Video | Conversation with Sei Founder Jay: The Beliefs and Survival Strategies of the Crypto Super Cycle Through Bull and Bear Markets

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Podcast: The Round Trip

Compiled & Organized: Yuliya, PANews

Experiencing the GameStop short squeeze war and seeing the owner Robinhood “pull the network cable” to forcibly end the retail carnival, this “dead” moment of traditional finance directly gave birth to the world’s fastest public chain - Sei, which aims to replace Nasdaq.

In the new series of “The Round Trip” Founder’s Talk, co-produced by PANews and Web3.com Ventures, Sei founder Jay Jog not only hard-core dismantled how parallel EVM can achieve a 50x performance leap, but also exclusively revealed the institutional fund password behind tens of billions of TVL and the new track of AI Agent payment, taking you to foresee the real picture of “decentralized Wall Street”.

From Robinhood to Cryptocurrency: The Rupture of Traditional Finance and the Birth of Sei

PANews: Welcome Jay to Round Trip! How has the city of Hong Kong felt to you so far? Why don’t we talk about your personal experience first, how did you get to where you are today? And what projects have you been working on lately?

Jay Jog: Thank you for the invitation! This is my first time in Hong Kong since 2018, and the city is as wonderful as I remember, if not better.

Regarding my background, I majored in computer science in college and joined Robinhood, an American brokerage platform, after graduation. Its most famous event is the GameStop short squeeze. At that time, a large number of ordinary investors bought more than a dozen stocks called “meme stocks” such as GameStop and AMC out of genuine optimism or driven by some kind of “meme-style” price movement, causing stock prices to soar. Wall Street hedge funds saw this movement and tried to short these stocks. The mechanism of short selling is to borrow shares and sell them first, and then buy them back and return them. But as the stock price rose sharply, short sellers kept losing money and were forced to close their positions to buy back shares, triggering a huge “short squeeze” that further pushed up the stock price. During that time in 2021, almost all retail investors made a lot of money from it.

But suddenly one day, Robinhood, the brokerage I was working for at the time, directly turned off the buy function, which meant that no one could continue to buy stocks that were rising, which basically ended that round of price action. At that time, people all over the United States were shocked and extremely angry, because it was originally the moment when a “little man” finally defeated Wall Street, but Wall Street directly shut down the buying order to some extent. As an internal employee, I feel very bad. My friends often think of me as the company itself and ask, “Why can’t I trade now?” “Why am I losing money?” And I can’t actually do anything, I have no control over the situation at all.

This incident made me really realize how “dysfunctional” the current financial system is. The root cause behind this lies in the T+2 settlement mechanism: Robinhood must provide up to $3 billion in collateral to third-party clearing houses to allow users to continue trading, but the company does not have this funds. This is the initial inspiration for everything: there are structural problems in the traditional financial system. If you want to build a truly “Internet-native” financial system, you need an “Internet-native” financial infrastructure. This is why I think blockchain is the most ideal vehicle to carry all this, which is basically our original motivation for founding Sei.

Breaking through EVM performance bottlenecks: the rise of parallel EVM and the ecological explosion

PANews: How did you start building Sei with that motivation?

Jay Jog: We started development in 2021, initially launching Sei V1 based on the Cosmos architecture, and launched the first version of the mainnet in August 2023. Cosmos does have a large developer community, but we found that you also have to support EVM smart contracts (usually written in Solidity and compiled into EVM bytecode). If you don’t support EVM, it’s hard to build a truly scalable and vibrant developer ecosystem.

So we started to seriously consider supporting the EVM, and we were also looking at its limitations. One of the most prominent issues is that the Ethereum mainnet and the various rollups on it support very limited throughput, about 50 transactions per second. For example, if you want to build an order book-based exchange like Nasdaq, you probably need to support about 20,000 transactions per second (TPS). This creates a complete disconnect: there is a huge gap between what can be done on-chain and real-world performance off-chain. We realized this was an opportunity to support this level of performance while still maintaining decentralization. That’s why we built parallel EVMs.

PANews: Parallel EVM has set off a huge boom after it officially launched on the mainnet in July 2024. You could say that you were the first to open this narrative, right?

Jay Jog: yes, I think we were really the first team to come up with this narrative, and the first to actually hit the mainnet. This has also led to many application scenarios that initially only appeared on our chain, and then increased significantly in on-chain activity. Currently, there are more than 5 billion transactions on the mainnet, with approximately 100 million unique wallet addresses conducting transactions on the chain and more than 1 million daily active users.

This activity further drives more TVL within the ecosystem, with our TVL peaking at about $18 billion, which is a very significant number in the entire ecosystem.

