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DevNTell - Rebuilding DeFi Liquidity with @katana feat. @Billyjitsu | Host: @narb_s
Recorded: March 6, 2026 Duration: 0:38:48Space Recording
Full Transcription
GM, GM, welcome to what's going to be another fantastic episode of Dev & Tell.
So if you haven't heard, Dev & Tell is a podcast held every week,
allowing founders, hackers, and anyone in between the opportunity to come on the show
and showcase what they built.
And today I'm excited to re-welcome DD legend, Billy Kampana,
Billy Jutsu, aka, who's a dev rel at Katana.
So if you didn't know, Katana is a DeFi-first chain
delivering deep liquidity and sustainable real yields.
So if you stick around for today's episode,
you'll get to meet Billy,
learn about all the latest developments with Katana,
and how you can get started using them today.
All right, let's get into it.
gmgm welcome back on the show billy except happy on man awesome awesome yes good to be back we're
gonna be back under a different banner now under the that's right that's right that's some six uh
six swag you're wearing right there man yeah. Yeah, actually, uh, I made this myself customized.
I have like, you know, the t-shirts are cool and everything, but like when I fight, like
I have a rash guard.
So this is kind of like a, um, what is it?
Like a, uh, more of a slick kind of thing.
So like when I'm wrestling or anything like it, I wanted something that was cool and like
the katana colors are kind of flashy.
So I'm like, well, I guess it's a free advertising and it's called katana.
So like it has something to do with the warriors. it works that's awesome that's awesome i i think
if it's custom made i i think katana should start selling it i think i think it would sell pretty
pretty well it's an exclusive team only one i did a run in the very very beginning and i was like
who in the team wants one i mean not everybody is like athletic but i'm like yeah it's cool anyway it's a cool shirt I'd wear it
has a katana logo on the side yeah I don't know I did by design has like a
little discoloration like has a little sword slash amazing amazing and yeah I
guess a swag aside for for people who might be watching today and aren't
familiar with yourself would you just like
to give a introduction absolutely absolutely so yeah I'm Billy Billy Jitsu on Twitter I got it
I got started in the crypto game in 2017 like right before that rush so like I got in early
I was just talking to some folks I've always always been into tech. And then we had the 2017 December rush, and I thought it was a genius.
I'm like, oh, why should I invest in stocks and everything else?
This is easy money, right?
And then I held it all the way.
I round-tripped it all the way through 2018, 2019, and I'm kind of just cruising along
with it, here and there, buying some stuff on there, you know saw the eth at 80 at moments as well
and like in 2020 during covet like when d5 summer came around that's when i was like whoa this this
is really exciting like that really like blew my mind of like what you could and couldn't do
and then obviously 2021 prices were going up and there was nothing else to do because you were all
stuck at home so like i started really getting into smart contracts, learning how to code.
Once upon a time, I was an engineer, a computer engineer way back when,
but I didn't really like the industry.
It was kind of cool, but I felt more of just a technician than actually creating stuff.
And so I had basically run my own business doing IT consulting for security.
So I haven't touched code in like years.
So like VS code and GitHub and all that,
like what is all this stuff?
So I spent like most of my time
just kind of figuring it out on YouTube.
And what I learned was if you don't know what to ask,
if your Google fool isn't good,
it's very difficult to learn how to do anything.
So when I'm trying to learn how to do smart contracts
and do everything, like how to make a token. And then I see all the devrels come back next week for part
two. And then there was never a part two. I'm like, where's the part two? And I would be looking
and looking. I'd watch YouTube videos for 45 minutes to get that one function that I needed
that explained. And like, I would, that would be like man I just I wish there
was an easier way to do it so my dev rel style as I ultimately started working in it became the
frustration of like what it is when you're starting out and it's like a lot of assumptions
a lot of oh you already know this like no I don't you know so like as I'm coming in I'm like okay
you know when I'm coming into like brand new interfaces or brand new anything like what do I
need just kind of hand it to me.
And that's kind of been like my DevRel style
coming in through like this evolution
of like learning and going through.
And as I was learning,
that's how I learned about developer DAO.
I saw one of Natter's videos of like,
that's literally one of the YouTube videos
I was looking at.
I'm like, whoa, this is cool.
