The Rollup TV: Wednesday, August 27th

Transcript

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>> we live, brother? Yeah, Rob, we live. It's hoodie season. It's about 95 degrees outside. We got got it nice and chilly inside. Make sure all the equipment is cooled down. Got the hoodie on. Feels like we're in the lab again. This is the most innovative >> in Florida summer. >> This is the most innovative media company in crypto. Welcome to the show. >> Rob, what's your takes on yesterday's segment, man? um with SY on on story. What was your uh what was your key takeaways? A lot of those clips did pretty well. Um I think people were definitely, you know, definitely had some interesting takes that I saw on the timeline. What's your take?

>> Uh my first take is that um this headline is too long. Um, my take on SY and Story Protocol. Um, I think Sy comes off as a genuine founder. I think he's done this before. He's built businesses before. He frankly has seen some [ __ ] and has done what it takes to pre persevere and stay resilient so that his company survives. And when he was kind of walking through he was able to describe how it looked a founder leaving happens. This is something that um companies have faced in in the past and to like I I wasn't

aware that there are some of the most successful companies out there where founders have left early and they've gone on to have massive success >> and I think it made me even more bullish on story because SY has done it before and because frankly he had the balls to come on the show and answer our questions and we were not easy on him. You were not easy on him by any stretch of the imagination. >> Yeah, I was the bad cop there. >> Well, I think I think it it's a true show of character for him to take it on the chin, face the music, and uh and come on the show, answer the questions, and and continue to build in the face of adversity.

>> Yeah, I mean, it was a pretty fun uh it was a pretty fun stream. So, I I I think uh I think that was one of our better performing ones. Was actually shorter as well. Uh may maybe the proof is in the pudding on getting the right topics, which is why we got Robinson today to talk about the Stargate saga. We got uh Neil from Dawn to talk about the DPIN outlook. Um and we've have Jacob and Mike talk about MEV in DeFi. So um yeah, looking forward to that. Uh should be a fun little stream. Um, and yeah, >> I uh I'm I think we're going to have some fun with this wormhole situation.

Like the the fact that the the absolute drama of this situation, right? And the fact that it played out in public was was very very fun to watch. And just to recount and we're going to probably go through this again with Robinson on the show, but just to recount what happened so far, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. Please. >> Okay. So Stargate put up a proposal that they were going to get acquired by Layer Zero. This happened on Stargate Dow. There was a representative from Layer Zero that that published this proposal on Stargate and I think it went live.

>> Wait, Rob, sorry. Sorry. Can we just uh can we go back for one second? >> Happy to. >> Can we just talk about Nvidia earnings in Soul real quick? >> Oh, sure. Tell us, Mr. M. Okay. give us a little tradey on Nvidia. >> Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. >> No, no, go for it. >> Before we go. So, Nvidia earnings is today. I think it's going to dictate a lot of what the market has to say uh with regards to just future upside. Um and I think it's something that that's probably going to happen I think in in an hour or two sometime while we're on the stream or at the end of the stream.

So, we'll be able to see that happen uh hopefully towards the end of the stream. I think it's massive for the the market. Like, if this goes well, the market does well. If it doesn't, then I think the market's going to be in a really tough spot crypto-wise. Um, and then finally, I think we saw some of those Salana Dats come onto the market and be announced. Um, so those are officially coming here and I think one was 400 million that was announced. I think there was a stream on the Salana account yesterday. One of the companies announced uh another one of theirs, Defi Dev Corp. So, yeah, those two things. Watch out for the earnings today, guys. Uh, and look out for Salana in the coming uh in the coming weeks. I think uh I think a lot of people have have been sleeping on it. Also, shout

out to the Hyperlquid all-time highs. >> Uh, shout out to our hyped whales out there. Everybody who got a eight figureure airdrop from Jeff. We did not, but we are riding a fat bag. So, shout out to Hyperlid. And, um, all right, Rob, let's bring us up to speed on the Stargate. >> I actually want to ask you about Nvidia earnings since since we're on that topic. Why in your estimation do you think Nvidia earnings is so important for the crypto market? Obviously important for the traditional markets, traditional equities, but why is that important for crypto?

>> I mean, it is literally the entire it is the stock for the world. And and and I think it's important because it's going to dictate a lot of the AI uh hype going forward. And I think frankly the entire stock market is currently being propped up by AI capex. uh it's basically uh these big corporations throwing massive nine figure contracts around and being all you know bowled up on AI that's keeping the market going and I think the musical chairs for crypto will continue to play as long as as long as the AI capex spend continues to happen and increase. So we just need Nvidia or Nvidia to keep kind of you know churning out uh more and more uh growth uh to to to keep the party and keep the lights on

in crypto. Okay, that I think that makes sense. Like B compute is kind of the lifeblood of AI and most of traditional SAS and business. Uh and so as Nvidia continues to proliferate and get more capex, they're going to basically spin the monetary velocity of the equities market. Um and then that leaks over into crypto. We're seeing a lot of AI crypto crossovers. Um, I think AI started to slow down a little bit. I don't know if you saw this, but an MIT report came out last week and was like, "Hey, we're making all this capex investment, but the productivity in innovation and and efficiency gains just aren't quite there

yet." Um, having some friction when it comes to implementing some of these systems. Um, and then also I saw Meta uh cut some of their spending. Yeah. and and it it was such a stark contrast and and quick turnaround because they Zuck just went on this hiring spree offering hundred million dollar signing bonuses like he's you know NBA allstar you know commissioner >> and and then turns around and and puts a freeze on hiring. So I think he's trying to control the narrative when it comes to okay pedal to the metal accelerate even further more capex. Oh, no. Turn it back. If if he's the one that basically has the has his uh his fingers on the light switch turning it on and off, then

he's going to be able to control the narrative. But you're right. Ultimately, it comes down to Nvidia. >> Yeah, it does. >> Whether or not, you know, the proof is in the pudding and the data is going to tell us whether this capex has has increased or slowed down. >> All right, let's get to the saga of wormhole. Um, >> yeah. Um, and let me just kind of give my give my uh quick quick intro there for a sec. Um, basically, you know, you saw I I'll just give my story of how how I think about Stargate and then you can kind of take it over the line for how this is all kind of developed.

Basically, Stargate came out as like this as like the actual bridge protocol that the user interface uh and the user interacts with for layer zero. So layer zero is this crosschain messaging protocol. They are facilitating asset transfers and message passing across different chains. Stargate was the actual place where you would go and use the used layer zero technology as a user. Uh and so they they launched this STG token. I think it was like last cycle. Um >> and this was like the UX of the um of layer zero. But back then there was a lot of uh regulatory concern from the SEC and and so different to now Stargate ended up launching as as this DAO as

this token this kind of decentralized DAO this kind of immutable code type of product uh when when in reality I think a lot of the market knew that it was effectively just a a spin-off of the like the layer zero dev team uh and their resources. And so fast forward to now, Rob, um, kind of what give us the intro before Robinson comes on as to what what has happened thus far up up in the saga and then I'm pretty stoked to get Robinson's takes on this. >> Yeah, happy to. So Paul Langford from uh the Stargate community and the layer zero community put up a proposal on the Stargate Dow. This went to snapshot and it was created August 16th, so it was about 10 days or so ago. Um immediately there was some positive sentiment around

this proposal. Stargate was looking at um over hund00 million in funding. They were going to get acquired by layer zero and frankly it kind of made sense because Stargate was born out of layer zero. Um there's a lot more detail that goes into the proposal. Uh they include kind of the the logistics for how this could be implemented. Um, this proposal was live for about four or five days and then Wormhole came in and said that they were making a bid on Stargate. Uh, this came as pretty pretty surprising because Stargate's community was already in favor of the layer zero proposal and I think it was maybe 60 or 70% in favor.

Very little of the Stargate community was against. It was just a matter of reaching quorum. When wormhole came in, they made this proposal. They made this bid and it was higher than the bid that layer zero made. I think it was uh 110 million from layer zero and it was 120 million from wormhole. This started to play out on Twitter because Twitter is the public square. It's a drama capital of crypto. And uh we saw uh we saw wormhole make the bid. Uh Brian Pelgro, the CEO and founder of layer zero quote tweeted said this is not happening.

Obviously, he had a right to say that because Stargate was already uh supporting this proposal from Layer Zero. And then Wormhole announced their bid. It came in $10 million more than what Layer Zero bid. And Robinson, who we're about to bring up in a few minutes, says, "Yeah, it is happening." All right, that sets the scene. Let's bring Robinson up. I think we got him ready behind the scenes, and we're gonna we're gonna uh we're gonna settle this once and for all. We're gonna get the resolution of this proposal. We're gonna hear from Robinson on the Stargate saga and the drama with uh with Layer Zero.

