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Algorand Interoperability: Featuring Wormhole & Folks Finance ⛓️
Recorded: July 7, 2025 Duration: 0:36:20Space Recording
Short Summary
The Algorand Foundation has announced the launch of Wormhole NTT, a groundbreaking project in partnership with Folks Finance, aimed at enhancing interoperability across blockchain ecosystems. This initiative is set to attract institutional assets and facilitate seamless token transfers, marking a significant step forward in the DeFi landscape.
Full Transcription
Það er það er það. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well, hello everybody.
Nice to see you joining in.
I think we will give it a few more short minutes before we get started.
So heading over to my beautiful colleague from the Foundation.
Hello everyone, we're just going to wait two minutes for the rest of the speakers to join on stage.
And then the amazing Sarah is going to host today's space. And it's a really good one where we talk about Wormhole NTT coming to Al Algorand built by Folks Finance. This is what
everyone's been waiting for. Interoperability on Algorand. Really exciting times. There are
lots of questions so we're going to answer all of those questions today. Thank you. Cool starting in just about one minute just waiting for Benedetto I believe.
Hey, how are you? Can you hear me?
Yes, Benedetto, we can hear you. Hi.
Shouldn't you be on holiday, Sara, after Cannes?
That's a myth. Yeah, I'm literally in the midst of the beautiful Austrian mountains with such a breathtaking view.
But you know, interoperability never stops.
Algorand Foundation never stops.
So I'm so happy to be here and talking about NTT.
Well, I wish to have the same view.
Milan is extremely hot, so melting.
I'm very sorry for that.
We have like 25 degrees sunshine.
I literally have the mountains right in front of me
Might tweet about it later. So you can have exactly that hint of Austria on your timeline
Thank you
All right, so I think we are good to go I can see see Sushan from Warm Hole. I can see Benedetto from Volks Finance. I guess we can kick it off, right? So let's do that. I'm Sarah Maria.
I work on the Interoperability and Web3 Partnerships for the Algorand Foundation.
You might have heard of that beautiful piece of tech, the layer one.
And yeah, we are very, very pleased to announce
that we are now launching Wormhole NTT on Algorand
in a great collaborative effort
with the folks finance team,
which is obviously why we have Benedetto here.
And we prepared kind of a very nice run through
of what we've been working on what to
expect and maybe what's next so i would like to hand over to Benedetto to do an introduction and
Sushant i would say then you're next right all right thank you so much and hi Sushant nice to see you here as well
nice to see you here as well um so i'll give a little bit of uh uh history of sarah how we made
this happen right together i think it's uh it's deserved like to to give a an understanding of
this uh beautiful collaboration um so of course uh at folks we have a long history with Wormall, as we built our cross-chain lending, also based on the Wormall technology.
And we are working proactively for a while now on launching our token.
And of course, we like the idea to launch it on NTT.
like the idea to launch it on on NTT so obviously NTT didn't have the integration with Algorand and
we wanted to have it as well on Algorand so we had this beautiful idea of
proposing to build all together three of us this integration and making this a new reality for
Algorand as well so this is the background for the audience to understand how this happened.
We proposed this to the Foundation and to Wormall,
and then the Foundation coordinated this work, three of us together,
and that's the big merit of Sara, of course.
She did a great job all over those months.
Hey, everyone. My name is Nishant.
I lead network expansion at the Wormhole Foundation.
And yeah, just to piggyback, Wormhole has actually been live on Algorand
for quite a few years now, actually, since I think I want to say 2021,
if I'm not mistaken, or maybe 2022. um but yeah like
benedetta mentioned of course while the core protocol was live so it enabled crushing messaging
for quite a while ntt which is our multi-chain token standard it stands for native token transfers
was not live however it now is thanks to the great people at algorand and folks finance
It now is thanks to the great people at Algorand and Folks Finance.
Thanks so much for these beautiful intros.
So let's shortly dive into the fact how all of that happened, right?
Because a launch is just not a launch.
There is so much leading to this moment.
And without Warmhole and Folks Finance, we would not have been able to pull all of that off.
So I would like to have a short kind of overview of what truly happened in the past few months
from the development side of things, the collaborative efforts between Algorand, Wormhole and Volks Finance.
So we started months back to start the conversation and very,, very quickly, due to folks finance cross chain
approach, we were 100% confident that this is the exact right team in the Algorand ecosystem
we want to work closely with. And then we obviously pulled wormhole into the loop to figure out how
all of that can be connected together to make all of that happen. I would like to get just a short kind of overview
from you guys, what your experience was like
being part of the whole development
for Wormle entity on Algorand.
