SVM Summit 2025

Since a lot of people holding Bitcoin, I think, uh, you know that Bitcoin right now is a huge asset but has a limited capability to participate in the DeFi ecosystem. The reason for that is because naturally the programming capability is, is compared to Ethereum and Solana, just very limited to do any DeFi work. So this is the core problem we want to solve. We want to be able to allow Bitcoin liquidity to come to other ecosystems, allow us to be able to participate in DeFi and other activities, and bring the liquidity, uh, the yield back.

So the reason we choose Bitcoin is because, uh, starting, starting more than 10 years ago to now, we see that the Bitcoin price has been getting to the stable stage. If you look at this, why show you the price change with the time, and since the Bitcoin ETF adoption and also like a company like MicroStrategy keeps pushing Bitcoin, we do see that Bitcoin tends to be the really ideal asset to be collateral compared to any other, uh, uh, token or asset on the market. So that's where we, we actually think this is a perfect time for us to solve this problem, and how we solve it from a high level.

Yala is a lending protocol which we just made a mainnet launch last week. Um, the way we do it, people deposit Bitcoin on the Bitcoin mainnet. Then we use, using, uh, MetaMask to accept all sorts of the cloud, um, for retail and for institutional users, and with MetaMask, be able to mint the stable coin on top, and, uh, you know that Bitcoin's price is always changing. So in order to make it a mint stable coin which is pegged with $1, we use an over-collateralization mechanism to be able to mint it. For example, if it's $100,000 right now for one Bitcoin asset, you can mint 60k, 70k; it depends on your risk preference. Then with our bridge, you can be able to make the Bitcoin stable coin come to Ethereum; right now, already Solana—we already launched on Solana on Monday. So the stable coin comes to Solana, or we have the roadmap to come to other chains as well, but right now we really have it better on Solana. So this is a high level of how it looks like from the flow. You, you deposit Bitcoin, you get a stable coin on the destination chain. We talk about Solana, talk about Ethereum. You still hold the Bitcoin wherever you feel you gain the yield from the, uh, other chain from the DeFi protocol or RWA asset. Then you can, you can pay back the loan and get your Bitcoin back. So that's where you can keep your Bitcoin position but also gaining yield.

So, high level, we have that this is talking about the user journey perspective for the user, uh, you can use all sorts of Bitcoin-accepted wallets to connect, deposit Bitcoin, then you start to borrow against that to allow you to do dynamic borrowing, allow you to get a, um, like a certain amount of stables; then from that you already have the stables on other chains, we talk a lot of Solana and Ethereum. Then you went to different DeFi protocols and yield; since a lot of people here are participating in, like, a Solana ecosystem, you probably all are familiar with where you can get yield farming, then maybe for those activities. Once you gain those liquidity, you can, once you earn yield, you can pay back the yield as well, stable coin as a loan, then get your stablecoins, get your Bitcoin back. So that's a way we, I think everyone here has the expectation Bitcoin will keep going up, but you never lose it, but you can get liquidity out directly and participate in DeFi.

So this is the, this is the mission we have, but, uh, right now why we are here is because Solana is the true goal chain where we're thinking it will have really bigger value here. Um, we have some analysis shown here compared to other, any other chains on Ethereum or other L2s. Um, you can see this; we show two orange bars and a green bar. The orange bar is the stable coin transaction volume, and the green bar is the actual market cap for the stable coin ratios. So Solana actually really represents the stable coin efficiency. That's where when we look at all the possible chains we want to integrate, Solana stands on the top, and especially right now, given that Jump really chose this chain, we see a lot of traction right now, so we, we want to partner with Solana, we want to partner with Raydium or other Solana DeFi protocols, allow us to give more yield for our users, so we now talk about how we do that as a tech part. I see earlier solely show a deep dive how they do like a programming efficiency for the chain organization. We just give you a high level of how we think about our innovation.

Uh, the key part I want to start with the bottom is the claro mechanism. We see that, uh, Maker, actually MakerDAO has offering over-collateralization, um, for Ethereum, Ether, uh, to get DAI, like many years ago, maybe five or 10, five or six years ago. So that's where we actually have a significant innovation from that is we offer a stability pool, allow users to participate to help you gain yield with the stable coin, and also we give the, like, a dynamic claro mechanism allow you to change your collateral position because honestly, you, you see the Bitcoin price go up and down, you probably want to adjust your risk and also make sure you have the efficiency to use your liquidity. So that's one key advantage we put on the market. The second one in the middle tier, we offer a really institutional-level security for Bitcoin assets. So that's where we, we want to make sure the Bitcoin is really secure in our platform, and on top, we, the team works very hard with all the Solana ecosystems to help us really gain yield when you have our stable coin in your wallet. So on top of those three, we see this is the advantage we offer for the Solana ecosystem, and people may question where's the yield come from; primarily, there are three ways: right, once you gather stable coin yield from the Bitcoin asset you have, you participate in the DeFi protocol in Solana, and we also have the roadmap to connect to all sorts of RWA projects in, on the Solana ecosystem and also others to allow users to be able to gain yield from the RWA protocols and also the token, right, token rewards where, where incentivize the market to start to participate more. So this is the primary three streams we think the yield you should be able to capture.

So right now, given that Bitcoin is a two billion, two trillion asset, and we expect, at least be humble, we think our yield can give you 4-6% with the, with the yield you're holding, so you should take advantage of it and keep your Bitcoin position, should never sell your Bitcoin, never sell the Bitcoin. So we have a booth in the other room, please come to talk to us, talk to our team, see if you have any feedback or you want to try our protocol. We already have the mainnet launch last week and have the yield on Solana this, this Monday. So hope you guys have, have a chance to talk to us in the end. Please follow Yala, follow me, and see to learn our new updates. Yep. Thank you.

And now we're going to move on into our first panel, Bridging TradFi and DeFi, the road to institutional-grade Web3. Moderated by Martin from Solana, with speakers from City, Solana Foundation, HackVC, and Camino. Welcome. Hey. Hey. Perfect. Actually, Vicki, can you come over, please? I think I'm the backup offering. Yeah. Hey guys, thank you for this. Uh, I'm Martin, a contributor at Solana. Today we have an interesting mix of panelists. So we have people from CloudFi, DeFi, and, uh, also RWAs. So, uh, guys, if you want, let's start with a round of introductions. Be free.

Thanks Martin. Hi everyone. Uh, thanks for having me. My name is Biser Deitrov. Uh, I work with City. I am responsible for our blockchain technology group. Um, so we are maintaining, we're building our City production use cases. Um, my, I started in crypto in 2015, co-founded a company at the time called BlockX, and since then I've been working on technology in blockchain for the last 10 years now. Thank you for having me.

Thank you. Um, hi, I'm Ben Brophy. I'm a poor replacement for Nick Goov, so don't be confused by the face. Um, so I'm ex-Fidelity International. I ran the blockchain team there for the past three years. um, been in the space about 10 years, all the way from doing extremely exciting, uh, kind of cross-border, um, post-trade on distributed networks all the way through to NFTs, beam coins, and the rest. Um, Fidelity, I think kind of focus there for the past few years has been on tokenizing money market funds, bonds, um, and as you mentioned, looking at kind of wider blockchain infrastructure, so yeah, it's good to be with you today, thank you.

uh, hey guys, I'm Rob, um, I'm a partner at HackVC; we're also investors in Solana. Um, and, uh, yeah, I focus a lot on DeFi, liquid trading, um, and kind of like yield farming. Um, and, uh, yeah, I used to work at Genesis Trading, uh, for a number of years. So pioneered some of the early structured products and lending, uh, in centralized crypto over-the-counter. Yeah. Thanks.

Hi everyone. This is Vicki. Uh, I'm co-founder for Yala. Yala is a BDC-backed stable coin. You guys are here, the keynote just like a few minutes ago. So my background is I was managing director in Circle for three years, leading a stable coin development team, and before that, I, I, I was working in Capital One as a director and also Microsoft and AING lead. So yeah, that's my background. Thank you.

Vicki. We have already crossed, I believe, 22 billion in total market cap of the hardware side. From your perspective, what are, what is the current state of the market? What is interesting, and basically, at what stage are we right now?

Mir, the market is very rapidly developing, and we've seen that for the last few years, but especially since last December, everything exploded. And even now the stationation, if the, we have an all-time high of, uh, this just this morning, Bitcoin reached 109. So it's really, uh, just, just speaks for the positivity and the, the, the expansion of services and thinking from large corporates, crypto startups, to developing new strategies and to, to deploying new capital. So I think we, in the next few years, we will see even more expansion into maturity, into new strategies, and into, into, into bridging, um, how we can solidify this cool, interesting technology into tangible, sustainable platforms that where we can build in the future. So all in all, I, I, I personally, I'm extremely positive about how the market will develop, and, uh, that's what we see in the, in the space. Yeah.

Thank you. Um, yeah, look, I think I think some like fundamentals have been done. I think sometimes when you find yourself in conversation about tokenization or building blockchain infrastructure, like this stuff's been done; like we've known how to do this for a number of years now. So I think there's this really kind of interesting kind of maturity inflection point where, um, we were talking about just before, actually, just kind of stuff's getting more boring, but I mean in a really positive way, like we, we've drifted beyond kind of sensational headlines or the idea that blockchain is this kind of sensational thing to actually just becoming part of the infrastructure, and the discussions are less around the technology and moving on to things about like product, compliance, risk, liquidity, which is really good because we're now viewing it as a product, and the technology enables the product. I think that's a really good space to be because product associates revenue, associates a, um, associates value, and that's where we want to be because sometimes I think some of the challenges, and it's kind of a caution still to the industry is, although we find the tech super cool and interesting and captivating, sometimes we get blinded by that. So I think it's still just reminding ourselves it's got to be finding client value, it's got to be generating revenue, and keeping pursuing that. But no, I think it's, I think it's a super exciting time, and I think, you know, um, you know, it's always that thing, I think sometimes you always feel like late into an industry, it's like it's only just begun. So I'm, you know, really intrigued to see, like if you look back the past 10 years, you think how much we've done. I mean, wow, what's going to happen the next 10 for us as an industry. Thanks.

Yeah. Um, I'll second a lot of that actually. I think product is, uh, is probably the most exciting thing right now in terms of like specific dApps and DeFi. uh, you know, a lot of the infrastructure is there now, the block space is there. um, yeah, it's a shame Arun's flight was delayed, but like, for example, Camino, you know, it's like a full-blown asset manager on Solana, and as it expands into more assets that are not just crypto-native, like RWAs, whatever it might be, the breadth of what you can do is quite interesting, similar to things like Hyperliquid, you know, super fast-growing perp exchange, and it's just crypto pairs for now, um, but it's interesting to see like as other products you launch there, whether it's RWAs, other tokenized securities, commodities, whatever. And then also the VM there that sits adjacent to such a liquid decentralized exchange, all the things you can unlock there. It's like lending protocols, um, you know, options, cross-collateral stuff. It's, you know, the space really explodes there in terms of possibilities. So yeah, it's great, you know, like we have the speed, the block space, the ability to build these things, and now people are building these things, and a couple of them are getting a lot of use and are very profitable, um, and, and honestly, like just exciting investments from an allocating perspective, but also from a user perspective. So I think that's like really where we're at, like today. Yeah.

Yep. Thank you, Mickey. Definitely, I feel I agree with all you guys saying like the infra is ready, the product gets more and more ready, it gets main, more mainstream adoption, and we, we, I think already missed the boat if you see the, the, the Bitcoin from $1 to 10,000 or 100,000, but I think this is the opportunity to see more like mature yield comes, like a 5 to 10 or 15, 20%, comes with more like an enterprise offering, and, and also, if you look at the history, we, we see a lot of bubbles blow, comes FTX falling apart, and also the Silicon Valley Bank falling apart, and the Luna, the, the, the TerraUSD, um, but when we look to the future, I, from my humble view, I, I don't see any collapses as big as that anymore. I think it's all legit players in this space, uh, and a lot of bigger banks like City and others are participating in this space. So it, and also with a crypto-friendly, uh, government, I think we actually see, see a huge growing from mainstream adoption.

Yep. Thank you for this. Actually, probably the clearest PMF is for stable coins and treasury bills when it comes to the tokenization side. But going beyond these kinds of asset classes, what new emerging classes do you see getting broader adoption, and, uh, basically, from your points of view, like what is most interesting at this stage?

Yeah, you phrase it in a very good way that, uh, quickly skimmed over payments and go to stable coins where I, if we stay at payments and stable coins, this is the product-market fit for crypto, I'll be happy because we have an asset that, uh, essentially you tokenize money, um, and, uh, you can move on a blockchain rail in a 24/7, 365 manner. That's a, that's already an amazing use case, and we see the growth and adoption. Beyond that, um, there's, there's definitely, uh, the use case of tokenizing, uh, usually illiquid assets or illiquid, or assets that are, um, having, uh, trouble being sold for some varieties of reasons, mostly fragmented marketplaces or some inefficient marketplaces. So I'm talking about, but on the far stretch, around real estate tokenization or, um, some more exotic things like, uhh, market rights, um, music rights, media rights, or something else, so this could be on the far stretch. If we stay on the financial side, I'll be interested to see, um, purely the expansion in, um, regulated finance on-chain, uh, because I don't think we, we exhausted everything that we can see, so, um, the movement of what would be the, the Swift equivalent of in the Web3 world or the Mastercard in the Web3 world, those types of like, um, structures would still have to mature so we will be able to see to move, move assets beyond just messaging. Why, what I mean by that is, is in, in our TradFi world, we have a clear segregation between messages and assets, so they move on different rails, uh, where the beauty of blockchain is that you can have, you can tokenize both the value that within the token you can codify the messages, the, the, the metadata, and yet actually represents an asset. So I think there is an expansion there, should be more innovation in the space where you can actually, let's say a private placement or some kind of like a, um, asset that is still not fully represented on public markets. There's a reason that, um, agencies and regulators are rethinking how ATSs and how broker-dealer rules would work because that's still yet to be qualified. So I'm expecting an expansion of like new use cases that would come out of it beyond payments that we already mentioned.

Yeah, thank you. Um, yeah, look, I think it's a great question, but I also think sometimes we're a bit susceptible from our kind of like crypto-native perspective. Like if I could slightly interpret the question about like what's the new narrative or like what's the next one, and I think that's slightly kind of an industry dynamic, and I think I would rather shy away from that because I know we've kind of said, you know, what was it, was it, you know, as you said, like, could we put music rights, and then, uh, we've moved on from there, and you know, payments is coming through, is it money market funds, was it real estate, not real estate, um, I think sometimes it's just like a lot of financial infrastructure is just agnostic of the value that's being exchanged. So, you know, it can be any currency, and it can be any asset. And a lot of financial systems are set up on purpose to be agnostic because the infrastructure providers don't want to know what you're doing. That's, that's the purpose of the service. So, I think a lot of it for me, I would, I would try to come back like look at the fundamentals, and I think then we can be, uh, you know, for example, I would take like, you know, a money market fund, um, can be super boring, which is cool. Um, but we still have not resolved that like, you know, we still, we think hypothetically and logically it can be collateral, and it can be a high-quality liquid asset, and then you get kind of quite excited, and is there going to be this bum fight between, you know, money market funds and stable coins, you know, yield-bearing, and oh, who's going to win this, sounds super exciting, but you know, fundamentally, if I'm a corporate, you know, treasurer, I'm sat there with a whole bunch of, you know, if I can stay in my money market fund for an extra day or an extra hour, that's material, right? That's material. So, I think there's some things that we just need to keep doing, like keep pursuing. Um, so I wouldn't necessarily want to say what the next new narrative is. I think actually we've, we've identified some really quite compelling use cases that deliver value for clients, and we just need to execute on that and, and, and see it through.

Yep. Thank you, Rob. Yeah, that makes sense. Um, I don't know. As far as like some new things that, I, I like to approach things from like a perspective of what I would personally really like to use or get value out of, um, as like an early user of DeFi and a daily user of it. I think one of the big things is more private securities, uh, on-chain. Like it's kind of crazy that, you know, companies don't really go public anymore, and possibly like the best way to bet on the largest tech companies of the future are only, you know, like secondary markets today. So, you know, I would like to see like things like Figure or Appronic or SpaceX or Open AI, all these things kind of come on-chain, um, be able to trade them, and like, sure, maybe a walled garden, maybe

You have to, you probably definitely have to KYC, and there's stuff that's, you know, coming for that. But just the ease of doing that on-chain relative to, like, you know, selling crypto, getting it to your bank account, hitting up a secondary broker, wiring him the money, paying some SPV. It's all this nonsense.

Um, yeah, exactly. So, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, I I think that's like a big one, and it's just something that I would use honestly.

Um, but yeah, like all the other stuff is going to grow too, like stable coins and payments like that use case will—it's already proven itself—and it's going to proliferate further. Like I was talking to, you know, a life sciences company that's selling like this micro-needle patch, and they're doing a lot of turnover in volume.

Um, and that, you know, they operate in a gray regulatory zone. So, their payment processor charges them 4%. And that's just like the going rate. And I'm like, maybe you should go look at uh Bridge. I haven't used it, but you know, maybe it'll help you somehow. And I think like leaning into a lot of those companies um and cutting into those margins will be pretty big for stable coins as like more uh upstarts kind of get get going with them. But yeah, those are like the main things I'd say.

Yeah, definitely. I I want I want to actually anchor the the the privacy part. Um, for security and privacy, right? Basically, um, the right now everyone knows that uh stable coin definitely will be the uh top killing up and keep growing.

Um, and it will be the vehicle or settlement for a lot of use cases. More efficiency, more uh like quick settlement, that's for sure. Uh, so but uh but but we see that enterprise or uh institutional adoption have a a pain point is um they don't want to disclose their intent because the intent is a kind of their significant advantage compared to anything else when they see on-chain; they want to they want to hide it. So we actually are are cooking something um in Yala is we want to help the user to hide their intent but also be able to do the e-farming and the trading.

Um, how do you do that? Definitely is AI offering because if you have if you can think about if you have an intent, for example, you want to buy buy a significant amount of Trump token. Uh, so we can actually um by using AI pack that in a small scale, like for example, uh 100 100 token a time to allow this to best access for the liquidity but also hide the institution intent by by just make it a very small uh trading scale. So and then be able to managing like a more wallet than before. So this is a typical example, but but we we expect AI can give us a significant more advantage for the strategy, help us allocate the best like uh uh trading strategy, but also do privacy preserving for the intent. I I expect that give us a significant advantage for for the market uh and push the uh institution adoption for the long term.

Yeah. And uh because you finished up with institutional adoption, what do you think is uh the biggest constraint and do we still have any gaps in terms of the infrastructure that we have on blockchain that is basically preventing institutionals to expose more of their balance sheets on-chain? And that's a question for everyone actually, Mir, the biggest uh from my perspective and obviously the way I think about it is we are in our jobs outside of just building technology; we manage risks. So um the the biggest hurdle that we have to um overcome over time is to obviously educate across the board that there's these new ledgers that exist and know speaking within the bank but in general as a ecosystem that and we need to adapt our risk profiles to be comfortable with um unpredictability of the public blockchain networks. This will take a while because that's the the worst-case scenario of a of a risk managers of not knowing how the blockchain would operate or if it would hard fork, soft fork, or uh if somebody would get me or sandwich. So there was a case where somebody wanted to move 700,000 stable to a different stable; they ended up getting 5,000. So these things, if we are to create the the faster, cheaper, better money, these these things shouldn't be possible, or at least you have a recourse of like um claiming back the money or so you you shouldn't be as we say operating in the in the in the unknown, the black box of scenario. So I think that's what scares a lot of the risk managers within the large institutions. So uh this having this predictability, this type of like governance frameworks that would provide for quote-unquote assurances, which I'm not sure how possible they are into a a pure public network. So uh I think there is a as we say the tide lifts all the boats; there's some maturity on both sides; infrastructure has to mature in a way that you have some predictability, some release of schedule, some some SLA guarantees, but also on the other side institutions adopting risk frameworks and and being more comfortable managing these type of risks. So I think that's what we're going to see in the next few years.

Yep. Thank you, man. Yeah, let's echo something. I think like risk is just such an important thing. We don't realize like and and managing risk in a large institution. You're saying like this is not a few people. This is moving hundreds or thousands of people where they have to like uplift knowledge, get a degree of comfort, be able to form an opinion with conviction, with data, with law firms, consultancies, everything wrapped around it. So I think it's recognizing like the network effect of change in large institutions where you know we may all come from either small organizations or more dynamic organizations where we have that ability to operate quicker, faster, and at pace, and we can also break things at times. So I think it's just acknowledging that you know institutions' market position is predicated on trust; you know, it's predicated on, as you said, like the decel point won't move. Uh, your example is great, you know, so that just can't happen.

