Wide ranging conversation with Romain Despoel, an associate at Polymorphic Capital. Romaind and AVB met at ETH CC Brussels 2024 and immediately hit if off. Some would say that sharing across two hackathons in such a short timeframe would bring any two people together, but we believe it is due to their shared past growing up in Venezuela that they have developed a strong friendship.

Some of the things we talk about that stood out to me:
- We open by discussing Venezuela. Romain's brief sting there when he was 7 and AVB's childhood, along with current electoral fraud.
- ZK Explainer: how it went from something cool but only theoretical Romain learned at uni to cool, real world uses cases in web3.
- Fully Homomorphic Encryption: what it is, how it works, why it is exciting!
- ETH CC Builds and hackathon stories in general. Being a builder is fun. The energy captured on the pod is contagious.
- Tales as a VC: challenges of investing in a Bull Market. Wild valuations, founders taking secondaries, what do people actually do for work everyday?!
- From Infra saturation to mass consumer applications.
- Infra fire round: hot takes on Real World Assets, Social, chain abstraction, DePIN.

We had a blast recording. Hope you enjoy. Let us know what you think

Resources:
Polymorphic Capital - https://polymorphic.capital/
MBD - https://www.mbd.xyz/
FHERMA - Platform for FHE Challenges: https://fherma.io/

Follow on Socials:
Romain - https://x.com/romdespoel
Polymorphic Capital - https://x.com/polymorphiccap

AVB - https://x.com/AvbNear
Wuipod - https://x.com/wuipod