[0:02]Ladies and gentlemen, check 212. I think I I think we're live. Welcome. Guys, make sure you're strapped in today for this special live stream. We got two special guests. We got Zane and we got Ryan right here from the Kronos Labs team. Give them a warm welcome. I would say I think this is this is your guys's first like public appearance, right? First, baby. You got number one. You got number one. Super special. Thank you, guys. So I I sort of handled the Kronos team. They asked me to not ask any easy questions. Uh, I want to start with an easy question to get things rolling. Uh, could you guys just introduce yourself because I I think nobody has been living under a rock, but you guys are still pretty new, so maybe quick introduction? Go ahead, Zane. You just kick us off. Yeah, howdy, everyone. My name is Zane. I'm leading the product team here at Kronos Labs. Um, prior to Kronos, I was working on high-frequency trading infrastructure in the Solana ecosystem. Prior to that, spent three and a half years building the OB stack, which is used by Coinbase, Kraken, a few other institutions to run their own L2 environment. Prior to all the crypto experience, I was at Facebook focused on news feed ranking. So, long story short, excited to pair the consumer experience with everything we've learned over the last four years and build one of the most compelling venues for retail traders across the world. Zane, what a chat intro. Um, so my name's Ryan, CEO of Kronos Labs. Uh, joined in December, love being here. Before that, I was the Chief Growth Officer at Optimism, where I got to work with Zane, by the way. Um, I was President for a couple years at Polygon Labs, and then before that, I was actually in the gaming industry, which is where I started my career. And uh, went to YouTube in 2014, early days of YouTube, and started the gaming vertical. So, I was the head of gaming there, built that business out, which was awesome, dude. Spent eight years doing that, and uh, saw that turn into a huge business. When I left, we had 450 million unique users watching gaming video every single day and generating billions in revenue. And so, kind of seeing that arc grow was really fun. And I probably get ahead of it a little bit, but why I'm excited to be at Kronos, is it's kind of the mix of I spent four years on the infrastructure side and then all this consumer-facing side, you know, building YouTube. And get to see like the world's merge a little bit here. Uh, I I'm sure you'll want to know more about that, but that is why it's fun to be here and uh, and have this conversation. And what about you, Zane? Because what why did you join Kronos? Besides, of course, Ryan, I think that's always fun. Come on, dude. That's the answer's right here, baby. I'll I'll jump in. Look, um, obviously getting to work with Ryan and Smith again is uh is a pleasure. But I think the the really unique opportunity is the relationship that Kronos has with crypto.com. A lot of people don't know this, but crypto.com, especially on the West, is one of the, I think it's the second largest venue for BTC spot volume. So, there is a significant opportunity and Kronos thus far has not really met that threshold, uh in terms of adoption that a lot of us expected to see. And when you look at how this technology is progressing, what we see are players with distribution have an unfair advantage in terms of gaining retail interest, institutional adoption, and what I see as Kronos is that perfect place where we can tap into some of that distribution and uh institutional relationships that crypto.com has, as well as the great EVM technology that the chain has and build a compelling product. So, long story short, there's a good uh base of technology here, and the untapped opportunity that Ryan, Smith, myself, and the rest of the team are going to go after is really integrating that deeper with crypto.com and going after uh the distribution opportunity in front of us. Can I just add onto that as well real quick? Like, when I was thinking about what next to do in in kind of crypto, it was kind of abysmal, you know, to be honest with you. Because the whole like speculative nature of where the space was at is, in my opinion, gone. But and so that's why I think people in the markets, they're like, you know, sad. There's all these chains that have like five people using it. The really big opportunity is being somewhere where there's distribution and like actually tapping into consumers. And so crypto.com, you know, it it already had, well ahead of any of these exchanges, tokenized stocks, prediction markets, credit card. I mean, well ahead of any of these things, ahead of Coinbase and others, and a lot of people don't know that. And so when they were like, look, we really want to get serious about partnering deeply with Kronos, there's more we can be doing that we haven't been doing. The time is now. It was like a no-brainer, right? Like, this is where you want to be right now in this space. Because so many of these projects are never going to make it because they don't have distribution. And we are at the most perfect time in crypto you could ask for. We're starting to get global regulatory clarity around blockchains and stablecoins, right? Finance, it is product market fit. Like we have this cold, like four years ago, CB. We're kind of like, oh, Web3 gaming, NFTs, we don't know what's going to work, blah, blah, blah. This thing's cool. We have like really concrete product market fit for these products. Like, all of the big banks, the exchanges, payment platforms, they know it in their