Um, I think as well is also just recognizing how far we've come. Like I think also, you know, if you look back slightly, you know, there was a time when we were pariahs, and then now you can talk to from an institutional perspective; there's a genuine discussion going on about you know the the flow of capital and assets between TradFi and DeFi. I think it's just important to acknowledge a couple of years ago like that was like a ridiculous conversation to have; like you've been laughed at the building, or they would have just thought that you're a scam. So I think it's again like in a really awesome way like recognizing like the maturity of thought, and you can now sit down with institutions and have that debate, and they acknowledge that. I think it's really important from a crypto-native perspective. We can be clients, and that's like hugely powerful; like we arrive with assets that your customers might want, or we arrive with capital that you know TradFi organizations want in their funds or in their network. So I think that changing relationship I think this is important where you know we move the debate from sometimes an adversarial either philosophy or a technology debate more to you know we have clients, you have clients, we have assets, you have assets; how do we build those reciprocal rails? And I really think we've hit that inflection point, so I think we're really going to see a quite an interesting uptick over the next few years.

Thanks. Yeah, is is the question like barriers to institutional adoption? Would you say more or less? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, like I think the big one is is probably still custody. Like, you know, the the concept of a private key just generally is rather still insane. Like, you know, hey, here's this key, like don't lose it. Uh, if you do, you're screwed. Um, and obviously with MPC and stuff, there there there's there's mitigance into it, but it's like the bearer nature of crypto, which is kind of what gives it a lot of value and and reason to exist to begin with, is also like a double-edged sword from an institutional framework that does rely on a degree of trust. And rightfully so. It's like, you know, I know like the stocks in my brokerage account can't get rugged if I misclick something.

Um, and that's like the core, I would say, like like like a big challenge. And there are some like um attempts at you know what what could you do with like uh you know whether it's social recovery or things like Turnkey or Privy making uh wallet infrastructure more abstract and accessible, but it's still like a problem; like even like JP Morgan said yesterday or two days ago like you know we'll let clients trade crypto but we won't custody it. I don't think that's because they're vehemently opposed to like holding crypto. It's like I think you know they did the risk calculus and and are like we can't have this.

Um, so I think that's the main one. And I think then like a lot of the tools for how you interface with like DeFi um are getting better; like for example like pre-transaction tracing and like understanding the flows that will happen in your wallet after you sign something. Especially now with Pekra where like you can um you know accidentally sign away with with just a a signed message. You don't even need to fire off a transaction anymore. Uh I think like you know like a technology like—sorry if anyone here has worked on MetaMask—but I think it's done irreparable damage uh for the general user in crypto, and things like Rabby like improve on it, and those sort of old vestigial uh terrible apps like MetaMask need to get replaced by things that are better um and more informative, and I think that'll help too.

Yeah, thanks. I think definitely mathematics is for individuals, not for institutions. Yeah. Yeah. And and and all definitely the the tool part, the infra part, have definitely can have a lot of room to grow. Uh, on the other side is more uh education. Right. It still um institution needs I think compared to a lot of pioneer who who for who are really getting into the space very early; institutions have have a lot of uh education to to transit themselves with with those um knowledge about the crypto and blockchain infra; I think it's still pretty hardcore attack part; it's kind of it it really are kind of a lot for for institution to learn. I think that's where I think could be a uh a some like a uh way knowledge or somehow like a agency can offer that; it will be significant for for for help with the adoption.

Yep, definitely. So we are already towards the end of our panel, but maybe just a final quick question which is about regulations. Just with uh with one sentence if you can do it uh recently actually yesterday the Genius Act was uh pushed forward. What do you think is going to be the implication for stable coins and tokenization in general, and which is the best jurisdiction for these kind of products to thrive at this stage? My opinion is that the best jurisdiction is definitely the US, and we saw it at Mah Mika—Mah, I'm not sure how to pronounce it. Uh, it's in the Europe in the Euro zone, but essentially there is no falls there; essentially nobody cares because there is no demand for euros. So definitely there is a um US, so I hopefully more maturity exactly in this policy space would be developed. So the the rules of play, the rules of engagement would be clearer. So I think that's one of the biggest catalysts that we will see in the next hopefully months would um provide for a um even playing field and for for uh confidence that when we build things are not in the gray zone or gray area; there will be a sustainable framework that you can lean on just like we have in traditional finance. So so many many many frameworks. I very I'm very positive about seeing those things codified. So not sure how long it would take, but any positive development that this space would be wildly adopted by institutions by by by companies because this essentially solidifies the the field. It wasn't a one-sentence answer, but yeah, very positive of things being developed into into the right space.

Yeah. Thank you, man. Uh yeah, super positive. I think it's just the irony that where crypto used to be seen as like a disruptive force and a challenge to financial markets and now with the growth of stable coins like we become like a fundamental underpin; like we're buying a load of T-bills; like we're like super important to the US government from a treasury perspective. I just find that like fantastic that they're now saying hey we're going to ultimately like rely on crypto for like economic stability. I just think from a market positioning point of view, I think that's like just ridiculous in terms of now a market position that we can now hold, and it's true. So, and it's going to scale. So, I think it's I think it's fantastic for us as an industry.

Yep. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I think it's fine. I mean, frankly, on one hand, I don't think anyone really asked for a stable coin regulation; like you have a hundred billion in Tether and Circle, whatever it has, like just telling you that the market says that they think these assets are safe and you know people will use them. So I I do worry about regulatory capture in any bill that's passed because of who's at the table versus who's not. I haven't actually looked into the exact details of the Genius Act in the form that it was passed. Um, so that's one hand angle of it, but on the other hand, I am optimistic that look there should be basic structures around duration and redemption and you know the fact that your money is still backed in an asset-backed stable if it claims to be one uh that need to exist.

Um, but I think we should as an industry should be very careful begging to be regulated because uh yeah, it can be it can it can get a little too bad. It can get it can go too far too. So Genius Act. Yeah. Got to be careful. Yeah, answer the early question. It's a uh Circle USDC is about 60 billion circulation, and so uh I think uh uh it is true that uh when when uh DC uh the the the challenge is uh um I I I'm not questioning that intent is uh intent. I think like when we look at sub 121, just a horrible rule and block block further because it's just insane to follow. I I think sometimes um when they are uh try to help us but in the result is they are not in the industry, but it will be very challenging, but once if they can like get a lot of top leaders like Coinbase, Anchorage, Circle, those and then it could help us guide with the best practice that that'll be much more reasonable for for give us uh good framework.

Um uh I I definitely want to see stable uh stable coin rupass because uh I still have a Circle share for my personal reason. Yeah, I I I wor it's I I what I see what I predict is once this pass uh we will see all sorts of banks could bring more stable coin on the market for help their own efficiency. I think this will be significant improv the the infra for the for the banking and then we'll see a a revolution for uh uh the uh bank banker systems not only in US but also for the developing country as well. I think we are in enter a new new stages, a significant mainstream adoption. I I I right now I already see a lot of banking are hiring like a stable coin uh experts to help them with the journey. So I I I'm pretty optimist with this uh the signal what I see right now.

Thank you so much. So uh yeah, thank you all for taking your time to be here with us. I think it was quite insightful. So yeah, thank you guys. Thanks. Thank you guys. And next up, Bitcoin 3.0. How do we bring BTC to SVM? Moderated by Harry Fetta Block with panelists from Yala, Avon Labs, Zeus Network, and Sakata Finance. Welcome guys. Up in the air is coming. Later. Oh, are we starting already? Yeah. Not yet. Not yet. Okay. Um, I don't need Bitcoin. Uh, yeah. Yeah. When do we start? Hello guys. Thank you so much for waiting. Uh, my name is Henry. I am ecosystem product lead/kite. I'm also the uh founder of Super Team Malaysia. That's how I got into like the whole Solana SVM. So ecosystem. And today we'll be talking about how do we bring BTC to SVM. Got some familiar faces here. Thank you so much for uh joining the panel. Uh I I think uh we have like 20 minutes. So roughly speaking how we would like probably do this is we'll go through some of like the sort of standard questions, you know, uh probably ask you guys to introduce yourself and also the projects that you're working on and then we'll go through some of the topics, probably like three or four, uh and then uh when I say like u okay means like you know like uh finish up in one or two sentences and then after that we'll probably go a little bit off script and then just kind of like yap, you know, just like chat online, you know, on stage. I think it's very important to just have fun uh and keep it interesting. So without further ado, uh would you like to sort of like uh explain uh you know introduce yourself and also what you do and uh what your project's all about? Yeah. Maybe starting from you. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Um, hello everyone. My name is Gary, and I've been an investor for like 15 years from Web2 to Web3, and um it's been a long time and uh in the Web3 actually invested some of the funds including modcoin and also uh many of the projects and from last cycle actually there's a lot of DeFi. So we turn to settle down and to do the project ourselves, which is a Cicada Finance. Uh, it is a protocol asset management. We pump up the real yield asset including the mining machine fund uh money market fund and also the payi fund, especially the quant fund, and we we put it all into the crypto and we use our token tokconomics which is a rebalance mechanism and to pump up all of this real yield, but not only RWA uh asset over there. Yeah, we'll talk to you later. Thank you. Hello everyone. I'm Venus, and I'm the co-founder of Avalon Labs. Uh, we are the leading on-chain Bitcoin lender and the issuer of USDA, which is a stable coin EO bearing stable coin that that is backed by the Bitcoin loans. Uh, and we are also pioneer the first fixed borrow system offering 8% of the APR. Um, and uh we off we uh currently we have around 1.5 billion of the TVL. So yes, we are the largest one in this space. Thank you. Yes. Hi guys. Uh, my name is Peter. I'm head of uh marketing at Zeus Network. Um, I've been in the space for seven years now and I've been on Solana since 2021, and um it's been a crazy ride for Solana. Um, and now today in New York celebrating Bitcoin all-time high with all of you guys. Um, it's a unique feeling. Um, yeah, we love to deep dive more into what Zeus is doing. I'm bringing Bitcoin liquidity onto Solana um into the DeFi um protocols. um chat more later. Yeah. Um, hi, this is Vicki. Uh, I think we all agree that Solana is a a good chain to bring BTC liquidity here. So that's why we're here to talk to you guys, and um my I'm co-founder of Yala BTC back stable coin issuer. Cool. Yeah. Uh, thanks for uh the introduction. I think uh interesting Peter you mentioned that it's an all-time high. I I didn't even know that. Uh, but yeah, so just trying to going through the just to go through the questions, right? Um, could you elaborate on what distinguishes your approach on bringing BTC to SVM and Solana uh in a trustless manner compared to traditional wrap Bitcoin solutions? So for example, right now we see a lot of like WBTC which was I think co-founded by Meow, right? I think uh the founder of Jupiter and so yeah could you elaborate a little bit more on like the ways that you're doing it and is it different? Was it how is it unique? Yeah. Um can we maybe you can start for whoever wants to take it first. Yeah. Huh? Maybe I'll go first. Yeah. I thought you would be sure I will go first. Um, so uh for Zeus Network we're building ZBTC uh which is a Solana native uh bitcoin and um I think uh it's nice that you mentioned about WBTC um previous great example of a decentralized bitcoin and um for bit uh Coinbase actually last

Year uh, launched on Solana as well. Coinbase BTC, um, which has done extremely well as well, um, and for those that don't know about the Bitcoin landscape on Solana, um, a year ago there was only less than 300 Bitcoin on Solana, one year ago. Uh, but today we're close to 67,000. Um, so we have seen significant growth, inflow of Bitcoin onto Solana.

Um, and uh, with the two WBDC and CBBDC, more of a centralized way into Solana, um, from centralized bridges. Uh, but for us, ZBTC, what we have built is a permissionless onchain, um, one-to-one lock and mint mechanism where you deposit one bitcoin on this uh, bitcoin blockchain and through Zeus network we're able to communicate and use Solana to validate the bitcoin transaction, um, to verify the state, um, so then the minting process starts on Solana. So every is minted on Solana is backed one to one by bitcoin. Um, and yesterday we just announced a partnership with Chainlink which now they uh, verify our proof of reserve on chain, um, in real time.

So uh, for Zeus network what we are trying to build and how we envision um, the future of Bitcoin is is permissionless, uh, no KYC, no KY, um, no centralized entity can control or freeze your transaction, um, everything should be onchain, um, transparent, uh, people can go in and out from Bitcoin to Solana permissionlessly. So, um, that's our vision, that is something that we have built so far, um, so we have gone just live a month ago and we have done over 60 million um, volume um, on chain and this whole process is just Solana validating. Yeah. So that's that's our approach. Yeah. Like uh, I think everybody knows Zeus right on the Solana uh, Solana ecosystem, very big as well, especially in the Jupiter launchpad time last year around March, March time. Yeah. Wow. Zeus was the first one for the Jupiter launchpad. So thanks for everybody who supported us a year ago and now we're here. Yep. Yep. Cool. Uh, anybody else also want to elaborate on that in technical?

Yeah, I can I can add some color. Um, so in Avalon we already provided service for uh, over 20k Bitcoin. Um, and our approach to uh, deployment to the SVN is more focusing on the security and the utility, uh, instead of using the wrapping bitcoin, uh, we are using the fitcoin, uh, FBTC, uh, which is a collateral in Avalon lending ecosystem, um, and then use the FBTC to mint USDA which is our uh, stable coin, um, users they can use the USDA to continue participate in the ecosystem, uh, such as converted to the USDT at a one ratio without any slippage and paying 8% of the fixed borrowing rates or uh, uh, stake the USDA into our SUSD staking vault and earn the yields, uh, during the entire process. The uh, FBTC as collateral will stay in the ecosystem. So uh, that will secure that will provide a very secure way for users to participate in the ecosystem.

Cool. Yeah, thanks for sharing. I think like uh, for the so we spoke a little bit about like the technical standpoint and also like how do you do things differently in terms of like bridging and stuff like that, right? Also want to also change it up a little bit and speak a little bit more on investment perspective and opportunities like uh, from an investment p perspective, right? How does bridging bitcoin to Solana influence the way investors evaluate projects or you know how does that uh, how does that crosschain uh, functionality open up new investment opportunities or even speculative uh, behaviors right, uh, in either in institutions or even in retail like how is the landscape changing for investing?

Yeah, I can I can start it. So, um, we we see that the the challenge in this space is bitcoin uh, holder actually is quite uh, uh, different from the uh, defi holders, defi like a participator right now in the market, um, they are more concerned about security than any other kind of like a user in in the in the system. So we actually offer uh, uh, the metaval. What I mean is for um, for institution user we actually plan we actually meet wherever user is. So what I mean is we we are uh, we have the roadmap we already support like a different uh, uh, custo like Coobo, Anchorage, code wallet, Ledger and others as well. And we have the roadmap to support Fireblocks and other we see that this is um, um, Bitcoin miner they prefer we see that that's where they come from they they view they view the security as as most important and after we onboard them with with those custodial solutions and then we offer uh, meta metam power by our notary bridge what is actually you can view as a side chain to to do the to do the validator as a decentralized way permissionless. This is give us the significant advantage to make sure our system is secure to meet the large customer need.

Cool. Yeah. Thanks for sharing. I think uh, you you you touched on a very interesting point, right, which I think is like the velocity of money, right? When uh, you know memecoins have very high velocity, you know, things are capital is very rotational. I think in in Bitcoin people are uh, less rotational and less mercenary hence you know they're going to park something in one place for a very long time and hence security right is very important right so that's pretty interesting thanks for sharing right like will you also like share some things about investment landscape?

Gary yeah, uh, for investment actually I think Solana investment will separate to three stages the first stage is about infrastructure and at that time actually I've got a fund invest the Solana by modcoin and some of the funds. And uh, so that is the uh, the first stage and second stage I think everyone knows this is a meme and this stage actually bring the user behavior to um, very special uh, stage which means that it's very hot but they still have got pros and cons and then uh, everyone talked to uh, Solana Foundation and venture know that they have to change the direction change their user behavior quite a lot because they have to face that uh, it's the casino mode cannot last long. So now it's the third stage which means that we have to build up the infrastructure. Uh, for example like a BTC to SVM there's asset management any there any kind of a lending protocol any kind of asset management protocol is very important. So uh, this is what we are now focused on and for this situation actually there are two um, different direction one is infrastructure buildup. Uh, for example I I talked to visual uh, and then they have built up many of Payi and infrastructure about that I think it's pretty good from the other side uh, it's all of the asset over there and I think there's not uh, enough mature asset in Solana and SVM system so that's what we um, finance cicata finance doing now uh, we try to build uh, and bring and pump up many of the uh, real asset here we're not not doing pump fund we are doing a pump up. So there must be many u bearing sustainable uh, reliable uh, asset over there. So this is very important like quant fund like a money machine fund something like this right.

Uh, I want to echo Vicki's point because uh, I think the growing of the Bitcoin ecosystem might bring the trend of the DeFi um, because when we were building the DeFi lending protocol we chatted with a lot of top tier mining companies and the the largest Bitcoin holders um, and they give us the feedback that they're not comfortable using DeFi lending because they are not comfortable to on-ramp their Bitcoin. So uh, with those feedback we started to build our city valid lending platform which is under the USDA um, where we uh, incorporate the the cobalt wallet as the custody solution to make the the miners the bitcoin holders more comfortable. So the security is a really really the key points in the entire ecosystem growth. Um, yeah that's what I want to thank you.

Cool. Yeah, I've got to go off script now cuz we only got 7 minutes and there's like basically yap on stage, right? So, uh, this is going to be contentious, right? You know, there's uh, I like to cause trouble sometimes, right? The the the for and against, right, of BTC, right? So, some people say BTC is uh, good because it unlocks a huge amount of locked liquidity, right? And like basically money that doesn't exist in all other chains, right? It's the biggest market cap, right? Bitcoin. Uh, so unlocking that is oh it's a problem of unlocking that right but other people also say that hey you know uh, it's just a different type of market people in bitcoin are not they just like to store their money they don't like to do defi right so it's not it's it doesn't work right so what do you guys think on that maybe like two or three sentences each so I budget the time let's get it first on.

I think there the problem from last cycle with LSD means that the liquid stake derivative. This is a big problem. We cannot stake all of the liquid or there will be no yield actually. So stake is only a methodology or a tool and then you can bring some of the derivative but the stake is not a purpose. So uh, I think we we have learned pros and cons from the BTC fi BVM system and now build up the SVM. We have to change we have to take the advantages but we have to change the problem which we cannot uh, stake or restake too much. We have to make the all of the use liquid that is very important. So that's why we bring up the liquid token and rebase token at the same time. So uh, we have to give the right back to the user and people and investor uh, for them to select uh, uh, if they want uh, the the yield or the liquidity but not stake their money all the time.

Gotcha. Nice. Uh, Peter, you got something to say?

Yeah, I think uh, it's a good question. BTC um, is it relevant or not? Right. So I think uh, for our vision BTC 5 means we want to put Bitcoin to use and to to put it to work. Um, I think our approach is not just a TVL play where uh, how many amount how many bitcoin we bring onto Solana. Um, I think we want to focus on the amount of Bitcoin that we bring onto Solana. They're being you utilized in in DeFi and I think um, we have seen a lot of uh, different teams uh, institutions and demand suppliers of Bitcoin wanting to come to Solana and and why because Solana is probably one of the most um, maturing and growing DeFi landscape um, compared to ETH. Solana is still very early um, but the money is floating to where there is opportunity and I think BTC 5 has opportunity on Solana and uh, this is a great timing you know for teams or even investors to get involved on Solana um, because the users are there um, the fees that is being generated as yield is there um, so I think these are the things that we're very bullish on Solana is that there is real users uh, real use case and and as more liquidity comes in um, from through better security measures, uh, more transparent methods. Um, I think we can see more of growth in salon D5.

Nice. Nice. Cool. Yeah. Just in time, two minutes for each person. I was looking at the time. So early her mentioned today actually is all-time high. But I think we celebrate all-time high all the time high all the time, right? Given that the Bitcoin keep have all-time high. So right now in my view uh, what how we qualify as a uh, institution user or something like a um, like a VIP customer we are talking about at least 100 bitcoin then that's 10 million but maybe one day maybe not very long few years few few years later or bitcoin maybe one bitcoin as a as a large customer oh you have one bitcoin oh my god that's crazy right So that will be the time I think uh, that at that time I I never question about B5 because if if everyone have that money as I really really want to see leave let it see the for but do nothing definitely for sure I think naturally this will go somewhere I think is the challenge for for for for all of the project here is how we can make sure we have the most secure system allow user can be able to earn y without the like a risk they are bitcoin so that's where I think is it's on our side how we can message it how we can operate how we can make sure it function as expect to to give the the benefits for for the bitcoin holder yeah I definitely hope that uh, one day we'll be considered wheels with just one bitcoin I think uh, we will be very happy yeah yeah anything do you want to add uh yes so uh BTC file was a hot topic last here. Um, but the narrative kind of goes down a little bit this year. Um, but I think a lot of people didn't understand the real demand opportunities behind BTCI. Um, Bitcoin as the digital goal that connects both traditional finance and the D5, it has the huge potential to bring the real volume from the trade. So I think that with the BTC file or the BTC ecosystem continue to grow, the Bitcoin will uh, activate more financial needs in both uh, uh, traditional finance and the defendant and bring new arrow to the entire crypto industry. Thank you.

