Hello, everyone. This is Olivia from Betru and I am your host for today's AMA. We are today we are joined by two very special guests to share their thoughts on the occasion and the topics surrounding it. In no particular order, we have Ignis Terenas, Public Liaison of Mental, and Nigel Lee, Head of Community and Public Liaison, who is a member of the
Public Liaison of Mental, and Nigel Lee, Head of Community and Token Communication of Immutable. We will also be joined by our old friend Leon, which will come in a second later. And thank you everyone for joining us today. And before we begin, let's have let's have a little introduction to the topic of the AMA today.
So recently, the cryptocurrency market is experiencing a period of renewed confidence driven by recent developments surrounding both Bitcoin and Ethereum. The long-awaited approval of Bitcoin ETF has significantly bolstered investor sentiments across the sector. With Ethereum, the leading smart contract platform particularly benefiting.
This upward path is fueled by a confluence of factors, including the potential approval of an Ethereum ETF and the optimism surrounding network upgrades and the positive border market sentiments. So let's begin with today's AMA. Before we begin, could you please introduce yourself and your background and also your project? Ignis, would you like to go first?
Sure. Thank you, Olivia. Thank you for having me, thrilled to be on this Twitter space with the Bitcoin community. My name is Ignis Terrenis. I'm the Public Liaison of Mental. So Mental is an ecosystem built around the Ethereum layer 2 mental network. We currently have two products, one core product, one is Mental Network, that is
sort of already one of the largest L2s, with about a little less than 300 million in TBL and we are hitting new transaction volume every week. We also have a liquid staking protocol called Mental LSP and the token symbol is MEIF, or it's basically written like meth.
That was just launched in December. It's already very successful, currently number four in terms of the largest liquid staking protocol. We overtook Coinbase stake ETH, I think, a couple weeks ago. And yeah, so at Mental I basically help in occasions like this, talk to basically external partners, as well as on the communications PR side.
Before this, I also worked at exchanges like Bybit. So yeah, really happy to be here and thank you for having me.
Awesome. Thank you for the introduction. Nigel, could you please introduce yourself and immutable to our audience?
Thanks, Olivia. Thanks for having me. Hey, everyone. My name is Nigel. As Olivia mentioned, I work on community and token communications at immutable. Immutable, to put it simply, is gaming.
Gaming in Web3 and blockchain. Technically speaking, we are a platform and ecosystem. We have both SDKs, APIs, as well as infrastructure. So we have both a start square driven instance, as well as a blockchain, an L2 blockchain powered by the polygon technology.
We mainly focus on gaming. We have over 200 games building on the platform and by far the largest gaming ecosystem in the block in blockchain today. And yeah, it's as simple as that just games on the blockchain.
That sounds very interesting. Thank you. And now that we have done a round of introductions, let's begin.
Our first question today is related to the potential impact of ETH ETFs. We have mentioned in the beginning that it was very exciting to see the final approval of the Bitcoin ETF leading to a wider adoption of cryptocurrencies in the financial world.
So I'd like to ask, how would an approval of ETH ETF impact the price of ETH and the broader crypto market? And what do you think are the potential benefits and risks for the investors?
Yeah, I think in my opinion, I would comment on price, like who knows where crypto prices will go. But I think the result you should really expect is a lot of legitimacy coming to the space with some sort of ETF, right?
This creates a lot of opportunities for people to be more exposed, to be educated, to crypto and cryptocurrencies, both for mainstream and institutional investors. And that's really what we all want for blockchain and web3, to get more eyes, to get more education, to get more legitimacy so that everybody just benefits from all of that attention and less education to the space.
Yeah, I agree. It's hard to talk about prices, especially in crypto. I mean, the Bitcoin price has definitely surprised us after the approval of the ETF. And Ignace, do you agree with Nigel? Or do you have anything else to add on?
I think, yeah, I do head to head. I think in a way is that we shouldn't seek out, we should ask what the ETF is going to do for us, but rather what can we do for the ETF, right?
You know, the narrative goes that with an ETF, a lot of like institutional funds that basically like institutions, especially those ones that are regulated to have a mandate, they cannot just invest in anything.
Sometimes like, you know, for a large institution like a fund, they can only invest in ETFs, they cannot just buy spot ETH. So the narrative goes that by having that ETF, you will allow those money to flow into the market.
And by having them buy the ETF and have the ETF purchase spot ETH. And then because kind of like those funds they rebalance at a much longer scale than day traders, you would have more ETH getting locked in.
And then that would basically create a larger demand. But then again, I do feel like, you know, for those of us who are actually building in the space, it feels like something that will come once we have
been able to attain a level of recognition and legitimacy. It shouldn't be that we are hoping for that to be a catalyst in price movement.
And really, like, you know, there's this meme, I think maybe some of you might see kind of like this guy kind of looking nonchalant staring at a computer screen and then something happens and then it celebrates for a second and then goes back to the same expression.
