Revolutionizing Ethereum UX: A Self-Custodial Finance Takeover - Baki Er

Transcript

[Music] Hello everyone. Um, thanks for still sticking sticking around at 5:30. So, um, at the end of the presentation, I just give you a small, uh, gift just for that. So, I'm Baki. I'm co-founder of the clave and like basically clave is a mobile onchain finance app where you can invest um in any token on any chain and you can earn with your token and you can spend with it as seamless as in like any fintech product let's just say like in revolute but of course like fully on chain and fully self-custodial. So we

are super committed to self custodial and like we are super obsessed about uh u UX. So um today I will like try to market you that self-custodial uh solutions are ready to go to mainstream because this is uh a topic that we are constantly discussing with like everyone in crypto most of them like still thinking that self-custody by itself uh is not that marketable right now because people don't care about the self-cost but if If we if we able to provide everything they have in the traditional finance but in a self custodial manner with a like BWIX

mobile first approach then it actually uh start matters. So um this is actually like a uh like an example for it. Um about I think two weeks ago one of the biggest banks in Turkey just go just went offline. So no one was accessing the mobile app uh their accounts. No one was able to moving their monies. So it can happen to be honest. I'm not here to like about the banks and how they are custodial. This is the word we already accepted and we are using banks.

The right side are like bunch of Turkish tweets. They are basically saying that like um the bank actually tweeted that we are having a problem blah blah blah. We are going to solve it. and people start to write that at this point I'm I don't have access to my account so I am not responsible of the transaction etc etc etc so this is to be honest very stupid thing to do online because it has no like real benefit to the users but actually these type of events uh make people realize that they may not have like full control on their money because if they don't have events like this they actually believe that they have full

control. So the bank the money in the bank actually like theirs but you know actually it's not. So um I believe that these type of events, exchange hacks, like other type of like custodial solutions problems actually uh enables people to learn more more and more about the importance of the self-custody because when we talk about someone uh like self-custody works like this, you own the money only you can move your money, they say yeah it's good okay so what next? So it it they don't feel the need of the self custody but when they have this kind of events and to be

honest today one of the biggest fintech uh company in Turkey also kind of a like partially shut down by the government because of the like some uh dirty money movement regarding uh money laundering. So currently millions of users of that fintech company also not accessing their uh money in their accounts. So these are really teachable moments and like these are creates uh like a cumulative consciousness around self- custody. But on the other hand so the I am going to provide you some numbers from Turkey. Um we have like around 8 to 10 million crypto users. It may look super sexy

from the outside, but we know that most of them just people like gambling with like meme tokens on exchanges trying to escape from inflation, trying to get rich super quickly. So, they are not actually like a blockchain user or like DeFi users. So, there's a um there's a study conducted by one of the biggest exchange uh in Turkey. So they are saying that like 50% of these user uh these uh crypto users knows about crypto wallets. So this might good look because like it's around 45 million but knowing something and using something is super different and we are going to see it in

the numbers. So only 15% of them actually knows about stable coins probably even if they are uh even if they are using it in exchanges but they have no idea how it works they they have no idea they can like withdraw their tokens their stable tokens in their wallets or like utilizing uh D5 and like similar percentage knows about D5 and only 12 12 uh percentage of um knows about seed phrases. So which means that if like around 10 to 12% knows about seed phrase probably I think like 1% around 1% of these people has actually

se have seat phrase and self-custodial wallets. So I think we don't uh have a right to blame them. So far self-cod was like kind of a terrible state. Um, we have seed phrases like it's a super important liability to the users if they lost it like it's a gun money. There is no way to get your money back and even if sometimes like uh we are building identity around our wallets for example I have few wallets that I'm delegate to some uh Dow. So my biggest concern is if I lose my seat phrase or somehow someone hack my wallet. So I'm going to you lose

my rights on voting as well. So it's going to be a big mess because there is no key rotation in EOAs and I think D5 is super important and like uh so far battle tested but um generally wallets are providing a ticket to the web3 ecosystem the crypto system but you need to know where are the events are being held. So you need to know about uh which protocol you can use what are the options. So the journey is not uh finished when you have a wallet and like the same thing um you have a wallet you don't have crypto there are like super messy onramp methods with very high fees you need to

have KYC on multiple providers to get your first crypto and even if you manage to do that on which chain you did you did so you may have a token on base but you want to buy another token on like in in another EVM or nonem ecosystem. So it's super challenging for uh regular users but I think like starting with this year we have like solutions to all of these problems. First of all um we have now 7 to 12 so which actually enables to use PS key to create your account. Um, how many of you are actually use Pesky in crypto or like in