I think we can start now with Sushant, if that's okay?
Yeah, for sure.
And now, like I mentioned, of course,
Wormle has been live for quite some time.
However, in that time, you know, we've been live for three to four years in Algorand
with a core protocol allowing for messaging between chains and shared state.
However, our kind of flagship products now, which is NTT, was not live in Algorand.
And so for context, what NTT is, it stands for Native Token Transfers.
And it basically allows asset issuers to deploy a token
and take it natively multi-chain without needing,
say, the token bridge.
And as a result, you don't really need a wrapping of assets.
You don't have, you know, wrapped asset on multiple chains.
You don't have any receipt tokens.
You simply have the native token deployed on multiple different chains
and it allows them to be fungible with one another.
Now, some protocols that you might already know that already use this
are quite a few institutional ones, as well as asset issuers like Securitize, for example.
Securitize, you can make the argument, is somewhat of BlackRock's tokenization subsidiary.
And what they do is effectively take TradFi products such as Biddle,
which is a money market fund, which is
backed by US Treasury bonds and allows users on the chain to one tap into that
yield that comes from off chain, but also allows them to compose on top of it.
Meaning you can do things within DeFi with this tokenized Biddle, such as
use the collateral to borrow stable coins against use it as collateral to just mint
stable coins natively such as usdtb um among a whole school of other things but most of all
allows them to actually take that original token which is initially issued on ethereum
and take it to multiple chains such as algorand
that is pretty much on point what warmhole entity is and additionally why we decided to really work
on entity for algorand um benedetto you and jidon were very much involved in the development itself
how would you say your experience not just for algorand but also obviously for folks finance has been
and yeah just share your thoughts on that one yeah i mean i'm not a developer so i weren't
directly involved and i wasn't directly involved in the development but i mean the team was of
course and and overall they i think that they really enjoyed because FOLX being a flagship for Algorand
DeFi and also
we built a very
innovative protocol on WarMall
the cross-chain lending so
merging those two things
and work on NTT for
Algorand and WarMall for the integration
was pretty exciting
for the team and the fact
that we were working for so long
and not able to announce until we achieved the last stage,
let's say, it was creating this formal,
like, oh, we want to talk about it, but we can't.
So we have been building under the hood.
And I think that the team really enjoyed
and we are very excited about it because
of course we are going to use it for our own token and it's the the team is waiting for
for a long as also the community for a long time so you know working on a new tech let's say that
allow us to do an innovative launch that something as this has never seen in the ecosystem.
It's very, very exciting, I would say.
And as Sushant mentioned, obviously, this is not just something that goes just for folks.
The tool will be available to everyone.
Everyone can leverage it.
So it will be a great value add for the ecosystem.
We will be able to onboard more token easily and faster without having needing of bridging
or having needing of obviously wrapping or having products building in actively.
We can just bring the utility of a token and the token
itself into the ecosystem so let's say we can leverage all the good work that
them warm old team does in the BD and bring it to our ground as well I love
that and that is such a great summary I think the beauty of entities truly
taking away the complexity of the wrapped asset,
which is something we very, very quickly fell in love with when we look deeper into what entity can do.
And for users, it is so much easier and so much more trust when you don't have to leverage your wrapped assets,
but can have your digital asset natively across different ecosystems, across different chains.
And as you just mentioned, Benedetto, we may or may not see a token launch leveraging NTT.
And I think that's insanely exciting, not just for the Algorand ecosystem,
but for the Fox Finance team, for the Wormhole team,
and users coming from other ecosystems towards Algorand.
And yeah, I can't wait to see that happen very, very soon.
As I just hinted towards this, no more wrapped tokens.
So basically as a user, you don't have to worry about
the fact that the complicated synthetic tokens,
AKA wrapped assets in your wallet
across different DeFi protocols, which just
improves the user experience.
And as Sushant mentioned, there are already a lot of projects and ecosystems that leverage
entity, which means an Algorand user will get true interoperability, aka access to different
to different ecosystems while having a very smooth user experience.
ecosystems while having a very smooth user experience.
And that brings us one step closer towards a cross-chain approach
that is truly mandatory for the Algorand ecosystem.
And what I would like to dive in now is we heard from Benedetto,
we heard it here first, that, of course, the developers will get access
to complete open source code so they can leverage NTT while building on Algorand to have true cross-chain tokens basically being built.
So Benedetto, could you give us maybe a bit of alpha, maybe a better understanding when developers can expect it, what they can expect?
And yeah, share your alpha.