Nice. Cool. Yeah. Um, now I have to figure out how I'm going to fill up the few seconds left on stage. So um, maybe if you had one one or two sentences to say as a takeaway to the audience, what would you say?

Yeah. Well, I think um, after BDC file, I think SVM and is will be very different from BVM and I think the the most important thing is the real yield and real application. So for example like a real application I can see that the Payi is the very good direction and real yield it's there are many directions for example like uh, quant fund and for example like mining machine money market fund is pretty good.

Yeah. Uh, bitcoin will go to 1 million in two years. So hold your bitcoin don't sell it. Um, if you love Solana and love Bitcoin, then you're going to love what Zeus is pushing out in June. Um, soon you'll be able to stake Solana and earn Bitcoin on Solana alpha. I I think uh, um, actually I want to anchor what she say right hold the Bitcoin or I will see the goes to moon. Um, but I I think the the big bad for all of us here is Bitcoin with Solana. I think this actually give us the most alpha in in the in the whole uh, crypto ecosystems.

Cool guys. Uh, thank you so much for joining the panel. Please give a round of applause to the panelists here for uh, the really good opinions and also the alpha. Right. Thank you. Thank you so much for being patient and I'll see you guys around. Please add them and follow them on Twitter. Right. Hey, thank you so much.

Now it's time for a technical deep dive. Hardware acceleration, what it is and how it impacts scaling. Join the Solair engineering team with Chads, Joshua, and Chaan, moderated by Mina from Spout. [Music]

Hello everyone. Testing. Hello everyone. My name is Maya. I'm the founder and CEO of Sprout. And I'm so glad to be here to be moderating this panel with all the really really awesome engineers from Solair. A lot of them I've known them for several years who also have built me with engineering smart contract issues. So I think this going to be a really awesome panel and I will try my best to ask the hardest questions I could. Uh, so let's do a first quick round of self intros.

Um, hey everybody here I'm found engineer is solair. Uh, we have four people here today. We have six people in total for engineering team. So you're talking to most of us today. Uh, my background is more like cloud and also like hardware stuff. I do also some some security compared to my other colleges. Um, yeah so been working a lot with solair. Hopefully we can answer your questions um today.

Hey everyone, Joshua here. So I lead products, so anything product integrations, things like that. Happy to chat. Um, yeah, and then broadly interested in AI. A bit of background on that side. So yeah, happy to have a chat.

Hi everyone, I'm Chi and uh, I used to be a security researcher at Felen aka hacker and also I joined Solair this early this year and I'm building the chain right now.

Hello. Hello. I'm Chaan. Uh, I'm an engineer at Solair and previously I was uh, co-founder of Fuzland. Uh, my expertise is in security and distributed system.

Cool. Let's get started. So let's talk about solar architecture a little bit. Um, what core design choices set the sollayer chain apart from all the other layer 2 or layer ones?

uh, we don't consider ourselves to be a layer 1 or layer 2 but more like a side chain like a polygon to ethereum uh, so our consensus is mostly just handled by ourself not on a separate layer one but still uh, for some fault tolerant uh, things we could not uh, like handle in such a way that if we don't have enough of uh, sec economic security on our chain then we couldn't handle it then we offload it to Solana and have Solana to handle the fault tolerant.

Yeah. Any adding?

No. Okay. We're pretty shy like so. Uh, yeah. Yeah. So if you are handling I guess all all the uh, transaction settlement, right? Is there any specific things you're dealing with sequencing? Because right now like as is really really a big narrative, right? So I want to hear your thoughts on that.

Uh, right. So uh, we have our own set of sequencers which is like a PA set of uh, sequencers that could be rotated over time and uh, we also have like a fleet like that allows anyone to join to verify the uh, the the blocks produced by the sequencer and uh, get the rewards for ordering. Uh, so for us we are mostly uh, just on our sequencer side we do it first come first serve but it's definitely possible for uh, external applications to do the application uh, specific sequencing and uh, we do support uh, like a port that allows others to submit bundles and submit uh, uh, like a large set of transactions to our sequencer and the sequencer will respect the order of the transaction in the in a bundle. Um, basically just to clarify there's no wisting anybody can become the sequencer.

Right. Right. Oh are you are you concerned about security reasons at all?

Uh, so so for a sequencer it's definitely going to be decentralized like a centralized sequencer never is going to work out because of the like like the nature of our industry. Uh, we want everything to be decentralized. uh, if it's not decentralized then uh, how do you tell others that your money is not in our bank account or or just in our multisc that we could just steal it by uh, doing some signatures by me or by by chi or by others. So we are going to have a decentralized sequencer and we're going to have a decentralized fleet of val uh, verifiers that are going to verify the output of the sequencer and the sequencer's main workload is just to uh, do the sequencing and uh, produce the block and the verifier is in charge of uh, ensuring the consensus ensuring that everything produced is valid.

Thanks. Um, now now I would like to move on to more a bit about like what the chain is enabling right cuz u most of no matter side chain layer one layer 2s you optimize for certain reasons it could be the throughput it could be modularity it could be the cost or something else so how are you guys seeing from more a functional perspective making the trade-offs as so layer so sorry can I repeat so uh, so when you guys designed the chain Right. What what are the trade offs you make? Like what are you focusing on? Is it modularity? Is it throughput? Is it cost or is it anything else?

Okay. So the only like aim for the chain is the speed, the throughput. Uh, we are aiming for 1 million TPS and right now we have uh, like um, 100K uh, you can see in the demo room. Uh, and it's mixed of like simple transfers and swaps as well and uh, you so some numbers of the industry right now. So for example for Solana they have uh, like uh, 70k transfer uh, that's the max they can do right now and we are hitting 100k uh, with transfers and swaps which is uh, like already a huge progress to it and uh, it's because like we have some special eliminations of like features on Solana uh, we removed some unnecessary parts of the of agave the the Solana validator client and uh That's that's uh yeah with the with the with the focus of

The throughput that's the like the number one goal of our development. Why does it matter? Like, who are you catering to? Is it traders? Is it institutions? I I don't think retail users going to say, "Oh, 500 milliseconds is way worse than 40 milliseconds," you know.

Okay. So I think like enabling a huge bandwidth will unlock a lot of like imaginations. Uh, for example, if you are watching YouTube, you might need uh like 100 megabyte bandwidth in your home Wi-Fi and uh with that bandwidth available, you can do it on the chain; basically, you can upload like streaming stuff on our chain, like uh everyone else can download it uh simultaneously, and that will unlock another like uh a variety of applications there.

Yeah. So sorry, go ahead.

Sorry, go.

Yeah. And on the trading side, so the the trading is not just consisted of the users but also the market makers, and the market maker needs the real-time uh price feed which uh most of other chains cannot provide. And uh if the latency is slow enough, like 1 millisecond, then the market maker is definitely happier than if they could uh get the price after 12 seconds. And uh for market makers, if they can get the price faster, they could uh just provide more sprout, provide more liquidity to the to the to to to the market in a more efficient way.

Yeah.

Yeah. And al oh, fast chain means that fast finality in our case because we are using a unique sequencer model. So the order is decided after sequencer start streaming data out, which means that if you're building a purpose on us, that's the finalization time already. Meaning we receive the transaction, decide the sequence, and then it's finalized pretty much if you if you trust the sequencer, which is fairly um centralized at the beginning with the decentralized goal in the future. So that unlocks huge trading opportunity especially for perair. So think about it: if you trade on Solana, your finalization time is roughly 10 seconds; it's crazy. And if you do that well, maybe some company use confirm the status, maybe you can average out to like four or five seconds. Yeah, but like for us, you can imagine right away finalization like milliseconds level, and then that makes it so easy to like, you know, liquidate you or like, you know, like close the position, whatever, you know, make, you know, that's that's the thing we're thinking about: fast with large throughput meaning really unlock whatever we haven't seen before. So I think as she mentioned, infrastructure improvement unlocks more applicationial level of like innovation; that's what we're thinking right now.

Yeah, I think I can just drop down a little bit on like the consumer side as well. I think retail might not, in a sense, might be too concerned about the difference between like uh milliseconds, right? But if you're trying to build like a consumer app for, say, e-commerce—I used to be in an e-commerce background—every second counts because conversion rates plummet after your first or second, even for page loads. So people optimize how fast your page loads. But if you are trying to sell something and someone buys, they make a transaction, and then your next—it takes some time for confirmation—but you have like an upsell page; you want to sell them something afterwards; they might just drop there, and then you stop selling everything after that's like a real revenue impact. Um, other things, maybe AI: if people are looking to do like low-latency AI distributed training and say, "I want to have a heartbeat server that pings all the other distributed clusters and say, 'Hey, is everything going well? Do I split payments?' things like that," um, if you have 10 servers, 100 servers, and you do one heartbeat, that's like 100 transactions, right, or something like that; that could require a lot of throughput. I think people will need to do a lot more; like, people develop all sorts of applications once they know that it's not going to be too expensive doing certain kinds of actions, and for the consumer side, it's going to be a lot easier to build knowing that my end-users are not going to fall off the consumer journey because of like some low lat like latency problems.

Yeah.

Yeah. Uh, looks like the engineers really like this question, but I but I do agree with you: like, the end audience could not only be like human beings but also AI agents, that would be a really, really large population, and then we need to make sure the infrastructure is like machine-readable, it's always reliable, the app runtime is going to be almost like 99% to 100%.

So now um I want to talk a little bit about—see what's the developer experience like building on solair because I mean, essentially you guys are are building this modularity or or toolkit or the side chain that you you hope a lot of applications would build on top of you guys, right? No matter the the video streaming, the AI agents, uh, what what are the ultimate like what what do you think the audience, the app developers, going to be focusing on? And now what are you guys working on optimizing right now?

Uh, I can start. So uh we are building based on SVM right now. So our existing program can pretty much migrate without any effort. This is just a switch of RPC endpoint for them. But like one thing we do not support is websocket because it slows down the chain so much. But instead, we have other like streaming mechanism for you to subscribe data change uh for the chain. So pretty much the message is like if you're developing a solana right now, you can migrate without any effort; all the two chains are the same, and we're building more in-house offering to those general SVM ecosystem.

Yeah. So other stuff we're optimizing is really like, you know, like when a chain becomes so fast, the data is huge; every second we're generating gigabytes of data right now. So it's like how can we enable developers to find the data they need with really cheap? Right? We're going to build a lot of like uh RPC and optimization around that, and so developers—for them, they don't need to pay expensive RPC maybe right at the beginning because we're going to offer everything for them so they can just come and use directly; that's that's one thing we're building right now, so if there—please add more.

Yeah, so I think on the code level, they don't need to change anything if they can already uh deploy their thing on Solana. But maybe on the like development mindset level, they might need to um think more about um some consequences on building on a such, you know, fast chain; like maybe some assumptions may not hold; maybe uh some level or epoch level things they might need to like change their mindset a little bit, but it's just um like um some initial thoughts of me.

I think for my side, um I'll be focusing heavily on like distribution. So like expanding like our CLI tool set so that anyone who wants to just try out transactions, look at um simple ways they can have sample code to interact with things; I'll start adding more into that um and making sure that LCLI tool or like endpoints that we use to construct transactions um are not just usable by humans but also by AI agents so that um once we plug in um hopefully we can have like an MCP um integration up so that literally anyone with an MCP server will be able to start calling, making transactions on Solana; you can go into cloud, their desktop top app, and maybe even do transactions from there directly. So, um it'll be interesting.

Yeah.

Just add on to the topic, we're also building an in-house bridge uh for developers.

I was going to ask what what do you think about interoperability?

Yeah.

Yeah. Go ahead.

Go ahead.

All right. Cool. Uh, so we're building an in-house bridge. Why I have to mention that for developers? Because we support not only the asset bridge but also the cross-chain call, which means you can call solair smart contract or program from Solana program, and you can you can do vice versa; you can call Solana swap from solair program call, and they we're going to bridge the call instantly for you so that enables a lot of new experience for users and as well as the traders specifically, right? Because now I can essentially bridge money to solar right now and do another trade on like Solana to balance it out, right? I mean, I'm not a professional trader, but I think there are going to be a lot of imaginations here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I I agree. I I think like if you guys are able to persuade a lot of application developers uh to to not settle on your chain, but just to to go through all the like write all the all the transactions through your chain, and then they can bridge the transaction to other chains, then that will be the goal, and I think that will be the best usage of why like your chain is the fastest.

Right.

Exactly. And also so we are being so fast. It we we do not only want the chain execution to be fast. We also want the asset movement to be very, very fast between us and others. So like money comes and goes all the time. We don't want to be like, "Hey, you deposit money is instant, and then we withdraw money seven days," you know; that kind of experience is really bad. So everything on solar will be very fast.

Yeah.

Uh, but but that's what I'm saying. I think another thing, especially for a large asset issuer, decentralization is really, really important; otherwise, like why would a large asset issuer come to asset issue that asset on your chain, right? How do how do you guys think about that? I mean, this is also a limitation for Solana too, so basically um like we sacrificed some consensus like uh we have one centralized sequencer, and but we added some other mechanis MS to ensure like decentralization. We have a set of verifiers; those verifiers, the binders, they can be run at like home PC, and uh as long as the you know the chain is—say we do something evil, which is not possible like to uh for our interest—uh, but if we do anything evil, they will instantly find it, and they will you know, h the chain, and uh people will be able to like withdraw their asset on Solana, and uh also like uh some people were asking about like censorship, and also we have this force inclusion mechanism which uh works basically pretty much like L2, like force inclusion; you can send a transaction just like uh chasset—you can send a transaction on Solana—and uh verifiers or our sequencer will include that transaction uh in our chain uh forcefully, and uh yeah, that's how we deal with the decentralization problem.

Yeah.

So just to add on that, um our execution part based on Westpaper and whatever we're building right now, it's fairly centralized, I'll be honest, but like why we still call it a blockchain layer one, that's because we design a very decentralized consensus layer, so you you may imagine the execution part happens within a very uh limited number of nodes, but the verification part happens among thousands of them, and then we designed some really funny, interesting stuff which means—like most of our fireers or validators in this case—they just you know, pretty much you can vote yes for everything; like it doesn't it never hurts, right? What are we going to do is we're going to send some honey uh honey pot, right? Like something—yeah, honey pot, pretty much—it's meant to be false, and then if you actually do not do the job, you will be slashed; you actually pay; you actually need to work for this, and then the Wi-Fi will design that to be very lightweight such that everybody can run their laptop top; you do not need dedicated hardware on the server to run that. This means we can easily scale the Wi-Fi like set.

Yeah.

Okay. Uh, enough uh difficult questions. Let's move on to some obvious ones. Uh, I know you guys are pushing really, really heavily on the emerald card. Um, and can you guys tell us like what makes it special? Like, why does retail users want to use the emerald card?

Yeah, I guess like it's a whole bundle of like different kinds of features. The first one is like we have some of the most competitive fees on the market. Um, and we actually eat some cars as well here and there um for users so they can can really spend um offchain like on in real life as much as possible. Number two is I think the emerald rewards. Um, there aren't many places where you can spend one platform and earn from an entire ecosystem of of partners. I think that that that part is huge. Um, we're starting to stack a lot more discounts, a lot more like partnerships with different kinds of platforms. Um, and announcements will be going out over the next one or two weeks. Um, so that hey, if you have this card and you're already subscribed to all these like different platforms, um you can receive like really exclusive discounts that you're not going to get anywhere else. Um, and other cards kind of compete on like cash back, but if I can give you a straight-up discount, you don't really need to care about cash back, right? You're saving money anyways. Um, other things about the card, um, being the optional yield as well. You can deposit, and then you can earn yield on your your deposit as well. I think that that part's pretty interesting. Um, we'll have sub cards out in the future. Um, and then a lot more integrations. I'm interested in exploring like more on the payment side. Um, whether we can like support small businesses if they're trying to do like transactions. um, other other things, maybe even integrated with—I think Stripe launched like an agent kit recently which allows agents to have cards themselves. So if an agent has both a wallet as well as a card, um it can handle both real-world transactions as well as onchain transactions. So that could be interesting to come pursue. But I think um in terms of all these things, like we are trying to optimize as many features um requests from um the users so they can have the smoothest experience, save the most money at the same time, and also experience the most like upside and like rewards.

Any additional thoughts on the card?

I think we are running out of time, but I I really, really appreciate all the engineers' like honest feedback. Is there any alphas you guys can share?

Card usage has points. Is that a real alpha?

Um, Josh can't confirm like our cards have emerald rewards points. So it helps with unlocking a lot of different kinds of emerald rewards and things like that. So spending is encouraged. I I'm a pretty straightforward guy. We didn't do our job later.

Yeah.

And we hope to cut that out.

Cut that out.

Thank you guys.

Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you.

All right. By the way, most of us are going to be uh in the other room for a demo, and you can try that.

Oh, hey. Thank you guys.

Um, next we have Solana DeFi 3.0, the next generation of Solana DeFi, moderated by Yao from Solana Foundation with panelists from GMGN, Jupiter, New Bit, and Commino Finance. Welcome, guys.

All right, guys, I think we probably need to wait a little bit. We have Mark from uh Camino. The founder of Camino is still on his way. So yeah, we'll probably wait for a few minutes. I guess you guys can like start introducing yourselves and then use this extra time to introduce your project maybe.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, this works. So, uh I will do a brief introduction. So, this is Yaya. Um, I'm working for Solana Foundation and very happy to uh join the uh Solana SVM summit and together with some like a top DeFi projects from the Solana ecosystem. So today we actually uh were going to have Son, the co-founder of Jupiter, with us as well, but he got a like—because this meeting, this Capano, has changed the time, so he couldn't make it—but very still very excited to have other like new teams in the ecosystem and also some OG team like Camino in the ecosystem to talk about the future of Solana. So yeah, uh while we're waiting for Mark, so uh what about we start to do some self-introductions and also uh want to learn more about your projects as well.

Okay.

Uh, thanks. So uh it's Suki here. I'm Jim J. I am I'm also the only one uh work—how do you say—only one in the US. um, like most of the team members are in Asia, and we uh we are building a very large uh Asian meme community. Um, and uh as for GM Jen, it's a meme trading platform. Um uh I I think most people heard of of GMJ is from Trump uh because a lot of uh Chinese digents are a lot uh are like millions uh in uh in GM Jen; they they they they bought Trump. Um, so uh like I I think over uh 50% uh trading volume of of our platform is come from uh SA. So I think GMJ is is um a a part of meme culture in uh in Solana now. So uh it's very uh I think meme meme coin is is also a very important topic uh in this circle and uh also for uh the the the topic, the next generation uh of Solana DeFi.

Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so yeah, my name is Norbert. I'm doing global growth here at Nubbit, and I think a little exception because we're a Bitcoin project. So in short, um, pretty much we are core contributors of Bitcoin Thunderbolt, which lets you send, transfer Bitcoin instantly with our bridging, without wrapping, all in a native way. And pretty much where the connection comes in is we are super close to Sollayer. We had an ongoing campaign going on. So any Solana card holder could actually claim some real BTC if they start spending Solana within within Solana uh within their card. So I think one of the biggest things that we're kind of transitioning into as well, we are able to see where Bitcoin as an asset class has been growing, and not too many people are willing to actually spend it. So like we're trying to find a way where users are able to earn real BTC um within actually their constraints; they can just send and pretty much spend Solana, and they can actually earn some BTC as a very much like reserve asset on it.

Yeah, pretty cool.

And uh I'm very always very excited to see some new players and some new assets in the ecosystem because which means like new users and new user experience and new assets, right? Um, so yeah, uh because we are already here and uh meme coin is like one topic we cannot avoid in this circle uh where meme coin is where retail users are, right? Um, so uh I think uh recently—oh, we have Mark here. So hi, please join.

Yeah, we were just finished the self-introduction part. So uh yeah, I would love to invite my old friend Mark from Camino.

Sorry, I'm late.

No worries. Finding out what New York traffic's like.

Oh my god, it's so bad. Sorry, New York City, but it's bad.

Yeah. Sorry. Did you—Do you want to do some self-introduction?