Zero wormhole. >> Robinson, welcome to the show, man. Appreciate you joining us today. I I think you may have a different story than the one that Rob just laid out. So, uh what you know, no better place to start than let's hear it. Like, how are you doing? How's the, uh how's the last couple days been? and would love to hear your side of the story, man. >> What's up, guys? Thanks for having me. Um, I'm excited to talk about the Stargate Saga. So, for I guess for context for the listeners, I think this is definitely the first time I've spoken about things publicly uh since kind of the the outcome of the DAO. So my my my intentions here I think it's important to to kind of outline those is I guess my number one goal or what one one of my goals is I don't want

to like I'm not here to like slander uh the competition or anything like that. I quite the contrary. Also I think like a little bit of slander is kind of uh played out within the cryptosphere a little bit. But um I I think my goals here are to educate uh specifically on the details of the DAO process that we went through that I think are being combed over and you know Rob I heard some of your commentary and I think the devils are in the details there and I can go over that. >> Um and yeah, I think that that's my main goal is just to educate. Uh I think there's um you know this was a kind of an exciting moment within uh within crypto acquisitions and I'm sure we'll see more of it and I want to make sure we learn from from some of these

experiences. Yeah, man. I appreciate that perspective. And I think that I think that um the the really really cool part about this before we get into how it all went down is that you know I think traditionally in any sort of merger acquisition deals it's a very very long process. It's a very drawn out legal process. You know this just happens onchain and this could continue to happen onchain in in in this fashion. And so, you know, I think that is uh that is a very unique uh part of basically blockchain technology that I think that uh we we can appreciate. So, without further ado, Robinson, appreciate your preamble and your preemptive remarks. There's going to be some spicy ones that that I throw at you. I'm sure you're ready, but let's

give you the floor for just just to hear your side of the story. Why did you guys decide to start uh to and make this bid knowing that the quorum had already uh you know that there had already been voting on snapshot that there was already significant uh um reason to believe that layer zero was going to win this outright? Why did you guys do this? What is your side of the story? How did this play out from your perspective? >> Yeah, and I was I was listening to you kind of give kind of the tea up to this discussion today which I think is important to harp on and I'll do that and then I'll definitely address a question specifically about why we wanted to go in, you know, given that almost quorum was reached even though quorum is like 1% of circulating supply

which is just absolutely absurd. So quick comment there. Um but I think it's important to understand interop protocols in general and where the value is. Um and so for instance James Preswitch actually had a really good tweet about this. So wormhole layer zero like any interop protocol they're messaging protocols right but all the value in like you know future revenues etc if we're being honest is at the asset layer every every message one of these interop protocols does is in service of something asset related and so when we think when we boil it down to that simple concept and and of course I'm making some blanket statements for brevity the the actual asset components or distribution or frontends become so so critical to your business and so

So what you mentioned Andy was you know so and I guess maybe just taking a further step back Stargate is to layer zero what portal is to wormhole right so it's like there you know back when we launched these protocols you we were worried about running an unregulated kind of exchange if you will there there was kind of you know a lot of people chose different made different decisions on spinning out uh you know the actual bridge versus the messaging protocol we did that we didn't launch a token layers of euro did that with Stargate they did right so if you're an investor and you're looking at layers here and you're saying okay I'm getting the majority of the volume here is coming from Stargate which token are you going to buy right you're going to buy the likely I mean the the logical thing

is like STG right you're going to say well if all if if layer zero is literally in service of Stargate why am I buying zero when I you know I should invest in STG and so this is like a fundamental problem worm actually is ahead in this regard we already kind of have portal it's owned and and worked on by our core teams and it's already going to be in everything app we're already doing same chain swaps etc But has had to kind of make and plan this move for some times because they have this bifurcation with their tokens. And so the way in which they decided to do that was what I would kind of call this kind of like Dowo attack, right? And so now I'll kind of get into why we decided to do this. So first and foremost, um I always look at these little things

because they they they make a big picture, right? When was this tweeted? This was tweeted from main account on a Sunday. I looked at I I did a quick I did a quick rock. How many times has this account, Layer Zero account, tweeted on Sunday? And it's like a handful maybe, right? So, the first thing first thing you notice there is like they don't want a lot of people to know this. This is going out on a Sunday. And so, I said, "Okay, like this is interesting. $110 million bid hits the the the Dow. Let's do a little bit of digging here. It's actually a $10 million bid. You actually don't need to do a lot of digging for that, right? The Stargate Treasury is like give it goes up and down. You know, the markets are a little bit crazy right now. around $100

million, you know, give or take. It's actually a $10 million bid for Stargate. That's crazy. $10 million for this protocol that so many people use that has all these integrations. So, when I looked at that and looked kind of how misleading this was, you know, we were like this like STG holders deserve like a a fair bidding process here. Um, not to mention and and I'll shut up here in a second and and kind of wrap up, but not to mention we had like anon accounts emailing us saying, "Hey, we we're being vocal in the Discord. we're being vocal anywhere we can uh and we don't feel like this is right and so I think to you guys question you say why did we feel like we should vote when quorum wasn't hit or was or you know it was close what not for us the quorum was so low it

didn't even matter even the passing vote I think was 1% of the circulating supply so there's a fundamental this is layer zero separate like fundamental problem that that can be what decides the acquisition of a multi-million dollar protocol that much of a decision-making power And so just I thought it's helpful maybe I'll just summarize giving some background to like why this is important from a strategic perspective and then like what what actually was here. It was a $10 million offer and there was like just under a percent of the actual vote like saying hey we're for this and a lot of people coming to us saying this is bad please help.

>> Yep. Okay. So that sets the scene and it also unpacks some of the details here. You also start to highlight some of the problems that are abundant across snapshot votes and across Dow votes when I think people saw this on the on the face of it and they saw okay Stargate was kind of born out of layer zero. It was incubated and then it sort of rolled out and spun out on its own and they came when it when it came to wormhole placing this bid and it almost seemed like some sort of vampire attack like you were trying to steal it away from layer zero. What you're saying is that your bid was actually more fair. What what would you say to the criticism of oh you know wormhole's just trying to steal away Stargate and and you know kind of overtake this uh from layer

zero? >> I guess first I would say like of course we're going to want to buy Stargate. There was it was kind of funny at first. Everyone thought it was a marketing play. Like there's actually probably a 24 48 hour period before we actually put in kind of like a it was actually a response to their proposal. We never put in a formal like Dow proposal, but when we put in that response that had that $120 million and we had the money on chain, it's actually about a 48 hour period where people actually just thought it was a marketing stunt, which was interesting to me. And it's like very much so like how misinformation spreads. Like why wouldn't I remember like remember the mental model I say, right? Portal wormhole Stargate layer zero. If we can get another distribution front end for wormhole, that is insanely

valuable. Like why wouldn't we want to do that? We actually had investors calling us like this is a great opportunity blah blah blah and so like yes you could say we were stealing it away but stealing it away to make it successful like from our perspective right so like I guess I the one thing I would dispel is that this was at all a marketing stunt and and for us beyond that we also wanted just a fair process for the star for SG holders right like there there was like a small small window to have this go through Stargate honestly if it was two if it was anonymous voters and I can get into why anonymous voters would have mattered and there was more time. I I think Stargate could have gone for, you know, the numbers we're talking about here was with the Treasury, like closer to $200

million. Um, we just put in an offer to try and stop the vote, but I think my biggest regret is we should have came in with just a little bit more of a a higher offer to really really shock, you know, the 10 million over just didn't give enough shock for some of these voters that were on the fence to say, "Hey, you know what? I have these agreements and stuff with layer zero. I'm okay, you know, foregoing those potentially in order to vote for a better outcome for Stargate. >> So, so you when you went to put the offer in, you legitimately thought that you had a chance to win. It wasn't just like a let's try to, you know, stir the pot. That's >> absolutely I we we thought we had number one a chance to win. And the reasons I'll back it up again, remember quorum

is such a small really like the vote came down to like two voters. Like that's that's that's really what it came down to. like that is such a small amount to overcome for something so big. So, of course, we felt like we had an opportunity to win. And I think Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. >> Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, finish. I >> I was just going to say the thing I want like the other thing I want people to know is like this was a proposal for layer zero to buy Stargate and with a clock ticking, right? All we were trying to do is say, "Hey, here's here's money on chain. We're putting our money where our mouth is. We want this to go to a no. So then we can go to a real process where multiple biders can come in, bid up the price and have it what's best for

the actual DAO and protocol. For instance, Axelar came in at the last minute. You know, Hart from Across came in at the last minute. Like all these when you actually look at the number, you know, 120 million is maybe like, oh, only a layer zero wormhole could afford that. But when you look at the net value, 10 20 30 40 50 what it actually could have gone up to, it's not that expensive for the protocol. And so we really just wanted to get that to a no vote so we could go to a fair bidding process. And would you say that you had reason to believe that um or or any speculative belief that the voters who voted to essentially accept this proposal from layer zero are also key stakeholders of layer zero itself.

I think this is where things get a little bit like I'll go back to my first goal at the beginning which is like I I really don't want to necessarily slander the competition. Space is big and I think we've got plenty of opportunity. Look, what I will say, and this is probably just DAO governance as a whole, maybe I can frame it like that, there are a lot of co-mingled interests, right? Like if you think about the the stakeholders that are holding a lot of these tokens and you think about the history of layer zero and Stargate since the beginning, right? Like there are going to be tied interests together, especially the big token holders, the ones that are holding millions, etc. Like they're probably building stuff. They're probably big traders. And so what we found, and I actually respect a lot of the STG

voters, so I'm not going to name any names, but what we found going through that process was like a lot of these voters really didn't either didn't want to vote or didn't want to vote no. Uh because they were worried about repercussions with relationships. And you know, that that that could be like just a standard voting thing we have to get over. But I I I found that that was just a little bit disappointing because it was almost like this unethical process where we have what's best for Stargate and STG holders is a bidding process where the highest number wins. But at the same time, these individuals have these really like intertwined interest, whether it's businesses they run on the side, etc. that like, you know, make it so that it it's it's kind of nerve-wracking to actually vote because you don't want to ruffle any

feathers. So that's kind of what we were bumping up into at the at kind of the final hour here and ultimately which which is what led to kind of the outcome that we see now. >> Yeah. So so if you were to be able to go back and do it again seeing as the result kind of uh it feels like maybe the the the punch wasn't strong enough to really shake up the Stargate voters for the reasons that you just described, right? Conflict of interest and just kind of fear etc. or just basically what they think is best. you know, is that is that the only thing that you would change? like either the situ you know what's in your control and what's not in your control perhaps with the quorum and the Dow voting on snapshot and your actions like I is there certain things

that you would like to see changed about the mechanism in the future like for example is the 1% for sure too low and that you know there's a different percent that you believe is approximately more fair or is there a process that maybe you would have done differently on the wormhole side uh you know should this should something like this happen again just things they're in your control and also just more broadly systemic uh you know mechanics let's call them you know curious what you'd want to see change in the future. Yeah, maybe I'll start with us and then I'll go to DAO governance, right? Like so a lot of people see CT, but what they don't realize with any of these like these these like uh battles always come up in all protocol categories every now and then, right? Like it's like 96 hours

of straight sprinting. And so like the the unfortunate pro thing was and I'll give you some context like and this isn't Stargate's fault. We didn't even get an NDA signed on the Stargate side, right? How how am I going to convince my team or my board to spend any 10 to$50 million if I have no due diligence docs on Stargate, right? And so I have to work with a team maybe that's not super willing work with all these voters in a like a 96 whatever hour period. It's like it's untenable. Like it acquisitions should not be done in this time period. So I think baseline that should change and and what I'm I'm serious and this wasn't Stargate's fault, right? There's red lines when it comes to something like this. Like most most mergers, most acquisitions take six months, can take 12 months, right? And

of course, we want things to go faster because we're in crypto. We want things to go faster, but we have to be reasonable, right? We can't do these things that fast. And so, um, you know, what I will say is like number one, it just can't it can't really happen in this quick time period. We didn't even get diligent docs. Well, I think we got them at like the final hour if I'm being like, you know, fully critically honest here. and it's just like wasn't enough to then turn around and putting a meaningful offer. But I think for us, if I the other thing I would say I would tactically do different and where I think we went wrong a little bit, I would have came in with the higher offer. I think from our perspective, we said all we need to do is beat or

layers offer to show that, hey, you have some serious biders here. And that's also why we put the money on chain. We said this is USDC. This isn't zero token. This is there's no conversion risk here. This is USDC. We will straight up we we will do this if you vote no. so we can open up our own proposal. And so I would have just gone higher. I think what I learned after from the voters is that given all their intertwined ties with layer zero, like they didn't feel like the 10 was enough to say like, okay, this is just so such a good deal. I can't I can't leave this on the table, right? So like I'll take that feedback. We should have gone in higher. We should have kind of, you know, hit heavier there. Um and then yeah, I mean in terms of quorum, look, I

