Jack Dishman · Clanker

[0:08]Welcome, welcome in. Uh, what's up everyone? We're back for another better call. Is all yaps. I'm here with Jack Dish. Uh, how we doing today? What's going on? Happy Uh, happy Tuesday. Yeah. Happy Tuesday indeed. Um, I'm Taco Tuesday.

[0:29]Have LeBron. Yeah, yeah. As LeBron says, you know, we're both from, from the Beantown area or I don't know if you're from there originally, but at least living there now. So, um, yeah, the, the sports definitely definitely runs through runs, but. There's some massholes here. So, exactly. Just a couple of massholes, uh, sitting down together, chatting, chatting tokens.

[0:51]Um, you know, one of the coolest things I think is I, I, I have a lot of things that I think are, are interesting, uh, about what you built clank and, and also forecasters a whole in the ecosystem there. But, uh, let's start with, you know, a little bit of an intro. Who is Jack, who is Dish and, uh, and yeah, why don't you, why don't you share with us Yeah.

[1:11]What's going on? Um, yeah. My name is Jack Dishman, uh, local to the, the Boston area. Spent some time in the Bay area. Um, I have, I got into kind of like. Crypto during like the GameStop era, like Nokia, uh, when those stocks were being, that's crazy because that's also how I got onboarded. Yeah. I just took a year or two.

[1:38]Uh, the GameStop NFT marketplace was the first that wallet at that marketplace. For the first two things, I've, I never used it. I never used that, that market. Well, it got de it got deprecated. I just bought one NFT because for a game. Right? Okay. Oh yeah. Dude, that's like the real use cases that I think crypto is like Forgs, bro.

[2:01]I, yeah, I am a, a trading guard game person through and through. That's like what got me super excited. I tried Gods on chain. I tried a couple of the other ones out there in the crypto space. But like, my goal, and one of the things I want to do, uh, on a separate side note is like, I wanna help create music.

[2:17]Cards for our artists within our org, where like we can leverage not only creating, uh, like the lore of a trading card, but having it be tied to an actual person as opposed to just mm-hmm. Fantasy characters. And I think that could be really valuable, kind of like sports cards, but being able to leverage Web3 technology of like, okay, anytime someone buys this card or potentially plays it in the future, you can send that royalty to all of the artists that are on that song.

[2:43]Like, yeah. And it's, it's really cool. But, um, yeah, totally. I mean, I, there was like some article I wrote, like this was way before Clinker, but like I wrote some articles. There was a Starbucks campaign that was giving away, it was like on chain loyalty points, I think. Yeah. Or no, I know, I know exactly what you're talking about.

[3:03]Because Honesty Campaign, because Candy Toy Box, uh, was super, super involved with Odyssey Campus. Yeah. She was always telling me, tell me stuff about, about it. Really. That's cool. And then there was the ticket master thing that they were giving away, like. It wasn't top shot. It was like something a little bit different.

[3:20]It was like digital collectibles of like your tickets, right? Where like some people can like, they kind of can hang their, you know, maybe it's like a, you know, a game series, whatever, like series seven of, you know, NBA finals, like that ticket, those were cool, like cool, collect collectibles there. But it was completely like, I noticed that it was like, it was so, like you couldn't export your keys.

[3:46]There was no wallet. It was all email and it was all deprecated. So all that stuff was just like gone now to the abyss. So that was a total bummer. Um, but yeah, I got into it when like, you know, on, on, uh, what were we doing? Uh, oh, it was, yeah, like the, the GameStop on Robin Hood. I was like, alright. Like there has to be a different way.

[4:08]Around the same time, you know, I think Bitcoin was pumping and I was like, well, there has to be some, you know, other way or like, you know, some better way to do it. Um, that's what kind of got me interested into kind of the, the crypto realm blockchain specifically. I love that. And then. Yeah. Yeah. And then I was also like banned from Facebook for like, I love that.

