These conversations tend to lean towards the technical aspects of launching/maintaining the index product (re the conversation around Balancer vs Set). Its important to keep the target user for this index front and center - it is your friend that just reached out to you on Twitter for the first time in a year and they are interested in crypto and they thought they could ask you because they see all of your crypto tweets… they want to know how to start investing in crypto and they say they have been keeping an eye on XRP because it is still “really cheap”. You don’t want to over-extend and overwhelm them, but you want to help them learn some basics and get some initial exposure. BED.
Best path is a direct Fiat → BED. Next best is Fiat → ETH → DEX → BED. Even the second of these options can be hard for new users. But by building a structured product (however simple it is) and partnering with one of the premier media/content creators for new crypto users we can start to imagine bringing more and more crypto newbies along this path.
If I am not mistaken, even before the BED meme the Bankless go-to-advice for new users was to get small exposure to Bitcoin and Ethereum and then keep researching and getting comfortable. This has been their path for new crypto users all along. A lot of their headspace has gone (and continues to go) to serving this very target user. I am not worried about the fee split with Bankless because, imo, we need them as a partner on this to get the marketing and distribution right - it is likely going to be even harder than DPI because once you are past crypto newbie this index might stop making sense for you… But the TAM is still huge, and creates a top-of-funnel for the rest of our Index products.