I think it should be the same for us. It's like we're in here for the long run and we see this as a significant milestone, but it's not kind of like an end all be all.
It's not the end of a dash. It is just something that we pass along the way, which is a nice thing to have. So, you know, definitely it will be a very welcoming development.
We don't know when it's going to happen. You know, Bitcoin took long enough 10 years that the whole conversation started about Bitcoin ETF more than a decade ago.
So hopefully, if it's not going to take as long like 10 years from now. But then again, like, in a way, it's like we shouldn't be hoping for that to happen to help us with price movement rather than we just build along and then it will just happen in its good time once, you know, the relevant gears kicking to their gearboxes.
Yeah, yeah, that was very interesting. And thank you for sharing. And Ignis has mentioned that the ETF approval shouldn't be the catalyst for price.
But do you think that an Ethereum ETF could be the catalyst for maybe more mainstream adoption? And if so, what are the potential challenges or regulatory barriers that still needs to be addressed?
Yeah, I think, you know, like, so Kavya is that none of us are like, you know, regulatory wonks, like we are not people who are traveling in the circles of the Capitol Hill or, you know, handing out in the halls, the water fountains of the SEC.
But we do think, like, both in kind of how SEC has been positioning ETH as well as in some of the complaints, like some of the lawsuits it's been filing against other blockchain companies, you can clearly see that SEC does not see ETH as a security.
Right. So it's it's it's categorizing ETH in more or less the same space as Bitcoin, which is like already a very, like, good validation.
You know, when it's going to happen, how it's going to happen, it's it's it's all up to everyone's guests or, you know, people who have better information than us who are actually, you know, filing those applications to SEC or actually working at SEC.
But, you know, what happened to Bitcoin? We just said, like, so first of all, there's a lot of overhand.
We understand what happened with with with Grayscale GBTC.
So they had a discount on the price for the longest time when they first was established.
There was a premium. So you like the GBTC price is actually higher than Bitcoin price.
But once kind of like the market sentiment solid, they actually had a discount.
So a lot of people were getting out because they also had charged a higher fee.
Also, now that we know almost one billion of that is actually from the FTX Estates that was trying to offload assets and then return that into cash of cash equivalents to to to to investors or like to to to its debtors.
So, you know, it actually makes sense for this to be a price correction when it comes to each because it doesn't currently have that overhand.
Well, it also just depends on where it comes. It comes, like, you know, in five years, it might be very different.
Currently, there's no one who is holding like the equivalent of that large amount of GBTC in ETH terms.
So essentially, like that might be a smaller, you know, cell pressure, as well as like with with all those native yield that is happening in Ethereum.
So you have you have staking, you have restaking with Eigenlayer and then you can even take the restaking token to do some other composable DeFi Lego.
So in a sense is that there isn't a lot of like sales and use cell pressure waiting on the sidelines to do that.
Yeah. So hopefully, you know, when it comes like it's going to be more positive.
But at the end of the day, like we don't know when it's going to come.
We don't know when this circumstances is going to be.
But, you know, it will be a nice thing when when it does come.
I agree. It's definitely going to be exciting.
And let's just look forward to it. And Nigel, what about you?
Do you think that and if ETF could be the catalyst for more mainstream adoption for Ethereum?
I think to Ignis's point a while ago, it's probably just one of many things.
And we shouldn't put all our eggs in that basket.
At the end of the day, having more products like an ETF just increases accessibility of ETH and crypto at large.
And I think that's the main point.
How do we create more accessibility?
How do we make the technology of blockchain and Web3 easier for people to use,
whether that be from a compliance standpoint or from a technology standpoint?
We should be trying to think of this from all fronts so that we do make it easier for the mainstream to come along.
So from a financial point of view, that might be an ETF from a UX point of view
that could be just making sure it's a simple sign in to get a wallet, things like that.
So, yes, I think it's part of the equation, but probably not the end all be all for mainstream.
OK, thank you both for sharing your take on this question.
And moving forward, another thing that has been discussed pretty much is the Ethereum scalability surge.
We know that in a recent AMA, the Ethereum co-founder Vitalik made a noteworthy proposal of an increase in the Ethereum gas limit.
So what does this proposal mean?
Oh, I see that Leon is here.
What does the proposal of the increase in the Ethereum gas limit mean?
And what effect do you think it would bring?
Yes, would you like to go first?
Yeah, sure. I think, you know, some of the things that Ethereum is working on is actually very beneficial.
Just coming back to kind of the topic of reason of Nigel and I being here is for L2s.
But lots of people like they would say, well, Ethereum is going through all those upgrades.
Do we even need L2s anymore?
But like when we actually look at what is on the roadmap, a lot of them actually benefit L2s more than they actually benefit Ethereum itself.
