Dylan Abruscato on building Crypto: The Game — from HQ Trivia roots to Uniswap acquisition

for those who take it seriously. Multiasset investing, industryleading yields. They're trusted by millions. Of course, crypto. And next up, we have we have an in-person guest in the studio. Take my person. Welcome to the stream. Do you guys need to swap uh headphones? Talk to you. Okay. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool.

I should have worn my suit. I know. You should have worn your suit. I mean, it's it's it's uh feel so underdressed. Yeah. Uh well, fitting that you're the first guest. You've been a close friend and uh advisor to the show here informally. Yeah. For a long time. Happy crypto day. Crypto day.

It's been um it's been very fun. It's it's such a uh it's amazing to get perspectives from so many different parts of the industry, investors, etc. And uh there's a lot to be optimistic right now. A lot more so than when you started Crypto the Game.

Yeah, I feel like we launched season one kind of in the depths of the bare market. It was uh you know early early 2024. I was was trying to think about what to do next and and I know we had spoken well you had had this idea for ever years. Yeah.

I can kind of give you the whole the whole backstory which I know you know but could probably be helpful context for the listeners. But um when I was first started working on it for real everyone was like you're crazy to build in crypto right now.

But in hindsight it was kind of the best time to launch to um but yeah I mean I I kind of grew up an obsessive Survivor fan. Uh watch every single season. They just announced the cast for season 50. I was like off camera uh reading up on that and uh apply every year. Never got a call back.

Um, but kind of played this like CD ROM version of Survivor called Survivor Ultimate with uh my friends growing up and it was like very very rudimentary. You picked your tribe mate, you you know played tic-tac-toe for immunity and you voted each other off um against the computer.

It was like very very early uh like early 2000s. Um and I don't know just kind of like always envisioned this world where I could play a version of Survivor online with my friends. Um, fast forward to my professional life.

Um, I, uh, worked at HQ Trivia for The Rise and Fall, which, uh, if you're listening, uh, you know, you know, might might remember a live interactive, uh, game show and, um, started my career in TV, but, uh, joined HQ for kind of the grand vision of a live interactive TV network.

So, in the same way that HQ took a game show and made it live and mobile and and interactive, the same could have and should have been said for a Shark Tank format or a talent competition or a dating show. Um, and of course, in my mind, a Survivor show.

So, actually first pitched the idea for what is now CTG internally at HQ probably six or seven years ago now, which is crazy. Um, and then yes, just one of those ideas that kept coming up.

I think I pitched it as an idea for a party around drop uh y and just kind of like, you know, was was starting to think about what was next a couple years ago. And well, it's interesting because it it was this uh one of the most complex products that you can build, right?

This like social interactive multiplayer, constantly evolving game that's happening on chain.

Uh, so watching you watching you build it, I mean you and and Tyler and Brian and and the team just uh uh did it very quickly and then got to market and I and I remember uh it very quickly took off and you very quickly were just I I you probably didn't sleep the the first week. No, not at all.

I mean it is uh it kind of ballooned into this 247 game show. I mean I I kind of assumed you know the way that it's set up it's it's a 10day season. uh every day kind of follows the same format of uh a daily immunity challenge in the morning. Think like classic arcade games or crypto puzzles or digital scavenger hunts.

If you win that challenge, you have immunity and you're safe from the vote that night. Everyone else votes people out. Basically, last person standing wins the pot.

Uh, and I kind of assumed people would log in in the morning, meet their tribe mates, make an alliance, register a score of a game, um, go back to work, and then kind of come back on that night to vote. But, uh, it it just was so so so timeconuming for the players, um, and and as a result, it was just 247.

Yeah, I remember, weren't weren't people like basically calling in sick or taking vacation days so that they could just walk in? most heavily requested uh like question basically from players between seasons is like when's the next uh season so I can request my PTO. What was that early controversy you you guys had?

I think you navigated it well obviously because it turned into a second season and then an acquisition by unis swap but but I feel like you quickly ran into the nature of crypto is that you're talked I forget who we were talking about this but uh maybe it was bology but crypto because it's so financialized is effectively incentivizing constant penetration testing and incentivizing the world to basically try to hack your system and I forget the guy's name Anish I'm sure you guys are are buddies now.