heart, they're all switching to go on chain, they're all going to be on rails, and that will have that will like proliferate mass adoption. And so, it's sometimes hard to decouple from maybe price action and all of these things, but I have never been more bullish to work in this industry. Three, four years ago, it was more like, this is fun, let's see how it goes. It is very clear where it's going now in my mind. That great to hear, you guys. Recognize some kind of untapped potential for Kronos. That's also what you guys, I think, makes you so excited about. I I'm directly going into the questions, guys, because we have limited time and I I I got like hundreds of questions. So, guys, important for everyone in the chat right now, nearly ends, I will try to pick a few questions. And if your question is not answered today, I think next week there's also going to be an interview with Alex and his team from Wolf Swap. So, plenty of qua plenty of opportunity to talk to Ryan and hopefully also Zane and Smith, maybe in the future. And I don't know, I I already saw like a Reddit AMA, are you going to do more like those as well? Yeah, for sure. I think in general, one thing I when observing before kind of taking the role was like, there's no communication. And even when I was at YouTube, all the time, right? Like, I was talking with creators, I was talking with creators' fans, subscribers, all these people, it's like very important to engage deeply. You see me in the Telegram chats and all this. I love this shit. I think it's fun. I like debating. I debate and fight with Zane every single day. It's fun. I like doing it with the community. It's great. It's how we build an understanding. So, yeah, Reddit's cool. It's great to do the MAs. It's not as engaging as these forums, but yes. I will be ever present everywhere all the time. Okay, great to hear. Okay, let's dive in directly into like the the the hot meat potato topics. Uh, I want to start talking about the rebrand first because I I saw a lot of questions and also a bit of speculation about what's going to happen regarding the rebrand. I I don't know if you guys know the complete history of Kronos at this point, but we had the MCO token went to CRO, a whole lot of debates, drama, whatever. People are, you know, rightfully scared. Can you quickly give us an idea of what can we expect for the rebrand and also why are we going to rebrand? Yeah, no, it's a great it's a great question. So, one, I have I had a little bit of like Kronos lore before joining. It's it's continuing I'm like continuing to build. It's it's turned into like a Lord of the Rings trilogy as far as learning all the lore from day one, but I am getting there. So, I am empathetic to when someone says rebrand, it's like, oh my God, you're going to change your name, you're going to launch like six tokens, all of this stuff. No. So, what what are we actually doing in practice? We are keeping the name Kronos, full out. We're keeping the token CRO. Nothing's happening to either one of these things. We're not launching a new token, we're not doing anything different, right? Why Okay, so then why rebrand? When I look at Kronos, we have this kind of like from a brand aesthetic perspective. We have kind of this like 2021, we are uh infrastructure, you know, tight style, you know, look. And I think we need to change and appeal to a broader audience because we want to appeal more to consumers using products that are on chain. We do not want to appeal to be like, we're like the AWS of crypto or something like that. It's an old meta. I just think we need a little we need a little bit of a refresh of how we think about the brand, how we talk about it. We're obviously building something which we'll talk about later, the Kronos app. And so our target audiences is very different. And so I think it just needs a little, we need a little bit of an update. And so we'll do that, roll that out in April. Again, it's like, I don't want to overhype it. It is going to be Kronos. It's going to you know, a new logo, new icon, and refresh of the word mark. Um, don't don't get too worried though. That's the extent of it. Should have had I known what you've been right, I might have, you know, prefaced that um when talking about the brand redesign. I saw my Twitter feed. I was like, oh shit, I woke up the next morning. I was like, I think I opened up an unnecessary Pandora's box there. Happy to hear no new token. I think I think we have seen many tries of making a token switch, for example, we had the Epic token a while back and did it work, always goes back to the previous value. So I'm I'm happy to hear fresh rebrand, fresh energy. Yeah. And that's all Kronos, like we want to build something that drives value back into Kronos. We want to just focus on Kronos. We want that to be front and center stage. That's it. There's nothing else. I I think to add on to what Ryan is saying, we're seeing this across the industry is this is not an innocent space anymore. You cannot just launch something out of hype and hope it moons, right? You need to build a sustainable, revenue-generating business, and tie that back to the underlying, whether that's an equity or a token to drive value. And when we look at the magnificent seven, I'm using quotes here, of crypto stocks or crypto tokens, right? You're seeing all of these uh Mag 7 type tokens have that model. And our long-term vision is that with Kronos, we can do the same, right? We start with the first thing, which is building a compelling product that retail users want, and that uh solves for institutional needs.