So, for example, I did the DanQuinn upgrade that that's going to have with the prototype shouting that you are able to kind of like create blogs for core data.
So one of the things that even for L2s, the biggest gas cost is actually still publishing data onto layer one.
And that is why Mantle takes a modular approach.
So like basically like arbitrary optimism, 70 percent, more than 70 percent of the gas cost is actually when you do data availability, data publishing onto layer one.
We use technology from Eigenlayer.
So Eigenlayer has a data availability solution called EigenDA.
We use the technology for EigenDA to create our own Mantle DA.
And instead of kind of like publishing all the data, retrieving all the data from Ethereum layer one, we actually do it through a separate data availability layer that allows us so much savings.
And at the same time, because it's built on Eigenlayer, restaking layer four, Ethereum, you are able to have more or less the same security assumption as Ethereum itself.
Mantle Dencharding and this prototype are able to save a lot from publishing those data.
And the biggest benefactor is, of course, Ethereum users benefits from it.
But actually, the biggest benefactor in terms of actual cost saving would actually be L2s.
Thank you. Thank you, Ignis, for sharing.
And now that we have Leon joining us, I believe that the audience that have been following our AMA sessions are pretty familiar with him.
He is the co-founder of Crossbase, and he is also the co-host for today's AMA.
Leon, would you like to say hi to our audience and give a brief introduction about yourself?
Sure. Thanks a lot for the invitation, and it's great to co-host another Twitter space with Bichu.
Today, especially, we have some outstanding guest speakers from Mantle and Immutable.
As we all know, layer two should be one of the key thesis this year.
And especially after the recent BTC ETF got approval, the market will pay attention to the probability of the ETF getting approval.
And I think probably the capital will rotate from BTC thesis to the ETH ecosystem.
And layer two should be a very important part we need to pay attention to.
So today, I actually got a couple of questions for ImmutableX and Mantle on the roadmap, on the potential competition among these industry.
As we know recently, there are some newcomers in this industry with some new ways.
So just wonder, how do you see the competition landscape and what are you going to do through the year?
So let's go through the question list, and I may have some actual questions to ask for the two guest speakers later.
Of course, please feel free to drop your question or to have a very fluid conversation between our speakers.
And going back to where we were before, talking about the proposal of an increase of Ethereum gas limit.
And with that and other potential upgrades on the horizon, how optimistic would you be about Ethereum's ability to address the scalability?
challenges and attract a wider user adoption?
Nigel, do you have any thoughts on this?
Yeah, 100%. At Immutable, we're big fans of Ethereum and we're big believers of Ethereum,
which is why we've decided to become a roll-up on top of the Ethereum blockchain.
And I think history has proven itself that Ethereum really has been able to become resilient over the years.
It's definitely had its ups and downs, but throughout all the upgrades, throughout all the so-called ETH killers out there that have come and gone by,
Ethereum has proven to be the place of both financial activity, but also culture, etc.
I think Ethereum has proven itself multiple times throughout the years, which is why we're really big fans and we've chosen to build Immutable on top of Ethereum as well.
Having said that, I think that's where layer tools do their part.
I don't think it's just Ethereum that has the responsibility to bring Web3 to the mainstream, for example.
From Immutable's point of view, we want to be the infrastructure, the gateway for people to experience games on the blockchain.
And that's one way how we can contribute to the Ethereum ecosystem on bringing in our share of the next 100 million billion people into Web3.
And that's through gaming. And we have a strong belief that gaming is going to be the use case that really brings in the millions of people into Web3.
And we're excited. We are already seeing a lot of the traction. Again, we have 200 plus games signed up and being built on the platform.
And imagine, right, like just one of the top games that you have today, CSGO, PUBG, League of Legends, etc.
Those are already hundreds and millions of players for just one of those games.
If just one of them becomes comes on board Web3, that's already on the road to mainstream. So we're super excited.
Thank you. Thank you, Nigel, for sharing. And I think gaming is definitely a very good way to attract wide user adoption.
And we know that Mantle is one of the layer two scalability solutions built on top of Ethereum.
So, Ignis, do you have any thoughts on like how optimistic would you be about the Ethereum's ability to address the scalability challenges?
What's your thoughts on that?
Yeah, I like the double entendre of optimistic here because Mantle is optimistic grow up.
Yeah, I think, you know, in a sense is that it is something that we are actually able to play a part in.
So, for example, like ETF, when we just said there's nothing that we can physically do about it.
Whereas, like to help address or like to help be a part of the solution of Ethereum's scalability issues,
it is something that we are actually doing and we are actually, you know, it is it is our reason of existence, our raison d'etre, if you will.
You know, like layer two stay help with scalability. And when you are built with, you know, a strong security assumption, you are able to, you know, not trade off too much of a security for the sake of scalability.
