year, where DePIN fits into the current wave of ATH’s and memecoins, which projects are still underhyped, and the benefits of being IRL.



0:00 Welcome Back

1:19 I guess we have to talk about memecoins, huh?

5:54  Comparing ETH Denver this year vs. last year

9:15 Why DePIN token prices don’t seem to be taking off

16:45 Are DePIN wearables the next wave?

19:46 Projects that are still underrated

24:29 GPU supply shortages

26:15 Over/Under 250 DePIN coins launching in the next 12 months?

28:08 What did the rest of us miss at ETH Denver? 



Disclaimer: The hosts and the firms they represent may hold stakes in the companies mentioned in this podcast. None of this is financial advice.

Connor, Sami, and Mahesh are joined by Raullen Chai, Co-Founder of IoTeX. IoTeX is the platform for DePIN builders, combining a fast, secure blockchain with IoT and smart devices.

Raullen talks about how he fell in love with crypto when he tried to break Bitcoin (and couldn’t do it), why he dedicated his work in crypto to supporting DePIN, the competitive landscape of DePIN-focused L1’s and where IoTeX fits in, and how IoTeX’s hardware origins help them serve founders better. 



0:00 Cold Open

0:36 The State of DePIN Fundraising

2:10 How working at Google and Uber exposed Raullen to crypto

5:56 Why Raullen was moved to leave Big Tech to crypto

7:28 Raullen’s Multi-Cycle Learnings

10:04 Why DePIN?

12:18 IoTeX’s Role in the DePIN Ecosystem

15:38 The Competitive Landscape of DePIN L1’s 

18:23 What are DePIN Founders looking for in L1’s?

21:32 IoTeX’s W3bstream’s Value Prop

24:22 How IoTeX’s hardware expertise adds value to projects

28:10 Dedicated Hardware vs. Consumer Mobile Device Trends in DePIN

31:00 IoTeX’s Hardware Origins and Early Adoption

34:06 The Benefit to a DePIN Builder of the Marshall DAO

36:38 Lightning Round   

Disclaimer: The hosts and the firms they represent may hold stakes in the companies mentioned in this podcast. None of this is financial advice.