Like there's a whole group of people
that are into smart contracts.
I meant the NFT on there and I joined
and it was overwhelming of like all these projects and a lot of developers that were into smart contracts. I'm into the NFT on there and I joined and it was overwhelming of like all these projects
and a lot of developers that were aspiring on there.
So it's, you know, it was kind of like crazy evolution
that I became a contributor to that.
And that's kind of like what led me to my first gig
in dev relations and then kind of evolved from that.
But DeFi is my heart and soul.
Like that's what like gets me excited
about smart contracts.
Like being able to have it open to anybody.
DeFi is like, you could do rich people stuff, but be poor, you know, like you can do that.
You know, like if I talk to like an accounting manager, hey, I have $500 that I'd like to invest.
He'd be like, yeah, bro, just call me with a few more zeros, right?
But like, if you want to learn stuff, like DeFi is like one of the best places where you can learn more about traditional finance than traditional finance if
you don't have a lot of money and i thought that was really cool and so like that's been my biggest
draw from there amazing man yeah and you have quite the tenured background and i yeah i can attest
you're a d5 wiz um if people don't know uh billy is the the champ of the DeFi investment side of DeveloperDAO.
So, yeah, and we're really grateful for him being here and able to guide us through that.
But you mentioned it, too, like before, like the way you would learn.
And I learned smart contract development the same way.
It was just finding tutorials, kind of reading up on your own.
And people would give you just enough to kind of get you from like zero to one or one to two.
But then you were kind of on your own to go figure out the rest of it, which is like I love the challenge.
You just go force something to be learned.
But times have changed now.
Like now everything is AI driven.
You can go ask your chat GPT or your Claude how to do something.
It might not be correct, but it'll kind of go through the same motions now.
Absolutely, yeah.
I would say Katana is a very AI heavy focus on there
as like not doing the work for you,
but creating like frameworks
and save a lot of that mundane time on there.
It does make you way more productive on there,
especially like creating a readme, right?
Like I remember on hackathons,
I'd be like, oh, I'm tired.
It's 36 hours in,
I have my code working front and working.
It's like, oh my God, I got to do a readme.
And then you have to spend all that time.
Now I can say, hey, can you look at all this code?
Put the readme and then you can clean it up, right?
So like when it's not like critical stuff,
AI is very helpful for like run-ins
and like, you know, quickly making adjustments
on stuff that you understand the code for.
Yeah, definitely.
I would not put my money in a purely vibe coded contract,
but it's definitely helpful.
I use it on the daily for different things, on different tasks and automating stuff.
So it's definitely, that's kind of one of the things that I'll be showing you guys today as well, like part of Katana's AI tool.
Yeah, and I'm really curious to see it in action.
to see it in action.
But I guess before we kind of get into that,
just to set the scene,
DeFi is great for everything that it does
and everything that it's done to this point,
but I'm sure you can attest that there's still some problems
with overall accessibility and whatnot.
I guess in your mind, you've been in the space long enough,
like what are some of the gaps, some, you've been in the space long enough. What are some of the
gaps, some of the bigger problems in the DeFi space before it can get truly adopted worldwide?
Number one issue for sure. One of the things that stops me from going all in is trust. Every so
often, you're going to see this got hacked. This was hacked. 24 million lost, 36 million lost,
$100 million lost. And then we hope
that we get it back and some people take the losses. That's definitely a big issue, right?
Like, especially right now, when you look at rates on mainnet or something, like you're putting,
you know, a million dollars at risk for 3%. You could just take it out in a couple of T-bills or 4% and have it insured.
Right. You know, so like those are kind of things that, that are really a big hump of
like, wow, how come I'm not going all in? I'm strategically putting like what I'm willing
to lose for what the return is in certain aspects on there. Given that, you know, Katana
has some pretty heavy incentives right now that make that risk worth it, right?
So it's definitely,
if you haven't seen what's going on,
definitely check it out.
But that's by far the number one thing of like saying,
hey mom, put your life savings on here, right?
Like imagine like that's something possible.
Like there's always that risk factor.
So, you know, it's one of those,
those biggest hurdles we have to do.
And now with AI, people are using AI for good.
I've seen a lot of those auditing things.