I think a lot of times like when people talk about like, if killer is also on so forth and the only metric, they actually kind of like over index on a really wax poetic about scalability.
So when I like to talk about how it can do like 65,000, 70,000 transactions per second.
But, you know, last year also happened that Solana went down for 17 hours and could not produce any single block for that entire period of time.
And it happened multiple times. And then, you know, all the validators like that, they are very centralized.
And then, you know, if scalability is the only goal, then, you know, it's actually easier just to have an intranet that's not even connected to the Internet.
So every blockchain basically has to have that trade off in the blockchain trilemma.
But what, you know, helps with Ethereum and layer two is built on top of Ethereum is because Ethereum is already the most widely accepted smart contract platform.
And it has such a gigantic market cap. Market cap is not just prize and it's just not money.
It's also just the amount of capital securing the network. And, you know, you can add up all the other old layer ones together and you do not scratch the surface of Ethereum.
Which means if, you know, you have a good security set up and you're rolling up to Ethereum, you are able to all, you know, through the help of restaking protocols like Eigenlayer,
you are able to have the same security assumption, which just makes, you know, bootstrapping liquidity and so on and so forth so much easier with that solid foundation at hand.
So, you know, what we are trying to do is, you know, we walk perfectly aligned with Ethereum on its philosophy, on its community, with its security posture.
But what we are trying to address, you know, help Ethereum addresses to move those transactions off chain, allow transactions, allow execution to happen on a separate layer.
So, Ethereum and like a lot of like other chains, you have basically a monolithic chain situation.
Every transaction, doesn't matter if it's core data, doesn't matter if you're publishing data, doesn't matter if it's execution, it's, you know, routing through different values for consensus, for those consensus to be produced.
It's all competing for the same block space. Whereas for Mantle, Mantle is a modular blockchain, which means we're actually separating out those different functions into different layers.
You have a separate layer for consensus finality that is down on Ethereum. You have a separate layer for data availability that is down on Mantle DA, powered by Eigen DA technology.
And then you have execution happening off the L1 Ethereum chain, but on Mantle, which means we're able to have more or less the same security, but at a much higher performance, hyperscale performance, and much lower fees.
So we have lower fees, not only than Ethereum, but also than most L2s, thanks to our collaboration with Eigenlayer, that is capturing everyone's imagination with its, you know, really great restaking offerings.
And yeah, I think that this question is in a way something that we are able to contribute more because it is something that we not only can help, but we are actually doing whereas, you know, for instance, like the ETF, it is actually something that we can hope for a good result, but it's not something that we are actually able to play an active party.
Yeah, thank you. I think both of you have shared a lot of very interesting insights about this question, and also your point of view of being like a player inside the whole Ethereum ecosystem.
So I think that has been very valuable. And moving forward, the next question is about the Ethereum layer to adoption. I know that we have mentioned a little bit in the previous question.
So how well the widespread adoption of layer two solutions affect the Ethereum transaction fees and network congestion in 2024? Do you think that the layer tools would solve scalability concerns or there are any further innovations needed?
100%, I think that's exactly, to Ignis's point a while ago, this is exactly where we have a part to play as L2s that try to help with the scalability problem with blockchain today, not just Ethereum.
That's exactly why we built these solutions, immutable, for example, focusing on gaming.
If you remember a few, a couple of years ago, what broke Ethereum and the gas fees were the bordered Yacht Club landfill, which caused gas to go up to hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.
And that's the kind of outcome that we really want to try and solve, because if we want to go mainstream and get millions of players on board, it can't cost thousands of dollars just to do one transaction.
And that's exactly why we built immutable as well. We want to onboard hundreds of millions of players. And the only way to do that is to find some scalable, super cheap way for people to experience blockchain.
So yes, definitely we have a really big part to play to make sure Ethereum is scalable and there aren't any crazy fees moving forward.
And that isn't going to happen with just Ethereum today. We definitely need L2s and maybe we even need L3s later down the line, because just one of the games will have hundreds of millions of players.
And imagine if they just do one trade in the same second, and that would just make gas prices go crazy. So definitely need it. L2s, L3s, what have you? I'm sure you will keep innovating over the years.
Thank you. Thank you, Nigel, for sharing. And yes, do you think that the wide adoption of L2 would change the transaction fee or the network congestion in the future?
Yeah, I think ideally, if we really are successful in what we set out to do as our mission to help democratize token government technology, it really will just abstract away all those difficulties and barriers that people currently have.
Also just dramatically reduce fees and then allow the throughput to truly meet the need of a world computer.
Yeah, sometimes I was recently at a conference in Davos, and then there were people trying to be smart. They were like, oh, if Ethereum is going to have dengue sharding, sharding, why do we even need L2s?
But they forget that, first of all, those benefits, they are not mutually exclusive. You can have dengue sharding, you can have L2 on top of that. Those are multiplication.
