Hey guys, thanks for coming to today's session with Bedrock.
We're just waiting on a couple more people, so please be patient and we'll be with you shortly.
All right, I think the game is all here.
so if I think we could get started. So good morning, good afternoon, good evening wherever
you are in the world. Thanks for joining us in this awesome AMA session with Bedrock
and the guest speaker from their side will be Gandalf who is in charge of BD. So Gandalf do
you mind just coming up and giving us a quick intro about yourself, your background and what
you do at Bedrock? Yeah, absolutely. Can you guys hear me okay? Yep. Excellent. So I'm Gandalf,
I'm part of the Bedrock team, business development manager as you said and I've been in the Web3
space for almost eight years now. Prior to that I was in banking and finance and I've worked
on a number of different projects over the years on blockchain protocols. I've worked
with Scott Melker, the Wolf of Wall Street. I've worked with Cointelegraph as a news and a
feature journalist with them. I've worked with NFT platforms. I've started my own business.
I've helped out projects, launched like Mike Tyson, Lomelo Balls, Stephen Aoki, NBA,
worked with WWE, Legendary Pictures and a whole range of people exploring the technology in this
space. And then more recently I've kind of focused my efforts in the DeFi space and that's where
I worked with RockX and that's kind of focused me even further into the Bedrock team specifically
with the LST, UniEath and which then transitioned into the LRT UniEath, the liquid restate token at the
start of the year. And so my time is entirely focused on the LRT side of things. I work with a lot of
blockchain foundation teams, incubators, accelerators, I work with a number of
DeFi partners and communities and that's essentially my efforts at the moment.
Awesome. Thanks for taking the time to join us for today's AMA. I'm really happy to have you. So now
without further ado, then let's get right into what Bedrock is about. So could you give us just a brief
intro around what the protocol is while touching on the native cross-chain liquid restaking aspect of it
all? Yeah, for sure. So one thing about Bedrock is, well, let me take a step back and just give a very
quick rundown of RockX, which is the team that built out the Bedrock protocol to start with. And RockX has been
around since 2018. And they've got about 2 billion assets under management. They do staking infrastructure and
staking technology. They also run access nodes and they do key security and key management technology and research and
development. And they actually run a lot of the infrastructure for other staking providers like
Lido, Swell, Oboll, SSV all use RockX's infrastructure. And in fact, a lot of these protocols actually come to
RockX to work with us on other developments. For example, Lido came to us to build out some of their liquid
state products. SSV came to us to build out DKG technology or integrate that into their system,
which is distributed key generation tech. And so we've got a very, very strong history and experience
level in the space around just liquid stakes, stakes, protocols, and like I said, key security and
management. And so that's where Bedrock came into play in that the team wanted to really develop out further and build
this end to end solution. And Bedrock is actually the only protocol built by a team that has extensive staking
experience and infrastructure experience, which I think sets us really apart. Some of the things that that's allowed us to do is
have withdrawals live from day zero. And Bedrock was launched a little bit over a year ago as a liquid
staked token on Ethereum. And around the end of last year, start of this year in transition to being a liquid
restake token, which integrated Eigenlayer's infrastructure. And one of the things that that we
focused on doing was focusing on accepting native ETH as the underlying asset rather than accepting the
LST token as the asset, which a lot of the other LRTs are doing. And the reason for this is because
one, it simplifies the user process and the user experience because you just have to stake your ETH
base and you get the benefits of the staking plus the restaking plus the points plus
everything else that's entailed in that rather than having to stake on an LST on the liquid state protocol
and then stake take your LST and then stake it with an LRT, a liquid restake token,
which is essentially doubling the steps, doubling the
bottlenecks as well as doubling the cost.
So that's another thing that we focus on doing. It also reduces the risk as well
because I mean, just one of the risks that we've been able to reduce is we are essentially an
oracle-less protocol. And that is talking about the
the ability for DPEGs and price feeds to be manipulated and
um, and your exchange rates to be manipulated, which is we've already seen with some LRT protocols
that's caused some issues. Um, but we're really focused on building out a low, but really reliable and
systematically, uh, low risk protocol. And so that's, that's kind of been the ethos for building out FedRock.
