Founders Space Spotlight 🎙️w @benjaminputley | PaidAd Disruption | $SUI

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MikeNielsen
@HavenMediaCoAug 11, 2025

The Spaces features Benjamin Putley, CEO and co-founder of Alchemy Exchange, in a deep-dive on fixing digital advertising’s fee-heavy, opaque “black box.” Ben recounts his ad-tech background (Sharethrough, News UK), pandemic-era crypto pivot, and building a 62-person team. He outlines why today’s market (dominated by Google/Meta) extracts average fees of ~43% (sometimes 80%), squeezes publishers, and inflates CAC. Alchemy runs a decentralized ad exchange that cuts fees to 3–8% and routes roughly 92–97% of spend to actual media while recording log-level transactions on-chain for transparency. The team is migrating from Ethereum to Sui for high throughput/low latency, GDPR-grade privacy with SEAL encryption, and blob storage (Walrus), with proofs via Nautilus. On August 19 they launch the Alchemy token across CEX/Sui DEX, sharing 100% protocol fees with stakers and opening AdFi pools for zero-day invoice factoring (LPs earn yield; publishers get instant liquidity). Case studies include Coca-Cola and a top-performing Ripple test. Q&A covers publisher integration via Prebid, higher CPMs, AI-driven agentic buying, and the blurred DSP/SSP line. Ben’s vision: capture ~1% of global ad spend and bring internet yield to everyone.

Founder Space Spotlight: Benjamin Putley (Alchemy Exchange) — Decentralized Ad Exchange on Sui

Session overview

A deep-dive conversation with Benjamin (Ben) Putley, CEO and co‑founder of Alchemy Exchange, on how Alchemy is disrupting the $750B+ digital advertising market dominated by Google and Meta. The discussion covered industry pain points (fees, opacity, walled gardens), Alchemy’s product and architecture, the migration from Ethereum to Sui, token economics and AdFi liquidity pools, integration and compliance, early results with major brands, and forward-looking goals. A Q&A with adtech practitioners followed.

Participants and roles

  • Mike (host): e‑commerce founder and long‑time paid ads buyer; frames real‑world pain (rising CAC; attribution opacity).
  • Capo (co‑host): facilitates questions; probes participation mechanics and small‑creator possibilities.
  • Benjamin (Ben) Putley: CEO & co‑founder, Alchemy Exchange; adtech veteran; explains product, vision, and Sui migration.
  • Jay Frost (publisher-side practitioner): asks about publisher value prop, CPM uplift, and DSP/SSP scope.
  • DJN Architect: asks about the Sui stack (Walrus/Seal/Narwhal etc.) and privacy impact.
  • Davy (adtech veteran): probes ad server/AB testing and publisher flexibility.
  • Big Stan (community): encouragement and welcome to Sui.
  • Arash (game protocol builder): asks about decentralized storage (Walrus) and SDK integration potential for web3 games.

The problem: digital ads’ black box and value leakage

  • Concentration & conflict of interest: Google historically captured buy-side, sell-side, and exchange rails, acting as “judge, jury, and executioner.” Meta operates a similar walled-garden model.
  • High, opaque take-rates: Average fees around 43% (in some cases up to 80%), meaning only a fraction of a brand’s dollar reaches actual media.
  • Attribution opacity: Buyers (especially SMEs) feel “at the mercy” of platform-reported results; true log-level transparency is rare.
  • Publisher strain: Redundancies and over-reliance on excessive ad slots per page/app degrade UX and push audiences to opt out. The original free-content-for-ads value exchange is breaking.
  • CAC inflation: Real-world example (Mike): CPA rising from ~$7 (2019) to ~$42 with no clear explanation from platforms. Rising CAC forces either price hikes or margin sacrifices.

Alchemy Exchange: what it is and why it matters

  • Core proposition: A decentralized ad exchange that helps brands “spend more on media,” i.e., 92–97% of budgets reach audiences vs. ~20–40% in legacy web2 exchanges.
  • Immediate value:
    • For advertisers: greater reach and efficiency on the same budget, with verifiable log-level transparency.
    • For publishers: higher CPMs and faster access to cash flow (via AdFi), enabling improved UX (potentially fewer ad slots) and better yield.
  • Transparency by design: Auction outcomes and associated blobs are notarized on-chain. Counterparties can verify who bought what, when, and for how much.
  • Practical framing: Alchemy deliberately abstracts blockchain complexity; to buyers and sellers, it behaves like familiar ad tooling but with better economics and full auditability.

