Juan Benet I Building Web3 Startups | Protocol Labs I Pragma Tokyo 2023

Mon, Oct 2, 2023, 12:00 AM

Join Juan Benet, founder of Protocol Labs and the visionary behind Filecoin and IPFS, in this fireside chat at Pragma Tokyo as he shares lessons from building foundational web3 infrastructure and startups. Juan dives deep into the origins of IPFS and Filecoin, explains why decentralized storage matters, and how protocol-level innovation reshaped the crypto ecosystem. He discusses the challenges of early crypto fundraising, inventing Proof of Replication, and launching core tools like libp2p, Drand, and CoinList. More than a retrospective, Juan lays out a roadmap for aspiring web3 founders—highlighting current opportunities in public goods, decentralized compute, crypto-native databases, zero-knowledge infrastructure, games, DAOs, and interplanetary consensus. If you’re thinking about starting a crypto project or building the next generation of web3 companies, this talk is filled with insights you can’t afford to miss. 00:00 Intro to Juan Benet & Protocol Labs 01:24 Early crypto interest and lost Bitcoin 02:32 From peer-to-peer research to IPFS 04:04 Why Filecoin was a separate protocol 05:37 IPFS vs Filecoin use cases explained 06:38 Early crypto scene and Ethereum origins 07:40 Why Filecoin built its own chain 08:39 Protocol Labs’ protocol innovations 10:16 Invention of Proof of Replication 11:48 Building Filecoin's storage market 12:49 Inventing the SAFT and launching CoinList 13:51 Are we still early in web3? 14:58 Comparing web3 to the early internet 16:26 Infrastructure and UX still need work 17:55 Web3’s next major applications 18:51 Key opportunities: games, social, compute 20:20 The case for on-chain Twitter scale 21:25 DePIN and wireless network opportunities 22:28 Need for crypto-native databases 24:06 Scalability without compromising decentralization 25:37 Interplanetary consensus vision 26:10 Web3 startup opportunities in Japan 27:17 Japan’s strengths in games and DeFi 28:46 Frameworks for early-stage founders 30:10 The idea funnel and finding “secrets” 31:38 Role of hackathons and project evolution 33:00 What is a true MVP in web3 34:31 Start small, test, and iterate fast 36:49 Defining product-market fit in crypto 38:08 Why “make something people want” still wins 39:42 Picking new primitives vs proven models 41:03 Optimize for speed and traction 42:34 New capital structures for public goods 43:55 Building with public capital and legitimacy 45:20 Startup tools: hackathons, grants, accelerators 46:42 Programs to bootstrap web3 startups 48:36 Question: Hosting the Internet Archive on IPFS 51:42 AWS, S3, and the cost advantage of Filecoin 52:36 Question: The future of hypercerts 54:35 Creating impact markets with hypercerts 56:04 Question: New public capital infrastructure 58:31 Aligning incentives to grow good public goods 59:02 Question: Human augmentation via computing 01:01:07 Brain-machine interfaces & coordination tools 01:02:40 Twitter as a coordination primitive 01:03:34 Closing remarks and invitation to connect _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🇯🇵 *Pragma Tokyo* It’s always been about hackathons. Until now! Kicking off in Tokyo we announced the latest edition to the ETHGlobal family last week. Pragma will be one day summit, focusing on high quality talks in an intimate atmosphere that fuels reimagining the world and networking with like-minded individuals. Watch the full Pragma Tokyo 2023 playlist here: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXzKMXK2aHh72VNBeeMzsvxnDdJH-vPhZ&si=z7enlsk30_DUjIoL _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow Juan Benet* X: https://x.com/juanbenet ✅ *Follow Protocol Labs* X: https://x.com/protocollabs ✅ *Follow ETHGlobal* X: https://x.com/ETHGlobal​ Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/ethglobal Website: https://ethglobal.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ETHGlobal _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _Are you interested in Ethereum development and entrepreneurship?_ 👉 Sign up for the next ETHGlobal event: https://ethglobal.com/events 🎁 Get exclusive access and perks with ETHGlobal Plus! https://ethglobal.com/plus 📣 Want us to throw an event in your city? Tell us where! https://ethglobal.com/city _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _