Bootstrapped to 5,000 enterprise clients: Birdeye’s CEO Kha Nguyen

0:00when your data coming from 4 500 sources, they're going to disagree with the data coming from the other source. And not to mention in many um small exchanges, many of the time the price going to be manipulated by by some items. So it it it may cost like a very very weird uh data points like a meme coin with a price of $1 million and things like that does happen.

0:26[music] Ashton Addison from the cryptocoin show and today on blockchain interviews we have ha co-founder and CEO of bird eyee. You've probably been using bird eyee for years without knowing it. It's the data behind a lot of prices you see today across 4 to 500 of the top exchanges and price feeds and much more. And we're excited to dive into the back end of

0:51that as RWA and tokenization and institutional adoption are growing blockchain and making it more mainstream. Ha, welcome to the show and thanks for taking the time. >> Thanks Ash for having me. >> Yeah, very very welcome. Uh I would love to start out with a high level on what you and the team have built at Bird Eyee. Many people have never heard of

1:15it, but you're sort of powering the back end of crypto going mainstream right now. So, could you explain a little bit more on what you actually do and the problems that you were solving when you started out? >> Sure. Um, so Buddha has been uh around for about more than 5 years. Um, we started off with just a website for for people to tracking token performance

1:37like price, volume, uh where the tokens be what what venues are the token being traded on. But then we evolved into one of the uh data infrastructures. We currently power like over 5,000 uh enterprise clients around the world like thinking about all the wallets, decentral exchange uh analysts like all the tools like that. Uh they using our data uh to uh to improve uh on the user

2:04experience or also to do um to make up on the analyst about the crypto market. Um and yeah um currently we uh we started off with the Solana ecosystem but now we cover multi chains we are supporting over 20 chains right now. >> Nice and at one point there was thousands of chains and a lot of them uh have have sort of died off. Um but we are seeing pretty strong adoption with

2:31you know some some some of these major chains. How how has that evolved in starting with with Salana and Ethereum and then deciding, you know, is this chain big enough to start including? Is this wallet big enough? Is the is there extra load on the system or can you just start partnering with everything? Uh well yes uh you're going to need to uh observe the markets right. Um so we

2:57we started off uh on Solana because Solana was uh such a good chance for the retail traders, retail investors. Uh and there are a lot of uh retail traders over there. Uh but then those investors, they don't really stick to one chains. Uh they also park their assets somewhere else, right? Uh whenever there's new chains, uh there's something uh new coming up, the new layer one, new layer

3:19two. Um the most recent one is obviously Robin Hood and there's a lot of users moving over there. Uh so we observe uh that uh the market data and we see that okay the uh the money is uh we follow that that money flow right uh so when we see that okay there's a lot of assets moving here there's a lot of uh asset being allocated into that blockchain then uh then then we going to just

3:44follow that one and we we support that and you can see that now there are probably hundreds of thousands of chains but the asset is actually concentrated into only like less than 20 chains um on on the other hands don't really have uh that type of you know trading activities at all. >> Mhm. Definitely. And when you started 5 years ago, I understand that the company

4:08was fully bootstrapped and decided they didn't need to raise from VCs who you said they keep switching, you know, to the next chain and the next chain at trying to capture opportunities. Can you talk about that decision of of bootstrapping and and has it paid off? Um well yes uh that is a a interesting story is that uh is not that we don't need to to raise but uh whenever we try

4:34to raise there's something happen right like as as you know in the in the crypto market like things happen and whenever we we try to to raise we think that okay this is the time to involve more experienced investors we need some more capital we need some more advice we need some more um uh you know knowledge and then something happens like you know FTX

4:55uh Luna and you know like a lot of things can happen that affect uh uh the way that the investor deploying their capital uh and then uh there are some uh that's some point in time we couldn't raise the fund that that we need and then we actually have to force ourself uh to monetize uh on what we already have and then that turns out to be uh pretty good decisions uh because uh we

5:19survive uh like all of those downturns of the market uh and here we are I mean in the future uh I don't know maybe we uh there will be some more times that that that that we might need to uh raise fund um but then yeah it is not that we choose to not raise fund but then the uh the whole market forc us to be who we are today and uh I'm pretty happy about

