Ava Labs: Before competing, let's first grow the pie together
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Ava Labs: Before competing, let's first grow the pie together
Web3 can sometimes feel like an echo chamber.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsHost: Blair Zhu, Mint Ventures
Guest: Lydia Chiu, VP of Business Development at Ava Labs
Blair: Hello everyone, welcome back to Web3 Founders Real Talk. We're here to bring you an exciting conversation with a leading figure in the Web3 industry. Today we're thrilled to have Lydia, VP of Business Development at Ava Labs, joining us on the show. Welcome, Lydia.
Lydia: Thank you, Blair. I'm very happy to be here and looking forward to our discussion today.
Introduction to Lydia Chiu's Background
Blair: Thanks for being here. Could you start by introducing yourself? How did you get into crypto, and how did you join this project?
Lydia: Of course. I started my career on Wall Street, like many who eventually end up in Web3. I initially worked at the large investment bank Credit Suisse—I believe it may no longer exist as of last year. I spent 10 years on the buy side, investing in internet, fintech, software-as-a-service, and gaming companies. Actually, many of the areas I focus on today—something we'll touch on later. When I was working in the internet space, I discovered Bitcoin in 2013. At that time, it was seen as an alternative payment network—a virtual currency for payments. It wasn't yet considered a store of value. It was decentralized—that was the idea. So even though I began my Wall Street career in 2007, just before the global financial downturn, the concept felt revolutionary—perhaps there was another way.
I didn’t switch into crypto then, but I started paying attention. It wasn't until Ethereum released its whitepaper and early mining began—introducing programmability for on-chain assets, making assets and value programmable—that I became truly excited. Because at that moment, I realized automated programs could execute transactions, and you could transfer value without the manual oversight required in traditional financial markets. That’s when I knew this was far more interesting than what I had been doing. I started diving deep into the space while still working, spending countless hours reading whitepapers. It wasn’t until 2018 that I actually entered the crypto industry—what I call Web 2.5. I joined a secondary market platform that no longer exists—they were called SharesPost and were later acquired by Forge Global. This was during the 2017 ICO bubble, with lots of fundraising activity—and the big question was: can these be treated as securities?
The goal of SharesPost in launching its digital asset division was twofold. First, to build a compliant marketplace using existing broker-dealers and alternative trading systems (ATS)—a type of trading platform operating outside traditional exchanges. Second, to create a global settlement network connecting broker-dealers and institutions worldwide to enable cross-border transaction settlements. We also planned to build this network on Ethereum—that’s an interesting story too. But by 2019, I realized there was massive regulatory work ahead—updating registrations and getting regulators to accept digital assets.
I realized I didn’t want to continue down that path. Then the opportunity to join Ava Labs came along, and I seized it quickly. To me, working at the actual blockchain layer—Layer 1—was much more appealing. As I mentioned earlier, we had tried building a global settlement network on Ethereum, but encountered many technical limitations with Ethereum at the time. We can discuss that in detail. That’s quite a long introduction.
Origins and Mission of Ava Labs
Blair: Wow, I love your story, especially how you entered crypto and discovered how promising the concept really is. I’ve heard many stories, but I particularly like yours. We all know Ava Labs is a widely recognized project, and people are curious about the backstory—how did you discover it? How was the project built? Can you tell us about how your founding team originally came together and the thinking behind it?
Lydia: I wasn’t involved in the earliest stages. I joined in early 2020, when the team was still small, working out of a co-working space in Brooklyn—before the pandemic hit. We’d meet every weekday in person, collaborating face-to-face. Looking back now, it feels surreal how far we've come. Since I didn’t participate in the initial discussions, I’ll speak based on what I know now and from previous conversations.
Avalanche’s mission is to digitize global assets. Given that our founder Emin Gün Sirer and COO both have backgrounds in distributed computing, combined with the context at the time, I believe it stemmed from a strong personal drive to build a network capable of handling the scale and demands of digitizing global assets. Therefore, we needed a fast, low-cost, secure, reliable, highly decentralized, and fault-tolerant solution.
