Living a DeFi life with Monolith

Transcript

[Music] okay

Oh alright are you ready to go I'll start

off with something very different so now for some reason we live in a world where I felt the need to bring this over from the UK it's kind of crazy really add this is its new the it's a pneumonic merch see it's got the logo on it yeah it kind of shows how how easily the world can like change in a fundamental way right we're like what's happened in the last month it's kind of

it's kind of bizarre and I think that's kind of true for what we're doing in our industry as well so let me start off by saying my name is Mel Gelman I'm the co-founder and CEO of this company called monolith and yeah what we're doing kind of revolves around something also that is transcendentally difference which is you know what you guys are working on right we've we've literally witnessed in the last 12 months we've witnessed the birth of a new literally of a new type of economy right an

economy that runs in parallel to the world to the world economy that we have today and yeah like it's it's growing exponentially it's growing a lot quicker than I originally had anticipated when I join you Syria and in fact I'm sure all of you have seen this but this is probably one of the most beautiful images like you could imagine where it's it's literally maps out the births of this organism right this thriving the synergetic writes more synergetic than the internet yeah it's like a living breathing thing and for all its shortcomings right it's it's still you

know where we're seeing RV like destroy it in some way or other to test its like limits fall it shortcomings it is still measurably better on a fundamental level than the world economy that exists today and that's kind of what we try to achieve with Mona's like literally what what like what monoliths is about is about this it's about the decentralized Assyrian economy right and what we're trying to do is we're trying to wrap this up into a consumer-grade experience right into a consumer-grade banking experience that you can actually live your regular regular life on aetherium

that you can literally abandon the old world economy and start to live your life in this new decentralized paradigm right yeah so we kind of describe this as a defy account to defy bank account perhaps and that probably includes a whole bunch of things that we kind of need to actually be able to say that you can one-to-one replace this with your bank today with your revolute or your HSBC or your like the big French banks I forget associate Asian era

that's a bank right yeah so yeah there's a whole bunch of things that we kind of see as being part of what what you would actually need to live in this new decentralized economy and that's this type of stuff so some of this we've already built so these are the green things we've built we've built a noncustodial wallets right where you're in control of your money yourself we've built a Visa debit card experience that allows you to do your daily all of the stuff you would do every day in the real world that you can actually spend directly from your decentralized the etherium accounts your urine your defy

accounts and we've just today added decks integrations into the wallet the orange stuff from the red stuff is stuff I think we can achieve this year in 20 and we kind of arrived at this point where we think we have like the basics to actually go out into the world and to tell people that there's this new economy out there and you can actually choose to be part of that rather than of something you know traditional right so some of the stuff are highlights here is

we're going to build that you can have your salary paid straight in right - rather than having it like you'd receive pounds or euros normally into your bank account but rather than having it you know be sent to some regular accounts and sitting there in pounds or yours we're gonna give you tokens straight away so and this would be this probably be compounding interest tokens even right rather rather than stopping at just giving you die directly we're gonna give you see die or chai or whatever your favorite flavor is of compounding interest token and like kind of the experience that we want is that a new

user someone outside of the space kind of has this basic experience where he knows he's maximizing the value of his money ultimately we need to there's a lot more we need to do to make this stuff simple for people we need to be able to compile your taxes we need to be able to do user privacy but that's all coming afterwards so even even the the stuff we've already built we've actually had to do a lot of stuff to get there so monolith was the first company in the FCS sandbox the AFC is the UK's regulator with them we showed that what we could do was basically not have

access to our user funds right and and this kind of blew their minds so what the FCA usually does is to have to worry about all these thin tech companies all these new challenger banks that are sprouting up that are doing interesting stuff but the risk is that if they go bankrupt all of the users that they had will lose their money and what we showed the FCA is that that doesn't have to have have to happen that in a worst-case scenario yeah our users would still be hole right and that kind of blew their minds our system is quite broad so on the one hand we interact with the visa network which is required a whole different set of skills to for us to develop versus the hearing network so for example for for