5:42it uh I don't really complain uh and that's good >> yeah it's nice uh when you know you are your own boss and and it's great to have partner ers that that can add capital. But the way that the situation works out and going through the turmoil, 95% of of crypto companies died through those bare markets. So, finding a will in a way to to make it through and bootstrap and

6:10build and be forced to find that product market fit and get the revenue streams going. Um, you know, it it sounds like it's worked out for you guys. >> Yeah. Uh and I think one of the thing that uh uh that we do a little bit different from many other projects is that um well many projects when when they start to building products right they want to follow the trends right uh

6:33it is like the wave is going up the market is going up so they want to build something to follow that trends whether it is memecoin whether it is tokenizations and everything um but for me I I really want to build something that is more independent from uh from the trends Um so that that means whether it is uh like uh there's this this trend or or the other trends we don't really

6:57being affected that much. Uh somehow we can uh have our own timeline we can have our own uh agenda and we don't really being affected uh by it and that's how we try to uh to build our business around. Um I mean I don't I cannot say that we are success on that yet but then uh it's still working for us so far. Yeah. No, I agree. If you try to jump on a trend that only lasts one month, uh,

7:25then, you know, and you're trying to build a a long-term stable business around it, you don't know how long the trend will last, but often these narratives keep shifting like the VCs are looking for the next big thing, but is this something that will be around in 5 years, you know, and and or should they be focusing on NFTTS, which ended up dying? Um, or they they may come back

7:46in a different way. But I think that's a a good way to look at it. With Bird Eye having so many partners in hundreds of exchanges, thousands of wallets, the 20 chains, what's the hardest part to manage of of all of that? Cuz I can imagine I have a portfolio of 100 different coins. I'm going insane trying to manage all these different areas. So when you have thousands of different

8:10partners, what's what's hard about that? Uh well the hard part is uh obviously uh synchronizations. Uh it's like when your data coming from four 500 sources it's going to be very difficult to uh um to have them agree with the with each other right like the data point from this this uh source going to be they're going to disagree with the data coming from the

8:35other source. And not to mention in many um small exchanges uh many of the time the price going to be manipulated by some uh by by some items. Um so it it it may cost like a very very weird uh data points like uh a meme coin with a price of $1 million and things like that does happen. Uh so how can we uh getting data from everywhere but then we have them to agree with each others.

9:03we we had to remove all the uh all the anomaly uh and uh and then we shift to our clients servers in under a few seconds. Um so the so the coverage and the freshness of of the data make it really really difficult. Uh and and it is what we have been trying to solve in the last five years. Um we have a pretty good system running right now. uh we are delivering under I I think like uh now

9:30it's like two three seconds from the moment when a trade happen anywhere in the world uh to the moment that our clients can actually display that information into their front end. Um so that's a is a pretty hard uh difficult problem um that we solve but we want to push it even further. uh we want to have a subsecond uh latency uh and uh yeah it is an incredible uh engineering problem

9:58that we are trying to solve. Definitely I'd love to learn a little bit more on the positioning and and understanding bird eye. You know, I'm familiar with chain link and that they use oracles to to grab price data and bring it into DeFi and without that you know the blockchain would not be able to it doesn't have a price. The price is set from the markets and that's how it

10:20goes into into there. So is is Birdy competing with them in in in that sense or is this different? Uh it is different because uh to be honest we are solving uh two different use cases. Um uh I mean we are good friends with with chain link and and pizza as well. Uh and what they are solving is that uh they're going to provide a very accurate timely price

10:46point uh for a very selective number of assets. uh we are talking about bitcoin, soul, uh ether, ether and you know like on the top tokens right uh and their data can be used uh for trade executions uh so on the exchange so lending protocol they can rely on that kind of data to do the trade executions uh but they do not support like small um meme coins on the fresh tokens that just

11:14being added liquidities uh somewhere right uh so so they have their very specific um use case uh and what we are trying to solve is that uh we want to provide to the market the most uh the most fresh uh new data uh and in the uh shortest time possible. [gasps and sighs] Um so uh so let's say there in the market right now there's like uh over like a few million

11:40tokens uh being issued uh and then there's like thousand of tokens being uh issues and new nearly every day right so we we want to spot um uh at the moment when that tokens being issued and then being uh and the liquidity being added in on radium or on any uh small exchange somewhere we want to know about that one and we want to send that information to