Yeah.

Yeah, sure. Sure. Sorry. Oh, cute dog. Anyway, uh hey everyone. My name is uh Mark. I come from Camino. Actually, I come from England. I live in Switzerland, but uh I come from Camino. Basically, if you don't know Camino, we are a DeFi protocol on Solana. We do a few things, probably best known at the moment for being the largest credit marketplace on Solana. So, you can come and do borrowing and lending. There's over 4 billion assets supplied right now. Uh, we also do uh some cool products which are which we call liquidity vaults. What they do is market making on DEXes. So plugging into Orca, Radium, Meteora, and the most recent product is Commamino Swap, which is very cool. It's like a meta aggregator. So it plugs into uh Jupiter and a bunch of other um DEX aggregators like OKX. And we also have a very cool integration with Pith Express Relay for intense based swaps. So bridging offchain and onchain liquidity—a bunch of fun things. So uh yeah, look forward to uh to speaking today.

Yeah, thank you so much for sharing, and yeah, Camino has been with the Solana ecosystem I think from the probably the very beginning, and I'm very happy to see it's growing and also uh achieving a lot of like new milestones. So congratulations. Uh, yeah, let's get back to the topic. So um today we have some like OG players and we have some new players in the ecosystem as well. So the first question is: what innovations have merged in the Solana DeFi space compared to the first generation or the second generation DeFi protocols in the ecosystem so far, from your uh observation? Maybe uh I think I want to serve this question first to Mark as well because you have been here forever.

Sure.

Thanks. Um, so innovations um what I really like—I'm just going to refer back to what I talked about there—I mean, the the whole kind of meta aggregator um a few years ago—if

You started using Solana DeFi; one of the first places you'd go to was a DEX. And you go to Raydium back then, Orca back then. You had to look at what tokens they had, the how the liquidity was, do some swaps on on their UI. And then we kind of evolved into this phase where uh Jupiter came in with the Jupiter aggregator. It became a very much loved protocol in in in Solana. And over time we've seen, of course, Jupiter thriving, but different models coming, different algos, different ways to um aggregate prices from DEXes. Now we've seen the whole off-chain to on-chain liquidity that I talked about with uh Camino Swap and Pith Express Relay. And that's taken us into the era of the meta aggregator. So, the aggregator of aggregators. And uh the net effect really is awesome for users because you're able to uh get access to the best prices on-chain on Solana. We're able to bridge the worlds of off-chain and and on-chain. We can do very cool things like slippage-free limit orders and um uh you know, no risk of the whole MEV topic as well. So I really like this um it just contributes to a more thriving DeFi ecosystem, more reason to stay on-chain and all on Solana. Yeah.

And also I think the user experience and the scalability of the DeFi uh projects on Solana is getting so much better as well compared to their uh first generation. So also the same question to Suki. Um as for the innovation, I think uh when I first come uh when I first got into this uh this this space uh I I I found Solana was uh building some um how do you say some project that's completely copy uh Ethereum-like uh they uh some devs just just rewriting uh Uniswap uh from Solidity to uh to Rust. So uh since it's very simple as the at the beginning uh there is not so much uh so many projects in Solana in that time uh just some uh boring DeFi protocols like DEX uh some lending protocols uh but things uh have been completely changed when uh PumpFun uh came up. Yeah. Um uh I think in uh back to 2021, in that time uh 2022 uh in that time uh there is not uh so so so many tokens in Solana um but uh but but now uh we can see thousands of tokens uh launched every day every day. Just just as we uh we talking right now, maybe some token uh was launched by someone. Yeah, that's I think that's um that's a big change. Yeah. Um and uh and becomes a game changer and the uh industry leader uh instead of just a copying uh Ethereum. Yeah, I think that's a Yeah, thank you. But I think like there uh because yeah I know like PumpFun literally like changes the way how assets were like issued or tokens were launched. Uh I think uh one of the reasons why PumpFun is here is because Solana already has a very like a solid infrastructure regarding the network itself and also for example we also have products like Raydium providing the liquidity and the but also we have the Jupiter providing a super smooth uh trading experience for the users. And I think that's a fundamental why the like a game shift is happening on Solana. So maybe everything starts from the boring side but there will be a yeah big change.

Um what about you Nobit, do you have some uh sharing about this? Yeah, I think like the biggest thing you guys already mentioned, but essential like with Solana, with account abstraction being a big thing. Um what's been the biggest onboarding user experience has been again like the easier for the user to actually get on-chain, essentially start using applications, the more likely they're going to stick around. I think what have we seen like the past couple of months is meme tokens or memecoins being a really easy onboarding tool, but after that the value definitely is on-chain already like within Solana, so like it's easy onboarding experience but there's definitely much more within DeFi that could be achieved. And I think with how I feel like most of the people have like almost like a goldfish memory now through TikTok and essentially if you're unable to provide that fast transaction without having an instant um essential result from your action, you're just going to move on. You're going to find something else that you are that you're used to. Like people are not willing to stick around for something longer. So I think that's why that's also like a huge huge thing with when it comes down to speed. If it's not instant, um people move on and I think you do have to adapt and with that like I feel like that's why Solana has been doing that in the best possible way. Yeah. Thank you so much.

As we already talked about memecoins and we said like, you yeah, memecoins are something we cannot avoid and they suckle like everyone trades memecoins still, right? And uh we I do see a lot of competitor PumpFun comes up like really recently like Raydium have their own like uh memecoin launchpad and also we also have Bunkam also launched their own uh memecoin launchpad as well. So the question is like how do you guys think about the memecoin launchpad like a competition landscape right now and uh what we can envision in the future? Uh also like how we can uh like memecoins are one of the ways to onboard the new users but what else we can do to uh keep them in the ecosystem and uh help them to involve in other DeFi protocols as well. So the question also maybe Suki, do you want to get start first? Yeah. Uh uh as for the meme launchpad, I I I I just want to say uh we need to compare with NFT marketplace in Solana in in the last cycle. Um because I think uh those two are very uh similar and also very different. Um so there is a fact that uh most of the um I I I mean the majority of the users of uh memecoins come from uh NFT traders and uh the uh and the uh game players like GMX uh Buax and other platforms like uh even Pump.com, they come from uh NFT product teams, that that's very uh amazing, right? Um uh I I think compared to uh NFT uh I I think memecoins are um is more like um a TikTok moment uh of uh uh on crypto culture. uh like we we trade we don't trade uh some uh artists uh we don't trade art but we trade the news, the the uh for example the Trump uh Trump uh just um post a trade or we we we will buy it uh immediately. Um so um I I think um um in in this cycle we we don't need artists to uh produce uh assets uh it just comes organically from everyday news, TikTok, just like TikTok, we uh we post we create and uh it's very na uh it's very uh natural and very organic and with Reddit it is uh I think this game will uh last um longer than NFT and uh it's definitely um a huge innovation uh in this era. Yes. Yeah. Thank you. So like basically like everything can be tokenized. Yeah.

What about you Mark? Do you have some insights regarding the competition? Well, I I just think um it's testament to the vibrancy of Solana. The fact that you know, Pump PumpFun came, did has done really well, has been criticized in various ways. New entrants come along. They've got traction. So yeah, I think it goes to show there's a hunger to innovate. There's a hunger to iterate. Um there's an opportunity for builders, for innovators, and um yeah, what what that landscape looks like at least right now, you know, in one moment, it changes again in 6 months. So um yeah, that's that's cool. It keeps it keeps everyone on on their toes. I mean, we uh we've managed to grow uh for example to one of the largest DeFi protocols, but you have to keep that hunger. You have to keep shipping because um if you don't you look over your shoulder and suddenly someone else is is whizzing by with a with a new product. So um yeah, to to builders I would say, not just for the the memecoin competition but everywhere uh keep shipping. Yeah, I think actually competition is quite good because it can keep their uh ecosystem to be one thing like active, then we also got some new good products and it's all a good thing for their end users so they can always find some like a better user experience. Uh what about you Nobit? Do you have some insights regarding this question? Yeah, I think like pretty much like well summarized where the biggest winner is always going to be the user from it. I think with better or more competition it is. And you know, when it's not zero-sum, I think that's the most important thing where not one product or one project is going to rule it all. There's always some small iteration that's going to make it better. And that's why the user itself is going to decide whichever they think is better. But again it's going to keep you on top of your toes to keep on innovating, keep on trying to make the user experience better and better where again similarly with like chain abstraction, account abstraction, we're falling back to the same kind of Web2 user experience where we are used to, we are done that for many many years, even decades. So I think um meme tokens once again, like whatever project it comes through with it helps with the distribution or at least get get people people on board but then you know the real product is actually going to keep them within the echo. Yeah, thank you so much.

And yeah, I think for this echo, so one thing is about the memecoin is about the attention but what's more important is for DeFi is also about the liquidity and this way to say more like traffic gets into crypto space and we are everyone's like trying to get more money or liquidity from the institution. So the question is like how does the Solana DeFi ecosystem work with the traditional institutions today and uh what can we do to attract more liquidity from the traditional finance? Uh so yeah, first question also to uh Mark because you guys have been working on this a lot. I know. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Definitely spending a lot more time on that than the memecoins at the moment. Uh so yeah, exactly. You may you maybe saw in the in the media yesterday uh Camino announced a sort of a collaboration with uh Securitize Assets and bringing on especially the Apollo Credit Fund into Camino and that's that's really the the area that we're playing right now and what you could say is Solana DeFi and on-chain finance growing from only being crypto-native assets through to a broad range. So I really think um now we see like big FOMO like big energy from TradFi like bringing bringing their tokens on-chain, their assets on-chain and um that's a focus for for us and should be for a lot of uh DeFi, which is bringing in interesting tokens. We're trying to do that especially from the credit perspective. These are amazing collateral assets, right? So, credit funds earning 10% a year, other types of tokenized funds, tokenized stocks, tokenized ETFs, and these are assets that uh people want to hold. And actually, institutions are looking for utility. They're looking for extra u distribution of course of their of their assets like Apollo which is huge in um uh in the fund space, especially credit funds, but if we're able to marry together the tokenized versions of of these assets with DeFi utility, for example credit lines against against them, then that's where we see I think this growth from Solana DeFi being 10 billion through to 20 billion uh and beyond. So spending a lot of energy there right now uh working with different types of institutions and there's a bunch of challenges to overcome uh such as who can hold them, who can trade them, how do we think about uh designing the tokens, designing the DeFi protocols to to accommodate them uh lots more regulatory concerns but uh yeah super exciting to to be involved there now. Yeah, I think that's also like a pretty cool way we do say this. Yeah, like at the accelerator it's like a super new because the first time Solana hosted a uh like big event in the US and also I think it's probably one of the first times uh we saw a lot of regulators and we saw a lot of institutions really join the conference. So if you are going to the Ship or Die event tomorrow then you will also hear a lot like good news from this side as well. So thank you Mark and thanks for their contribution to help the institution really get on board to Solana.

Um what what about you Nobit? Uh maybe from the DeFi perspective. Yeah. Yeah. I think pretty much like what we've seen in 2024, like much more clarity from the regulatory aspect from the US that definitely kind of spreads across the globe as well. So it definitely makes it easier to innovate things and I think from yesterday or a couple days ago where um the Genius Act like has passed, I think much more clarity is going to come at the end of the day that again benefits the end user because I think if you have kind of some sort of rules or where we can actually kind of move in between it will make um actually onboarding more users, which naturally going to bring in more liquidity I think both from the retail aspect and from the institutional aspect, they do want pretty much the clarity. Um I think institutions since they're playing with much bigger um or deeper pockets, they do have to make sure that at the end of the day everything is secure, like there's no and I think when it comes down to both BTC and Solana as well, when smart contracts get involved, I think the security is the number one priority that that everyone needs to take take control over. So I think that's one of them. But I think starting with the foundation which is in my opinion is Payi um on top of that how the yield um can be contributed, how it could be distributed back to the user and also back to the institutions because they're not looking for 50% yield. They just trying to make sure that they get a little bit more on top of what the inflation actually does year-over-year. So yep, that's just kind of my aspect from also BTC. Um but again I think we're on the right path that just keeps on growing and heading to the right direction. So we'll be exciting to see what's coming next. Yeah, I think the growth matters like you're either from the tradition of liquidity or from the DeFi to Solana is all about like um expanding the boundaries. So uh very last question is like uh how do you guys think about the biggest challenge for Solana-based DeFi protocols these days and uh uh what will be the next big opportunity for them uh in the future. So the first question to uh Suki um for the biggest uh challenge for uh Solana, I think uh I think the problem is also the uh scalability because uh you know that's why we need SVM, where we need Solanair um so for me trading, so for me trading uh the speed is the the zero uh latency is very important to every trader so I I think uh we are all um seeking a better user experience, the high-speed um uh infrastructure uh and uh we need uh uh uh like um uh some um new block uh new chain like Solanair, some new solution to help us uh to uh uh have a more professional uh experience, a trading experience. So uh I I I think the biggest challenge challenge is also for scalability. So uh I think Solana is is um um is going to be uh solving this problem. Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much. What about you Mark? Yeah. So challenges, I I mean I think at the moment the world's our oyster but um a big challenge is still the adoption at scale of public blockchains. Um so lots to overcome there with lots of side challenges of of regulatory clarity and so on. But that ties in with with the major one. And then in terms of opportunities, like I said, the the world's our oyster right now and a thriving world of Solana, SVM broadly is really good. So we're seeing the opportunity for Bitcoin assets to come at scale. There's so many very interesting uh Bitcoin on Solana, which is in essence like an RWA. So we've seen Coinbase Bitcoin do really well. We've got um OKX Bitcoin and uh Zeus Bitcoin's been uh coming to Solana recently together with multiple other ones. So, we've got this era of very interesting assets with the Bitcoins, with the stablecoins, with the tokenized securities and RWAs. And I think that and the fallout from it just results in a huge amount of more economic activity on on-chain and uh a thriving world. So it the opportunity for builders is huge right now. So build cool products, think about what's coming in the future, think about um not just retail but institutional needs and yeah there's a a massive opportunity. Thank you. And about you, do you have some insight regarding this? I think like Mark said it like summarized it perfectly. Um, I feel like for what could happen, I feel like we never really know what to predict. What would be one of the kind of, you know, downfalls or negatives, but there's a ton of opportunities within the ecosystem like with more builders, more devs actually getting on-boarded, more cool stuff being built. And again, the competition is healthy. It's it's good for the ecosystem. It's a natural kind of cycle where more players enter and forcing you to have a better product so the end users will be happy at the end. I think as many different ways I feel like from a BTC aspect at least like more retail users have been aware of it, which definitely helps I feel like the adoption of things but again if we can do get to get institutions more on board, be on the same page about what can be achieved in Solana and what other ecosystems have to offer will just only help for a continuous growth for for DeFi as a whole. Yeah, thank you so much. So yeah, a conclusion. So the next generation of Solana DeFi like a better scalability and um more liquidity and better user experience. So thank you guys for sharing. Uh that's all for the panel today. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you.

The next panel is Security in Focus: Real-Time Defense. How the pros secure Web3, moderated by Sebastian from Everlapse with speakers from Sattora, Fuzzland, Immunifi, and Asymmetric Research. In my brain. Well, hello everyone. Thanks a lot for joining this panel. Uh, I'm here with four legends of Web3 security today and I'm super excited. So uh my name is Sebastian. I'm the CEO and co-founder of Adavar Labs. We're a boutique uh Solana audit shop that manages, you know, to do internal QA with collaboration of independent researchers and um I'm going to hand it off to our first amazing panelist. Mully, you want to introduce yourself? Yes, thank you. I'm excited to be here. I'm Misag. I'm co-founder of DeFi Security Summit, which is an education in security and also Sattora, which is a security firm providing security services including auditing, formal verification, incident and response uh Web2 consulting and also formal verification and also we have a tool for formal verification. Excited to be here, super exciting. Please go ahead. Okay, my name is Chiaan. I'm CTO of Fuzzland. Uh we mainly do real-time security by just monitoring all smart contracts on the chain and identifying attacks and vulnerabilities ahead of the attack. Uh Mike O'Keefe, I head up uh sales and customer success for Immunifi. We're known for our flagship bug bounty programs and audit competitions. Also do audits uh for all chains including Solana and have an end-to-end uh security platform um for folks both Web2 and Web3 services within there. Hi everyone, my name is Jonathan Claudius. I'm co-founder and CEO of Asymmetric Research. Uh we focus on uh holistic security program development for Layer 1's and DeFi. Um we also run a rather large infrastructure business where we run validators and and other exotic Web3 infrastructure. Thank you. Awesome. Thanks guys. So let's move on to our first topic. Um it's on-chain versus off-chain security. Um just a few weeks ago there was this zero-day patched on Solana, right? A true, you know, like a work of art. Um and a few months before at the end of last year we had this supply chain attack on Web3js that basically gave attackers access to you know, like keys and systems of developers. So how should teams split their efforts between you know, securing on-chain and off-chain stuff, like how how should they manage all of that? You know, many many people are focusing on purely on-chain but seems like there's a bunch of uh dangers lurking off-chain as well. Yes, should I start? Yes, please. So you're absolutely right. I think that what we are seeing in the last two years is that

Uh, the focus has been shifted initially; most of the work was on chain, and I think now the situation is unclear. There are three reasons. First of all, it seems like we are doing a good job in protecting the on-chain code with auditing, formal methods, and many things. The second thing is that we see that the off-chain code is getting way more complex. So things are tricky, and also we have to see the attackers are getting more sophisticated. If you look into the baby bit attack, this is an attack that we haven't seen before. So the attackers—so now if you ask people, and this is what we see in SAT and many others—many are spending an equal amount of effort in the off-chain as in the chain.

Okay. Please go ahead.

Yeah, so uh, this is true, and uh, we see a lot of projects only invest in web3 security; they only audit their smart contracts; they don't audit their infra. But uh, indeed, they should put more funds into their web2 infrastructure, their off-chain infrastructure. There are a lot of cases recently that got hacked, not just due to private key leaks, like the bZx case, but also other cases like the Multichain blues front-run compromise, like having a vulnerability that is allowing everyone to front-run their transactions and then claim the free money. And there are a lot more other cases where there are issues in the backend; there are issues in the frontend that are causing others to lose money. And uh, recently, the amount of hacks that are due to the frontend or backend issues actually spiked.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, um, piggybacking off of obviously what the other panelists had said up here, one of the things, you know, I believe in personally, is just an ethos of security and vigilance within the personnel at your company. Like it should start there, right, regardless if you're two people or 200 people. That's one of the things that's the most important to cover those gaps. The other thing that I've noticed is, is I almost think of it like, um, in terms of medical care. So, it's a lot harder to go in with a problem and then go visit a bunch of specialists. And I feel like we see a lot of siloed care between the web2, the infra, and the on-chain items, uh, in terms of smart contracts, etc. And what you really should be trying to do when you're approaching security is look for a collaborative medicine approach, right? Um, Mully is up here; Jonathan's up here; um, we're up here. And a lot of us have a lot of expertise across all of these verticals, not just with your smart contracts, not just with your infrastructure. And I think a lot of folks that are taking these two things as separate topics should really make sure that they're devoting the calories and time, ideally as early as possible, to have some sort of security roadmap in able to do that and treat these things as more of a collaborative medicine approach rather than a very distinct, treat the symptoms on one side or the other.

Yeah, I would I would agree with the other panelists, especially Mu's point around us getting better at securing on-chain, right? We're getting we we're starting to understand what's needed; the talent is starting to enter the space where we have more folks that know how to do the on-chain work. And I think a lot of folks don't realize that for a lot of these teams, a lot of crypto teams, they operate as a startup. So their operational security is just not nearly as mature as what I think a lot of attackers are experiencing in terms of attacking web2 targets. Um, so when you have a sophisticated adversary that's used to working against hardened operational security programs for larger organizations, that we look at new organizations where these are people going to an Apple store and picking up a MacBook, um, and then just making that their operational build, they're just not prepared to deal with the adversaries that are out there and the motivations behind them. And in the traditional sense on web2, like if you pop someone's laptop and there's like an attack that's successful, that usually leads to some sort of longer tail thing in web2, and it's harder to monetize. But in web3, we find this resulting in like control of a multi-sig. We had the Safe exploit earlier this year. So, um, 100%.

Awesome. Well, thank thank you very much for those comprehensive answers. The second topic uh for today has, you know, a relationship with the title of the panel, which is real-time defense. So that basically takes me to this question for everyone in the room who's a developer: Imagine, you know, you've launched, you're in production, and a live exploit happens. What do you do? How do you react on Solana? What's your incident response plan? You know what? Does anyone have in the room? Does anyone have like a clear incident response plan, or should we ask these guys? Let's do it. Let's start with Michael this time.