uh other applications? Nice. It's it's it's not half but like um it's it's like a way to use your uh phone as a let's say a cold wallet because you can create your account with your face ID or your fingerprint and there is no seat phrase to hide. Everything is handled by secur enclave of your phone. So there is of course a seat phrase but it's embedded in the chip and no one has uh access to it. So in just one click you can just create your account and we have account abstraction and now we have 7702. Now we are bringing account abstraction kind of

a to the uh to external owned account. So we are going to have session keys especially batching and I think most importantly gas abstraction to uh everyday users and on top of that we can utilize modular uh account uh manage uh modular account contracts and crosschain intents so that we can get rid of to like get rid of uh of obstacles to do some transaction multi-chain even if like in EVM ecosystem or in the nonem ecosystem and of course like these are just first three steps are just like the foundation to give someone an access to

selfcast studio world we need to unlock unlock the capabilities to make D5 more accessible we need better on app solutions and of course we need to provide uh more and more uh tokenized options to people to just trade everything on chain so I think now we have a infrastructure that can actually serves people and that can scale the UX we have. So let's start with the past keys. So in clay actually this is our origin story. Two years ago, our team attended the IT global hackathon and we presented the first version of the usage of Peskis on um EVM chains and basically this is currently available almost on

every layer too and we are expecting to uh push this for mainet as well. So inclave you can create your account in just one click literally. So you may thought that like I am already creating my account in one click in like let's say other EOA wallets but that doesn't true because on boarding doesn't end with like the creating your account. It ends with when you have a secure account and secure key management. So you need to back up your seed phrases on other wallets. You need to maybe uh do a iCloud backup. But in here all you need to do is use your pass key. It's stored in your device. It is safe with you. So

that you can just on board to web3 ecosystem. And peskies are good because it's super hard to hack them. So you cannot just accidentally sign a transaction on any um on any domain or you can you cannot just give away your seed phrases because that's not on you. And um like whenever I talk about this of course the next question is okay I created my account what if I lose my phone because everything is attached to my phone. But here is where we are utilizing both the perks of the ZK technology and the account abstraction because with the account abstraction we we can now rotate keys. So first of all

we are utilizing ZK mail recovery. Um we actually worked with Atarum Foundation to enable this. So currently you can use your email as a onchain guardian to secure your account. Let's say you lose your phone and you just uh like enabled the email recovery in your clave account. When you get a new phone, you are just proving that you have ownership of that email by simply replying a a recovery email and then you can start your uh recovery process. If you don't like that, okay, we have another solutions for you. It's basically the same principle, but it has different dynamics. You can use social

recovery, which is basically you can assign your friends account as a guardian to your account, your ENS to do guardian as a guardian to your account or like any of your friends, any of your family members, your cold wallet, it doesn't matter. As long as you have access the other wallet, you can use it to recover your account in a new phone. And all of these methods has actually uh 48 uh hours time lock so that you can also prevent the malicious attack and like when you create your account the job is not done there because you you are just an account right now. We need to turn into users.

So there's like simple steps to make uh make it more frictionless. First of all, we need to get rid of all of the 0x addresses. That's why in clay we are using onchain usernames. As long as uh as soon as you create your account, you are getting a username and it's actually a subdomain on ENS username. CLV.ethth ETH so that you can just use it while sending money uh inside clave or like from other uh crypto wallets that are supporting ENS. And about apps as I told you before we are super obsessed about user experience. So far in like uh one and a half year we didn't like integrate

any of the regular onamp providers because UX sucks. So I just created account on clave but when I want to own app they are just sending me to another uh provider another website I need to do KYC this is like not what I sign up on. So luckily now we have better on solutions now we have solutions like bridge now we have more uh different provider who can enable us to like get USDC or USDT with bank transfer. So we are now solving this problem. Currently we have enabled this in Turkey. People in Turkey just uh start an on-ramp in uh clay. They said I want to buy USDT with

like thousand Turkish LRA. Then we are giving them a quote with our partner and an IBAN to Turkish bank and they are just sending money and getting their USDT to USDC tokens uh immediately. There is no redirecting to uh anybody else and like we are going to do it with for USD, euro, peso and other currencies and sponsor transaction. This is super important to like onboard someone. Uh generally I onboard people by just sending a payment link on claim so that uh whenever they create their account they just click the payment link and get like 5 USDC that I'm going to show you at the end. And since we have sp we are

sponsoring every transaction at the point they get the 5 USDC they can just start using 5 USDC in our earn section to get five to I don't know 8% APR in D5. This is a super impressive moment for them because it's the first time they are like encountering uh something uh regarding D5. So if you don't have sponsored transaction so it's going to be oh hold on I need to send you some ET or other tokens so that you need to pay gas fee it's become more and more complicated with sponsor transaction it just works and also bash transaction we are utilizing this not only for swap but also for all D5 operation inside clave let's say you want to become an LP on a

