What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompeo know most of you know me as pomp you're listening to the podcast. Simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off stun. E kuu Lei Chau is the founder and CEO of Ave. A leading startup in The decentralized Lending space in this conversation. We discussed decentralized Finance improving user experience and user interfaces onboarding more developers disrupting the banks and decentralize lending. I really enjoyed this conversation with spawning and I hope you do as well.
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purposes only. All right guys, bang bang got standing here. Thank you so much for taking time to do this.
Thanks for having me here pleasure. For sure. Let's just jump right into your background youth built. One of the more popular defy protocols. But before you did that you had kind of a whole another career. So talk a little bit about your background be in before you found the Bitcoin crypto blockchain the theorem etcetera.
Yeah, totally. I think I've been to space now roughly in general building things in bulk Shane or four and a half years and pretty much kind of like spark Project based applications ready to finance. And before that. Actually I was I was in the legal industry stand. Also I started to study law before that. So I'm my I'm kind of a by education a lawyer and the reason I actually went to low was because before that
Was building Financial applications that are two applications of practically what's difficult is today. We are banks and so forth and I started practicing Building Products very early. I actually my brother was had a lot of influence in this he loved to develop things on open source, meaning of lyrics and
somehow I also catch up the the programming there when I was quite young and yeah, so the applications were quite interesting actually. It was more related to financing at the bubble bursts who releases applications in let's say app store Google Play and constantly with feedback I run into regulation. I was quite young 18 19, but then in that kind of got me to start in low. I just wanted to understand like how you know the rules of business.
Jewels of Regulation board and that was his position because there I actually started to think about contracts like legal agreements and how to make them is patient because they usually aren't many times. If you have a dispute you are not going to the court because this is tube socks and you need to pay for it and there's a high chance of risk that you get a bad decision from them. And what what potion does and allows do is that you can actually have piece of code so-called smart phone jacks, that doesn't change.
Change so once you deploy the code into a public talk chain Ledger, it executes exactly how its program and this is for example how Bitcoin works if you send transaction for 100 to another and you have the right practically instructions. It cannot go to anywhere else and this is just a simple example of what may be inspired to come in and build Financial applications and I started with the video because
It was more kind of like an open system where you could do quite complex stuff in em, or what? I was wanted to build like a date when I started give us an overview of what you're working on now with Ave. Like I mentioned it's become one of the most popular defy protocols. What is it? And how does it work?
Dana says what's obvious is it allows the users to come come to Ava and practical deposit cryptographic asset in see them to grow and that's how simple it is. So traditionally when we look at cryptocurrencies and digital assets. We usually hold the market exposure. So it's kind of like we believe in the technology with believe in the culture and we believe that there's some future of the of the asset that we are holding whether it's
It's fine if they do or all the or some other I said that is the cryptographic for me. And what's interesting here. Is that what Ava loves to do is that you can have a kind of get a cash flow for your assets. So not only you have the market exposure, but you also have the cash flow in form of interest rates. And this is what other practical does so when you deposit you basically start to see your balance growing and at the same time you can borrow from the
Protocol against your deposit. So let's say you can pause it from Bitcoin which is kind of like if they didn't form this point or this video in which you might be able position. But at the same time you can pour also called stable points, which are USD picked currencies that used in this advice Finance example got it. And so when you think through this be idea of decentralization versus decentralized entities,
Talk me through the framework, right because the actual product experience or the product functionality that you're building here. It exists in the centralized for all right, there's plenty of companies that do some version of this. What is the advantages in your opinion between centralization versus the decentralization and then why choose to build this as kind of a D5 protocol rather than go build it as one of those centralized entities.
Yeah, that's a good question because I see been a benefit in the bowl system. I like the kind of like a lending models that there is now for example in central as Finance where we have booked by we have Celsius and what not. And what there is interesting is that it definitely allows flexibility. For example, you can get give loans against group The collateral for example Fiat currencies, but what's beneficial in Defy is that practically because everything is on smartphones?
You kind of see all the transactions there and you can see also exposure there. So when a user or anyone is looking at the Army protocol you actually see what's going on there. And that means anyone can audit for example, what are the exposures there in terms of risk? And what kind of collateral they are used and what is the current liquidity there and also many of these things are actually built in rules. So because they're based on smart phone jacks
It actually means that you can't change those rules arbitrary. If if you want to change them you practically need to deploy new contracts and then divide that liquid in there or then you have some sort of like a governance model which is told in pays the community governance how those rules can be changed. What's surprising is that actually even centralized lenders are using the find the back end. So there are also connected to the liquidity.