All right. Um, yeah, I think the advice we typically give people, it's almost like, you know, if I were to jump out from behind a column and say like, you know, something's happened on chain, like what's your first move? If you don't know it instinctively, uh, that's already a good signal that the plan isn't strong enough, even if you have one. Um, I think the other item is knowing exactly what that plan is, listing it out and gaming it out, right? Just like a large Fortune 500 company will do disaster recovery. Um, we should be running these types of things throughout on a regular cadence, whether it be quarterly, what have you. The other thing is to make sure that you have the required personnel within your walls, and frankly, I would actually encourage you all in the systems we're working in, which are many are open source or mostly open source, is to reach outside your walls for those things. There are programs we run like Safe Harbor. Um, there's incident response groups with security experts that you can you can engage, right? So we obviously are living in the web3 world that is mainly decentralized, and you can decentralize some of your incident response as well. So I'm sure some of the other advice I could give these folks will will chime in with some some great ones. Jonathan, you want to go next?

Yeah, I mean, we work on a number of these incident response cases where folks are losing hundreds of millions of dollars in a single clip. And um, I think Mike hit the nail on the head with one key thing that a lot of folks miss with incident response is that you start out with a plan. It starts out at the planning phase and being prepared in advance, not having to respond when you um when you've had an attack. And one of the most valuable things that we can do, at least as we're building comprehensive security programs, is building with a defense-in-depth type attitude. So when you have your incident response that happens, you're not completely wiped out in a single go. So things like rate limiting, other controls that are inside your protocol can really start to stem some of the damage or at least slow it down so that you have time to react.

So you want—

Yeah, I definitely agree with Jonathan. So, uh, basically, you need to have a plan that is already there, and uh, you need to get prepared about upcoming attacks that are going to be targeting your project. So there are all kinds of companies out there that are doing security alerting, security defense; uh, they will tell you that there are some signs of potential attacks on your program, and uh, and basically, you you should subscribe to those kinds of alerts and uh get a heads-up on potential vectors that could hack your smart contract or hack your project. And there are others that could do like front-running, that could do real-time exploits, reversion by doing fuzzing, formal verification of the exploit and figuring out what it does, and all kinds of services are available, and uh, and the project should subscribe to—

Yes, I agree with everybody here. I think ownership in incident response is very, very important, and there are companies—I guess you and us and many—we provide incident response for our clients, and that's very valuable. And what you want to do, even before you launch, you want to understand what we'll do when this happens and who are the people who can help you, and this help can mean many things, including understanding the problem, understanding the impact. Maybe this is something which is not directly related to incident response, but after the attack happened, postmortem is equally important, and sharing information is really, really tricky. We see that some of the bugs repeat themselves. So sharing the information, of course, the incident response, but doing a postmortem and sharing information is is very, very important. Even with the big beat attack, we see that actually there were things similar before. So sharing information so people are aware.

Awesome. Thank you. Uh, the final topic for this panel is something that is being discussed very lively nowadays on Crypto Twitter or X. Um, and it's about audit competitions versus private audits. It's pretty polarizing, I would say. Uh, you know, audit competitions are fast, decentralized, and they pay for findings, right? They don't pay for the time of the people. On the other hand, private audits, they they they go deeper, they're more controlled, and you know, the the result is that you need to pay for the time of the auditors even if they don't find anything. So, in, you know, what what do you guys think about, you know, the the are they complementing each other? Are they in competition? You know, if you just look at Crypto Twitter, they seem to be in competition, but if you think about it, you know, they make sense to do one after the other. Jonathan, you want to start?

Sure. Um, well, first of all, private audits and contests definitely compete with each other in the marketplace. Um, they definitely compete for time and and mind share from projects looking to remove bugs from their project. Um, I don't necessarily think that they have to necessarily be competitive, either/or. I I don't think that I don't think one replaces the other. I I fundamentally believe that these are layers within the program, right? So um, for me personally, I like to—when we were when we advise clients through the guiding them through the process of building out layers, working their way towards mainnet—we generally try to prefer the private audits before the contest platforms. Um, I, you know, my my general philosophy is we start kind of in the in the inner circle and we sort of work our way out towards some of these outer layers, um, using things like bug bounty programs, um, when we get to this sort of late stage, um, and we really need to widen the net um of potential people that can contribute to finding bugs.

Got it. Michael, you want to?

Yeah, happy to. Um, so here at Immunifi, we're we're in a unique position to have all of the data by orders of magnitude greater than any other competitor. So I can tell you from a data perspective, these things are not at odds; uh, they're a—the best return on investment, and obviously, we can have discussions specific to projects or what you're in development on and how you might lay that out, and that's typically what we do with our customers, but generally the best return on investment you can get from a security perspective when we're talking about these two specific things, uh, is to do one high-quality audit followed by an audit competition, um, and we do have specific anonymized data to back that up because we catch the things that are on mainnet through our bug bounty program. So by having by orders of 10 to 15x more data than other folks, I can objectively prove that to you, essentially, that that is that is the right formula in many cases. I won't say all cases, but many cases.

I think it's a bit tricky. I I don't want to be here. I mean, uh, if you asked me a year ago, I think I would agree with everybody here; uh, things are changing a bit. Used to be, first of all, the case that auditing was very expensive. Uh, and audit prices have—they are individual auditors. Now there are a lot of good providers in this space. I think community is still very useful, uh, but you have to take it with some grain of salt. We are seeing—because we are at the other side—we are getting uh reports from Immunifi, from others, and we are getting also very good data, but sometimes—and again, I don't dispute what Mike is saying—AI is making things tricky in the sense that AI allows people to submit things which are not real, uh, and and we are seeing it, I guess, in Immunifi and Pentera; all others are seeing it and looking into it. So I would recommend to people, first of all, get somebody that knows your code; that's very useful, whether it's a private company, get somebody—I don't want to know—and tell you, get one, get two, get three, get enough. If you are Uniswap, you can get five, but I don't know if all the others—you get people that know your code, and then depending on what you're building, I think getting a community, especially if it's something very unique that you are building, is useful, and we get the community to review our rules or or to provide new rules is great. But I think a year ago it was the case that we can see top auditing firms finishing an audit, and after that, people are finding easy bugs. It's not the case anymore. That's my feeling, and feel free to contradict me.

No, I mean, certainly the audit space has gotten—I know we're not supposed to cross-talk, but—I know the audit space has gotten many more players, a lot more talent, and a lot of the community folks have actually gotten into the auditing space itself, right? So—um, I don't necessarily disagree with you; I also wouldn't say to stop at one audit; I'm saying that if you were to sequence something, one high-quality audit with multiple auditors perhaps, uh, followed by a competition, and then there's there's additional things you can audit as well, Joan.

Yeah.

Yeah, definitely. So, if you have the budget, then find as much auditing company as you can to do the audit. Uh, and basically for the auditing competition, there are a bunch of security researchers looking at your code. But those good security researchers, there are not not a lot of them. Although those competition platforms brand themselves saying that they have hundreds or thousands of auditors on their platform, but actually the good security researchers, there are only like 10 or 20, and sometimes they got conflicts, sometimes they got all kinds of other things, and uh, yeah, so basically, if you can get a like a private audit, then it's definitely worth it, and uh, after that, and you see that there are enough budget, then also do an auditing competition, and uh—

And like for auditors, um, they they can find some of the vulnerabilities, but they could not guarantee that they could find all the vulnerabilities. So it's definitely worth it to hire multiple auditing companies or do multiple rounds of competitions as well.

Yeah, there you have it, folks. So multiple audits, private audits followed by competitions. I think everyone here agreed. So myth busted. I thought it was the other way around. Okay, final thing. Uh, in one sentence, this is going to be hard. One sentence, what's your real-time security advice? Let's start with MI.

Shift left. Start early.

Toan, stop vibe coding.

What did he say? Stop vibe coding.

Um, the uh—

Yeah. Uh, can't start early enough planning this out.

Okay. Yeah, I'll take I'll take a slightly different approach. I I definitely agree with those folks about starting early, but I would say own your own security program. So take control over your own threat model and use that ownership of the threat model to engage some of the lovely security firms here on the on the panel, because I I feel like once you understand your program well, you understand your threat model, you can play the best possible hand.

Awesome. That's a great closing. So with that, let's give a hand—a round of applause to our amazing panelists and hope you enjoy the rest of the SBM Summit. Thank you. Thank you guys. We will take a 10-minute break. Uh, we can go get some refreshments, coffee, and we'll come back in 10 minutes. Thank you guys. Hello guys, our AI panel is starting. Please can come in. If not, maybe I was like using this—Uh, yes. Yes, I'm doing that. Okay guys, we're going to have our next panel about AI: Your future teammates are AI. How AI will change work, play, and social life. Moderated by Ben from Fortune magazine with founders from Outverse, Renaabs, Kite AI, and more. You can come up. Uh oh. Hi. Yeah, I was like you. Are we Are we all set? Is everyone here? I don't know. Is there—are we missing anybody? Okay. Okay. Let's uh let's get let's get introduced. Uh, hey everyone, my name is Ben. Uh, I'm a reporter at Fortune. Uh, I cover crypto mainly, but I do write about AI once in a while. Um, yeah, why don't we just kind of go down, start from the end, uh, and why don't you just introduce yourself and, you know, talk through who you are.

Yeah, hello guys, I'm Kelson. I'm the founder of AMovers. So we are basically decentralized artificial intelligence of things, which is like AI of IoT, and what we do is we build an edge-set agent framework that can run agents in local devices—for example, your computer, your phone, your smartwatch, or even low-level embedded devices—and we connect it to the agents to the AI, and also connect it to the blockchain to make it a deep ping; that's what we do.

Yes.

Hi everyone, I'm Conan from Renaabs. Uh, so Renard is building the TE-based private data marketplace, unlocking high-value private data liquidity across um data providers and motor providers.

Uh, hello, my name is Lawrence. I'm currently the head of ecosystem at Reborn, and we're building an end-to-end sort of um protocol right now for the robotic space, going all the way from data collection to building your own simulation environment to also then building our own foundation models for robots.

Hi guys, I'm Chi. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Kite AI. So we're purpose-built layer one for being the transaction layer of the future agenic internet, and uh, what that means is uh, you know, with the future of the internet that's running by billions of agents, uh, you do want them to be able to collaborate and transact autonomously with with each other and also like the digital services that they are accessing, like a data model or like a digital website; in that case, how would you be able to enable them with verifiable identity attribution and also like a payment rail—that is is what we are focused on.

Cool. Uh, well, hello everybody. It's the first time I think we've all met in person uh after being in a Telegram group. Um, I I think like one way I want to kind of get started uh is you guys are all doing some sort of like crypto decentralized AI type of thing. Um, and I think, you know, from a reporter standpoint and from somebody who's looking at this, it seems like it's a lot of like combining one super hyped thing from 2021 with another hyped thing from 2022 and 2023. And, you know, there's been a lot of people that have been doing this. I'm curious like—I mean, are you finding that your users—I guess you're all pretty new—but like, are you finding that your users are actually interested in this?

Me?

Yeah. I mean, anyone can go into it. Let's keep it, you know, wide open.

Yeah. I think for our project, it's pretty early stage, so we haven't had any extra users, but we—what we do is we just basically right now we are business-oriented. For example, CU is the biggest consumer DP on Solana, and they are they they are like building like a smart ring for health data, and we help them to make their ring more like agent-native and more and and we also developed a technique for them to like for their next-generation rings to like transfer crypto by just tapping the ring with other devices. Uh, we think that's a pretty cool thing.

Yeah. Uh, okay. So, do you—it seems like you have at least one project that you're working on? Um, what about everyone else? I mean, taking on kind of the the two hypes into one mega-hype question.

Uh, yeah, actually, I can speak on this a little bit, like how essentially—actually, the robotics customers right now that we're working with actually were like really interested actually to see sort of like how we are sort of—

Like using or leveraging, essentially, crypto or like leveraging essentially blockchain to help sort of provide a more diversified data set, essentially, for the different customers we have where it's like, hey, we kind of like want, you know, different sort of like data sets or different sort of like inputs essentially from people that are like in different environments, different contexts, essentially, like different sort of like heights and sort of like all around the world.

Um, and like the only way to really do that, like especially in robotics right now, it's like an incredibly centralized approach where it's like you have people in like in factories wearing like motion capture suits basically doing sort of like, you know, specific sort of like tasks like kind of repetitively. Um, but they're not like capturing sort of like the real world. Like you need a way to essentially get people sort of to be able to do stuff and contribute this like regardless of where they are.

Um, and like actually have them in like their own like home environments essentially doing it. Um, but they need to be rewarded to do so. Like you're not going to be able to incentivize or get these people to do so for free, essentially. And that's where it's like the data ownership side, the data providence side that crypto provides kind of made it like essentially this really interesting sort of catalyst to basically help them sort of like get this data in the first place, but then also help essentially these users monetize this data essentially as well.

Um, so that's been like a pretty interesting sort of like I guess like viewpoint from some of our customers. You want to go?

Yeah, sure. So uh yeah, we definitely see a lot of like the not only like the uh customers but uh more like even from enterprise and institutions got interested right now on uh collaborating. So uh basically uh it can come from like the the supply and demand side. So uh I think um uh sorry, what's your name again?

Lawrence.

Yeah, Lawrence was talking about like the robotics data and data, you know, like a data uh provenance and governance for getting like more uh available robotics data for people to use and trend uh which definitely like has been what we've seen a lot on the demand on the supply side on how to find like the high-quality data to to to use. But uh goes back to what we are working on right now is u basically as a transaction layer for agenic internet. What we really want to enable is like for agents in the future to uh when they are using or like uh accessing and uh transacting with uh the each other agents who are like the supply like the data like the the the you know like models, how would you be able to have like the uh trust in the process and then how would with a verified trust how would you make payments? So that's why actually one of the use cases we're now working with uh uh PayPal uh which also one of our co-led uh investors for the last round is actually the agenic payment side uh and also like the genic identity. So what does that mean is uh uh uh one thing if we think about in the future agent will be able to do a lot of like those uh uh real you know like a micro fraction fragmented transactions with each other in real time. uh that's require like a new type of payment re to be able to make those transaction and payment happen. Uh that's without some of the uh the ex without the downside of the existing payment re like the the using like a visa network or AC will be very slow will be you know like a very high fee for each transaction. So this is where like stable coin become like a really good solutions for making those type of micro real-time payments uh between a agents.

Um, and we have another guest um that has joined us on the paddle. Do you want to introduce yourself?

So I'm Semi, I'm just filling here for Yash. Um I'm from Sandy. So yeah, I'm here. What do you think uh crypto AI? Is it just combining two things that are popular into one thing that's I guess even more popular?

So I don't um like uh as a kind of a tech guy um I more don't look at um crypto as like um go with the buzzwords and things like that. What I see is like you give uh an AI um an agent a wallet of its own. So in day-to-day life like how we enable payments like for me um going consumer going where actual AI is used um is much more important than um like just um using it to popularize it. Giving your AI agent a wallet and like enabling it like okay yeah um a number of um transactions of course everything is um like in uh financial is involved in everything in any way so that is the like main thing I feel so it's more like I guess seeing how it can use payments or like use crypto to kind of docky things payments um it's like um different aspects of uh folks like for traders it's like you give it a you you get give them more hands like more um ways to experiment you can um give an AI $100 wallet and like it's more risk for the traders too and it's more risk for every when you give when you're giving AI more room for experiment like more room for okay so uh he can only transact so much he can only trade so much on his own he can um set bots but again like He can do so much on his own. But with an agent, it like um expand its capabilities, expands its limits. He can have two, three, four, five um as soon as like agents to you know experiment with how payments work, how payments happen and again help with daily life things. Okay, maybe I buy it.

Um I don't know. I'm getting a G and yeah just to add one thing that's why smart contract can be very useful because it's programmability can really add like more programmable logics for govern like how the agent should behave and align the intent with humans. Do you guys I mean part of this panel is about you know how are AI's you know AI agents AI changing work play and social life like do you do you want to jump in?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. actually cuz like you were mentioning about the uh like for example in the treating scenario that you're delegate you're treating task to an agent it's probably risky especially uh a lot of existing solutions like we see on Salama treating bots when you create a bots it give you a like a wallet address with a private key meaning that there's a centralized party access to a private key and you're going to deposit your asset into a address that is controlled by others and how we going to solve that like is it's like a trust problem and uh and we do see some like uh uh some like past incident had happened like Dex X um and what we uh were trying to push forward is a more trustless offchain solution together with onchain transparency um the the tech technology that we're using is trust exe environments uh where the uh this either you can have like agent autonomously create a smart contract or uh you can have your like uh uh wallets deployed in a this enclave confidential environment And you can have your credential like private key or login password exchanged there. And all those actions are verifiable on chain.

Yeah. And I see Lawrence nodding. I don't know. Do you have anything to add or I mean I one question is also maybe just taking it a different way because it seems like a fun question. Um AI is changing your social life. Does that mean you guys have just gotten lonier because you're just having AI socialize with each other or no?

Lawrence is like yes.

Uh, I mean probably not the case for at least like myself. I just think it just helps like in general just make things just more productive. So I guess like conversations maybe that you know maybe need to be done over like you know video calls now essentially can just be done like over text and like a lot of that sort of like back and forth can sort of some be like automated away with like AI now um in general but yeah that's kind of like my thoughts about that specifically.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think uh so because we are trying to build like a AI companion application on top of all the tech we are providing. So we think right now or maybe in the future agents cannot like represent you like the fully but it can social for you. It cannot social for you but it can be used as a medium for people to connect with each other. For example, if if I don't know you do you what's what's the name of your uh person? Do you have an AI friend?

Uh no I said it can it can be used as a medium for people to connect. For example, if I don't know you, you don't know me. But we have we we have a we have AI agent on our own and you you agent knows you my agent knows me. It can socialize for us first and then uh find some interesting topics and then we can connect.

Could be a dating app, right? You just have your AIS just talk to each other.

Tinder agent.

Tinder agents. Sounds like an episode of Black Mirror, but okay. Well, that's you know that's that's what Frontier Tech is, right? You know, everyone's just doing things on the on the edges.

Um, so another question kind of going off the I think maybe let's stay with payments, you know, uh, the social thing just kind of seemed fun. Um but uh I think there I mean kind of what um you were speaking about in terms of uh like the risk or what we were kind of getting to that with the risk on this and I think it kind of touches what everyone's doing because you know there's risk in for example with Lawrence where you know if people are putting their data on on chain and something like and that gets kind of misused by AI or gets leaked I mean there there's risk in having AI attached with a wallet. I does anyone want to kind of talk about like how you guys are thinking through that and thinking through especially once the sums of money becomes much become much larger and the sums of data become larger.

Um I guess um something uh which uh like yesterday Solana mobile announced uh no I guess today uh the um TE pin um so a trustable execution environment uh that's I think which is going towards like solving that. So um again like the as the risk goes um having your own isolated um like front on the AI because um on the side of crypto um everything is onchain everything is out there of course it's um like uh I mean it's encrypted but again um so having uh an isolated environment where your um agent interacts or where your agent keeps your data which is the missing piece um uh like in you know uh getting the giving the risk um like minimizing the risk with what the AI does that is what I think um would be the solution for that so like a I don't know just like a play environment or like a or like a protected environment more yeah it's more abstracted so it's like um um your uh AI like the most of the data it stores in a more of an isolated environment and the interaction it does is um only the data which is needed it um takes on that isolated environment in in like different ways like um yeah so uh I would I would think like just exposing all of your data is not the thing like the way to go it's more of like having an isolated environment first and then proceeding anyone want to weigh on this risk with AI and payments g you want to go for it yeah so uh by the way that's what why to us we consider having for each of the agent to have their own identity such an important thing because uh when you are using when you are using the agent or when the agent is doing their work uh it's will serve a good by start accumulating like their transaction behavior history around this agent if you have like a identity just like human has an identity SSN then you start accumulating a credit score and all those like behaviors around it uh in some way that will not do the thing that you mentioned like oh preventing the agent to be able to access the data unless again you do some like smart contracts to guard the thing but once you start having like data I come from data background we do things in a very datadriven way then once you have the data there's tons of t count tons of things you can do for example if the agent start having like those good most of the good behavior then you can use those historical data just like how you use experion for like the house loan and all the stuff then you can use those data to prove that hey I'm an agent that's doing good stuff so please allow me to for example like access your website access your tool and even like do autonomous account creation and all the stuff but anyways yeah that's is one way we think can help mitigate the risk by start tracking those behaviors around agents.

Gotcha. So just like through more data you can get more info about whether these guys are doing the right thing or the wrong thing.

Exactly. Guess it's like humans in a certain way.