How it works (high level)

  • Real-time auctions: Alchemy hosts auctions per impression; buyers bid programmatically; sellers get the clearing price.
  • On-chain notarization & storage: Transaction data are encrypted (with Seal), stored as blobs (Walrus), then notarized on Sui to create an immutable audit trail.
  • Fee reduction and performance: By distributing infrastructure costs and eliminating intermediaries, Alchemy reduces take-rate and improves throughput.

Why Sui (migration from Ethereum)

  • Enterprise-grade performance: High throughput, low latency; fits ad exchanges that handle billions of daily auction events.
  • Data stack maturity:
    • Walrus for scalable off-chain blob storage with on-chain anchoring.
    • Seal for selective encryption/decryption, crucial for GDPR-compliant handling of PII/log data.
    • (Ben referenced the ability to mathematically prove off-chain events on-chain as part of the stack they rely on.)
  • Focus shift: Moving to Sui’s validation layer removes the need to run Alchemy’s own validator network, freeing the team to build more product value (activation, formats, targeting, frequency capping, AI agentic buying).
  • Team alignment: Sui/Mysten Labs’ background (ex‑Meta adtech DNA) and roadmap align with Alchemy’s enterprise requirements.

Token and economics

  • Token: Transitioning from the “ADS token” (validation-era) to the “Alchemy token” (financial/DeFi-era) on Sui.
  • Launch: Migration/launch targeted for August 19; listings planned on CEXs and Sui DEXs.
  • Protocol fee sharing: 100% of protocol fees (3–8% earned by the exchange) are used to buy back and distribute to token stakers. Year-to-date fees cited at just over ~$500k to be redistributed.
  • AdFi pools: Liquidity pools that let publishers draw down at “zero days” against invoices; LPs earn:
    • Fee share in Alchemy token.
    • Yield on provided stablecoin liquidity (when enabled).
      Because Alchemy’s base costs are ~40% cheaper than legacy rails, publishers can opt for faster liquidity without destroying economics.
  • Launch valuation: Indicated fully diluted valuation (FDV) target under $100M at launch.

Integration and onboarding

  • Publishers: Alchemy uses Prebid. Publishers can:
    • Add the open-source Alchemy bidder via prebid.org (HTML/app).
    • Apply for a token and vetting (to exclude non-human/bot traffic).
    • Begin monetizing with programmatic competition on every impression, improving price discovery and CPMs.
  • Buyers/Agencies: Buy as usual via Alchemy’s DSP or partner tools; same ad units and workflows, now with lower fees and transparent auditability.
  • Walled gardens: Platforms like X (Twitter) and Meta do not allow third-party exchanges inside their inventory; Alchemy focuses on the open web/CTV/publishers where it can operate.

Compliance, privacy, and security

  • GDPR-compliant design: Seal-based encryption ensures only authorized parties can decrypt user-related data fields; Walrus handles storage; Sui notarizes outcomes. This capability was a critical blocker-resolver for EU compliance.

Results and adoption motion

  • Education-led go-to-market:
    • Years of buyer education (“no one gets fired for buying Google/Meta”); test budgets that scale on performance.
    • Podcasts bridging adtech and blockchain audiences (tens → thousands of listeners).
  • Notable activity:
    • Coca‑Cola: focus on transparent path-to-dollar and efficient reach (“everyone with a mouth”).
    • Ripple (stablecoin campaign): Alchemy ranked among the best-performing exchanges, leading to increased budget.
  • Retention: Minimal churn among brands once onboard; budget seasonality still applies (e.g., airlines in Dec; sports cycles for Nike, etc.).

Roadmap: automation and AI

  • Agentic media buying: Implementing AI-driven buying on the exchange.
  • Workflow automation: Automated outreach, proposal generation, campaign setup, optimizations.
  • Interop with existing DSPs: Researching model-context‑protocol (Anthropic) to interact with external APIs, automate tedious ops (line items, creatives, pixels), and reduce platform-hopping. Early enterprise pilots in flight; broader release targeted around early next year.