So the code it doesn't actually look at whether it's in centralized - would be simplest - it just finds its way where there is arbitrage and centralized Finance has different kinds of risk and decent was pointers for some decent refiners might have risk related to some amount of liquidity and also like the technical risk, which is practically smart phone jacks and so forth, but I think like the transparency and the fact that rules are built into the contracts is the main key component here.
Yeah, and so when you think through
this there's a couple of
different aspects to the decentralized finance, right? There's obviously what I'll call kind of a base layer in a theory mm, which is serving as one protocol. There's then kind of other key components of infrastructure that applications will be built on top of and then there's the actual applications themselves that have kind of built on top of a protocol and they're kind of the interface if you will or the user experience to the user. How do you think of Ave and kind of
It fits in that technology stack in the decentralized troll.
Yeah, I think kind of like a follow we definitely have this we have this horizontal approach in the sense that we're building. We build a protocol and that we are constantly improving the community and that means that that protocol is accessible by other smart contracts and other kind of applications that that's so some of the developers might build on top of other so it's practically developer.
Is protocol mainly because it's development friendly. It's very easy to integrate the documentation. It's quite good in the sense and that is kind of how we went to the market when we launched the protocol last year. But we also kind of have always had the focus for the past years whatever we have built that we actually want to get touching the end user. So everyone else was trying to solve in 2018 2019 and 17.
I'm even kind of like this bill the protocol that some other protocol will use and and kind of they the end-user aspect is disappeared somewhere. No one was taking responsibility of creating Financial products for any user and we always wanted to kind of like have this connection and that is why we also build a user interface where you could connect with your own wallet. So it's practically bring your own wallets and you come there and it's about three connection then you can actually
You all been here in Fort portal against so we definitely do have both of the approaches. Oh, so most of the liquid is it comes from other places? I mean, there's over 100 different Integrations in products built on top of all the but we are very proud that we also kind of like focus on the user experience and try to get all the way to the end user as well. So it's kind of weird doing two things at the same time, but it's it makes sense as well talk a little bit about kind of the
since mechanisms that you have talked a little bit about kind of the token first the protocol and for those that are unfamiliar with how some of these decentralized protocols were just kind of walk us through it. Yeah, so kind of like now many of the the the the default verticals are based on like a governance and they used to be before this whole governance period that is it's very fascinating at the moment. There used to be this idea of that one.
Deployed decent as fine as the contracts you should or should not change them. You should upgrade protocols and that should be immutable code which I kind of agree because in the sense, you know, you weren't you have this certain thing and use the blockchain our and kind of like the ability and and but at the same time understand that kind of like when you deploy something you might want to fix some sort of box or you might want to improve the protocol because Innovation is something that
constantly evolves and I think whenever you deploy code, it means that your code because it's public it has a expired date and that means that someone else is looking at your code and they're developing the next Innovation. So you need to kind of like continue innovating and cover with confidence allows you to do is you can actually deploy code and it's not immutable completely at that point. But which is what it means is that you can control how to operate that code based on the token governor.
And the beauty here in the system is that you practically can't go arbitrary change those parameters. For example, a risk parameters of the protocol might be how much you can borrow against repeat point over here with video. What kind of assets could be listed into the protocol and this is kind of like what the governor's decides and all the token holders in the in the process and this is kind of interesting because it actually they are actually
Ali controlling a protocol now that has roughly over 6 billion six billion worth of value what in those contracts which is kind of like fascinating at the same time and all the like interest that the borrower's are paying partially is set aside into the protocol doubt visually treasury, so now is organization which practically governs it and in the future. It could be distributed. Anyways giving prawns or or back to get back to the Token holders or how
However, the committee decides to end of the day.
So when you think through this essential eyes entity would essentially build a product. They would have users come in. They would have that Revenue generation from the users and then the centralized entity has a centralized p&l and that's where kind of all of the prophets would reside right when it comes to these decentralized entities in many cases. It's going into a pool and it's either being distributed on kind of a pro rata basis of ownership of the tokens or there's some sort of voting mechanism as to what to do with those.
