Bridging Web2 and Web3: Innovations at Solana Breakpoint 2024

In this episode, Richard Carthon from Edge of NFT brings you live interviews from Solana Breakpoint 2024 in Singapore, featuring Raagulan Pathy from kast, Sam Kang from Jambo, Joshua Sum from Solayer, and Ian Cummings from Photo Finish. These innovators share how they are pushing the boundaries of blockchain technology and creating solutions to bridge the gap between Web2 and Web3.

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Key Topics Covered:

• Revolutionizing Stablecoins: Cast transforms stablecoins into a banking experience with features like Solana Validators and interest-free spending cards.
• Affordable Web3 Access: Jambo’s $99 phone empowers users in emerging markets with tools like Jambo Play and a multi-chain wallet, helping them earn and save in Web3.
•  Simplifying Restaking: Solayer’s restaking layer provides seamless integration and performance tailored to Solana’s ecosystem.
• Crypto Gaming Milestone: Photo Finish Live launches on the Apple App Store, blending blockchain gaming with the mainstream app market.

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What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let us know in the comments on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@edgeofnft/

Episode Highlights:

Raagulan Pathy: “We’re not just creating products for the crypto-savvy; we’re building solutions for billions who need banking alternatives, but might never know they’re using crypto rails.”

Sam Kang from Jambo: “Jambo Phone isn’t just a device—it’s a tool for empowerment, designed to onboard users from Web1 straight to Web3.”

Joshua Sum from Solayer: “We customized restaking specifically for Solana. The result? Simplicity and efficiency that builders and stakers truly value.”

Ian Cummins from Photo Finish: “Getting approved by Apple for Photo Finish Live is a massive step—not just for us, but for blockchain gaming as a whole.”

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For the full transcript, see further below. 

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About Our Guest:

• Raagulan Pathy is a key figure at KAST, where he is pioneering innovative banking solutions on the Solana ecosystem, aiming to enhance financial accessibility and efficiency.some text
  • Linkedin: Raagulan Pathy
  • Twitter: @raagulanpathy
  • Website: www.kast.com
• Sam Kang is the first employee at Jambo, which has created the most widely distributed Web3 mobile phone, the JamboPhone, designed to simplify access to blockchain technology for users in emerging markets.some text
  • Instagram: prodigykang
  • Twitter: JamboSam
  • Website: www.Jambo.technology
• Joshua Sum represents Solayer, a unique restaking layer on Solana that focuses on seamless integration and developing exciting new features for the platform's growth.some text
  • Linkedin: Joshua S.
  • Twitter: @0xJsum
• Ian Cummins is the founder of Photo Finish, a groundbreaking horse racing game that recently gained approval for the Apple App Store, bringing an engaging virtual racing experience to a wider audience.some text
  • Linkedin: Ian Cummings

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Transcription: 

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Richard Carthon: Hey everybody, Richard Carthon here with the Edge of NFT and we're live at Solana Breakpoint here in Singapore and I have another great guest with us. We have Raagulan with Cast who just came off the main stage giving an amazing speech to everyone about what you got going on over at Cast. Pleasure to have you here. Thank you for having me. Of course, so first I want to learn just about what is Cast and then I want a little bit of a breakdown of what you just talked about during your keynote. Yeah, for sure.