Awesome. Thanks for sharing that with us. So just to sum it up for the listeners here,
I think the three main takeaways are natively staking withdrawals available from day one, which is
obviously quite the pedigree and the fact that it's an oracle-less protocol. So, um, given that you, you know,
worked with Lido and, you know, with the pedigree that you and the team feature, um, uh, could you maybe
dive, um, a bit deeper into the technical aspect, you can piggyback off of what you said previously,
or you can introduce some, um, new features that you guys are perhaps working on, but, um, we'll leave
it to you. So if you could, um, share some insights on the more hardcore tech part of the integration,
that'd be awesome. Absolutely. Um, so like I was saying about with FedRock, we've kind of built
it from the ground up in the focus on risk-free. One of the things I didn't mention is the majority of
the, uh, customer base with RockX is all institutional. Uh, it's all institutional clients.
And what that means is we can't mess around. They have a much, much higher due diligence process.
They have a much higher and much more strict, uh, uh, focus as far as when, where they put their
investments, et cetera. And so that's one of the things that has meant our underlying infrastructure
that we're using will, uh, not only meet the, all the requirements for the retail investors,
but we know we can meet the requirements for institutional investors as well, including the
traditional finance guys. And I mentioned the, uh, withdrawals of being live. One of the really
cool things that we've been exploring is again, trying to reduce the, the, the different risks.
And one of those risks is around, um, essentially centralized bottlenecks. And so the,
the, the staking and I'm saying aspects that's all done through the smart contract, that's all
relatively decentralized in a sense. However, uh, the validators that are underlying the, whatever's
being staked, that is still in one sense centralized. Now this is a risk that's kind of assumed by
everybody who mistakes. It's not a new risk. It's not unique to us. It's just every protocol that does
staking liquid staking, everything. The validator has a degree of control and what that control is
when you want to unstake your, uh, tokens, your ETH or your LST or LRT or whatever it is.
Sure. You interact with the smart contract, but your tokens are still locked up with that validator
on the blockchain. And you have to trust that the validator that's holding your tokens is going to send
the withdrawal request on chain to then start that process to unlock those tokens. And that can take
one day a week, two weeks, depending on the withdrawal queue. And if that withdrawal request
isn't initiated, then no matter what you do with the smart contract in interacting with your smart
contract with the LRT, you're not going to get your tokens because they're still locked in with that
validator. And so there's a level of trust there where, yes, it's assumed, yes, it's relatively low
risk, but it's still a level of trust. And Ethereum is looking to reduce this level or remove this, um,
trust level in the sense that they're wanting to improve and make it a trustless withdrawal process.
But that's going to be coming in. I don't think it's coming in the next upgrade. It might be in the
upgrade after potentially it's just being discussed at this point. Uh, but what RockX and Bedrock have
been able to develop out is we've been exploring being able to do, um, essentially a trustless
withdrawal, which is when you as a staker will initiate the withdrawal request on the smart contract,
that will actually automatically send the withdrawal request from the validator as well.
Now I'm not going to go into too much detail as to how that works because that's
highly technical. And there are a couple of different ways that it can happen.
But essentially the, the key takeaway for that is that you as a staker are now controlling
when your ETH has the withdrawal request process on chain or, or, or sent on chain,
which is no longer in the hands of the validator, but it's in the hands of yourself.
And then other things that we're looking to do, which isn't necessarily as technical, um, but kind
of leads into what this space is all about is cross chain restaking. Uh, and one of the things that
we've been exploring is taking that to the next level. And there are two ways we're doing that. One
is by taking the Ethereum LRT, the uni ETH token and making that truly cross chain restake. And what
I mean by that is not just saying, okay, yes, you can stake your ETH that's wrapped on Arbitrum,
or ETH that's wrapped on another L2 or different chain, but you can actually stake whatever token
you're holding, whether it be ARB tokens, whether it be USDC, whether it be the wrapped ETH or whatever
it is, uh, the, the product that we're working to build out will accept all of those in a native
sense. So yes, it will be bridging across. It will be allowing you to still get all the restake benefits
on Ethereum, but it now means that let's say you've got a yield bearing token on Arbitrum.