decentralized exchange normally like it takes 45 transaction because you need USDC, you need USDT, you need to approve both of them and like deposit, right? But with bash transaction, you only need USDC and just sign one transaction. We are doing the conversion of USDC to USDT and approval and like deposit in just one transaction. So when we combine all of these after the onboarding, it's become a product, it just works. And like the another biggest pain point after on boarding someone the fragmentation like um Kyle actually reminding us this every year. I think this is from like two to three years

ago. Every year he just screenshots and says like it doesn't change because I have Ethereum but they are on different chains. So there's a fragmentation. I cannot use them as a whole. Now it's changing. Now we have an account system that can provide unified balance and you can use your tokens on any chain with crosschain intense. Let's say you have $500 at base, $500 at arbitum as USDC inclave, it doesn't matter. You have,000 USDC and you can use it on like any of the options here. You can use them as a

whole. you can use them as a partial. Everything is handled by crosschain intents. So it's becoming more and more smoother for the users. And actually we need only we only need to do these uh unified experience for the basets. Let's say Ethereum, USDC and USDC. If we do that then like the experience become magical because other tokens already like some domain specific or like uh chain specific tokens. so that we are enabling anyone to have like a better experience uh in crypto and we really believe that we need to guide users. So I have huge respect to like general

purpose wallets or like extensions because they are enabling us to do literally anything we want in D5 world or or like any protocol we found out in any website but regular users or like let's say normies or newcomers they're not looking for this people in emerging countries they just want to see how they can get dollar how they can get yield how they can get spended and what's the like easiest way to do it. They are not looking for a vault connect button in their wallet. They want to see everything uh created for them. That's why we have a invest section. We are creating tokens. We are making it more

explorable for the users. We are making it more searchable and we are also providing index fund stocks inside the app so that they don't need to just use any other application. And also the earn part which is super important for us because uh Clave is a live product for more than a year right now and like 85% of the funds in clave are utilized in our earn product because it's super easy like you can deposit your stables you can deposit your ET or other tokens in lending pools or decentralized exchange in LP positions on the background but on the front end users

just seeing that oh I can get like it's like a little bit exaggerated here but 22 uh 23% on USDC and I'm just signing a transaction of course we are informing them about the position the risk etc but we are making them to enable uh access anything in just one transaction and it's super easy they can just get in they they can just get out so it's provide a freedom for the uh for time and again we need to provide all of these with like oneclick access with batch transaction we need to get rid of any like unnecessary approvals I don't know conversions uh on the front end and

I think guestless experience and like abstracting chains in all of these flows is super important because it's becoming more and more and more messy uh when we start to talk about them and finally stable coins like I don't need to mention how important they are or how kind of a breakthrough right now but uh they're actually unlocking a super opportunity for clave users as well. So um we have clave debit cards we are going to launch in a month or so. So basically uh we can offer these cards to anyone in the world and they can just transact USDC in their clave account and the next second they are able to spend

it in their local currency. That's a huge unlock. I live in Germany but I'm from Turkey so sometimes I need to send money from Turkey to my bank account in Germany. It's it's a mess process. uh sometimes I wait two three days to get my money and like sometimes they are char charging me 2% 3% fees on both side so this actually like unlocks so many opportunities because making the money spendable in their real lives make it like more sense for for the people otherwise okay I am earning yield on my USDC yes I can provide some off-ramp options but like just tapping my card to

spend my USDC is whole another level and on top of that we can offer like uh yield bearing USDC in their debit cards so that it's becoming more and more magical for the user side and like the final two things is that gladly we are seeing more and more tokenized assets uh in crypto now we are talking more about tokenized stocks and inclave we are going to offer tokenized stocks to our users. Um this may not be like a huge unlock for for the western culture but there are so many peoples in emerging countries trying to access USDbased investment or US stock exchange but they

are not able to do it so it's going to be huge unlock for them and universal asset this is one of my favorite project that we are integrating right now currently you are you can buy literally any token on aarium ecosystem system. So it works kind of a like a uh bridging and custodial way. You can think of these set as a wrapped version but eventually you are a you are uh buying XRP, Dogecoin, Cardano on base and you don't need to go to centralized exchange uh just for these tokens. So you can benefit self custody all of the things I mentioned and you can still buy these uh token options as well.