Funds how exactly does the revenue that is generated by Ave. Where does that go and then kind of how does that get distributed to stakeholders? Whether it's you know people who have the equivalent of equity the governance the tokens Etc.
Yeah, this that's a good question. So but each and every asset that they sing the protocol has its own so-called Reserve factor, which practically means like based on risk assessments of the community and also partially of the other team actually it's decided what what what could be the the reserve factor which means what is the amount of Interest generated to the depositors is set aside actually to be arbitrary and currently it started to accumulate.
in the version cue launch which was during bit of December and actually those funds are sitting in that treasury now treasury, so only the Avatar can holders can decide what to do with the treasury, but the cool part is that the treasure is growing in the form of a token so quickly to explain what our a tokens is that as a depositor as a normal user when you deposit into the other protocol, let's
say use this e 100 USD see you get in return 100 a use DC which is kind of like a certificate of what you deposited kind of a received into the protocol and that's a u.s. DC grows in your balance, algorithmically all the time, whatever you story and that is practically interest-bearing token. So if you send it to your friend, it still keeps going and so forth. It's kind of like a very interesting concept and kind of
Permission settings again. So the treasury actually also grows in a token. So even like they're not allocated yet and where there still are working there and going in balance as same way as the a topping holders are getting getting their balance increases and the other Governors practically what we're now working quite a lot is to create a grant program from the Dow that practically is some of the
a mechanism where Community developers just come and get bronze and how the process is actually working in terms of voting. You actually don't need to go to yourself. So let's say, you know previously governance disentis governance you expected kind of like that everyone will participate and vote. But the truth is that not everyone wants to actually be part of participating actively so you could actually delegate your voting power to someone else so protocol police station,
and so forth you could actually delegate your proposition power to that serve developer that could create those proposals and put them into the blockchain practically a piece of code and the protocol politicians will vote on those proposals whether whatever is kind of like their agenda and your mandate that you gave them so it's very fascinating part of the whole whole kind of like if I part
For sure, and so let's kind of play devil's advocate for a second, right? There's a bunch of people out there who would argue. Hey, why do you need a token? Let's say we start with that first, right? So when you've got the token element to this talk through a little bit as to is there the what possibility to do it a different way and if not then how you thought of the design of the token specifically
Yeah, definitely. You can do it without a dog and and practically you have some cons there. And in one of the things is for example, when we and I will go into a swell time example why you're talking is also important in the in the kind of like backstopping the protocol but you'd actually deployed the same person code and then put it on chain. But the thing is that if you need to change the code in and all the other liquid that is there and you deploy another practically.
For what you need to do is meet you then migrate all the liquidity. So you need to say to the user that we draw everything for this pool and put it to The Honorable so it creates a bit of like a user interface issue and I think kind of like being able to upgrade pools in the future. But which is kind of like you have a high threshold on what can be upgraded and what can be changed is very important in the sake of innovation because if you stop innovating in the find someone else comes and
Is that Innovation which practically means that that other community has more Innovation kind of like an influence and might get better Network effects. But in terms of like the governance do in the we have in essence the orbit of in holders, they are practically making risk-based decisions all the time. And that means that if you they're voting for listening you assets that can be used as a collateral. They are voting for risk parameters. For example, how much you can borrow against certain party.
Cooler asset so they're adding constantly at risk or removing risk and and once they're doing that actually there's a bility them to transfer the risk themselves. So we have this kind of like a safety module with the always talking holders can deposit their orbital gets there and get rewards in our way and what they're actually doing is they're backstabbing the protocol. So let's say if there's some sort of like exploit hack that leads to a deficit in the protocol.
in that case up to 30% of that state can be slashed and comfort the protocol and this is kind of like something that was very important to add because we were thinking during the beginning of 2020 that what's the most important thing to us and to get the protocol to scale and that's practically the bottom assets and the quality and how to get the liquidity is that we have to provide a safe as possible Oracle for the depositors and and also beyond that like we have to have a way
that if there's some sort of mistake happening and could be an exploit or something because people code and also like it's always we've seen it if I quite a lot of hacks and we have to achieve Comfort level if you go to the mainstream and also institutional the option to so what the protocol governance is actually doing but just risk-based decisions about their backstopping protocol as well from this kind of like a risks.
