Cudis's blockchain-based longevity protocol, w/ Edison Chen, CEO of Cudis

Speaker A: I think there's back to 2017, 18. There's only 3,000, 5,000 tokens in the market. But now, thanks for pump fun and all this. We got like, uh, 30 million token, a couple of thousand token, like every day. Right. So I think we need to really focus design on the product, the token as a product, like telling people why they need it and, uh, how this could be valuable and useful.

Speaker B: Hello. Hello, and welcome to yet another episode of the solface podcast, where we have conversations with founders and developers in the Solana ecosystem. We had a great one today. We talked with Edison, the CEO of Kudis. Uh, they make a wellness ring that tracks your health and fitness data and have, uh, a cool solution for gatekeeping that information on the chain so you own your data. Um, and a cool incentive program to incentivize you to track your data.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, it was a really great conversation with Edison. Like, I've, I've seen a lot of people using these wellness rings, wellness trackers. Like I use a Garmin, um, smartwatch. A lot of people use, like, Apple watches and all of their, uh, you know, fitness tracking stuff. They always feel kind of clunky and like, you definitely don't own your own data. You don't have any control over who gets access to your data. It's just whatever that company decides to do with it. You agreed to the terms of service. Kudas takes a different approach, um, which is great. It's very Web3 Eco, sort of in like a deep in sort of way, which I think is really, really cool. And, uh, yeah, I'm, I'm sold. I'm getting one of these rings. It's not like a. I need to. I need this. I need this.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm excited to try it out. I've never actually used, like a ring fitness tracker before. I've got an Apple watch and sort of practice steps and various workout data and things. But I'm excited for the sort of slimmer profile of a ring. That'll be fun. And, uh, Kudis was kind enough to give us a referral code that you all can use for $60 off the ring. So go to Cudis XYZ, that's C U D I S XYZ. And at, uh, checkout, enter the code Sulfate with a capital S. So it is case sensitive. Make sure you capitalize the S, but use sulfate for $60 off and get 500 additional reward points to kind of kickstart that incentive program for yourself. Uh, before we dive into the show, I want to do a Shameless plug, as always, for unboxed. If you need a dev work. Um, we do a lot of sort of 0 to 1 MVP work for early stage founders who are trying to prototype, build out new concepts. So if that sounds like you, uh, hit me up on Twitter or, you know, reach out to me here, you know, on. On our website and, uh, I'll help. Yeah.

Speaker C: All right, let's go ahead and dive in. Nothing in this podcast is or should be considered financial advice. Any opinions and thoughts expressed are solely those of the individual. They do not represent the opinions of any entity. Enjoy.

Speaker B: Great to meet you, Edison. I, uh, I've been excited to have this conversation. I'm sorry we weren't able to do it last week. I'm, uh, sorry about the mix up then.

Speaker A: Is that good? Yeah.

Speaker B: Is it middle of the night for you right now?

Speaker A: Uh, actually it's all right, uh, because I'm now in the Dubai, so it's kind of like 9pm but you know, still a little bit jet lag. Because it's like 1am in Singapore. Yeah, something like that. Yeah. Dang.

Speaker B: Dang. So Singapore is home base for you?

Speaker A: Uh, yeah. Uh, so I moved to Singapore last year from Los Angeles. So basically half time in Singapore, halftime in the. In the States. Yeah.

Speaker B: Cool, cool, cool. And, uh, is there a conference in Dubai right now? Are you in Dubai for, uh, Token.

Speaker A: Yeah, now it's the token 2049 Dubai. Yeah.

Speaker C: Oh, I didn't even realize Token is going on right now.

Speaker A: Okay, then that's their. You know, they didn't do their job, I think.

Speaker C: I've been also largely off, like social media and everything for the last couple of weeks. I was traveling in Paris for Paris Blockchain week and then took a week off.

Speaker A: Yeah, we were there. Yeah. Um, so.

Speaker C: Oh, nice.

Speaker A: Yeah, my co founder Lizzy was there and, uh, uh, we were running a small side event together with, uh, Solana Foundation.

Speaker B: Yeah, let's see. As far as intros, you know, I'm James. I've been rolling in the Solana ecosystem for the last four years. Got my start in crypto dabbling with NFTs and doing client work for clients who just happen to want to do some crypto stuff in the EVM space. And then, uh, somewhere along the way I drank the Kool Aid and here I am on Solana. And I don't know that I'd say I'll never go anywhere else, but probably not, because why?

Speaker A: Yeah, here's a cool place to stay, right?

