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Blend w/ @PacmanBlur
Recorded: May 9, 2023 Duration: 1:04:33Space Recording
Full Transcription
Thank you for listening.
Hey, hey, hey. What's up?
Jim, Jim, do you mind just giving me one minute to get my setup going?
Oh, let's get the setup going for sure.
In the meantime, for people that are just joining, breaking news today, DGods is now the fourth collection to be added to Blur's new product called Blend.
For people that didn't know, I learned this recently as well. Blend is a mix of Blur plus Lend. Blend, you got to admit, no matter what you think, the branding, the name is pretty cool.
So today I've accumulated a lot of different questions about the topic and we're going to kind of go through. So there's a lot of confusion around how it works with myself included as well.
And so I want to just get the answer straight for Mr. Pac-Man. So, yeah. The best thing you guys can do right now is just while we're getting Pac-Man set up, is just go ahead and just kind of blow up the space. You know what to do.
Hit the retweets, hit the gang, and then we can get it started.
And we're going to do just like some direct questions to start out with and then we'll go into, you know, Q&A at the end of the hour. We're going to keep it a tight hour. The goal is for people to be able to replay this space.
So just going to be a lot of different questions and then hopefully some people make some cool threads about it. Let's get the information out there. So, awesome.
Awesome. Let's do this. And Frank, I know you have some questions. I definitely want to make sure we make time for you to share a little bit more about DGods because I think what you guys did coming over from Solana was super impressive.
And I don't know if everyone who's coming as a Blur user is super intimate with the story. So I think it'd be good to share that as well, for sure.
Absolutely. I'll do the quick intro and then we can get into the question.
So DGods is an NFT project that was started in September of 2021. So we've been around for a while.
We started it out, honestly, more as an experiment and all a bunch of young kids that wanted to make a really cool project.
And we've learned a lot, pivoted a lot over the last year. Our goal has always been to be the number one NFT project in the world.
Now, there's a lot of different definitions of that and I like to keep it ambiguous.
But the point is that if you sign up for DGods, if you buy a DGod, you just know that everyone, not just the team, but the community as well, wants to see that goal accomplished.
And once we get to that goal, then who knows what the next one is.
But yeah, a year ago, nobody really heard about us.
And now DGods is a default top five project in the world.
And we want to just keep pushing the boundaries of what is possible with NFTs.
So that's a quick one-liner on DGods and happy to, you know, follow me, follow the DGods account to learn more.
We also have another project called Utes, which is going to be even more experimental than DGods.
If you really want the craziest stuff that's happening in our ecosystem, that's coming to Utes next.
And DGods are kind of like our flagship NFT.
So that's the quick summary there.
Awesome. And Frank, happy to jump into questions about Blend.
But I honestly actually have some of my own questions about DGods.
And I think you have some really interesting perspective on the NFT space overall.
So maybe if I can just throw a few questions in there once in a while, that'd be great.
100%. Awesome.
Yeah, let's weave that in throughout the process.
But I think here, let's do this.
I think you've explained what Blur and Blend is before.
But I think we have this, you know, like you said, I'm all about DGods.
I think, I'm curious, here's the first question right off the bat.
What value does something like Blend provide to current and existing DGod holders?
Yeah, absolutely.
So the main value that Blend provides, and stepping back a bit, it's more so borrowing and lending as a concept.
And Blend is a specific implementation of that, that, you know, we created to try to solve specific problems that we found.
And I'm happy to speak about those specific problems.
But in general, the value of borrowing and lending is that if you hold a DGods today, and, you know, let's say, like, let's give it like very tactical.
Like, let's say you held a DGods, and you're like, you know, I actually want to put like $5,000 into Pepe, because that was pumping, I am feeling so much FOMO.
You know, I love my DGods, but, you know, I just want to throw $5,000 into Pepe.
And you don't have $5,000 lying around, you know, because most people just don't have that kind of spare cash lying around.
In that case, you know, the really only way that you can get that liquidity is you need to sell some of your assets.
Maybe you have some other NFTs that you can sell.
Maybe DGods is the only thing worth more than $5,000 that you can sell.
So you end up actually having to sell your DGods, you know, which currently is around like $8,900, so it's like $16,000.
You need to sell that entire DGods in order to get that $5,000 of liquidity to make that Pepe play that you want it to.
So this means as a holder, your options for getting liquidity are pretty limited.
It also means that you need to exit the collection in order to get that liquidity.
And you need to sell it either, you know, like at floor or into a bid in order to get that liquidity quickly.
So it's bad for the holders, it's bad for the floor prices.
A much better alternative would be, okay, DGods have, you know, come on to ETH.
They've held their floor price for a while, you know, definitely worth more than $5,000,
even in the current, you know, catastrophic market conditions that we've seen with Bittrex even like filing for bankruptcy today.
A much better solution would be, oh, I can actually go and borrow $5,000 against my DGods going and making that Pepe play.
And then afterwards, if I want to, I can keep that loan open or I can pay back the loan after I'm done making that play.
But that's a much different position that you're in now where you don't actually need to sell your DGods in order to get liquidity.
So that's the main benefit from holders is it's really just providing another avenue for holders to get liquidity without forcing them to sell the collection if they don't want to.
Awesome. Love that. Let's get deeper.
So let's say that I take the $5,000 out on Pepe.
The dip might be looking really juicy, hypothetically.
What is the, can you explain how the APY, APR works?
And let's just say I take out $5,000.
Do I just need to pay the exact $5,000 back or what are the options there on how much I need to pay back to get my DGod back?
Love this specific example, by the way.
I think it helps people understand it a lot more.
Yeah, absolutely.
So basically, whenever you take out a specific loan on Blend, each loan is a peer-to-peer loan.
So basically, every lender on Blend is different.
They can put out different loans at different terms.
And basically, when you want to go and borrow, let's say, $5,000 specifically, it'll try to find you a loan for at least $5,000 at the best rate possible.
And actually, right now, so I'm just looking at the loan order book.
And so if you go to the DGods page on Blur, you click into the Loans tab, you can actually see that there's a zero APY, zero interest loan for $5,000.
So you can actually take out a loan that basically you don't have to pay any interest on.
And I can explain why that's possible.
Why would a lender offer a zero interest loan?
But basically, right now, you can basically take out this loan at 0% interest and then pay it back for that exact $5,000 amount.
With that said, most loans, especially if you want to borrow larger amounts, will probably have a higher interest rate.
And that interest rate accrues daily.
So it's like every day, it'll grow by a little amount.