Yes, sure sure of course uh so right now we are at the stage
where the smart contracts are completed and now we are doing an internal review with the wormhole
team uh before we do a uh an audit an official audit itself so in terms of the timeline for the
sdk and the documentation it won't be ready until we finalize the audit
because we want to give it complete, of course.
But, you know, we are at the final stage, like it is just about reviewing it, auditing
it and making it public.
So it depends on how fast it's going to be, the coordination and everything.
But hopefully a month and a half from now
so you have you heard it here so our developers from the ecosystems are going to be able to leverage that in a month and a half we like that because that is exactly what we wanted and we as
benedetto mentioned earlier it felt like we've been luring in the shadows, ready to finally announce it.
And it's hard to keep these great news inside of you
and internally.
Sushant, you've been with us literally in Cannes,
joining us for a panel exactly about that topic.
How was it on your end from the wormhole side of things,
especially where more and more projects
leveraging entity building right now to keep these news inside while also having more projects
coming towards your ecosystem yeah it was great and i have to say the the alga con event was
amazing it was like one of the best events i went to even not the best event and obviously the venue
was amazing as well um i think that what's very, very powerful is because Algorand has a lot of brand value.
Algorand has been around for a long time.
It's been executing for several years now.
And a big part of that is, you know, when you're attracting, especially institutional assets and asset issuers,
they want to see ecosystems that have been grinding, that have been building
and really making things happen, you know, regardless of how live they've been.
Algorand, of course, you know, despite you guys being live for many years now, you identify
that, of course, you know, you want more assets to be on Algorand itself, but also you want
to offer, you know, access, like you mentioned, Sarah, to other ecosystems natively on Algorand
without them having to go through the process of having to bridge
to other ecosystems, finding out where to bridge, how to bridge,
what to do on set of ecosystems, and basically just unifying
that whole multi-chain experience on Algorand itself.
It's been very exciting to see.
Obviously, I hung out with the folks finance guys in person,
which was great.
They've got a lot of things in the pipeline,
and they've just constantly been building since day one,
as I'm sure lots of people here already are familiar with.
But also, new asset issuers, new stable coins
are wanting to go to Algorand now that they have this functionality,
which is kind of a big kind of missing piece
to be able to actually deploy an Algorand.
Now, of course, outside of that,
you guys have been working on basically just upgrading the capabilities of algorithm as a chain obviously now you have things
like yield like staking things that are very very important to just having kind of like a
full stack defy ecosystem and you know it just kind of goes to show it's almost a testament to
the work that the foundation has been doing on the algorithm side of actually upgrading the chain and
making it more and more relevant
to every kind of use case,
both on the retail side,
which strictly DeFi applications,
but also on the institutional side.
And so we're seeing a lot of that actually happen,
which is really, really good to see.
I agree.
And I see the team of Algorand
and of course, Folks Finance,
they are working 24-7.
They are making sure that not just we get more projects towards the ecosystem
and improving the tech, getting the word out there,
improving user accessibility, token accessibility.
They are really having a full-blown pipeline of new projects coming up,
new techs being launched.
So I think we are in a perfect timing to launch NTT.
And again, all the time that has literally led up to this moment.
And it feels just right, not just for the folks finance team,
but for WarmHole and obviously also for the Algorand blockchain.
And yeah, with that being said, as you mentioned,
we have the staking live, which is obviously something our users really, really enjoy.
And now where we have for other users the possibility to access Algorand even easier and get access to a product like Volks Finance or Lofty or Tinyman.
through NTT, this is going to be so much improved.
Through NTT, this is going to be so much improved.
You have an easier token movement,
which attracts, of course, new users, liquidity,
which will obviously boost DeFi,
hint for folks' finance,
and make new project launches,
especially looking towards startups
from the startup programs we have,
even more attractive.
So I think we are exactly on the right path with one whole
entity and again it's a pleasure working with you guys and Sarah I would add also an important thing
that is also existing projects can expand in order to uh make interoperable their tokens for example
exalgo we plan also to make it it available cross-chain with NTT.
And it's very good also for other Algorand projects that could do potentially the same, right?
So it's the way to bring Algorand in other chain in a very, very easy way.
And this is just a good thing for the ecosystem and everyone can leverage it.
I agree.
Absolutely.
It's not just for the new projects coming, but also for the existing ones, for the existing tokens, just improved accessibility.
Yeah.
And I think with Fox Finance and obviously WarmHole, you guys really make Algorand a multi-chain player.
We are not just attracting developers who can build across different chains with wormhole.
We are also attracting users
who would like to leverage tools like, again,
Volks Finance or Tinyman or other projects
that are really popping off.
They want to expand into other blockchains.