You can use that as the underlying asset or the underlying collateral to then restake on, uh, on
Bedrock through, sorry, on Ethereum through Bedrock. You get all the benefits from Bedrock anyway,
but you're still going to get the underlying yield benefits from your, uh, asset that you are now
holding as collateral for their stake. I'm not sure if I made myself clear there,
but, um, that's the first way that we're looking to do that. The second way is we are pioneering the,
uh, truly multi-chain restaking protocol. So not only, uh, do we have UniETH, which is restaking on
Ethereum, but we also have UniIoTX, which is staking on IoTX chain. And that one came about with the
IoTX team, actually the foundation team approaching us saying that they wanted us to help them build
out a native state, uh, liquid staking derivative on their chain. And so Bedrock is the only liquid
stake protocol on IoTX. But just recently, a couple of weeks ago, I think it was, we announced in
partnership with Babylon and a few other, uh, strategic investors that we have launched UniBTC,
which is the first, uh, Bitcoin restaked protocol. And so that's in partnership with Babylon. And the way
you can see Babylon is an equivalent of Eigenlayer, but on Bitcoin. And so that's going to be taking
all the billions and billions of dollars of, uh, Bitcoin that's just sitting there not being used.
And that's going to allow people to start earning yield on that, not just in a staking on Bitcoin,
but restaking with multiple different services, just like Eigenlayer does. And then we, uh,
are actually working to bring that as well onto Arbitrum as well, reducing fees. There's something
like 10,000 wrapped Bitcoin, just sitting on Arbitrum, waiting for some opportunity to come into play.
And that's where UniBTC will really shine. Uh, and I believe we are the only protocol that
is offering that at this point. I am happy to be proven wrong, but I have not seen any other
protocol that is doing Bitcoin restaking. Awesome. Thanks for the detailed breakdown of
so many of your features and benefits. And I believe that, um, you know, you've touched on
this next question that we have lined up in your previous answer, but if you can maybe then, uh,
zone in on one piece of alpha, um, that could be a beneficial strategy for cross-chain restaking
on Arbitrum specifically. That'd be awesome. Let's bring Arbitrum into the equation.
Yeah, for sure. One piece of alpha for restaking on Arbitrum. Was that the question?
Yep. Yep. All right. Well, uh, I think there's a few, but to narrow down to one, I would probably say
the, the, with the low fees on Arbitrum and the ability for you to, to, to really do different
strategies without really burning into your, your yield with the fees, et cetera, there are
probably some really interesting strategies around the leverage, uh, of your assets. What I mean by that
is, excuse me, for example, you take your, your ETH on Arbitrum or your, whatever token it is on
Arbitrum, you stake it via bedrock that gives you uni ETH on Arbitrum. You then take your uni ETH on
Arbitrum, put it into either a Pendle pool, which hopefully will be launched very soon, or you can just
put it directly into a lending protocol. And if you put it onto Pendle, you can then take your PT ETH and
then put it onto a lending protocol. And that will allow you to borrow more ETH. Now the big risk with
lending or, or borrowing ETH against your LRT is the liquidation risk. Because uni ETH is a non-rebase
token and withdrawals have been live and they've been live for months and months, the liquidation risk is
extremely small. And the reason for that is one, the risk of DPEG is not really there. The reason
why DPEGs happen previously with, um, certain LST protocols and LRT protocols is specifically
because withdrawals haven't been live. So there's no way to arbitrage the, the price fluctuations, uh,
that happen on DEXs, which then allows that DPEG to save. Whereas when withdrawal is alive, anybody who
can purchase the LRT at a discount, even a 5% discount can immediately purchase that on the DEX and
then do a withdrawal. And they know that they're going to get that 5% profit automatically. There's
no risk involved with that. But taking this further, because uni ETH is non-rebasing, what that means
is all the rewards that are earned in the underlying staking on Ethereum, they will essentially be added
into the uni ETH token, not as additional tokens, but as additional value. So the value of the uni ETH,
one uni ETH token will constantly be increasing versus Ethereum, or first thing, ETH, sorry. So
one, uh, one uni ETH is essentially worth 1.06, I think, ETH. And then tomorrow it'll be worth slightly
more and slightly more and slightly more. When we first launched, it was worth one to one. So it's