visa we've had to build a full-on AML checking system right we've had to show that we can make the etherium network safe to them so that means that even though we can't access users funds we can still see funds going into their contract wallets and we can track its provenance and so our pitch to visa ultimately was that we think we can that we can do anti-money laundry controls better than a traditional bank code because the traditional bank will only see the last step they can't see you know like revolutes can only see that

your money came from a French bank they can't see where it came before and we told these that because we can see we can trace funds from their inception ultimately we think terrorist financing and anti money laundry will be a lot better to check for on the blockchain and yeah we've built a lot more so on a yeah we've we've checked our system quite thoroughly with penetration checks and yeah like the largest audio all--it's we've spent a lot of money on

doing it properly and all of this is kind of starting to pay off so this is a chart of like the actual actual usage of our card so since each user has full custody of their own funds right in the moneth wallet you have all minding your own control when you want to use the card you physically have to send an etheric transaction from your own control to a back-end top-up service which is represented as a smart contract so this is the crypto float Doulton card or eath smart contracts you can find on isla stand and if you look at it this is what you see so here on the Left this is

when we first went live we had a closed beta for two months and then as you can see so this is literally people sending eath to this contract to top-up right in this onei and then the way to read this chart is that and more and more it gets added and then at some point we have to like withdraw that from the specific contracts to top-up are like Fiat reserves with visa but as you can see like the chart it you know like we reached the same amount of eve every time in a shorter amount of time and the growth is honestly sunning so like even

comparing the last two two months we've reached the same Fiat amount value and about half the time and this is yeah this is all without marketing this is purely growth within the theorem community people actually using our product day today I find this really interesting if you compare it to say like an exchange where most exchanges in our space then they'll have like huge peaks of activity during like you know when the price going up right and then like yeah years of nothing but what we've built is like it's basically

steady throughout right because this is actually a daily thing people are actually living their lives in this new economy and it doesn't matter what the price is doing and yeah I assumed in I was worried you can see and so another interesting aspect is that the tokens that people are using we I think we accept like 14 tokens right now by far almost all of it is stable coins or like it goes eath and then died and then I think like a quarter of the

amount of die volume is tether volume and then use DC or the other way around and it's quite amazing it's it kind of shows that yeah you know people aren't spending their crypto necessarily they're just spending the stable assets that they have and yeah I know I made the screenshot last night and I noticed that look since most for you since all of our users are in Europe it was kind of funny to see someone in the middle of the night top-up 300 like dollars worth for an adulteress kind of wonder what they bought I shouldn't be saying this so yeah and then this is the like the cumulative amount of money being spent

so this is how much is being spent every month so this is Europe so this month well February one hundred and twenty two thousand dollar euro was spent which is up from eighty three the month prior and like as you can see like all the curves are just crazy it's really encouraging yeah since we went live we seems you know like the people that get our products either they're amazing so this is a guy I like I like this I took this screenshot last night as well

he's French he says director of popular learned juvenile du coin la voila alpha the premier cast kitto the show the share monolith web 3 Java book VAR common common solitons transition the level all die so my friend is correct that means he's talking about transitioning from euro to die and I think that kind of vibe is is true for almost all of our users today right so this is Danny god bless him he's been doing crazy work and from RV

and yeah he uses our card he still wants he messages me every day to add a die we're working on that Stanny I promise yeah people using it someone else from from Danny's team joined a few days ago another French guy so these people are are literally the pioneers right like these people are some of the first people to actually live this life that you know I was originally promised with Bitcoin right so I joined Bitcoin like a

long time ago now because it promised this vision of a different world right this parallel economy that you know was separate from the government's and all the stuff where everything was transparent and decentralized but you know the reality was that an I quit University I cancelled all my bank accounts and they traveled the world with just the Bitcoin wallet in 2013 but the reality of Bitcoin was was that virtually no one actually lived that life right like no one you know we were all saying like bitcoins gonna take over the world but I don't actually like like lived and so that's what I think we've

achieved here today right that we've built this product that for the first time you know people can literally start to peer over the wall of like human suffering right and look into this world that we're only able to envision because of etherion right like aetherium has given us this insights into a society that goes far beyond what the the current systems of control could ever produce yeah I'm quite a radical and I desire nothing more than to like leave the old world

and like figure out how we can actually build a society that can take us to the Stars but there are some aspects there that need to be discussed so I'm going to give a few observations hold on to your butts so regulation is coming which I'm ironically kind of representing with Agent Smith you know like 1 billion dollars in defy is just about small enough to like fly under the radar right now if we want to reach you know in our case we want to reach 800 million