[4:35]Yeah. So you understood the concept of of of like needing non-sensical like tools, right? Yeah. Yeah. If you can't log into like a traditional platform because some servers down or you know, you get banned or so like this, my, I was just banned for like a blip in the system, like, you know, temporarily, um. But you know, like that just goes to show that like the interoperability is truly powerful.

[5:02]And, um, yeah, that was, that was kind of my first couple of things and did a, did a couple other, like, works for a couple different startups and, you know, the, the areas, but none of 'em really caught on. Well, like I wasn't, what were you doing, Adam, outta curiosity? I was building a, uh, the first one was a decentralized social media.

[5:23]It was actually like kind of a, a rival to like me paragraph. It was pre paragraph, but like primarily forecaster. Um, there was like de so around that time it was called Blogchain by Capsule Social. Uh, I moved to Paris for that, which was fun for a couple months. Um, and then I was building. Certificates of authenticity for jewelry, like primarily for like engagement rings.

[5:52]Uh, but it didn't really catch on. That was kinda like after like the bubble popped in. Yeah. Yeah. And then we were building like a, like an AI chat bot for like home repair services. Which kind of led to kind of like using that, like what I picked up, kinda like moved that over to clinker eventually. Um, and what was it?

[6:13]Oh, then I, I worked for like a token sales and distribution platform. But you know, we, what, it was crazy like the, the amount of like volume we did with Clinker, we like lapped that other company in like a couple like weeks. It was pretty crazy. That's crazy. That was, yeah. Yeah. That was, that was fun. Um, yeah.

[6:31]You're like, yeah, yeah, this makes more sense, dude. Yeah. Don't go man. But yeah, tell, tell, tell us that sort of that transition into Lanker, like what started that, that seed of a thought, you know, working at all of these Web3 companies and startups in different capacities, getting experience in blockchain Right.

[6:49]Like that early. It must've been great. Like where did you start to think like something like Lanker was needed? Well, I was actually, mm-hmm. I quit my job like that summer to just try, try and, you know, build something. A lot of like these side projects. I was like, if I'm not gonna do it now, what am I gonna do it?

[7:09]Um, I was building like an on chain boat registry, like when base just came out. Um, a variety of other like things that just like kind of flopped. Um, and then I, we were at like a forecaster meetup in Boston. That's where I met proxy and we were like, Hey, like took him outta my boat. We're like, let's build something.

[7:29]Um, and yeah, we, it was pretty simple. Like the, the visa of clinker is like super simple. Like we didn't even that at the front end. Um, but built that in like, you know, a couple days. And, you know, he's got away with like, he's a super poster, like, taught me a lot about posting how important it is. Um, but yeah, that literally as soon as we launched it was a hit and the rest is really history.

[7:54]Hell yeah. No, I love that. That's, uh, I think like one thing on that is just like, I think it's a lot of like luck, like the hard work kind of leading up to it. But all it takes is like that, like timing, luck and like these, these are things that you like usually can't control like that. Like whatever percent is just like, totally just like depending on like the weather, you know?

[8:17]In this case it was the election, right? Like there was just like rising tides, like I think we dropped it like right after the election or something. And, um, so like that, that was, uh, that was kind of it. And you know, I think ever. Since then, we've just been like trying to like scale, um, you know, make sure things are working, you know, um, and yeah, like fortunately, like we've had a really great experience and especially with like all these like defi hacks and things like the clinker stuff is, you know, it's good.

[8:47]It's like very fortunate that, you know, things have relatively been chill. You know, that's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's, that's really interesting because it's like the, that it's all those unknown variables that you can't control. And I think you said it really well there. Um, it is just like you can do all the hard work all, but, but then all it takes is that spark, right?

[9:08]Mm-hmm. And, uh, it's cool to hear that. That kind of timing for you was, was around that, that election. So, um, so then the start was, uh, very quick, very fast. Where did the, you said V zero was very simple. Where did you kinda start doing that? Leveling up from V zero to one, to, you know, to the four V four. You guys have to today.