So if Ethereum, by itself, increases its TPS, increases its throughput by 15x, and then L2 increases by 300x, it doesn't mean that you can only take one or the other.
You actually multiply them into 4,500. But at the same time, what is the endgame? People always talk about, oh, what is the endgame?
Is Vitalik's five-word rhyming, verge, purge, splurge, whatever, the endgame? And people often conflate the word end and endgame, exactly the final third of a chess match, it's not the final.
But in any case, it's a short-term goal, is what I like to think. Because if you're truly thinking about long-term, if this is a technology that's actually going to benefit future generations to come, then it's not going to be a five-year plan.
It's not going to be a 15-year plan. You need to truly look at the long-term. It's like a couple centuries at least.
So whatever Ethereum's currently roadmap has installed, if we're truly trying to extrapolate that into a couple of generations down, it's still not enough.
It's 10,000. It's 100,000 transactions per second enough.
If we're truly talking about mainstream adoption, wide adoption, like everyone on Earth, like half of the population on Earth interacting with the blockchain, whether they know it or not, because you can have that kind of abstraction on a daily basis or even on an hourly basis.
You just think like 4 billion people, like hourly basis, 4 billion transactions times 24. And then you divide that by the throughput. What is the throughput needed?
All those solutions, we are all working toward that. And then it's kind of like there's no end in this pursuit.
There's no, oh, we have dengue charting. We can rest easy now. We have solved blockchain throughput problem. We have layer two now. We have layer three now. We don't need any more progress.
It's like there was a famous, kind of like one of those famous last words. Some people from the late 18th century, they were like, oh, science has already discovered everything we ever need.
The CEO of IBM back in the 40s, they said, I see a global market need for a personal computer of four, because they could only see the demand of their present time and they can only extrapolate it down five years.
If we're truly thinking about providing a blockchain solution, an ecosystem that people will interact on a daily basis, they actually enjoy doing that.
They come to play games. They come to have web-free social applications. They are having financial transactions like tokenizing real world assets, for example.
If you're truly doing that and interacting with the blockchain on such a regular basis, you need way more throughput.
Each of us is just trying to chip away at the problem a little bit. We're never going to solve it. If we're successful, blockchain actually achieves wide adoption.
Then it's actually like an arms race. You should, throughput should always try to catch up with demand, instead of a bunch of ghost chains saying, oh, we have 75,000 transactions per second, but no one is actually transacting.
You still have five transactions per second on that blockchain.
Thank you. Thank you, Ignis, for sharing your take. Leon, do you have anything to add on or do you have any thoughts, any questions?
Well, actually, regarding the mass adoption question, I got a follow-up question for the two guest speakers.
Ignis just mentioned in the statement, Layer 3, RAS, we see the recent trend, a lot of the RAS solutions on top of the restaking.
It sounds like building ZKRO up Layer 2 is not as hard as before, so probably the competition will really hit up with many new Layer 2 build up on top of this technology.
You two are expert in Layer 2. You know the real know-how of running on Layer 2, no matter from the perspective of technology or how to run an ecosystem from the operation point of view.
So how do you see this RAS backed Layer 2? Do you think they really have a great competitive advantage or less advantage compared with the so-called native Layer 2 or later run use?
This is a question for the two guest speakers. Thank you.
Yeah, I can jump in here to start. We've always been a firm believer that technology is never a sustainable advantage.
We make it a point to find the best technology for our community, our network, and for the games that build on Immutable.
But at the same time, as you say, technology is always an arms race, right? You always need to be upgrading it because there's always new technology to consider.
At the same time, to your point, it's always going to get easier and easier for people to adopt technology as they become easier and more accessible.
Having said that, we don't think that's the right way to differentiate, which is why we spent a lot of time to make sure Immutable has a really strong network, a really strong community, and a very strong brand as well.
Because that's something you cannot easily replicate. And that takes time, right? It takes time to build a brand. It takes time to gain the trust of community.
It takes time to build a network that really is so widespread that it's just so hard to be able to capture that value without spending the same amount of resources and time and effort to build the same network from scratch.
So we've been very thoughtful in doing this, and we've made sure that we focus on quality and building that strong community and ecosystem so that exactly to that point, even if technology catches up, we still have an advantage.
Yeah, I think it makes perfect sense because Immutable acts, even during the beer market in the past two years, you heard a lot of events.
I even attended one or two. In Taiwan or online, you have a very strong community with GameFi projects, and you have a partnership with a lot of GameFi venture capitals or ecosystems.
That's, from my perspective, a very strong advantage, even though from a technology perspective, everyone can build up later too, but it's not so easy to build an ecosystem around the GameFi like you.
I'd like to echo every point that Nigel just made about the strength of a brand and the effort that you pour into supporting a vibrant community around it.
It's very important to have the message discipline as well.