Europeans right we think this is the year that we can do that if we want to do that the regulation is inevitable it's the reality and we have a choice about how we approach that so it's going to happen no matter what either we stay you know like we we have this vibe about us where we just you know we want nothing to do with with with the government's like regulations and all the stuff and end up getting regulated right where they come in and they tell us what's gonna happen and and you know bull will pulley will be kicking and screaming and it'll be

awful or we self-regulate right we're you know and it should be obvious to everyone that that is by far better choice that we preempts it right but that means that going from 1 billion dollars in defy to 100 billion right going from 50,000 people in defy to like 500,000 yeah we're gonna need to take like to start thinking about this now and I'll just talk about you know like why regulation even exists in the first place so the reason is that because of without it bad

things can happen so does anyone know what this is or where this is it's a guess it's this is London during the industrial the Industrial Revolution so in London as in France across the San and across the tames loads of new industries were popping up right it was an economic boom but consequently this was a very new industry like ours and you know these companies they would just you know they would go about their business and they would you know dump their waste into the rivers right and so about 50 years off the Industrial

Revolution the Thames River was declared biologically dead meaning that there were no fish in the river anymore and you know today like obviously that's not the case anymore it's been a complete 180 and the reason is because of regulation right that companies were heavily taxed for polluting the environment and this you know like like regulation exists because we want to we want to disincentivize behaviors we don't like it's the same way that cigarettes have high taxes on them right there exists this idea that our industry

could be you know this like this like free-market mecca right that we could exist without regulation but I think we're kind of witnessing the opposite unfold before us so there's this crazy thing in our industry where like you know all the bitcoiners want Bitcoin to go to infinity right and there's even this maybe some of you know there's this thing called the Citadel where it's like this future society where like Bitcoin has gone to infinity and it's created this bizarre world imagine for a second that this does happen guys imagine if in

the Bitcoin does go to like the amount of electricity that Bitcoin would consume would literally be like the greatest modern climate disaster right and why like why we even doing that when we have new technologies like proof of steak or whatever even if you know group with bitcoins where it's a fork Bitcoin and make a proof of steak version the old Bitcoin would still exists you know and like people would still keep mining right and so you know this is the type of area where regulation is unfortunately needed it really is on the fringes right of of our industry just to make it work and yeah ultimately I'm

coming back to this image you know we need to really ask ourselves what is that world that we're building right right now it's the world that you know it's this this is the future defy economy it's decentralized as transparents it's trustless but imagine if we can say it's a whole a whole bunch of things more right and so yeah I'll give you so I really had a hard time deleting this slide so there's been a trend in our industry right where we've gone through certain

like chapters almost right now we're at chapter 2 and this is a chapter where we kind of are like using using up all the up all all the opportunities to like provide financial services without any without any like like data on the user itself right but imagine if in the future you know data exists for both and for both people and companies that you know allows you to get a mortgage that allows you to get a loan without you know with just your identity and you

know potentially so so I've highlighted contributes any movements and with that I mean that imagine if in the future there's a version of compound or a version of maker where you know that if you're lending your money out to this system the people on the other side the companies on the other side are are only companies that you want your money to be lent out to so let's say rather now where where it's all basically like people who want to like leverage like buy more crypto instead we go to a world where you can make sure that your money is actually being used for green energy right that all the companies right they've got some sort of NFT that's the only way to interact with this you know

this new compound version and you know if they have like a specific type of token then they can interact with it if they're a green energy company or a nanotechnology company or whatever well it would be amazing if we can build that because you know trust lessness and decentralization are only stuff that we care about not the regular world and if we can go to the regular world and say that here you know here's this new economy that we're building and oh by the way it's so much greener it's like equitable for everyone and it solves all these things I'm not gonna go into what it could solve because I think that's up to you guys and I think there's probably like much better people