Yeah. I mean, we we made up in the DMs for sure. Yeah. Um yeah, so uh the way that it works uh is is basically you buy your entry for. 1 ETH. Um that entry goes towards the prize. Um and the the entire prize pot goes towards the winner at the end.

And I was always kind of concerned that there could be some sort of civil attack. Someone would try to buy up 51% of the entries um and basically guarantee themselves a victory. you know, there were a couple things we did uh to to try to prevent that.

Um, and we uh for season one, we kind of kept entries uncapped uh so that people couldn't like necessarily figure out what the 51% mark would be. Um, but yeah, right before uh the entries locked and the season began, uh, Anish and his army of bots basically bought up most of the slots.

Um, and kind of wearing my like web 2 HQ trivia hat, I was like, "Oh, bots are bad. " Uh, basically like kicked them all out. Um, and was like, "This is this was built for real people and real players.

" And, uh, immediately got the wrath of Crypto Twitter, which, um, somehow happens every season to the point where like a few friends joke and think that like I'll intentionally like drum up some CT controversy so more people talk about CTG. Yeah.

Um but uh I mean I immediately realized that uh you know bots aren't bad in this world and um so yeah we ended up refunding a niche and and you know making things right and he was so nice and and uh you know we we ended on good terms.

Um what was it like bringing uh web 2 or sort of traditional companies into CTG because I I remember you had some pretty high-profile partnerships as well. Yeah, Adidas uh actually sponsored a challenge during season two, which was our season two controversy. Um wow. Um but no, it's all good.

But yeah, I mean it was so um so incredibly like humbling and refreshing to see that basically after the virality of season 1, a brand like Adidas kind of saw this this little internet experiment um and decided to reach out and asked to be a part of it.

So um yeah, we had six sponsors for season two, each sponsoring a different challenge. Um one of which was Adidas. Uh the rest were all kind of like cryptonnative brands, one of which being Uniswap and that kind of do you expect legacy brands to get more involved with crypto?

We we every once in a while we'll see them dip their toes in whether it's with Adidas and CTG or Nike with uh its artifact, right? But but it feels like that's died off a little bit, but at the same time traditional institutions are getting more involved with crypto than ever. Yeah, I think eventually we'll see it.

I still think it's kind of a dirty word with like the big Fortune 500 like non-crypto brands. Yeah. Um the Artifact example like didn't go well for Nike. I would say the CTG example probably didn't go well for Adidas, which is like a whole another conversation.

Um but uh I I think uh we as in crypto builders and and pretty much everyone that's been on the show today and that you will speak with has seen some sort of like the wrath of of the trenches and the army. Uh and it's not a great feeling.

And uh if you are a large like Fortune 500 brand with like a crisis comm's team and you're kind of like seeing all of those replies and you know folks feel like uh basically when the crypto Twitter army like goes after brands I think it's really hard to deal with.

So um having said all of that as you know the experience and the UI and the UX gets better and uh you know things like privy like improve the login flow and wallet creation and kind of abstract away all of um basically all of the crypto from these uh experiences.

I think like big brands won't necessarily know that they're doing quote unquote crypto integrations. It'll all just feel like the internet. That makes sense. How how have you seen crypto? I would put CTG in the category of of crypto entertainment or crypto gaming.

Y uh it's one of the few games that that it feels like crypto Twitter, crypto X like really played and got hyper engaged with even though it was at a small scale. Have you seen any other games really capture people's attention?

And I know there was a bunch of like openw world games that raised massive amounts of money but then haven't seemingly haven't delivered. Yeah. Ironically for a crypto game founder, I'm not much of like a gamer myself.

Um I think of CTG as much more of a game show than like a video game, but uh in my mind the closest example is Yapster. Um which uh is is also very heavily inspired by HQ Trivia. I don't know if you've played around with Yapster, but um it's an interactive game show where you basically can submit memes.

uh the players can vote on the memes and like the winning meme each show uh is launched as a token. Uh so it kind of has that and it's 100% live and everyone kind of like votes in real time. There's a chat functionality.