It's when you think through kind of how this has grown so far. What are some of the high level statistics right just in terms of market adoption because one of the things that I think is really important conversation is there's a lot of tribalism. There's a lot just kind of kind of religiousness in crypto whether that's good or bad. I'll leave that debate to other people. But the one thing that is very clear is that in many cases we can just see what the market is adopting. And so when whether it's on chain data, whether it's
Companies revealing, you know, it's kind of their metrics and their growth when you think of Ave kind of what are the high level metrics that you're proud of and then also that you think is important for people to understand just in terms of kind of validating the market adoption. Yeah, what's important of course kind of like is that the the market size itself in all of us, but we have probably just six billion worth of value look in the contract, which means that's the collaterals used for the borrowings.
and of course like we have this pop so-called flash on functionality, which means that you could borrow a from the protocol without a comment All 4 One 1 block 1 to 30 mm look and it works in a way that you can do in one block many kind of transactions, but then you need to sit on that block which bhakti means that you can borrow from from our without collateral by an asset in exchange 1 and 7 and 17 extent equities in France extensions to and then return the kind of
like a platform and if you don't return all of those transactions will fail because you failed do fulfill one of the conditions of that person's action. So that's essentially the rational there's a lot of information out there in the soap of the internet about classrooms and way more technical explanations. I will leave it to you guys, but that's kind of like a we had 2 billion worth of flash loans last year. So that's an important metric but even more important metric is that we have so far.
This year two billion for the flash huncles. So that's kind of shows like how intense the growth is. But I also like to emphasize the interest rates because that also tells like what kind of liquidity crisis there and just Christ not to a crisis, but punch there is a table because apparently the yields are at eight nine percent past 30 days which practically is that there's nothing of it.
Equality in our way or in defying general and this is the moment. We're actually now institutions are looking at those heels and looking at how they can participate in and kind of like quantifying assessing and it's not hard. I mean it is hard for institutional to participate because it's just Defy is a big big smoke and everything is completely new and I think like for example, the Tesla practical taking Bitcoins are balanced.
And those kind of moves like they just strengthened The Narrative of like what books and what cryptocurrency is what this point is and eventually kind of like it expands the idea that actually, you know, you find Opportunities not only in traditional Finance, but in this completely for them is you world Frost is kind of like we've been like kind of like a been here for a while and trying to spread the message.
Absolutely, when you think about what you're building it is decentralized finance. It's on The Cutting Edge if it is successful, it will disrupt a lot of what goes on in the traditional world. How do you think about interfacing with that Legacy world with any of the Legacy banking institutions? Is it something where you just say? Nope, we're not even going to you know, really worried about them and we're just going to go build our thing and if it disrupts that it disrupts them, but they kind of have to catch us as the innovators or do you see ways that you can work?
With
them and interface with them that's in that kind of a win-win or a mutually beneficial manner.
Yeah, I think the idea World practically, you know for additional points in the central point is they pretty much need to work together in the sense. I think there's been kind of like many years that we have been doing this both things. We have different kind of terminology. We have different kind of culture. We have a very strong lean culture. That's the kind of like that's that's that's what that's the the product of the freedom if you can either wait and have fun at the same time and we
- I think you know why the fire is growing so fast and also like building protocols in general underlying principles as well. If you take a look at like what's the what kind of development there is actually in Bitcoin in the theorem protocol and Indie find General. I don't know about other protocols. I don't follow follow them. But you know, this is really what I actually like keeping my eye on in the reason that it's moving so fast.
Else is pretty much because the technology is open source, and anyone can contribute and that practically means that you know, it's there is no competitive modes. We all are there in the final war zone in a cute way. You know, we look at what others are doing. We try to improve our protocol and if you look at the only thing that matters is this constant Innovation and how your team is able to do an innovate constantly. This is the kind of thing. I'm looking
In our team and also like in other themes I'm trying to help in this space and if you look at traditional Finance, there's a lot of molds and this mode thinking is exactly what breaks but Warren Buffett and kind of the previous Financial kind of like Advocates are telling that you need to find your mode. But if I there is no modes, it's just like you need to constantly innovate and the only way kind of like you could see why it is you need to contribute as well. And this is what happens has
and it will explore because it's not anymore Linux that there's two and a half thousand contributors contributing for every release but a big part of those contributors are actually people working in bigger companies and contributing to Linux because its Mission critical software and I believe it's like teacher also traditional finance and banks are also contributing into this open source protocols and that's great for them as well because it kind of shifted the Legacy systems that they have into this kind of like a bit.