Speaker C: No, Solana's home Yeah, I'll go ahead and introduce myself as well. Um, so I'm Nick. We've been doing this podcast here for like two and a half, almost three years now. Um, uh, I'm actually full time at the Solana foundation right now. So I'm on the developer relations team and that's why I was in, in Paris. Um, I was both speaking on stage and I ran the Paris uh, Blockchain Week hackathon for the 3 uh days before uh the main event. And uh, before that I was active duty military in the US for about 10 years operating nuclear reactors and submarines. And then I've been full time at foundation for uh, about two and a half years now and then part time a couple of months before that. And um, yeah, Solana's home so I'm not planning on going anywhere.

Speaker A: Yes sir. Yeah, totally agree. So I joined the space since 2016 after uh, I built my first company and sold it and then you know just uh, deep dive into the crypto. Since a lot of m. My friends like uh, was engineer in the Silicon Valley and they shared me with the, the white paper uh, of the Bitcoin and then you know totally upset obsessed with it and uh, then start deploy the money into the crypto and um, also do a lot of the early investment uh in the space since 2017 and also uh, um starting from a lot of the layer one project, you know like Phantom Anchor, um Solana and then a lot of the application like Exchange or this. And um, started building the qutest since uh 2023 uh after I uh leave my job in the venture capital was uh helped them manage like $200 million fund. Mainly focus on the crypto, consumer tech and the brand business. So you can see uh, QTest is a little bit like um, connecting the dots of my previous like career path. And uh, we launch our first product 2024 and second product uh December uh last year as well. And um, yeah uh, that's uh, how we get it here. Uh, starting all the way from the Hacker House and uh, Renaissance Hackathon back to the April last year. Yeah, nice.

Speaker C: Yeah, that's great.

Speaker B: Let's actually just dig right into Cudis. Right. I'm uh super interested to hear. Uh, uh, there's actually a bunch of different topics I kind of want to talk about. We might not have time to cover all of them. So. So maybe we'll just start with what I think is one of the more important questions. Why web3 for wellness? Why do those things mesh? Why does it make sense to have a wearable health tracker that's also integrated with blockchain technology.

Speaker A: 100%. So before we build Kudis, um, there's actually conversation goes on. Like uh, I'm really into the wearable and wellness. Uh, I'm personal, um, doing the. I um, would say like early biohacking, like very entry level since 2018. So start drinking more instead of eating more, you know, like um. So I'm pretty getting, you know, uh, like doing that way because I got a couple of friends, they are doing that already for a lot of years. And uh, I was investing one of the super supplement company and the founder, uh, you know, kind uh, of like a mentor me in that way. And uh, this conversation goes on with another friend of mine. Um, so we uh, are both aura user at the moment and we just you know, take a coffee and uh, we were like uh, chit chat on like what if that we don't pay the aura, uh subscription, right? And they instead of they pay us, you know, like uh, that's all our data, right? If we can own the money through the Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, stablecoins, why not we can own our health data, right? Because at the moment that AI already ah, pretty hype in the Silicon Valley. And uh, a lot of my friends and alumni, uh, in UCLA built around AI and also in Berkeley. Um, so I was thinking what matters in the future, right? Especially for every individual. So we think like uh, health data definitely matters. Because if you think about training AI, uh, all matters, all the fill, uh, our data, um, bear with all this idea. We start design, think about uh, why this matters and uh, how we should um, why the combination is like a wearable and health data and the uh, web three, right? So we see the blockchains, uh, as a technology perfectly match with uh, uh, the goals of or the purpose of own the health data and for every individual. Like uh, if you help people to uh, put that on chain, people know, okay, that belongs to me, right? Use the NFT or SBT as a proof of it. And also you can limit access to all those who you know, um, allow only from you they can tap into the data. Not those like centralized company. We don't know where they put the data and uh, we don't know like who they share the data with, right? So but also at the same time we know, you know, last cycle we got step in, we got sweat economy, we got super walk. There's a lot of the great uh, you know, walk, tour, house tour and company. Uh, but I think at that moment they many folks on the gaming side, right? Not overall as a health economy here and also when talk to Longdaddy is also pretty new in these couple of years. But we know one thing, that incentive, uh, is a great thing to drive uh, people into the healthier lifestyle, right. I can just guarantee myself, oh, I'll go to the gym for seven days in a row, right. But probably I'll just give it up, uh, maybe second day M, my muscle feel like pretty sore. Right? But with some of the incentive here or you know, I just battle with James or Nick, you know, hey guys, let's see who can you know, achieve like seven days in a row like uh, into the gym, right? Work out and uh, whoever lose, you know, lose couple of bucks, right? Then I think drive us, you know, more about, you know, we need to do this right? We need to sleep better, we need to like go to the gym, uh, train our body. And um, so after go over all these SaaS, we think oh actually it's like a perfect match and uh, there's nothing like this before, uh, in this area and nothing like this in this industry before. So that's how we have this idea and then start building on the hardware and all the um, application around this concept. Yeah.