I think, Leon, that is a fantastic question, but I think I very much agree with both of your takes.
Technology is important, but it's not enough.
At the end of the day, the most valuable asset a blockchain can have is actually not necessarily the technology, because technology is never an end.
But rather, the people, the friends you make along the way, so the meme goes.
At the same time, you would need to look at the product market fit.
I can just give you two examples.
When you think about how fantastically successful TikTok is, everyone seems to be TikTok-ing.
Just a few years ago, we actually had almost the same product in Vine.
But a six-second video, you'd set that to music, very creative.
But Vine died, and TikTok somehow came along with almost the same build, and it's wildly successful.
Google Glass, when it first came out, got so derided that it basically was sent to an early grave.
But now you saw Meta came out with their smart glasses, and in collaboration with Ray-Ban.
And it actually worked, because it no longer looked nerdy.
It actually looks cool, because they're partnering with the right brand that is already producing fashion accessories that people love.
And it's just added on this little smart thing, almost an afterthought.
So I think it's very important to find the product market fit, and very important to actually find a group of people who actually love you and love your brand, love your product.
You can have the greatest product in the world, but if you don't have those ingredients,
to help you build a community around you, then it still wouldn't work.
It would go the same way as Google Glass and Vine.
Thank you. Yes, please go ahead, Nigel.
Yeah, I know. I mean, speaking of community, shout out to Rubrik.
See some immutable community members out there. Thanks for coming.
Well, thanks a lot for the answer. And actually, I got a follow-up question for Ignis.
So I know the background for mental blockchain, because we actually, from two years ago, we started to have a lot of collaboration with bi-beat ecosystem.
And even mental, we have close engagement with your Chinese community.
A few weeks ago, they have a plan on the inscription, the BRC-20.
The mental version of the BRC-20, we planned some events.
So this is one of the potential aspects that you want to play around or promote, probably in 2024.
So my question is, what is the, you know, you can do DeFi, GameFi, like in midwax, or SocialFi, or NFT, I don't know.
What is the main focus for mental in 2024? You think you will have a big play this year?
Yeah, thanks. Thanks for the question. And no wonder your name looks familiar.
Yeah, a couple weeks ago, we had a big kind of like inscription mania, I think, you know, for two, three days in a row.
Mental was the blockchain that had the highest transactions per second among everyone, including Ethereum and like the other layer twos.
I think at the peak, we had like 500 transactions per second, everything was still going quite smoothly.
Yeah, so the thing about kind of like being a public blockchain and our ability to kind of really offer that service to everyone is that we don't actually need to pick and choose.
We do see a lot of GameFi on our platform. So like we have about 130, 144 actually.
That's already built on mental mainnet and another hundred also on testnet. And I think like the largest category is also actually gaming.
But, you know, we are able to, thanks to our tireless business development team, able to give support to everyone.
So we have a very vibrant DeFi ecosystem on mental. We have, you know, great money markets, great taxes.
Recently, Trader Joe, Trader Joe is the largest tax on our launch. They're also arbitrary.
They actually just franchised on to mental called mental called merchant mall.
And they did a token generation event for an age of more tokens to order Joe token holders who reached to mental.
And that was wildly successful. And then, you know, a lot of centralized exchange got interested in us to connect to the mall team to to to list.
So, yeah, we just kind of like in a way see ourselves as, you know, we're building a technology platform on which, you know, developers build us able to build killer apps.
So we don't pick and choose. We just we just look at the thesis. We look at what they have built.
We look at what the market needs right now. And if it's something that the market needs, then we support them.
We support them both in terms of ground space, both in terms of, you know, really deploying our very vast and robust marketing muscles, but also through our eco fund.
So mental eco fund is a 200 million catalyzed capital pool, 100 million coming out of that mental treasury, 100 million matched by external venture partners, the likes of Pantera, Spartan, Wampa, like all the biggest names in the venture capital space.
And we're really able to give that full suite, wide globe support to some of our most esteemed, you know, partners.
Not only are they getting, you know, seed funding, not only are they getting all sorts of technology side of support, community support, we are just really keen to bring the greatest value to our users.
And that is only the blockchain ecosystem. In addition to that, we also, as I said, in December, we launched the mental, its own liquid staking protocol.
And now it's almost already becoming top three. It's currently number four, I think, but we should soon be a top three liquid staking protocol next to, you know, Lido and Rocket Pool.
And that is just like, it's not even been a month since it's formally launched. And we just breached our cap again.
So we are running currently a double dose drive that is offering double the market yield of rewards.
So market is about 3.6 when you become a, you know, Ethereum validator by staking your ETH.
We, because thanks to the large treasury that we have, we have one of the largest on-chain treasury.
If you discount native tokens, it's actually the single largest because we have about 270 ETH and hundreds of millions of stablecoins.
