Growth lead @upshift_fi/@august_digital | Building stablecoin yield products with fintechs/payments teams | Chess player | Prev google
Joined December 2021
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tl;dr:
I've joined @upshift_fi to help democratize institutional DeFi yield and unlock stablecoin growth
book a call with me to tell me about your yield issues: calendar.app.google/VtUcjiPw…
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crypto is wild, fun and thought-provoking in equal measure, with opportunities everywhere. I love (most of the time) working in this industry
but the vast majority of people find DeFi complex, high-risk and very manual. Lending is too safe; aping is too risky.
I am convinced that stablecoins and onchain assets will reach many trillions in market cap. And that yield will be how we turn passive holders into active participants of onchain finance.
that's why I'm joining the @august_digital team to lead growth on Upshift.
@aya_kantor and @AElkrief are top 1% founders, with many years living and breathing DeFi.
We are assembling a high-integrity, mission-led team - our goal is as many people as possible creating wealth in an open financial system.
if you have ideas about how to build DeFi yield products or you're willing to spare 15 minutes to discuss your DeFi experience - I would love to chat: calendar.app.google/VtUcjiPw…
job's not done. trillions need yield
NASDAQ-listed DATs are now deploying into vaults.
Read that again
We are now well past the point of return. Blockchain rails and stablecoin infrastructure like vaults are transforming every component of capital markets.
Not to mention this is a very unique opportunity - deposit HYPE and jump the line for new extensions like .agent and .human.
So cool to see internet-native financial infrastructure ushering in the next wave of internet domains .
Excited to see this get over the line with @mxchaelho, @hyunsujung_ and team
Hyperliquid gets early access to the new internet.
1,000+ new internet extensions are coming online.
Deposit HYPE in @D3inc's Frontier vault on Upshift to accrue points toward priority on .agent, .human, .robot, .labs and more.
@hyperiondefi (NASDAQ: HYPD) is launch partner.
"It would not be unimagineable to me that [...] some of the well-known ETF issuers (he Van-Ecks of the world) set up shop there"
When I speak to friends about crypto, by far the most accepted and well-known example application is perps.
Hyperliquid has a massive, massive growth curve still ahead
Firecrawl is crushing it
Introducing free People Data for ChatGPT & Claude.
Give your AI agents access to 270M+ company & people records in Alexandria.
Get 1,000 free credits a month to build prospect lists, find work emails, & research job history with the Firecrawl plugin.
firecrawl.dev/alexandria/cat…
The way @saradu talks about building an agent-first platform is fascinating
Listen from 32:50 on how Slack isn’t built for agents:
“agents are not treated the same as humans”
“‘install a co-worker [an agent]’? is that the right frame?”
“I’m [the agent] this super intelligent being and humans are asking me to do stuff with little context and berating me”
“an agent is a type of entity on @andocorporation that joins a channel like a human”
“what’s the first 90 days for an agent onboarding”
Very opinionated on agents as first class citizens and the future of product development.
Curious how this scales - would guess the non-AI pilled majority may even find this type of language/thinking alarming
Slack was built before AI and you can tell.
This solo founder raised $20M to build the workspace for humans and agents.
Solo Founders Podcast ep 30 is live with @saradu of @andocorporation.
01:19 Two companies, two motivations
05:29 A problem worth ten years
08:43 Why now, and why so few competitors
19:36 Agents are coworkers, not tools
33:15 The locked office building
37:07 An agent's first 90 days
42:53 Trust runs backwards with agents
54:05 Georgia to SF at 17
1:09:30 The bear and bull case for going solo
Onedotfour retweeted
Claude should be every growth person's best friend
A few growth/marketing folks have asked me for my GTM engineering set up, sharing below (probably forgot some things):
Terminal
- cmux.com by @cmux. A terminal app that makes managing workflows easier.
- Workspaces for various workstreams: Sales pipeline, AEO/SEO, Social, Analytics, Learning/consolidation, Video editing.