12:04our clients so that [clears throat] on the our clients like the wallets, the taxes um they can use our data to uh to display that one into uh to you uh uh as a users right uh you can see that for example if you get uh adopted uh some new tokens right you can know instantly that okay it is on my wallet and this is the price of it and this is uh the value

12:26of uh of that amount of of tokens uh so we are solving like totally different use use case Definitely. No, thank you for explaining that. And you talked earlier about verifiability and getting the information fast, but making sure it's accurate and the potential for manipulation, especially on newer coins or lower liquidity exchanges, small exchanges. If two sites show potentially

12:54different 24-hour volumes for the same token, which one is right? And and how do you determine Uh we actually have a have a very uh sophisticated system to uh to detect like uh which one is uh is accurate and which one is actually there are like two cases right uh when you see um something uh different like for example token price being double right there could be

13:22it could be uh manipulation or it could be something real just happening right uh how [clears throat and snorts] can we know that uh it is like uh the fake one or the real one. Uh then we we're going to base on the different uh different uh parameters. Um we're going to look at okay uh where that trade actually happened. Is that in a very high liquidity uh venue or is that just a

13:45very new a very small liquidity uh uh uh exchange? Uh and then it's like uh how uh what is the trade volumes? uh is that like a 0.1 uh volume or is that like $1 million traits? Uh and that going to tell us a very different stories. Uh so uh so we we do look at all of those and and we have to make that uh decision just in a

14:12fractions of a second. uh and then uh yeah I mean that uh that is something that that we do uh constantly because uh that kind of noise is uh actually happen more often than than you think. Definitely. And there can be a big difference between a lot of volume and a lot of liquidity. And especially on some of the sketchier exchanges and the large exchanges, they're using market makers

14:39to make the market. and and some of the smaller exchanges, they're probably pushing up the volume a lot and maybe wash trading. How do you determine the quality of of the that volume on and to you know it might show $100,000 volume but if you try to buy 10,000 of of some small token it it might have huge slippage. >> Yeah, there could be some other set of

15:05parameters right. Um there's something that we call the capital efficiency. uh it is like uh we're considering the uh the volume and uh and the liquidity of the market. Uh and then uh we can also take a look at the how many um you know wallet address actually participate in that market uh with us count on the unique wallet address. uh so that that can that can be a parameter as well uh

15:32for us to to determine okay this is like they have 100 millions uh volume but then uh if I don't know if 40% 50% of that is just being generated by uh 10 wallets then then that then we we going to rate it differently from uh you know we we we have that decentralizations of a volume generated in another markets >> Mhm. M

15:58>> so yeah all of that had to have had to be thought through and we have been you know like do it and then revise it and refine it in the last 5 years there's a lot of cases definitely and you and the team at Bird Eye had presented at Salana Breakpoint the the the top Salana conference a few years ago as an insider on the knowledge of Salana network growth do you still

16:25think it's you know the the the right choice in in how you started bird eye starting on Salana and do you have are you optimistic about that network moving forward? Uh yeah uh when talking about Salona uh I feel so lucky because uh I choose uh to build on Solona since uh five years five years ago. Well before but before but I I was actually the head of product

16:50at Soulcan which is uh the default uh explorer for Solana. Um and I'm still being surprised by the uh ecosystem every day even even now because uh Solana uh the the interesting about that ecosystem is that uh it does have a directions right uh the founders of the Solana foundations they does have have a general directions of you know building the fastest um decentralized uh machine

17:18uh in the world but then how they did that actually change u based on the market right like uh you remember like uh back then when the meme core happens and now we we have the uh internet capital market and then we have the you know uh all the asset uh tokenizations uh so so the whole ecosystem actually swift based on what the market wants but then the general direction is is still

17:44there um and that's what I like about it uh it is you know the best system is a systems that uh change right uh because otherwise uh if they just stick to one method, one way of doing things, then uh it's going to be very very fast. They be uh uh they're obsolate. Um so um so yeah uh I think Solana is an incredible uh ecosystem, incredible network. Uh there

18:11are so many people uh active and there's so many uh talented engineers and talented uh uh people like doing both business and community in development. Um yeah have it has been like five six year and I still very enjoy it. Mhm. I appreciate the the insider insights and um because it's a lot to follow all of these chains and I think Salana still uh is a top contender for uh helping