I've been just like you guys, you travel a lot and I've talked to a lot of people. Well, the one one thing in this the industry right now and and may I I'll avoid going on a tangent, but I think crypto is going through its practical era, right? We're seeing smaller validator sets. I think Andy, you and I have talked about this hyperlquid, FOGO, circles of 20 validator uh chain, but also like the practicality around Dowo governance in general. I've been asking a lot of people I respect, what do you think about Dowo governance? What is the future? I haven't heard any bullish sentiments on governance at all. And so, so I just think running s any sort of acquisition like this through a DAO is it it's kind of predatory if I'm being honest because you you have such a short window. You you can know the

voters, you can corner the voters, you can do things in the background and like make your will happen. And yes, I know there was some four proposals in the actual forum, but if you go to the Discord, if you actually you go to the forum as well and the forum there's not a lot. And if it and if you go to our emails, like it's crazy how many people were against this, but nervous to make their voice known because if it did go through, you know, this entity that's acquiring them is going to know they're going to remember who wasn't for them at that time. >> Some people did voice their dis displeasure with the proposal. I'm going I'm on the layer zero uh discourse, the Stargate discourse on this this thread

is insane. >> Read some stuff. >> Yeah. So, so just before I do to push back, Robinson, I think you're right. If you hadn't come in with a higher proposal, maybe it would have worked, but frankly, I don't know if you could have came in with a proposal high enough based on the intertwined interest that you're des you're describing. So the guy who posted the proposal um in his proposal says well well for one he's uh part of the layer zero foundation and in his retort to the wormhole proposal on this thread he says as someone with a significant amount of STG Stargate as the found the the foundation of layer zero also with a significant amount of STG he fully supports this deal of course right because he's he's in the

foundation someone calls him out as as so I guess he had $44,000 worth of STG. Someone says, "Oh, you mean as someone with 44,000 STG?" Pretty reasonable question. This guy responds, "Oh no, do you have more? Did I fail your purity test for STG ownership? Allow me to get on a knee and bow to you, oh grandmaster of STG tokens." This is the guy who made the proposal on behalf of the Layer Zero Foundation. And so I think what what this indicates is that I mean look, if someone's gonna have that kind of language to me or my community and make a bid to buy my company, I'm giving him the middle. I'm like, dude, [ __ ] you. Like you're going to talk to me and then try to buy my

company like that? Get out of here. And so there was no way that layer zero was going to lose this bit. >> Yeah. No, there was no there was I after going through the whole process like maybe that's another thing is even if we came in let's say at 150 all in including a treasury so call it net 50 I I I don't know that we you know I if you actually look as soon as we placed the bid so you can only vote if you have staked STG as soon as we placed the bid a bunch more tokens staked so like there were they were prepping for the outcome where we could potentially get to a no there was really only two or three voters that needed flip. They actually didn't even vote.

They just had such big holdings and were staking. They they were they only needed a flip, but they they were prepping for a no vote. If it went no vote, then they're like, "Okay, like we're going to load up and and stake a lot more STG and figure out like, you know, what back channel we could do that." So, it was absolutely a massive uphill battle for us, but that doesn't mean that our intentions were pure, but I do agree that it would have been it would have been hard no matter what. And, you know, again, layer zero doesn't really want these details to come up that come out that much. I'll give you an example. You know, boy, I was supposed to go on the boys club stream this morning and you know, I actually love the boys club team. This is this is no no no flack to

them whatsoever. I think they were in a difficult spot. Um, but you know, I there was like Brian was on there and I was going to go after him and it was kind of like, hey, we can't have you anymore. It was announced on Twitter and pull me off. So, it's like, you know, if someone doesn't want these details out there, it should be again like kind of the alarm signal should go off a little bit. And again, I'm not saying anything malicious was necessarily done, but like I think we should just be honest about this process and it, you know, it's seemingly a little bit unethical is from our from our perspective. >> Robinson, I I do have to ask um from the thought process of both layer zero and wormhole acquiring Stargate would have also meant acquiring the STG token, the ticker, the handle, the contract

address, the ownership of that. Um and thus you would have ended up having a wormhole token which uh crypto Twitter recently destroyed you on saying that you should be using your 100 million to buy back the token rather than trying to go and fight layer zero. Um you would have had this STG token, this W token. You would have had to figure out a way to maybe merge these things. I'm not sure what layer zero is planning to do there. Uh how they plan to merge these together. You would have had a sticky process of like transferring the value somehow. like had you won this um you know and speaking to your token holders here what would you have actually done to make this a win for wormhole token holders? Yeah, absolutely. So, I I think that one of the best things for a token

is uh obviously revenue buybacks. A lot of people agree with that at this point. But what if you go further down the stack then what do you need in order to get that frontends stickiness users right and so frontends are actually and at the asset level and this is why I'm talking about and this is why I started with the general idea that interop is messaging messaging is largely commoditized where the value occurs as asset and frontends. And so for us, frontends are really important. Portal is extremely important because that's ultimately where we're going to collect fees. It's no no like, you know, uh, silver bullet here. It's very similar to a DEX, if you will, right? Collect fees and then ideally, if your front end's really sticky and you get a lot of revenue, that goes back to the token, right? And so when we think

about the acquisition of Stargate from our perspective, that's just another fee generation for when we turn on the revenue buybacks. And so that it's like as simple as that in terms of how we would convert zero to W. Uh you know we would have done whatever the one to one conversion is there and you know once we got to our proposal we would have put that out there but I think the bigger point here is that frontends are good for revenue. Um and so you know when you think about interop in general a lot of us are realizing we realized this a long time ago again messaging commoditized assets are everything front ends you know are an extension of that and that's where you're going to charge fees and that's what's going to drive value back to the token. Um, so that's I guess that'd be the context I'd give there.

>> And and would you would you then have had to like deprecate the Stargate token and then like let like like there'd be some sort of destruction of value is what I'm trying to get at. Like I I don't see how how it would be a win for any like like there would be a destruction of of the Stargate token's value that it currently has, which I'm not really sure where it's trading now, but like there have Yeah, I I just think that would be a that'd be a bit of a headache. I don't know. I mean even even in the even in the like zero um even in the zero Stargate deal, right? Like one of the things why we proposed the USDC is because there's no conversion risk.

So like you're absolutely right like converting from the one token to another since Star layer zero's offer was going to be in zero. Like you have a bunch of conversion risk risk and slippage that you have to take into consideration. We thought by putting up like a flatout USDC here's the money for it deal that that would have been you know perceived better as better, right? So like of course there's going to be issues when you actually convert over and there's going to be dilution but those are things that we could have you know figured out if we had time to go through a governance process collect feedback from the STG holders >> there there's always taps and and ways to try to average that out Robinson I'm curious um this kind of begs the question about uh the balance of power uh between foundations and and lab

companies and so I you know obviously the layer zero foundation made this proposal to Stargate. You know, you're kind of I'm actually not sure if you're on the foundation side or the lab side. So, maybe you can clarify like where should these proposals come from? What is the division of responsibilities when it comes to these foundations and these labs companies? And just generally, if if if you were to see, you know, this this M&A process play out again, what what should h how should this shake out in terms of the foundations, the labs? Is this just a song and dance? because America had, you know, some pretty significant regulations or generally what is what is the purpose of this division?

>> I think it's a song and dance. I think uh split entities is one of the worst things to happen to crypto since inception. When is it better or more optimal to have a company with a single goal split into multiple different entities? Like I I it's hard for me to see an argument where that makes sense, right? You have split decision-m you have people that are in different areas, maybe run on different missions. they have all the way down to the systems they're on, right? You could have different EO systems, like different payroll systems, right? It's it's just like multiples of more overhead to have these different entities.

So, you know, I I mean I I this would actually probably be a fun debate to have, but like I I think that just it's one of the worst things to happen. And so, one thing that I'm actually looking at closely is what does it look like for all these entities to consolidate? So beyond like the kind of the layer zero situation here, like one thing that I think is interesting is people talk about like digital asset treasuries, and I know that's not the the point of this conversation, but one of the ways I I think that that you can sustain a trade above the the NAV is actually what does it look like for these companies to say, hey, had to split out, but now that there's kind of more regulatory clarity, what does it look like for us to consolidate potentially? And I know some some are

talking about that. So, you know, I I think it just is a song and dance. it's always trading back and forth between the entities. It makes things much more confusing, you know, obuscated. And so I like I I generally am pretty against it, right? And I I don't blame anyone, including us. We we we were, you know, played the the hand we were dealt, if you will. But it definitely makes Dow processes like this much more hard, acquisition like this much harder, and uh you know, I'm looking forward to potentially a world where a lot of the consolidation happens around these entities. >> Yeah. Robinson, one last one before we let you get get off on the on and a final word for you. Um, so I put that tweet out this morning and uh your your favorite person in the world, Chainlink God, responded again uh asking about

exclusivity agreements, paying security ties coincidental history. I mean, do do you have a word for this guy? Like do is there any thoughts on like just this chain link wormhole layer zero battle? It's like the three titans. I mean, I'm not I'm not trying to have you stir the pot too much here, but like someone's got to say a word to Chainlink God. He's just he's just firing in the in the comments right now. >> I'll address it. What But the first thing I'll say is like one thing that's exciting for all three parties is like the opportunity side like as consolidation happens, this is something I did predict like I think Interop like continues to consolidate. I don't think there's one winner. There's multiple.