Speaker B: So it sounds like you really honed in on two primary reasons. It's the fact that the actual users can own their own data. But then also we can build incentive mechanisms with crypto that actually encourage healthy behavior.

Speaker A: Yes sir. Todi, awesome.

Speaker B: I would love to dig into that incentive design a little bit. Um, you mentioned some of last cycles kind uh, of like health focused products like Stepin, right? And this cycle we've got like Moonwalk Fitness. Um, and like you said, they're, they're more gamified type of, uh, type of approaches to fitness and wellness. Uh, I think one of the things we saw with Stepn was this huge boom in uh, like incentive for people that then had this really steep drop off, right? Which is not unusual dope. But I think there, there's a question out there that is a challenging question of like how real is this incentive loop, right? Is this, is this kind of just like a pump pump thing or is this something that is sustainable, can be sustainable? Uh, I'm sure that's something you thought a lot about and I would love to hear your thoughts on a sustainable crypto incentive.

Speaker A: Yeah, I, I love this question. Uh, to be honest, I've been asked similar question for past two years. Whenever we meet new users, investors, partners uh and the answer, um, part of them, always the same but uh, part of them uh we also learning, right try to learn more around user behavior and uh, how you design the mechanism and why that happened. And so uh, recently come to conclusion like uh, what's your purpose or goals at day one, right. So I think Stepn uh is a great game that they design based on like what to earn and also house conscious.

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: But at the same time uh, don't get me wrong, I think they're perfect uh but they are a game, they design it in a game way. So there's nft, there's uh tokenomics uh in the game and also there's uh tokenomics like uh two token, right. And um, they're doing great job in the scale to the Web2 consumer and they onboard a lot of new users, millions of new users, right. And they promote the idea of amp at the same time as well and they also sell a lot of NFT after they're listed on the exchange like $100 million of the NFT. So at company level I think they did a great job. They do uh, have their highlight uh moment and also they make the uh great revenue generating from their business. But on the other side uh, uh, I think fundamentally they build a gaming studio, right? So if you take a look at the Stepney as one game they're very very successful because one game can generate $100 million of the revenue and uh, worth still like five uh, hundred mil or like uh, you know I think highest point like close to 5 billion or something. I forgot the numbers. But uh, now they still worth you know uh few hundred million dollars market cap. Right? So you can say they're not a good company. And also at the same time I know there's still a lot of user are uh playing around uh Stephan and uh, um using the NFT and make some money, you know. So but at the same time that I uh feel like at day one they're not trying to build a house ah economy or say not trying to uh, um amplify their value uh with the data they're collecting and uh, they're not trying to build more things upon uh the user they already have or more the data they already have. Right? Like steps data is uh, Sometimes people think it's like very simple data, right? There's a lot of way you can get steps, right? You can get it from Apple, Health, Google House, Strava, a lot of other apps or wearables, right? But at the same time that is also the User behavior. It's very um, um, important data. Singapore government give their citizens the reward based on the steps they take every day. If you can take like 10,000 of steps every day you got some points reward and you can use the points reward to redeem some of the coupon at the garment bag, the convenience store in the supermarket. So we can see these mechanism works. But what after what we see at day one is if we can actually help people to tracking and uh, uh, collect a lot of the data. There's actually a lot of intrinsic value or say more value you can build upon all this data based on your sleep data. We can help you dig deep into it and uh, provide you analysis and uh, also more insights about how you can make it better.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: And the economy around this, how to make it better is actually huge.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: So back to your question. I think because their first day purpose is not try to build a house related economy and also the ecosystem is more towards game side. So I think that's a fundamental things different here. So.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, so yeah, so that make, that makes a lot of sense. Your uh, incentive design is less around gamification and more around building out this health and health data ownership economy. You alluded to some of it there toward the end of like rewarding um, you know like maybe maybe uh, a uh, government or institution rewarding um, people for healthy uh behavior like like taking steps. I think we see that sometimes with like health insurance companies, right where, where they might have users have a wearable and track steps and they'll be exact for reward. And you're basically saying hey we see some, we see that in these places as like proof of concept that this health data is valuable. There is actual value in the data itself. And in the case of health insurance companies there is value in trying to modify user behavior. Right. Um, and you're saying how can we do this at a greater scale than we have previously?

