Inside Robinhood Chain with Seong Lee

Transcript

What's happening, guys? I'm your host, Patrick here with Defi Dave. What up? And this is the fully What's up, Dave? This is the Fully Fested podcast brought to you by Defi Llama. Uh, this was a really cool episode. Uh, we're re-recording an intro cuz we first recorded this episode about a month ago with Song, the head of product for Robin Hood crypto. And we talked about the vision behind Robin Hood chain. We talked about some of the adoption then and I think there's actually even more adoption since we recorded it. Uh what do you think about this Dave? What do you think about Robin Hood chain?

>> I think this is really interesting because it's basically a time capsule. So I want the viewers and listeners to keep in mind this was filmed a month ago. Uh listen to what song has to say and see how much their vision has come true. Um I think you know saying that it's taken off is an understatement. With Robin Hood chain, you're basically seeing like every class of crypto user, whether they were DeFi people, farmers in 2021, whether they were Salana Trenchers in 2024, they're all uniting and they're all like playing against each other. You know what I mean?

They're all like playing and like you're seeing new and I you're seeing new primitives come up like stock tokens and things being built around those primitives that are like a blend between the two. So it's really it's really something to see Rob into a chain and it's really great to have on the head of product to explain the vision uh like this like in a time capsule man formative. >> Yeah, >> learned a lot back then. Hope you guys learn a lot now. Let's get into it. Let's But before we get into it, make sure you go ahead, you subscribe, you follow, you comment, you reply, you like, and if you want to get deep into the numbers, make sure you go and sign up for Llama AI in the description below. [music]

Welcome back to the fully vested podcast by DeFi Lama. We have with us today Sun Lee, the head of product for Robin Hood crypto. Robin Hood chain has been taking off probably one of the hottest narratives over the past few months. We've been tracking it on DeFi Lama and so today we're hoping to dive into the story behind the chain. And we've also got with us DeFi Dave just >> perfect timing. >> What's going on? >> Wow. Not much. Uh you know just working uh doing you know getting on this pod.

Really excited for it. really excited to hear about everything Robinhood chain going on because you really have taken the world on chain by storm. >> Yeah. And um I that the timing was so good I don't want to redo the intro but to recap for you Sly head of product Robin Hood crypto. Um son do you want to share a bit about yourself and kind of what you've been working on with viewers? >> Absolutely. And uh thanks for thanks for having me here. Um you know we've been working on quite a few things here at um Robinet Crypto. Um, you know, as you mentioned, we launched uh the Robinet chain about 30 days ago on July 1st. We actually did it um in the UK. And alongside that, um a couple of very important um features as well, including

our stock tokens product, um a permissionless stock tokens product native to the Robinet chain. um major improvements to our Robinet wallet, which is a fully self-custodial crypto wallet that allows users to access the Robinet chain alongside um many other chains as well. And then finally, our Robined Earn product, which is the first embedded DeFi product in the main Robined app, where users through a self-custodial wallet within the Robbed app can access a decentralized lending protocol called Morco. So, uh yeah, quite a few things we have got uh going

on here. So, very excited to to chat through things. >> Absolutely. No, we're definitely happy to have you. Um so first I I mean I think a lot of people who are in crypto or DeFi are familiar with Robin Hood chain at this point um on some level. Can you share a bit more about what's the vision there and um you know why why Robin Hood chain? >> Absolutely. So our vision for the Robin Hood chain is we think finance should and will be onchain and we want to build towards a world where when you are accessing everyday financial tools and even if it's not everyday institutional

financial tools doing that onchain is the best most transparent and ultimately the lowest friction way to do those things. And so what we really wanted to do with Robin chain is offer both the platform and the building blocks to build towards that vision. And we've done that with our chain um designed for extremely high throughputs, extremely low block times, 100 milliseconds. And the building blocks that we've initially launched with is our uh stock tokens product which gives developers in um the access to uh build whatever they want to on Robinet chain. Um and so yeah

it's a little bit about the the vision for for what we're building towards and why we are so excited about uh these recent launches >> and it's permissionless. Correct. >> And the stock tokens are permissionless. The Robinet chain is also permissionless >> and go ahead Dave. >> Yeah, I was going to ask so these stock tokens which absolutely makes sense since you are Robin Hood first and foremost. Uh so it makes sense the stock tokens are the one of the premier products. Can you go into what exactly the stock tokens are uh and how they work?

>> Sure. So the tokens are a debt security instrument that when you as a holder of the token you are entitled to the value of the underlying stocks that back it. These tokens are backed one to one by the underlying shares issued out of the uh lichenstein uh regul regulatory structure. And the best parts about this token are that obviously it's permissionless, meaning that if it's on DeFi, you can access these tokens and the underlying assets that they give you exposure to 24/7.