They want to expand into new products,
new liquidity, new user experiences.
And these user experiences are only possible through the right interoperability partners.
And again, Sushant, what you guys at Warmhole do is just the perfect fit.
And as you mentioned in the beginning, we started really working with Warmhole years back.
And now where we have NTT, there is more refreshment coming, more projects we started looking towards and making sure our users get access to.
And I think this is exactly the way to go for interoperability when it comes to a block on a blockchain level.
So we talked about the development, our experience, the meetup in Cannes, what Folks Finance has been contributing, what Warmhole is looking towards.
And we heard, obviously, institutions, stablecoins, payments, improved interoperability.
So how can the Algorand users now actually benefit from all of that?
And I think I can, from my end, explain that within one or two sentences.
one or two sentences, and I would love to get your thoughts, Sushant and Benedetto.
And I would love to get your thoughts, Sushant and Benedetto.
In my opinion, through Warmhole NTT, the user is able to move extremely fast, seamless,
and in a very trusted way across different ecosystems, which is exactly the message behind
interoperability.
This is, in my point of view, from a user experience, where they can benefit from.
What do you guys think?
Yeah, definitely.
Just to add to that, you know, one of the things is obviously
there's a great deal of applications that exist natively on Algorand.
And if you wanted to use them, say, obviously, you know,
the cross-chain aspect of folks' finance, you can access on multiple chains,
but it does use Algorand as like the core hub.
But then also
you have the you know the same chain let's say domestic lending market of folks finance that
exists on our grant as well as like quite a few other protocols now if you had say you know let's
use the biddle example again if you had biddle on say ethereum you know there's only a few places
that you can actually make use of that um but you might be like hey i want to start exploring the
algorithm ecosystem you know they've been building they've been working very, very hard.
There's a bunch of really meaningful applications that are already live there. Before, you wouldn't
be able to kind of go to Algorand and still make use of your Biddle because, of course, it's only
live on a handful of chains. But so let's say one day that Biddle goes live on Algorand,
you can do everything you want to do natively on Algorand
without having to go to a different chain.
Which I think is very, very powerful.
Because if you want to kind of, you know,
take advantage of the things that Algorand offers
in a very unique way,
obviously there's benefits on the actual chain level
as far as performance and gas
and that sort of thing is concerned.
But also just tapping into, like I mentioned,
there's native applications.
I think that'll be very, very meaningful.
There's obviously everyone is trying to spin up
their own stable coin.
Everyone has a lot of stable coins
because there's so many different ways
to compose on top of them
and actually generate yield from them.
And Algorand is able to kind of enter that space,
incentivize, just have a novel application,
say via folks finance,
which I think will be very, very exciting
for both users and asset issuers alike. I like that. And I think that I noticed that obviously stable coins are
getting more and more attention. And when you have a stable coin that can be leveraged across
different chains and not just on one chain level, this is a huge game changer for users. Because
obviously, let's say you finished your trade on a DeFi platform,
you always want to go back to a stablecoin.
You're going to access a DeFi platform or any other product
through a stablecoin, highly likely.
So having them natively across chains, way better user experience.
Benedetto, you coming from VolksFinance,
what would you say is for the users a huge benefit
now having the opportunity to use one whole entity?
Well, of course FOLX is going to be an entity and it's not for everyone that's important
but for us it is and for all the folks community which is
obviously a large majority on Algorand we are going to be able to leverage the tool to have
not only trading in one chain but actually this is a very good point to bring up because
It's a very good point to bring up because being able to use NTT is also allows Algorand to be connected with other chains in terms of trading.
So there can be, for example, if a token like, let's say, as an example, FOLX is going to be listed on Algorand, obviously, but maybe also another chain.
going to be listed on Algorand, obviously, but maybe also another chain.
Then by being able to use NTT, you can natively transfer it on the other chain and leverage
trading opportunities of price difference.
And that's something that generates volume in both chains.
volume in both chains, so it's very good for the chain as well.
So it's very good for the chain as well.
Of course, for Fox Finance on Algorand, it's also very, very important to have NTT integrated
because this brings that there is an opportunity of listing new tokens in an easier way, for
the same reason as I explained it now, because you don't need to have all the liquidity on Algorand, but you can still list something on Volksfinance and leverage
entity in order to do the transfer.
So we can have new assets that can be listed in the lending markets,
both stablecoin to be borrowed or as well new collateral.
Yeah, I think that is for, so for user itself, when it comes to collateral
leveraging one whole entity on folks finance, again, massive improvement on the user experience.