Um cool. I mean like I think the other what do you think is going to be the breakout application with crypto and AI? Like what do you think is going to be the thing that people are going to be like, "Oh, this is the intersection." That worked.

Um maybe a mobile MCP client.

A mobile client.

Oh, yeah. A mobile MCP client would be like most close to having um like uh if you've uh been involved with the drama going around MCPs, MCP servers um like uh uh OpenI also launched their own MCP today. So like having them in your phones I think would be a big breakout because again um they target specific use cases and like um being able to do that natively is what my catches you want to jump in.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think there's two angle to look at this problem. One is like crypto for AI and another is AI for crypto. So if is so if like it's like AI for crypto it's about enhancing the user experience of current current AI current crypto applications and and I feel like that has kind of already been talked about where people make these like skins of chat GBT to kind of like help you code and solidity you code in Rust or stuff like that but I think the more maybe far-fetched idea would be crypto for AI and I don't I don't know if you have any uh crypto for AI yeah crypto for AI like I mean like kind of decentralized computing is one you

Yeah.

Yeah. Definitely like crypto for AI is like like as uh like crypto is decentralized. AI is is centralized. So there's definitely like a cross point for me for to meet like decentralized computing decentralized inference or as like trust trusted execution environment etc. And there's a lot of things going on.

Gotcha. I mean uh anyone else kind of weigh want to weigh in? Do you want to weigh in on the breakout application that happen?

I think uh one like obviously the universal abstraction like treating AI as a universal abstraction layer for uh cryp like for crypto is one perspective one one other perspective we see uh was uh on the the compliance side so um be a censorship resistant using blockchain um so um for example um following the European GDPR standard a lot of application um building for example social applications you're going to using US private data their private chat history and uh if you are using this like the application developer are using this in like from a user own data perspective and transact this data on blockchain's metadata u through the dec decentralized sequencer so it's going to be censorship resistant and so it solve a lot of like um compliance issues and can actually spark uh like a lot of potential uh AI native applications that um sparking from the proprietary data um so I I guess this like is originate from the the nature of the blockchain

Gotcha.

Um it seems like we are out of time. Um but it's we we've had a cursory discussion. You know, we haven't really gotten depth in depth with it, but you know that maybe for next time. Um but anyone uh thanks for joining us up here and thanks everyone for listening.

Thank you.

Thank you guys.

Thank you.

So up next is our payi panel. The next evolution of payi embedded finance onchain credit and global accessibility. Our panelists include speakers from Huma, Sprout, Parah, Visra, and MetaMask. And the panel is moderated by Zach from the block. Welcome guys.

Oh, good. They have a timer. Yeah, this is the best news. Can everybody hear us? All right, sounds good. Hello. Thanks for coming. Um, I'm Zach. I'm a journalist at the block. Uh, why don't we just go down the line and have everybody introduce themselves and say a little bit about their project and how it relates to our theme of the next evolution of Payi.

Hello, my name is Arbi Karaman. I'm co-founder of Hum Finance, the first PayFi network.

Hello everyone, my name is Maya. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Sprout. We are building the risk-adjusted yield engine for retail users.

Hi guys, I'm Aditi. I'm the head of business and operations at Perah. Um, we are building the uh most comprehensive wallet and authentication suite on chains like Salana, EVM, and Cosmos.

Hello guys, excuse me.

Hello guys, this is Nate um co-founder CEO of Vishua. We're building the trust of Swift of Bitcoin uh of uh bridging the liquidity and the asset of native Bitcoin to the other ecosystem to find better utilities.

Hi everyone, I'm Risby. I'm the product lead at MetaMask for new networks and we launched Salana two days ago on the Metamas extension which we're super excited about and yeah, more to come.

Cool. So let's start with with Huma. What was your vision of PayFi and what it could grow into when you first started out and how do you think that has changed over time as you've navigated the evolving crypto landscape?

So Human started about two years ago and when we decided to build the first PayFi network, we were not necessarily just coming up with random ideas. Our previous company which was uh a leading fintech called Earnin in the US uh was one of the first experiments in consumer payment financing. Uh and we were providing digital cash advances using advanced AI and we were able to create something that uh scaled to tens of billions of dollars of you know business. uh and we learned that to be able to build similar businesses you need infrastructure that doesn't necessarily exist in trade and a lot of things you know was so so hard for us to build even though we had an incredible you know technical team and that's when we decided you know just start experimenting with okay can we actually build this in modern infrastructure um can we build this on you know blockchains stable coins so that actually we can build a global system that more and more payment finance applications can be built on top Um you know we tried to build a card application um back at earning as well that was super hard because of the limitations of the card networks and the APIs and the processors. So you know we decided that somebody has to build you know all these abstraction layers and um bring the orchestration um to be able to um benefit fit new applications to be built on the blockchain otherwise just using stable coin doesn't necessarily cut it and yeah it was a journey of about one year of hardcore research um a lot of building and rebuilding and uh Huma 2.0 O uh which was launched about a month ago was the biggest breakthrough because you know we decided to um create this tailored product that has a pretty large front end on the DeFi side. Um the first early product that was an institutional product only uh and it was a closed loop system u because of the way the traditional you know payment partners um want to utilize the services. uh we made breakthroughs in compliance we made breakthroughs in the the D5 uh elements of it and now we have a uh end to- end system where you have PST the pay token that brings liquidity into the whole network uh and that liquidity in stable coins is used by uh traditional payment institutions by card issuers and by card networks to settle payments instantly and the yield generated from all of that is pushed back on chain um and you know just creates this flywheel of um uh uh DeFi yield uh uh coming in, DeFi liquidity coming in uh and creating more and more use cases um and more

Settlements around the world and um, what we have seen since launching Kumo 2.0 was a 9x growth um, and this is, you know, just like literally April 10th um, about more slightly more than a month ago. And I'm so happy to see, you know, how everything is converging um, finally. But obviously, when we started like none of this was in our, you know, um, pervision; it's just as we built, we start seeing, you know, new things and opportunities uh, and yeah, excited to be here today. Cool. I guess a natural next point is to go to Nathan because Vishua is is a partner of Huma. So could you talk a bit about the challenges in bringing Bitcoin liquidity on chain specifically um, that you've had to overcome?

So basically, um, there's a very striking paradox comparing to the fund utilization of traditional finance, which you can see 4 to 10% of the assets staying idle, but crypto is like 65%, out of which 95% of them are Bitcoin. And why? Because Bitcoin is something really hard to build on top of. And that is that is why a lot of, you know, if you talk to minor, if you talk to institutions, if you talk to the Bitcoin holders, even on the retail side, they don't want to deposit. If you deposit, the Bitcoin is not within your wallet, and they can just simply rob you, right? Because uh, I came from a security background. Um, I've I've I've been dealing with th a lot of those scenarios, right? So this is one huge like trust problem. So that is why we are building the very first trustless swift to not just bridge the asset, right? We relay and verify your self-custodial bitcoin to the other ecosystem to Solana to SolLayer to EVM to Sweet, for instance, right? And that is why then because uh, I have a close relationship with Richard and uh, I'm kind of like his security advisor, so um um, that that's why we build a trust through there, right? Because we don't introduce any additional security assumption; your asset is and your own UTXO is self-custody is protected by the consensus of Bitcoin or the consensus of Solana, right? So like if any if anyone is familiar with, you know, like the cyber security kind of concept, the great analogy is the wooden barrel, the theory of the wooden barrel; this the security of the system really based on the shortest part of the barrel, which means that I don't want to criticize any other project. But if you introduce any additional security assumption, if your protocol is not as secure as Bitcoin layer 1 or not as secure as Ethereum layer 1, not as secure as Solana, you are the shortest barrel, which you don't want to be, right? So that's why we trust your knowledge proof. We build economy incentive to make sure that the dishonest user will be penalized. So that is why we're here.

When it comes to building trust with users, I think Mana, you could speak to Sprout. What kinds of questions do users have when considering adopting the product and what types of things do you think are are useful for users to hear?

Um, I think it depends on the type of user. So for Sprout, we we are both B2B and B2C in a sense. uh, we are building this risk-adjusted Intel engine for retail users to understand the relationship between risk and the rewards for DeFi. That's the the core eos of this because and that that comes two perspective, right? First is you need to understand what each of those users their risk preference are, and second is you understand oh, the risk assessment for each of those DeFi protocols, no matter the bridging risk, the mechanism design for that spa, for example, for that specific stable coin and also maybe how is there any risk in terms of B2B or team, right? Those are all like all the risk that you need to consider in your risk assessment framework. So to be able to better cater that like our goal is always talk to as many users as possible. And going back to your question, what do users really care about? I think for uh, let's say a web 2 user or a web 3 non-de user, they 100% care most about their phone security, right? Maybe they don't want that 15%, 25%, or 40% DeFi yield in that sense, but they just want to make sure okay, while I'm enjoying maybe this 10 to 15% of a yield, I can use it; I can sleep while it compounds, so so security and usage is is the most important or the key words that I've done like after 100 plus user interviews; that's what they really talk about. Another thing from a web 2 user perspective is off-ramping; like we are in the US, so when we do KYC, we can do like Coinbase, Moon Pay, right? And then maybe some of the apps it even allow you to use Apple Pay, but it's a different story in emerging markets, let's say Southeast Asia, Asia, Malaysia, right? You need to integrate with local off-ramping partners so that you can get to really really low tier of the fee; like Moon is charging 2.5%, 2, 3%, but if you're working with a local ramping partner, it could be just like 15 bips or 25 bips, so it's it's really okay, use security and then fees. That's it. But but I I know this is a really really prolonged answer, but I think the the core thing is you always need to talk to your users all the time and incorporate that back to your product in a really fast manner.

So Adidi, what else do you hear from users when it comes to we've talked about security, off-ramping, fees? Are there any other um elements you would add to that mixture?

Yeah. Um, yeah, just for context, um, we're building a suite of dev tools. So we come across a lot of teams building a lot of things. Um, namely kind of stable coin onchain finance type use cases, especially in emerging markets. Um, I like to call them frontier markets. Um, and some of the use cases that come up a lot, especially with kind of stable coin type apps, is definitely security. We even see things like speed. Um, just being kind of mindful of someone's connectivity in the region they're in. Um, being able to sign transactions quickly on Solana if they maybe don't have really good Wi-Fi. Um, so we've thought a lot about, you know, how do we kind of frontload signing transactions to the server rather client side. Um, we've also thought a lot about um, pass key support is another thing as well with accessibility. um uh, we're quite used to using kind of Touch ID and Face ID for, you know, a variety of things including like Apple Pay or, you know, on our iPhone devices. Um, the fact is a lot of Android devices actually don't support pass keys, especially if they're made if they're certain variants of Android devices don't. And so um, that's another thing to factor into accessibility when thinking about kind of payments use cases; you want kind of the broad scope of users in frontier markets to be able to actually access the product. Um, I think something else that comes up is also a lot of uh reputation is actually offchain. Um, so especially when thinking about being able to get a loan as a business owner in Kenya um, you're likely to get that loan based on your reputation in your community. Um, and so how do you bring those mechanics on chain? And I think that's a really difficult problem to solve. And so um, you know, there's a variety of ways that we've thought about it, but um, all kind of bundle up into this idea of accessibility and keeping your funds secure and usable um, in these markets.

Yeah, absolutely. Um, and when it comes to MetaMask launching on Solana, which it did a couple days ago, uh, obviously MetaMask is most known for the Ethereum EVM ecosystem. What was it like kind of approaching a more mature ecosystem? What were the different challenges that were involved in in bridging MetaMask to Solana?

Um, yeah, you already said it. So MetaMask in 2016, 17 was like the EVM wallet. Everyone used it. But you can also see it in the code; like literally every line of code was on EVM, EVM terminologies, EVM code, like everything EVM-centric. So I think for us, you know, like many people wondered like why did we join late, you know, in a way um, the challenge was really like how can we make the entire wallet now multi-chain, like really a total overhaul, right? Right, so this was the architectural challenge that we took on like, you know, roughly half a year ago, and it was a total overhaul of our code base, and that was the real challenge, right? It was not about Solana specifically, but how to make MetaMask multi-chain ready. So we need to think ahead like what's comes after Solana. So we are launching Bitcoin, for example, in like uh, you know, in around 3, 4 months. So we need to think ahead like how can we make it such that it's modular and we can plug in Solana now, but then, you know, uh, Bitcoin, Tron, whatever is then interesting for for us essentially. So I think that was really the challenge like architecturally, and our knowledge in consensus is also pretty much um, skill based on like EVM blockchain and L2s. So scale was also an aspect, right? So we need to scale up our engineers to really think through like how does Solana work. It's like a next-gen blockchain, right? They have different signing uh mechanisms, there different, you know, ways how you interact with the blockchain. So it was really getting up to speed there, which uh, which was another challenge, but um, no worries. Uh, so it's really about now we have a lot of EVM users, right? Like we have 40 um, you know, 30 to 40 million monthly active users, and how do we enable them to seamlessly go into Solana and back and forth easily, but then also attract new existing um users that we don't have, you know, like how can we, you know, get them into our ecosystem and make it seamless. So yeah, maybe that's a bit of a answer here.

Yeah. Yeah. Totally. You're right. No, I was just like a little bit of allergy. That's um, Poland season in New York, but not allergic to that answer. Um, when it comes to and anybody can jump in here. When it comes to building PayFi on Solana, which values of Solana, the foundation, the developer ecosystem, do you think really align with the goals of your project? And which do you want to see more development, more more brain power go into?

Maybe I can get started because we just did that exercise very recently. Um, so you know, we started on the EVM ecosystem as well two years ago. Um, and we grew um quite a bit, but we realized that the EVM ecosystem was becoming more and more fragmented, and that was a challenge because, you know, um, you have fragmentation on the stable coin liquidity, you have fragmentation on partnerships, integrations, even the same code that you write, you know, doesn't necessarily work exactly the same way; there are some, you know, challenges with certain tooling not being available on every single EVM ecosystem, and then you need to kind of like um, you know, create some uh uh in-house solutions to replace them, but then it's hard to replicate one-to-one, and you know, if the infrastructure you're trusting in uh uh is not necessarily there across the ecosystem, it becomes like really hard to actually bring a solution fully to the EVM ecosystem, and uh, Solana obviously is very different in the sense that it's it's very consolidated, right? So, you have one chain, you have, you know, one of the fastest growing stable coin liquidity um on this chain. You have a very active, you know, um base of uh traders and users and LPs on ecosystem as well. But also the tooling is, even though you could say not as mature um, the tooling basically can be used anywhere in the ecosystem, and the you know, just integrating with a few simple solutions like the um Orca vaults, Material vaults, you know, Pyth oracles um your solution becomes immediately composable to the whole solidify ecosystem, right? So when we built IMA 2.0, So with those a few touch points, we were able to integrate it to Jupiter, Meteora, Rate X, Camino. It's just, you know, it's incredible that suddenly yes, you're taking a lot of effort to rebuild everything for an, you know, chain that is taught very differently, but at the same time, it enables this composability at a rate and speed that wasn't possible on the EVM ecosystem. Um, what could it do differently? To be honest, you know, so far our experience has been uh quite positive and rewarding. Um, and I I believe the ecosystem also evolving with a mindset that they want to make sure the chain is increasing bandwidth, reducing latency, and it is becoming more and more suitable for use cases that requires maybe 50 milliseconds of settlement time. Right? If you want to build the modern, you know, card layer on chain, you need 15 milliseconds settlement time. Um, and I think we're getting closer to that. Um, I think from our perspective, Sprout Day one, day zero is a cross-chain app. We never bet very very heavily on any specific chain. And that's also like what I told all the other ecosystems because I I do maintain a pretty good relationship with them because we need to know where the yields are. uh, but I think our promise to the user is that we go where the users are, where the best risk-adjusted returns for the users are. So you cannot just oh, because of this chain give me more support, I going to favor that, right? It's it's more based on the data uh, the market data, the on-chain data or the risk assessment that you have done, and then you make the decision for the users. In terms of the Solana ecosystem, I think the core difference I have experienced so far from a builder's perspective is they are very small like compared to all the other EVM ecosystems; like if you want to know all the DeFi players across different chains, you probably have to go to 10 different events, right, to to meet them. But for Solana, they're just like, "Oh, we are all the same." So they they have this small cabal, but I think this landscape, at least from my understanding, is changing very very rapidly because within the next like three to six, six to nine months, there are so many big blue-chip DeFi players that going to enter Solana. And I think this is a positive thing because we don't want to see so many um cabal thing ongoing, or we we don't want to see just one or two big players winning. That's not good for the retail users. That's also not good for the builders, right? Who who are actually paying a lot of attention to two user experience to or how do we actually make innovative product so that we we add incremental value to the space, onboarding new users to the space, and that's what we are really focusing on. Um, so going back to the topic, do I enjoy building with developers from EVM and Solana? Yes. But I think I learn different mentalities and and I will I will use like our own voting as well as our own mechanism to break into those frontiers and build groups.

From a builder's perspective or developers perspective, there are obviously benefits to having a smaller, more centralized community. But when it comes to something like convincing Bitcoin maxis to come over to Solana, does that present any challenges when it comes to the narrative of how safe exactly and decentralized exactly is Solana?

I mean, I was about to say that uh, if you don't let me speak, I will keep coughing, but is um, basically you're asking a very good question, right? Why do Bitcoin maxis come to Solana? So I mean, that actually correspond to the last question like how how we are collaborating with Solana because um, basically the Solana is using account-based model, right? So that is a very good for the retail-based or, you know, like the person or institution-based solution, which means that if they do self-custody with their own account, they they can have a joint account together with like Bitcoin and Solana, right? So, it's under the same hood. I mean, it's a very user-friendly plug-and-play and a modular like very modular design pattern if you're a CS major, right? So, it's um, very good way of building, actually building a product and making technical sense, right? So for those people who actually enjoy because basically our interface is that they just sign up once, right? Using like because their signature will compose to Bitcoin to their Bitcoin address to their Solana address to their Stellar address, for instance, right? So that will be um, part of the product building process; the the Solana account like account-based model in Solana actually facilitate like the bit the Bitcoin users or like the Bitcoin holders. And one of our user scenarios is the Bitcoin-backed credit line, the Bitcoin-backed global credit lines, right? Cuz um, I assume that most of you guys are born in the states, and uh, it's um, it's a pain in the ass for people who have low credit score to get, you know, get credit cards uh, to get, you know, like the the favorable mortgage loan like mortgage rate and so on so forth. And if you want to go like if you're a foreigner like an international student come to the US, you have like no credit line, you have like no no no way to get the credit card, right? And given, you know, like the deflation that the US dollar that people tend to hold bitcoins, I mean, thanks a lot for the last 10 years; they educate the market so well; the the US dollar devalue for, you know, like more than half because uh, the very first time I came to the US, I mean, one single espresso cost, you know, like point like point 8, like 80 cents. Right now it costs like $3, right? So you know how much is it deflated, and then um, people tend to use their Bitcoin. So we are enabling them to use their Bitcoin, establish establish their credit line and just swipe everything, right? So that is account-based, and Solana is account-based, and Solana is a great infrastructure that with a higher because um, if we rely on layer twos, for instance, like EVM layer 2, it'll be a great security assumption on them not rolling back. If it's a ZKVM, it might work better, but most of the ZKVM right now, I mean, they haven't achieved the goal that they've st they've stated. So we have to rely on Ethereum layer one, but Solana greater throughput than Ethereum layer one, greater a greater greater account building model. So I would say as a pure infrastructure, great for retail use cases.

All right. Uh, we're running a bit behind, so we don't have a ton of time, but let's let's start with Risby and come back to me. Um, I'm just curious when it comes to PayFi, do you think that crypto as a whole has lost the plot when it comes to allowing people to actually use crypto in their everyday lives to pay for goods? Is that something we should be prioritizing? What are the obstacles that can get us there, or is that not the right goal to be striving towards?

Um, so yeah, before I joined Consensus, I was actually um product manager for Bitcoin Swiss Pay. So it was a pay product in Switzerland. I don't know if you know, guys. Um, so this product was actually heavily used by many in Switzerland. So you could pay, you know, taxes with that um product that we have developed. You can go in-store and, you know, spend your um USDC, your USDT, Bitcoin in-store and pay for goods. And now um, maybe some of you have seen we launched the MetaMask card, and with that we actually want to enable everyone to um spend their crypto, USDC, um any token that you hold essentially, and today we have um, you know, partner we have partnered with MetaMask with Mastercard and a banking partner to actually enable that, and today we can um we reached over 1.54 billion people effectively, know that they can use, so we have issuers in many countries uh, US and LATAM and a lot of the I mean all of the European countries basically, but where we are lacking behind is finding issuers in those countries where you have a lot of underbanked or unbanked people, you know, many of the African countries, Philippines uh, a lot of crypto users, but we don't we need to get an issuer there, and this is the challenge, so um that's what we are, you know, trying to get there, and if if if you have any contacts here, you know, issuers that we can work with, happy to. Um, so yeah, that's I think the challenge, you know, the issuer side, so crypto everyone can access, but once you want to connect to the real world, actually allow people to spend it in-store, you need to actually work with the regula, you know, you need to have the issuers; the regulation plays a role, so that's I think the the challenging part at the moment, but I think we are we are getting there, and also another anecdotal evidence is strong, right? Like, you know, you ask

Like two actually anecdotal evidence is strong and uh Lightning in El Salvador. So I have a colleague in El Salvador and he says, you know, you think maybe it's not being used really, but it is, right? So they're using lightning network to pay for goods in El Salvador.