But like all look at all these chains, Stripe, Google Cloud, uh you know, Circle more and more chains. you know JP Morgan just means like the opportunity size for interop is bigger but it's not going to be a lot of winners right so like the battle is just heating up because of that right it's like there's a lot of chains so the hate is kind of spread across all these chains for interop is just consolidating so it's getting more and more fierce which is I think you know personally I'm competitive so I think it's kind of fun um but look here's here's what I'll say chain god is just you know fishing for reactions this this entire industry and I think any like person that really works in it It runs on BD deals, right? So, I'm not saying anything about securitize. I'm saying in general there's I don't

understand the the hill people are dying on and I think there was actually a lot of people that were originally commenting on this thread being like, you know, how many chain foundations, how many DAPs, how many infrastructure protocols do a token swap, do a milestonebased grant, except that's literally what foundations are for. Like, so I just don't even get the like flood attempt here because it's completely moot. Like, show me someone hasn't made some sort of grant with that a token they have or milestone based agreement and then I'll like have a different answer but like this just it's just a nothing burger like he's just farming and he you know the competition is fierce and I don't expect anything less from >> CG yeah um Robinson one last word for you on this saga here just any closing

thoughts reflections and then we'll let you go man I know you're busy >> no I appreciate you guys having me on like one last thing I'll say is our intentions were pretty clear And I want to want to make them clear here is like this. We had fully intended for reasons I said to to acquire Stargate and do what's best for SG holders. Our firm belief that a fair bit process and not jamming this through a Dow would have been the best outcome. Axelar across us just in that short period of time put in bids to acquire this thing. I think we could have got it almost double what the value that was currently acquired for.

Um, that being said, I think crypto is fun because there's always things to learn learn from and improve upon and Dow governance needs to be improved upon. I think acquisitions full stop via Dow governance shouldn't happen. Um, and you know, I will be more vocal about this going forward on my end and uh can hopefully contribute to the conversation on how we can better >> Robinson from Wormhole. Quite the saga. Um, thank you for joining us, man. I appreciate you answering the pointed questions. I'm uh starting to take to take the role of asking the the tough questions and seems he's got the >> the uh skin to take it. So >> Andy Zilla over here, shout out. We got Andy taking your coming for you.

>> Yeah. >> Thanks for having me, guys. >> All righty. >> Thank you, Robinson. We'll see you next time. >> Bye. >> All righty. Wow, that was electric, man. >> I love it. I love it, man. The competition in this market >> interrupt is just crazy, man. Cut. It's so cutthroat. >> It honestly makes it hard to invest in from like a let's make money on investing in this sector like you know let's say chain link layer zero wormhole are the winners then I suppose there's a basket of like an interrupt basket there but then you've got the the other players across the axel the dbridges the etc etc. Um yeah man I mean it's just it's I I think it's the most cutthroat sector in crypto. Look, I think you have to look at it from uh one or the other.

A retail perspective of if you're buying the token or if you're looking at it from the business perspective who you're going to use. >> Yeah. And generally the token the value acrruel of the token. Like I I I don't see an argument for any of these tokens really. I mean you point to an alt token right now that's going up other than Hyperlid, right? And one of the majors. It's tough. But if you're looking at these as businesses, like Robinson said, this thing is worth much more than the $10 million beyond its treasury value. Like it's generating fees. The the infrastructure works and people are using it and so they're generating revenue. Interop protocols are one of the few that are generating revenue.

>> That revenue isn't yet getting passed back to its token. From a business perspective, I think, you know, if you're looking at it and you're looking at it from an M&A angle there, you know, you can invest far and wide into this sector. Well, I just want to say that we asked Brian from uh Layer Zero to come on the stream last week. He went uh on a couple other streams. I think he went on Thread Guys and some others. Um he's on Boys Club today. We like the Layer Zero guys. We support them. They're awesome. Pudgy Penguins holders fans. They've done great work. Brian's the man. I've met him in person. They got a couple great guys on their team, Daryl, Mark.

Uh super super tight with those guys. So, you know, we're just happy to be a platform for people to give their takes. And I think there's a lot of spicy takes. Probably going to be quite a few good clips from this one today. Stir the pot on Twitter. So, let's roll into the next guest. We've got Neil from Dawn, the co-founder of Dawn. Neil is uh working on in the deep sector. I'm super curious about what's what's going on there. Thinking of more of this one as a a kind of like a deep update, a deepin refresher for us uh and and just kind of understand what's going on. So, Neil, welcome to the show. Appreciate you having us and being patient there. We had quite the segment prior.

>> Uh, thanks for having me on, man. I mean, when I'm honestly, you know, stunned by the amount of infrastructure that you guys have built yourself to make this stream possible. So, you know, kudos to you guys, but a lot of props behind the scenes, but thanks again for having me on, guys. >> Yeah, I appreciate it. It's uh it's the rollup TV, man. It's like it's it's it's people don't realize I I just spent point4 ETH on a damn camera lens. You know, the guy's got >> to do >> That's right. Well, Neil would love to just get your your background, man. It's your first time meeting Robbie and myself. Um, you know, where you're from, what's your what's your history, why did you get involved in Deepin, why you dedicating your career to this, and I got a ton of questions about Deepen

tokconomics, some of the successful protocols, what you guys are doing, etc. >> Yeah, man. And thanks again for having me on here. I'll give the quick background for me. You know, I was an electrical engineer in Princeton, but you know, before then, I grew up in West Orange, New Jersey. So, uh, you know, not too far ultimately from when I went to college, but, um, I think we're in a a pretty interesting spot of kind of meeting this, uh, intersection of where real technology is impacting everyday lives. And that's been kind of like the the central point of my career, I'd say, is I originally started off, you know, as I mentioned, electrical engineer in Princeton, but when I dropped out to go do startups, I ended up building like healthcare analytics software. And I'm like, this is fun, but kind of boring,

right? I wanted to build technology that actually impacted everyday households. Um, and that was actually when I kind of first fell in love with this idea of like how wireless can be used to solve really big connectivity problems. And this was kind of like around the 2017 2018 timeline when you know Helium kind of the godfather I guess of deepen in many ways um has started become gaining kind of a little bit more prevalence there and putting and just making themselves known. Uh, and that was really where we drew a lot of inspiration from is we got to see what is the power of like communities when they come together to build wireless networks and how can you completely dethrone the big guys in the process.

And so that I'd say is kind of what my hope for my entire career and what I want to do for the next 30 40 50 years of my life is I want to help build a new user internet and use wireless to make that whole thing possible. So a little bit of a boring background by myself but hopefully some good context you guys ask some questions on this. Well, I know you're close with my buddy Marcus from Ubetel, which might be some alpha that we can't talk about too much on the stream. Um, but uh yeah, man. I mean, look, I I first got my exposure and I think Rob as well to deepen with Helium, right? Just seeing uh people run these little machines on their in uh like like my university friends would would like run them for Wi-Fi and such. Um and so

you know that ended up kind of growing growing into now there's tons of you know other deepen kind of networks platforms etc. So m maybe we can just understand the core value prop of of why decentralizing these physical infrastructure networks is important. You know if you had to explain to somebody who' never heard about deepen prior you know you're in an elevator with somebody what what is the core value prop of the deepin category as a whole and maybe specifically as it as it um you know includes Dawn here? Yeah, the core value prop for deepen I think is pretty straightforward is it comes down to really three different categories is you know deepen is really all about taking the digital

infrastructure that powers our lives right like what I'm talking to you guys on here this is going to some server which is finding a way to do some sort of like UDP based handoff and do some recording and it stores all of that for you guys to be able to upload onto X and then you know do some clips so that you guys can put it on later. All of that digital infrastructure from the wires that interconnect us all the way to the backend servers. That's this category of digital infrastructure. And DPIN is just this initiative of just taking this digital infrastructure space a $2.3 trillion market and making it so that instead of it being powered by the big companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, it's powered by individual users like you and me, right? And I think the first or maybe not the first

but one of the kind of early examples when I was like first getting into college I remember I was at when I was visiting Caltech um one of the guys that I was visiting there he was doing this kind of protein folding problem where essentially everybody had this little desktop application and they were doing protein folding for research and the idea was it was just cheaper to have college students contribute a little bit of their time and a little bit of their digital infrastructure to solve this complicated problem that ended up having huge impacts for chemical engineering. and biomedical. And so it's this entire landscape of like having consumers build and power the internet so that it can be cheaper, faster because it's closer to the end users that they service, cheaper because they're in cheaper footprints.

But then I think the final point is trustless so that you don't have any of these big monopoly concerns. And I think whether it's like cloud services, AI, GPU, or in our case broadband, the easiest example that I can give for like why monopolies suck in general is like my home internet bill from Verizon. I'm paying 128 bucks per month for that, but that same volume at a data center only costs them 50 cents. Like it's a combination because it's so expensive to run the wires from their data center to me. But also, that's what happens when you have a monopoly. You have ultimate pricing power. And I think if you can find a way in which every consumer can kind of contribute a little bit towards building a new economy, that is I think where the power of this digital infrastructure comes about. And I guess

the final example that I'll give with this, it's like kind of like what happens when gig economy meets digital infrastructure, right? That's kind of deep in a nut in a nutshell. Yeah. So I think the transition it's

kind of an interesting one where I kind of think about it if you view it from like the perspective of utilities is kind of one way to look at it. And so one way that I kind of think about it is the kind of like electricity, right? right? Is that eventually electricity just became a proper utility that you could then disin inter disintermediate yourself if you were actually doing like running solar panels. And so I think as we kind of look at what Dawn does, right? We're kind of doing the same thing to the fourth utility where consumers can own their own infrastructure and help contribute and then sells their surplus back to the grid. DPIN does that both with everything from broadband to like cloud computing and all of that kind of stuff.

