Eric Waisanen, tokenomics lead at Phi Labs and co-founder of Astrovault, describes his role as "just trying to find a nice niche in a place with great tech and terrible economics." With a background in economic philosophy and game theory, Waisanen offers a critical perspective on the current state of Web3 economies, emphasizing the need for sustainability amidst widespread crashes. He views the future as undoubtedly in Web3, but stresses the importance of building it "properly and sustainably." Waisanen's journey to tokenomics began by applying game theory to card dealing at a casino, leading to a ban from card counting. This led him to DeFi in 2017, where he observed "all these Ponzi's that I don't have to invest in to capitalize on." He quickly became frustrated by the disconnect between brilliant technological development and underdeveloped economic models, asserting, "We were having developers build economies and that is not their forte." His current work, including Astrovault, aims to bridge this gap by matching economic design with technological progress. He draws a strong correlation between card players and successful crypto traders, noting that both involve assessing expected positive value; "if you can use gambling to have an expected positive EV then it is investing." Discussing past failures like Luna/Terra, Waisanen identifies it as an example of "a great developer that's dabbling in economics" in an echo chamber. He highlights that Luna's money-printing mechanism was "not different than the US government does," but when a self-collateralizing token aims to compete with a fiat currency, its underlying economic flaws become evident. He argues that "any time you're self-collateralizing, that's assuming that your entire market cap is collateral for this token, but realistically the only money you have access to is the liquidity provided against your token which is far far less than the market cap for absolutely anything." This makes such systems "necessarily under collateralized," and he anticipates more stablecoin issues. He views ideal overcollateralization as incredibly inefficient unless specific incentives align, leading him to state, "I don't have a great view of stablecoins in general." Astrovault, his project, is not launching a stablecoin but is designed to manage liquidity more robustly through a diverse treasury. Waisanen's advice for the average user is to "understand the actual business models because there aren't many" in crypto. He points out that many DAOs operate with perpetual debt and no clear revenue streams, relying on speculation that often doesn't justify their valuations. He advocates for accessible DeFi that empowers individuals to manage their funds without reliance on "third party businesses that will just steal your funds anyways leave you with nothing like we're seen with FTX." He finds it "frustratingly dire" that many large DEXs with nine-figure valuations earn "zero dollars in revenue," and their governance tokens lack genuine utility or reward potential. His goal is to create products that "contribute and create substantial value but properly capitalized on that value with their token kind of driving in value to the token stead of to equity in companies." Regarding blockchain architecture, Waisanen expresses skepticism about "app chains in general," explaining that Astrovault is launching as a Layer 2 on Archway to leverage its "fantastic incentive models to reward application creators" and reduce the "higher overhead for perpetual infrastructure provision costs" associated with individual app chains. He emphasizes thinking long-term—a "ten, the thirty, the fifty year plan"—when making these structural decisions. For Layer 1s, he believes high inflation must be combatted with "some kind of combative deflation through utility of the token," citing Ethereum's EIP-1559 as the "best current market standard." He critiques Cosmos for having "absolutely brilliant software and gave it away for free," failing to monetize its core utility, which results in the ATOM token lacking "inherent value, other than governance." This lack of sustainable revenue models often leads to projects disappearing. Waisanen is particularly critical of liquid staking derivatives (LSDs), labeling them "completely non-viable" and "not economically feasible." He explains that staked assets consistently trade below their underlying value, which means they are not truly liquid and "everything is just really really extractive." Astrovault seeks to revolutionize this with "protocol earned liquidity," where users farm AXV tokens, which can then be staked to earn rewards from other protocols like ATOM, Juno, and Archway. This mechanism allows AXV token holders to exert governance power over those Layer 1 networks. Waisanen clarifies that Astrovault's DAO earns *other protocols'* staking rewards as revenue, aiming for a robust, self-sustaining treasury. With projected annual revenues in the tens of millions, Astrovault positions itself as "a VC that helps justify, helps make connections for these Layer Ones," as their treasury's value is directly tied to the success of these underlying chains. He cautions against the "we're all going to make it in Cosmos" mentality, believing that "not everyone's going to make it, but what does make it out of this dot com bubble will be the next to Amazon, the next Google." For the ATOM token specifically, Waisanen asserts it "has to develop something that other people want to use and charge them for it." He expresses concern about Interchain Security (ICS) being a sufficient value driver, questioning "Why wouldn't people do is somewhere else?" He notes that Cosmos's neutrality and open-source nature paradoxically limit its ability to capture value. Ultimately, he concludes that without developing "new software, something new that's for sale or rent," Atom cannot secure its long-term value. Archway, where Waisanen serves as tokenomics lead, is differentiated by its focus on "economic innovation." From his economic philosophy background, Archway aims to optimize not just existing systems, but the underlying reasons *why* those systems were created. He distinguishes between "monetaristic inflation" (increase in monetary supply) and price inflation, criticizing how ATOM's inflation inefficiently decentralizes infrastructure costs to validators, inadvertently lowering the Nakamoto Coefficient. Archway's approach redirects a portion of monetaristic inflation to directly reward developers from gas fees and subsidize their payments. This incentivizes building "something new, build something useful pretty, that actually gains traction on Archway," including historically unprofitable "tooling, DAOs, things that are network goods." Waisanen attributes Archway's potential for success to its well-resourced team, drawing from core Ignite and Tendermint members, and their "top-down approach" that prioritizes "regulatorily compliant and safe" development. He anticipates a "strong level of stickiness" for Archway as a "profitable access point for the interchain hub," allowing developers building on other Cosmos chains to access services through Archway and get paid. While validators on Archway might earn "less tokens proportionately" compared to high-inflation networks, Waisanen believes this model is not "gameable" to hurt security. He argues that paying content creators and influencers directly through monetaristic inflation, rather than forcing them to run validators for income, would be a more logical and secure approach. Waisanen concludes with optimism for an "economic revolution" driven by Astrovault's protocol earned liquidity model, moving away from "cronistic or ponziistic things." He emphasizes that "there is innovation, there is success in future in crypto in defi, in gamefi and NFTs but it's not what's been done you have to take those next steps, you have to develop them in away that's sustainable. You have to have tokenomics that will drive value to the token through the utility of whatever you build and that's being built in quite a few places and that's encouraging." His personal motivations are his family—his wife and three daughters—and the desire "to make a difference... better the world in some way shape or form."