Speaker A: Exactly, exactly. Yeah, I think you totally got the points. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker C: One of the things I'm curious about is like what type of data are you able to actually collect from the rings themselves? Because like you know I have a smartwatch, I actually have a Garmin smartwatch sitting here right next to me charging um, and like what sort of data can you get from it? Because like a smartwatch it has the various sensors that typically sit on the top of your wrist or the bottom of your wrist depending on the particular wearable and like you can get a whole bunch of information from that. But the watch is physically much larger Than a ring. So like what type of information can the Cudas platform actually like collect from this ring alone? And like what. What is the app then in turn able to provide to the user?

Speaker A: M. I think in terms of the you know development of the technology especially at the sensor and uh the OD microchip and also the battery technology, uh it allows us to build some product uh smaller uh than before. Right. Like uh aura play uh a great role uh and also very very important role in the ring sector. You know they are like uh. They're the. One of the best right. And they're one of the earliest, uh not the earliest but the one of the earliest to build wearable product in a ring form. Right. And I think comparing to the watch there's a lot of different um uh position and the things uh you know text back around the ring. Right. It's smaller and uh, not disrupted and um, better on the you know battery life. You don't need to charge quite often because they don't have the screen. So like a very uh. The. The performant uh perform at a very like battery uh safe way. Right. So I can share you a little bit like here. So you can see in our app we have the sports mode. You can track different you know 30, 31 different activities like uh, like a real time performance. You can see it and you can oh my sleep score sucks because yesterday was like on the fly. So you can see the uh sleep and uh stress uh hurry and resting heart rate and also hurry variation in the blood oxygen uh saturation and also steps. So there's quite a lot of things the ring can help user to track. Very, very similar to all the other variables but uh, in a uh relatively minimal way.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: And um, um I think it can already fulfill people's needs about what matters every day. Uh at the biomarkers level. Yeah.

Speaker B: How much of that data is actually stored on chain versus kind of just in app or on server somewhere.

Speaker A: So um, before we help user put it on chain uh we do store them uh at the server, the ipfs. Uh and also we are not uh so far for now we're not actually put all the data on chain right. Because it's quite a lot of data after I think a few updates after next few months uh we can help user to collecting 1 to 2 gigabyte uh data every week I think or every month. So it's actually a lot right? That's a lot if you put it on chain. Uh, that's crazy. Right?

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: Uh, I mean Tony and uh. Roger will yell at me like uh what the fuck you're doing here? Why you put all this on chain? You don't need to. Right? I think there's a conversation before right? We talk about what we should put on chain, right? If it already good. We don't need to put on chain. You don't have to. Right. So when we talk about scalability and also um. The. The performance of the different layers or the different layer one uh uh. Uh infrastructure. So we need to think about the real application use case so far. Now we help user to help them to mint the health data empty. And um. We use um uh. I uh think it's uh the new uh SPL token standard in. And we use the um uh NFT like the data pointer to get people uh to know okay. In this NFT that's data uh that I store at the ipfs and uh. They click the you know whoever bought the nft they got the link and they get access to the data for use uh and read right.

Speaker B: So it kind of store. But it is. But it is gated with an on chain nft.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker B: I think that makes tons of sense because like. Like you said it's a. It's a shit ton of data doesn't make sense like the, the blockchain is not the. The best uh. Or at least the Solana blockchain is not the best like storage mechanism necessarily but it is. But it is great for, for sort of like storing things like that right? Like a uh. Like an NFT for. For gaining access to things, et cetera. So is it. So is it just that the data stored and encrypted somewhere and then you can only view it if you have that nft.

Speaker A: Yeah. So um. I totally agree that I want to add two sentences here like uh. First Solana is the position as the Internet capital market, right. And uh. So the NFT we help user to mint actually is a proof of asset right. So the house we. We think house data is a ah. Asset. That's why we put it into an empty way right the form of the show as empty because we acknowledge every individual's health data is an asset. So then if you put the proof on the Solana it makes total sense because it has a value. People can pricing it. You can price yourself or you can get some other buyers the data demanders that they. They can price it.

Speaker B: Yeah, got it. So you're looking at it so it's less like what I said about gating access. Although that is a Component. But it's, but, but it sounds like you're almost looking at it more so from the perspective of this is an asset and we're going to almost like an RWA type thing, right. Like we're going to this asset on chain because we do think of it as an asset.