Raagulan: So previously I worked before founding this company at Circle, looking after the Asian business. So Circle's best known for USDC and stablecoins. And our feeling was that in most countries in the world, about 150 countries, banking is really not working, especially for global trade, people selling services and goods on the internet, and stablecoins is sort of taking their place. But the experience around stable coins are not great. Like you have to either use an exchange or you have to use a wallet. It's not like a banking style experience, right? And that's what we're trying to fix. We think that on the Solana ecosystem, all the components of having a bank there, you can have like a check or cash account, which is just stable coins. Then you've got the equivalent of a savings account, and now you can have a card as well. And so that's what we've put together, and it's very super simple to use user experience, which we've spent a lot of time, and we're very passionate about. And that's what we introduced on stage. But we also introduced a couple of other things as well, more aligned to Solana ecosystem. And so a lot of people heard about PayFi, and are still waiting to see exactly how that plays out. And we actually launched a Solana validator. And the main reason is that soon you'll be able to bring your Solana to cast, and actually spend up to 60% against your Solana, interest free for life. Of course, what we do is we hold it on our validator securely, and then we use the interest from that to basically cover the costs of it. But it's a very, very cool user experience. You have your Solana there, You have the equivalent like a Visa card and then you can go and spend against it. And you don't have to worry about, do I have to pay it off by the end of the month for my interest free? And we think that's a really, really cool use case to show the innovation that's happening in Solana. And then finally, I think the thing that we launched is the first ever Solana card. So we've partnered with the Solana Foundation to actually release four cards. There's an entry-level virtual card, which is free for anyone, which they can onboard with. But of course, there's always going to be people who want cooler products, and so we're trying to innovate around that as well. So we've actually introduced an illuminated card as well, which is like tensile, and it's like when you tap it, it actually illuminates like a Solana logo. which is pretty cool. And a little bit of something to show off. And then we have a gold card as well, which has more benefits and so forth. But then we have the crazy hundred only being made available right now, normally by invite only, the Solana solid gold card. And this is like the heaviest solid gold card in the world. It actually costs us more than $10,000 to make one. Wow. So it's like, and it comes with three of the normal gold cards and supplementary cards. Now, this is not really for everyone, but there is some people who want to show off the exclusivity that they've got their hands on one of these. If that's you, then go for it. It does come with some other stuff. People are like, what do I get? It's $2.50, so it's not cheap at all. But it does come with things such as our concierge, which we're rolling out, which is a never say never concierge. You can ask them for anything and they will deliver it. And that comes with a couple of years of that rolled in as well. So you actually end up, when you figure out earn rates and all that, it actually ends up being a DRSA value for money as well. So that's basically what we launched and we're excited to see what the uptake is. The Scalano cards are in pre-order right now.

Richard Carthon: Which is really exciting. So you are bringing banking in a very easy way to Solana. You're also providing cards in which people can go into the physical world and use Solana to pay. And you are creating this interface in that, I want to say that Web 2.5 of like bridging the gap between the two. Yeah. Solana users, but even for people that are trying to come into this space to get introduced to, you know, the possibilities that are Web3.

Raagulan: Yeah, exactly. And one of the things is that, like, there's a few hundred million people who are interested in crypto and trading crypto, but the need for stable coins and a need for banking is like a five billion person problem. And I think we're on the cusp of being able to build a product where actually for most of those five billion people, they wouldn't even need to know it's crypto rails underneath. It just feels like a bank, right? And that's basically what we're trying to build. We still have a long way to go, but we think the components of starting that journey are now available on the Solana ecosystem. But someone just had to put a really good user experience around it, and that's what we're aiming to do.

Richard Carthon: Absolutely, which is awesome. And you could have gone to a lot of different chains to do this, and we're here in Solana Breakpoint with a lot of awesome activity going on. So how's your experience been here so far, and what's been the reception post given your keynote?

Raagulan: I've got to check the socials because I just literally got off the stage. But I think Solana is just an incredibly active, passionate and innovative ecosystem. And so there's so many things we have to bring together to build this and continuously expand our offering. And we think that Like really, if you just want to cut to the chase, it's just basically Ethereum or Solana. The problem with Ethereum is it's like too slow and too expensive. And the builders are all coming to Solana. And so it just makes complete sense to work with Solana ecosystem. And also I'll just say a note about the foundation itself. It's just so incredibly supportive, so easy to work with. They promote you, you know, you know sometimes you're with pinching yourself like is this really all for free or like they're really helping this is so helpful and I think that's why we love the Solana ecosystem.

Richard Carthon: Absolutely well the energy here is electrifying there's definitely a lot of amazing collaborations to be done here and it's on your home turf here in Singapore but for those who are listening to this are really excited and they potentially want to be one of those exclusive gold members what are the next steps they can take to participate?