If you think about in terms of APY, maybe if you held your loan for an entire year, maybe that $5,000 loan goes from $5,000 to $6,000 because it accrued interest or $7,000.
It depends on the specific APY of the loan that you're taking out.
But basically, that interest accrues.
And then whenever you want to pay off that loan, you can pay off that, you know, like the principal, the initial amount that you borrowed and then whatever interest accrued.
Awesome. And so maybe the follow-up there, in your opinion, if you're allowed to even have an opinion on this, is this like a long-term, you know, is this like something for more long-term?
Or is this something like you mentioned, you know, whether it's Pepe, whether it's something in your IRL life, et cetera?
It's probably something that when people take a loan, they should have a game plan on how they're going to pay it back.
Is that – that's kind of like the underpinning here.
Would you agree or disagree or what's your thought process there?
Yeah.
So it depends on the specific goals of the borrower.
So the way that Blend works is it's a peer-to-peer.
So I mentioned earlier, right, each lender makes their own loan offer versus like if you've heard of like peer-to-pool lending, like Aave or Compound, for example.
These are like ERC-20, like token lending protocols, and they're peer-to-pool.
In Blend, it's all peer-to-peer.
Everyone's making their own loan.
And the loans are actually perpetual.
So they don't actually have explicit interest rates – or sorry, explicit expiration dates.
So technically, if someone wanted to, if the lender wanted to and the borrower wanted to, they could keep a loan open forever and just have it accrue interest forever.
In practice, that's probably not going to happen because either the borrower is going to want to refinance their loan or pay back their loan or the lender might want to close their loan at a certain point.
And in terms of like how long should the loan positions like last for, it really depends on the specific borrowed amount and the interest rate of the loan and the market conditions.
So, for example, I'm looking at the data for Milady's and Azuki's right now.
And actually, there are – and we launched Blend about like a week ago, a week and like eight hours ago.
And I'm looking and I'm seeing there's actually – there are loans that were taken out as soon as Blend launched that have stayed open for that entire week.
And typically, those are lower LTV loans.
So I'm looking right now and like there's like dozens of loans that have been open for an entire week.
And the highest LTV, the highest borrow amount that I'm seeing is around like 80-90% LTV, which LTV stands for loan-to-value ratio.
It's basically, you know, what's the value – you know, what's like the theoretical value of the thing that you're borrowing against and how much have you borrowed against it?
So 80-90% LTV is actually a pretty high LTV compared to most like NFT lending protocols.
And those loans have been open for an entire week.
Now, you've probably also seen if you've been on Twitter, there have also been people who made really short-term plays.
So I think I saw this one tweet where someone was like, oh, bought a Nuzuki, you know, like yesterday and then sold it for like a 0.5 ETH profit today and only put like one ETH down or something like that.
And that was definitely like a higher LTV loan.
If you're doing a loan that is like 90% plus LTV, then that's probably a position that you're not going to keep open for a long time because if the – you know, there's a lot of volatility in the market.
So if the floor ever falls below the amount that you've borrowed, the lender is probably going to try to close the loan and get their liquidity back.
It's a very similar mechanism to – if you've ever used an exchange like Binance, for example, and you take out a borrower position, if you take out like – if you borrow like 90% of your balance, then it's very likely that if there's any sort of liquidity, if there's any sort of like price fluctuation or volatility, you're probably going to get your account liquidated.
But if you are – you know, let's say you hold ETH and you borrow like 30% of the value of your ETH, then you can probably keep that position open for as long as you want because unless ETH crashes like 60%, you're not going to have your position liquidated.
So it's kind of like a nuanced answer to like a very simple question.
But basically, if you want to keep a loan open for a long time, you're probably going to want to borrow at lower LTVs.
We've only been live for one week, so we've only been able to see the loans that have been live for one week.
But currently, the loans that have been live have LTVs that are below 90% or 80% LTV.
I would imagine that if you want to keep a loan open for like an entire year, given the market volatility, you probably want to take a loan out at most like 30% LTV, right?
That gives you like a good buffer room.
If you want to take it out for 30 days, you probably want to do it at like 50% to 70% LTV.
You can take out a higher LTV loan, but it just means that if there's volatility, it increases the likelihood that you're going to have to get your loan called and repay your loan.
And then it won't like – you won't be able to keep it open as long.
So that brings me up to something that I'm sure people have said and you've seen throughout Twitter.
It's just this thing that people keep saying, and I want to give you a chance to maybe address it or verify it or debunk it.
It's this idea of like quote-unquote predatory loans, lending practices where people can immediately call loans.
I think there's a lot of confusion on the way that people can call loans, what does calling a loan mean, et cetera.
So if you want to riff on that as well, because I know I've seen that all across my timeline and let's just curious to hear your take on that.
Yeah, definitely.
I think there's two aspects here is what are the risks and trade-offs of blend for the borrower and what are the risks and trade-offs of blend for the lender?
I've actually seen commentary on both sides as bad for either side, and it's kind of humorous because it's like if it's bad for both sides, that can't both be true.
But the answer is there's risk and trade-offs.
And the way that blend works is it's a perpetual lending protocol.
So every borrower position, every position remains open forever unless the lender goes to try to close the loan.
And the lender can actually do that at any point in time.
So blend, unlike a lot of other lending protocols, doesn't rely on any oracles.
The lender can close their loan at any point in time, and basically the loan will go into an auction for 30 hours where the auction will try to find another lender to take over that loan at an increasingly high interest rate.
So it starts at 0% APY, and then it increases all the way up to 1,000% APY.
And the idea is it's basically going and saying, hey, someone is trying to borrow $5,000.
Will you lend to them at 0% interest rate?
Maybe there's no takers there.
And then it keeps on increasing the interest rate.
Will someone lend it at 10%, 50%, 100%, 500%, 1,000%?
And the goal is to eventually find a clearing price, a market clearing price, where another lender will step in and take over that loan.
I think when I've seen people say that they think that there is this predatory aspect, it's probably because what I've seen it, and Frank, correct me if I'm wrong, if you've seen other angles, I want to be able to address that.
But what I've typically seen is if you look at the highest LTV loan, so right now I'm looking at, let me just take a look at DGAUD as an example.
So if you look at the highest LTV loan where you borrow 7.7 ETH against a DGAUD, then there's a daily interest rate of about 3%.
So that's about like, I need to double check, but I think that's probably about like 1,000% APY.
That's like a really high APY.
And the reason why it's a really high APY is because 7.7 ETH is a really high LTV loan.
The lender in that case is actually taking a lot of risk giving out a loan at those terms because if the market conditions change, they basically need, they basically, no matter what they do, they have to wait at least 30 hours in order to either get their ETH back that they lent out or get the NFT as collateral because the borrower maybe like doesn't repay the loan.