Back end of finance and they can focus of providing better services for the their own user base.
So when you think through kind of the regulatory framework, right, so we talked a little bit about interfacing with the banks and the cooperation there you guys have this kind of license in the British Financial system, maybe talk a little bit about the license that you have why that's important as you continue building this and then kind of how you think about even though it's decentralized, you know, kind of a nomenclature you still have licenses and so does that mean that all of defy will eventually come to have regulations around it or just how you think through that?
Yes, it's a practically what we have so there's two things there is the there's a decent-sized protocol that is running out and obviously on the ethereum blockchain and it's covered by the community a token of the community. But also we basically have an entity that is responsible for Integrations and building businesses on top of the product. Also, there's like two separate kind of like a thing and with this entity that we have in UK, we basically went and applied for electronics.
License and idea is there that we want to build gateways into the decent guys finance and that means practice that means for the mainstreamers that actually don't have direct access to be quiet. They could actually convert their pounds dollars euros into stable points and then interest-bearing stable points and get the defy exposure. But in terms of like tribulation, these are two different things and kind of like it boils down to this bigger.
Russian like like how to regulate protocols because if you think about it, so it's a Bitcoin is protocol if there is a protocol and defy the different ways the different protocols. They are they're all Financial protocols in one way or another and they have something inflation which is kind of way to reward the upholders of the network and then maybe five protocol stay they have just wider functionality than let's say securing a network. What what are
system dots are contracts basically Securities lending and borrowing laterals and support So in this sense, like if you think about all of this season first protocols, it's kind of like an ocean and I think like when you comes to regulation, what's the best thing and most efficient regulate is actually the port's that provides access to the ocean and that's the kind of like exchanges of the world and and the front front ends that take custody of the user funds and I actually believe this might be actually happening is that
At the bigger, the biggest ports will be those centralized participants that are having now. Let's the centralized exchanges or centralized lending services. And I think those will be in the kind of like a Gateway is to defy.
So when you think about the biggest obstacles right is for the developing of this ecosystem and specifically Ave and decentralized protocol that you're building. What are the biggest obstacles or challenges moving forward?
Yeah, I think on a phone one of the biggest issues in my opinion is definitely that we are trying to build like we're trying to use the same security into you know, all the transactions that we have. For example, if you take a look at the Bitcoin Network, so what's interesting about Bitcoin is that you know, you have this network that uses the most sound and kind of like a security method to ensure the sort of value, right? So practically it's very difficult to break.
Protocol because of the consensus mechanism and you're using electricity to kind of execute the network and that's that's very good in terms of likes likes historical value. And when we look at for example, what's going on in 30? Mm. What's interesting there is that, you know, all the transactions are not equal. So let's say you might have trading functionality or you might have lending a borrowing you might have actually gaining their Collective.
Abel's so it's just like operator operating system where you can have any kind of an application. It depends how you code it. And what's the challenge there is that it's kind of like a traffic jam at the moment because everyone wants to build and use the same signal level of security which practically means that you know, the network gets congested congested and everyone is paying the same price, which is actually the high price. So now they're kind of like a question. Is that how we solve the scalability? So how we can
Applied to security where you needed more and apply less security where you actually don't need it that much. This is like where the discussions of later to scold me. So for example, if you have site change on the video that you actually can't actually do most of the transactions and settle into the etherium network and and keep the state that way so I think that's the kind of like a parent challenge that we have in the whole ecosystem.
Got it. And then when you think about the user experience for the user interface, obviously when you compare it to I don't know. Let's say square or Robin Hood, right? Maybe the functionalities different but just the kind of slick design the gamification. There's so many things that they've done really well that make it dead simple for users to use those kind of fintech platforms defy Bitcoin, etherium and kind of all of the products. They don't have a lot of
Same kind of design superiority if you will. Is that going to change how will it change what is needed to kind of drive that change just kind of talk a little bit about you know, what's going to happen from user experience that your user interface standpoint?