[10:33]And after we have that, um, we continue to sell the story around how the underlying is uh driving value back from the entire system. I I think that directly tapping into the right topic because you're mentioning retail. And I think anyone that has been looking on Twitter recently or X has been seeing a handle change. You guys are now talking very much directly about the Kronos app and that's going to that should be also helping the CRO token in the future. But could you quickly give us an introduction really of what you think about what this Kronos app should be looking like or what it should be able to do, like function-wise? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I have a lot probably to say on it, and I'm sure Zane does as well. I think like first and foremost, we're not running a generic L1 playbook anymore. This whole like grants programs, hackathons, helping developers show up, it's that that is not going to work anymore. People have spent hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars doing it, it doesn't work. Right? Um, I think we have this huge advantage to plug into crypto.com's 150 million users, and we want to build this app that can actually serve these folks.
[12:05]And so, we're setting out on that, and that's what we want to do. We want to call it the Kronos app, because we want to kind of have an end to end where it's the app is up here, you have the Kronos network. And when I think about developers and what do they want? At the end of the day, a vast majority of them are like, they either want distribution for their token, right? Because they're launching some kind of project. And they need users, and they need liquidity, right? And so, there are ways that you can artificially do this, like, give them grants and try to give some criteria of like, how you list their token and all that. But at the end of the day, if you have the trading app that is mobile-first, that is globally available, that's targeting Gen Z, you are now giving real access as far as distribution. You are getting users to be on chain because they are depositing assets into the app, which is built on the Kronos network. And so, when other developers want to build long-term, on the Kronos ecosystem, they are now going to be able to tap into that distribution, that liquidity, and that user base. It's dry today. Kronos doesn't have anything of of, you know, meaningful size. The numbers are negligible, at best. So if we are going to serve the developers in a meaningful, meaningful way, but it's going to come with an intense focus of shipping a single app that is actually going to do it. And you can't just like put one leg out and throw like 10 people on a project and hope for the best. We are competing with like the largest exchanges and institutions and banks in the entire world to deliver a product like this. We are the most unique to be able to deliver it as well. And so we got to get like very serious and very focused. So, that's like where my head is at on some of these things, and that's what the, you know, this spawning of the Kronos app. Now, let Zane obviously chime in as well. Yeah, great great summary, Ryan. I want to re-emphasize this point around focus, right? So it's a sequencing thing. We want to build a compelling, valuable application that is solving retail users around the world, their need for getting access to inventory, whether that's stocks, commodities, prediction markets, crypto. And once we have solved that need and we're generating order flow on Kronos, it makes it a compelling reason for another developer who's building, let's say, a money market or the next generation DEX to colocate with the Kronos app so that they can easily tap into that user base and instead of trying to struggle and get their first 50 transacting users, they can get access to the hundreds of thousands of users that are hopefully going to be transacting on Kronos in the near future. What I also read a lot online is that we've been talking about the Kronos app, but what many people also think when they talk about the app, is they talk about the the crypto.com app, of course. And of course, we we also talk about powered by crypto.com for Kronos. Uh what what would be a reason for them to not use the crypto.com app, but to go to the Kronos app instead? I don't know if anyone can answer that. Yeah, look, the crypto.com what we call internally the main app is a phenomenal product. It's uh high security, high trust, and I believe it's becoming something like an everything app, where you'll be able to I I'm not on the team there, but I assume uh tap into banking opportunities, as well as trade stocks, trade prediction markets, trade crypto, earn a yield. It's a phenomenal product. Now, not everyone across the world has access to crypto.com due to banking regulations. And the way that we see Kronos is a way for users across the world, because of the non-custodial nature of the product, because of the blockchain rails, to be able to finally