Speaker A: Yeah. So we, we, we, we do think this great potential in the future people will definitely categorize the health data as asset. And also in the future we categorize them into the rwa. Just, I think just, you know, so far, uh, not many people, uh, pay attention to their value of their health data. Right. Because, you know, there's no one pay us before. Right.

Speaker B: Yeah. It's a difficult market to create. Um, but like, for, like you said, like Solana is, is an excellent, um, place to create capital markets on the Internet. Um, and combined, like, combined with the wearable that you're, you're creating and the data you collect. Yeah. You can create like a new market which is exactly.

Speaker A: Yeah. I like that's what we, you know, bidding for and also hope that uh, onboard m. More users first. I think as long as people can build consensus around it. We all acknowledge that uh, our data could be the asset. Right. And uh, whoever want to use it at least need to reward us. They don't need to maybe not pay us like a dollar or thousand dollars, but they have to acknowledge that they're using our data and uh, they need to in exchange of some of the value, uh, for using it. Yeah. So I think that's very, very important. Yeah.

Speaker B: Who are the potential buyers that Kudis is focused on or, or are you more focused on creating the marketplace and less concerned about who the other side of the market is?

Speaker A: We definitely can't, you know, care about both sides. Right. We care if we can create a marketplace for the health data at the same time. So we care about those who might need the data. Right. During our conversation, um, today there's already we mentioned like two type of the entity, uh, or institution might need the data. Right. Insurance company, garments. Right. Uh, we heard a lot of governments has like huge uh, problem on the taking, uh, care of the elder at the health care. Right. Because take a single as example, they figure out like after the elder get to like 70 80s, they might need to pay, you know, 3,5x of the health care than they expected. So they try to think about how can they put more money before they get into 70, 80, maybe in the around 30, 40 age, they can start taking care of themselves and then try to lower down the healthcare, you know expenditure in the future, you know when they get outer at the same time they're like uh research, uh like hospital, like uh a big farm and also like medical research um uh labs they also uh require a different type of the data not the data like very general, not just steps but a specific group of people's data are what they're looking for. Right. So a lot of people ask us oh how many users you guys have and uh, oh if you don't have like million user or 5 million users why your data matters and why should we use your data and or why there's someone want to buy your data. Right. I mean if you look at the numbers everyone can chase after Apple Health, Google House, even Samsung House, Strava, AH MyFitnessPal to buy the data. Right. But do they really got a lot of offer or deals from other uh companies that uh require the use of digital health data? Uh I don't think so. The uh digital health Data is like 100 billion of the uh market right. And uh, so there's very specific needs around the data right. As when we talk to the NS and Duke, uh, uh one of the professor at the cardiology sectors department uh he asked us can you guys do the copilot study together with us for the heart failure patients. So they only need to study with like 30 patients after they're doing the surgery uh about the heart failure and they need to track and monitor like uh, uh around like three to six months after their surgery behavior and how they sleep, how they stress, how their stress level and how the heart rate goes in sports performance of this or any other activities that matters for them. So uh, the hard part is sometimes find these 30 people because I ask them like how long it take you guys to prepare everything. I mean we can be definitely customize some plan and features for you. They said they need to take like six to 12 months to onboard these 30 patients. But it take a little bit far. But it's actually one of the uh dilemma here. People want to do better job on the medical side and also healthcare. But actually sometimes finding specific group of people is a hard thing and also global wise there's some minority diseases only have two to three cases and uh, it makes it extremely hard to find all these people. So we're thinking maybe after 10 years uh one of the mission that we have internally, we never speak public before is we want to build a community and platform can try to onboard as many people as possible and they do have specific needs for Their data and for some solution when they try to put a quest, okay, we need to do some study around heart failure or uh, diabetes or some minority diseases and who have the similar problem or who want to be part of it. Right. To make a uh, global movement.

Speaker C: Uh, seriously, that's really, really interesting. I've never considered the potential for using especially in bulk, in mass amounts of data. If you have millions and millions of people that are having various health wearables that yes, you could use them for like basically post analysis from a study. It's like you know, you participated in some medical study and we're going to monitor you for the next 12 months and we're going to use these wearables to help facilitate that. The data gets back to the doctors, they can analyze it. But the opposite side of that, I've never thought of that before that's really, really interesting is like you could use all this data to like potentially find people that could be suffering from some particular condition that's trying to be studied. And you can because you have all this data aggregate. That's really, really cool.