And so to answer your question about like what does that transition look like, I think it's one where the pricing ends up becoming more like a utility. So it just becomes more competitive and value continues to go up the stack to solutions like inference and all that kind of stuff, right? So I think we're a long way out from where that where that ends up happening. But I think all of these things about these trends of moving digital infrastructure from the edge just in meeting them using the blockchain, it's all kind of just as an eventual eventuality of just making it incredibly price competitive. so that it's a proper commodity for the things that sit on top of that. And when we consider like the history of this and like the shortcomings that we've had, one of the biggest things that I say has stopped us from being able to do this is

one is like information asymmetry is that if the pitch is like every consumer is going to be a deepen operator in the future, which I firmly believe it's just difficult to do that, right? Not everybody has the expertise to be able to do that to set up their own server with their own AI, you know, their own they're running their own AI inference layer because of a GPU they slotted in. It's very difficult to be able to do that and I think we need to as an industry bring that towards consumers and make that more accessible and then one other final piece I'll give towards that is also the proof layer because the biggest downside that you have towards this is instead of it running in decentralized servers or sorry in centralized servers where the person who is managing that is the one that's ultimately responsible for that customer

relationship here the customer relationship I might be relying on a hundred different people to be able to do that and that is kind of the challenge of where proofs come in is proof proofs are being used nowadays to make sure that the quality of service is legit. You're using cryptography and math to make sure that people can't lie about the underlying service that they offer. And the easiest example is in our case is like if I have a Dawn node and I'm selling internet to my, you know, my neighbors, which I do in my in my home right now. I have three neighbors around me and I sell them broadband. The way that you need to be able to do that is by having a way in which I can't lie about how much bandwidth I actually have to give them or what they're receiving.

And when you start having mechanisms and proofs like that, you can start doing interesting things like decentralized SLAs's. Like I don't have to call Comcast or Verizon and complain that my speed isn't good. I'm going to have a mathematical guarantee for how good that speed is and I can get rebated automatically as a result. So I'd say it's a combination of like the trend ultimately needs to solve kind of this coordination layer which is still very early days solved by proofs, but then the biggest one is just like consumer accessibility I think is definitely a huge chunk of that. >> Yeah. Neil, I mean, I just gota I gotta push back on the on the incentive model of of a lot of these deep in companies.

I mean, I think the biggest flak for you guys is um tokconomics just aren't going to work. Like the the the token is the product people firmly believe in how the token incentives have allowed deepin as a category to be created. They've allowed people to essentially, you know, use DAON tokens, use Helium tokens, use XYZ tokens to uh, you know, have highly subsidized internet or highly subsidized wireless, etc. And that's been the beautiful thing. But the sustainability of these mechanisms and the actually the token actually ever not just kind of trendlining hardlining towards essentially a, you know, zero is is is just hard to figure out. So like I don't

like like how do we you know let you know I got the title of this is the next five years of deepen. I think the biggest challenge is how how do we solve the next five years of sustainable deepin tokconomics such that the token incentive solution to the creation of these new markets which is amazing is actually something that can be sustainable. We don't just need to like raise for a new company to launch a new token that's sexy and like you know restart again like like you know how do you answer that push back? That's that's a great question. I mean, I think the most fundamental answer that I always give to this sort of thinking is the actual technology of tapping into individual users to help build up supply so that you can then sell that supply to

other people in whatever capacity. The unit economics of that need to work without a token. Like that's primarily number one. And as long as that's the case, and the token is really just like an accelerant or fuel on the fire to be able to do this through different capital cycles as capital comes in looking to deploy in this new infrastructure. And there's a lot of different interesting mechanics you can do to get around this problem as well, like doing a two token type model where one resembles like programmable equity and another one kind of programmable debt or structured debt. Like there's a lot of interesting ways to get around it, but I just say, you know, I'm more concerned about making sure that you are delivering real value that is cheaper and faster to the users. And as long as you can do that, that's the most

important thing that matters. And so I think to drill back into that example that I gave before is in my case, I essentially in my home, I have a little $100 access point that is right on my ceiling like I'm looking at it right now. That device provides coverage to my three different neighbors in my home. And instead of them also having to spend $128 on an internet connection, they're paying me $30 for my internet connection and we're splitting the bill four ways. Like that that uh unit economics that's there that where I just spend $100 on that access point and now I'm saving $90 per month on my internet bill. Like that's the power of what the right level of technology can do when it's brought with the right level of trustless coordination. My neighbors don't have to

know anything about me to know that they're getting the service that they said that they're paying for. And so you can it's easy to see how like that's kind of just like an arbitrage of data in some ways. And as long as mechanics like that exist, then I think the token is really, you know, you actually have a lot of leeway into making sure that the token actually does does uh >> But isn't the isn't the isn't the the doesn't the whole model break if um if there are like like why would I end up using this unproven physical infrastructure network when I can just stick with my Comcast? I don't run into any legal problems if they find out that I'm doing this other kind of stuff and uh it's pretty much the same price. Like sure, if the unit economics match out to

be even, great. But even is not good enough. Like we're looking for like a 50% cut to make this work without a token. Like like how do you how do you even get get close to that? >> Yeah. I mean, in in in this case, right, that that $100 device that I have, I got a payback period on that with just a month. So, I mean, we're talking like that's pretty pretty compelling unit economics that are there. Yeah, I'd say that kind of makes it a sufficient one. But then the biggest thing too is that a lot of these industries, >> their NPS scores, right, the net promoter scores are so bad, consumers are looking for a better alternative where they can actually get proper accountability and transparency and they don't have to worry about their data getting stolen, dealing with data caps and all this kind of stuff. So I think

it's really just this kind of intersection of like when can technology facilitate a good digital infrastructure arbitrage combined with when consumers are sufficiently pissed off enough that they want another solution. And I think we kind of exist at that interesting blend between those two. >> What's the the service like? you know, the the price. Okay. Sounds like it's, you know, $30 versus $120 that that that's, you know, 75% off, but is it what's like the upload download speed that someone can get from one of these devices? >> Ah, that that's the cool part about it. So, the we are now at a point in history where wireless technology has gotten good enough to compete against fiber.

And that was really what we when we decided, hey, we have to go all in on this. Like when I first started Andrina, the web 2 company to compete against Comcast and Verizon, that was in 2018, 2019, and in 2020, we started scaling it up. But it was only until 2024 when I when that wireless technology got good enough to really compete against fiber at scale. And so now we're in a scenario where my neighbors are getting a fiber level experience just delivered over wireless. >> And what okay, so what's the distribution plan here? Because I can also understand if we can get this into emerging geographical regions then we can provide internet access more abundantly to the entire world not just cut costs for the first world or the western world. How what what is the

distribution plan? Is it that one access point can service three homes and so we need an access point every three homes. How do we how do we do that? Is that is that the right scale? How how should we think about distribution? >> Yeah. So the example that you gave to just solidify in the minds of the viewers the other end of the spectrum where we talked about me in like a bougie area in Princeton, New Jersey, but on the other end of the side you have people where like something like a Starlink would be a great solution, but if you imagine like a rural village in like an emerging market, not everybody can afford a Starlink connection, not everybody can afford a Starlink subscription. So the idea of a single Starlink connection that they can that can then be terrestrially expanded by dawn where everybody can tap into it,

that's kind of the other end where you're just bringing coverage to people that didn't have it in the first place, which I think is also an equally equally compelling solution. >> And then so to to get to your case about like what the go to market plan is how we think about this is it's not a ratio of like one to three. you're in a scenario where a single node depending on how much you want to spend to it can cover anywhere from 10 households all the way to you know a thousand households. And so that's why the name of the game for us is a combination of making sure that our tokconomics that we have in the protocol are incentivizing the deployment in the highest opportunity areas that we have. Like there's one deployment that we have in in Brooklyn in Brooklyn, New York, you

know, the tallest building in Brooklyn that actually covers over a million households with just that one deployment. Um, so I'd say that's >> is that the same hund is that the same $100 access point? >> No, that one is way more expensive. Yeah. And so that that's where we as we think about kind of like the the protocol emissions and the reward curve, they match you proportional to how many households you provide coverage to. >> And and so I think Andy, that's kind of like your original thing is is that it's just a it's just an accelerant. It's a fuel in the fire. It means that you as somebody that is making this capital investment in this infrastructure, you don't necessarily have the massive burden of recouping that investment by going out and knocking on doors. We as a platform help make that easy for you.

But then of course tokens helped uh you know provide a little bit of that cushion there as well. And so part of the core dynamics for us and Robbie this gets to your question is the protocol is designed to automatically reward people proportional to how many households you provide coverage to. So if your node is providing coverage to you know one household versus 10 households the person who gets 10 households covered will get 10 times the amount of rewards as the person who's providing one. And that way you just have like a clear alignment of incentives about what the protocols are trying to achieve. And the protocol for us is trying to achieve a network that is twice the size of Comcast located all across the world.