And it takes 30 hours for them to get that liquidity back.
So if you're trying to take a loan at that high of an LTV, you're going to get a high interest rate.
And that is basically a market interest rate because the lender is taking a lot of risk.
If you want to take out a lower LTV loan.
So as soon as you, so I'm looking right now, as soon as I get to the 6.9 ETH range.
So if I, if you want to borrow 6.9 ETH against your DGOT, which is, let me just do the calculation real quick.
So that's a 78% LTV.
If you want to do a 78% LTV borrow, then the interest rate for that is, is literally 0%.
So once it gets to a range where the lenders feel a little bit more comfortable with the risk, you start getting lower and lower interest rates.
The reason why there's such a stark difference is because basically based on the LTV, based on the, the loan amount, the lender is taking different amounts of risk.
When you see a really high LTV, high interest rate loan, it means that the lender is taking a lot of risk.
And then the, the borrower, if they want to take out a loan at that high of an LTV, then they're basically going to be paying for it in the form of a high interest rate.
Okay. Understood.
So I think maybe the follow-up there is when you think about the incentives, I guess, for lending right now, there's obviously like this 2X, you know, lending bonus on points.
Is that where you feel, you know, people are more willing to put up these really high LTV loans?
And do you feel like, yeah, I mean, just curious if you want to riff there on what the incentive is on the, I think it makes sense right now on the person that's loaning out their D-God, they're going to get ETH immediately without having to lose their D-God, for example.
And is the hope, I guess, for people that are lending out ETH, I don't know if you want to talk more there about the incentives, because I'm trying to see how we can explain to people on both sides, which would be more exciting for them or if they want to participate at all.
Yeah, absolutely. So the reason why we focus the points on lending is because the goal of the blur incentives has always been to increase liquidity.
And it has worked so well that you'll see even lenders take out, you know, offer loans at 0% interest rate.
And actually, people will comment like, oh, like those interest rates are like unnatural.
But it's really funny, because I've also seen people comment on like the predatory like lending rates.
And it's like, if you have 0% interest rates, those are like, by definition, the most borrower friendly terms that are possible.
I guess the only most more borrower friendly term would be a negative interest rate.
But once you have a negative interest rate, then that's just going to be incentivizing like wash borrowing.
But basically, the reason why that's possible is because blur is giving incentives to lenders to put out loan offers at high LTVs and low interest rates.
And a really good analogy here is if you actually look at Web2, buy now, pay later.
So I don't know if anyone here has like bought a phone on with like Klarna or like Afterpay or like, you know, maybe someone has like a Peloton and they bought like a Peloton with like Afterpay or something like that.
But basically, a lot of times when you actually buy with these buy now, pay later services, you're going to actually be able to buy with a 0% interest rate loan in Web2.
The reason why that's possible is because the merchant is actually so in this case, like the seller, like it would be like Peloton, for example.
The merchant is actually subsidizing those zero interest rate loans because having such good lending like loan terms basically increases demand so that it's worth it for them.
And that's how you get 0% interest rate loans in the traditional Web2 buy now, pay later space.
And basically with Blend, we're effectively mimicking that dynamic by directing the lending points to lenders who offer high LTV, low interest rate loans.
Awesome. Okay. Another one. This is an interesting one I got in the DMs.
A big issue in fixed duration loans has been borrower simply forgetting to pay back their loan on time.
And in the DGEN kind of community that we have here in NFTs, I imagine that that would happen relatively frequently.
Do you think Blend's perpetual structure will also have this issue given loans can be called at any time?
Yeah. So the reason why we actually wanted to design a perpetual structure is because of that dynamic.
When we were looking at the lending space, we actually found that with existing NFT lending solutions, there were the most like popular for like peer to peer protocols was having fixed duration loans, which is like, you know, for people who aren't familiar and most people aren't going to be like super intimately familiar with all the different protocols.
But basically, it's like a loan where you say, oh, I want to borrow X ETH for 30 days.
And and then at the end of those 30 days, I have to pay back my loan or or lose the NFT.
And what would happen is actually sometimes or not uncommonly, people would actually forget to set a reminder 30 days later.
So they'd have to like manage their positions.
And then like 30 days later, they might forget to come back to pay back their loan.
And then they'd actually lose their lose their NFT in that scenario.
And that felt really confusing to us.
And it felt unscalable because, OK, this is just like a problem for if you have one NFT that's being borrowed against.
What if you have 10 NFTs that you're borrowing against?
Now you have 10 different dates that you have to set reminders for.
And that, you know, I like whenever we design things, I like to think like for myself, like, what would I want to see?
And in this case, it's like, I can't imagine setting 10 different reminders for, you know, 10 different loans that I'm taking out.
That just sounds like so complex and such a hassle.
I think the right the optimal model here is if you look at, again, like exchanges, like token exchanges, they have done a lot of amazing work in terms of improving the UI, UX of a lot of these financial primitives.
If you take out a borrower position on Binance, you never actually have to worry about, you know, you never set a duration for your borrow position.
You just have a certain amount of borrow that you have and it's like a certain amount of LTV.
And then if the prices go down enough, you might get liquidated.
But as long as the prices sustain at a specific level, then you basically will never get liquidated and you'll just be, you know, your borrower position will grow by an interest rate.
Um, so we basically wanted to figure out how could we mimic that dynamic where the only thing the borrower needs to think about here is the floor price of, of the assets that they're borrowing against.
And as, you know, people in the NFT space, people are pretty much like always aware of the floor prices of their assets.
You know, even if you're not trading every day, you're probably checking the market either every day or, you know, every other day.
And then even if you're not checking the market times a day or 5,000, you know, most people I think are checking the market.
Uh, yeah, way, way more than that.
So they're going to be very familiar with the price.
And then that means you're also going to be very familiar with, oh, the prices are going down.
That means I might need to, uh, you know, pay back this loan or, you know, the prices are sustaining.
That means that I don't really have to worry about it.
Um, and then we also added notifications so that there's both in app notifications and email notifications so that if a loan is an auction and there's 24 hours remaining and no one's actually come in to step in to take over the loan, then that means that the market conditions have probably changed around your loan.
And there's a likelihood that your loan will get liquidated if you don't pay it back.
And we actually send an email notification on top of that, uh, so that the borrowers can know and get 24 hours advance notice.
So basically we try to create a mechanism where there's just given the behavior of people in the market creates like multiple levels of fail safe, right?
As a borrower, you only really need to think about the floor price of the assets that you're borrowing against.