And then people are also using AI for bad, a lot of black hack activity, right?
So they're scanning all the old contracts, looking for exploits.
So like, it's going both ways.
So it's always a constant battle of, you know, where we'll get there.
Every time there's a hack, we get hardened, you harden the contracts, we get them stronger.
Eventually we're going to get there.
It's just, it's not yet, right? So like, there's always some form of risk're going to get there. It's just not yet, right?
So there's always some form of risk anytime with DeFi, even with the front ends too, right?
Even though if you have the most basic levels of DeFi, there's a lot of different pieces,
a lot of different Lego pieces that can fall apart.
And then basically, house of cards come crashing down because some rounding error happened
on some Oracle.
It's like, man.
So it's one of those things.
And then getting TVL as a DeFi founder, right?
Looking at it from both sides,
as a founder that's trying to start out
with getting things going,
if you don't have initial capital to make yourself legit,
it's very difficult to get started, right?
Because me as a user, I'm looking in
and I see a brand new vault and I say,
hey, only $100, oh, they're going to rug me, right? right like you're just trying to start and if you don't have initial capital to
show people hey like there's been enough trust in this to put a lot of money in here uh then then
it's like well why should i do it and like and there's no money to do incentivize people to do
that so that becomes a problem and that's something that that katana kind of like looks at as well and
like those initial ones because we've kind of been there right as as builders and
what we've been there and that things like we have these ideas but it just doesn't take off
so like what are those missing factors that take off yeah yeah wonderfully said and yeah i agree
i agree wholeheartedly with all of it um and and i guess um perhaps some of these these problems um
katana is looking to solve so uh i guess uh guess what would be your so-called elevator pitch of
Katana for people watching today? Well, it's not so much of an elevator. Let me share my screen
really quick on here. I'm kind of making like what is Katana on here. So yeah, the next generation
DeFi chain, like what we are is a very opinionated chain. I don't want to say we're exactly an app chain,
but we are focused on exact narratives, right?
So you as a builder, you as a user,
have you ever been somewhere on a restaurant
and with someone that's very undecisive
because they have a ton of options, right?
Like you can go to like a burger joint
that serves tacos and serve spaghetti or something. It's like, let's just get a burger, right? And then you to like a burger joint that serves tacos and serves spaghetti or something
it's like let's just get a burger right and then you go to a burger joint that only has
burgers that say hey you want a single or double right your decisions are made quicker it's a lot
less stressful right and that's kind of what katana is doing in a sense we have an orchestrated
defi stack we have a set of core apps right one dex which is sushi swap right now one lending
barring out which is morpho and one right now, one Lending Barringah, which is Morpho,
and one Perps, which will be coming out eventually soon, something like that. There's no fragmentation on what to bet on, right? So think of it like an Apple ecosystem, right? There's one iPhone,
whether iPhone Pro or whatever, but you know, I want a MacBook, you know exactly what you do.
As a builder, you know exactly what to bet on, right? Morpho is not going away, right?
So if I'm building something
that's gonna have leverage staking
or leverage looping or anything like that,
it is going to be built on Morpho, right?
There's been many chains that we see right now,
especially now that there's a lot of dApps
out there winding down.
Imagine you built your leverage on top of that.
So now your Lego piece underneath just fell apart, right?
And so now with this orchestrated defy stack you can now create
strategies that you know are not going to go away and they're being built together right
the number one peeing about this is capital gets put to work day one right on the chain anytime
you bridge into katana those those bridge assets are getting put to use in like a productive strategy
on eth mainnet right right? So theoretically,
you could say we're one of the most ETH aligned L2s out there because we're actually doing
something on ETH mainnet, right? It's not like, hey, we'll get you back and we'll pay some
sequencer fees. We're doing that already, but we're also doing something on the ETH mainnet
directly on there. It also builds in chain owned liquidity, right? So that means less slippage on
there. So as the chain grows, as the TVL grows the chain-owned liquidity will be there so when people pull out liquidity or
when chains so paul die you know there's no liquidity there's no as like the chain owns
a lot of that liquidity and anybody that's done founder stuff renting liquidity is vampiric
right so like oh man like okay i have a million tvl and then okay the terms have ended you pull
it out you haven't made enough money.
Now what, right?