Like that's our mandate. >> Yeah. Um Neil, when you're looking at the kind of intersection right now between the unit economics or the the feasibility from a uh you know household expenditure perspective, you know, kind of converging with this consumer sentiment and consumer behavior of these more incumbent based uh telecom or phone or wireless providers and and you're mapping us out to where we are today. you know, we got the inception of some of these deepend providers. Like where do we go five years from now? Like like we're having this conversation in in August of 2030. Um what's your vision for for for the next five years of

deepen? So the vision that I have for the next five years of deepin is actually tied to like what we just did on our hardware release which is I think that the growth of AI is going to be probably pretty close to unbounded in terms of the demand that it's going to have on digital infrastructure and I think that homes in general are the cheapest location that you can have digital infrastructure in general and so I think when you look at the fact that investors are like investing in GPU so like a 10% return that's kind of crazy to that GPUs are being like the investment of them is like equatable with a return profile of that of real estate. And that just goes to tell me that investor capital is just looking for every bit of IRR that they can

scrape by. And so if you're in a scenario where I can spend thousands of dollars per month deploying a GPU at a data center or tens of dollars per month deploying a GPU at an individual home, it's clear that that is going to happen eventually. And I think what's interesting about that is that that cheap footprint for all this digital infrastructure is is limited, right? There's only a certain amount of homes users where you actually have this cheap infrastructure. So I think the home is going to over the next 5 years become the most in demand footprint for digital infrastructure period. And I think there is going to be a massive amount of contention in a race to be able to secure that. And you're going to need technologies and protocols that can effectively mediate that exchange

between massive AI companies that want their GPUs and cheap footprints to be able to optimize their cogs and individual households that don't necessarily have the expertise or know exactly how to do that. And so I think if if AI was kind of the again like another accelerant to this whole equation of digital infrastructure at the edge and I think as the demand for GPUs continues to grow and grow, it's only an inevitability until it ends up in the cheapest footprint and the cheapest footprint is going to be people's homes. So I think deepen over the next 5 years is like a virtual certainty just because of that trend alone.

>> Okay. So let me put that into like uh left curve terms here. A a lot of the a lot of the infrastructure that is physical in GPUs or in these computers will end up in the homes of individual uh people for the reasons of the acceleration of demand for uh just compute basically and maybe like people want to run local LMS they want private AI they want their own AI team like they don't want to use BT and open AI and whatnot and so because of that trend uh those people are going to be looking for the most cost effective and environmentally friendly footprint. Like when you say footprint, is that like like what exactly do you mean by that?

>> I mean where the physical where the physical GPU card lives, right? >> It's going to be okay. Understood. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. and and that's going to be in the in homes because of the acceleration of AI and then and the the increase in the demand of compute leads to that going into homes for for for why exactly >> because it's the cheapest footprint. So if you wanted to like buy uh like if you wanted to buy a data center to be able to put your GPUs you're on average paying about $180 per square foot. But if you want to buy an apartment building or a multif family apartment building, you're paying2 to$3 square foot. So it's just it's just if you need reliable connectivity, reliable power, climate

control infrastructure needs. There is no cheaper footprint in the world and that resource is limited. That resource is scarce. But we as we kind of look at what AI is going to be doing over the next 5 to 10 years, there's no reason to think that AI demand and the amount of GPUs we need is going to be capped. So I think the demand for that is just going to outpace the amount of cheap real estate that we have which is going to put the households directly at the center of this new marketplace >> which is exactly aligned with the decentralized physical infrastructure network thesis. >> Exactly.

>> It's we're going from data centers to everyday users at home effectively. >> Exactly. And so that's why like my bet and kind of what we started this conversation of my bet almost has nothing to do with tokens. My bet and why I dedicate my career to this is because the technology unlocks a more efficient arbitrage. Like that's it, right? And that that's that's what gets me behind all of this. >> The a after co there was kind of this corporate real estate like like uh void. Everyone went work from home. All these big uh buildings where that used to be offices were empty. Malls, same thing.

Do you think we're gonna just based on this thesis, do you think we're gonna convert those into data farms? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. Like like the I remember during this time period like the amount of startups I would see that were doing modular data centers that were like shipping providing shipping containers that you would send towards a commercial building whose parking lot was empty due because of COVID. Stuff like that was on the rise and I think we're going to continue seeing more of that stuff. Uh where every single, you know, underutilized square footage is going to be tapped at some level of digital infrastructure. So I I totally believe that.

>> Yeah. Neil, um I guess just final thoughts from you. Is there any deepin protocols or founders that you'd like to shout out that are doing great work that our audience should should check out, you know, whether building within Dawn or on top of Dawn or outside of Dawn. What are some of their your favorites out there? >> So, my favorites are the ones that I think where in this sort of like five-year landscape, if they were to go away, somebody would take their place. So, they're ones that I think the technology is just critical for a more efficient construction of the market. One of them obviously Helium right the OG they just turned on the recent burn of their uh you know burn based on their data credit usage which I think is huge for their protocol. Another one that I love is is inference and SAM from

formerly Cusco now inference.net they're providing kind of this consumerpowered inference layer. Uh love blockcast and pipe which are incredible CDN solutions. It's just you can kind of look at the entire stack of what Google Cloud, AWS and Azure are doing and you can kind of see all these incredible protocols that are taking uh that them there. So if you want to if you want to check out more, you know, you can you can see we've been writing a lot about which of these protocols we love to and you know we love working with. So hopefully that gives a little bit of a good context there. >> Love it. One one last thing for you. I I couldn't not ask about your bio on on X.

you're building the global state of something and these equations look very perplexing. What is going on in your bio? >> So those are Maxwell's fields field equations um namely for the propagation or at least the two of the four that relate to the propagation of wireless waves and I think that's kind of this interesting intersection of DIN is you're just taking like a theoretical framework for how stuff happens and you're providing a trustless representation for that onchain. So, I'd say if you were to go to the most abstract general sense of what we're doing, like that's literally what we're doing. And I thought it was just a little funny to to just go to the extreme for that.

>> I love nerd, man. >> That's I think that's a conversation for another time. We might have to leave Andy out of that one. >> Yeah, I appreciate that salt dead, but it is true. >> No, nerds run the world, man. [ __ ] yeah. I appreciate your time, man. It's been a pleasure learning from you and just understanding your perspectives. I really appreciate it. >> Thanks for having We'll have to get you on again with some of the other deepen projects on like a debate or a or a multiaceted conversation next time. It was good to meet you though. >> Yeah. Thank you guys. Thank you, Andy. Thank you, Robbie. I appreciate I really appreciate it, guys. You guys have a good day.

>> Sweet man. Keep up the great work. See you soon, brother. Peace. >> All righty. Had to had to throw a little jab in there. Rob, I don't know if you if you like that one too much. >> You just Why do you got to hate on the nerds? The thing about you, Andy, is that you love to dish it out, but you can't take it. >> No, I can't take it. I'm a freaking big nerd with a with a soft heart on the inside. Hard shell, soft heart, big nerd. >> The ladies love you. >> Up next, we got Jacob and Mike. Final segment of the day. Great vibes. >> It's been fun. It's been uh >> need some coffee.

>> W It's been It's been broad. Like I I really enjoy just how many different areas we can touch when it comes to uh when it comes to this stream. Obviously, this is cryptonative and blockchain oriented, but I mean we were talking about M&A, right? When it comes to Dows, next we're talking about deepen and physical infrastructure hardware. I I think this is indicative of just how many different business sectors and how many different areas this technology touches. And I think, >> you know, we we uh we're not maximalists. We haven't boxed ourselves in. And uh thus is the nature of the rollup. I'm trying to see um when this Nvidia or Nvidia earnings uh is released. I think it's in the next half

hour. >> Okay. Well, let's get Jacob and Mike up. >> Yeah, we just need another second. Okay. Just hours away. Nvidia. Nvidia. >> Yeah, we're >> How does these usually come out? >> I think it's usually 4:30. I think it's usually like market just closed. Record close. new all-time highs across the board ahead of uh Nvidia earnings. So, that's probably a good sign. >> I mean, it shows expectations. >> All right, let's get let's get Jacob and Mike up here. We're going to be talking about MEV, one of the more classical things that occurs in blockchains and uh specifically we're going to be talking about L1, Monad, fast lane pivoted. Uh

we're going to be talking about OEV uh from Redstone as well. Wait, we're not gonna be talking about uh Nvidia earnings? >> We're gonna be talking about Nvidia earnings once they come out. You want to just sit here and talk about what you expect for Nvidia earnings here for 30 minutes? >> I don't know. I think your entire net worth is dependent on on the results of Jensen Huang's earnings. So, I think you add more pressure to it, man. >> I think crypto decoupled from the stock market a few months ago. >> Oh. Oh, the decoupler. Um, yeah. I think we're basically ready to have Mike and Jacob up. So guys, just give us one sec and uh we'll roll it out. But ready when you guys are in the back. Um yeah, I mean guys, so kind of quick uh overview here

um around me and DeFi. Um yeah, Rob, so I think you mentioned that that we had uh kind of a bit more of a of a of a wide range of conversations this morning from interop into um into deepen now kind of rolling into some more technical stuff here uh with me. Um so yeah I mean look I think like my goals and objectives of this conversation is just to understand um what's what the latest is happening with some of the Oracle uh MEV OEV kind of conversations um some of the the recent updates in application specific sequencing uh kind of that whole conversation um and just generally like how how these how these systems have

been uh progressing as of as of late. So that'd be my core goal. Um, and yeah, >> well, we've got Jacob and Mike on stage now. Guys, welcome to the show. It's a pleasure to have you here. >> Yeah, guys. >> Awesome to be here. Thank you for having me. >> Dude, that is an electric microphone. >> That is it. Jacob, you need to step up your game, man. >> I know. I know. Not going on enough podcasts, but um longtime listener of this, so excited to be on. >> Good, man. You you're probably a listener of the uh of the 2024 early 25 rollup technical days. This is a nice blast from the past. Let's jump right into it, guys. Maybe just brief intros about yourselves, what what you guys do at your respective companies. Appreciate

you guys joining us today. First time meeting you both. So, uh, looking forward to it. >> Yeah, first time being on the road. Phenomenal to be here. Uh, for the people that don't know me, I'm Mike Masari. I am strategic advisor at Restston Oracles and I've been a Reston since about April. before for the past two decades I was very much in engineering and it's a career that took me all the way up to be director of platform and integration at chain link before and then I left chain link in March 2024 join res in April 2025 my focus at Reston is twofold one is very much on advising strategically the

direction of the company and the growth of Reston as an oracle fast growing oracle in the case and then secondly uh with Jacob here uh we are uh looking after redstone atom which is our new product that is very focused as you guys correctly said on OEV which is what we call the evolution of ME >> switch from chain link to Redstone pretty indicative of a thesis that you're betting on there um yeah Jacob would love to hear uh from you as well uh and uh tell us a little bit about some recent developments over at Fastlane.