[9:29]Yeah, V zero when we launched, like it actually wasn't ready, like all like these tokens, like the LP locker was like they were gonna unlock, so we had to do like a full migration, which was like probably like the most stressful thing I've ever had to do in my life. Um, to like migrate all of these, like on, they were unlocking and once they unlocked we had to move them all to like a LP locker.

[9:55]Um, and then like, yeah, V one, V two, we were kind of making these smaller iterations of, they were all permission too. Like you couldn't call the contract yourself, you had to launch it through the bot. Um, so I think that helped a lot with like, kind of just like. Distribution. Right? Like, not, the bot would kind of like go down, right?

[10:17]Like we would just like turn it off for the night if like, you know, uh, just to like make, I don't even know. We couldn't keep up with the amount of requests. Um, it wasn't until like V 3.1 when we started to introduce like vaulting or like, you know, the, the creator supply. You could vault like 30%. Um. I think that unlocked like the project to meta right?

[10:42]Where, um, you know, you could kind of build a project around it. Um, have like some of that, I think like kinda looking back like those OG tokens where there was just like, all of it to the LP position were the most fun because then you don't have to worry about like, you know, the Debs Rugging, like you learn, you earned those tokens off the fees.

[11:03]Um, so yeah, I think like, you know, it V three one and then V four I think is like, you know, basically like we added like all of the, you know, the things that you'd want in like a token launcher and the token deployment. So, um, yeah, that's kinda where we are now. And like, you know, we've tried, kind of tried to do the pre-sale stuff, but that wasn't a huge hit.

[11:27]It was just like, the thing that I've learned is like the more you add complexities to it. The less, it kind of like, you know, it just gets too complicated, right? Like, um, so yeah, that's, that's kind of where we're at now. Or kind of like puts a lot up to it. Yeah, that's really interesting. Uh, that like, uh, keeping it simple part of it, uh, I think a lot of us in crypto and blockchain have a challenge with that, where it's like, okay, like you build an MVP or you build a usable product, but now how do you.

[11:59]Um, actually get people to, to then use that. Right. And like you said, your V zero is very simple. That's how you got to that point of, you know, being able to, to have all that demand. So it's super interesting to hear the evolution of your token launch here on, was it on base originally? Yeah. Yep. All days.

[12:21]Um, so yeah, so it's just interesting to hear like your version of, uh, how you've built this. How you guys built this, uh, token launcher and how it's kind of in a sense different than a lot of the other traditional token launchers out there. Right? Like Lanker isn't just a token launcher. It gives you that verifiability and like understanding plus the social graph of forecaster, which again is super powerful, um, in a separate sense, but like it gives you that understanding of, okay, the.

[12:51]The things that aren't always transparent with tokens, where I'm like, I work with a lot of musicians, people that aren't super deep on the tech side and just wanna leverage the tooling. It's like all of the unknown trans uh, things become transparent there. And I think that's super powerful. Right. And, uh, and yeah, no, I'm, I definitely wanna dive into that.

[13:13]Forecast their social graph side of being able to see the creator as well, see their social history, what they're posting actually as you're kind of coming in and, and choosing that as opposed to just a wallet address. Right? Yeah, yeah, totally. Like, uh, the first versions, like we, we weren't storing like the cast hash on the token contract.

[13:36]We introduced that later. But for V zero in like the early versions, it was just like stored in a database, right? We would just map it like we were the like, not really the source, but kind of the source of truth, right? We would store that record of like. Who requests it when, um, in the form of a cast.

[13:55]Right? And that was like, kind of only possible through forecaster there. And because they had like the, uh, connected Ethereum account, right? Like, um, now you can do it through like on X through Privy, right? You can kind of just spin up an account for someone, um, and. Like that, that was like kind of the, the big unlock there.

[14:16]It's like you don't have to kind of like preset up an account. You can export it and then, you know, get your fees that way. But, you know, there's, there's very little setup that, that you need to do. Um, and I think, yeah, I think that was kind of like, you know, what a, a benefit there. Just the fact that like, they had these tokens.