- I also have a Triage workspace which has a custom /triage skill that lets Claude look across all workspaces to flag action items that have fallen through the cracks
- ! cfork, a small bash script I wrote: it forks the current session into a new pane with the same context, for when one task splits into two
- /rc (remote control) on each session, so I can check in and reply from my phone on the weekends
- ! caffeinate, so my Mac stays awake and long jobs keep running when I step away/sleep etc
Context layer, 4 levels:
- Claude kept skipping my skills and freehanding, so I made it add hooks which now run on every prompt. It names the matching skill, memory files and handover file before Claude starts
- memory.md - standard, updates in background
- custom /handover skill - For each workspace, I have a rolling md file e.g. AEO.md and /handover adds to it. I run this command whenever I've used up ~40% of the context window - I've customized my Claude code panel to tell me when I'm near the threshold
- custom /session-retro skill - Sometimes, /handover will not be enough. So it recomends I run a /session-retro which is an additional layer for deeper context consolidation e.g. updates to key skills
^ If anyone thinks I can improve this with Obsidian etc let me know, wasn't really able to get into it
MCPs and packages:
- Remotion for video editing
- Firecrawl
- Ahrefs/Gauge for AEO/SEO
- yt-dlp - download a youtube video
- mlx-whisper - transcribing videos
- Webflow mcp
- Monaco mcp
- Hubspot, slack, gmail, ga4 etc
Other tips
- Constantly ask Claude to turn anything you do twice into a skill
- Ask it to push back on your reasoning
- get Claude to reply in Simplified Technical English (a Karpathy tip)
- Vaults (what I do at @upshift_fi) cover a lot of industries, so I'm always learning about finance/payments. I have a quiz deck which runs at session start, so Claude tests me on what I'm learning using spaced repetition
- Giving claude a lot of inspo - honestly just pasting in video URLs or tweets and letting Claude figure it out
Claude should be every growth person's best friend
A few growth/marketing folks have asked me for my GTM engineering set up, sharing below (probably forgot some things):
Terminal
- cmux.com by @cmux. A terminal app that makes managing workflows easier.
- Workspaces for various workstreams: Sales pipeline, AEO/SEO, Social, Analytics, Learning/consolidation, Video editing.
- I also have a Triage workspace which has a custom /triage skill that lets Claude look across all workspaces to flag action items that have fallen through the cracks
- ! cfork, a small bash script I wrote: it forks the current session into a new pane with the same context, for when one task splits into two
- /rc (remote control) on each session, so I can check in and reply from my phone on the weekends
- ! caffeinate, so my Mac stays awake and long jobs keep running when I step away/sleep etc
Context layer, 4 levels:
- Claude kept skipping my skills and freehanding, so I made it add hooks which now run on every prompt. It names the matching skill, memory files and handover file before Claude starts
- memory.md - standard, updates in background
- custom /handover skill - For each workspace, I have a rolling md file e.g. AEO.md and /handover adds to it. I run this command whenever I've used up ~40% of the context window - I've customized my Claude code panel to tell me when I'm near the threshold
- custom /session-retro skill - Sometimes, /handover will not be enough. So it recomends I run a /session-retro which is an additional layer for deeper context consolidation e.g. updates to key skills
^ If anyone thinks I can improve this with Obsidian etc let me know, wasn't really able to get into it
MCPs and packages:
- Remotion for video editing
- Firecrawl
- Ahrefs/Gauge for AEO/SEO
- yt-dlp - download a youtube video
- mlx-whisper - transcribing videos
- Webflow mcp
- Monaco mcp
- Hubspot, slack, gmail, ga4 etc
Other tips
- Constantly ask Claude to turn anything you do twice into a skill
- Ask it to push back on your reasoning
- get Claude to reply in Simplified Technical English (a Karpathy tip)
- Vaults (what I do at @upshift_fi) cover a lot of industries, so I'm always learning about finance/payments. I have a quiz deck which runs at session start, so Claude tests me on what I'm learning using spaced repetition
- Giving claude a lot of inspo - honestly just pasting in video URLs or tweets and letting Claude figure it out
Two great trends in crypto:
1. Tokenized assets and stablecoins will exponentially grow due to superior programmability, composability and economics
2. Stablecoin yield will be in every fintech eg remittances, B2B payments, consumer banking and more
Vaults are able to operate at the intersection of both: making stablecoins productive by generating yield from tokenized RWAs
Upshift is building out the most flexible, custom vault infrastructure for neobanks, payments teams and asset managers to generate stablecoin yield
Great to be launching this with @ramzyyalii and team at Solana
Upshift Gamma USDC is live on @solana.
A native Solana USDC vault curated by @Gamma_Research_, opening with more than $7M in deposits.
Its initial strategy lends to and loops multiple RWA markets on @kamino.
Idle money idea #3: a card where the balance earns until the second it's spent:
> deposit lands and sweeps into a stablecoin vault
> stablecoins earn yield ranging from tokenized MMFs to DeFi
> the exact amount is instantly redeemed when a tx is made
Who's building this?