So when we combine all of these together, I think finally like we have products that can be marketable uh with the property of self- custody. So we can enable people to invest anything like literally any asset. We can enable them to earn in DeFi in just like one click and also we can enable them to spend their tokens. So it's becoming like a full-fledged application and now I can compare this with the like similar application in fintech and I can say that you can do it you can do same things in both application but mine is self-custodial. Now this can become a

marketable actually uh property in crypto. So thanks for listening to me. So if you like to just um try cla uh and like experience few of the items that I mentioned, you can download cla create your account in like 5 seconds and uh scan this QR code. It has 5 USDC like the gift is not the 5 USDC but like the experience of all of the things I mentioned. Currently Clay works on ZK sync. uh probably in a month or so we are going to launch uh the multi-chain unified balance version on B arbitrum and other L2s. So you are going to see more options here and yeah thanks for

listening to me. If you have any question, happy to answer. Thanks for the thanks for the wonderful talk. Uh question, what is the key uh differentiator that takes Clava to stand out from uh let's say the most known fintech apps like Revolute and others? H I think um we we can like think about two things. First of all, as I said like we we are now able to provide almost everything Revolute provides. Of course,

their scale is a little bit different. We are talking about like a multi-billion company but uh in the core feature set we are able to provide everything they can provide and we are self-custodial. Secondly, I think like the biggest mode of crypto is we are like global from day one. So they need to work way harder to reach every user in the world because eventually they are custodial. They are more uh actually uh they need to adapt to regulation more and more. So we can expand quickly uh and we have more agile and to be honest what we are offering is like we can

offer anything someone built in D5 and it can be super innovative. So like I kind of feel that in crypto we are like building all together. So if you innovate I can also benefit from that. If I innovate you can benefit from that. And this creates like a huge like snowball effect for the future. I have two questions. First of all, I would like really appreciate your UIUX design. It's really perfectly looking when we compare to the other company that he mentioned. It's much easier and much uh looking great. And my first question is uh can we assume that Clay is uh something near to the hot wallet

or cold wallets? For instance, like my deposits is uh can I achieve if something bad happens to clay or I cannot achieve anything that happens. And my second question is that you mentioned the lots of Turkish comp companies and uh Turkish how can I say the Turkish uh regulations that we spoke but uh as I saw in your application that European Union and the US uh markets are coming soon. So do do you ever apply to regulations over here because it's much harder when we compare to the Turkish side. So Turkish government is much more uh understandable against the uh

cryptocurrencies. But here in Revolute, I use Revolute a lot to g uh exchange my cryptocurrencies. But every time that I have some deposits over my uh DeFi accounts or other uh cryptocurrencies which I used and applied for my KIC. I kind of afraid because the the rebel may say like okay we have to investigate your uh income and then maybe they can put on their hands against my deposit and they never going to accept so on so forth. So how will be the clay working in the European side when we compare to the other uh rebels that you have? So that's my own questions. Yeah, thanks

for the question. So, first of all, starting from the last one, um I think now it's more difficult to get a license in Turkey because we just had a regulation uh like mostly for centralized exchanges, but it's kind of affects affect everyone in crypto and it's kind of a like a still like a gray zone how and like which companies should get licensed even we are like uh still investigating about them but like I I think until a point like we had to do it. We are going to aait from any licensing in Europe, US or other markets because like we need to f we want to focus on fully on the onchain part. So

if you like to deposit from like your bank your uh I don't know other assets. So we have lots of new partners to enable this. As I said, we were hesitant to use the uh like let's say traditional onamp companies we are like seeing every day because like we don't want to redirect you to another website. We don't want you to make another KYC to uh another company that we are not going to track your deposit when you have a problem. So we are now finding companies who let us build whitelisted API based solution so that we can provide everything in our own UI but like

leverage their license or like regulated entities. This is possible and I think it's more and more it will be more and more easy uh like every day. So that's how we are going to move forward with other regions. And about the question regarding clay being hot wallet or cold wallet cold wallet. Um I think it's a tough question. I don't want to start war with the cold wallets but eventually what makes cold wallet a cold wallet is like you have a isolated environment right. So when you use pass key you actually have it because like it uses secretlay in your phone and it's an isolated uh processor

from the entire operating system. So in a manner you can think that like it can provide benefits of the cold wallet but I personally don't like label it as a cold wallet but I think in like between hot and cold it's something here. So if something bad happens to clay, what about my deposits will going to be like can I uh char charge them back or send them to some other uh wallets? Are you talking about your tokens in cla?

Yes. Yeah, it's a soft coal wallet. Even if like we disappeared next day, you can still um use your clave application in your wallet. You can like even uh assign another key with our uh key management module and you can still use it because none of your operations is actually tied to us. It's a Safas to the world. Okay. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Okay. Any other questions? Okay, that would be it. Uh a round of applause for Thank you. Great.

[Music]