get access to inventory or assets that they previously were prevented from accessing. So, this really goes back to the thesis of blockchains and crypto and Bitcoin, right? We are democratizing financial access, and Kronos is the tip of the spear for how we're able to do that. So, I see them as um two products that are trying to solve the same need, um one is non-custodial and one is custodial. Yeah, again, just to add, like, everything agree with everything Zane said. There, when you are central as an exchange and you are holding people's assets, you are under in every single one of these countries, there is a different regulatory expectation of what you can and can't do. Just a fact, because you are custodying people's money. An on-chain ecosystem is very different. It's the beauty of permissionless chains and that ecosystem and the offering there. And so, because of that, you just inherently can have a unique offering and in the trading. And so, I think like really making sure people understand that that unique difference is why you can create a different product experience that you otherwise can't. And it's good to have both of those. People want different things and expect different things. Before, I think, people were looking at these things as too much of like, oh, you're just this is just kind of replicating what already exists, and I think that's like where a lot of people's head is today. I six to 12 months from now, it won't just be us, but you will see a lot of people be like, it will turn their heads upside down on what's happening on chain. And it's it's it's just a the a different expectation and rule set because of the nature of it. It's not like a nefarious thing, it's just factual. I I totally see that. I went to Cuba a while back, crypto.com was blocked there. So, my reason saver was actually going on chain to get stuff done. Also, because it's connected to my crypto.com Visa card, that's actually, I would say, one of the unique selling points as well. So, uh, yeah, great to hear.
[17:54]Yep. I I'll check if anyone has any questions about this. No. Um, I I think it's already clear. Uh, I I also see you guys have big uh, you know, big believe in this, it could actually hit you mentioned thousands of users, so you guys are trying to aim big. Uh, there's also because you guys want to burn a lot of CRO. I want to make the bridge really to talking about tokenomics because many people Yeah, I was surprised, dude. We're 20 minutes in. I'm surprised this is you're just now asking. Yeah, I I think I think it's time.
[18:28]So people have been uh wondering about, you know, it people are in the CRO fam partially or I think mainly because of CRO. Uh, I I've got I I can't see the clock here. I got a clock with the price ticking next to me and it's today it's a red day, but it's been a it's been quite rough over the past few years. People feel neglected and, you know, the the the worst was really, I think, when they also had the 70 billion unburned or mint, different naming, of course, uh, people have been really, you know, they've lost a lot of trust. People left the space, people felt betrayed. And especially because there was a lot of like lack of transparency on that front. Now, there's new leadership. What's what's the take here from the team? Yeah, there's a lot uh there's a lot to unpack there in that line. I think one one thing that really needs to happen is the efforts that we work towards need to go towards crowd, right? Like I think that is just has to be the case moving forward. And so when you think about kind of the token, one, it's like the network fees are negligible amount. They're never going to be able to do anything. Nobody is going to hold a token anymore. It's not 2021 for governance-related reasons. And so there needs to be like a real plan for value accrual, and I don't think this is unique to Kronos. I think this is what you're seeing in the markets have overall. Everybody is looking to this, right? Um, I mean, even look at Hype, who, you know, just did another purchase, you know, of a bunch of tokens with revenue, are showcasing that this is really important, that there is some kind of, you know, flywheel that makes sense for tokens. So, I think you just have to start with that baseline, that that is the reality moving forward, right? And so any project, doesn't matter who you are, you need to take this like very seriously. We actually started with this as like first principles of thinking about this. And so what you naturally come to a conclusion to is, you do have to generate revenue. Okay. When you're a network, how do you generate revenue then, right? It's like you could have a lot of apps continue to build, but it's really cheap. And so that's not going to solve your issue with the underlying token, wherever you are generating revenue. And so that is why we say, what do we have that's very unique to us, that we can do, that can help drive revenue into this ecosystem? And it is building the Kronos app. We have