Onedotfour retweeted
cBTC Earn on @citrea_xyz, powered by Upshift.
The cBTC Earn Vault keeps deposits in BTC. @ClearstarLabs curates it, with @noon_capital as a key partner.
CTR incentives are paid on top through @merkl_xyz, increasing APY to ~10%.
Spent the weekend absolutely obsessed with Claude Opus 5.5
Blown away by how easy it is to make motion graphics, montages, animations etc
Made this in around an hour, giving it video references from viral launches, videos from Youtube to clip, access to free music and clip banks on the internet. Decent amount of back and forth but in many cases it one-shotted things better than I could have described it. Didn’t need to spend on anything except claude itself
AGI is here
Onedotfour retweeted
Vault infrastructure choosing Base is a signal.
Curators go where the liquidity and the users are, and depositors follow the curators. Each layer that lands here makes the next one easier to launch
Upshift is now live on @base.
Upshift is onchain vault infrastructure, working with @ClearstarLabs to bring yield to Base.
Curators, fintechs, and asset managers use Upshift to launch onchain products, while depositors keep self-custody throughout.
Base is growing rapidly (#3 ecosystem by TVL) + @ClearstarLabs is killing it at onchain lending vault curation
XRP remains one of the most underutilized assets onchain with no native staking and little yield options
Vaults make perfect sense to Earn on XRP. Now you can do so on Base. Great working with @HorinekPM and team on this
Upshift is now live on @base.
Upshift is onchain vault infrastructure, working with @ClearstarLabs to bring yield to Base.
Curators, fintechs, and asset managers use Upshift to launch onchain products, while depositors keep self-custody throughout.
These past 3 months at @upshift_fi, we've launched Earn products with @krakenfx @jumperapp @turnkeyhq @StellarOrg and now Fordefi.
Every day, I sit in calls with fintechs and asset managers who want one thing: safe, differentiated stablecoin yield.
Vaults are the answer
Upshift vaults are live in @FordefiHQ Earn day 1.
Fordefi institutional teams can now deposit assets into Upshift vaults, turning idle balances into productive positions.
Live today:
- @SentoraHQ RWA and Sentora BTC vaults
- earnAUSD vault on @monad
More ways to Earn in Fordefi, coming soon.
Capacity-constrained strategies have always been distributed by relationship.
Axis ran that book for 8 years - now it's open on Upshift. Congrats to @bidorder and the @AxisFDN team!
($15M and growing 🔥)
The Axis Origin Vault is live, powered by Upshift.
$50M initial cap on the pre-deposit - deposit USDT, USDC or USDx on Ethereum.
@AxisFDN runs market-neutral arbitrage across venues and settlement rails; the Origin Vault turns those returns into a tokenized asset.
Onedotfour retweeted
Vaults unlock onchain financial products for different types of companies:
Exchanges, Credit Cards, Fintechs, RWA issuers, Custodians, Payments etc.
Whether it's stablecoin Earn vaults in neobanks or credit facilities for card settlement, Upshift powers it.
Source: @stabledash interview
When I joined Upshift early last year, multi-strategy vaults were just beginning to take off.
Now they are ready for the largest capital allocators, deploying direct from @KrakenInsto qualified custody.
Expecting institutional flow to only accelerate from here
Institutional Vaults on Kraken, powered by Upshift.
Eligible @KrakenInsto Institutional clients can now put idle treasury assets to work in permissioned, curated onchain vaults, directly from Kraken's qualified custody, without new wallets or extra counterparties.
Stellar have been in this game for a long time now (original @MoneyGram partnership was in 2021)
Having worked with the team like @puniaviision and @AdaVaughan over the last few months, I can see a long term approach to a thriving payments and DeFi ecosystem
Bullish
Upshift is launching vault infrastructure on @StellarOrg.
We're integrating with Stellar to grow DeFi TVL across the network, with a vault roadmap that spans RWAs, DeFi, and asset management infrastructure for Stellar ecosystem apps.
Solana NFT trenching is one of my earliest memories of the onchain world.
The ecosystem has come a long way, with institutional partnerships announced every week.
Super pumped to be launching our vaults to help accelerate the growth of Solana DeFi and institutional adoption
Tokenized asset management is coming to @solana.
Businesses can now use Upshift to build non-custodial vaults, generating yield across any strategy:
- Onchain lending
- Levered RWAs
- Tokenized private credit
- Market-making
- Basis trades and more
A new, multi-strategy vault standard on Solana, powered by Upshift.