**Twitter Space Recap The NEAR Demo Day: Roundtable Link: https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1yNGaNmlwYvJj?s=20 Date: Mar 15, 2023** Participants: - Kendall - Co-founder of Proximity - Will - Investment team at Pantera Capital - Igor - Managing partner at Hypra Fund - Ben - Crypto.com - Vincent - MetaWeb VC - David - Near Foundation **A. Thesis of Faith in Web 3:** - Despite the industry's unpredictability, there is still a lot of great talent out there that's building for the right reasons. - The industry is building a new financial system that provides transparency, speed, and openness to the financial industry, which is really exciting. - The founders and builders in the industry will disrupt the common financial industry. - During the previous crypto cycle (2018-2019), many projects were built but lacked utility or real value. In contrast, in the current cycle, there are many useful crypto and web3 projects being developed, leading to increased institutional adoption and confidence. - Issues from the previous cycle such as sustainability and onboarding friction are being addressed, though there is still room for improvement. - The fundamental values of blockchain technology remain important, including payment infrastructure and a decentralized P2P network. **B. Is there current interest in investing in this market and are you actively investing?** - VC are actively seeking talented founders and innovative projects to invest in the crypto market. - Pantera Capital has raised its expectations for projects in the crypto market, remains enthusiastic about investing, and actively searches for skilled founders and innovative projects. - Hypra Fund sees an excellent opportunity to invest in the current crypto market, with easier access to finding a capable team, strong founders, innovative ideas, and an excellent minimum viable product (MVP) than in previous years. **C. Could you share some insights into your recent investments?** - Proximity launched a joint order book fund with Orderly, Spin, and Tonic for DeFi infrastructure, and encourages interested teams to contact them. - Pantera's investment in Obol Network promotes distributed validator technology for Ethereum and other L1 ecosystems, with a focus on DeFi infrastructure and gaming infrastructure projects. They prioritize core infrastructure development. - MetaWeb invested in DVT and is interested in DeFi/infrastructure deals, monitoring social DAOs, and GameFi, but acknowledges early-stage adoption challenges. Vincent will attend the Game developer conference in San Francisco to make industry connections. - Crypto.com believes investors seek innovative protocols with different mechanism designs, and investing in infrastructure provides exposure to the entire space without project-specific risks. - Hypra Fund is interested in the Bitcoin Lightning Network for investment opportunities, as it is an area many overlook, despite ongoing developments by the Lightning Network team. **D. Advice on pitching an idea in the Web3 ecosystem:** - Founders must have a good understanding of the market landscape, competitors, and product differentiation. - Focus on the Go-to-market strategy in your pitch. - Other important aspects of a pitch include current traction, partnerships, roadmap, use of funds, and team outline. - A great product also needs a lot of supporting infrastructure to succeed in the market. - The team needs to be deeply committed and crypto-native to succeed in the Web3 ecosystem. **E. What are the benefits and difficulties associated with selecting a blockchain to build on?** - Choosing the right blockchain can increase the chances of project success. A project needs relevant infrastructure and functionality to work, select a blockchain where similar projects have succeeded can be helpful. - Layer 1 blockchains have the necessary throughput to make most projects successful. - Layer 2 blockchains, particularly in the Ethereum ecosystem, are expanding and breaking down barriers that once presented usability issues. - Building an appchain is challenging and time-consuming, requiring significant effort due to limited tools and being a multi-year process. It's advisable to evaluate existing L1 and L2 solutions first and only consider building an appchain if they can't solve the specific problem you're addressing. - Near is considered to be a strong option for products designed for mass adoption thanks to the visionary team and its early implementation of scalability technologies. **F. What are your wishlists for the Near and Aurora ecosystem?** - Boss is seen as the easiest way to deploy decentralized front-end applications, and there is interest in founders building their front ends on infrastructure on top of this. - There is a desire for more NFT use cases and interesting collectibles, which could be used for more than just profile features. - There is a need for better education and advertisement about the toolings and SDKs available on Near to help developers take advantage of Near's technologies. - More idiosyncratic use cases that leverage the ease of development on Near and create something new with a consumer-facing angle are desired.