So like having access to that deep, deep own liquidity is something that makes you great.
Like you have less slippage and your rates are a little bit better, right?
And then the cat token, right?
That's basically kind of like the vein of this whole mountain of DeFi is like your emissions kind of like go through like your voting system on here.
So you are, I guess one of the best examples for that
would be like, let's say airplane miles, right?
You're a constant flyer.
You're a user of that airline, that specific airline.
You always go specifically with an airline.
You earn those miles.
Now, as this major mile holder
that you've been using on there,
you get to vote like on where the routes are.
You know, let's say I was going from LA to New York,
but we have to fly through Atlanta or do something.
It's like, you know what?
It's better if we go through the Texas side
to the South side and come up with it,
we get less turbulence.
And then you as a voter get to decide that on there
and you get to decide where the emissions go.
So for those that are like not familiar
with like Airdrome or Belladodrome or Solidity or Curve, basically you lock up your tokens.
You can do whatever you want with the tokens, but you can lock up your tokens and that gives you kind of like a voting power.
And then there's ongoing emissions going out that incentivize dApps on here. So like for, for Eridove, like you can incentivize a, a pool, ETH USDC or RAP BTC USDC.
And then you can get incentivized to do for your work. So you get basically about how that works.
Well, imagine that on the chain level, right? So when you, when you work as a DAB on a chain,
you're, you're kind of on your own, right? You have to have your own token and you have to have
your own incentives. And then you hope that maybe the DAO
will throw some of their tokens on there for the chain.
And then you get some incentives for like two months
and then those go away and then your TV all gets lost.
Well, imagine if you were able to vote for your DAB
theoretically indefinitely, right?
So if you have stake in the game
and you're a user in the game as a VCAT,
which is the stake cat token,
you get to vote where the emissions go, right?
So you can, right now at this current timeframe,
we're limiting only it to DEX LP.
So like you get to vote for like ETH USDC,
ETH RAP ETC or whatever your pool is.
So if you are a user and I'm supplying liquidity
to the ETH USDC pool,
I'm gonna vote for the ETH USDC pool.
So I get more APY, right?
Like as a DeFi user, it makes sense.
Like I'm in the game, I'm a user. I'm gonna vote for what makes most for me, right? Cause I'm going to vote for the ETH USDC pool. So I get more APY, right? Like as a DeFi user, it makes sense. Like I'm in the game, I'm a user.
I'm going to vote for what makes most for me, right?
Because I'm a user.
But as the chain expands and as our roadmap clears out
and we start seeing that we're going to be able to vote
for things entirely on the chain.
So I can vote for markets on borrow lending.
I can vote for markets on like Spectra yield tokenization,
PT tokens.
I can vote for incentives on purpose X for volume, right? Like, oh, you know, I'm in this position.
I have this Delta Nutri strategy. What works for me, right? And ultimately you can vote for your debt, right? The biggest thing for builders is that moat of getting TVL and having incentives.
And the moment your incentives leaves, everybody kind of leaves. I know because I leave, right?
If the incentives are not there and there's a better opportunity,
it's like no hard feelings.
I just found a better opportunity for me,
for my money, my risk, right?
So I'm going somewhere else.
But if you can keep voting
and keep those emissions coming to you,
then I'll stay there, right?
Because it makes sense for me.
And that's kind of like the value prop
of what Katana does,
is like being able to do this kind of like
flywheel type of scenario
where you are the voter.
Like if you're a user of the chain and you have, you know, your stack,
or if you're actually like definitely using something in there,
like you're using a DexLP, you're borrow lending,
you can incentivize your own position with your own votes.
And that's kind of like one of the biggest value props that I've seen that's very unique on there.
So it's happening on the layer one level by using the ETH alignment on the strategies
and on the layer two level, you're getting your admission
votes as well. And it's just basically
the more people that come in to participate,
you can't just sit there. You have to actually
participate the more you get
out of the chain.
Wow. Well, yeah,
that seems
like that looks really awesome.
I'm not going to lie.
