Perps, Prediction Markets, and Payments with Relay, Fun, & Katana | Money Rails 2025 | Polygon Labs

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How we doing, lads? >> Very well. Very well. >> Excited to to chat about payments and perks and prediction markets. Literally three of my favorite things on Earth. >> So, that's going to be fun. Okay. Can we do a a quick self intro here? >> Hi, I'm Matthew. I'm working at Katana, which is a new layer 2 incubated by Polygon and GSR focused on DeFi and mostly leading the institutional liquidity and other initiatives related to that. Hi everyone, I'm Felix from fun.xyz. We do payment aggregation working with companies like Poly Market, Katana, and Relay.

>> Amazing. Uh I'm Pat from Relay. We uh are fast crosschain, same chain swapping. Basically making transacting across chains as simple and seamless as online payments. >> Okay. So simple, seamless has come up a couple times. uh you guys definitely are trying to abstract away a lot of what your products do and kind of make it simple and seamless. What do you think uh or what has what's the biggest point of friction that you think still exists and like that people would be surprised to hear?

>> I think it has to be the challenges to go, you know, multi-chain very quickly and very seamlessly. It can be a very binary choice for a user or a partner whether or not you have the support or integration to be able to get to a certain chain and to be able to kind of you know provide that to a lot of wonderful partners like fun and katana um I think has been really one of the reasons why relay has started to come out of its shell if you will. >> Okay. So sorry just so I'm clear this what what is the friction point? >> The friction point is is being able to write move your assets across chains. >> Okay.

>> Yeah. >> Okay. Relay solves that. >> We try. [laughter] >> They do a good job. Absolutely. Uh the other side we see is friction from legacy on-ramps. So there can be a lot of uh very traditional on-ramp providers where they'll have siloed KYC. It makes KYC sharing very difficult. And so as a user each time you want to use a new on-ramp, you're having to go through a completely net new experience regardless of how many times you might have used the site itself. So that friction can stay and crypto to crypto can be solved with places by like relay. you still have issues if you're trying to use a net new on-ramp provider that can be very frustrating for a firsttime crypto user.

>> Um, I'll give a non-technical answer, I guess, which is I think there's a lot of friction in terms of the trust of the industry and everything that's that's come with crypto and all these different hacks and exploits over the past few years. Uh, and people are just like scared, I think, to use crypto. So, I think that's a point of friction. >> Okay. Yeah, we're all we're all trauma bonded here together from the last few years of crypto, although it's gotten better. Um, but on that on that point about trust, how do you think about someone whether it's a a user or an enterprise for that matter, like what's how do you convince someone that what you're offering is a better solution to what what they're doing? Yeah, I think

it depends on the type of user and the type of audience you're you're going for. Obviously, analogies to like what they've already used before. Um, help kind of build uh I guess like competence and understanding of the product itself. Um, and then yeah, I think just making it as easy as possible for people to on board with partners like these people um on stage here with me. But I can think kick it over to them. Yeah, I think from our side, the nice thing about doing payments as high level as we do is you only real feel the friction of payments when something goes wrong. If it goes right, it means no one has any complaints and you don't even notice you're using potentially even crypto. So for us, the um that that that friction piece is is often removed. And if we do our job well, we're going to help drive

people to DAPs which are incredibly enjoyable and novel to use rather than have people think about taking steps to get through on ramping or uh swapping or bridging their tokens. >> And are you in those convers are you do you have enterprise um partners or are you mostly in like a DAP world? >> Yeah, we we we're looking into working with a lot of NEO banks as well at the moment. So you can imagine every NEO bank wants to be able to settle in stable coins or take stable coins in and not have a barrier there between fiat. The next stage from there is okay well people who hold stable coins probably also hold variable tokens. They might have Bitcoin, they might hold Salana and Ethereum. How can we work with those neo banks to make sure that any net wealth a user might have can also be assimilated

into the the neo bank or institutional world as well? >> Interesting. Okay. Trust. How do you how do you manage it? Uh I think working with you know a lot of our very very close partners and collaborators like fun to be able to provide ultimately a very very fast experience um whether you're going to Tron or whether you're going to an Ethereum L2 um it it needs to feel the same across the board just like you would expect in a web 2 environment um and to be able to kind of you know offer things like gas sponsorship or SLAs's for partners so that they have guarantees and can kind of you know trust you know when things do go wrong, we take on that risk and we will kind of you know make sure to kind of you know solve not to use a a literal term but

like solve things accordingly and make sure the experience for both the partner and their end users uh is you know as reliable as as they should expect. >> Yeah. And then at the chain level like the more the longer your funds are in the bridge the more times they get stuck all of that just deteriorates trust over and over again. So everything that they're doing to try to solve for that is obviously really important. Yeah, we're all responsible. What's the I actually had this thought after our live stream that I wanted to ask you. What's the oddest swap or bridge that you've ever seen and or like Yeah. What's the weirdest thing that you've seen come through on Relay? Not that you're watching the transactions, but just >> watching the transaction log. Um, I remember early on when I first joined

Relay, one of the wildest things was seeing, you know, someone who would be a pure competitor, if you will, >> who was using us to rebalance. >> Oh, >> which is wild. Okay. >> Um, but then I think like you'll just see insane sizes of transactions on these longtail chains and like the frequency of these transa I'm like, what are these users doing? >> Totally. >> It's honestly incredible. But uh you know I think we're we're very very lucky that we've you know been able to build that trust with you know partners and users alike.