And you're probably already thinking about that.
And that's a much easier proposition than setting, you know, 10 different reminders and trying to like, you know, figure out the right timing.
You know, you might be busy at random times and forget.
And that's just a really difficult value prop.
So that brings us to another question, which is, do you feel like there's a world right now it's based on a pool or it's almost like a collection, you know, broadly, you don't know what NFT you might be lending towards or, you know, getting custodial, uh, you know, access to.
So I guess it's a two part question.
One, do you imagine that you guys end up adding functionality to provide a loan to a specific NFT and, or get the utility of the NFT?
Cause I think that's another thing you should probably clear up, uh, too.
I think some people, you know, I also meme it cause it's just funny, but the idea of like someone being able to get access to the D God's discord for 0.5 ETH or 0.8 ETH or whatever it is, it's actually technically not true right now.
Like you don't take custody of the NFT today.
So maybe if you want to just kind of explain how that part of it works and what you see down the horizon with, um, what it means to give a loan, maybe do a specific NFT versus the entire collection.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Great question.
So right now you don't have that ability to like use like delegate cash and get into the discord or, um, for example, like, let's say there's like a flash mint.
Maybe you wouldn't be able to do like the flash mint.
Uh, that's functionality that we didn't ship in this V1.
Uh, but that is functionality that we will ship in a future update.
So basically what you will be able to do in the future is once you have that NFT, you can delegate to your own wallet.
Um, and basically, you know, it's, it's the same thing that like most of these like discord tools have, where if you have like a token gated discord, you can basically get in by delegating to your own wallet.
So you can still access the functionality of the NFT.
And then if there's, um, ever like a mint, right.
A lot of times there might be like airdrops of some sort where you have to be a holder of the NFT in order to mint another NFT.
Um, and basically there's mechanisms that we can implement to enable that functionality for the borrower.
Um, even while the, the NFT is, is still in loan.
So basically, you know, TLDR, it's like, it's, you don't get access to the utility today.
You only get really access to, uh, the price appreciation.
Um, if you're buying now, pay later, uh, or if you are borrowing, you get access to liquidity.
Um, and then in a future update, we'll be working to get borrowers access, you know, whether they're borrowing or they buy now, pay later.
We're going to work, we're working to get borrowers access, um, you know, to the utility as well.
So you guys heard it here first, the D we're calling them D loaners, by the way.
Um, you know, you guys heard it here first.
We're not going to get them today, but they're coming soon.
Excited to haze and make fun of all the D loaners, but in a loving way.
So can't wait for that, uh, functionality whenever it does come through D loaners are still D gods, but you know, just a little less Riz.
So we got Spencer up on stage who I would say is one of the smarter people here in the NFT space.
Um, so yeah, I mean, I'm curious what questions this, this, uh, dude has.
Yeah.
And Frank before, and Spencer absolutely definitely want to hear your question, but I also want to address Frank's second question, which Frank, um, correct me if I'm wrong.
You're asking about loans on specific.
Yeah.
That's a great question.
So I mentioned earlier that the way blend works is that the lender can basically call a loan and initiate an auction at any point in time.
And then it works to find like another lender over 30 hours.
Basically this entire protocol is built around the assumption that we can create a liquid lender market around, uh, the loans.
So like an example of this is like, let's say, let's say it was like, um, instead of, uh, lending protocol for, um, uh, like NFTs, it was like for like Bitcoin, for example.
And, uh, let's say someone had a position on Bitcoin.
They borrowed $10,000 against their one Bitcoin.
And, uh, this, you know, their, their loan went into auction and, uh, you know, it went from zero to a thousand percent APY.
You know, Bitcoin is something where you can imagine, okay, this is like, there's so many eyes on Bitcoin.
There's so many people that want to buy Bitcoin.
If someone is offering a loan, uh, you know, at, at the very max, right at a thousand percent APY on a $10,000 base, uh, and the collateral is a singular Bitcoin, then there's probably going to be a lender that steps in to take over that loan.
Right.
And they'll probably step in at, at a thousand percent APY, they'll probably step in at 500% APY, probably a hundred percent APY, probably even 50%, probably even 20%.
Um, so you can, this is how the auction mechanism basically finds like a market rate for the loan.
But if no one, if, if it was not an asset like Bitcoin, let's say it was an asset like, um, let's say it was like an asset like Pepe, for example, right.
Where it's a new asset, uh, it's very, very risky.
Um, maybe you have a $30,000 bag of Pepe and you want to borrow $10,000 against it, but you might find that there's many, far fewer lenders willing to actually come in and step in at, you know, 10% APY, 20% APY, maybe even a hundred percent APY.
The lender wouldn't be willing to step in.
Maybe even at a thousand percent APY, the lender wouldn't be willing to step in.
Um, so as the asset becomes either more volatile or more illiquid, this mechanism is not as well suited for that.
And it wasn't built for that, but for assets where, um, you know, basically there's a lot of lenders focused on the asset and there's like a clearing price that people kind of generally believe to be like the valid price.
Then this mechanism works when it comes to like an individual NFT or maybe like a rare NFT, this mechanism is probably not as well suited in its current form.
Uh, there's modifications that can probably be made to actually make it work well.
But basically like, let's say you have a rare and the rare is worth like a hundred ETH and someone is willing to loan you 50 ETH against that rare.
Um, that works initially, but maybe there's only one person willing to loan you 50 ETH against a rare.
Cause it's like an illiquid asset.
There's like not enough prices three.
So maybe there's only like one or two lenders that are willing to make a loan at 50 ETH.
In that case, if they kick off the auction, there might not be another lender that's willing to come in at the 50 ETH mark, you know, even at a thousand percent APY.
So as the, uh, as the asset becomes more illiquid blend doesn't really work as well for that.
And in its current form, it's not built for that.
It's really built for, um, you know, liquid collections that have a value that is like generally well-respected so that if there is an auction that's kicked off, the auction can quickly find a market clearing price for the loan.
Um, without you having to worry about getting like a, you know, off market clearing price for the loan.
Uh, we will definitely be adding support for, um, you know, like loans for like rares or traits, et cetera.
Uh, but it'll probably require, um, a little bit more, a little bit more of like a creative mechanism design than blend in its current form.
Yeah.
I think that's also something that's interesting that you guys get a lot of flack for, but I have to give credit where credit is due.
You guys are very good at creating simple interfaces for very complex, uh, you know, mechanism design.
And so I guess this is more honestly a question for me and just advice or how you think about it.
But what is like the design process as from, from start idea to finish when you're factoring in so many different elements and trying to make the final version of it feel kind of elegant and simple.