Speaker A: Exactly. I think there's both way. Right. Once people feel like that you are providing them useful uh, or valuable things, features, advices, they would love to share a little bit more data together with you and uh, trying to find better solution.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: Because when we launched the white paper a couple of weeks ago, the new one is about qtis building the first rewarding longevity protocol. When we talk about longevity, I think it's very, very personalized, like healthcare, medical, um, solution and longevity is something very personalized. Right. It needs to be customized to different needs. You might like the meat protein, but I might prefer the vegetarian style of the life. So my solution probably not going to work for you. Right. So and also I can't tell you like uh, okay, all the food and nutrition I'm taking with my plan help me like um, you know, maybe look better or younger or make me energetic, but maybe it could be do the opposite way for you. Right. So that's actually uh, you know, uh, stop a lot of the people uh, you know, trying because they're thinking oh this people uh, like Martin is uh, the best way. But actually it doesn't work for me. Am I allergic for that? Right. But uh, when you come back to the focus on the people's personalized needs, then the AI, the data uh, uh, can play uh, a lot more things than uh, before. Uh, the solution that other company try to provide. Yeah, gotcha.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's really cool. Um, I want to shift gears a little bit and so we've been talking about the sort of the software and the method medical side of this. I'm curious about the hardware side of um, of the rings themselves both from the perspective of doing manufacturing and then how that like process looks and like how to like build a physical product that uses crypto in some way. Um, I think this is definitely a sort uh of an under talked about thing within the industry is the hardware side of doing these things. There's probably you know a small handful of companies that are building physical products that are being shipped around the world soon. There's all sorts of logistics to go into that. You know when people think web3 they think software but like the, especially on Solana, Solana has become the Deepin chain basically. I mean Salon is the everything chain but uh, it's become truly the home for Deepin and Kudis is just another example of that. So I would love to hear um, if you could talk to building these physical products and what does that look like logistically and then the manufacturing process. If there's any of that kind of stuff that you can share I'd be super curious.

Speaker A: Yeah for sure. So um, when it comes to building the hardware uh actually uh I have a conversation with uh ah Seekers general uh manager uh Emmett uh and uh we have a talk like during the breakpoint that uh we both agree that hardware is uh shitty business. You know. If you don't have to, you don't have to.

Speaker C: I have heard Emmett say that before.

Speaker A: If you don't have to you don't have to. You know so but I uh think we both, but we both agree when you start building it uh you know you just can't stop right. Uh when you really love building something especially in the hardware way there's actually a lot of things you can build around right. Um we are basically the one who have the idea and event idea that uh combine uh the blockchain, crypto and um together with a wearable technology and the health data ah like you know the data hub and also all the um things here. Uh but you know a lot of manufacturer owner they can't understand right. And also we design ourselves but we need to do the R D together with this like a manufacturer because at the day one we don't have a lot of venture backers. I use my own money to self funded the company and bootstrap uh before we raise the money right. So we have to take every step very seriously and also careful right. If I Lose those money, the company die. So we try to see uh, at a certain amount of time what we can do and we cannot do. Right? So try to focus on those, what we can do and uh, forget about those. We you know, um, we can right and maybe uh, do it later when we get a little bit larger, a little bit bigger with a little bit more users. We try to build something better, bigger and um, you know, faster and all these. So I would say um, we have two generation product in like 1 uh year right? That's not very normal things but uh, that's definitely follow our principle here. If we do have the money and the ability, we'll try to build something a lot better as, as much as possible. Uh but also it come back to some of the question uh about the logistically that there's a different um stage of building the hardware. First you have the concept and then you design uh, uh and build the first demo and then you test manufacture, try to See,000 to 2000 Will it work or like craft uh uh, add some technique or craftsmanship. It won't work, right. So I'll tell you guys one thing I never share with anyone before. So the first generation of the cutest ring actually the um, how to say that the rate of quality uh standard that we have is very high but the rate is pretty low. You know like um, four out of ten they're not working. The reason why is not uh the battery wise or all the other is a structure. So the ceramic uh around the ring uh we designed as rotatable. It become one of the signature when we launched the first generation of the ring. And people love to play around it but it actually killing us because so hard to manufacture. And we are the only, only one design doing that. And all our manufacturer supply chain they you know they got tortured by us, you know because we told them we have to have it. We can't you know only because like we need to spending more money to manufacture it and we give up on that, right? We didn't do that. And uh. So yeah so. But not many people knows about it, right? People just feel like oh this uh, you know really fun features but actually it's cost us a lot more uh than we plan. So when you get to the task manufacturer and then the uh, you know the official manufacturer stage then um. It still have some gaps right that actually cost a lot of team a lot of money and time uh to work on. And also one little difference on um. A parts can kill a lot of things or say it can Kill everything. So I think that's. We all agree like, uh, hardware is kind of like shitty business. You know, like you. You have to be really detail driven and uh, you can be wrong a lot of times. Yeah, you need to be.