With the innovative Avalanche consensus mechanism emerging at the time, we saw an opportunity to build a network powered by it. That became the driving force behind the project. We’re still working toward digitizing global assets—but slowly, one asset at a time.
Challenges Faced by Ava Labs
Blair: The entire Layer 1 space is extremely competitive, and the broader Web3/crypto field is dynamic and fast-moving. We keep seeing new narratives and trends emerge, lasting weeks or months. We’re curious how you effectively manage and lead these trends as a pioneer in the space. Have you faced any challenges, resistance, or adversity along the way?
Lydia: Avalanche launched in September 2020—nearly three years ago, almost at our mainnet anniversary. A lot has happened since then, and we’ve witnessed many changes. Alongside Avalanche, numerous other Layer 1s have emerged. Ethereum is transitioning from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake, many Layer 2s have appeared, and new technologies keep entering the market.
From our perspective, we’ve always focused on fulfilling our mission and continuously innovating—providing tools and technologies on Avalanche that enable tokenization and smart contract development for any application or asset. While different narratives come and go, many of us at Ava Labs personally believe the overall market size is still small.Competition may be fierce, but before we fight over market share, let’s grow the pie first. That’s always been my mindset.
How many people are there in the world? How many internet users? Sometimes Web3 can feel like an echo chamber.
Current Focus Areas of Ava Labs
Blair: Yes, I completely agree. It’s still early days—we might need more time. Once we have better technology and applications, maybe mainstream adoption will follow, but it’s not quite there yet. Can you share what Avalanche and Ava Labs are currently focusing on? You’ve emphasized your mission to digitize world assets, suggesting a push to bring more assets on-chain. What are your current priorities?
Lydia: Yes, there are many types of assets in the world. We’re not just talking about financial assets or so-called real-world assets (RWA) or on-chain assets. Broadly speaking, we believe subnets are key to bringing diverse use cases on-chain. This includes gaming, institutional and traditional finance, consumer applications like loyalty systems, and the ability to bring various currencies, stablecoins, and payment methods on-chain. In short, we care about all of these.
But stepping back, what we truly care about is enabling anyone who wants to build an application or launch a use case to do so on Avalanche—with the right tools and architecture to support them. Specifically, using subnets as a way to scale the Avalanche network and allow developers to build custom modular networks. I think this is a powerful approach—you don’t have to compete for blockspace or transaction ordering on the main chain or public permissionless networks. You can create your own environment with dedicated blockspace tailored to specific use cases. For example, the Movement Labs team recently announced their funding round. They’re building a Move-based ecosystem to advance the Move VM and language. Their first step involves building M1 on Avalanche—not as an L1, but as a subnet powered by Avalanche consensus.
One compelling aspect is that not every developer in the world knows Solidity or wants to use EVM. Our philosophy is to meet developers where they are—giving them choice and flexibility to build securely, faster, and cheaper than current Web2 or other solutions allow. That’s one way to think about it. Additionally, we’re developing many things for the Avalanche platform. There’s already news about Hyper SDK, which helps people build custom VMs or applications/use cases on subnets. But Hyper SDK specifically prioritizes performance and throughput.
So it focuses on delivering higher TPS than what’s possible with Solidity or EVM. That’s part of our technical focus. On the business and strategic roadmap, we continue helping partners understand how best to use Avalanche—how to optimally build their apps, whether on subnets, the C-Chain, or other permissionless environments. We also help partners leverage various programs we offer. We’ve discussed a lot—it’s quite extensive.
Blizzard Ecosystem Fund and Its Evaluation Criteria
Blair: Yes, I’ve seen those tweets. Your progress with partners is impressive. As you said, grow the market first—that’s how you expand it. You also talked about developers—how to lower barriers, ensure a richer ecosystem across all these applications. Developers shouldn’t need to master complex coding, and transaction costs can be greatly reduced. That’s fantastic. I know you’ve launched your own investment and ecosystem fund. Are there any preferred areas you’re currently watching? Can you elaborate on projects or fields you personally favor? With so many emerging trends—like RWA, or social赛道 such as the recent Friend Tech craze—which ones attract your team?