Um, and then we can go to Spencer's question, but this is more just as like a friend or cure.
I'm curious, you know, how, what is that design process inside the blur laboratories?
Um, how do you guys go about thinking through that?
Yeah, I think, I think the key thing here is a lot of it just comes from being, you know, the re the reason why we started blur was in 2021 as we were selling our last business.
I, you know, personally got really into NFTs.
I minted a blip map, sold it around like 25 ETH and got super hooked.
Uh, afterwards I really fell in love with the trading aspect.
Uh, really had a lot of fun with that.
Um, I think just as part of that experience, um, I also became very frustrated with the existing infrastructure.
I thought a lot, one, I thought the infrastructure was just not really serving the market.
Um, and you know, whether it's NFTs or tokens, this market has always grown on the back of like really strong infrastructure improvements.
You know, as Coinbase has gotten better, as Binance has gotten better, we've seen bigger and more players come in and that's allowed the entire space to grow.
And so I always felt like the infrastructure wasn't, wasn't there.
And I really wanted products and protocols that just really frankly did not exist.
Um, so blend is actually something that we've, we've wanted to build something along these lines in terms of what it enables.
We want to build something along these lines since day one.
It just took us 475 days to get here.
Um, you know, but it is what it is.
Like things just take time to develop.
When it came to the process for designing and building blend, it really came down to, we wanted to enable the features.
Uh, we want to create like the features, right?
Buy now, pay later and borrowing.
Um, we actually didn't want to have to create our own new protocol from the get go.
It would have been much easier to just go in and integrate with something, uh, existing.
But we found when we looked at what was available, we found that nothing really enabled the UX that we wanted.
Um, either a peer to pool protocol, there were peer to pool protocols that were, uh, very simple in terms of, you know, they're, they're typically peer to peer to pool lending protocols are perpetual, right?
So if you borrow, um, on Aave, you don't have like a fixed term.
You can hold that position for as long as you want, uh, unless like the, the market conditions change and you get liquidated and they have a, this like auction liquidation process.
It's actually, you know, there's similar elements you can see in, in blend.
And then there's the peer to peer, uh, but the issue with the peer to pool model is the lenders, because they all have to take the same risk parameters.
I'm getting like way too into the weeds, but no, it's great because they have to take the same risk parameters.
The protocol has to take a lot less risk, uh, basically has to offer loans at very low LTV rates, uh, relatively.
Um, because otherwise you can't have the entire protocol taking like, you know, a 90% LTV loan offering a 90% LTV loan loan.
That's just like way too much risk for an entire protocol to take versus in peer to peer each lender can basically take their own risk, right?
Some lenders, maybe they deeply understand the decods ecosystem and they're like, you know, I'm willing to actually, uh, almost like bet on decods and I'm willing to offer a high LTV loan, um, at a decent interest rate because I really know this market.
Like another lender might be like, you know, I actually don't know the gods at all.
I don't know what they're doing.
I don't know about the points system and the staking.
And so I'm just going to look at their price history and I see that they've been trading around eight, you know, for a while since they came to Ethereum.
So I'm going to make loans at, you know, 50% LTV at four ETH.
And so different lenders can basically express their different risk preferences versus when you have a peer to pool protocol, everyone is basically forced into the same risk parameters, which means that the pool has to take less risk.
Uh, or, or they take more risk and the entire pool gets blown up, um, and a peer to peer model.
The only way that we've seen that implemented before was with fixed duration loans.
And, you know, like I explained earlier, that just felt like a really confusing UX to us.
I, I couldn't imagine myself ever using a peer to peer, uh, lending protocol and, you know, managing different positions.
So I couldn't really imagine, you know, the rest of the NFT community also doing it.
Uh, the, the, the perpetual, uh, position just seemed like a much more natural intuitive, um, you know, mechanism.
So we basically started from there and we're like, okay, what do we want to enable?
We would ideally have a perpetual system that is also like peer to peer.
Um, and then we kind of just got about, went, went about like thinking through from, from first principles, how could we potentially implement that?
Um, and of course we had a lot of help and we're very grateful for Dan Robinson, who was one of the key designers.
He was really like the like inventor behind Uniswap V3.
So this guy is a very brilliant, uh, protocol designer and we collaborated with him together, uh, to design blend, you know, from the ground up.
Incredible.
And I think sometimes just hearing the thought process and I just like the simple deductive reasoning behind it of what the pros and the cons are between the different systems.
And I think that's helpful.
Even like there's so much of drama controversy around all of the different things that a lot of people in this space do, but it's always fun to just listen to a builder, talk about why they made something.
And, uh, yeah, it just takes a lot of the mystique and the lore out of it in a good way.
So that was really helpful, but I do want to go to Spencer.
He always has interesting takes.
Sometimes makes me scratch my head.
Other times definitely makes me think, but what is up Spencer?
Hey guys, dude, I'm just excited to see two legends here and what you guys have launched today and what I got to witness.
And do a little bit of play around with, it's just been so exciting.
Um, I have one question for Pac-Man cause you know, you know, I, I use this pool a lot, uh, this, and I, and I, the way I think about it too, is not just like borrowing, but especially with a 0% APR right now on some of the loans, like it's basically a put option that's free to take on your NFTs.
So that's another thing, but that in, in, in like indicates the idea that like you may default on a loan.
So I was curious when you were like designing this protocol, how do you think about defaults?
Like in equilibrium, this protocol is working.
Are we going to see a lot of defaults?
Is that something that only happens if things aren't going as planned?
Like, is there a number or way that you were thinking in protocol design about like how to optimize for, um, or think about defaulting loans?
Yeah, absolutely.
I think, um, basically in a healthy, it's not about the number of defaults.
It's about which loans are defaulting.
So for example, if you have a, uh, four, 50% LTV bar on, on your D God, right?
So it's at four ETH, um, and the lender closes the loan and it goes into auction.
Um, one is that loan should never be, uh, should never go into default because a lender should base.
Another lender should step in to take over that loan because if it does default, that, that original lender can immediately sell that NFT for four ETH profit.
And, and then the, the, the APY on that, like, let's say like they just took out the loan and they, they close it and, and then they get that four ETH value.
It just given the short duration, it'd be like, you know, like a, a, a 10,000% APY or something like that.
Like, it's like too ridiculous.
So in a, in a healthy liquid market, one, that loan should never, uh, even go into default.
Uh, it should be refinanced.
Um, let's say for whatever reason, the loan doesn't go and get refinanced as a borrower, it doesn't make sense for you to let that go loan go into default because you're giving out four ETH versus worth of value.