Raagulan: Yeah so you can go to our website which is castkst.finance and it's slash Solana if you want to go and check out our Solana cards. They're in pre-order now and then depending on the type it'll take a little while to arrive but they're available now pre-order or you can join the waitlist as well.

Richard Carthon: Awesome. Well, you're here first. Go check it out and appreciate you joining us today. Thank you. Thank you. Cheers. Hey, everyone. Richard Carthon with the Edge of NFT here live at Solana Breakpoint. And I have another incredible guest that has an incredible product that I'm excited to learn more about. I walked past and saw this. I was like, dude, I need to learn more about this. So we have Sam Kang with Jambo. How are you doing today?

Sam Kang: Hey, it's a pleasure to be here, Richard. Yeah, my name is Sam. I'm first employee at Jambo. And I guess the one-liner is Jambo is the most widely distributed Web3 mobile in Web3 history right now. Really wanted to share this vision is that since January of this year, we've actually sold 570,000 of these across 128 countries. Wow. And a lot of people are very curious how we've been doing that. Well, number one, our Jumbo phone is priced at $99. Wow, very affordable. Yeah, very affordable. And a lot of people are like, oh, $99. Well, what are the capabilities? Well, the capabilities is similar to that of an iPhone 11. So if you can imagine, it can pretty much run any Web3 game, wallet, application out there. And what's special about the phone is actually not the hardware itself, but what's inside of the phone. So if you get a phone, inside of it comes pre-installed with the Jambo app and partners that have partnered up with Jumbo. And so within the Jumbo app, very simple, two things, Jumbo Play and Jumbo Wallet. And so Jumbo Play, in a nutshell, is a dApp store merged with a questing platform. And then Jumbo Wallet is a multi-chain wallet. that is an NPC wallet that we've made with Web3Auth. And so the whole idea here is if you look at the box, it says, you have a Jamba phone, you have a job. And so we actually are selling primarily in emerging markets. So regions like Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia. And we're targeting people that may not even have a smartphone, people that do not have access to bank accounts, the unbanked, and people who don't have the power to do cross-border payments, remittances, tackling inflation, and maybe a lot of mismatches between the type of education they're offered and the type of jobs they have available. And so what does everyone in these regions have? It's time. 24 hours a day that refreshes every day. And so by, number one, giving these users a phone for the first time, through a $99, powerful, with the opportunities and tools curated in one place, we can effectively onboard a user from web 1 straight to web 3. And yeah. And so that's kind of the vision here. And we're working locally with a lot of on and off ramp partners. So whatever they have been able to earn, they can spend in their everyday things.

Richard Carthon: Which is very powerful, so awesome recap of everything. And I think you did a good job of pricing this out, creating DApps so people can, like you said, you have a job, you can go in there, you immediately start earning by doing different actions. But then also put it in an affordable way that most people would have the opportunity to come and participate with this. So I'm sure you've been working on this for a while. You're here now all the way in Singapore, it's a lot of break point. You have a booth, you have people coming through. What's been the reception so far?

Sam Kang: Man, I think a lot of people were like, hey, I see the sign, $99 on there. Is that like a sign-up fee? I'm like, no, no, no, no. That's the actual cost of the phone because we're targeting emerging markets. And people were blown away. And actually, today, we had like a pull-up bar. And so Jambo's motto is empower, inspire, live. And I think if you kind of look at what Red Bull's doing, they're selling an energy drink, right? The whole idea is you're empowering people to buy that product through many cool things. So in a similar way, we have a pull-up bar. The person who does the most pull-ups that hour will be able to win a free Jumbo phone. And we're also announced, this is the Jumbo phone one. We just announced our Jumbo phone two. And so a lot of people have been asking, what's special about this phone? Just for the same price of $99, It has higher specs. It has Jambo GPT. So now it has capabilities of GPT you can pay with crypto. We give free service in the beginning for premium GPT. Because a lot of people across emerging markets cannot access open AI services, et cetera. And then there are a lot of new premium partners coming inside. And so if you can imagine, there have been some other phones in the past that were airdropped some tokens. Well, we have 70 plus partners inside of these phones that all provide their own tokens and rewards and so that's what we have launched today and that's the big news here.