We're actually staking our own treasury with, you know, mental liquid staking protocol and giving the earnings to users.
So currently we're offering 7.2. But yeah, it's actually already maxed out because the reaction has been so positive.
So we originally had a cap of 250. Now it's 250,000. Now it's 333,333, and it's already reached again.
But that, it's actually kind of like the liquid staking protocol and the layer two ecosystem actually helps one another because you have this kind of composable yield.
We have the best-in-class native yield and people can hold, you know, METH instead of ETH and then you can do the same thing with METH as ETH in the entire mental ecosystem.
So on top of, you know, whatever benefits you're having by putting your ETH into those, you know, liquid swap pools or, you know, in those lending protocol, you're actually earning native yield, best-in-class native yield twice the market rate by holding an ETH.
So in a way, it's like we are taking a two-prong approach, but it's mutually beneficial and bringing the best and greatest benefits to our users.
It sounds pretty amazing, like 7.2% yield. It's a pretty nice one, an attractive one.
And I believe, as you saw, DeFi should be a very important part of your ecosystem because as far as know, like BitDAO, which, you know, the foundation of mental, it's really rich in the treasury.
So I guess given there are so many treasury or TVL on your ecosystem, like DeFi, no matter if it's a fixed income or DAX or PERP could have a good demand for people to make money on top of this TVL.
All right. I think we can move on. Let's move on to the next.
Awesome. Yes, awesome. I think that was very interesting and we are definitely all looking forward to what immutable and mental will do in 2024.
And moving on to the last question of the day, let's step back and look at the big picture of Ethereum and the layer tools.
Where do you see layer two landscape five years from now and how different will layer two approaches coexist and collaborate?
What are the potential paths that different layer tools can reach separately or working together?
I think from our side, it really depends on, I think it'll be, just to change it a little bit, where layer tools reach will be mostly a reaction to where will games be five years from now in terms of a blockchain, right?
I think to this point a while ago, the capacity should really just follow the demand.
If there's 100 million people playing games on Web3, then layer tools need to evolve to be able to sustain and support that kind of traffic.
If it's going to be not 100 million, but a billion people playing Web3, then maybe it's not enough to just have layer tools.
Maybe we need layer trees for specific games as well, right?
So depending on what happens with gaming in the next five years, that's probably where immutable will be going in terms of scaling technology as well.
And we're always pushing the boundaries.
And in terms of coexisting approaches, collaboration, et cetera, 100%, I think it doesn't make sense for Web3 to be siloed nor fragmented.
That's exactly what we were trying to solve as an industry versus banking in the first place, right?
So I would like to think that in the future it will be a very seamless, very liquid type of situation across all the scaling solutions across the board.
Thank you, Nigel. Thank you for sharing. Ignis, do you agree on what Nigel has said before?
Yeah, very, very much so. And I think in a sense, layer tools, if you compare them to sort of alternative layer ones or the so-called wannabe youth killers, we actually work a lot more collaboratively.
We know, I think like we know several members of the immutable X team, and then we also work with sort of optimism.
We're very friendly with Arbitrum. We talk to Scroll or, you know, several other blockchains all the time, whereas kind of like all layer ones, they're all trying to kind of like basically hold onto their users.
We, in a sense, we are all building on Ethereum. We are all trying to, you know, help Ethereum solve some of the problems so that it can focus on the bigger problems, in a sense.
So we work a lot more collaboratively. This is a question also, like I think I've been asked recently on another space or another conference, is that, oh, does that mean kind of like it's going to be different geography?
Is it going to be this different discipline? I think in a sense, it's actually up to the users. So what we can do, what we can focus on is actually not to pick and choose kind of, oh, you know, sometimes the cartels or like the crime families of New York, back in the day, they would basically, this is your territory, this is your territory.
But, you know, we are just, we're helping the builders to build the best step, and then they will go out and find the users, and the users, when they see there is a product that they like, they will come.
So in a sense, it's that we don't get to pick and choose, oh, what are the areas we're going to focus on? Or like, what are the geographies we're going to focus on? We're actually just going to go all out on everything.
And the hope is that, you know, we're able to build the ecosystem using the right incentives and have the strong tech tech support that developers will actually build something that truly everyone wants.
Because, you know, when, say, for example, when the first iPhone arrived, it was revolutionary in its hardware design, but is it actually doing anything revolutionary?
Like, we could send emails, we could send messages, we could take photos, and so on and so forth before the iPhone.
But what it does so differently is that it was able to kind of like build this streamline super easy and not buggy system for a very strong and diversified and talented developer community to basically start to inhabit, to build out everything.
So all the apps that we love and use on a daily basis, like, you know, be it Netflix or, you know, like, I don't know, where you order your food with, there's a geographic difference somewhere and it's over eat, somewhere it's grab.