[14:36]Like it was kind of like the, the rugging aspect was like if a dev like sells their, their tokens that they get in the fees. Like, you know, but at, at that, you know, sure, it can't be like, detrimental, but it's not like a full like removal of liquidity where it's like you can't change or exchange the token anymore.

[14:55]So, uh, yeah, that was, that was kind of like, I, yeah, it was kind of, yeah, that was, that was kinda like. I think the big unlock there and it's not, not like we like invented tokens, right? Super simple. We just modified it a little bit. We just made it a lot easier to do. Yeah. I think that like. As a whole, blockchain brings the, uh, friction point down for people that aren't as, uh, able to get the same resources as you know, everyone else.

[15:26]And I think the really cool thing are builders that come in and build different things to help individuals leverage the tooling in a better way. In a, um, in a symptomatic, in a. In a way that, uh, is in alignment, right? Mm-hmm. And I think one of the really cool things, you know, that you've built here with the ability to have forecaster and use that social graph is now, you know, with blockchain, you have other people building other things on top.

[15:57]Like, um, Y Berserker and Diva fly with empire building mm-hmm. And building Now if you have any ER that's out there. You can bring that clank and add utility to it and it's just a net benefit to anyone who's used your protocol or, or, or your token launcher, let's say. And really leveling that up and showing that, you know, there's these upgrades that can be created in the sense of a community helping foster an ecosystem.

[16:21]And I think that's a really cool part of where blockchain comes in is that interoperability. So forecaster being the social layer. You guys have now created clank at, AT, which has been bought by forecaster. So it, you know, is, is now an, uh, a, a resource, um, that can be used with the, you know, this upcoming clank, um, ecosystem fund that's coming out that, uh, that Nish prof and Adrian are gonna be stewarding, which is super exciting.

[16:49]It's great to hear that. We, there's a, we had spoken actually a week ago and we were, were mentioning that, um. Uh, buybacks aren't as effective as, um, they seem to out to be in different capacities. Right? So doing something else with that resource, I think will be really valuable to this ecosystem here. I'd love to hear like, any of your thoughts on, on that side of things.

[17:15]Yeah. Yeah, totally. Uh, first wanna give a shout out to Jordan and Adrian. Uh, they are at Empire Builder. They're great. Shout out to, to you guys. Um. Seriously, they've been thinking from day one, they're the best. Um, yeah, no, I think the ecosystem funnel would be really cool, right? Like we had kind of like forecaster developer rewards before, um, which I think were, you know, it wasn't gonna, like, it wouldn't allow somebody to go maybe full-time, but they could, it, it could help subsidize some of those infrastructure costs that.

[17:51]You know, maybe could be a burden on an independent developer that's looking for funding, right? Or maybe limited funds. Um, I think that's the goal of the ecosystem fund, right? And think also a goal is like kind of having that run independently of like, you know, like myself and like the NAR team. I think that's like a goal, right?

[18:15]Where it's, we want it to be kind of like an objective, uh. You know, fund, right? Where people can, you know, they could submit, uh, you know, whether it's proposals or, you know, requests for funding for really anything. And I think like, it's kind of just gonna be like a breathing, like a living thing. Um, really excited to see how, you know, they go, uh, it turns out I've, you know, I, I, I have utmost respect and, you know.

[18:42]I think they're, they're gonna crush it. Um, so yeah, Adrian and Prof are, are great. So, um, yeah, I think, I think it'll, it'll be a great, um. Spark right of, uh, something here to forecaster where I think there's been, um, a lot of places. For me it's been a, a, a, a great opportunity in the last little bit because there, there's been less users and, and active users as has been in the past, but I think all of the tooling has gotten better in this time, and that's my favorite kind of space to be.

[19:16]I came in in 2023, you know, a couple months after the bottom of the bear, and it's just kind of a good place to be because. The tools that are available to you are better and more valuable than people are speculating on it currently in whatever way, shape, and form you look at that. I, I see that as hype cycles and hype in different ways.