Um and because of the speculation of like the token that like basically wins at the end, it has that uh feeling of a live show. So I would put Yapster in my mind as like the only other kind of like live interactive game show that's like really really exciting me right now.

And how how big can something like that get in your mind? I think huge. I mean, there's like uh the secret sauce at HQ was that you could win real money and like that is the case for like most of these crypto game shows. I think uh the difference with CTG and Yapster is that uh there's kind of only one winner each time.

Um whereas with something like HQ, uh tons of people could win. But at the same time, uh, because of that, you had folks basically winning like 25 cents or less than that with HQ because it grew so big.

So, um, yeah, I think like I don't necessarily know that like a live interactive memecoin show is going to onboard the masses, but um, there's like tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people on crypto Twitter right now.

What What are you seeing right now on uh, because I know you'll end up advising or investing in in other early stage crypto projects. What are you seeing uh as far uh kind of trends in the early stage? You clearly made the decision with CTG not to raise money and you had every opportunity to.

I remember in the early days you would ping me and you'd be like, "Oh, this fund, you know, and I would, you know, we we would have I remember having kind of conversations about why it would probably not be good for CTG if you were to raise and then but many people I think wouldn't have made that same decision. " Yeah.

No, I think uh with regards to raising, I think like not every single idea has to be a venture scale idea. I mean, we've spoken a ton about this, you know, offline, but um I you know, I think CTG was uh dreamed up as uh initially a drop, like a personal drop.

Uh I think that uh it's not like HQ in the sense that we really embrace seasonality and try to be very close to a TV show. Uh and so we technically go off air for like months in between. And I think uh the players need that because it's so intense and we need that because it's so intense.

And um yeah, I think you know if we had Rays we probably would be on that like hamster wheel of like having to build some sort of scalable platform so communities and people can kind of like spin up their own versions of the game and it was just like a very manual process and I I felt like um it wasn't necessarily the right choice for um CTG.

But um I don't know. I'm I'm excited about uh Pixie Chess, which I know, you know, our friend Josh has started. Uh and for those listening that aren't familiar, um the way that it's been described to me is is basically like a nounstyle auction for different uh onchain chess pieces that have magical powers.

So you can imagine a queen that goes invisible or a bishop that can go backwards, forward, sideways, etc. And every single day there's a different auction.

You essentially acquire these pieces, add them to your deck, and the funds from those auctions go towards different Grand Slam tournaments that you can like take um basically take your uh deck with you and and and play against others. Um really excited about that.

Uh I've been playing around with um Vertigo uh which is a new uh like decentralized exchange on Salana that's like anti- sniper.

So, I know um we you know spoke spoke you guys spoke to to Ben and Alain and and you know a lot of these token launchers and and tokens kind of have a a sniper problem basically where someone will buy up most of the supply and instantly dump it.

So I think like building uh exchanges with like cleaner token protections and and anti- sniping mechanisms is um something that's just going to be net beneficial to to everyone. So yeah, those are a couple things that come to mind.

Um, and then the last is uh probably Token Works, which is like the closest thing we have to uh crypto mischief. They do different like token drops. I think I saw you posting about that. Yeah, really excited. So, um, it's Brian Armstrong next. I think so. I think we'll see. Check the calendar.

Well, thank you for coming on. Your first the first official. Oh my god. Thank you so much for having me. Not on the set, John, but there you are. Thanks for coming on, Dylan. and thanks for all the help on the show. We got Brian Armstrong next. The gong is still in the studio. This the gong. The gong.

The real gong rings much longer than the fake gong. Yeah. Um while we're waiting for Brian, let's tell you about adqu. Adqu. com. Out of home advertising made easy and measurable. Say goodbye to the headaches of out ofome advertising.

Only adqu combines technology, out of home expertise and data to enable efficient, seamless ad buying across the globe. It's out of home built different, John. It is. It is. Uh, and we have Brian Armstrong here. Welcome to the stream, Brian. How are you doing today? I'm