That's like a lot of free money that you're leaving on the table.
So basically for that kind of loan at a low LTV, the loan should never go into a default, um, at a high LTV loan.
So let's say you take a 90% LTV loan and let's say the floor, uh, uh, goes down, right?
Let's say, you know, the floor goes from, uh, you know, uh, 90% LTV to, uh, like 99% LTV, right?
Basically like, you know, let's say you take like a seven ETH loan and the floor is at like 7.01 ETH.
Basically at that point, the loan should default because the loan is at such close LTV, you know, such a high LTV ratio that it doesn't make sense for the lender to not close out the loan at that point.
And it doesn't really make sense for the borrower to repay the loan.
So in a healthy, uh, market, basically lower LTV loans should almost never default.
And then higher LTV loans should default based on the volatility of the market.
And this is very similar to if you take out a, uh, position on Binance, right?
If you take out like a low LTV position, you should basically never get liquidated unless the market crashes.
Uh, but if you take out like a super high LTV position, then, uh, you should get liquidated as the market is fluctuating.
And that's just like a, you know, natural, healthy functioning of the market based on, you know, the, the volatility and, and risk of the market.
That makes a lot of sense.
You know, we, we, we live in a pretty risk-free, you know, low vol market with our, with our animal JPEGs.
No, I'm kidding.
Um, so it's, it's, it's, it's interesting that you think about that, um, in those ways.
Now, what do you think in general, like the, the positive impact that this protocol has on the health of the platform?
Like, I know this is a hot button issue around blur.
I tend to think like more liquidity is always good, but I'm curious internally, like, what do you think?
Does this change price dynamics within collections?
Is it something you're thinking about something you were, you know, trying to avoid?
Like, how does, how does like this, uh, change in how people can buy or, you know, take loans against their NFTs impact the, the health of the space overall?
Yeah, definitely.
I think that this is, uh, you know, this kind of gets into like a somewhat like philosophical angle, but in general, the role of finance is to unlock economic efficiency.
By allowing the full spectrum of risk appetite to basically be expressed.
And, you know, I think that's maybe like too abstract of an answer, but basically if you look at like how, like, just like how the world economy works, it's through, like, for example, if you didn't have mortgages, like very few people would actually be able to afford homes.
It's only through financing that people are actually able to afford homes paid down over time and they get access to the benefits of their homes.
And on the other side of that, there are many lenders who are willing to, you know, offer loans and get like, uh, you know, 3%, 4% APY, you know, in like the housing market.
Uh, because like that, that's like given their risk preference, that makes sense.
And for a buyer, they're willing to take out a loan because they really want to get access to the house.
If you look at like Silicon Valley, you know, this entire system works because you have, uh, you know, like investors VC who are willing to provide risk capital.
And then you have, uh, founders who are basically willing to provide sweat equity, uh, and by, you know, matching those, uh, those different preferences, you get Facebook, you get Google, you get a lot of creation and economic value that's produced.
When you look at the token space, similarly, if someone has a strong preference on how the price of an asset is going to, you know, flow either up or down, they're able to take out a position and express that preference, uh, right.
They can either, um, uh, you know, just do it on spot or they can, you know, borrow some funds against their position and, and, you know, take on an even stronger position.
Uh, and basically able to express that preference in NFTs until blend, you know, by and large, even though it was technically possible, um, it was very, very difficult for people to go and fully express their economic preferences.
And in general, um, I basically always believe that that means that the economic activity and growth of the space was being, uh, artificially held back.
Um, there are very similar conversations.
If you look at the development of the stock market, when things like futures and options and other financial primitives were introduced, there was a lot of, um, noise and basically FUD about how that would like ruin the market.
Because before it was like, you have to buy like an entire position and you couldn't like, you know, fractionalize, you couldn't hedge, et cetera.
Um, but in reality, what ended up happening was with the introduction of these financial primitives, you allowed the entire space grew because you allowed the full, you know, there are a lot, there's a lot of capital out there.
There that's willing to earn a, you know, 5% interest rate.
Like there's just like a lot, there's like almost like infinite capital out there.
That's like willing to earn a 5% interest rate.
Uh, but there's very few, uh, there's much less capital that's willing to earn like a 1% interest rate.
Right.
And then there's also a lot of people who are maybe down to, you know, buy an NFT for $500, $1,000, $2,000.
There's far fewer people who are willing to buy an NFT for $20,000, $30,000, $50,000.
So basically, you know, the general belief that, that I have is that by introducing these financial primitives, we can unlock even more economic activity and growth for the entire space.
Uh, and even though that there's a hundred percent, a learning period, as people kind of get used to these mechanisms that are introduced, that didn't really exist in the market before there will be a learning period.
Um, but our belief is that the net outcome of that will be that the entire space grows and people are able to effectively expect, express their economic preferences, uh, much better than they were able to before.
Wow.
I, I, I really enjoyed, um, hearing that breakdown, I guess for you, what, what makes NFTs different?
Like what are the unique characteristics?
Um, because as you referenced a lot of traditional finance, you know, and, and different economic options out there for different asset classes, what are like the things that you hang your hat on and say, yeah, well, these few things are different about NFTs.
And what does that mean for the outlook from your perspective for NFTs going forward?
Yeah, absolutely.
And then actually I, I do want to, at some point, cause I think this is, this will be a good segue for some, some questions that I have about DGods, but I think something that's really important to highlight is this.
Basically introducing financialization to unlock economic efficiency, it's not about financializing NFTs themselves.
It's basically the end goal is really unlocking growth for NFTs as a whole.
I think the best example of that is, again, if you look at, you know, web two buy now, pay later, the goal of buy now, pay later is not to turn your iPhone into like a financial asset.
It's to allow more consumers to be able to purchase an iPhone because it's really hard for people to spend a thousand dollars up front, but it's definitely way more feasible to first people to spend a thousand dollars spread over 24 months.
And that basically just enables way more access to the actual asset itself.
Like right in web two, it's like an iPhone or Peloton or whatever.
And you're not actually taking away, you're not financializing the asset by introducing these financial primitives.
You're just allowing more economic activity to happen around the asset.
Similarly for NFTs, the goal is really just to enable even more growth for the entire space.
When I look at NFTs, the thing that I really fell in love with that I first got into it was one, I just had a lot of fun, like collecting and trading the NFTs.
But my mental model of them is really, I think NFTs can be used for much more than this.
But definitely like the thing that I really fell in love with was really this concept of thinking of NFTs as digital collectibles.
I think in general, people love collecting things.
The fact that NFTs have different traits and different rarities.