[19:37]I think that's towards AI right now as opposed to blockchain itself as a whole, not even decentralized social media. Right. Um. But I think that there lends to be crazy value there. 'cause if you can build on top of systems that are undervalued, then you're just in a place, um, to benefit from that, that technology.

[19:56]So I think it's been a really fun experience over the last three months, four months, um, you know, for. For, for me, seeing the, you know, Lanker get acquired by then Far Caster and then Far Caster getting a acquired by, um, NAR and kind of seeing the ecosystem shift in a lot of different ways. But I think the, uh, the core.

[20:18]Value and everything that's, you know, still there is that was there, is still there of what's, what's behind the scenes. So I'm really excited to see how the rest of 2026 goes because I think, uh, with the evolution of snaps recently, which has been bringing back frames, but with extra capabilities here, um, bringing back like.

[20:38]One click social features that aren't available on any other social media currently, like as a whole, like, to, to me, of the, the ability to kind of have programmable, uh, casts I think is super valuable. Um, so I'd love to know, like, you know, your thoughts on, on the rest of 2026, if you know, behind clank or any of your thoughts other than the ecosystem from where, where you're going.

[20:59]You guys have. Built a lot of really cool utility into the token launchers there. Anything you really wanna attack? I know you said the, the, the presale side has maybe made it a little too complicated. So that's its own challenge. Um, recently there was the, uh, team clank, right? That you guys launched. Um, I don't know if you, you have any thoughts on that, if you wanna share more about your vision for that, but I'd just love to know, you know, what's, uh, what's, what's in store for Jack for the rest of 2026?

[21:28]Yeah, I think, um, you know, the, the goal of what I wanna see right, is like have, you know, pave not, not pave the road, but like, you know, make it so other developers be, be independent developers or like, you know, un relatively smaller developers, be able to, you know, do kind of like the same playbook as clinker, right?

[21:52]Where it's building on top of these. Like Lego bricks, right. To kind of like build cool experiences at scale, right. And test kind of like hypothesis and, um, yeah, really just like experiment. You know? I think that's like the, the most powerful thing that we can do to like, push not only the, the crypto industry forward, but just like in general, like technological innovations.

[22:19]Um. It's cool to see kind of like the, you know, the surge in AI usage, um, not only for, you know, personal coding agents, but you know, whether it's data, you know, processing, uh, social aspects too, right? Like little personal assistance, things like that. Like those are really fun. Um, yeah, I mean, in the last, like this year we've had, you know, this surge of AI agents, but like you guys created a.

[22:49]Uh, an AI agent in, in and of itself with Lanker on forecaster. You know, earlier I was playing around with Eliza a little bit the year before. I really liked that. So like, I think seeing how the, like you said, the, the new emergence of people using AI more and how that interacts with blockchain. I've always seen them as kind of intertwining technologies and for me, like blockchain is that verification layer for what AI can be.

[23:15]So I think it's really cool that you guys kind of were ahead of that trend at. Sense. Right. So in a way, in a way I feel like that's so long. I don't even think I was like using like a coding. I, I must have been. I think it was out for sure. One of those. Right. Um, but yeah, no, I, I think it's, it's super cool.

[23:34]I think I would love to see, you know, more of those, you know, in feed experiences. I think that like we've seen a lot of cool, kind of like the agent gaming side too is like an emerging kind of. Verti, I wouldn't say vertical, but a category. Um, that's really exciting. I think that, like, that is really like a, a big captivation of like, um, just like entertainment.

[24:00]And I think like, especially in like the, you know, the hype cycle. If it's, if there's less hype right now, I think that it can be a good kind of like catalyst there, right? Where it's giving people, you know, entertainment, uh. You know, enjoyment, kind of like bringing the fun back. Um, where I think a lot of this can kind of get lost in like, speculation, right?