constantly increasing. And what that essentially means in relation to this lending and borrowing is that
the value of your underlying collateral of your uni ETH is constantly going to be going up compared to
the asset that you're borrowing, the ETH that you're borrowing. Therefore, the liquidation risk
is constantly going to be reducing automatically, just by the fact that the yield, the underlying yield
that you're earning is going to be added into the value of the uni ETH token. So all of that put
together means that the risk is extremely low for liquidation. That then means you can then take your
ETH and you can put it elsewhere, or you can restake that again back into uni ETH or do whatever
you want. Now, obviously this is not financial advice. This is just one of the strategies that
people are taking. Um, but one of the other things that I think is really interesting is to note is that
because Bedrock has multiple state tokens, uni ITX, uni ETH, uni BTC, very soon, uh, you, you're probably
going to be able to hold different or start with what some, one of these tokens and then starting to get
exposure into some of these other ecosystems. And I think that's a really interesting play. And that's
something that I'm not really seeing, uh, occurring with any of the other LRTs. I mean, they're building
out the L2s, like SWAL is, et cetera, but I think that's going a different route. And again, taking this
back to Arbitrum, because with Arbitrum, you don't have those higher gas fees. You don't have that, um,
the, the slower transaction times, you can really take, take advantage of these additional opportunities to
really squeeze the maximum yield out of your, your assets as possible. The other thing I'll, I'll just
add is, um, with Arbitrum, it's probably going to be getting at least the same, if not higher, um,
incentives. In fact, it is going to be getting higher incentives than what you can get on Ethereum.
And that's because the, uh, grant that Bedrock has just received. So Bedrock has just been approved
for a $262,000, a thousand ARB grant with the LTIPB, uh, grant program. And a hundred percent of
those tokens are going to be going back to the community through incentives, um, just for simply
holding, uh, for engaging in DeFi activities, et cetera. That's going to be coming up in the month
of June and we'll be running for three months. And in addition to that 262,000 tokens, which is
roughly about $250,000, we're working with about half a dozen different partners who either are also
approved in the LTIPB grant program. So they're going to be having their own ARB tokens that are
going to be, um, matching our incentives, or they've got their own tokens or their own incentives,
uh, incentive programs that they're going to be including with uni, uni ETH. So you're going to be
getting your underlying Ethereum yield, staking yield. You're going to be getting your restaked
yield with Eigenlayer, which currently is in points, but it's going to be involved in the AVSs
as we start to delegate more and more to them. You're going to be getting your Bedrock diamond
points, which, uh, has relation to the value that you're providing Bedrock. You're also going to be
getting your ARB tokens from our grant program, uh, incentive program. You're also going to be
getting the tokens from our participating partners. You're also going to be getting points from some
of those partners as well. And then you can just do that time and time again, if you decide to leverage
or, um, take advantage of some of these other opportunities where you can kind of get exposure
to multiple assets at the same time. Yeah. Thanks for the detailed breakdown of the strap and tying
that into, um, the LTIPP grant application, which by the way, congratulations, um, on your successful
application. We're happy to welcome you to Arbitrum and, um, would like for you guys to make yourself at
home. So if you could maybe just, um, dive quickly into how that process went and, um, how, um, how,
how your experience was with that. And, uh, yeah, just, just some background information on that would be
nice for our listeners. Yeah, for sure. So we actually heard about the Arbitrum grants,
uh, the LTIPP grant by the Arbitrum Foundation. So we've been in, um, conversation with the Arbitrum
Foundation on working with you guys to, to get in more involved in the Arbitrum ecosystem for a number
of months now. And one of the opportunities that, that you guys raised with us was, uh, getting involved
in this grant program. And you guys have been running grants programs really successfully over,
oh, I don't, I don't know how long, maybe, is it years? I know it's definitely been numerous months,
but how long has the SCIP program been, been around for? Not quite years, but, um, we're stretching back,
um, a number of months now. So we're in phase three at the moment.