>> Yeah. Okay. Um mainstream adoption is a a phrase that we hear all the time at things like this and um it can be uh to the point of exhaustion where we're like okay let's let's set this down. But I I'm curious obviously it's something that we all think about we all want. um what does it mean for your specific thing and like is it is it a number is it a vibe but like what's what does mainstream adoption mean for your product? >> Yeah. So you can think of katana as a chain or actually like a super app that's very like den focused and so uh it's hard not to see like prediction markets on stage and think of poly market and some of those kind of

applications which I believe like actually have hit it. Uh I think mobile is a huge key here and so uh for Katana's application once we kind of get to V1 and V2 and start innovating um seeing like that go up on the app store and these kind of things I think signals >> on the app store. >> Okay, that's a that's I I just feel like it's good to have like what's the black or white thing where it's like we've hit it or we've not hit it and I think on the app store is a great a great northstar. What about for you? I think from our sides, you know, we're we're integrated with Poly Market. So, we're already there where the majority of the funds are from a retail consumer lens in crypto. The next stage is how can we tap into web 2. Our mission statement is how

can you remove the technological barrier to entry for value exchange? Meaning, every time you go and purchase anything online, how can you use your entirety of your net wealth to be able to execute that transaction? For me, that comes into looking >> Sorry, can you explain how what you mean by that? >> Of course. So if you imagine today going and purchasing something uh with crypto, whether that's an NFT or whether you're entering into a trade, there's a little element of you that has to think about what am I doing to connect a wallet. What am I doing to be able to swap one token to another to even prepare myself to enter into this DAP? Well, before we were working with Poly Market, you could only send in USDC on Polygon. Now you can send in Salana, Bitcoin, fiat. For us, that's worked well on the crypto

side. We know that we can solve for crypto again using using relay and and routing partners to be able to resolve whatever tokens you have. The question then becomes how can you use any other assets that you have? How can you use your fiat potentially even? How can you use your shares on Robin Hood to be able to instantly liquidate them at the point of purchase and execute a transaction? And for us again we we envision a world where anyone anywhere can buy anything with anything. And you only get that by beginning to think how can you use someone's entire net wealth at that point of purchase. So the metric itself, I suppose, would be how many payment methods can you begin to aggregate that are useful to a user at the time they're looking to execute a transaction or purchase or enter into purchasing an

NFT. >> My Sephora points, can I use my Sephora points? >> Your Sephora points hopefully one day. I And again, this is this is what we're here for. You know, the the more things which become tokenized, the easier it is to remove the intermediary of fiats and be able to use one token for another. And that world is not that far away. We're already doing it with cryptoto crypto. We we will hopefully do that here every day. And to remove the fiat intermediary or is already happening. We're swapping it for a stable coin. The next stage will be removing the stable coin journey entirely and just having a very good price differential between your Sephora points and maybe your AMX points.

>> Maybe then I can stake my Sephora points and get some yield on them. Go ahead. How would you answer that question? I think even just to parlay from Felix's answer once we're on par from a transactions you know kind of per month scenario and you know payments being made in the realm of like what you see with Venmo cash apps even someday maybe the Visas of the world uh and we're still you know quite a bit away from that I think you know last month we did somewhere in the realm of five to six bill in total volume move total you know assets paid out uh and I think Venmo MOS in the realm of like 65 to 70 million or billion, excuse me, with a B >> a month. So, still some some ground to cover there.

>> Okay. >> We're catching up though. >> What's the What's the barrier to growth for >> for all three of you guys? >> I honestly think we're getting close to a point where it's not the tech anymore. Like the UX is almost there. I think it's trust. And a lot of that then comes down to storytelling, marketing and building, you know, that that trust within the users that either saw what happened with NFTTS with uh >> what happened with NFTs >> a bit of a decline in the market and I think some right if you got exposed to NFTs you maybe got hurt >> you know trauma bonded as well but I think the other piece right is like >> Sam Bankman Freed and everything that happened there like there was a there was a bad couple years. Um, anyways, >> yeah, I would say crypto is the only

industry I know of where regardless of the p political spectrum of the person you're speaking to about it, everyone has an opinion that tends towards a negative. And definitely having been into getting into crypto from the NFT world, I spoke to a lot of web 2 enterprises that inevitably will be using NFTs in the future and they're held back by someone in their office trying to buy a token and getting scammed. I think with crypto you see something very similar even as soon as you un people understand stable coins and the idea that something can be still pegged to a fiat currency but having a net advantage of the blockchain the world becomes a bit simpler for them to conceptualize that understanding we're again I I think for from funds perspective we're coming for all of web 3 we we know we'll achieve it and web

