𝗔𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗕𝗮𝗻𝗸𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗱𝗿𝗮𝗺𝗮, 𝗜 𝗽𝘂𝘁 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁𝘀 𝘁𝗼𝗴𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗲'𝘃𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝗲𝗻, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘄𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 @therollupco: Starting DeFi Slate in May 2020 while @robbie_rollup was still finishing his math degree, myself having dropped out and ran an online biz for 2 years, was a no brainer. We had been in the trenches of the 2017 Bittrex orderbooks & BitMEX degen chatbox till 2am in the university library together. We help put on a conference with @BlockchainEdu back in 2018, peak bear market... Diving deeper into crypto after seeing that you could finally interact with onchain apps was one of the easiest decisions we've ever made. However, the vertical to attack was not. Start a protocol? Data company? Job board? Media? Our lightbulb moment came when we decided to focus on education and credibly neutral content as means to educate, empower, and enrich those around us. Our motto from over three years ago still rings true today. We'd been in the blockchain club together in 2017, we gave presentations on topics to hungry, young students. We enjoyed it. Fun fact: Rob actually beat me in the race for president of the club in 2018. That made me quite mad. Anyways, a treacherous bear market of zero demand on the DeFi Slate business side, a few failed partnerships, wasted time, significant loss of capital led us to take divisive action. 𝘚𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘩𝘢𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦. The rebrand to The Rollup came following an article from @VitalikButerin called 'Rollup Centric Roadmap'. The vision of seeing where the tides were shifting. We knew this was going to come to fruition, but how do we position ourselves for this? This was the question we pondered for weeks on end in spring 2023. Too risky to focus on just one rollup/chain, too much tunnel vision, we'd miss trends elsewhere. But, if we went too broad, we'd miss the niche level of dominance we are slowly gaining following Devconnect... We decided to skate to where the puck was going, and man we did not expect this type of fast growth and trajectory, let alone the forecast for 2024. Just like that: The Rollup was born and hasn't even seen its first birthday yet! After an epic time @EFDevconnect, filled with a lot of praise for the rebrand, quality of content, and overall comments like "I'm so bullish on The Rollup" as well as some constructive criticism such as "filter out old airdrop content" and "focus on education" and "make sure you do lots of DD on every project you work with and always remain transparent", Rob and I went on a sprint for 4-5 days to unpack everything and think big picture... 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝗺𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗿 𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗼 (𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗽𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗹𝘆): The Rollup is currently undergoing a period of scaling. We are revamping our website, growing our partner base, writing angel checks, expanding our grants business model, growing the team, hosting virtual and live events, creating entities in new regions, shipping a native dApp hub, engaging in governance delegation, and pushing hard on all socials with new strategies to grow audience. Our goal is to be a of dominant voice of authority in the modular blockchain, rollup, appchains, and Ethereum scaling world. We will onboard new users via our social strategies, memes, paid ads, and really well done educational content while facilitating onchain usage all within The Rollup Hub, a set of educational tutorials comprised within the website's natively embedded dApp widgets. The first example was @lifiprotocol for cross-chain swaps & bridging, since then we've integrated @kado_money for on/off ramp, @OnBndit for minting @unstoppableweb domains and other cool domains & NFTs, @CoWSwap for MEV minimized swaps, and @OvertimeMarkets is in the works for onchain sports. By doing this, we'll continue to back only the best of the best projects and host them on our website with a stamp of approval for the new users we onboard. This is why we chose to focus on Rollups. We want to onboard the next 100M users directly to L2s where they can operate very cheaply, quickly, and with the underlying security of Ethereum. One day we envision hundreds of millions of dollars of tx volume on our dApp hub, with tens of thousands of users who know onchain crypto as "The Rollup Apps" rather than dozens of separate dApps. 𝘉𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴, 𝘪𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴, 𝘸𝘦 𝘨𝘰𝘵 𝘺𝘰𝘶. Next, we will continue to back really quality projects with angel checks. I've cut half a dozen or more since 2023 started and plan to cut more in the modular space/zk/infra/good dApps. We will back these founders, we will be transparent with a disclosures section on our website (in the works), and we will help them in anyway we can. We may or may not earn extra compensation in the form of sweat equity as well. I think we can pull more weight than most VCs by a long shot. That's why projects should consider us on their cap tables, even with a small ticket size. We are looking to expand our event presence with some key partners, the first taste of this was with @epicweb3 in Istanbul. Going forward, at the biggest conferences you can count on The Rollup being much more involved in hosting events, moderating panels, and speaking. Nothing locked in on this yet, but I'm going to make it happen. I promise you that. Right now we are also expanding the team. We're bringing on more video creators (Rob & I are slammed on content), more backend content managers and system designers, as well as taking better care of our team who's been by our side for 3+ years. By doing this, we'll be able to provide more value to our partners AND pump out tons more high-quality content for all beloved our readers, followers, and listeners. Also, it'll give @robbie_rollup and I more time to really lean into the bigger picture: Locking down big events at conferences, building our governance delegation participation, investing in more deals, speaking with more partners, and shipping the dApp hub. 𝗧𝗼 𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗶𝘇𝗲... Going forward, myself, Rob, The Rollup team, and our community plan to execute on all of these fronts while staying true to our core ethos of why were even here: Onboarding the masses via education, empowering our community to succeed, and enriching them through our content, opportunities, and maybe even a little help of number go up tech. Lol. 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘦 '𝘸𝘦𝘯 𝘢𝘪𝘳𝘥𝘳𝘰𝘱' 𝘰𝘳 '𝘸𝘦𝘯 𝘳𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘶𝘱 𝘤𝘰𝘪𝘯' 𝘧𝘰𝘭𝘬𝘴 - 𝘸𝘦𝘭𝘭, 𝘺𝘰𝘶'𝘭𝘭 𝘣𝘦 𝘸𝘢𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦, 𝘐 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭 𝘺𝘢 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵! If you're still reading this you're a legend, thank you for the support, truly means a lot.