Interview | LDA & QuickSwap

Join us as we converse with the visionary minds at Lunar Digital Assets (LDA), exploring their strategies, aspirations, and the pivotal role they play in the Web3 narrative.

In our latest sit-down with the brainpower behind LDA, we delve deep into the mechanics of how they operate in the Web3 space, their unique approaches, and the collaborations they have forged.

From discussing their unique ‘community-first’ approach to the stringent selectivity in choosing projects, to delving into their partnerships with renowned names like Polygon, QuickSwap, and Dogechain, this interview is a treasure trove of insights.

Let’s start with the basics. Your company is engaged in marketing and incubating new Web3 projects. Tell us in more detail how you launch and scale projects in such a complex market as the Web3 market, where transparency and reliability are at the forefront.

The one common denominator in everything we do is community. We’re in our 7th year of incubating projects in this industry and this has been our priority from the very beginning. We believe: Influencers, KOLs, PR, ambassador programs, social media, and even exchanges, are all to build strong, loyal, and passionate communities where everyone works together to benefit each other as much as possible. 

Can you tell us about who Lunar Digital Assets has worked with in the past and what they look for when seeking out new clients to work with for Business Development and Marketing? There are well-known blockchains and projects among your clients.

At LDA we’ve taken a very different approach than most firms/agencies. We don’t do outreach, and we only accept 1-2% of projects that apply to join our incubation portfolio. In 2021 we politely rejected almost 200 projects. We only work with projects we truly believe have a chance of changing the industry.

Some of these include Polygon for over 4 years, QuickSwap for 3 years, Dogechain for 1.5 years, and Persistence  which we helped launch and worked with for 2-3 years.  We still support Persistence, but no longer work directly with them. You can find more about the other and current projects on our website Lunardigitalassets.io  There’s also information there regarding how to get in touch with us if you’re interested in having us represent you.

And how has Lunar Digital Assets survived in the bear market so far?

A very important part of working in this industry is managing finances. You have to be conservative during a bull run and make sure you have enough runway to survive a multi-year bear market. This is my third bear market, so it’s nothing new to me. Actually, LDA has thrived in the bear market.

We incubated and helped launch Dogechain, which was one of the biggest launches of the bear market valued at over $4 bil FDV peak, before the community burned 80% of supply, the largest burn in history of over $2 bil US value of tokens. If you’re a good company and you only work on projects you believe in and represent everyone well, the bear market becomes much more manageable. 

What tips do you have for other companies, CEOs, or Developers which are struggling to survive until this crypto winter ends?

Find a way to survive!  The grass is very green on the other side when we all get through this crypto winter. In the last bear market of 2018, I took no pay from the company for 6 months, then half pay for another 6 months to be able to pay our team. That sacrifice helped us build a stronger and even more loyal team.

We have all followed each other to hell and back in order to continue our mission of global decentralization. You can use equity as an incentive also… Be frugal, be ready, and be willing to sacrifice because the real money is made in the bull market. 

You do a great job using Twitter Spaces. You have been hosting a lot of Twitter Spaces with “All Roads Lead To Polygon,” Immutable, and others. At what point did you realize that you enjoy being a public forum host? And what topics do you usually discuss on your Twitter Spaces?

Gosh, I have always enjoyed speaking in public since I was a young child. Some of my childhood teachers liked it, but many didn’t. (laughs) I guess once you find a way to make speaking a part of your job, it all naturally works itself out. 

With “All Roads Lead to Polygon” and other spaces, we try to have a very open discussion, with some planning, but also very free flowing and natural. We do what we can to cover current relevant topics while digging deep into areas of the industry.

We usually have one main topic like gaming, DeFi, capturing TVL, regulations, community, NFTs etc… and then invite the industry’s leads in terms of other CEOs, Devs, Celebrities, and Media figure-heads to share their knowledge and openly discuss their opinion on any given topic.

And was being a podcast or Twitter Spaces host originally in your business plan?

I’ve always been told I should make YouTube videos and I would have loved to have done that for a living in another life.  But, running LDA, being Co-Founder of QuickSwap, etc… is too demanding for me to do content creation full time.  So, hosting Twitter Spaces and sometimes speaking as a guest a few times a week is perfect for me.

I’m able to do what I love, which is learning from the community and teaching fellow enthusiasts all together through open and broad discussions.

Let’s talk about your projects. We have noticed that DEX QuickSwap and Polygon blockchain seem to be working very closely together, especially with your weekly Twitter Spaces “All Roads Lead To Polygon,” which we have seen have up to 85,000 listeners! Can you tell us more about this collaboration?

Sure. LDA does marketing for and helped incubate both Polygon and QuickSwap, so there is a lot of common ground.  We pair nicely, respect one another, and work together incredibly well like any great team does…

Ok, so what separates QuickSwap from other DEXs?

1. Our community focus. Total team + advisors only received 3.75% of the total supply. The rest was reserved to give to the community through liquidity mining. The team also raised no funds, even though we were offered over $20mil from different VCs and Exchange venture groups.  A few of these offers were from some of the top exchanges. 

2. QuickSwap’s DragonFi Ecosystem has V2, V3, Perps, Concentrated liquidity management, a gaming hub, a Polygon ecosystem mobile application in development, and multiple other protocols being built which we haven’t announced yet. QuickSwap has hundreds, maybe even thousands of projects now building on top with integrations.

We have also heard that QuickSwap launched QuickPerps, a decentralized perpetual exchange on Polygon. The DEX features a starting slate of six assets, including $MATIC, $ETH, $BTC, and leading stablecoins $USDT, $USDC, and $DAI. Can you tell us more about its features?

Sure. It’s actually mostly simple… It’s GMX, but for Polygon, with some added improvements and features. GMX is one of the best product-market-fits in the industry right now and we knew Polygon needed this to continue to dominate in DeFi. QuickSwap V3, QuickPerps, and Gamma liquidity management protocols are #1, #2, and #3 respectively per DeFillama TVL stats on Polygon ZKEVM. We believe Polygon ZKEVM is 1-2 years ahead of all other rollups technologies.

So, naturally, we want to stay at the top of that chain as it continues to develop and the ecosystem grows. Rumors are that Polygon will have a massive 10s or 100’s of millions airdroping for ZKEVM with their new POL token migration to Polygon 2.0. We think it’s the best bet in the industry so we’re going in big on it for the time being!

Last question (actually, we couldn’t help asking this question…) There are rumors that Lunar Digital Assets might host an unofficial Christmas party in one of your team members’ barns in the UK and have it themed as a “Fight Club Christmas Party” with actual sparring… Is that true?

I can neither confirm nor deny these allegations!  We do have several former and current competitive fighters, along with heavy lifters, who work internally with us…!  If videos of that were to leak that would make for some great Youtube, Twitter, and Tik Tok content! I wonder what Elon and Zuk would think?! (laughs)