[24:23]Like trading I think is like, it's, I think it's essential. Um, but I think also like, it can, it, I feel like it almost like needed kind of a reset where it was all about like, you know, what, what the next token is, right? I've seen like, like a couple, like pretty sophisticated, like. Fake projects coming through like, like recently Clanked, but I'm sure it's happening on like all the other launchpads where it's like, just like a, a vibe coded like website with kind of like, even like they'll do like a white paper.

[24:56]It's crazy how sophisticated these are going. Like they'll even have like a fake LinkedIn profile for like their founding team to make it look legit and like it's so, it's getting like just so advanced where like some of these like just. You know, token sniffers or like project due diligence projects are like, or, you know, tools are so important.

[25:20]Um, which, you know, I think there's a huge room, or room for kind of like innovation around that, right. Whether it's, you know, I, I think even like block explorers are so like, outdated, you know, like pasting a contract address, having to decode the byte code and like all of this is just like, it's, that is like the barrier.

[25:41]Two, kind of like, maybe not the barrier, but a barrier to like more widespread adoption. So, um, you know, if we can make that easier for like, traditional or, you know, maybe non-technical people, but specifically like not, um, people that aren't familiar with like blockchain tooling, uh, to use. Yeah. I think that could be really interesting.

[26:04]That's a, that's a cool little, uh. Little spot in the space. I think there's a lot of people that are trying to do the ENT side of like a chat bot with the ability to like use some, ask some blockchain questions. But I think it'll be a lot more powerful when it's just like within your normal workflow of using it.

[26:27]And I think that's like where, like you said, it could be, it's a really. It's a, it's a tough spot, uh, but it'll definitely help onboard more people. So food for that, for sure. Yeah, I mean, I think it's cool. Like there's, you know, like the export, uh, oh, am I, I, I'm gonna just been out there. You're good. Um, yeah, no, I, I think like, uh, there's like the cool, like I'm also a fan of like those kind of like emerging technology primitives.

[26:56]And X 4 0 2 or I think like XMT P too, right. Where mm-hmm. You know, if you're kind, can kind of like build the foundation. And I think that's probably like how kind of forecaster maybe started, but they, they were like client centric, which was really nice. Right? Like, that might be something that, you know, is, could be needed right?

[27:16]With, you know, instead of, I don't know. Or like, basically like a, a flagship interface. For an underlying protocol, right. In the Quaker perspective, the, the interface, flagship meaning like the fall, fall back to, but you can also use like alternative clients, right? Is like, was the chat bot. Um, then we had like the deploy form, but now there, you know, then there was like Empire Builder, clin, Krusty, K, like all these other kind of like use cases or you know, areas to kind of like index.

[27:48]Uh, well both index, but also like right to the contract itself. Um, yeah, I think like, you know, there's, there's a big, uh, need for kind of like that aspect, right? You can build super cool tech, but if it's not like right in your face and like you gotta kind of jump through some hoops to kind of use it, that can kind of be, uh, you know, a, a fallback there.

[28:12]But yeah. Um, let's see. You also, yeah. I'll pause there. I don't know. I feel like I'm just kind of rambling now. No, no. I love it. I, I appreciate it. Uh, Jack, it's great to to have you on chat. Um, is there, uh, a good place for people to reach out to you? Where is, where is, uh, where's the best place for people to come?

[28:33]Say hi? Yeah, if I'm on forecaster, I'm at Dish there. Um, on X I'm at Jack Dishman and yeah, hit me up. Happy to chat, happy to help out in any way I can. Um, and yeah, z all thanks for having me on and yeah, I'm excited to, uh, maybe I'll try and make it up to your neck of the woods and, uh, you could, you know, grab a coffee or a beer or something.

[28:59]Yeah, a hundred percent. Well, we're planning an event in October, so we'll have to have you up for that. That's right. That's right. Yeah, that'd be great. Perfect time to do it. Yeah. Uh, appreciate it. It is amazing to have you on. Um, thanks everyone for popping in, um, and, and listening back and, uh, have a great rest of your day.

[29:17]Have a good one.