Speaker C: Once you. Once you manufacture the thing, like you can't. You can't unmanufacture it. You either have to maybe fix it or you just have to move on to the. The next iteration and solve those problems. You know, hardware's tough.

Speaker A: You're gonna. You're gonna pay for it anyway, right? You. You like? Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker C: I mean, uh, speaking of mobile, like, I. I use the first generation of Solana mobile phone and uh.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker C: Yep. I. I look forward to the new one.

Speaker A: Same here. Same here. Same. Glad today. Yeah, I saw a little dig on uh. Yeah, I saw them showcasing the Breakpoint. I also like a uh, couple of days ago in the Crossroads. I think people pretty like.

Speaker C: Oh yeah, I heard about that.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's pretty nice.

Speaker C: Yeah. I still have yet to see the new one in person. Like I've seen pictures of it which like doesn't do anything. It looks nice. It looks like a phone. But uh, yeah, I'm excited for the new one sometime this year I think.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Very excited to get on it. Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah. That'll be fun. Um, I. I want to ask. I mean this is kind of pivoting back to software. Sorry, Nick. That's uh. Okay, not that much. This is more general question. Um, I am curious, like why did you all decide to build on Solana versus the other chains that are available. Right. Um, I obviously have my own preconceived notions about Solana and why it's great. But I'd love to hear from your perspective why you think Solana was the right fit for. For you and your company.

Speaker A: Back to 2023. Oh, you know, back to the first day I was in the space and for past couple of years. I know Bitcoin pretty well. I know Ethereum pretty well. And you know Tron like uh, Phantom now call Sonic and then Salon. And you know, I know Solana that uh, I've been going through all these uh, time and uh, uh, be with all this community over the past years. I feel like three things do convince us when we make the strategic decision. Maybe we call a very strategic decision when you make something choose which chain to build on. So we look at the price product and the founders, you know, so when we talk about the price actually is the community behind it. Right. When we choose to build on Solana. Uh, the price actually is still at the low range, but community is still here and uh, I think builder is not leaving, fund is not leaving. Community is not living. People have conviction here and um, a lot of my friends have conviction here and uh, same to myself. And so I feel like, okay, we do get a strong community and uh, when we look at the product, even the price is low, still a lot of founder building great product and try to onboard more new users and also try to uh, find the driver and uh, also the real use case. Not something you know, uh, fugazi or say, you know, weird or something, but something really, you know, drive the Solana grow, right? Like Jupiter, right? Like um, hideous and uh, Magidan. A lot, a lot of, you know, great project at the moment, like building great things, right? And then founders, old founder and Matt in Solana, you know, very, very diligent and they're everywhere. And um, you know, the other events, no matter how much the copy worth, they're always there, right? They talk to the user, talk to the, you know, new founders, talk to the builders, right. I think that's very important. You know, compared to some other ecosystem, you know, they're doing something else, they're busy doing something else and not busy building. They're not busy being the mentor, they're not busy learning people's users needs, right? So combining all these like uh, these three, three main factors, um, the community, the founder and the products. I think Solana at the moment we feel like it's a great place for the consumer, uh, product and applications right at that moment. Deepin is not a huge thing yet, but we already see Helium and uh, some other project start building more things on Solana. So we feel like, okay, uh, that's definitely the place we should be there and uh, we can be there for a very long time.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, that makes, that makes a lot of sense. I actually really appreciated that delineation between the factors that you guys thought about. I don't know if every founder thinks through it quite that logically and I wish they would. So I think that's fantastic. Um, and really appreciated that answer. Does Kudis have uh, plans for a widespread token launch of any kind or is it mostly focused on the NFTs that you get personally for participating and contributing your data?