That's why I joined. yeah yeah there you go there you go uh and um i i might have missed it but um the the entire incentivization to
to keep the the token token staked and in the network is so that you can participate in these
types of votes and um basically um there's some
like game theory behind it i've read but um that that's essentially the the crux of it correct
ultimately yeah yeah there's also like different strategies on there we have uh relayers uh we're
gonna have something called avcat that you can then delegate some of your voting uh delegations
on there so you have you have to like do that service and then you know it'll auto compound
things for you so you don't have to like vote that service and then it'll auto compound things for you.
So you don't have to like vote like biweekly or something.
I know it's a little bit of homework.
Some people like it, some people like,
we're doing different options.
But again, it is very designed by people
that actually use DeFi.
And one of those things is like,
I actually use the chain to be honest.
Like I have my own money on there.
I have some investment strategies on there.
Cause there's a lot of people
and right now we're getting cleared out of the space, right? Now like people are moving and leaving in the space. There's a lot of people and right now we're getting cleared out of the space right now like people are moving and leaving this right uh there's
a lot of people that didn't actually use the product they sold so like i like to tell people
like i actually use this product right like i actually have stuff staked in katana on there
i'm farming it so i will be voting and i'll be doing because i believe that works as a defy user
i've seen the frustrations i I've seen the fragmented liquidity.
It's like, all right, this is something that's worth working towards.
Sick.
And I know you also mentioned it earlier, but you also have some alpha for us.
Oh, yes, definitely.
So I have seen a lot.
Well, even like coming back to it, AI is definitely a major factor of like everything that we're building on here.
And like a lot of people, you look at the timeline,
AI, everything, and I see a skillset.
So I kind of built out an MCP server.
It's not live yet, but it's in there.
But I wanted to make a good MCP server.
I just want to make a crazy one.
So like, I know this one takes a little bit of time on here.
So I did some preset and I'll do one live.
But MCP server basically has it. this one takes a little bit of time on here so i did some preset and i'll do one live um but uh
mcp server basically has it so now that we know that we have one dex now that we know we have one borrow lending one perps one cat token one one system to kind of rule it all you don't have to
use that many tokens in order to scan opportunities on the chain right like uh if you had to scan
like every dex every aggregation every everything on the chain it would? Like if you had a scan, like every DEX, every aggregation, everything on the chain, it would take too much on there or you'd have to like your RPC would be
dead. But now that we have one of each, we can run really good information on the NPC servers of
like, what's the status of this? What makes the most sense for me? So I created this MCP server
for myself to begin with. What's the best strategy for me to do this? Like, I don't want to keep
looking at doing analytics and do this and things change. I just want to ask the question and then
build out a contract, right? So ultimately I did that, right? So I was like, you know, let me pull
the data of, oh, sorry. Okay. Can you tell me the current status of all the sushi pools, which ones
have the highest incentives, right? Our incentives model all run through Merkle, right? So if you're
a builder out here and you're looking to run like some models or auto compounding services, all you have to do is grab
all the incentives from Merkle and then auto compound them to whatever strategy you want,
right? Very simple, one, one, one, right? I always compare it to like the Apple ecosystem because
I want to buy an accessory for my MacBook Pro. I'm not guessing the dimensions or anything. I
already know. 2026 MacBook Pro, these are the dimensions.
This is how it works, right?
An instant framework.
And that's kind of what we want to do at Katana.
So I was like, all right, it's going to go look,
and it's going to look at all the pools that are available,
how much volume, what are the reserves,
you know, what is the balance?
And then what are the incentives by APR?
Like, okay, boom, here's the fee schedule.
This is the APR that it's dealing with.
And then it has its own, like, again,
I have to work on some disclaimers on here
because it's not financial advice. It's just giving you the data on there of like what,
what it is and what's available to you in a single thing. Like as more agents and more DeFi agents
are coming out, a lot of front ends aren't going to be as used as much, right? They're going to
look at the data and they're going to make the decision based on the data. Better than saving
tokens is talking to the MCP server
that's very optimized.
And I was like, do I wanna use an MCP server or not?
Because every time you connect one,
it does take a little bit of tokens
every time you ask a question.
And there's a lot of open cloud users
or cloud version users.
So like tokens are very big, reserved for me.
I was like, when I connect to MCP server,
it's gotta be worth it, right?
And so I wanted to make sure that was optimized
to maximum capability on there.
So if I said, hey, what if I wanted to
pull all the lending Morpho of all opportunities, right?