Um, phase three. So that, that's been really successful. And I've been watching that with,
um, a number of our partners really, uh, it's been, it's been great for the explosive growth of
different protocols and, uh, different ecosystems on the Arbitrum, um, blockchain. And so it, I think
it made perfect sense to, to get involved in this LTIPP, which stands for long-term incentive program.
Um, and, um, and it wasn't easy. There was a lot of work that needed to be done. There was a lot of
due diligence and, and it's quite stringent. The, the, the process we had to create the application
that we created just to be considered, uh, was maybe 10,000 words long, um, like eight or nine pages long.
And, and, and we worked with advisors, multiple advisors to, to kind of bring it up scratch.
Then we, um, worked with the council, uh, a, um, delegated council. And then after that process,
we then had to be approved by the public. Uh, and so we, we went for a snapshot vote and, um,
proud to say that we received 99.9% for, uh, and only 0.01 or 0.1% against. So we, we had overwhelming
support from the community, which is really exciting to see. And now we are doing our, uh,
compliance. So we're doing our KYBs. We're doing our KYCs. We're getting all our reporting dashboards
and reporting infrastructure set up. And, uh, all of this is before we've even received a single
token up token. So I think the, even though it's difficult for people like ourselves and protocols,
I think it makes a lot of sense because it really ensures that the, the quality of the projects that
are getting involved in these grants programs are really, really high. Um, and that's one of the
things that I think other grants programs really lack is, is they, they have excessive amounts of
funds, but they don't know how to, uh, focus those funds into really quality projects and quality
ecosystems. And that's where I think the Arbitrum grants program has really stood out. And I've
been involved in other grants programs myself, uh, with, with this work. And, uh, I think this,
this has been one of the more exciting ones and the fact that every single, so there's 46 million,
I think, or 45 million ARB tokens in this current round of grants program. And a hundred percent of
those ARB tokens are going to be going to the community, even though there's, uh, I think there's
about 90 or 85 to 90 projects that are going to be involved in this grants program. A hundred percent
of, of all of those projects will be sending the entire grant allocation back to the community
and incentives. So at the end of the day, it still goes to people like yourselves, but it really
encourages an organic and active growth and activity, which is really exciting to see.
Yeah. Appreciate your kind words. Um, we take pride in the stringency of the application process for
sure. Um, it has to be multidimensional. And as you know, that this is a long-term incentive program.
So we have to make sure that the projects are, um, aligned with us, not just for the next four months,
but for the next four years, four decades, et cetera. So again, welcome to Arbitrum and congratulations
on the grant. Um, so speaking of, um, you know, what you guys are going to be doing on Arbitrum,
you briefly touched on Bitcoin restaking with UniBTC. So could you maybe do a deeper dive into how
that's going to, going to be fleshed out? For sure. So with Bitcoin restaking, like I mentioned,
it's, uh, in partnership with Babylon. So Babylon are building at the, the restaking aspect in the
sense that there are numerous protocols that, uh, DeFi protocols that are building on top of Babylon.
And they can, you can see them as kind of the equivalent of an AVS on, uh, on Argonlayer AVS
standing for actively validated service, I think. Um, but essentially think of them as your, uh,
services or additional chains or sub chains, side chains, whatever you want to call it, uh,
that are built on top of the Babylon or Argonlayer layer, which is built on top of the Bitcoin or
Ethereum layer. And, uh, and so they will be taking, so with Babylon, it's accepting currently wrapped BTC.