18:39tokenize the financial system as well and of course Ethereum and I want to dive into that next because recently and over the past year or two we've seen a lot more institutional adoption and real world asset tokenization and tokenization of other financial products. and merging them into decentralized trading and blockchain networks. And that's probably opening up

19:03more avenues for bird eye. You're not just tracking the data for digital assets and the top bitcoin and these altcoins. There's traditional financial products now that are on chain. So how has that evolved with bird eye? Um well firstly uh well there there are much more assets on there are much more valuable assets uh on China now especially with the tokenizations of all

19:31the reward assets for all the stocks and uh you know gold and treasuries uh and uh the data now we we actually have to be um much more standardized um you know like with the crypto data we uh it is very noisy uh and normally does there there aren't any uh you know common standards among all the data providers uh but now with all the access uh coming

19:56from the traditional finance uh they are very standardized right like uh when talking about all the SEC regulations like all those uh uh stocks they are in the same format there are some certain standards that we actually have to follow uh there are some concepts that we actually have to learn and adopt from the chart file to uh defy. Um, so so yeah, we we actually

20:21have to change uh quite quite a bit in the way that we do business because uh uh in the crypto world, we can defy some some some concept, right? We can put up with the new names and everything. But but when we work with on the chart five assets uh we actually have to adopt all the uh on the concept that is already being defined uh for 100 years like uh

20:43stocks like treasuries like bonds and and everything we have to use all those words so that we keep it familiar to all the investors. Um so yeah there there's a lot of thing we learn we uh we adopt it. Uh and then uh technically we we also have to include a lot of uh offchain data as well. So we have the onchain data but but now uh we also need to include all the offchain data like

21:07coming from on the exchange like NASDAQ NYC and um SEC as well. Uh so so from from all those places we have to merge it with the onchain data that we already have to bring uh the uh better pictures to uh uh to the traders and investors. Um, so that that is a a challenge, but it is something quite fun to to solve as well. >> How quickly do you see RWA tokenization

21:38growing as a business sector inside of Bird Eye and and when do you expect that the market cap of of that sector might outpace uh crypto? Well, uh that is a very uh good questions uh because currently it is already in in our business. So we do have uh some APIs that uh that expose the information about those RWAS uh through BA API uh pack. Um and there are

22:06already some uh some some projects some clients already use that one to display um reward assets on their tools on their wallets on their website. Um but then it is it is just the beginning right. Uh and and also the the number of uh asset being tokenized is actually uh not that much. Well I mean there are thousand of them but it is still like uh uh not that

22:30many. there will be uh much more when uh you know currently we mostly about the US stocks right but then uh when it's uh when it's expand and being uh accepted in Europe in Japan in Singapore in Hong Kong then uh in China then there will be a lot more accepts um so uh so I'm quite positive about the uh about the trend because uh the you know the uh the

22:56benefit is is quite obvious uh now everybody in the world can uh trade own those um regulated assets 24/7. Um and um you know if you are in the US you can actually buy some stocks like being issued in in Japan or even in Vietnam and vice versa like for us here we can buy some assets like being issued in the US. Uh that is that is something very exciting right uh so I believe like all

23:23the good things will have the time and then uh whole trend going to going up. Uh but then from from our side of view like with that belief um uh we are building uh uh our data products to to fit to uh uh to that futures. Uh we are uh we will have more uh RWA APIs so that our clients can consume. Um uh we're also building uh more institutional uh

23:51tools as well some dashboards so that uh people can go and uh go over there and to track for the trends and uh maybe spot their new opportunities uh and to track their portfolio for example. Um so uh you know the the possibilities are limitless for us. Yeah, it's an exciting time in uh digital assets and you guys are going to be busy with the amount of tokenization

24:17and institutional partners coming in. [laughter] >> So I hope so. >> Yeah, I know. So thank you H for for all the insights into this. Uh I'm wishing you and the team all the best at Bird Eye and keep bringing us fast reliable data uh so that people can make decisions in decentralized finance and regular finance as they move move into the web 3 world. So I appreciate you

24:42taking the time. >> Thank you Ashton for having me. Enjoyed a lot. [music] >> [music] [music]