>> Yeah. So, I've been at Fastlane for about a year and a half now. Uh, so I lead the OEV product at Fastlane. So, basically the intersection of oracles and me application specific sequencing um all that fun stuff. So, before how I got into crypto was actually running liquidator bots um on my own uh liquidating on some of the lending protocols you probably know on Ethereum mainet. Then I I went to API3 and I built out the OEV product for API 3. And then I came to Fastlane and I was in charge of building out OE there of course. Then um met Marson at uh ECC in Brussels and uh the rest is history now

building out OE for Redstone. >> Beautiful. Well guys uh I think we brought you on here to discuss Redstone Atom uh which is kind of the new solution and partnership between Fastane and Redstone. Could you give us a little bit more of a primer on Redstone atom? I think everyone is familiar with Redstone as an oracle, but OEV is still a little bit of an unfamiliar concept. You know, please give us an intro to OEV and to Redstone atom. >> Yeah, I think that very briefly in order to explain best how atom works and what it actually is, we need to touch very briefly on the concept of MV, right? So MV effectively is the value that comes out out of liquidations um in lending protocol very very generally speaking

and so far this has been captured historically by bots and and by liquidators right so as Jacob correctly said he was running one and these bots effectively they outbid or they try to out bit each other uh in a gas war or what I've been calling for the past few months a knife fight uh to liquidate the position as fast as possible and and capture the the me. The problem with that, of course, is that the protocol gets nothing out of this and therefore the user gets nothing and there's a bunch of other problems as you guys can imagine. There is a lot of like spam on the chain and there's uh like increasing gas cost and so on. So what we decided

to do was flip this thing on its head and instead of having uh the liquidation happen after a price update uh make sure that we decide and we determine who has the right to liquidate a certain position in the same time as the price gets updated. So we converted this knife fight into an orderly process and and that is in the form of an offchain auction uh that's run through Atlas which is the beautiful piece of infrastructure that Jacob and his team built and all of the bits of the liquidators for this position they go into the auction. So price is about to

be updated on chain. The auction gets run. All the people bid and then we push together into one single atomic transaction both the price update and the auction result. Hence the name atom. Therefore, once the information gets on chain, the people that won the auction, the first person in the auction can liquidate the position. And at the same time, we do capture the value in terms of these bids that effectively these people uh do and then we share that with the protocol and with the user.

>> Beautiful. Okay, that was a very good explanation. Uh pretty in-depth too. Um, this is something that maybe we could get some numbers to like understand the scale as how how much value is currently getting leaked because that that's really what it sounds like it's happening is that uh these auctions aren't running as efficiently as they could be and so there's sort of this value leaked to these liquidator bots. How how much is currently being leaked to these liquidator bots if I if I kind of understand that correctly. Um and then also Jacob curious like from the Fastlane perspective kind of where this partnership meets what what is Fastlane bringing to the table here?

>> Yeah. So I think um the total value leaked to date is somewhere around half a billion dollars. Um probably just over that. Um, so I think it's good to just kind of take a step back and understand like why is there so much value being leaked? Um, and so basically when a lending protocol has to do a liquidation, the lending protocol is going out and swapping doing a swap on the market. So they're just swapping a collateral asset for a loan asset. And the lending the problem is that the lending protocols have to hardcode a slippage parameter for this swap like way ahead of time. So what they're doing is they're they're

hard coding a slippage based on the worst case possible like onchain state. So they're saying like hey if liquidity dries up and we're in a total black Monday you know black swan type crash like how much slippage might we need to offer in that worst case scenario that happens 0001% of the time. So they end up setting a slippage for their swaps of anywhere between like 3 to 10 to 15%. So obviously most of the time when they're executing these swaps at this massive slippage, they're just getting totally wrecked. They're getting filled at awful prices. Um and yeah, that that's why there's been so much value leaked today.

So about two years ago at Fastline Labs, we started working on application specific sequencing um which is basically giving applications control of exactly how their transactions are ordered. So instead of just giving this up to the blockchain, the application can define certain rules of how their their transactions are ordered. So that's done in kind of like a hybrid off-chain onchain way. So the offchain component is like gathering the bids and there's some sort of filtration process and then we take the highest like 5 10 20 bids and we put those on chain and the auction actually gets settled on

chain which is a pretty unique thing to Atlas and what fasting labs have developed. Yeah, it's the partnership that we had with Fastland was instrumental to make this happen. And and the interesting thing is that having this effectively being one single transaction uh and incredibly incredibly fast because the the auction that we're on uh just last 300 milliseconds and um effectively if no bits come in 300 millconds and we just fall back to the regular price update. In the vast majority of cases, we are actually making the protocols faster because you can do more with a single transaction.

At the very worst case, we match the same speed of today. So, we just send the price update after 300 millcond delay, which is faster than the buff time of the majority of chains. And then people can liquidate afterwards as normal in the worst case scenario. And we actually uh launched this already on Uni Chain. We're expanding very quickly to to more chains. But we thought the Uni Chain was a great launching partner because of the DeFi nature of it, because of the speed of the chain itself. And then we saw very very promising results.

>> Um are you guys using application specific sequencing on Mega ETH? Because I know that Redstone's going to be helping them with their Oracle stuff. I I'm just curious like is there actual real demand and traction for application specific sequencing happening on these really fast chains where the whole goal is like composability but like there's actually you know applications that are going to push the limits of even a really fast somewhat centralized performant chain like a monad like a meg kind of what's the actual state of demand and adoption there on on these fast chains?

>> Yeah, that's an excellent question. We are not at the moment. So at the moment as I said the the auction takes about 300 millconds to run and this is um something that between us and the fastline people we decided it was a good time to you know be still very very quick but um at the same time given people enough time to to actually bid and and liquidate the positions. Uh but uh so we're not omega currently. Bold is a product that has an incredible low latency. So uh at the moment until we reduce the latency of Atom which is something that we have in the works um the use cases on Mega they're usually different from the use cases that we see

for for RestoM specifically but at the same time the goal in the long run is to have every single RTOM feed being OEV enabled in the future. So is something that we want to do because we do believe that eventually what people will want to know is uh if their feed support to because this is true value that gets back to the protocol and true value that gets back to the user. So that's the direction at the moment. We're not quite there yet but we're moving towards it.

>> Yeah. So just just to touch on that. So with with faster chains like mega eth and monad um the me is still there right so it's just shifting how the me is extracted on something like ethereum mainet the me is extracted via priority like gas price who who bids the highest gas price on mega the me would be extracted in a latency race like who can who can act at the lowest latency and ping the the mega e sequencer first so it It's kind of the same from an auction perspective. You want an auction for both scenarios. Like you don't want it to be a latency race and you don't want it to be a gas price war. So fundamentally like you there's still the

same demand for these type of services on fast chains like Mega ETH and Monad. And I'm curious how the MEV market has has evolved like uh again maybe you guys can provide some stats or numbers as as to you know what what we've seen. Oh, there goes my camera. Um um like how how is this how has this shifted over the over the last few years? Yeah, I think application specific sequencing is probably kind of coming to the coming to the front now. Um, it's something that's basically been talked about for a couple

years at this point. Um, it kind of started out with like backrun auctions like Mev Blocker, Mev Share, that type of thing. You send a swap to unis swap, you get a searcher to backun it and send you some value back. it kind of moved to RFQS and aggregators instead, which is kind of just like fixing the leak in the first place and giving the user the best swap. Um, Hyperlid really pioneered um I think application specific sequencing in its like most true form first by ordering um makers overtakers. So now you've got things like BAM on Salana that are trying to replicate that in more of a like a decentralized and permissionless

validator set. Um, and then you've got things like Sorella Labs, uh, which is very similar to Atlas, which is like saying, um, let's just do the sequencing before it ever gets to the validator. Um, and and do it in a way such that the validator can't reorder or change the sequencing in any way. So, we've seen this progression and now we're basically at the point where there are kind of a few ways to do it. It's either have your own app chain like Hyperlid, it's do something like BAM on Salana or it's handle the application specific sync before it ever hits the validator like Cella or Atlas.

Um so okay so I think that there's still going to be push back though from these chains mega or uh L1s that are like like like if you think about L1 REV application specific sequencing completely goes against the entire business model of the validators of any given L1. Uh this is kind of like bullish for like the rollup thesis bullish for the L2 thesis bullish for the for like the sequencer thesis app chain thesis etc. like how do you plan for how does fasting gonna uh get over the incentive problem when dealing with something like monad, right? How like how have you been able to approach monad and be like hey like we're going to give you give your validators less returns but your apps are going to make more

money so maybe your builders will be happier and your users will be happier but your the core infrastructure for the people that actually need to be you know running to make this network work they're going to be less happy they're going to earn less. How do you get over that like business development hump from the technical uh kind of like design perspective? >> Yeah, I don't actually think the chains are looking at rev in the same way that other people are. Okay. >> So, you've got people like to from Salana um actively promoting BAM. You've got the the Jetto folks are actually like the people that make a lot of the money from REV and they're introducing BAM, right? So you kind of see this realization where it's like okay well um we could just keep extracting as much as

possible from users or we can just try and build the best platform to build financial applications and in doing so we'll earn way more re I think there's there's numbers on this which like the Salana people get to which is just if they can just charge a fraction of a cent per transaction and they get to the amount of TPS they expect to get to then this will be even higher than the current rev today. But you only get to that amount of transactions by making the financial applications as performant as they possibly can be. Got it.