Yeah, so definitely like to be and like few years ago. I mean that users because we have more horrible. So it was so difficult. You don't have even a stable coins and and it's very like everything was way more conquer but then so we have we have improved quite a lot. But even I like in terms of like user experience, it's not that super actually bad because you know depositing into Ava is just one one transaction away if you have already
Assets in your wallet, I think like an assembly if you want to swap though cancers, very easy way to do it in for example in balancer and so would but they kind of challenges like how do you enter into space when you are not like crypto native. So for crypto native people like you needs it's just like it's that simple right but then it when I go to someone else your friend, isn't it ecosystem like how they will understand and how to understand to start the season. I think it's a question also,
A bit about education. So I really like the way it recently on what elements actually tweeted that you know, you should kind of like avoid avoid wallets where you don't have the keys because that's the kind of like a thing and I don't think actually you need to avoid and you need to choose but that's like the main thing that people need to be educated them. And I think like in terms of like the approach while Robin Hood and how they're approved at the
The kind of like these experiences because they those applications were invented to to basically fix the user experience the same way as Financial technology fintech is invented to improve the normal banking experience and what if I was invented and let's say they're in Bitcoin. It was invented actually to fix fix the back end completely. So the approach is completely different like we came here to fix like what actually is very Legacy system and make that
Better and now we're working our way like down all the way to the user experience, which is kind of like now the last part that is going to get fixed and it feels like Robin Hood's they actually started from the user experience. So they kind of they have an interesting approach there and that's why I like, you know, they get traction but we're working towards fix it that it's the last step but it's the most important one.
I love that if you zoom out you look 20 25 years from now talk to you about the future of D Phi. Is it the dominant Financial system is everything decentralized. It's all open protocols and users are using it. You know and of the centralized system is completely forgotten and they've had a transition to the D fire world. Is it a coexistence? What does that world look like and kind of how do you just think about the future of defy, you know, 20 25 years out?
I think what will happen is that default will be quite big so definitely like it will be a kind of like an ocean but put it the ocean and you could plug in you could draw liquidity from from this ocean and you can supply liquidity, but I don't think like I don't think it's replace is completely like centralized providers of centralized Finance because in essence like it definitely brings efficiencies, but kind of like you don't want to put everything on
Because it's costly and in some cases you want to use a database and you know instead of just literally clean in the main chamber and I'm also the financial transactions might happen in a trust Network. So let's say if you have Circle you have revolute, you know, they could interact between each other by using the the the book chain. But also if they have a trust Network and they have funds in that's a bit coin instead of you. They could also decide between each other that
Hey, we trust each other. So let's just move database numbers and save some transaction cost and we both have like a good relationship. So it doesn't need to bolt down all the way to practically that let's have all the databases in blockchain because you know, you won't have to apply that security costs and I'm not sure all the like Dennis of people want to you know, pay for that and but we're pulling power a lot of people. So now if you take a look at the a tokens
Simple it actually is a permissions Global savings account. So anyone who holds that those tokens are actually getting used the nominated yield. So they actually have a access to stable currency. You have to be nominated in that increases in balance. And that's what whole thing. Especially in places where you have local Garden see that sucks completely and like has this kind of like huge inflation and I think it's
it wouldn't power but a lot of people and I think we're looking at other we do very well in the deposit side. And now where we kind of like are trying to work is in the empowering solid how we can make under clatters moans and how we can make this system work in Empower people and I think Defy is just one thing. I mean, there's more in life than Finance, right? So it's pretty cool that if you can Empower things that are known defy related NSD space greater economy, you know, like traders that are creating art.
Accessing to the spacer to labor and helping their out and of chain as well. So I think like there's way more cooler things than finance and I hope that we can Empower it to some extent.
Absolutely. What do you think is the other interesting projects in the space? And even a ton of Angel Investing and you probably can't name all of them that you think are interesting but just two or three that off the top of your head you find fascinating valuable and worth paying attention to I think the project it's called para swapped. So subtracting what they're doing is they're I mean if I like what it is all over the place you have this this like the essentialist exchanges at the working order book passion, which are
Look at the tears and then you have this kind of like automated market makers such as for example balancer you just hop still so there you just provide the quality and then other water users could just swap their Assets in and what virus will be doing is that they're pulling all this liquidity into one place. So you just don't need to chop work or where you liquid attend. Just make sure the exchange assets without getting this slippage so
This is like a very powerful thing because it actually like Pulsar the liquidity to one source and you can integrate that into whatever you're building if you want to access defy the quality and I think there the interesting part is that they they do it in a very gas efficient way. So that's that's something that they're very proud of and I don't know project which is quite what's fascinating is called opium Network.