And I don't think I can share plans, but there are going to be other Bitcoin assets that will be
accepted in the future as well. Um, but I probably can't say any more about that, but, uh, keep your,
keep your eyes out and your ears to the ground on that regard. And, um, and so the, the wrapped Bitcoin
will be accepted as it gets locked and that then gets used to, uh, as the insurance or, or the,
the, the assets that can be slashed when validators don't, uh, perform as they should.
And that allows the validators to then run the security for all these, uh, AVSs or all these
services, services on top of Babylon. And so that's where that yield is coming from.
Uh, the fees, the tokens that are being built out, et cetera, that, uh, from each of these services.
So with the wrapped Bitcoin, it gets locked away. However, we want to keep that, that asset
liquid and that's where the uni BTC comes into play being the liquid asset. That uni BTC, uh,
will essentially be bridged onto, uh, Arbitrum. And the, the benefit of that is just almost identical
to the benefit of uni BTC bridged onto Arbitrum in that it allows for, uh, much more flexible
opportunity and people to take advantage of these opportunities without really having to
weigh up the cost of, um, these micro transactions or, uh, is gas really high at the moment? Can I
take advantage of, um, whatever opportunity it is? Do I need to worry about timing, et cetera,
as the blockchain goes up, the blockchain fees go up and down? None of that really is an issue
on Arbitrum. And that allows for the DeFi opportunities for uni BTC to really be expanded
out further and further. Uh, and I know that there are numerous projects. Again, I can't name any just
yet. Um, but there are at least a dozen projects that we've been talking with, with the uni BTC token
specifically that are very excited to get involved with that. And I think it makes a lot of sense
to get involved on Arbitrum. And again, one of the reasons for that is because of the fees,
but the other reason is there is 10,000, uh, wrapped Bitcoin already just sitting on Arbitrum.
Um, um, over 10,000 in fact. And so instead of forcing those, uh, holders to then bridge back
onto Ethereum, waste their gas fees there and, and then have to worry about all those, um, concerns
that I mentioned before, just keeping it on Arbitrum and allowing you to, to start earning additional
yield is just going to be a game changer, uh, for the, for the Bitcoin ecosystem really,
an Arbitrum ecosystem. All right, then, um, keep your eyes and ears peeled guys. Sounds like there's
quite a bit in the pipeline. Um, unfortunately unable to be mentioned today, but I think we're all
quite excited for what they have cooking up in the coming months. So you just touched on this, um,
um, in your answer, but if you could maybe tell us a bit more about the potential that you see
in Arbitrum, um, specifically with regards to the LRT sector, I know that you, um, for example,
mentioned, um, the Bitcoin that's already sitting there right now, but do you have any other, um,
talking points that you'd like to, um, bring up?
Sure. I think, um, I think one of the key things is there are numerous L2s that are already existing
and, and many, many more that are coming up these days. And people have often asked, how many L2s
do we need? Which ones are going to survive? Which ones aren't going to survive? And I think
it's, isn't the question necessarily of which ones are going to survive, which ones aren't,
what's going to be king, et cetera. But where I foresee L2s leading is more becoming where they
have their own defined utility and use. And DeFi is massive. Like we all know that it's been proven
that it's massive, that there's a lot of potential. Uh, it's already in the billions and billions of
dollars of value. And that's only going to be increasing exponentially of all the L2s.
Um, there are a handful where you can say, okay, so that one is use case is clear. Polygon,
for example, it's use case is really focused around the gaming sector with Arbitrum. The use case
is really focused around the DeFi sector. When I talk with, uh, VCs, when I talk with DeFi partners,
protocols, there is one chain, when I say, what's the go-to chain that you guys would want to be
engaged with when it comes to DeFi transactions and investing, it always comes back to Arbitrum.
And so I think that there is some really clear potential there for Arbitrum to become the DeFi L2.