Lydia: Yes, the ecosystem fund supports innovation across categories—no fixed focus. It’s open to any developer or project bringing interesting use cases and building cool applications. The reasons they need funding vary. The investment fund—the Blizzard Ecosystem Fund—is tasked with growing Avalanche’s ecosystem. While investment themes or project types may evolve over time, the fund maintains a diversified portfolio across industries. Our belief is that neither Ava Labs nor the fund managers should try to pick so-called “sure-win” sectors. Instead, we want to support everyone building in this space, giving their projects a real chance to succeed—however they define success: mainstream adoption, virality, 5 million users, 5 million wallets, etc. None of us claim to know what will ultimately make this industry successful. We just aim to grow it as big as possible.
Blair: That’s fascinating. Many projects say they back certain industries, but your openness is impressive—you simply want to see value and uniqueness in a project, then fully support it. But I imagine you conduct extensive due diligence and internal evaluations. Can you walk us through that process? What core capabilities or requirements do you look for in developers or builders within the ecosystem?
Lydia: Starting with our team—we have both generalists and domain experts on our business development and Blizzard deal teams. We have six vertical leads covering institutions, DeFi, gaming, enterprise, etc. Overall, we leverage team expertise to support projects in these sectors. Due diligence varies, but common threads include the team itself—especially for early-stage projects, we prioritize team composition and relevant experience. We place strong emphasis on whether they have domain expertise, particularly when evaluating cross-industry projects.
We also assess business model or use case feasibility—standard financial or investment analysis. But above all, we ask: are these exceptional builders who know what they’re doing? And second, are they committed to advancing the ecosystem—are their vision and approach to Web3 aligned? I think that’s another key factor. For domain-specific expertise, we have a diverse team that dives deep into each vertical, rather than relying solely on generalists. But we do have generalists too, who help analyze areas where we lack specialists. Overall, our team is highly diverse.
Discussion on Web3 Applications and Industry Drivers
Blair: That’s very interesting—I completely agree. I don’t know about other industries, but at least in Web3 and crypto, the team is crucial. Sometimes founders and builders must be very careful in choosing direction and sector. They often face many distractions along the way—something we consistently observe. We’ve discussed developers and your mission. We’re also curious: how do you assess the growth of current Web3 applications and their broad impact on the evolution of the decentralized web ecosystem? What lies ahead? It’s still very early. So my next question: what are the main catalysts or drivers for the next cycle? These are two tricky questions.
Lydia: It’s been an extraordinary journey. To answer the second question—even in tech, there’s never a clear answer. Everyone’s searching for the next big winner, innovator, or disruptor. But it never arrives as pure technology. It always comes as a single breakout application—suddenly user growth explodes exponentially.
Then the market follows. I believe the same will happen in Web3—pushing it to new heights and real adoption. Simply put, we need a killer app people love to use—maybe they don’t even know it’s blockchain-powered, and that’s fine. The UX must be seamless. If people truly love an app, they might tolerate some friction, but not so much that onboarding becomes a blocker.
I think we need that breakthrough application. Where will it come from? Answers vary. But I’m very excited about an upcoming game called Off the Grid by Gunzilla Games. They’re doing amazing work on graphics and gameplay. They released a preview video showing well-known streamers playing it—it looks stunning. As a gamer myself and someone who’s invested in gaming companies, I naturally lean in this direction.
Blair: Yes, I share that feeling. I think there’s definitely a key pillar: making the entire Web3 world smoother and easier to enter. Newcomers often find it burdensome—managing wallets, private keys, learning each app, navigating various DeFi protocols, each with different UI/UX. It’s not user-friendly for daily use. GameFi could be promising—there are many Web2 gamers. If we make it visually appealing and integrate NFTs and other elements, it could be a fascinating journey.
Lydia: Yes, there are many possible directions, but as a gamer, I’m especially excited about what’s coming. It will launch first on my console, making access easier. It won’t run in-browser—you won’t need to create a wallet with C-chain tokens to start playing. You can just begin. That’s critical—simple onboarding. But not every project launches with such a clear product. Sometimes blockchain development isn’t easy for developers.