So it's very name is a bit funky. But what they actually do is they do their evidence on chain. And what's interesting there is that they have a system where they can list different kinds of Biggers and actually provide Insurance in form of because insurance is derivatives. And that is what the device base needs at the moment. So when we have institutions, they are looking that what you know, if they're if they're depositing into all that they're kind of like
Quantify what's their risk how they how they can reach their risk. And that is why I like each experience plays quite big role in space. So those two things are for me something that's has been been progressing recently white fairly. Well, absolutely before we finish up. I asked everyone the same three questions. The first is what is the most important book that you've ever read?
Most important I think like recently I would say the books name was Empire of cotton and and you know interesting there was because it was a cotton as a kind of like Community, you know, we all were Autumn. So practicing was like how it affected kind of like otherwise over the centuries and like how it has been like part of everything that's almost everything that's happening in this space and it's
Just just tell about cotton but it also tells about like instrument in general. So let's say how done is just a community in one way. We see like the currencies as a community or whatever. We're creating and how it plays like little importance in our culture. And I think like that was one of the important books and I don't read much like that's I have to say it out loud because I would love to read but it's just like being in this space. It's just like horrible.
Like if if anyone is going to be if I like like don't like thank think twice you will like have no personal life. So, you know, this is something you think of very seriously, I love it. The second one is more personal sleep. I I've got friends over at eight sleep and they've convinced me to to not sleep five or six hours but more like 8 or 9 and they've built an awesome product Suite including this Thermo regulated bed, which
The last you make it hot or cold I sleep super cold and I absolutely love the product and have gotten much much better sleep because of it. What's your sleep schedule and kind of has that evolved over the years? Yeah, so I have to say the sleep is the most important thing for me. So if I if I can't get enough sleep, I like my my performance gets it's going to be very very very weak. So it really like if I don't get like enough dream or you know, if like rest like I definitely will
you will be like a weak person and it's just something like it's very frustrating for me because you know, it's sometimes I need to wake up middle of the night and help someone and in or just like I have long days and you know early wake Up's and it's just killing me because I know that I'm kind of like actually to myself because I can't function properly and and this is something is very difficult. So I think sleep is the most important.
And you need to have and if you see sleep, well, you can actually have more healthier diet as well because you know, you don't your body is working better biologically. So I think that's that's something I also if someone is looking coming to defy you might say that it's not easy is it
Get some sleep sleep is is completely converted me. I like to joke that I'm a convert to The Sleep religion. So I'm all in on it. Last questions more fun. Aliens. Are you a Believer or non-believer?
I achieved believe that there might be some other people looking maybe like us who are not like us it's definitely there might be somewhere. I haven't seen any so that's the problem. Like I I would like to see at some point if there is but the probably issues that traveling from other place like take some Zone time, but not to sound too crazy crazy person. I mean, there's very small plot of value in the protocol at the moment. So I would say that I believe what
I haven't seen any any anyone that looks suspicious absolutely not suspicious.
What a
one question do you have for me to finish up and get asked me. Well, what do you got for me?
yeah, maybe I will ask you kind of like
a question about what do you think about defy?
Yeah, look, I think that it's very obvious that decentralized Finance is going to be you know a thing right and it's probably going to be the main thing. I think that there's lots of people who want to put me into different buckets, right, you know for years. She will be like, oh, he's a Bitcoin maximalist and I've always kind of been said no, I actually don't think that I am it's just more so that most of the things that I saw in the very very beginning of defy frankly just seemed
Sustainable to right and so one of the the examples I always use is if you go back to 2010 to like 2015. There's a ton of companies in Venture that would go and they brag about look at how fast were growing. Look at how great our growth rate is and then what you would realize is like they weren't actually growing fast on an organic standpoint. They were simply just spending a bunch of money to drive users. Right? And if you look at like the direct to Consumer companies all that kind of stuff, so when they shut off the advertising growth shut off.