Richard Carthon: That's huge news, well I'm glad you were able to share that with us and you know people probably watching and listening to this right now are really excited about this, they want to learn more, hey how can I get my hands on this, how can they both be able to get this, learn more about the community, and if someone's listening and they want to potentially participate and be one of the dApps that are preloaded on here, how can they partner with you guys?

Sam Kang: Yeah, so I guess number one, if you guys are looking to buy the Jamba Phone, one, do it fast because Once we start officially launching the Jambophone 2s, these will no longer be available. What that means is Jambophone 1 holders will become OGs. So get it at jambophone.xyz. Now if you want to keep up with what's going on around Jambo, all of our Jambo socials are at jambo.technology. And I guess third thing, if you want to come and participate, we're on the fourth floor. We have a big booth right now. And the biggest announcement that we're doing is obviously the launch of the Jamba Phone 2. But right after Anatolia and Mert speak on stage today at 5.45, I'm going to be on stage doing a pretty crazy show. And that is all under the light of Empower, Inspire, Live, and product showcasing.

Richard Carthon: Well, I love it. Well, Sam, thank you so much for spending time with us. And everyone, make sure you go check out Jamba. Richard, pleasure. Thank you, sir. Thank you. What's up, everyone? Richard from the Edge of NFT here, and we are live at Solana Breakpoint here in Singapore. And I have an amazing guest with me. We have Josh Sum, who is with Solayer. Great to have you here today. Happy to be here. Yeah, man. It's been like a whirlwind over the last like several weeks. Obviously, we just met each other in Korea and now we got to reconnect here. So, you know, Breakpoint is just getting started. How's the day been so far?

Joshua Sum: The day's been moving fast. I arrived at 9am, started unpacking all of our merch and stuff like that, and it's just been non-stop meeting people. It's very interesting because now we get to meet the people who are staked on Solayere, and we're like, oh, wait, dude. Epoch Zero Staker, OG. I get to put a face behind the numbers and it's something phenomenal when you meet your end customers. But other than that, yeah, meeting a lot of old partners, friends, hanging out in the city, just inviting them for lunch and whatnot. So yeah, showing them Singapore, I'm from Singapore.

Richard Carthon: That's really exciting. And for a lot of people, face is the name, but for some new people out here who don't necessarily know what Solayer is, can you explain that to us?

Joshua Sum: Yeah, sole layer, so we are the restaking layer on Solana. So think of us as anything restaking, we are the guys for it. We handle, but we do restaking in a way that's very native to Solana, because you can't just copy-paste eigenlayer. Things work differently. The tag is different. Everything's different. So we customize it purely for Solana. And there are things that you can do on Solana that you can't do anywhere else. And that's where we are. I think we'll probably have a lot more of a product market fit on sole layer as well.

Richard Carthon: Yeah, which is why your growth has been amazing and why you guys have been so busy out here. So with being able to connect and be here in Singapore with a lot of your end users, what's been some of the feedback that you've been getting from IRL?

Joshua Sum: Feedback? One partner so far was saying that you guys are easier to integrate with because they come from the Ethereum world, right, where things are super hard to integrate with, especially for Eigenlayer and some of the other protocols. First, we learned from the experience, and we were like, OK, we're going to build this from scratch on Solana. How are we going to make integrations like single API call? Can we just make it like that? And that has been a great response. I'm going to keep up the good work on that side. And other than that, folks were very interested in what was our roadmap. So definitely stay tuned, because we're launching two or three different things here at Breakpoint. We have a presentation coming up soon, either today or tomorrow, a lot of big news. So yeah, and then there's more stuff after Breakpoint as well.

Richard Carthon: That's awesome. It's always a great time to be able to come and reveal your roadmap in real time with your community. But as you're here, you're exploring, what are some of the things that you're looking to hopefully take away from being here at this conference?