And the drone network itself, it's huge, right? It's like uh just after Solana, it's the next biggest uh chain in terms of TVL and activity. But if you actually look onchain, like what does the 90% of the transaction make up? It's actually peer-to-peer payments. So they're really really using it for payments and not just, you know, gambling and meme tokens. So I think there's a lot of opportunity there.

Yeah, I mean we should talk is uh one of our partners is the largest sharehold one of the largest shareholder of Panda Express. Let's talk. Yeah. So there's there's definitely synergies that you can reach out to those people. Awesome.

Di, do you have anything to add on this?

Yeah, I think um we are actually making great strides. I don't think we've lost the plot at all. Um, I think with the onset of stable coins and, you know, uh, the Visa network kind of really taking off, there's a bunch of partners that are kind of joining that. The Genius Act finally has some sort of kind of clarity around like what stable coins are in the US, how they need to be regulated. Um, I think we're also going quite far with UX. Um, we've clearly gotten figured out a way to get rid of seed phrases with things like NPC. Um, as well as, you know, there's a lot of work going on with like Solana, smart accounts as well. Um, Swig was just announced a couple days ago, um, squads as well. And so, I think we're getting there, but I think there's a larger kind of more infrastructure oriented problem around getting merchants onboarded, getting them the right kind of systems in place to plug into their POS, um, setups. And so, um, I think it's coming together, but, um, yeah, still work to be done.

Anything to add as we wrap up here?

Um, let's keep building. If because if we stop building Robin Hood going to take all the web three shares soon guys come on we are the web3 cabal let's go yeah um maybe just a quick quick ad I actually do believe very strongly I made this prediction in about less than 10 years will have more than half of the transactions in the world happening on chain and happening on stable coins and analogy is actually very very simple today you have about three to four quadrillion of transactions all passing through New York from the federal you know Reserve Bank of New York. um the Fed wires swifts uh in USD in USD the CLS the FX transactions DTCC almost every single big equity you know bond transactions are all passing through New York nobody knows that their payments are utilizing this infrastructure that are that's basically built by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and that's only happening because that's the requirement of utilizing you know USD in transactions and the dominance of USD is leading every single transaction to route through New York to to settle this is just stupid u and there's no reason in a world where we have developed you know chains and um stable coins liquidity um and FX liquidity um in local jurisdictions um for any settlement to happen you know this way and it doesn't have to happen you know no offense with a meta mask you know people trying to pay at a point of um uh point of sale uh you know anybody just using a regular card can go to point of sale as long as Visa is settling Mascar settling onchain stable coins people will be using uh without knowing that they're using this technology and the most advanced technologies uh and innovations as we know feels like magic right like people don't need to know that they are trying really hard to use the technology um in less than 10 years I think more than half of the world is going to be settling on chain all right I think that's a good prediction to end it thank you all for your time and we'll uh we'll hand it over to the next panel I appreciate it thank you thank you so Thank you.

And next we'll have our JTM panel. We'll have Jessica from film funo or protocol and rarable. Welcome. Or have I seen Oh, you're good. You're good. Okay. Oh, Carol. Another Daniel, nice to meet you. Oh, shift. I'm distracted. Oh my gosh, that's so cute. We have another panelist. Um, what what's what's his or her name? Uh, her her name is Carol. Carol. Okay, welcome, Carol. Um, let's do a guest introduction. Um, I'm very happy to have you all here. Um, I'm Margie. I'm from Solair Marketing. And Jessica, let's start with you.

Okay. For sure. Hey everyone. My name is Jessica Solomon. So, I've been in the web 3 space for a while. Actually, my first really paying job was as the first community manager at Maker Dow in which I started at the launch of single collateral die. At that point, I realized that there was quite a bit of community to be had, not just online, but also at the in-person events like our beautiful Margie is hosting. Uh, so I moved from not just answering everyone in the kitchen sink's questions on our version of Discord to then actually being the head of events and attending multiple different hackathons and sponsoring those events within crypto. Given that it was an events driven industry, I felt that we really achieved quite a bit of traction for decentralized finance at that point and then I moved to consult with a directly within uh under Stony and then leading growth for 1 in the DEX aggregator which I trade on from time to time and honestly it's got pretty good prices but it kind of depends on what jurisdiction you're in. However, the advent of NFTTs in a way in which all these artists and creators came in truly I felt created a new window, a new vertical for web 3 and for the people using web 3. And so now I'm actually working on something called or my first product and the entity isn't totally named is film.fun. Film.fun fun is a combination of the sort of fun of creating meme coins or ICO token issuance which I'd say Donald Trump has normalized and sort of legalized with AI text to video models. So my co-founder is actually an award-winning director. He's the youngest person to win a Sundance prize. And what we are doing is we are allowing people to essentially decentralize what it means to be an investor in a piece of content and be influential in that piece of content. So we issue tokens upon creating an AI textto video 30- secondond pilot and once they reach 69K in terms of tokens bot at that point people can go into a prediction market or decision market and they can decide the outcome of the next episode by staking those tokens and this goes on and it's a free market so we see how it goes.

Great. Thank you Jessica.

Yeah. Hi guys. Uh I don't have such a hefty introduction as I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But um I represent Korea. We are a D5 payment network. We work with one in as well with maker dial with many D5 protocols and wallets. Basically enabling them with the payments use cases and products like on and off ramps, cryptocards. And my background is private banking too. So been joining uh been enjoying this space for the last six years and I believe like staying here for longer.

Great. Daniel.

Yeah. Hey guys, my name is Daniel Tan. Um, so I'm right now I'm head of the ecosystem at Aura Protocol, but when I first enter in this space, I was in a crypto consulting firm. We have like uh the like top western projects like BIT and Agarant enter into the Asia market and vice versa and helping them to uh implement the go to market and growth strategies. Yeah. So, I've been uh in the space for quite a while as well, like since 2018.

Yeah, Jonathan.

Cool. Hey, everyone. I'm Jonathan. I'm the head of ecosystem and art at Rarable. I've been in the space for about the last 5 years. Um before I led partnerships at the soccer club here in this wonderful city, New York City, FC. Um what brought me to crypto and NFT specifically was uh the community, the culture, and I think I saw a lot of that through NBA Top Shot. I thought it was incredible how culture and community can come together across the globe online. And I also thought with the blockchain uh royalties, people being a able to monetize through their creations online was uh a really great thing no matter where you were on on the planet. Um so before uh Rarable, I was head of BD on the founding team with Piñata. If you guys are familiar with Piñata IPFS, um it was great to be a part of that team really helping these different marketplaces creators grow from early on 2020 2021 and I was with a small uh art focused platform called Wild XYZ before wearable. So I've been with Rarable almost 2 years now. Um a lot of us think a lot of people think of us as just the NFT marketplace. We're much more than that now. We have a white label marketplace solution that we partner up with a lot of um professional web two brands, web 3 companies, different chains. We partner up with them to help build out their NFT ecosystems from the start from scratch or help amplify what they've already built. Um we continue to work very closely with creators and artists as well. And I'm leading all the uh drops and uh partner activations there. Um so excited to chat with you all.

Great. Thank you so much. Um, and since we are running on a short time, we can just keep our answers like straight and on point. Um, so I will just hit it with some uh brutal honesty like what's the most unexpected GTM lesson that you have learned uh the hard way in crypto? Jessica, do you want to go first?

Um, yeah, for sure. I'd say that it's not necessarily brutal. It's also kind of beautiful. But one of the cool things about community and crypto is that the fact that people's bags, their money is on the line, that also influences their personality and who it is that they're friends with and who they like and how they interact both in real life and online. And I think that's a sense of power that crypto has that we need to really take seriously and make sure that our communities are as fun and hybrid, brutal, honest as they possibly can be while also being prolific, great communities that create a good name for us.

Other

Yeah, I think uh the hardest lesson we learned is just to build a community from day zero as well. Like if you're building kind of infrastructure layer or protocol, you're kind of more thinking about partnerships and sales and all of this stuff that you're going to probably partner up with as much possible companies. But the the probably the main lesson that we learn is just to if you're building for example um infrastructure layer or B2B company, you should probably start with uh developers straight away from the day zero and uh grow this as a separate arm. um attend different hackathons, sponsor these hackathons, uh grow the developers network around your company at the same time doing partnerships with the biggest platforms as well. So I think yeah this is something we try trying hard right now for the last two years but u we couldn't started it earlier like six years ago and probably um it will be more advanced now.

Yeah, from my point of view, I think the biggest lessons I've learned uh in the past couple years is that uh like the hype around the protocol uh could be a false signal. Uh so like when a projects is like launching their tokens um you usually generate a lot of hype around it and when the token price is going down or like u uh whatsoever uh if there's no uh if if your users is not with you anymore you never had a product market fit. So I think uh eventually like um at the end of the day we are still still building um building a projects like uh we need to figure out like the broader market fits as early as possible and develop uh like a good like uh go to market funnels or like any type of funnels as early as possible to kind of return retain that hype even though you don't have a proper for product to activate or convert uh the users right away but at least you need to like return them uh and later on to uh activate them.

Yeah, I'll jump in. Um it's interesting because we have many NFT launches that are happening on primary across different chains, different marketplaces. We run variable.com in itself. Um and you can only prepare so much for what that launch is actually going to be. You don't know at the end of the day how many will be minted until mint the mint day actually happens. So it's hard for to actually properly calculate what those numbers could be because the market is different. These chains are different. The projects the platforms that we're working with are all very different. So um it's almost like you're driving blind for a little bit and it's it's you know that's the brutal honest truth. Um, but you put what you can, you prepare as much as you can beforehand. And especially from our point of view, we're supporting, we're the supportive arm, the technical partner for a lot of the projects or platforms or businesses that we're working with. So we try to work to amplify that as much as possible.

Um, so I think now is the like the trend now is that a lot of traditional finance is putting their money in web 3 projects and uh more web 3 projects want serious money. Um how do you think uh is the what do you think is the major difference uh that we market to traditional finance people uh and um web three people native cryptonative people.

Yeah I think that's a great question. I think when it comes to traditional finance people money is agnostic. So whereas in crypto one of the things I noticed I mean we're at a Salana conference. I'm not tribal but there's a lot of crypto people that are a bit tribal. They're like I'm into Ethereum I'm into Bitcoin. I'm into Salena. everybody else. Traditional finance doesn't like that. Like they just want to see that their money is moving up. And I'd say like helping sort of dissect some of that tribalism into a more realistic sense of what this means in terms of financial opportunity for a person that maybe doesn't want to figure out how to use MetaMask is something that's valuable.

other

yeah that's a good question I think for us we've we've seen traditional people coming to the platform we've seen also companies coming to partner up with us from the traditional background like uh for example stable coin issuers circle paxes all of these guys so I think for them is like as Jessica said is money is agnostic and they're trying to build the infrastructure for um all types of consumer applications all types of institutional players as well so probably Um the best way to approach that is just to partner with all of them at the same time and just continue to build the product and um yeah there's a probably big gap between crypton native users and uh um institutional players I would say in this people coming from traditional background and to fulfill this gap you probably have to attend both both sides both types of conferences like Salana ones for example or a stable coin summit in any part of the world as well.

Yeah. Um so I think right now like um since there's a launch of the the the belief I think it offers like a a new type of exit uh channels for the like a web two or traditional companies um and uh so I think more and more like a traditional institutions going to going to come and uh um since I I'm from a traditional like a finance background I I think uh and I'm also in the AI crypto AI space. So we have a product to offer to like a uh we can abstract like a web three friction away and focus only on the product itself and then we can just like build um build like a like build a AI product and get the users uh build a user base and get revenues. So I think traditional people is like more conservative about that and uh they also going to look into that those metrics. Uh and uh also um you also need to like um have your like a web three front of things.

Yeah. From from my point of view we have a few different partners types of partners that we work with. So great examples like Mattel or McFarland where we have these traditional brands that are coming on chain. We built out their marketplaces and we want to make sure that for their users it's as easy as ever to just jump on and collect onchain and they don't even know they're using the blockchain, right? So we we really hyperfocus on how can we just keep the onboarding process super easy for them. And on the other side we have platforms that we've built that are extremely den obviously like we're a web3 native company. We've pivoted plenty of times to you know help people come on board uh to web 3. So I think you know to for that side it's a little different. We build out we built out a new platform called rarable.f fun for example that's really focused on uh the financialization of trading um through the new marketplace that we built through the launchpad as well. Um but it's very different right and that's a pure struggle that a lot of folks have in web 3 is there's so many different types of verticals within specific businesses and that we're trying to do at the same time. How do we actually market properly to all the different uh user bases that we have?

Yeah. So, uh next question is about how you on board non-crypto people like people who don't know about crypto at all. And I think Jonathan just touched uh some part of it uh including a very very easy onboarding process. And Jessica and Arthur and Daniel uh what do you want to add?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that's something I'm thinking deeply about every second of the day because really I think it's the most important thing we can do here in crypto because we've got really a large amount of great infrastructure. We don't have as many users that I'd say justify the quality of the infrastructure we have. One of the things I find interesting is the way different people think about money or the way they think about sort of accountability of their finances. In many ways, I'd say tokens almost compare to the concept of points, credit card points. I like booked my flight from Can to New York with my Chase credit card points. That's still somewhat of a financial asset similar to the way the to a token is. I think having sort of different user experiences that are all based around the same solid core web 3 infrastructure that makes sense and is palatable to different types of people. It's something that can actually very easily be done. It just takes expert go to marketers.

Yep.

Yeah. for us for mergia to on board non crypto people it's like actually the main business we do on and off ramps we also launched spend car product that allows them to spend their crypto assets from non-castorial wallets and um I think the strategy to acquire as much more of these customers is to basically partner up with someone who also interested in these kind of products as a distribution channels as well um so basically again like a stable coin companies stable coin uh providers L1 and L2 uh foundations that are interested in distribution of products to uh as much users as possible and we basically can offset the pain of paying the fees for on-ramps or off-ramps or spending these from the cards also as Jessica mentioned for from the kind of like non-crypto user standpoint they want to be you want to meet these users where they are currently and for example some of the neo banks and traditional uh banks offer um premium services like uh you know point systems as well so you can use for example lounges eams um Spotify, Netflix subscriptions uh for free uh with these companies if you're using some of the premium products. So similar to um you know uh to us with the crypto cards for example, we want to enable as much as possible this type of exper experiences for crypto native and also for non-crypto users to make this transitions for them easier. So yeah, I think uh that's something we trying to to be a best of uh in this market.

No, I love that. Wait, by the way, so with Mercury, can people use their credit card and just buy crypto?

Yeah, basically that's the main business. Yeah, but it's it's kind of like the closed loop when you also have a spend product. When you also have a card within the same wallet for example inside phantom wallet, trust wallet

or ledger. You will be able to onrem crypto from your bank account and also then you know, do stuff, use remittances, use cases which are also also quite big on the wallets as well as like speative use cases, buy crypto, sell it, and uh, basically you can just use your debit card or credit cards in in the normal world as well, spending your crypto assets. Yeah.

Uh, so Daniel, yeah, for us we have like we have identified two clear paths um in terms of onboarding the web2 users. So first is to um we have a proprietary like uh uh technology that can create AI agent live streaming like in a very short time period. So we kind of like uh create a lot of Asians, whether it's like uh uh Jesus or like Buddha uh and uh let them like live stream 24/7 in like uh web2 social platforms like Instagram, TikTok. So and to onboard them uh to know more about the web3 and uh and also abstract the the web3 like intricacies away.

And the second way is also to reduce the friction. So in terms of onboarding uh we create this like technology called war gas. So the user doesn't need to have the gas like uh if it's on base, they don't need to have uh the the ethereum uh they just need our token and they can make the transactions uh so with with this technology. So I think by reducing uh the frictions and also because web3 users is like so like has a completely different profile as web2 user, users. So we are kind of like um catering towards web3 users and onboard them uh with the least amount of frictions. Yeah.

Yeah. Web3 is a bit more on risk than some of the other. So it's good to subsidize gas.

Yeah. Jonathan, do you have anything to add?

Yeah. I mean um I agree. I think just making it as frictionless as possible is is super important. Um we have a lot of different partners that will use specifically for our web2 brands that are coming to build out these marketplaces with us. Um so when their users are coming on chain and and collecting, you know, these different figures on McFarland, um they they think of it, they think of the tokens as points, right? They're just, oh, this is what I use to transact. Like they're just easily using the front end and not having to go click approve or confirm or signature. Obviously, we do that all the time, but for someone that's coming through web2, it's it's a little different. We just want to make it easy. Web3, you know that they get it. We all get it. It's way more simple that way.

Great. Thank you so much, guys. Oh, we're running out of time, so I'm just going to wrap it up here.

Yep. Thank you.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Mark. Great to meet you all.

Thank you, Carol.

Thank you, Carol. 2020.