to talk about this so yeah you know if we did our job right we could literally you know create this economy where people want to exit right our current system because they fundamentally understand that what we're building on your theorem is amazing imagine if one day we can say that you know you could become a citizen avi theorem and get like free health care or something right like that is something we could conceivably build but like that's not the type of you know direction things are going right now we're limiting ourselves very much the type of thinking and we can accelerate very quickly towards a much more interesting future

if we start to take this you know to like evolve our thinking about where where should we be going next and so then I'm gonna just finish off by talking a bit about what monolith is trying to do in 2020 so this is the year right like I started in E Theory m5a five six years ago I don't know and I did not expect that we would be where we are today with defy which is a new word as soon as we are right so and the fact that we can go out there into the world

today and say that hey you can get seven percent interest on your dollars or your pounds or euros as they are coming I believe and tokens from make it out like that's quite amazing right like that's something that you know it's not just about technology anymore it's about like here are these practical things that anyone like would want right like you can tell anyone in your family who doesn't care about the stuff you've been talking about for the last five years but that's something they'd be interested in and so for us this is the year that we can really go to the general public and and we're optimizing for Europe

right we don't want to water down our experience like trying be everywhere no no we think we really have to compete with the best challenge of bank services here such as revolutes such as Monza or whatever and yeah I think we have to get a little better at our user experience others are you know like we've were very back-end technology focused right now and yeah there's a it's gonna be it's gonna be interesting we want to be the first defy Bank basically so because ultimately the reality is that um you

know the endgame here isn't trying to build for you guys as much as I love all the people who are as passionate about the space you're like dedicating their lives so this to this industry and you know like we're all like this intermediate step right the reality is that most people in the world just you don't give a about how finance works right it's it's the last thing they will think of that and so if we can just provide this experience where you know we just maximize their value right like like in the office we're just joking about like how the only thing people care about it's just number go up any number go up and so let's try and build that type of experience and like

the type of thinking that were applying to that is rather than having the portfolio view which every crypto wallet has had right we're at the top of your wallet you have this number which is like the balance of all the assets beneath it like let's scrap that and why don't we just put one central currency in the middle of the experience such as chai right well you know that if you get your salary paid in go straight to chai maximize your value you only have to understand that and then without spoiling too much about world building we'll be able to provide a very incremental and you're quite a fun experience about learning about the rest of the industry from their own

so yeah it's all about you guys right like we're building this portal right I love this graphic we made it Lycia last week we're building this crazy port right we're gonna go out there into the world freak people out a little bit we're gonna tell them there's this new economy and that they can get all this amazing stuff but the amazing stuff that we can tell them depends on what you guys build right what is this economy that that we're building let's make sure that we get you know we really do try and make it you know the society we actually want to live in and because yeah we're not necessary always thinking

like that and then yeah new update rolled out other any users here anymore let users yes amazing thanks guys so yeah today Dec swaps were added so you can wish you interact with virtually every debt and I mean the broadest sense of the word decks because it also includes like interacting straight with compound and straight with like the the underlying defy anyway a lot of good stuff is coming I can't take too much credit for it like we have a few team members in the room like these are the

people bringing you monoliths right building monolith for you yeah thank you thank you for listening [Applause] I'm happy to take a few questions if there are any questions go ahead yeah so it's available in the European Economic Area I'll repeat the question so everyone can hear where's where's the card available so yeah in the EA that's the technical word I like to say Europe

because I don't think most people know what the EA is that it just means that everywhere in Europe except for Switzerland yeah sorry sorry as far as other jurisdictions go I think we're trying to you know we're trying to build this core experience that resonates with people first we're trying to nail it first right the types of questions we're asking interning is like you know like if you have a wallet right you've probably got like five cards in it and what makes you pull one card out of the wallet over the other right all these reasons are very subtle right like with