The second part about that is that they are bankruptcy remotes. Meaning that in the event that Robin for some reason, you know, is no longer here, you as the holder of the token through a third party objective security agent will be able to redeem the token for the value of the underlying. So these tokens are robust to whatever happens to Robin Hood. And so we've launched with about 90 stock tokens on July 1st. That's now expanded to 100 and we're working on adding many more to that.

>> You know, you know what this sounds like to me? This sounds very like stable coins. There's like the stock version of stable coins uh and how they are on chain and how they function if anything and especially in its structure like this. I think this is a good way for people to imagine uh what these stock tokens are. >> Definitely. And the way that we think about these tokens is that they are going to enable new types of financial applications just as stable coins did in DeFi that we don't know of today that just don't exist because um yeah it hasn't been easy to get access to these >> and for people who have never used

crypto before and maybe like like they don't care about onchain offchain what should they be excited about with these stock tokens like what might they be able to do now or in the future with some of these tokens? >> Great question. And the thing I do need to clarify is the stock tokens are available in most jurisdictions. There are a list of restricted jurisdictions. They are not available in and very publicly disclosed on our documentation. the the part that we're most excited by for uh investors that have never used crypto before is that these stock tokens, you can access them now 24/7

uh mostly no matter where you are in the world. So, the part that's really exciting to me personally is that even in some jurisdictions where there are local brokerages that offer you access to stocks, the path to even getting access to those stocks from converting your local currency to US dollars and then paying the local broker fees are extremely high. Whereas with a stock token, depending on however you're accessing these onchain, the fees are low. All you need is a stable coin to be able to swap into the stock token. And you can again do this 24/7, which is uh a level of access that just didn't exist

before. >> Yeah. And one thing I can imagine too is seeing these stock tokens used on lending markets being used as collateral. uh which for the more advanced TFI haggs is something you know I'm sure they're excited about in the future. >> Definitely we're we're excited for all types of use cases to to come out of the the building blocks that that we that we've launched. Yes. So the inverse of my question which before I was asking you know for people who aren't cryptonative why should they care for people who are existing crypto users um and I've seen the stats you know many of them have moved money over to Robin Hood chain but from your perspective for people who are past existing crypto

users why should they be excited about what you guys are building and like what might they want to use with it >> definitely so it is early days it's been 30 days since we launched the chain and the stock tokens So, I can't speak to all the use cases that we think are going to come out in the future, but if you're an onchain investor, trader, or even an institution that wants to hold your assets on chain without converting it back to fiat and back to traditional rails, stock tokens are the best way to do that today. And even when it comes to certain tickers like ESV um which offer you know a different type of exposure you have a

variety of choices now to diversify your assets onchain versus what you had before. Um I don't know all the use cases that are going to come out in the future but I expect there to be many many more. And the reasons for why an onchain native trader or investor or you know firm will want to access stock tokens is really only going to grow exponentially from here. >> Yeah. And we've definitely seen that over the past year on other venues. Uh so it makes sense that this evolution is happening. Like something I was saying to a friend yesterday, it seems like crypto and crypto infrastructure was a midwife for all these tokenized RWAs uh coming on chain. I we spent years

building the infrastructure from the actual blockchain stack to the application layer, everything in between. Uh and now everything's and then now there's been more clarity, no pun intended, about like what you can and can't do from a regulatory perspective. So it just makes sense like now is the time for Bob Hood chain to come out uh with stock tokens uh and with you know hopefully other things in the future. >> Definitely. And uh like I said, we're excited to see all the use cases coming out in the in the future and uh we're we're here to help uh encourage that for sure.

>> Yeah. And um you know, I know we've been talking about the future a lot, but now I want to bring it back to the present. Uh in this current moment, what uh have you been seeing in terms of activity on Robert Chain? And uh what do you think is driving that growth? That's a great question and it's definitely something that I'm very excited to be able to answer because what is exciting about Robin and Chain and the activity that we're seeing right now is that it's a pretty well diversified set of things that are happening and from and the part that's even more exciting is that it's happening from a well diversified set of user types as well. So, as I mentioned, there's our Robin Earn product which

enables users on Robin to natively access decentralized lending protocols. And these types of users may never have used crypto before. And while you may not see that in the transaction volume because lending actions are not high transaction, they're high um AU transactions but low volume. uh we we are seeing a very significant portion of Robin Hood chain's TVL come from these types of users that again may not have never may not have ever used crypto before and then you're seeing RWA transactions our stock token volumes are definitely taking a very large portion

of all onchain related stock token volumes um and the last part is organic activity that's happening on the chain uh which I'm sure everyone here is well aware of u that you know and and that's exciting to us. We're uh here to encourage all types of developers to be building on the chain and I'm happy to see that it's not just one type of activity that's happening right now. >> Um I'm going to pull up some numbers real quick just to give people watching a sense of like the scale of what's going on. So, this is DeFi Llama's Robin Hood chain page, and current numbers I'm seeing is TVL $435 million in DeFi apps, cumulative