The underlying logic of institutional entry: traffic, distribution, and killer applications

PANews: Such high data has really attracted institutional funds to start entering. When these institutional allocators choose between different blockchains, what do they value most? Is it traffic, brand, or the technology behind it?

Jay Jog: In the past year, we have had five large institutional funds (including BlackRock, Brevan Howard, Hamilton Lane, Apollo, and Laser) issue fund products on our chain. A few weeks ago, Ondo also launched USDY on our chain. We’re now starting to see a lot of institutional adoption landing.

Frankly, institutions don’t really care so much about the underlying technology itself. They care more about what kind of user base you have and whether the distribution channels are well established. This is why ecosystems like Ethereum and Solana are naturally more attractive to institutions, as they already have the largest user scale and mature distribution networks.

From a broader perspective, the value of blockchain performance is mainly reflected in the empowerment of developers. If you can support very high throughput, you open up new design space for developers to build entirely new application types. If you can create a “killer application” that other ecosystems cannot achieve at all, it will naturally bring more users and more institutions will naturally be more interested in this ecosystem. In the crypto space, the “excitement” usually comes from two things: either a new source of revenue has emerged for users to make money, or an application case itself is very interesting and worth participating in. As long as one of them is met, users will start trading on the chain, which is the key to attracting and activating the “flywheel effect”.

Through the entrepreneurial journey of bulls and bears: stay focused and resilient in the face of adversity

PANews: I want to go back to your personal experience and talk about it in depth. Giving up Robinhood’s comfortable, well-paying, and stable job to start a business in crypto, is there a moment in your journey over the past few years that made you feel like “this is not what I want”? Can you share some of the tough moments that made you stronger?

Jay Jog: I think we were going against the wind from the beginning. We started building the project in 2021, but the first funding happened almost exactly after the Terra crash. Terra’s market capitalization of about $50 billion at the time almost evaporated in a week, and just three weeks after that happened, we went to raise funds as a new team. As you can imagine, most VCs took a wait-and-see approach at the time.

That is arguably the first time we have truly entered the reality of the crypto industry funding environment. But when you start a project in a bear market, especially after an “apocalyptic” crash, you become very frugal and pragmatic, cherish the resources you have at hand, and lean your team as much as possible. This makes you very self-sufficient and has a clear direction. If you start a business in a bull market, you will face 10 different development directions to attract attention; In a bear market, these distractions are largely non-existent, and you can focus on one thing and do it to the extreme.

Overall, I am very grateful to have embarked on this journey, and the project has been much more successful than I originally envisioned. Of course, it has also experienced many troughs, and whenever a bear market comes, the morale of the entire industry declines and confidence is low. For example, as we recorded this podcast, many influencers have left the industry in the past two weeks, and the price of Bitcoin has recently fallen to a stage low of about $59,000.

PANews: In recent weeks, we have seen a lot of old players liquidate their positions and even wonder if crypto finance is scalable and if everything we build is meaningless. In the face of this emotion, why are you still 100% optimistic about the future?

Jay Jog: The crypto industry is a very resilient industry. The current situation is very interesting: on the one hand, the industry is making great progress, such as the US government is pushing for legislation to provide legal status for stablecoins and establish a clear regulatory framework, and institutions are launching stablecoins and fund products on the chain on a large scale. But on the other hand, the price of Bitcoin is falling.

But one thing is very clear to me: as long as there is real growth and real adoption, those short-term volatility from the bear market will dissipate in the long run. As long as you have enough faith in your project, the bear market is often the best time to enter. From a builder’s perspective, it’s a great time to build applications that really carry weight and achieve real product-market fit (PMF); From an investor’s perspective, it is also a good time to invest with high conviction and deploy high-quality assets (such as Bitcoin in the “discount” range). So I’m still very optimistic about the future of the entire crypto industry.

Building a “Decentralized Wall Street”: Sei Giga, Permissionless Assets, and In-House Incubation

PANews: In your opinion, what else needs to be built to lay the foundation for the next bull market? What role does Sei play in it?

Jay Jog: Our vision is to build a “decentralized Wall Street.” From our perspective, the bear market is a great opportunity to complete several key constructions. There are three main core levels:

The first core is the underlying L1 protocol itself. We are developing Sei Giga, which will help us achieve a performance improvement of about 50 times. This is a very exaggerated improvement compared to any other blockchain protocol on the market, and will make it possible to build systems such as Nasdaq-level systems on-chain (which is difficult to do with existing public chain architectures so far). There are many very interesting technologies behind this, such as the multi-concurrent block production mechanism and related incentive design.