And I know we don't have a lot of functionality around that right now.
Like we're working on it.
But, you know, the fact that they do have different traits, right?
You can have, you know, laser eye NFTs and, you know, like Mohawk NFTs and like all these other things.
That just makes it really fun to me.
The community aspect of it is really fun to me.
This is not really an aspect that you get as much in the token world, which is, you know, a lot of acquaintances that I have kind of come from that.
And you don't really see the same kinds of communities in tokens as you do in NFTs.
Like you can have super strong diehards for sure, but the communities are just different.
You know, for myself as someone who spent, you know, literally I spent like 95% of my life for the past decade online.
This idea of digital collectibles just makes a lot of sense to me because I'm not really collecting physical things.
I don't really have, like I'm like nomadic.
I don't really have things that I'm bringing around with me.
But I am spending pretty much all my time online.
This idea that you can have a digital collectible and you can verify the authenticity of it and you can like, you know, hold onto it in your own wallet and transfer it and do with it what you want.
That's something that's really powerful to me.
And that's basically how I view NFTs.
Ultimately, when I think about how can we grow this space, I think that creating better financial primitives basically allows the entire space to grow without detracting.
And the goal is to do that without, of course, detracting from the native asset itself.
Just like these financial primitives did not detract from the native assets.
You know, when you look at how buy now, pay later and other financing, financial primitives have basically enabled growth in the Web2 space.
Love it.
Frank, I think I've heard you actually speak on your mental model of NFTs.
And I think this would be a great time to share your own perspective because I think you have similar experiences in some ways, but also different too.
No, I think what you said resonates deeply with me because similarly, I grew up on the Internet.
I'm 24 now.
And so my entire life almost has been like, you know, digitizing my identity in different ways.
But in a lot of ways, you know, there's people that want to make, quote unquote, like digital identity or digital collectibles.
But whether people want to admit it or not, and this is my more degen philosophy, introducing money into digital collectibles is what makes them cool.
You know, my joke on this is like NFTs are the greatest hobby of all time because the fact that there's a chance that people make money allows people to justify spending, you know, countless hours every single day, you know, in this space where if they were doing it for just Internet points, you know, they would feel like a loser.
But because you add money in it, it makes it adds this sex appeal and this ability to kind of justify spending a lot of time.
But what people do with that time is essentially they're dedicating attention.
And that to me is what's super interesting.
So I think I had said something about this a while ago.
It goes like people will spend more time on the Internet.
People will spend more on the Internet.
So they will buy verifiably cool digital collectibles that enhance their experience on the Internet.
These digital collectibles are called NFTs.
It's that simple.
I think a good way to put it is at a certain point, you know, with wealth, I think you run out of things to buy.
Like I mean it quite literally.
Like after about the $100,000 to $200,000 mark of something like any item in the real world costing money, you're basically upgrading to a cooler car.
You're getting a bigger house or you're buying a more expensive watch.
But there's not a lot of products in the world today that exist in that in between, you know, where, oh, what do I what does someone go and spend $200,000 on if they're spending all day on the Internet and they're barely going to touch that car or only going to wear that watch, you know, once or twice to some, you know, event that they don't even like the people that they're going with.
And so I think a lot more people are spending more time on the Internet.
And to me, the digital collectibles are the NFTs that enhance people's time they spend on the Internet, make them more famous, make them more popular, give them a network of people that, you know, are valuable to them and that they can enjoy spending time in their tribe.
To me, I think this is only possible today with NFTs, and that's really exciting because if it was locked to just one website, you're essentially a slave to the growth and reach of that single website.
But the composable nature of NFTs is what makes it just really interesting.
Like, I think, you know, you could see a world where in the future by holding a specific NFT, you get all kinds of perks, you know, you know, you get limited access to certain cool products that are dropping, not even within your own ecosystem.
But because other brands and other companies want to get access to your holder base or the people that hold one specific NFT or part of one tribe.
So I think, again, as the Internet goes more and more infinite in the way that content is infinite, like algorithms are infinite, you're always scrolling down a feed, you're always going to get fed more and more relevant things to you.
There's this digital scarcity tribe that we call NFTs that's becoming bigger and bigger.
And I think that is a primitive that will only continue to grow in demand because human beings at a certain point, like need intimate connection.
But human beings are also going to be spending more and more time on the Internet.
And I think by gating stuff like this financially and by interest and by, you know, quite literally using blockchain technology that makes it composable and more part of like this free Internet ecosystem.
I think all these things combined create a really interesting experiment that we're all in.
And so I'm just a fan of people that are pushing the boundaries of this experiment.
And I would definitely categorize, you know, everything that you guys are doing, regardless of the controversy, as people that are pushing the boundaries of this space.
And that excites me more than anything.
So I see Hamza with his hand raised, but go for it.
And I just want to add, I just want to add two quick anecdotes that I think really corroborate that thesis.
One is, you know, one of the most important things that people don't really talk about as much is really demographic trends.
In general, right now, the next big segment of consumer spending is coming from Gen Z.
And if you look at and basically over the next like decade or two decades, we're going to see like a massive wealth transfer from, you know, all the seniors over to millennials and Gen Z.
And if you look at Gen Z today, what do they spend their money on?
What do people ask, you know, their parents for like Christmas cards for?
They ask it for like Robux and like Fortnite.
I actually forget the name of like the Fortnite dollar system.
V-Bucks.
Yeah, they ask for V-Bucks.
So basically, the Gen Z of today, the next generation of consumers, they're already spending all their money on digital items.
But again, those digital items, they have vendor lock-in, which in the short term, no one ever notices vendor lock-in and pretty much like no real consumer ever really pays attention to it.
In the long run, though, the vendor locking is debilitating.
It really, it basically creates these wall gardens that people just like can't get out of.
The value of NFTs to me is the fact that you have these open permissionless systems.
It definitely comes with a lot of trickiness involved.
But I think in the long run, basically allows you to create a more strong foundational base for the digital economy.
So one is one is those demographic changes.
The other one is if you actually look at who is the richest person in the world today, what is like one of the wealthiest companies in the world?
It's actually the founder of LVMH.
LVMH is this massive holding company.
They basically own all of the luxury brands like Louis Vuitton.
And I don't think they own Gucci, but they own like pretty much every other luxury brand.
They just bought, what's that soap company that everyone loves?
Aesop?
Aesop.
They just bought Aesop for like a few billion dollars.
And literally this guy.
Yeah, this, this, the founder of the LVMH is literally richer than Bezos, than Musk.
And it's literally only from 70 luxury brands.