I want to deposit my USDC on Katana.
What is one of the best APIs available on here?
And so it looks at Morpho.
And if anybody that's worked
on morpho realizes that the morpho contract is static but all the markets change and they grow
indefinitely right so there i can get certain markets and i want to keep updating it so i have
scripts running in the background that will do search indexing for you to save the tokens so you
don't have to search yourself blowing your tokens and then return just like the top top like 10 15 uh
data's on there for you so you can go hey like these are all the ones that you can look at and
if you want to deposit for that with the incentives also basically the direct markets maybe you don't
want to go through a vault manager maybe you want to go direct to the market i do that a lot too
and so i deposit under and see what kind of utilization hey you know is it liquid is it
not liquid right all these things a d5 person would understand would would appreciate right and if you're learning these are the numbers of things
that you want to look at right and so you know it'll give me that and then ultimately what's my
return right like where's where am i going to get the most returns on there who's who's doing the
curation you know that kind of stuff on there uh and then like all right it'll give me like a general
idea based on apy but But again, that's,
you know, up to you at your discretion to use on here. And then for those that are a little bit
more advanced, like looping strategies, right? What's the best looping strategy? So I have to
consider when I'm looking at looping strategy, how much liquidity is there? What are the fees
on the decks when I got asleep? How many bips am I paying? Is there any slippage on these things?
Right? So like this can be a tool that you can learn or that you can use to build off of, right?
And so it'll go through all the looping strategies
available on there.
And this takes time, this took two minutes
cause I'm scripting, looking at all the different markets,
off the different things.
So that's why I kind of like preloaded it a little bit
but then it's gonna return,
hey, look, this is one of the best ones on here.
This is how much volume I suggest doing five loops
because of the liquidity.
So when you unwind,
you don't, you know, get wrecked, you know, so like, there's a lot of things that are considered
that are very useful for DeFi users, DeFi power users that may be running through Excel scripts,
everything's moving towards AI and it's, it's inevitable, right? So it's like, why not basically,
you know, cater to that, that audience on there. So as you built in the MCP server, you could get
the skills directly
if you want to directly,
but this is pretty much how it works.
And then like giving me different type of like,
you know, loop strategies,
how much liquidity is available.
Give me a flag on that.
It's like, okay, there's only like two loops
because the liquidity is not there, right?
So as more markets change,
I can't hard code that, right?
I have to let the AI do its thing on there.
So that's one of the biggest things on here.
And then ultimately what everybody cares about,
can you actually build it?
Yes, if you wanted to build a smart contract,
wanted to build a looping strategy, right?
These are load tokens.
I just wanna show you like the token usage.
Can you help me see which ETHdc pool uh has the most rewards and i really was worried about token
usage that that's my number one because again i was a 20 cloud user and anybody that was using
20 cloud with opus two prompts and you're done for five hours right like i'd be like man this is horrible
so anybody's starting out or doing anything i'm like this kind of sucks because i can't do anything
right and then the people with 200 they're just you know flying all day so i was like all right
let me make the token uses as small as possible as minimal as possible so i have scripts kind of
like running on the back end and just the the the tokens return the data right like so just the data
gets handled by the tokens on there and so yeah? Like, so just the data gets handled
by the tokens on there.
And so, yeah, like this is kind of like
just giving me the general idea
of like what's available,
what's here, like how much it's making.
So like it's doing all the numbers for me
and it's just returning on like, you know,
what kind of data I get with minimum.
I think that maybe use like 200 tokens
or 300 tokens, not thousand,
but like I want to build something
like can you build me
a smart contract to handle the rebalancing? That's going to take some, some tokens, right?
Because now it's going to do the logic in the, in like the smart contract stuff and then building
it out. But basically it knows what it needs to do. And it's going to help me do the rebalance
for this on there. So like, it's going help me do the rebalance for this on there.
So like, it's gonna like pull the ABIs
that are already loaded, it's already set.
So like that way it's gonna like search
and do everything for me.
So when the MCP server goes live,
I wanted it to be a really good tool
for everybody to learn, to use,
actually be a useful MCP server than just,
here's smart contracts, here's the docs, go build, right?
And that was kind of like my biggest value prop
of like, what would I use on there?