The second level is institutional adoption. We are already starting to see assets and fund products like USDY come online, and the next step is to make these assets as “permissionless” as possible. Currently, many assets are “licensed” and cannot be freely traded on-chain after issuance. Once permissionless, these assets can be truly used in DeFi scenarios, such as in lending markets, which will be very exciting.

The third point is what I want to see the most, that is, more killer applications in our ecosystem. Over the past few years, we’ve observed that there are basically two paths to building killer apps. The first is to reach out to as many entrepreneurs as possible to persuade them to join, but this is often mediocre, because really good founders usually choose the top ecosystems that already have the largest user base (such as Solana, Base, or Ethereum), which is a typical “chicken or egg” question. The second way is to actively incubate projects and really run them in your own ecosystem. The traditional “standard play” (such as running hackathons and building builder houses) will no longer be so effective by 2026, and we are already taking the path of internal incubation, and I believe that other ecosystems will gradually follow suit.

PANews: As a retail investor, I would like to ask what are the unique characteristics of Sei among the projects incubated within your ecosystem? After all, chains like Solana or other chains also emphasize high performance, where is the difference?

Jay Jog: A key point is that once Sei Giga goes live, all applications related to the Central Limit Order Book (CLOB) will only be available on our chain. If you want to build a system like Nasdaq, it requires about 20,000 TPS, which is basically impossible to do on existing public chains. The Nasdaq only accounts for about 10% of global securities trading volume. So, if you want securities trading to be truly on-chain, which is currently almost impossible on other chains, Sei Giga unlocks this ability. I think more financial applications, especially trading scenarios, will become the most interesting direction.

Advice to ordinary investors: establish core beliefs and refuse to blindly follow the trend

PANews: I believe you have experienced multiple bull and bear cycles. I actually believe in our hearts that we are in a super cycle, but the market sentiment is really bad. As an investor in this space, how would you advise the average investor to survive a bear market?

Jay Jog: That’s an interesting question. I first entered the crypto market in 2017 and experienced a frenzy at the end of 2017, and by 2018, and especially in 2019, the market cooled significantly. Ironically, I took my Bitcoin to a poker betting site and lost everything, so I strongly advise you not to do that. After that, I experienced the bear market after the FTX collapse in 2020 and 2023.

The most important piece of advice I can give is: you must have a strong belief in your intention to participate in the crypto industry. There are many people who don’t really believe in crypto, and only come in because their friends are doing it or the industry is hot.

You need to establish a core logic to understand why you believe in encryption. Once you have this core understanding, whether you are a builder or an investor, all the choices in the bear market will be more calm. But if you just find crypto “exciting”, it often doesn’t end well. So I strongly recommend that people who are going through a bear market think deeply about why you really believe in crypto.

Breaking the myth of technological materialism: the real moat of ecology lies in users and applications

PANews: What misconceptions do you think the market still has about Sei in 2026? How would you correct these perceptions?

Jay Jog: The biggest misconception is that people think we’re just focusing on the technology itself, we’re just going crazy about improving performance.

Of course, we attach great importance to continuous optimization of technology to improve the performance of the chain. But we also know that the value of technology has boundaries. After a certain stage, what really determines the ecology is the actual user growth, real traction, and killer applications, not the TPS value or the final confirmation time. That’s why we focus on incubation projects, because it’s the most efficient and direct way to enhance the overall strength of the ecosystem.

Advice for Asian developers in 2026: Deepen the financial scene and embrace AI agent payment

PANews: One last additional question, what advice would you give to Asian developers in 2026? What should they focus on when building an app?

Jay Jog: I think there are two more macro trends right now:

The first is the core application scenario where finance is gradually converging into encryption. Of course, there are many other directions to experiment on-chain, such as blockchain games and social networking, but we are beginning to see that even in games, social networking, and various other crypto use cases, the really effective implementation is often the financial-related parts that are most suitable for on-chain execution, while other modules can be built off-chain and then put on the chain through state promises or proof mechanisms. So I think we should further deepen the financial use cases and think about how to play a more important role in them.

The second direction that will appear more and more is AI, especially as more and more AI agents appear (such as products like Multbot), users can run their own agents and instruct them to perform tasks. Agent is an internet-native form of activity execution, and for this form, it makes the most sense to use an internet-native currency. “Agent payment” will become a bigger trend. Protocols like Coinbase’s x402 are being created, and we actually played an important role in helping them launch and become one of their first ecosystem enablers. So I think “Agent payment” is definitely a new direction worth exploring, especially for entrepreneurs who are just starting out.