When I think about NFTs, I think NFTs are, you know, these like luxury items that signal, you know, social status and community is basically, you know, luxury for the digital economy.
So if you just think about, you know, who are the next generation of spenders and also what are the core human behaviors that have value?
People love collecting things.
People love, you know, spending money on luxury items that, you know, elevate their status, signal community.
NFTs, I think, are absolutely capturing that trend.
So that's really how we think about it.
You know, I personally think about it.
And it's interesting to hear that you also think about it in a similar analogous way.
And to add to the statistics here, here's the banger.
I think we talked about it once, but it's my favorite stat that I heard in the last year.
In 2022, 72% of luxury spending, we're talking Gucci, Louis, all the, all the brands you described was Gen Z and millennials, 72%.
And I think there's this perception today that, you know, it's only the boomers that are buying that stuff.
But I think in reality, again, like, as costs go down and all the major technologies, like, it's less expensive now to own a supercomputer in your pocket than it was 10 years ago.
So as costs go down on these commodity-esque, like, pieces of technology, I think the next layer of it is just obviously, oh, if we think everyone in this space is spending a lot of time on the internet, you have not met a 15-year-old today that has grown up plugged into the internet.
For them, real life is just as much their online identity as it is their real personhood.
And so when you look at the simple consumer purchase decision in a year from now, in five years from now, when you're deciding how do you want to spend $10,000, $20,000, do you want to buy a Louis purse?
Or do you want to buy a cool collectible that you get access to a sick community you're going to make new friends with, you're going to have people to chat with, you're going to have events that you can go to, and you're also probably going to get airdrop more digital collectibles, you know, from there.
When's the last time Louis Vuitton didn't airdrop?
I can't remember, you know, and so I think it comes back to these very basic, not even like BS, no fluff.
It's just like, would you rather buy an asset that is going to give you, you know, community, like events, network, all these things for the same price point and the same flex factor, quote unquote, like flex factor in two years.
Would you rather buy that or a physical item that you're going to get the one-time purchase on and as soon as you buy it, it's a depreciating asset.
Like, I think people are just going to get smarter and yeah, that is definitely the thesis, you know, right now.
And so I think a lot of people are fixated on how do you bring in 10 million people, 100 million people into this space.
And I think that's going to happen naturally over time.
But the way that the entire industry of like just buying collectibles in general exists is you have these kind of blue chip, gray old collectibles.
You have the Pikachu cards, you have the, you know, you have the LeBron James rookie cards, like you have these things that sell at like really high values.
It doesn't mean the entire industry is sitting at those high values, but that creates the market around it.
And so, yeah, I mean, that is definitely our goal with building D-Gods is how do we build a native Web3 brand that isn't trying to do, you know, what 100 Web2 brands have done over the last 100 years, but leverages this technology to provide those unique things that you can't get.
You can't get into a group chat for other Louis Vuitton bag holders, you know, quite literally bag holders.
But, yeah, that's super interesting to me.
But I know we have a hard out at seven.
Let's go five minutes over here.
And then, you know, Lakers takes like five minutes for the tip off anyway.
So my Laker fans and audience, I'm also watching the stream right now.
So I think we have Hamza up here.
And I know there's a few other people requesting.
We won't get to you this time, but we'll do more of these.
I think they're always super fun.
Hey, hey, everyone.
Thanks, Frank, for bringing me in.
I actually had a question for Pac-Man.
And before that, I was actually sitting this weekend with a trader.
Actually, he's in the crypto space from 2012 and like one of the OG, OG traders.
And apparently I was very surprised to know that he is market making a bunch of NFT collections on Blur.
And I was like really, really, really surprised that he apparently created the bottom for Bitcoin in 2014,
the bottom for BCH in 2015 and like a bunch of things.
And he apparently has a, he had a background before crypto.
He had a background of market making real estate.
And like I was really surprised and I was asking him a bunch of questions like,
why are you like, you know, what do you think of Blur and Blend in general and this infusion of credit?
And he said something which you also just mentioned.
I wanted to understand why do you say that is like the infusion of credit, you know,
changes this whole mortgage because the NFTs are fixed, which is like a land or real estate, so to say.
So I'm curious, like, are there other, are there other folks, you know,
who are actively trading in market making who have this sort of background?
Or are they also like sharing some thoughts in this?
Or are we a little bit early in this?
Yeah, yeah, that's a great, great question.
And it's awesome that your friend is actually doing that.
I'm not sure if I, if I know them, but if there's anything I've learned, it's, it's don't fade the, the Bitcoin OGs.
But there are definitely market makers.
Actually, there's like really, there's actually a lot of cool like DeFi people who are also market making on Blur.
And that's actually something that I've seen some sentiment that is like, oh, like there, there isn't like new liquidity in the space.
It's just like the same people.
And that's absolutely not the case.
I think especially since the Blur token launch, what we've seen is that there's a lot of capital.
If you look in the Blur pool right now, there's over like $100 million worth of liquidity in the bidding pool.
And that, that liquidity can be used for both bidding and lending.
And some of that is definitely existing NFT participants that were, you know, bidding before.
A lot of that is actually new capital, either from DeFi or other aspects or other spaces where people basically came in, saw the opportunity.
It's still, I would say, relatively illiquid because, you know, a hundred, even $100 million of liquidity is still small.
When you think about how much liquidity there is in DeFi and the rest of crypto overall.
And then, of course, like the rest of the world.
So it's still very, very much early days, but we are seeing, starting to see, you know, the introduction of more and more of these, these players.
And really the goal is, you know, for the space to grow, you're, you ideally want everyone in the NFT space, right?
You want consumers, you want people collecting the items, you want market makers, you want big institutions,
you want, you know, entire communities coming in and a healthy, thriving ecosystem will basically have all these different participants all fulfilling a different role in the ecosystem.
So, yeah, Hamza, to answer your question, there, there are others.
There's not like an infinite number of them, but we're definitely seeing, you know, we saw more than we, we had before.
And that, that to us is a sign of the space, you know, starting to mature.
But of course, you know, there's still a long road from here.
Awesome, guys. So if you had any interesting takeaways, criticism, questions, et cetera, go ahead and make a tweet thread.
I'll be looking at them all day, especially during timeouts during this Lakers game or commercial breaks as well.
So go ahead, make some threads. Let's, let's talk about it.
I think as long as we're discussing this stuff, having interesting conversations with interesting people,
for people that are really care about the space, it's going to be a lot of interesting, yeah, things coming up.
So appreciate everyone, Pac-Man, Spencer, Hamza, everyone else.
Thank you guys so much for your time. Have a great night and let's go Lakers. Peace.