>> Yeah, I agree. And ultimately, you know, we're talking a lot in crypto for the past now many years about adoption, about getting more people on on specific apps or getting more people even in crypto in general. And I think that the key to that is really user experience, right? And and people ultimately if the user benefits from something at the end of the day, that's most of the time what drives the vast majority of the adoption. So um I do agree with Jacob. I do think that in order to get that amount of transaction, in order to get that amount of adoption on these chains and these protocols, the only successful

way will be to offer the best product possible. Coming back to some of the OEV conversation then um I think there's been some success across a couple markets but I think maybe you could say that uh the amount of value that uh you know Redstone thinks potentially that that that there is to be uh rec captured it is far higher maybe than what is actually on chain right now. Like maybe I'm wrong, but it it I remember when when we first started thinking about this, it was like, okay, there's around like a hundred million dollars a year up for grabs. Have these numbers changed? Like has this year been different for OEV

than expected? Like what what is the actual potential for real revenue collection from OEV uh now that you guys are working on this in practice? Like what what what have the results been? What are you guys actually expecting? Um because I think this is like could be something that goes back to the to the Redstone token holders, stakers, etc. I think the community is probably curious as to how you guys actually envision this revenue stream being something that you guys leverage for your protocol. >> Yeah, when we talked about this uh before even Jacob and I on on different stages over the past few months, like we always called it the $200 million problem. Um so our estimation is is around that. Obviously there is a

difference between you know venue that the leaks and venue that can be captured. We are very very high and we reduce that difference like to the minimum possible. Uh but yeah the opportunity is definitely huge. Um it is as you correctly said um in a certain in a certain sense a revenue play and it's something that uh definitely we do capture revenue but for us really the most important thing is that the protocol does and like this revenue doesn't just like leaks as as it did. uh ultimately goes back to what we said before. If a user gets a better experience by using OEV feeds and and the protocol of course can have more

aggressive strategies for example then everyone wins at the end of the day and and this is really what we what we care about at Restston. Our big mission from way before my time at Restston was uh to to make DeFi better and and this is what allow res to be like the fastest growing oracle in the market. This is what Ringy allowed the the very high reputation the rest has that and and our reliability. So yes, as much as we capture revenue, the core focus of Atom is to make the protocol better, make the protocol faster, make the protocol more secure and let the user benefit from it. We already have in the works um iterations

on this product and we we have in the works like new features. So, we're not we didn't launch it and we're going to stop. Like Jacob and I with with the team, we're working very hard every day to to improve it with that goal in mind. So, it's not just about the revenue. It's never really just about the revenue. >> No, it's it's it's really about making lending products better. >> Um, so we we took an approach where it's like it's it's great to capture revenue, but we aren't willing to make the product worse in order to capture revenue. So a lot of times when you're trying to capture revenue, you do have to maybe make some sacrifices to the product. And what we wanted to do was just build a service that yeah captures this revenue but also makes the lending

products better. So I think like yield is probably like a top three use case for crypto, right? Right now you've basically got maybe like per memecoins and you've got yield um as like the real PMF in crypto. >> Yeah. And you can see this in like lending lending TVL right uh like a TVL it's up and to the right morpho oiler fluid it's all up and to the right and people talk about like trillions um and you know realistically we probably we really will see that I think like um there's funds like Apollo who I think are 750 billion in a AUM and they're putting their they're tokenizing their

funds and putting them on chain not to like reduce operational costs as like the RWA thesis was before. Um, no, they're doing it because if you put the assets on chain, you get more yield. >> Yeah. >> So, fundamentally what these liquidation services are is they're actually like infrastructure that scales yield and improves yield. So, the revenue is great. I think the revenue is just v. And what's really coming is just like building infrastructure that scales this product with incredible PMF which is onchain yield and making sure that when trillions come onchain that DeFi is safe and when bad things happen because in

finance what can go wrong will go wrong eventually. Like we are that infrastructure that's almost like an insurance product that keeps DeFi safe. >> Well, you just triggered me so hard Jacob. Uh, how does Fastline plan to make money before you guys run out of VC dollars sir? >> Yeah, I think like >> we're really early, right? >> But serious. Yeah. >> Yeah. We we launched a product a couple months ago, so I think >> I guess maybe it's cliche, but it's really about building the best product and the revenue will come later, right?

We're building like I said yield is incredible PMF. All these lending protocols they make a lot of money. Athena they make a lot of money. If we build infrastructure and products that is critical to these companies like a and Athena and it's critical to onboarding trillions then like we're going to make a lot of revenue. The focus is really just like how do we keep iterating and building the best products that scale yield. >> Yep. Makes sense. Um all right guys just coming to a close here. What what is your ideal 6 12 18month vision for Redstone Atom? Like if you guys could could have this ideal outcome or or maybe what's your bull and bear case for this specific product? Um whether it be adoption terms, volumes, uh usage,

um you know, stuff like that. Kind of what would you say is your ideal outcome? Bull bear case potentially. Uh just curious how you guys are thinking about you know uh looking forward for this. >> Very interesting question and we thought about this a lot and we're still thinking about it a lot uh Jacob and I and all the team but at the moment a lot of it is education. So, MEV is kind of a nuance problem and an OE is an even more nuance problem. And again, even seasoned crypto people that are not in that specific vertical, they don't quite understand the the grasp and like the amount of value that

leaks and and so a lot of of it is education, educating the user, educating everyone that is involved, even educating oursel and on trying to find uh new and new challenges to to tackle. Jacob when uh he wrote the the white paper about this um did a lot of research and we're still using that to to base our innovation. The second is adoption. Obviously we launched this product fairly recently. It's been about a month now that we officially launched.

Of course we've been in conversations with um customers and partners since a bit before that but we're still at the beginning. We are live on just a few chains. We're going to be live on many many more chains. As I said before, the ultimate goal is to enable every single rest feed to be an OEV feed too because at the end of the day, as we discussed, because of the speed and the security of it, this is just a value. So, it's something that we want to provide to every single restaurant customer. And then thirdly, as Jacob said, is and to me this is the most important one and this is why it's our long-term goal as well is to keep the same level of

security that we have now and that we've been having for feeds for AV. Now we are extremely extremely secure but we really do see this as a product that makes Reson even more secure and then creates that assurance layer around the fees and then creates the insurance as Jacob said like this day scenario right and this this black Monday scenario that you know in finance happened before and probably will happen again. So we want to make sure that when it does crypto is ready and we want to be part of what make crypto ready.

>> Yeah. So the the thing I the thing I really love about this product and this vertical is I believe I understand exactly what the user wants. So this isn't a game of like trading. You know, for instance, like Coinbase, everyone always asks like, "Why do users swap through Coinbase? They charge them way bigger fee. Why do users swap through Phantom and pay 85 bits?" Like, no one knows the answers to these questions really. It's UX, it's clicks, it's like distribution, it's whatever. But lending is very, very simple. It's like users just want the most yield. It's not really a UX thing.

It's like if you can offer the most yield, you're going to get the users. And you're definitely going to get the most scalable user base, which is the the mercenary, the hyperrational, the institutional capital. Like these people certainly don't care about anything else other than yield and delivering excess returns. So the bare case is really like that people stop caring about yield and making money, that these institutions stop caring about uh their returns. So I'm pretty happy with the bear case. Um, and the bullcase is just like, yeah, in 12 months I want people to see and understand this product as kind of like a a novel oracle type. Everyone says

like no DeFi without oracles. Well, I want people to think like no yield without OEV. You know, I want people to this is like it it this is the critical infrastructure to serve the most yield. If you're an app or if you're a new chain and you don't have these services, well, your chain's going to offer less yield to your users than the other chains. And um it's unclear how your chain's going to survive if you're trying to win like lending or yield. So yeah. >> Yeah. >> Gentlemen, I I hope that the bull case is what plays out. The ultra bull case.

>> I I think Jacob, I think the bare case being institutions aren't coming on chain wrong. Institutions don't want yield wrong. that people don't want yield in a more speculative environment with lower interest rates when there's potentially better rates on chain that than there are in the traditional finance world. Wrong. Like all these things are probably going to happen and will only accelerate the thesis more. I you know we've been building in the more uh restrictive monetary policy from a macro perspective in DeFi for the last couple years which is why it's been harder and harder um you know for for these things to take off. I think, you know, any sort of more kind of loose monetary policy globally, macro-wise, really just kind of uh creates more of a surge of DeFi and can kind of allow DeFi

to shine, which which I think is is the is really what we've been waiting for now that feels like the industry has been recognized as being mature enough to be uh a part of the traditional finance portfolio and a part of the traditional finance thought process in their quarterly reports and in their in their asset allocations. So guys, um you guys are building the infrastructure that seemingly those people won't ever actually care about but will really really really need and uh you know whether they need to know OEV or MEV or application specific sequencing future application builders the future users of these chains the capital allocators um you know they will all be using this technology and I think that the big question that a lot of us

in crypto have today and and the thing that we're trying to figure out is how do we make it so Redstone and Fastlane and Ethereum and Salana and Arbitum and Hyperlquid generate the value, not you know Robin Hood, Revolute, JPM, Goldman come in and just reap the value off of what we've built here in this open source world. And so I think that's that's the question that I think is uh is answered. I think that's the current that's the current uh setup that we're faced to figure out how to best understand and and kind of fight against. And so I don't know if you guys have any closing thoughts there or just in general, but it's been a pleasure.

>> Yeah, likewise and thank you so much for having us. Infrastructure that is visible is usually the best infrastructure. Uh the one that people don't really know exists, but it's there and is always there. Infrastructure is a very interesting thing because it's one of those things that people notice and care about when it doesn't work. So when if if people don't notice it and it's just there doing its job sign then it means that that it's doing a good job and and this is what we're trying to do regarding your your comment. I've been in crypto for a little while now uh as everyone in this room and I really want to see the original crypto values being upheld throughout this change. It's clear we're going through times of

change and as you said there's probably been no better time for DeFi than today but yeah it's very important that we do it with the same level of trust minimization the same level of decentralization the same level of security that we always applied throughout and effectively this is our mission it's our mission for atom as a group and it's my mission personally as someone that has been building in crypto for a few a few Yep. We're going to we're going to accelerate yield and we're going to force Revolute to use our infrastructure because that's the only way that they're going to make as much money.

>> That's how that's how fast is going to make money. Andy, shut your ass up, buddy. No more silly questions. All right, >> let's go, Jacob. >> All right, Mike. Jacob, it's been a pleasure, man. Thank you guys so much for joining us. >> Thank you very much, guys. >> Thanks. It's been a pleasure, guys. All righty. Alrighty, guys. What a stream. That was a fun one. Uh, it's been a It's been a good It's been a good day. Uh, on the set, Nvidia has or Nvidia Nvidia. Nvidia, they have beaten earnings. I'm going to call that. We're going to rip from here. I had to throw that out there. I'm bullish. Great stream today, guys. Thank you so much for being here.

We'll see you guys tomorrow. Last stream of the week is tomorrow. And uh much love Later.