And so what I think that you know, let's look at like yield farming. For example, one of the big kind of knocks I've had there is saying look it's unsustainable to Simply say hey, if you come use our product we're going to give you, you know, 200 300 percent annualized returns because they're essentially just using paid marketing. It's a new version of paid marketing once I stopped doing paid marketing then like that kind of mercenary type User. It's just going to go find who's paying three hundred percent today, right? There's going to go run to the next one and kind of just beat the protocol to do it again.
That doesn't mean that it's defies not going to work. It just means that like that specific application. Another thing that I've been very kind of critical of is I see it's right and so in 2017 and into 18, I kept telling people like look people are going to get in trouble for this stuff. It is the sale of unregistered Securities the United States. I don't think that that's the best thing that people should be doing there for like be careful. And again, I think people took that as like, oh he's anti, you know Innovation, whatever.
Just calling how I see it and ended up being right on that. And so with all that said of like I've been very very critical of some parts of It ultimately I look at decentralized Finance as if you take everything in the traditional world, everything is going to get digitized. We're going to digital stocks bonds currencies and commodities that's been my thesis for years where that plays out. I think is where a lot of the debates like when people say like, what do you think about defy like everyone's good debate like what technology second gets built on to me? It's like before we even get into
That debate is just like of course decentralized Finance is going to be a thing like you got to be an idiot to not think that at this point what that entails though. I probably have a nuanced view right like digit digital decentralized money. Right a kind of an open protocol like Bitcoin to me is defy rights like that is decent part of decentralized finest. It's not the totality of defy, but it's also not excluded from defy right? It's one piece of it. You've got to have decentralized kind of sound money then if you start to go and you look at let's take what you're building.
Ding or maybe with Eunice swap or something like that. Like I always just say the people. I don't think I'm smarter than the market right and like you can't argue against six billion dollars locked in value. You can't argue against, you know, take a Yuna swap where they're doing between 600 million to maybe a billion dollars in annualized fees on that exchange. Like those are big numbers that are very very compelling. And so I think that everyone gets caught up in this like religious War to some degree and to me it's just like
Look, I actually don't care if it gets built on bitcoin. It gets built on a theorem or gets built on some protocol that hasn't been started yet. Right like at the end of the day. I just know that we're going to have a decentralized open Digital Financial system and really just a digital open decentralized system in general not just Finance but kind of everywhere and so for me, like I'm not a developer like I'm not going to be the one to go build the kind of overarching dominant platform instead. I just want to understand
Who's building? What and where is the market adopting things and then just go and accelerate what's already happening right as an investor and kind of someone with a large audience. That's my greatest contribution is I can provide capital and then I can provide distribution from kind of an awareness and user acquisition standpoint. It's I've been spending a lot of time kind of just trying to understand you know, what's working. What's not working kind of what's do people think of sustainable. What do people not take a sustainable. But you know, it's just a foregone conclusion if you fast-forward 20 25 years.
At like everything is going to be decentralized. Everything is going to be digital and everything is going to be on these open protocols. I think that just people get caught up in like the debate today of you know, which one wins on this factor that fact that the end of the day like a lot of them are doing different things. Right? Like it's you wouldn't say that obvious competing with Eunice walk. You wouldn't say that Ave and Unisom / compete with Bitcoin pray like those are all different things going after different use cases, they have problems. And so I think that people just have to remember that like the world is not as black and white as they want it to be and the new
Is important here so that's kind of my general thoughts on.
Yeah, it's definitely a game you do those were pretty good points. I mean like you have different kinds of protocols and different kinds of applications and and I think the price but of like wider than we see and that's something that people need to go over with this kind of a tribalism because like there's like there's so many things to build, you know, so many people to help it just does make sense to stop kind of like in you know, push back because there's just there's just Innovation and opportunities.
Everywhere like it and you can build them very well. And that's the cool part. Absolutely. I completely agree. Where can we send people to find you on the internet or find out more about Ave?
I think that on the Twitter all the others or handle so so following that is there's a lot of stuff are this court. You'll find out this court are as well. I'm not calm you will find rates and also are those social media telegram. I'm pretty active myself. It's great people get quite amazed that they can actually reach me out and I like to keep it that way, you know con con, you know be discussing whole day on topics, but
No, but but still I like I love to talk to people. So that's pretty cool. I love it do a fantastic job people obviously find it valuable. So keep going and let's do this again in the future.
Yeah, definitely. Thanks for having me here.