And I'm not saying that DeFi is not going to exist on other L2s. Absolutely it will. But I think it's,
is one of the key ways that Arbitrum is really going to set itself apart and develop out its identity in
being for those that want to really dive into, uh, DeFi in a more heavy way. That's where Arbitrum is going
to really play a critical role. And I think we're already seeing that because there are
numerous, uh, L2s that some of the LRTs are getting involved in, but the, the one that has the,
the most value, uh, locked in it. And the one that is, uh, consistently being activated by these LRTs
is Arbitrum. Yes, you've got Mantle, you've got Mode, you've got Scroll, you've got, um, ZK Sync,
you've got Metis, you, you've got a whole range of them that, uh, um, being engaged by the LRTs.
But one of the first ones that every LRT is kind of engaging in and making sure that they're building
out a very, very strong, uh, foothold in is Arbitrum. And I think that speaks for itself as far
as the value and the opportunity that that's there, because where there's the liquidity,
that's where the whales are going to be coming in. And where the whales are coming in, it's because
they see the most value and generally speaking, they're whales because they know what they're
talking about and they know what they're doing. And I'm not saying you should always follow the
whales blindly, but certainly the whales have become whales for a reason. And so if they're going
to be engaging it in specific areas of DeFi or specific L2s, i.e. Arbitrum, I think it makes
sense that it's worth looking into and figuring out why. And, uh, I think I just touched on that briefly.
Yeah, it's an awesome way to look at, uh, some of the factors behind the success of DeFi and Arbitrum.
Um, and, you know, and then in addition to that, um, I think it's also about the interconnectedness of
all the protocols. Um, it's, uh, one piece of the much, much bigger and much, much more vibrant picture.
And, um, all the fact that the protocols are so closely, um, big to each other and there's a whole,
there's a sense of family here in the DeFi space. So that's one of the, um, I, one of the big points,
I think that's, um, a big, big selling points for Arbitrum. And I think, um, we're on like a really
good path and we're excited to help, um, onboard you guys into our family. So, um, in a closing note,
if you could maybe just provide your future outlook on LRTs and on Arbitrum in general, um,
I think that would, um, just about do it for today's space. So take it away. Yeah, no.
I cannot hear anything. I think something's just happened. I'm just going to
reconnect just quickly. Sure. Take your time, Alvin.
Hey guys, Gandalf is just reconnecting. So if you could give us a quick moment,
you can get readjusted. Uh, it seems like he's back on. Hey, Gandalf, can you hear us?
Hey, you're back. Okay. My apologies. My, uh, sound cut out there. I couldn't hear anything.
All good. All good. So, um, I think we're just about, um, close to wrapping up today's session.
So if you could maybe end on your thoughts on the future outlook of LRTs and the future outlook
of Arbitrum in general, I think that would, um, yeah, conclude this session on a great note.
We'll take it away. For sure. Yeah, absolutely. I'll take the LRTs one first. So I think it's really
interesting in that we've seen a very fast progression of, um, LSTs to LRTs and LSTs being the liquid
staked and then LRTs being the liquid restaked. I think they're going to essentially become one and
the same. And the, the, the, the design that I mentioned about how Bedrock started to transition
their LST into an LRT rather than saying, let's separate them and keep them as two separate entities,
I think is where the majority of other LRTs are going to go. And it, it makes sense where you're going
to end up with just one staking action by the user, whether it's with their Ether or USDC or whatever
the token asset is. And the backend or the smart contract will essentially engage and interact
with all the different, uh, protocols that are involved, whether it be Eigenlayer, whether it be
Karak, whether it be Swallows L2, whether it be, um, any of the other Eigenlayer competitors in the
space, or even getting involved in other chains entirely. And their, their yield opportunities,
for example, Cosmos, Solana, Polkadot, um, we've got conversations with each of those, uh,
we've actually got relationships with each of those chains and their teams and, um, exploring liquid
state protocols that are going to be built out there as well. And the simpler we can create the
investment product, so to speak, the better. And I think that's where LRTs are going to be
simplified. They're going to develop out as more of a simplistic, uh, product that kind of meets all
requirements and, and gets its foot in the, or it's, um, a piece of the pie in all the different
ecosystems. And even EtherFi is starting to, to explore that in the sense of they've got their liquid,
um, product, which essentially means you, you, you restake with EtherFi and then you, you lock it
away in the liquid product and it's getting a whole bunch of additional yield, um, by doing all of the,
the additional, uh, DeFi opportunities and it's being managed for you. And I think that's where LRTs are
really going to head in that instead of it being, you have to engage in five or 10 or 15 different
protocols and platforms and kind of keep track of everything and manage it all. It's all going to be
done for you via the smart contract. And the, the restating aspect is, is kind of that first step of,
of being able to do that in that it's engaging in multiple ecosystems at the same time. And I think
that's just going to develop out further and further and it's going to be such a simple product
for people. It's, it's going to be, essentially it's going to be a competitor to traditional finance,
uh, and traditional investment opportunities. That's where I see the future of LRTs.