Joshua Sum: Takeaway? Good memories, of course. Yeah. And of course, I think main things that we have on the professional side, integration partners, AVSs, people who are using our technology, building on top of us, stake providers, people who are going to be sending stake away, community members as well, people who are going to be part of the sole layer on the larger Solana community as well. Superteam just met a lot of the Superteam folks out there. And really, it's always a pleasure working with them. Yeah, I think those are the main ones. Other than that, it's just getting to know everyone and having a good time. It's a conference and all, but I think it's good to kind of get to know people personally as well.

Richard Carthon: It is, man. You built that FaceTime, built those relationships, and obviously you could have went to a lot of different places, but you chose to be here. So why did you choose to participate at Breakpoint?

Joshua Sum: I think Breakpoint, so I didn't manage to go last year to Amsterdam, and a lot of my friends, I was back in college, so I was stuck there. But my friends went and they showed me a bunch of photos, and I FOMO'd so hard. So I'm here right now in Breakpoint, this is where I sit. It's Solana focused, right? You can go to any other site event right now and it's going to be a mixed bag, right? Here we know the quality of the crowd is great. Everyone here is all aligned and they're all working towards the same things. At least you're very much interested in Solana and we are very much interested in Solana too, so we can fight.

Richard Carthon: Absolutely. Well, we definitely appreciate it. So everyone who's listening right now, they want to learn more about Solayer and be able to do all the things that they can on there. What are the next steps that they can connect?

Joshua Sum: Definitely go to our website. The links to all of our app, where to stake, all of that's on the website. Our Twitter as well. Most of the stuff goes out there. And links to our socials, telegram group chats, and all of that's all on our website. So yeah. Awesome.

Richard Carthon: Well, Josh, thanks so much for spending some time with us. All right. Perfect. Thanks for having me. Hey everyone, Richard Carthon from the Edge of NFT here live at Solana Breakpoint, and I have Ian Cummins here with Photo Finish. It's a pleasure to have you on the show, but first I want to dive into, you know, what is Photo Finish?

Ian Cummings: Photo Finish is a horse racing game. It is really a kind of a virtual version of real life in pretty much every way. Players are racing for real money. They're betting on races. It's kind of everything about horse racing except the real animal. Right.

Richard Carthon: Well, how is with the people playing the games? I saw it up there and people are having a lot of fun with it. How's the reception been so far?

Ian Cummings: It's been great. I mean, we've been out for nearly a year and a half now and have just been building a community this whole time. The Solana community is, of course, amazing. And today was the big announcement. We got approved by Apple. So having an app on the App Store that's real money, Solana, horse racing is the first that I think in the world. And so that is really an exciting milestone for us to move forward and really start growing into the next level.

Richard Carthon: Oh, absolutely. And so with having that go live in the store, so for people listening right now, they could probably go to the store and download it. So how are they able to go and do that?

Ian Cummings: Yeah, I mean, it's in the U.S. App Store only now. So that's the first step before we go into sort of worldwide. But yeah, if you just go to your Apple App Store and search for Photo Finish Live, that's that's all you have to do. Download. It's super easy to sign up. Just takes an email and password. And then we try to hide a lot of the crypto elements, you know, from people and help them get going in the game before they get overwhelmed with all of the crypto stuff.

Richard Carthon: So everyone who wants to participate and also make sure that they can stay connected with you guys, basically just go to the website and can join all the other socials or any other ways that they can potentially connect with you. Yeah.

Ian Cummings: Photofinish.live is the website, and it's a kind of a vibrant ecosystem. You know, there's races being run. There's people on there all the time. It's a pretty wild world that you can step in and it's extremely deep and detailed and authentic. Myself, I'm on Twitter with Ian Cummings NFT if they want to follow me, but the Photo Finish main account, all the alpha is there as well.

Richard Carthon: Perfect. Well, Ian, thank you so much for your time. Glad to be here. Yeah, absolutely.

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