two is even more exciting again because of the scale of it so the question there is how do you bring over the traditional payment methods and legacy understanding of legal and compliance teams for some of the largest companies on the planet to make crypto not so much of a scary idea. And I think a lot of that actually is happening to be fair to them internally now. They're having those discussions about what would it look like to release a stable coin. The next stage is what would it look to like to pay with Bitcoin or pay with Salana to be able to interact or again pay with AIOS or Sephora. >> What what do you think about in terms of barriers to growth?

U I mean I think it's a lot different from moving from the infrastructure side versus application and the chain side. So uh again I think user experience and account abstraction and a lot of the steps that have been made or are honestly a lot lot farther than we were like 5 years ago. So uh I think it's like by the day people are continuing to innovate and make things easier to use but I think usability has been like the biggest historically. >> Yeah. Um, okay. So, in terms of buzzwords, we also hear um interoperability and composability a lot. And I do think that we're at at a spot where that's feeling real. Um, if if I were to wave a a magic wand and have one um integration partner happen for each of your three products or companies that would make a meaningful

difference for you, >> who would that be? I uh I think this would have to be a visa >> answer, you know, working with the top payments company in the world uh and is and starting to get, you know, more funds on chain, moving across ecosystems. >> That would be pretty sweet. >> Okay, Visa. I know there's someone from Visa here planting a little seed. >> I think uh any any of the big payment providers are clear on Visa, Mastercard, Stripe. Um, for me, one that's a little closer to home is I'm a I'm from the UK.

I'm a big Revolute user. I think Revolute is an incredible fintech app. I think it's been slow to adopt crypto to the level it should. And that is the next stage of what crossber payments look like. Wise is another one people don't really talk about when it comes to crypto. They're quite anti- the kind of a real crypto stance. But if you live in Europe, you or even even here in South America, you understand the difficulties to move crossber payments on a regular basis. After I graduated, I moved to Ireland and even moving between Ireland and the UK, which should be two of the closest countries on the planet uh is very difficult. And so only once you've seen that friction do you begin to understand the net benefit that web 3 would provide to to remove that barrier.

>> This is completely random and I just thought of it right now, but if Reddit somehow integrated Katana where you could swap on Reddit, you could trade on Reddit, you could deposit funds on Reddit, I think that would be pretty wild. That'd be pretty sweet. >> Okay, we have two minutes left. Um, just a quick quick one here. What do you the three of you predict to be the breakout narrative or use case or DAP or app for this next cycle, let's call it. >> Let's start with you.

>> Okay. Um h I think the breakout meta is going to be seeing the adoption of payment crypto payments onchain payments that I've seen in the very little time I've been in Buenosares everywhere. Uh I think we are very close to our breakout moment. >> Can you tell the story about your vendor who uh requested Sure. So, uh, we had an event yesterday and we'll have a follow-up one tomorrow where we're, you know, working with some partners to bring basketball players together to have a tournament. One of the merch, you know, items we got was a custom manuili insignia uh, mate mug and the vendor requested to be paid in crypto in USDT on Tron, which was a chain that we just

launched support for on Friday. And so I used the app to pay this vendor which is like in my mind's outrageous but truly yeah I mean the future of onchain payments is here and now. >> Yeah totally. >> Okay. >> Yeah. I think uh again this is where it feels most visceral that onchain peer-to-peer payments works because again it there is so much deep stabilization in the relative countries and and in terms of the currencies that are on offer. So it makes so much sense to remove that into a digital world. My hope from more of the US and the European lens is kind of the the next stage from there which is as I said a lot of these traditional web two businesses especially the retailers are looking at stable coins are looking at releasing their own token. I don't think

it will be long before they start to either convert whatever you pay them with into that token as a rewards point or just encourage you and nudge you towards holding that token itself. Once that happens, the interoperability between each one of these brands becomes very exciting. Is Gucci gonna have their own token that you can use at Nordstrom? Or are you going to be able to take uh again your flight points from one vendor and use them on another? I think that is a world that certainly when I was in the NFT world, I was trying to work towards and it never really came about. >> It sounds like it's giving me 2021, but I I like >> I think it's it's almost easier to understand from a stable coin perspective because the overall risk from a corporate compliance perspective becomes massively reduced. And if we can

get into that world, again, the NFT world, which I I really think will be the the long-term uh rewards, points advantage, will will come back through. >> Yeah, I know we're times up, but I think more perks, more prediction markets, those will continue to develop mind share. I think things like Apple wallet when they have uh stable coins integrated into their wallets, stuff like that, um will kind of further propel us. So, >> nice. Thanks, guys. This is fun. >> Thanks, dude. >> Thanks,