$16 billion in DEX volume, and nearly $600 million in stable coins on the chain. >> That money is moving. >> And money's moving. I know. So I I always say that like it's important to look at volume and especially stable coin market cap cuz it's very like if you have just stable coin market cap it's tough on its own because all that money is basically real right it's not like you know it's it's it's backed by dollars. Um you can have deposits but then like if you also have volume means there's also activity so money is moving around. Um uh besides the stuff you mentioned, anything else that you think is like driving this growth and and genuinely like you know you can see that deposits

have just been kind of steadily climbing over the past month. Um I think the the main the main drivers of activity are probably the three I mentioned so far in the tools and we again it's very early days 30 days since launch um and we expect uh the use cases that are growing on the chain to >> to be very different from where we are today and by the end of the year. So we should be seeing a uh any single activity become less as a percentage of what's driving activity on the chain.

>> That's always a good way to be. >> I have another question from the builder perspective. Uh because you know a lot of builders are seeing this activity. Uh they may want to hop on Robin Hood chain but they don't know how. Um, what is the best path you think for builders to actually go ahead and build on rapid chain uh and you know get get the attention either get the attention you guys or get the attention of the community? >> Great question. I'm a product guy obviously. So I think the first answer that I have is build a really great product that you are really excited to put out there. And right now we've seen on the Robinet chain applications that

didn't really have a history before Robinet chain. They weren't live on other chains or anything like that deploy on the chain for the very first time and because they have a good product get a lot of adoption. And so obviously that's not a guarantee of any sorts, but um you know I'm I'm a product person. So I I think building the right product um for the right user and uh making doing your best to get the word out there is the best way to do it. In terms of how to tactically do that, there's uh obviously quite a bit of documentation that we've put out there on how to build on Robinet chain. We've made it friendly and easy for EVM devel

friendly developers to launch on the chain and also uh easy and friendly if you're not on if you're not familiar with EVM development to to to start developing on EVM. So plenty of resources that are that are out there including on our Robinchain.com like homepage as well. Yeah. >> Yeah. And I guess like uh another, you know, I've had a few conversations with other builders uh and I think one thing that was mentioned what they really like about Robin to chain is kind of like your basically your neutrality uh quote unquote and how you basically you know when uh building a chain you have options of how hands or how hands off you want to be uh in shephering the

ecosystem and Robin Hood has taken approach of being more handsoff than other chains. Um I'm curious like what you know what are your thoughts on the neutrality strategy and how it's actually you know as we've seen by the numbers from Patrick on DeFi Llama how it's benefited so far. >> That's a that's a good question. Our our focus for the chain is to one build the best chain for developers to be live on. And that is where we spend the majority of our time making sure that the chain is extremely performant at both a throughput level so that you know it can

handle a lot of transactions in any given moment but also that this chain is very very fast. And so that's our number one priority. Our our second priority is making sure that the chain is building towards and enabling the best building blocks for RWA development um both now and in the future. And that's what we think will give developers the best support to be successful on on Robinet chain. So I'd say that's how we are thinking about um making sure that developers get the support that they need on on the chain.

>> Yeah. Uh pivoting a little bit, do you want to share a bit more about Robin Hood earn product and your partnership with Morpho? So um to be clear, you know, our Robin Hooded earn product is a fully self-custodial product where users are able to themselves through a self-custodial wallet connect to uh a decentralized lending protocol in this case Morpho. Um and so it's it is a fully self-custodial experience. um and wouldn't say it's you know necessarily um as direct of a partnership in in that sense but I you know I think um the product is what we've done and focused

on is made sure that the user experience here is really really simple users can both understand the risks of the actions that they're taking um in this flow so as you go through it the disclaimers that we have and the the educational material that we have is is really abundantly clear for users, but also made it so that you you're not caught up in the typical setup you have to do with self-custodial wallets. And so again, this is a first fully embedded experience on the Rabbit main app. From a product perspective, we have to make sure that the UX here is on par with what users on the Rabbit app expect. And so that's um that's how we think about

it. And we're really excited today. users are earning 7% through the Robin Hood earn product by connecting through the decentralized vending protocol and um so far the reception has been really really great and um even from users that have not used crypto before this is the first time using it um yeah it's been it's been very exciting to see >> interesting now so do people choose specific vaults they want to deposit into or is it just one general pool and then it's somehow allocated kind of on the back end out of sight >> so As of today, it is we did only launch with one path, so one one vault. Um, but in the future, we uh expect that to be able to expand.