Scale and goals

  • Current processing: ~20–30M transactions (rolled up efficiently into Walrus blobs; notarized on Sui).
  • Scale ambition: Grow activity substantially (Ben referenced targets that would contribute significant on-chain activity as volumes ramp).
  • Commercial target: Long-term path to 1% of global ad spend; Ben quantified this as roughly ~$750M in gross ad spend as a milestone.

Small creators and Sui-native apps

  • Today: Programmatic CPMs and biddable scale favor larger publishers/CTV and the open web.
  • Tomorrow: If Sui-native apps emerge that expose monetizable inventory, Alchemy is open to helping smaller creators monetize (subject to vetting and demand density).

Q&A highlights

  • Publisher value prop (Jay Frost):
    • Immediate: Higher CPMs from Alchemy’s bids.
    • Second-order: Forces other SSP/DSP bidders to bid up to maintain delivery, lifting overall yield; potential to reduce ad clutter and improve UX.
    • Tooling: Alchemy operates with both buy- and sell-side capabilities; has its own DSP with growing automation. Lines between DSP/SSP are increasingly blurred.
  • Ad server/AB testing (Davy):
    • Not currently an ad server replacement; could make inventory entirely biddable.
    • Recognizes ad server pain; evaluating roadmap opportunities.
  • Sui tech stack impact (DJN Architect):
    • All components matter, but Seal was decisive for GDPR-compliant encryption/decryption of auction data; without it, EU operations would be blocked.
  • Storage (Arash):
    • Walrus is used for decentralized blob storage; blobs notarized on Sui. Open to discussing SDK-level integration for games.
  • Launch economics (Primo):
    • FDV intended to be under $100M at launch.

Founder background and motivations (Ben)

  • Early life: Grew up near London; highly competitive; sports (rugby, football, cricket). Early hustles (e.g., tried to start a T‑shirt brand at 15).
  • Family influence: Father became an entrepreneur (recruitment); high expectations and resilience.
  • Education & early work: Oxford; worked as a waiter (intense, immediate feedback). Broke into adtech via a rugby teammate; small French adtech startup (interstitial era); then moved to a California-based ad exchange (major publisher deals: CNN, WB, FT). Brief influencer stint at News UK clarified preference for smaller, faster orgs.
  • Crypto moment: 2017–2018 exposure; during 2020 DeFi summer, with co‑founder Adam Shirley (ex‑CondĂ© Nast), saw blockchain as ideal for adtech transparency and cost distribution. Founded Alchemy in 2020. Team now ~62 (UK HQ; dev in Bangalore).
  • Inspiration: Arsène Wenger’s contrarian thinking and execution at Arsenal (“break the mold; persistence delivers results”).

Advice to aspiring founders

  • Share and validate: Don’t hoard ideas—execution is the hard part; talk to the users who have the problem.
  • Persevere: Expect to work longer and harder than planned; be resilient when only “one person is clapping” (often yourself at first).
  • Ask for help: People are often flattered to be asked; leverage expertise to accelerate learning and avoid pitfalls.

Key takeaways

  • The ad market’s core issues—opacity, heavy take-rates, delayed payment terms—are solvable with the right blockchain stack and domain-native product design.
  • Alchemy’s promise to advertisers and publishers is simple and compelling: materially more of each dollar goes to real media, with verifiable transparency and improved cash flow.
  • Sui’s performance and data stack (Walrus + Seal) enable enterprise-grade, GDPR-compliant programmatic at scale, letting Alchemy focus on product, not validator ops.
  • Tokenholders can share directly in protocol fees; LPs can fund zero-day publisher drawdowns via AdFi pools, gaining exposure to the “OPEX of the internet.”
  • Adoption is earned: start with tests, prove performance, scale budgets; once onboard, churn is low despite seasonal/vertical budget variability.
  • Near-term milestones: August 19 migration/launch on Sui; fee staking; subsequent AdFi pool activation once Seal is on mainnet; continued AI-driven automation for buy/sell operations.
  • North Star: capture 1% of global ad spend while restoring a fairer value exchange across the open internet.