Speaker A: Yeah, I feel like uh, I love Token, I love crypto. So at day one we build qtis. I know that we will definitely launch a token, that's for sure. And uh, also I think uh, uh, crypto and token is a great way to drive uh, the project growth if you do have the product. And uh, the token can help you to drive it. Right. Can drive your project and take uh, you to next step and help you to raise more money and uh, creating um, more hypes and uh, drive a lot of traffic and attention. And uh, I would say token is the best way to market a brand or project.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: But also if you don't have the product and if you don't have something for real for people to use, um, token can kill you as well. Right. So, uh, we definitely looking for launch or token this year. Uh, hopefully we'll be in Q2, so next few months pretty soon. But uh, at the same time that uh, we take it very serious, we think, uh, token is actually also a very, very important product. Uh, uh, for a project that you need to really design around it, you can be just launch a token. You need to think thoroughly about why we have this token and why people need the cutest token and uh, how this can uh, drive the growth of the business and uh, why this makes sense. Right. I think there's back to 2017, 18, there's only 3,000, 5,000 tokens in the market. But now, uh, thanks for pump the fund and all this. We got like 30 million token and we have uh, I think a couple of thousand token like every day. Right? Yeah. So I think we need to really focus design on the product, the token as a product, like, uh, telling people why they need it and how this could be, uh, valuable and useful.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's awesome. I look forward to hearing more about that. Um, I appreciate the thought that goes into it and the fact that you want to have a token that's actually well thought out, has value for people, that you recognize it as an important product in addition to the core product of your company is, I think, uh, a tremendous thing.

Speaker A: Yes, sir.

Speaker C: Yep. Agree.

Speaker B: Uh, I really only have one last question. I would love to hear your grand ambitious vision.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: For however long it takes. Right. Like maybe that's five years from now, maybe it's ten years from now. Every industry, every product takes a different amount of time. So what is sort of your biggest, grandest vision, uh, for Kudis, when you're, you know, dreaming at night.

Speaker A: Okay. I mean, according to our white paper, uh, I probably need to take, um, you know, I'm 32 this year, so 33 this year. So probably I need to take like 107 years to prove that people might leave to 140, you know, house Ban. That's possible things, right? But, but you know, um, at least

Speaker C: you'll be tracking all the data along the way.

Speaker A: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. So I think, uh, as long as we can do our own jobs, there's 100 more years for us to build. But at the same time, I feel like, uh, or ambitious, uh, or visions here or everything I'm thinking every night is uh, can we really bring the personalized, uh, longevity solution or the service program products to every individual?

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: Because there's um, billions of people on Earth, right? I can work for billions of people so far, for now I can. But uh, maybe after decades, 30, 50 years, uh, AI become extremely, uh, fast or say very, uh, capable about handling trillions of data. And uh, I think that's possible things to come, right? So design and provide a solution, like personalized longevity solution for everyone. I think that's something very, very interesting and it could be something we build for decades. So, you know, because it's uh, already a, uh, huge thing and so far I'm not sure if it's the right thing to do because if you do like standing old people's uh, health spans or lifespans, it also could cause some chaos for the Earth. We have very limited resource. Uh, but I think our fundamental goal here is not getting everybody to live until 140 or 200 is getting people to live happier, healthier and better quality of their life when they have the time. Right. So I still want to go out with friends when I was 80, 90 or 100. Right. I don't want to lying on the bed and waiting for my day come. Right. I want to have some fun. Otherwise why I'm leaving until like 110 or like 120. Right. Doesn't make any sense. I don't want to just stay at home and lie on the bed for like 20 years because only I want to stay alive. Right. I think that doesn't make any sense. So for more things here, or say for more value we want to create for people is to get people to really build up their strengths, uh, cognition, stamina, and can allow every one of us to enjoy our life for longer period. Yeah.

Speaker B: Awesome. I think that's a great vision. Um, I'm here for it. I hope, I hope.

Speaker A: Yes, sir. Glad to hear that. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: I mean, I hope that I get to participate in that and have that as well. So I love what you guys are doing. Thank you so much for chatting with us and thank you. Yeah, I would love to have a follow up in a year after seeing another year of how the product has gone.

Speaker A: Uh, yes, sir.

Speaker B: Yeah, thanks.

Speaker A: Joining 100%. Yeah, and also I love to, uh, share more product sauce in the future together with you guys because we're going to, uh, curated a lot of the new, um, longevity product services program. It would be pretty fun of the new things, you know, some like a rejuvenation pot and the methylation test and all these. And also the new supplements we would love to get, you know, um, most of the more people to try it out and also we'd love to get you guys on board as well.

Speaker B: Yeah, nice. I would love to try out that stuff. That sounds great. Well, thanks. Thanks, arm. Thanks a ton. And, uh, to the listeners, we'll see you all next time.

Speaker C: Thanks a lot. Bye. Bye.

Speaker A: Thanks a lot.

Speaker C: All right, thanks for joining us for this episode of the Soulf8 podcast. I hope you liked it. I know we did. We always have a blast recording with our amazing guests. If you've got a moment, please leave us a review in your podcast app or subscribe on YouTube. And I guess it's, uh, time to get some more coffee and get back to work.