So next we will be having Ricky Lee, core contributor of native. He will be talking about from inventory to credit: native builds a new type of onchain liquidity. Good. The uh slides. Okay. I think it's the last one. I don't think it's quite working. Oh, there you go. Hello. Hello. Hello. We're good. We're good. Is this uh is it loud and clear? Okay. Okay. Cool. All right. Thank you guys very much for staying this long. I understand I'm the blocker away from you guys, between us and the drinks and the dinner. So, uh I'm going to I try to keep this slides as simple as possible. But uh if we uh really want to just talk about one thing today uh I want I want everybody leave here with with a with a question mark in mind, is like what's wrong with currently AMM design? What's wrong with current DEX design? Right. Before I get started, thank you Maggie very much for for having me here. Uh and also very proud investor of soul layer and they've been doing fantastic. Uh obviously everybody knows about it. Uh I see the uh I think I'm reading the room. I think everybody be too serious, right? We have all-time high today. Let's have a little bit of, you know, smile on our face. I promise I won't bombard you guys with all the technical information. So, let's start with analogy, like what's going on here, right? So, I'm I'm a VC investor. I I like to talk about what's wrong, what's what's the unsolvable problems in our industry. And uh at the center of a crypto I do believe on the past couple years uh we have decentralized finance to be the focus of it, right? And among all the among all the domains that were our blockchain technology try to solve, I do think decentralized finance has been one of the focal points and in within this decentralized finance domains I do think spot trading right which is tightly gener tightly uh I would say relevant to the token generation events is actually another focus point, but what's wrong with it, right? I think from the very start of the first atomic swaps introduced from easter delta right it's like it's been about since 2017, right? It's been about eight years um we actually are doing swaps, not trading, which means that right if you want to trade or swap one token to another token, there are a lot of prerequisites, a lot of conditions you got to be able to hold the token in your wallet, both kind parties and he got to be able to put the two wallet, two tokens on the same chain, execute a smart contract and swaps it, right? This is what I call inventory based trading, right? Or I call it in stone ages. Not that I know about what happened in stone ages, right? But I'm taking a wild guess, shell to coconuts, right? We are actually changing seashells to coconuts, but all this time we're still doing it. Can you believe it? Right? We're trading billions of billions of dollars every day. We're still doing effectively seashells to coconuts, right? What this actually means? It means that that's why we have so many problems right now in this financial which actually cause the problem of the financial inefficiencies, right? We we have to put money into the AMMs, LPS. We have the incurs impairment loss. We have to solve the problem of you know, liquidity segmentations reduced by different chains and the problem is getting worse by have many chains including it. So layer right uh so what what do we do right? So in the past sort of like a you know a couple years we have try to solve this problem by introducing different type of dexes, units of v3, meteora, maverick right and then we try to introduce different type of interoperabilities protocols and infrastructures and also we try to improve the user experience from the trading side and all this leads us to the current limitations of the models which means that we try to solve many other problems introduced by one simple root of the problem which is the DEX which means that we are still transacting on inventory based right so this is native and it's specifically targeted to solve this problem. What it actually does is two parts: one is actually one pool of capital, another one is actually the way to use the capital through the swap engine, right? Anybody interested in this one you can take a further look and we'll bother you all with with was actually technical details and this is more like the way it works is that if I want to put analogy is like say if I want use a US dollar that I deposited into the bank say HSBC New York right and I put say like I don't know $1,000 here and u I want to buy something I flow over to Hong Kong I want to buy something I want to buy I don't know a cup of coffee so I log into my bank I pay for it. Does does the money the thousand dollars cash I put into HSB bank in New York the cash does it actually gets moved to Hong Kong? Right. I I don't think so. Right. But the bank knows, right? The way I spend it is because the $1,000 cash I put in New York physically turns into a credit in HSBC. So I can go there, use it in Hong Kong and buy use that buy a cup of coffee. This kind of simple idea does not exist in our industry. Right. It's as if I have to carry the $1,000 cash with me on the flight, go over to Hong Kong and put it into the HTB bank in Hong Kong again and then use it with a cart over there. What this means that what if we turns the entire process of the banking side into the onchain executable EVM contracts, right? Put this all this in a way that everybody can use and everybody can understand. And this is what native does and increase a new type of liquidity what I call it a maker side of liquidity. And aside also aside from actually absorbing the capital and putting it into a pool, we also have a swap engine that actually operates as as a trading floor to actually utilize this capital and financing the trades to the other risk takers, market makers, trading firms and so that it can generate the EOS for for LPS. Very similar ideas to what we have done for the AMMs. So what this means to everybody, right? First of all, as LP when you deposit money into this pool, you're there's no impermanent loss anymore. It's principle protected and it's acting as a as a lending protocol. And second part is that for the market makers, right? Right? For the risk takers, the professional guys who's really good at making markets, they can actually go ahead and actually borrow money onchain financing through it collateralized but leveraged. And lastly, for the aggregators, right, for the one in for the cow swap, for everybody who's trying to find liquidities on chain, you actually can access liquidity uh in a simless way, right? And non-custodian way, right? And lastly for the people who is willing to launch a token right instead of putting money into the AMM pools this is a brand new way of trading it, brand new way of building onchain liquidity. So that was it right. So I would like to basically if you really want to categorize what happens in the spot trading markets in in in crypto uh 3,000 ft levels we only have three type of players: takers who is actually the swappers, the retailers who's willing to transact and then the pathfinders right the aggregators, the mega aggregators who actually trying build infrastructure to find the liquidities on chain through everywhere and the Lastly, the makers. The makers actually right now only exist in AMM form or in the form of x * y= k. It's a it's a it's a formula, right? And we have spent so much time and efforts in the first two categories, right? We have many many applications. A lot of brilliant people try to solve the problems. How do we make the maker takers to be seamlessly transact and have a great UI have a great way of convenience in accessing this is infrastructure which is basically the blockchain technology and we have a many way many in I would say founders and investors put money and applications into the pathfinders which is basically hey how do we effectively find onchain maker liquidities right but everybody sort of defaults that the onchain liquidity should be put into the AMM M likes right which is X times Y equals K. I come from a traditional finance I don't believe any assets should be priced using a formula, all the assets should be priced by the risk by the risk by the appetite by the bits and offers right and that is actually what I believe the right way of building onchain liquidity and that was not possible you know until today right until the introduction of native which means that we're bringing the risk based pricing and By abstracting away the inventory based trading and transform that inventory based trading into credit based trading then it becomes possible to professional market makers to traders to actually be able to make onchain equities available in a way that has not done before. Right? That was my uh presentation. I think we're we're we're good on time. Uh all right. Thank you.

Next, we'll have a fireside u moderated by Zach from the block uh with Chu, co-founder, Chris, co-founder of Sonic SVM and Joshua from Solair. I think I need to grab Joshua. I don't know. Sure. Um, anything? Well, I I have some AI interest that's outside of crypto. Yeah. Did you see the um I'm sure you saw like you see like open AICP stuff. Yeah, it just

All right, we're all here. Hello. Oh, we're good. All right, I want to start off with what I think is a central question. Uh, I was talking to a crypto founder recently who is involved in crypto AI founder, let's just say, and he said, you go to crypto conferences, people love talking about AI. It's every other panel. It's it's a core topic of discussion. You go to AI conferences, no one's really talking about crypto. Why do you think that is? What do we do about it?

Yeah. Um, I'll go first. Hi everyone, my name is Chris Zoo. um co-founder of Sonic SVM. Um we've actually had an interesting conversation recently uh with our product lead who thinks that um we should not involve crypto with AI in the majority of the use cases because crypto does what crypto does very very well, which is fundra the transaction, monetary values um while AI does what AI does very well, which is automation, really really speedy execution uh getting the agent to do things for you, right? um and oftentimes when you combine those two things it's really just a narrative and we don't want that uh especially because uh it doesn't really add additional layers of value. Um however, we do think that if we can combine those two things uh in a product and allow crypto to just focus on transactions and AI just to focus on automations, we can actually um create something very interesting which I'll probably talk a little bit about which is what we're working on right now. um agentic browser that allows for all the monetary value to transfer between you know different browsers um but the the browser itself is running headless with an AI uh so that you don't have to manually confirm every single transaction um yeah I I guess um quick introduction I'm Joshua, I'm head of product so um have some background in AI um and the way I think about is actually very very similar is that hey crypto is really good at doing a couple things is very good at creating these network effects. It's very good at handling payments. It does u monetary stuff very well, but not everything needs to be onchain. Um and actually AI in a sense is usually much faster, better, lower latency if you just dump it all on like a server. So, I think that that that's that's some of the parts that people have like contention about. But, um I do think like AI solves very straightforward problems of hey, performance. How do we make things faster, scalable, just make things Do you need to if if there's a human that's there that doesn't need to handle all of this, can we free that person up to work on other things? Because now we have this technology that can handle flexible input and give out flexible output. Um it's not as deterministic as what we had like before AI became a thing. Um but I would rather have a lot of more crypto projects or like crypto AI projects run on web2 rails for the AI part because it has been heavily researched. We have like teams of thousands of people at anthropic at open AI and our teams at in crypto we're not as well equipped in this sense. We don't have dedicated AI research teams that's building these. I we have some teams that building it, but most of the times the projects that actually get funding and take off are not these ones, right? It ends up being companies that wrap around GPC and then they play a nice narrative and then they fire off a token and then it looks good, but then it captures a very bad light from the rest of the AI industry and they're like, "Oh, you're not serious." Right? Um but if you have like proper crypto crypto AI projects that run on crypto rails for payments or creating a marketplace or create like a economy around that but the core AI product is strong and because you're using the well-researched well-established frameworks they're in web2 instead of trying to reinvent them for in a web3 fashion I think that creates a lot more value um like letting each tool is a technology using the right tool to solve the right problem instead of mixing the technologies for like a narrative play.

So when it comes to designing an agentic browser, what are the parts of it that you optimize for the web2 rails that we have versus the parts that you try hard to integrate with web3?

Yeah. Um I think the data pipeline is ultimately what we think the value will occur. Um we split our product into three parts, right? We we have a cursor function that allows for basically looking at where the user is looking on chain. So whether it be a CA or a token ticker or if they're looking at uh a information about Trump's token for example, we have the ability to kind of capture all of that data and then give action suggestions based on what the data uh the user is looking at. Um so we say that that's the user's eyes kind of like Monica in the traditional AI realm. U before Manis wrote out Manis, Monica was the extension tool that act as the eye of the user. And then we have something we call the command line the command bar uh which is like superhuman for crypto right if you can just do slashby and then you can buy any assets across the internet that's pretty cool and right now you have to you know route your uh through maybe uh aggregator or go to a um a centralized exchange or dex right and then the third product that we are rolling out is the brain um that basically we take the data pipeline and we train our custom models initially it was just a prompt engineered model. Now we have enough data um to basically fine-tune that for domain specific purposes and with a action suggestions and the routing that we were just building out the user have their eyes, their hands and then now a brain. Um and these three you know parts act in accordance to each other so that user can execute transactions anywhere on the front end of the internet. And in crypto, I think what is important is that if we can automate the routing and then we can automate the data collection, you basically have the most efficient execution terminal on the entire front face of the internet and then you can monetize that through owning the order flow. And I think that's kind of become consensus where if you own the front end of the internet, you own the order flow and that's where the value capture occurs. So that's our thoughts behind the product.

Do you have anything to add on that specific point?

Oh, on like the Oh, I thought the the question was the other question. Um, one thing that's interesting to me when I when it comes to the capabilities that I wish the internet had right now that I think crypto could unlock is microtransactions and microp payments. One thing I think about as a journalist is sometimes I want to read an article from the St. Louis Post Dispatch or some newspaper that I don't subscribe to. I don't live in St. Louis. I don't really have a need to purchase a whole subscription. It would be nice to be able to unlock an article for 25 cents 50 cents and read it just for the day. when it comes to AI agents, you know, running loose on the internet, what do you think uh what kinds of behaviors do you think they'll exhibit that currently aren't possible on the internet, but that you hope will eventually grow and and have more tooling and and capability around?

Um, in terms of capabilities, I think, um, I mean, we like to think that web2 is actually very far ahead, but actually it's also still fairly it's not where we want to be. Um, that's why like tools like browser base or like composio exist because it helps with a lot of these tool calling to help with like breaking past like people's captures and stuff like that, right? A lot of the web2 experience is still broken even in in in the most cutting edge AI mainly because of like the policy that companies set and they're trying to like browser base comes out with something and then the company's like reacting to to stop it but it all comes from the incentive problem of I want to gate my content because otherwise you're going to train a model on it and you're going to make all the money essentially instead of me so I'm going to train it on myself and get to market first before you can train it on my data and I think that's where this dynamic can be shifted. with crypto in some sense, but um I don't even

Think humans have decided how it should be before we even try to apply, like a market structure or something, towards that. Um, but I do think that like monetizing content, like I, in, in like an ideal world, if an AI does inference on top of like a piece of an article, and then you're you're doing some sort of um, you pull out that source with rag or something, you and you point like the source of this response that I gave you are these five articles; we should be paying those because it essentially is an a person running through all that data and informing someone or something. So, um, ideally that's the the the the cross-section where agents can kind of come into the play. Um, other than that, then transactions. Can you make transactions on people's behalf? Can it um act as like a double a digital double of someone? So you can pay, it can own things, you can um operate and it can infer and also pay other people who have created the content. Yeah.

Uh, just to add on to that a little bit, um, one exciting use case that that we think the browser would bring um or in general just what we would like to see in crypto is if we can replace all of your e-commerce purchases or your subscription services uh with just a percentage cash back uh based on crypto yield, and every single transaction you do on the internet gives you some type of cash back or yield. That's how Honey, you know, grew super super large. That's how Instacart acquired billions of users or millions of users. Um, we can actually do that with crypto. I I don't know if anyone in the audience uses Cass or Red Pay or any of the crypto cards. You have a pretty steady yield, right? Like on top of what you spend. That's one use case where we're just focused on the transactions and the value capture through those transactions.

And then through the agentic side, um, we actually see a couple different sides of the agent agentic browser kind of taking shape. Open eyes operator is basically utilizing something like browser use um but it's just kind of clicking around with the open internet where, you know, um most of the web pages are open, you can get information back, but once you need to actually execute any action, that's where, you know, um operator doesn't work, manis doesn't work, manis can just retrieve information but can't really act on your behalf because authentication um, fellow which is a competitor there, basically has two types, one is headless and one is headful. And the headful browsers uses your credentials and then executes transactions with your login. And in analogy, you know, in crypto, if the agent gets an authorized transaction through your wallets, um you don't want it to spend all of your $50,000 in that wallet account, right? Um, you might want it to spend just $100, $200. So that UX is yet to be deployed even, you know, with products like Privy or Turnkey. Um, it's not there yet. So I'm actually really really excited about B where the key management services and the permission setting for the agents can be more mature in the next coming maybe two or three years.

All right. And as we wrap up, what are you most excited about? Um, in AI and when it comes to crypto AI, when it comes to crypto AI, I think um being able to synthesize a ton of data across everywhere, right? And then to make the right decisions, automating that. I think um that's one thing I'm interested in. Second thing would probably be um how would an agent swarm work together because right now we have like different things, langraph, we have like agent handoffs and different things, but all that's like within a specific framework, what about if you have agents across multiple frameworks and what they're all transacting to each other, how do you make sure that is there a way that you can look at all of these agents talking and transacting with each other and say, hey, maybe there's a better way to do it, and then you tell them what to do and then they figure it and they do it in a more efficient system as a whole. It's like a so intelligence. So I think it's something like pretty interesting. So we might have Dows made up of AIS. Might we might could be interesting. All right, that's our time. Thanks so much. Thank you. Thank you.

So now is our last session of our event of fireside. I will have Jessica take the lead as always. Hey, how is everyone doing and thank you so much for being here. I'm super excited to introduce my friend Andra. Actually, both of us um have a commonality in that both of us have worked for a really cool DEX aggregator called 1 in at uh one point, which is really one of the best places to trade and honor is now working at another I'd say S tier best of breed project uh which we'll be getting into in the next nine minutes or so. Uh, so Andre, do you want to say a little bit about what you're working on and who you are and how excited you are for this new wave of crypto?

Sure. Thanks. Um, so I'm um I'm Andre, I've been in this space for about eight years. Prior to cryptos in Silicon Valley um within crypto, I've worked for um a few projects that you might know such as unstoppable domain. I was head of growth of 1 in, that's um what role she had before as well. Um I also worked with origin protocol. I helped bring institutional capital on chain and now I'm a co-founder at Lys labs. Um what we do at Lys is what we call meaningful data and we focus particularly on the Solana ecosystem. Uh mostly because we feel that the data um ecosystem in Solana is not mature yet and projects are underserved when it comes to their data needs. Um so we do a couple of things really well. Um we have a two to three millisecond latency data um which is enhanced. It's not just raw data. So we we create custom aggregations based on use case. uh we then contextualize this data with knowledge graphs um which is basically a a way of querying the blockchain that is native to the blockchain itself um because it's not sort of like SQL back end, it's it's it's a graph so you should be able to find the relationships between data points um and query as needed and then last of all we augmented with what we call OG rags which is a really fancy way of serving data, a more efficient way of serving data than APIs um so yeah so that's kind of what we do.

That's incredible and I it seems like quite a big need for multiple different blockchains. So with Lysabs in terms of meaningful data is the meaningful data would you say it's specialized towards the Solana ecosystem or more broadly?

Yeah, we started with AVM. um our background has most of my my co-founders are also DPVM um and um we built like 99% of the tech for for on the data side there and then last minute we sort of got challenged actually by by an investor who said why don't you guys look at Solana, it's a much bigger challenge than EVM, like TPS of course, so my co-founder sort of like took 36 hours and he unlocked like real-time data for Solana, so we're like okay maybe we should just do this, then we shared it with everyone that we knew and they were like okay this is like actually insane so you guys should definitely focus on Solana. So, um we're doing Solana for Solana for part of our go to market. Uh but long term, um the future is multi-chain, right? So, you should be able to query anything on chain on any blockchain, whether it's an L1, L2, whatever it may be.

Totally. Totally. No, that's awesome. And um in terms of where you you all are at in the growth stage right now, is it that you're still gathering say like AB testing or are there a number of people that we'd want to start using OAS labs at this moment?

Yeah. So we have a couple of products. Um since our stack is optimal for AI, um our thesis consists of two pieces. One is if the features are entirely tokenized, they need to have like really powerful data if that's truly everything is on chain. And second of all um if AI will come then you need to have like obviously an optimized like data data sets for AI. So that's the other thing because you cannot find opportunities on chain for staking, trading etc, manually anymore, it's simply impossible. Right. Right. So we built an agent called Selectus which is a more retail facing product that one is in beta test at the moment. Uh what it does is it does research for Solana tokens so that you can u query interesting things that you would not be easy uh they would not be easy to find otherwise. For example, we do something we call real P&L. Uh which if you want to calculate um usually it's not accurate because what is P&L stand for again? Uh profit and loss. So if you want to see like if a trader successful, right? Um there's like multiple ways to calculate that. But where did they buy and where did they sell? Did they move funds around into different wallets? It's just like really difficult to track. Where if you have like a knowledge graph in the back end, then that this is much easier to calculate. So that's actually something that like would I think make a lot of sense for exchanges as well. Yeah. So, it's a really versatile product, right? Just and that's why we wanted to open it up to anyone to build on top of it because anyone can just pull whatever data they need for their use case.

No, it's amazing. Um, and it sounds like it almost functions as a way of sort of showcasing the individuals as well, almost the Koss or the traders so to speak.

Yeah. So, we don't focus so much on the labeling, but if you know the K's wallets, then you could can for example see their entire like history of like trading. You can see where they sit on the leaderboard. Again, you can do P&L analysis. You can see what tokens they own, but like actual deep research, not just the surface intel that all the sort of um platforms give you. So, yeah, that's that's again what we do, why we call it meaningful because that's the whole point of like being able to get stuff that you can't find easily.

Oh, that's incredible. And then what is something that Lysa Labs is excited about besides meaningful data and like obviously this awesome agent play?

Yeah, I think AI in general. Um, obviously there it's been quite a narrative. It started pretty strong and it kind of died down. Now it's coming back. Um agents haven't really accomplished much in the space yet. We've had like personality agents which I mean great for experimentation, right? Like we we love that in crypto, but it's largely they're largely meme coins. Yeah. But but we haven't really seen actual useful agents, right? So we're still there to like we have yet to crack them. So I think in general we're pretty excited to to look at that space. Um and we also focus like I said more on the trading use cases just because a lot of activity is there. So there's it needs like lots of data. So that's that's really interesting for us. So we're excited to see what the new ways of trading are like lots of like sentiment tools that are coming out that we want to combine with for off-chain um data so that we can see if the sentiment is there then does it match the onchain action. So that's also something that we want to offer users in the future. So generally I think um just exploring this future of like deep data like I said and then seeing how AI is going to pick up on it and find alpha basically.

Absolutely. Yeah. I'd say like an AI model is really only as good as the data that trains it. So being the curator of that data and helping to truly source it is is so important. Transformation of the space. Yeah. Um but yeah, I want to use this Lys AI agent and whatever alpha we can get for Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Best trading agent and who to follow in terms of um Brava and loss is very important. Yeah. If you're into trading for sure you have a stack that you're using. So our goal is to kind of and it's not even to replace the stack. we're actually complementing it because we also have for example a Chrome extension where if you're looking at a tokens project or GMGN or whatever it may be you can open a Chrome extension and then you can do research on that token on that project inside the window. So you don't even have to come to us for for that. Um so yeah so that one's like like a retail friendly product but on the developer side we also have like APIs that we're giving away right now for testing. So anyone who wants to build something on top of it especially for Solana um we can spin one up right away. We're not even charging for data right now. Our data is free at the moment. um mixing. Yeah. So, um we're we're in discovery mode. We're trying to figure out like I also don't believe in old subscription model for data. So, that's another trend that's kind of dying in my opinion and it's really hard to monetize. So, we're looking at like I think so too actually. Yeah. Um well, no, that's beautiful. And so what would you say is the best way for people to get involved in OAS labs now from like both a developer perspective, a customer perspective or an investor perspective?

Yeah, I mean if if anyone's building on Solana, they can come to us and if you're using data for your day-to-day operations, then we'll be happy to to give you like custom aggregations for whatever data you need. Um so again, free of charge, we'll we'll hand you an API. It takes us like one or two days to spin it out because we're doing it manually right now until we build the front end. Um if you're retail focused then u we welcome you in our beta testing group so that you can try out the product. We love like brutal honest feedback because we want to make the product better. So um you can do like I said try try to um trading part. We also have the first back testing simulator on um on Solana. Um yeah the only one at the moment is trading view and we built a cryptonative one because the space needs one and we built it on Solana. So we also have and what's it what's that product called? Yeah, it's it's it's just a Selectus agent, but it has a trading simulator, back testing simulator. So, you can like back test your strategies and see what worked, what didn't, and you can save them and it auto trades for you, which is kind of what an agent is supposed to do anyway. So, so any of this can be tested right now at selex.ai by anyone who's in the into the trading world for Solana.

Cool. Cool. So, it sounds like there's a lot of opportunities for a lot of different people and a lot of ways to truly maximize together.

Yeah, indeed. We we want to work with like I said everyone um in the Solana ecosystem and then as we expand we're going to go to like Hyperliquid probably Bara Monad um and some others as well. We have demand for that right now. So amazing amazing. Well Andre you are incredible. I'm so excited that we get to chat about this big brain project and um everything that is to come. It's an honor. Thank you for having me. It's been exciting to catch up. Yeah. Yeah. Um okay. Well, it's been wonderful you guys. We will all chat soon and we can hound Andra for any questions you all have. Thank you.