If you’re building a game, you’re already creating a full engine around graphics, gameplay, and game engine integration—the last thing a developer wants to worry about is blockchain. So why not provide a service to make blockchain development easier?
At Ava Labs, we have Ava Studios and AvaCloud—a managed subnet service. It helps teams focus on core app features, making network infrastructure a secondary concern. They know they need blockchain, but if we can truly support projects and help them build great products and businesses, why not offer a service that simplifies development? This is another area we focus on—expanding the market so developers can concentrate on what matters, instead of struggling to fetch data from chain, use APIs, or build dashboards.
Blair: Yes, founders should free their minds—shouldn’t stress over blockchain tech or implementation details. That can consume huge amounts of time and energy. It’s great to see you’re committed to providing a more developer-friendly environment. They can focus on product-market fit, choose their industry, and plan growth strategies. I think this is a major pain point in the current industry, especially as more developers join. So I’m glad to hear this. I also agree with your view on the internet—users don’t need to understand blockchain. They don’t need to know it. Imagine asking our parents—they don’t understand internet tech, but use it daily. I think that’s the ideal scenario for Web3.
Lydia: Yes, our parents don’t know about backend servers or that Uber and Lyft run on AWS.
Support Priorities at Ava Labs
Blair: Right, they don’t need to know—all they need is ease of use and convenience in life. That’s why they keep using it and are willing to pay. Thanks for sharing these insights. My next question might be tricky too. I know you’re very open-minded and avoid picking so-called “sure-win” trends. But what are your thoughts on current popular narratives? We’ve seen friend.tech, RWA, LSD, Layer 2, even trading bots gaining traction. Can you break down whether Ava Labs plans to support all these project types or sectors within the ecosystem? What’s your personal take?
Lydia: Based on my experience and investments, and time spent in both Wall Street and crypto, there are strong reasons to use blockchain for innovation and to make traditional finance more efficient. That’s where tokenization plays a role. RWA is having a hot moment now. While we don’t necessarily pick “sure-win” sectors, we do want to support key verticals we care about.
For example, in RWA, we launched Avalanche Vista—a $50 million initiative by the Avalanche Foundation to purchase tokenized assets, aiming to boost the RWA market. We’re also partnering with buy-side firms to grow the market. We’ve received feedback from issuers and investors: once an asset is tokenized, it often lacks on-chain liquidity. On the institutional side, we’re working with buy-side firms to address this. Unlike many past platforms that focused only on supply or tokenization, reaching the next stage requires liquidity, demand, and distribution. That’s where we’re focusing. There are other areas too—we’re working with artists.
As part of the Avaissance program, we’re focusing on NFTs and bringing digital art into Web3—very well received by the community. It involves existing artists mentoring newcomers. We have resident artists offering courses, with multiple cohorts—first batch already completed. It’s not just grants or investments—it’s about community, engagement, education for artists unfamiliar with Web3 art or NFTs. Now they know how to create collections or portfolios on-chain.
We also support DeFi—consistently. In fact, one of the foundation’s first initiatives in 2021 was Avalanche Rush. In gaming, we have different programs—Avalanche Arcad3, designed as a bridge between Web2 and Web3 gaming players. On the Web2 side, the first cohort included GREE, a Japanese gaming and content media company. On the Web3 side, teams like Shrapnel, developing AAA-style shooter games. This is another area we deeply care about—perhaps we’ll discuss it more today. We’re actively pushing many fronts to fulfill our mission: digitizing global assets. That’s our slogan. We’ve chosen these six verticals and invested significant time. Overall, we strongly support and help our community—and newcomers—find their path.
Blair: That’s great. Rather than picking “sure-win” trends, you’ve done a lot for the community and developers. Thank you for sharing these valuable insights—your expertise is incredibly helpful for all builders. We look forward to seeing more innovation from Ava Labs and more good news ahead. Thank you.
Lydia: Thank you—it’s been a great conversation.
Blair: Same here. Thank you.
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