this unique differentiator of plugging in and being very closely partnered with crypto.com and the 150 million users they have. We have the ability to tokenize stocks and and prediction markets and do all of these things and then build this on chain. Then you're like, okay, how does that actually work from there is how do you distribute revenue down into the token? I think you can get into a lot of debate on do you buy, do you burn, when do you do it, how do you do it, all these different things, and there's different mechanics and thought process around this. But generally speaking, their revenue needs to go into like a handful of buckets. One, it has to go into the validators. That's like pretty key. You know, you can't just print tokens. We're not going to do that shit anymore, right? You can't do it. You're already maxed out that supply, right? So you can't do it. So at some point, you need to have self-sustaining revenue for the ecosystem, for the validators that are staking. So, boom, that has to be one box. You need to have some funding that goes into growth, user incentives. How do you get people to use these products? When you look at all these great, you know, uh trading platforms, they're giving customer incentives, right? Whether it's a sports book like DraftKings, whether it's a Hyperliquid with air drops, you name it, whatever you want, but there needs to be some user incentives and people expect some return in order to continue to use a product, but obviously have an ROI there. You need to self-sustain the team that is developing these products. And then you need to do something that goes directly to the token. Again, we can argue the allocations, what that looks like. The model changes based on money, but that needs to, in general, be the way that this kind of dynamic works. And what people are really going to be caring about on the CRO side, not just you guys that are token holders, institutions, anybody looking at it. They're going to say like, how can we trust this? How do we see the transparency around this distribution? When it goes here, how do you actually mechanically do it? You know, this is going to be really important. So, I would say that's the lay of the land. That's how it trickles down. That's how we we like build a robust ecosystem. It's not launching new projects with new tokens and all this is getting very dialed in on CRO. Okay, um, as as Ryan said earlier, all of these magnificent seven tokens are underpinned by a sustainable business model. What what does that mean? We're looking for revenue, and we're planning to drive that not just from the chain, but via the Kronos application by monetizing some of the order flow that comes in through think about a small fee uh for enabling retail around the world to access some of these stock tokens, prediction markets, commodities, and so on. And I think each of these metrics are kind of pushed in order to tell a story, but at the end of the day, right? What we want to build is something that is compelling and valuable to the retail user.
[23:44]And the best proxy for that is an exchange of money, right? So for us, revenue is the North Star. It tells us that we are building something that is valuable for retail around the world, and that is what we're going to be optimizing for as uh we enter this next chapter for Kronos. I'm I'm super excited about this next chapter, so I'm I'm looking forward to hearing more from you guys. A quick question, where can we find you on X or somewhere else? Yeah, please, FZZ on Twitter. Is that your gaming attack, by the way? Just just wondering. Yeah, yeah, yeah, dude, it was um when I was very little and got an Xbox, um, it generated like funny silly names when you got it. And it was Floy and when they released um, the Xbox 360, one of them, they allowed four-letter characters. So, I just deleted all the letters. So that it was easier to add me. So I got a four, you know, because the four was the minimum you could have. I didn't know I would go on to have a gaming career, play competitively, work in the gaming industry, and now not have a real name anymore, because it's like synonymous with it. I would have probably chosen a different one, but we live, you know, we live and we learn. All right. Well, CB, everyone can follow Kronos app on Twitter, Kronos app, one word. Uh, and then for me, you can follow me on Twitter as well as Zane Bachus, Z A I N B A C H U S. Right, guys, so make sure you follow them as well on Twitter. Make sure you follow also the X account. Uh, I think that's it for this stream, though. So, make sure you go there. Uh, go join the Discord. Go join all the place where you can follow Kronos. So, we can continue the conversation. Also, on this channel, we're back Sunday with a new stream, 9 PM, Amsterdam time. So, make sure you strap in. Also, don't forget to hit the like button. Also, push Kronos on the algorithm. Uh, on that note, I thank you guys so much. Ryan, thank you so much, Zane, and that's uh, let's talk again.