a big old traditional bank you know it's always gonna work you know with like a fancy new bank it makes you feel a bit cooler right maybe one of them does your transaction analysis better what we're trying to figure out is how we can like kind of be an order of magnitude better than every other card in your wallet right and this will be done through defy right we have to think about what aspects of defy Qui introduced that experience that you always pull out your monolith card yeah any other questions yeah is there or will there be fiat on that yes yeah it's exactly so so that's what it when I said

salary and salary in that is what I meant so this we're gonna give you like I'm not gonna give a timeline but soonish forget soonish like first half of the sea for sure we're gonna give you an Iban and a sort code account number see that you can you know give it to your employer or whatever right and have and and again unlike every other service in the world today basically the moment the fee at your pounds are yours hit that that account number they're not gonna

sit there right we're immediately gonna convert that to like you know euro or pound I write or chai or whatever right or no gold if the apocalypse happens right and put it straight in your wallet well you can we what like what we fund what I fundamentally want is just an experience where I'm not holding on to use of funds right and so we can we can still give you Fiat but it'll be in the form of a token right so yeah I don't know how if this is public knowledge but

like there will be really good decentralized versions of not just a dollar which we have today but also pounding euro they're obviously all gonna come right they're gonna come in the next 12 months and so as our users are all in Europe it's kind of painful if we have to give them die because it's a dollar based account we're gonna do that regardless we're gonna give them you know see die but ultimately what we want is that you know it's just a financial experience like you're used to right with the currency you understand but it's got compounding interest on it and so that means we're gonna give them you know hopefully euro die or pound I do you feel that like like we're all comfortable with having euro die or

whatever but people that are not comfortable with crypto yet do you think that they will have enough yet that they will be comfortable with having everything in the token that is not really yet proven on a mainstream level yeah I mean I guess they're they're probably that's a great question you know like we're gonna have to figure out on the one hand we have this huge pool which is you can get compounding interest which is more than any other place you can get like even in the FinTech world there are cases where you can get like seven eight percent on like peer-to-peer loans right like that's similar to die but the difference is your money's locks up you can't you know one block later withdraw it on like use

it right so that alone is going to be a huge pool and indeed yeah like for some people that's gonna be enough for other people they're gonna want more insurance assurance and so the you know this stuff we can do there like insurance but yeah you know like at the very least what is be true but the theorem economy is that it's anti fragile right so our traditional economy if something happens you know like everything kind of collapses in cascades with the theorem economy because everything is open because everything is transparent all

attack vectors are tried right it's it's like this stuff is battle tested and so assuming that die you know like dying is existed for a while now it's the biggest bug bounty in the world basically yeah the assumption is that it's only gonna get better over time but yeah there's still risks any other questions how would you compare on the list with the Twala for example for also because a few I know no exact imperatives on it the fuser actors who provide banking cards credit cards so

debit cards actually with a firm account how would you compare monolith with some of these actors yeah so what makes monolith fundamentally different is that our experience revolves around being noncustodial that we don't have access to your money right now this is unquestionably an idea that's gonna catch on right I think people even the few few thousand users that we do have they definitely trust us a lot more than they trust some completely unregulated you know dodgy crypts of company based you know on some Cayman Island right with their crypto

right because that's how the world works today virtually every exchange we've just built the Uni swap equivalent of a bank account right where we don't have access to your money right in the same way that unislope doesn't have access to your funds it's not sitting there like with finance or with a Kraken or something and so I think that's where it starts that is a foundational difference ultimately we're also not about you know like spend crypts are right like this whole pump-and-dump vibe that a lot of these other projects have we're mainly focused on etherium well only focus on a game and that's because you know we think almost everything else isn't actually that interesting you know like the only

thing like we're going to have to build a very compelling economy on aetherium for it to actually start to draw in regular people's attention right and we're just optimizing for that we want to give people the very best experience from this decentralize economy you know what where we want to get to is that you know ultimately we can give people a better mortgage on their house than a traditional bank can right so yeah that's our focus just this decentralized economy maximizing the value for normal people yeah last question yeah yeah what's there

someone in the back okay I'm not sure thank you guys very much [Applause]