>> Okay. Interesting. Have you seen by any chance the um the risk data defa put out for Morpho recently? >> I don't believe I have. >> Okay. So, we we put this out for every Morpho vault. I think I think it's probably the most um [laughter] I I think it's probably the most um >> uh comprehensive like uh sort of risk. >> It's not it's not Jamie pulled that up. No, it's Patrick pulled that up. >> Patrick Patrick I'm pulling up the thing that I was [laughter] I was talking about. Um let me find a good example here. Okay. So I just I just chose the largest largest Morpho vault here. So, here's Steakhouse Prime, for example. Um, yeah, this is something we we just launched

like two weeks ago. Uh, but basically for for any Morpho Vault, uh, we're going to have this and and I don't I don't want to distract from talking about what you're doing, but I thought it was interesting, uh, tie-in. Basically, uh, rather than doing like an audit like most people do, what we do is we look at every every point of failure in the vault, whether that's like an oracle, whether that's collateral, and then say, okay, if this point of failure, like worst case scenario, what's the maximum you could lose? So, it's like if if this sequencer went out, the maximum you could lose would be 17% for this vault. um >> basically to help help people model risk and then also model like all of the all the trust assumptions. So that includes

the audits that includes any any assumptions as far as governance and snapshot proposers. It maps out all of the connections between like um basically all the trust assumptions you have if you're depositing into that into that vault. >> That's that's really cool. I I'd love to check this out. >> Yeah, I can send it to you. It's it's in our in our yield dashboard and again we have that for all I think hundred some morpho vaults now but interesting >> hopefully it's not behind a paid wall if >> no it's actually all free >> have to bug you for one [laughter] >> well feel feel free to bug but but but that uh the risk data is um publicly available >> very cool >> the only thing that's paid for is Llama AI which you can go down the description

below to the link and sign up now for Llama AI to get deep into the numbers on all the morpho vaults and everything in between. >> That is true. The the AI assistant that's that's because of token costs. Um token costs [snorts] you have to charge for that. Um uh anyways, so I I I know we're trying to keep this interview like relatively concise. Um like stepping back and thinking towards the next few years, what do you see as like the eventual outcome of the tokenized stock boom? Like what might the world of finance look like in 5 years? That's a great question. To me, what success looks like from a product perspective is, and you're seeing the inklings of this

with the earn product where users can access a financial service or a tool um themselves through DeFi, self-directed, and they don't have to worry that it's onchain, DeFi. It's just a better product. And so to me, that's what success looks like for our RWA tokens where we believe tokens, tokenized stocks are a better way to access the underlying um instrument, the easiest way, the most accessible way 24/7.

And we think the best products are going to be built that way. And so to me, if you know a couple years from now, if majority of the world's investments retail or institutional are happening through RWAs and hopefully our stock tokens, but it's not like a stock token product. It's just how it works because we built a better product. That's exactly what we're aiming for. >> The convergence is real. It won't be DeFi Lama anymore. It'll just be F Lama if you [laughter] We we we we do have the llama.fi domain, but we use that for our API and stuff.

Um yeah, just finance llama. Um uh anything else that you really wanted to hit on today? So, >> um no, I think I think that's it. We're we're really excited for all the development that's happening on the chain, stock tokens, and all the all the excitement from developers in the community as well. And so excited to continue making our chain, our stock tokens, our wallet better and see this see this growing for the future. And hopefully a year from now or even end of year, the the place that we are and where we get to is very

different from, you know, what what we're describing today. So >> yeah. And where where can people find you? Where can people learn more about Robin Hood chain? >> Robin Hood chain uh is on our Robinood.com/chain domain. Um myself, I don't have a huge online presence, so uh yeah, >> he's busy on the products. He's busy on the product. >> Yeah. Yeah. Heads down, you know. So, >> yeah. >> Yeah. >> Heads down. Love to hear it. Um awesome. Uh any final words before we close it out? >> No. Thanks so much for having me and excited to be able to have shared you know what we're doing here >> and thank you everyone for watching this episode of Fully Vested. Make sure you go ahead share like repost comment follow on all platforms subscribe on all

platforms and if you want to get deep into the numbers go to the link below and sign up for Llama AI using DeFi code. Uh thank you so much for joining us song. Thank you.