Fomo Co-Founder: The Next Breakout App Won't Call Itself Crypto | Markets Outlook

**Se Yong Park** (0:00)
People have pretty rose-colored glasses when they look at brands today that are revered, and they don't think about all the shortcomings, because people don't think in terms of what did they do wrong, and it's always about what did they do right. I think a great example of this is the iPhone, right? Apple has this reputation of always shipping perfect products, when in reality, like the first two iPhones couldn't even support email. People learn to forgive you for the shortcomings, but if you never give yourself a chance to actually reap the benefits, then you won't have a chance in building a product that people use.

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**Kate Irwin** (0:41)
Welcome to CoinDesk Markets Outlook. My name is Kate Irwin, your host, and I'm here with Se Yong Park, the co-founder of the Fomo app. Welcome to Markets Outlook.

**Se Yong Park** (0:51)
Thanks for having me.

**Kate Irwin** (0:52)
So what are you seeing in the market right now? Is there anything that you are watching in the crypto markets?

**Se Yong Park** (0:58)
I think everything. I think the markets look really good. It seems like majors are cooperating, on-chain is doing well, and there's a lot of life even in things like perks and prediction markets. So I think the market as well just looks very exciting and excited to be building in this atmosphere.

**Kate Irwin** (1:11)
In the past week, obviously, we've seen a big turnaround with green shoots everywhere across the majors and really most of the industry. But Fomo has been seeing, according to the data that I'm seeing on DeFi Llama, new all-time highs with fees in the month of August, seeing around 11 million in fees. What are you seeing on your side as the biggest drivers of growth for the Fomo app?

**Se Yong Park** (1:39)
I think right now is kind of the inflection point where it seems like we're leaving the bear market and entering hopefully what is a very long bull market. I think it would be in line with how most people view cycles operate and a lot of things on-chain that are leading us to believe the same as well.
I think there's just more increased appetite in people wanting to trade things, whether it is Bitcoin or hype or meme coin or AI coin. I think they need a venue to be able to do it and we've been one of the biggest beneficiaries of it just being able to educate people on how to use the app on why this is something that should exist and then how you can interact with others in social network. I think it's an experience that really nobody in the real world has been able to really experience in any way until this point.

**Kate Irwin** (2:22)
There is this narrative for a lot of folks that crypto has been in this institutional era for perhaps some years now.
As one of the founders of a very consumer focused trading app, what is your perspective on where the consumer piece fits in? Are we seeing a consumer renaissance? Is Fomo just an outlier in a broader institutional dominated digital asset market? What's your perspective on the nature and that balance between the consumer and institutional and where Fomo fits in?

**Se Yong Park** (2:54)
I think the way to think about all the institutional adoption is that it is at the end of the day for the consumer to some extent. I think the way that institutional adoption is going to be looked at is, how can you actually touch more consumers and give access to better technology without them actually realizing? I think that's a core principle that we share too, where people trade on the blockchain or across many blockchains on Fomo. But if you're a normal user who just wants to trade a token, you shouldn't have to know, oh, I'm interacting with crypto or this is happening behind the scenes or these are the things that Fomo has attracted away from me. The best consumer products actually allow you to do the thing you want to do without having to care for these things or think about them.
I ultimately think consumers will benefit from all the institutional adoption, and they'll also be the ones that actually are driving most of the activity, moving forward on chains like ARK and Tempo and all these institutional chains that are popping up.

**Kate Irwin** (3:43)
On the FOMO side, are you seeing most of the traction coming from a specific blockchain? FOMO appears to support many different blockchains, Solana, Robinhood chain, places like that. Are you seeing growth driven by a primary chain, or are you seeing more even distribution there?