It's not like you have 15 tabs open, you need to change from one product to the other, which is,
and then you might forgot, okay, what was the initial situation? what was the initial situation what was the initial tab i have been
to so it again user experience just develops and improves as we speak and for folks finance and
users on folks finance game changer so now where we talked about the user experience what is very
very close to our heart at algorand are obviously the developers. We have so many very smart developers
on the blockchain itself and in the ecosystem and what we focus on is also improving their experience
with the Algorand kit. We improved the whole way of building on Algorand itself,
having improvements as we go. So now entities, as mentioned before, going to be open source in one and a half months
for the developers so they can truly build cross-chain with formal NTT, which is beautiful.
But what else can we expect the integration to do for the developers?
Again, I think I will ask Sushushant what do you think will improve for the
developers on algorand through ntt yeah for sure i think um and of course benedetto will be able to
speak on this uh just from a personal perspective if you deploy a token say on algorand natively
um of course there's a lot of users a lot of liquidity that exists on our ground natively
but if you want to tap into say users and users and liquidity from outside of Algorand,
if you deploy this token with NTT, you'll be able to do this kind of out of the box.
You don't need to set up liquidity pools in other chains so that there's
fungibility and all of this and that.
A user would be able to, say, take your token and bridge it to,
argument's sake, Ethereum.
And the way this would work is that you would just simply do a burn and mint
from burning it on Algorand and then minting it on Ethereum. And the way this would work is that you would just simply do a burn and mint from burning it on Algorand and then minting it on Ethereum. And then if you were to do this on
other chains like Avalanche or Polygon or Solana, etc., you'd be able to do that just natively.
And all of these implementations will be fungible with one another. So the best thing for a developer
is that all of a sudden, you don't have to create some bespoke implementation for you to bridge your
tokens to another chain, nor do you have to create create some bespoke implementation for you to bridge your tokens to another chain,
nor do you have to create this convoluted UX for you to actually do so.
They can simply go to, say, the Algorand bridging front end
or Wermos portal bridge, for example,
and just be able to bridge out of the box,
which I think would be very, very easy,
especially for the new developers that want to lower the barrier to entry
for users to be able to access their token without having to necessarily bridge to Algorand first,
then swap and get the token, they'll be able to get it elsewhere.
Good one.
That's exactly what is super mandatory, not just obviously on a user level, but also on
the developer level.
Because when you build these products,
this is exactly what you want to have.
This is exactly what UX should look like.
And again, I think with the open source development that is so mandatory for our users.
I just saw in our beautiful chat one question.
beautiful Chad one question I think I would like to just drop that in there
I think I would like to just drop that in there.
when can the algorithms community expect entity or Algorand on the entity
website and we talked about this obviously during the development and we
have a precise a specific timeline for that so the first step for us was
definitely the development the next step is the open source experience for the developers, then integration into different
projects. And obviously also part of this kind of roadmap is the integration into the
NTT website, just to answer that in between here.
And in a few weeks from now, you will be able also to use it on testnet just for reference.
Exactly, exactly.
And I think that is the last question we have here from the community itself.
When we expect the documentation, open source SDKs and tooling for developers looking towards
integrating entity and Aspen andpen had to literally answer that
in the very, very early beginning.
He took that and ran with it.
It's one and a half months.
And again, it's not just a launch.
It's not just a very quick announcement.
We've really worked the past weeks and months on this.
And this is just the beginning of the next steps
in interoperability for Algorand.
I think I don't have more questions prepared.
I can just tell you to the people who are listening and taking the time on a Monday, there's more to come.
And I think we are going to announce a lot more when it comes to cross-chain accessibility and token accessibility on Algorand.
And if you want to stay up to date,
follow Algorand Foundation,
follow Benedetto,
obviously follow Warmhole and follow the Volks Finance team
because very soon there's going to be more.
And in case Sushant and Benedetto,
if you have something to add,
I might have missed.
Now is your turn.
I will just say follow Sara and have trust in Sara
because she's super good in delivering.
I mean, it was a pleasure to work with her on this.
I'm pretty sure we're going to work together
on many other things.
But she is a very passionate and hardworking person at the foundation, so I really admire her.
So when the space ends, I'm going to go cry a bit.
So thank you so much, Benedetto.
It was a true pleasure working with you as well.
Sushant with you also, and also Ozzy from Wormho, Katja from Wormho.
The team is very driven, and obviously from the folks finance side as well
i think it's not just a project it feels like a family and we really work together
god i'm getting too cheesy here so i'm gonna stop talking here and thank you so much for joining
thank you for having us thanks everyone looking forward to this see you very soon bye bye Thank you.