And how that looks, I think that's where Arbitrum and these L2s are really going to come into play,
because if you, uh, staking, um, I did an exploration with, um, some of the LRTs a couple
of months back and the fees varied between, I think with, with Bedrock and a couple of others,
the fees were around the 15 to $20 to do a stake, a restake action. Uh, and then some of them,
it, it, it went up to something like $200 or over $200 just to restake, um, a couple of ether.
And that's just ridiculous. It doesn't make any sense to do that. And so being able to,
to do that, and then you add in on top of that, blocking those in Pendle or putting them in TimeSwap
or putting them in VectorReserve or, or any of these other DeFi protocols, that's another $50 right there,
$50, $50, and adds up to, soon you'll be paying $500 just to be able to get 15%, 20% yield.
And so being able to engage in all of that automatically with a smart contract, doing it all for you,
and doing it at a fraction of the cost, i.e. on Arbitrum, it's, it's the only way to go.
Uh, I don't think it's going to work if we don't explore through those paths. Uh, and I think that's where
Arbitrum is really going to come into play in that, uh, we're seeing these, these fees be reduced.
We're seeing the transaction times being reduced and we're seeing the, the user experience being
improved drastically. I know one of the constant things that we're working on at Bedrock is improving
the UX. I know when I talked with some different protocols, including Arbitrum, uh, one of the things
that, uh, and Pendle as well. In fact, one of the things that was on the forefront is how can we
create a user experience that is really amplified and really sells the user and makes it a positive
and a pleasant experience rather than them thinking it's DeFi, it's complex. And, um,
each of the LRTs are doing it in their own way. And I often play around with each of the LRTs dashboards
and portfolio pages, because it's really exciting to see each of their own twists on things. And I think
with not having to worry about fees, not having to worry about transaction costs and transaction times
and all of that, it means that these protocols that are building on Arbitrum can really focus on that
front end, that user experience and make it a really, really exciting and enjoyable process.
Uh, I'm already seeing gamification of certain aspects with, um, affiliate programs and referral
programs. You've got, um, leveling up, you've got all sorts of really cool features that are starting
to be played around with. And that's only possible because we don't have to worry about these, uh,
uh, extremely high fees and, and, um, reducing things from the technique, uh, reducing the pain
points from the technical standpoint is really that front end now that user experience. I think that's
where Arbitrum is going to come into play.
Yeah, for sure. Um, one of the things that we take pride on in Arbitrum is that, um, it's, we've,
we've done the hard work. Um, I mean, I didn't do it, uh, that's very, very talented folks that
off-chain labs did, but, um, the infras here, the communities here, the liquidity is here. So,
um, it's really up to the protocols to make the best use of that. And I think, um, your approach with
focusing on the front end UI UX to ensure a smooth and, um, easy to use experience for any average guy
is one of the best approaches that you can take. So, um, very excited to, again, have you in the
Arbitrum family. Congratulations and welcome again. And I think with that, we'll wrap up today's, um,
Twitter space. So thank you everyone for joining us and make sure to follow Bedrock and Gandalf for
the latest news on what they got cooking. Take care, guys. Bye-bye. A pleasure. Thank you.