But, you know, we, like, Apple didn't develop Netflix, but it allowed that to happen. So our core kind of like focus is to support, build and support developers to build something that users will want.
But we don't actually like, like, a lot of times, like, even now, blockchain, in order to attract users, you need to have a lot of incentive program, everyone is deriding on the points, points, so called points everywhere.
But I think, you know, if we're truly able to build something that people actually want, then we don't even need that people will just naturally use it.
Like, you know, you don't need to reward people for watching Netflix, trying to think of a better, you know, like, maybe still lingo, right?
Like, you know, you can actually learn things and people would just gravitate toward they would just want to use the thing you don't actually need to give them things for them to do it.
So hopefully, that will be where we land in three years, five years time.
Like, people will just naturally gravitate toward mental or, you know, toward immutable x, toward the really diligent builders who actually building for the long term, who actually have the user's benefits at heart.
And we actually building for the greatest benefits of the people who will use it instead of, you know, trying to carve out territories.
Thank you both for sharing that with us. And yeah, I think there is definitely a lot of things to look forward to in five years time.
And also, we all know that we are at a space that everything moves rapidly and with the same one year in crypto 10 years on Earth.
And I think a lot of things may change a lot drastically in five years time.
So yeah, let's look forward to it. And yes, before we wrap this up, I am sure that our audience would like to know more about our guests and their projects.
So is there anything that you guys want to add, any platforms or websites that people should follow to stay tuned or to connect with the team?
Yes, Nigel, please go ahead.
Yeah, definitely. I'm super excited to share the good news.
If you have it yet, please follow immutable the handle. It's in this space.
A lot of very interesting news coming. A lot of interesting news have come already during this last week.
If you haven't heard, CoolCats is building on mutable. Treeverse is building on mutable.
And can you imagine this is still January 2024? We have a lot more stuff planned out for 2024.
It's going to be a really exciting time. So if you're a gamer, if you're like with three gaming, please follow us.
There's going to be a lot of good news moving forward. Can't wait to share it all with everybody.
Awesome. Look forward to it. Agnes, is there anything that you want to share?
Yeah, thank you for the opportunity, Olivia. I think the best way to follow everything that's happening with Mentos is actually Mentos Twitter handle.
That's also in this space. So we tweet so frequently, I think like four or five tweets every day.
But a lot of alpha in there and then you have basically all the latest information.
And I personally proofread every single tweet so you can be sure that the grammar and the syntax is perfect as I strive to be.
And yeah, we also have some exciting developments. So a newer version of Mentos mainnet will hit in short order.
So currently we have a testnet, Mentos V2 testnet, Sepuliar on testnet and a lot of users as well as projects already testing it.
We are forecasting like a Q1 launch of the mainnet after Ethereum's upgrade as well as after Eigenlayers launch of EigenDA on mainnet,
which means in this V2, Mentos V2, we were able to have EigenDA directly on Mentos instead of using the technology to create our own data availability layer.
And it will be faster, it will be even more secure and it will have great data availability and it will be even more friendly to builders because it will have the latest optimistic tech stack.
So yeah, exciting times ahead. And yeah, our double dose math offering is still up. So, you know, if you ever see like a little gap, you can still get in on the ME Mentos P-Train.
Yeah, follow Mentos Twitter. Thank you.
Yes, everyone, please drop them a follow if you want to stay tuned to the project.
And last but not least, Leon, is there anything you have to share with us about Crossbase?
Yeah, I think a lot of audience must be very familiar with us. We are building Crossbase.
We call it SoGafai, social plus game plus five. And yeah, we are doing social mining company recently, which is really, really hot.
And we are going to launch multi chain features probably in the next two months.
So probably we will have the chance to also build this on Mentos or in middle acts, let's see.
So it's really happy to know the two other guest speakers, let's build some connections and see how we can collaborate.
And one more thing, as far as you know, Mentos are pretty good for DeFi builders.
This is what I learned from my discussion with your Chinese community manager a few weeks ago.
So see, probably we're going to build some like DAX or DAX curve in the upcoming boom market.
So Mentos could be one of our better choice for the layer two infrastructure. Let's see.
And good to know you guys. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks, everybody. Thanks for having us. Thanks.
Thanks as well. Thank you. Thank you, Nigel.
And once again, I'd like to thank our guests for taking the time to be here with us today.
And it was an amazing session. We have definitely learned a lot. And thank you for the listeners for tuning in.
And last but not least, I like to remind our listeners that there's an airdrop for this AMA.
Check out the details in our announcements on how to participate. And to wrap this session up,
I'd like to remind everyone that today's AMA is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial advice.
Participants views our personal opinions and always conduct your own research before making any investment decisions.
So thank you once again for all coming and see you soon in our next session.
Goodbye, everyone. Have a nice day. Bye.
Bye. Bye. Have a good night. Have a good day. Bye. Bye. Thank you for having us.