So, those are kind of like how I would go.
And obviously you can see it going
and it'll build you stuff.
So like I built it for users and for developers
to go both ways, depending on how they wanted to go with that.
But yeah, that's the MCP tool.
I have so many acronyms in my head, it's like,
that's the MCcp server tool that
i'm building for katana on there yeah it's just me on the on that uh i'm owning it that's my stack
so there's any problems definitely holler at me or blame me if you're getting your tokens blown out
but definitely uh you know something i'm very considerate of on there and so i'm gonna skip
because i'm not gonna blow those tokens but ultimately this is what it canning it but what it's ultimately wanting to do awesome yeah that's that's so dope and yeah
it's awesome you also you subtly mentioned it but um you said that you basically built something
that solves a problem or something that you wanted to make more accessible for you
wanted to make more accessible for you um which is one of the key cornerstones of anybody who's
trying to start a business or start a new venture right so um you got to build something that solves
your your own problem and and then you kind of take it from there so and and i guess um any any
any more alpha around when people can start playing around with the MCP server?
I'm hoping in the next week or so.
I'm getting an official link.
I have a testing on a personal link.
Don't click random links in crypto.
I want to make everything official, nice and safe.
I'll probably make a tutorial guide on there,
like how to install it to your cloud and get that up and running
and then show people.
It works for everything.
If you're using Codex or whatever, it's built for all the agents on there but i just use cloud
personally on there so but basically for for every one of them if you don't want to do the mcp server
you can get the skills directly and then use a bad skill but just people tend to forget
and then again i wanted to make an mcp server the tokens. 100%. And yeah, as far as I've read,
the token usage comes from the fact that the MCP server,
when you start it up,
it's got to load the entire schema of the tool sets and whatnot
inside of the context,
and that blows it up every time.
And we're seeing, at least I've seen a little bit,
people are kind of getting around that
by building CLI tools.
Like Google released their whole workspace CLI
like a couple of days ago to kind of like lead the chart.
That's ultimately gonna be the next step, right?
Like I think AI changes so fast that like,
you'd have to be jobless to keep up with how fast it's moving
because it's like so many things.
But yeah, CLI is definitely the next step.
Again, an agent first experience of like,
docs are great, but agentic servers and skills are better
because it's already built in there.
And as we move it,
but we still have a long way to go before we do that.
So we definitely want to have people use the app
and use that on
there um you know as we're going on there i kind of wanted to show like what's happening on katana
so i killed my screen but let me get bring it back here um but one thing i did want to highlight
on there of like for defy and what it is as i share my screen again is like there's an ongoing incentive campaign right now uh on the katana urn so if you are in
the regions of of binance and okx if you have the if you are living that i do not so i cannot take
advantage of it unfortunately but i would absolutely love to is uh you know there's crazy
incentive campaigns happening on both concurrently right now uh i think there's often like something
else maybe popping up in the mix too but uh as we head towards the end of the quarter on there i
mean there's there's major incentives on there like um you know i think i think there's like a
50 million campaign on okx and 40 million don't quote me on that i'm doing off the top of my head
but like of like cat tokens that are going on there and then that will let you own a piece of the stack as well and then you could devote it in there so i
just it's just thinking about like imagine getting early on aerodrome or velodrome kind of stuff you
know like being able to get voting early and get all those crazy like incentive like i don't want
to promise anything but like those those are like cool things to get on everybody wants to be early
on there so like if you're in that zone it it'd be great to get in there and start early and start experimenting with the voting and seeing
how Katana plays out in the flywheel. Awesome.
And yeah, I mean, weekend's coming up, so no better opportunity
to start messing around with that. Yeah, you can check out the app
directly. I think you can link it on there, but the app directly is right here.
It's very user-friendly on there.
If you have, you know, assets on other bridges and everything, whatnot, then you are like ready to go.
But you can literally swap in.
The swap in is a bridge.
So from any other chain, you can like basically, you know, bring in and swap in directly or just go one-to-one for your thing with, you know, a little bit of bridging fees on there.
I think I have another wallet on here, but like definitely like different earned campaigns that are happening that are
available for you. But yeah, different rates. Great, great rates. This is based on like the
rewards calculator. So you can definitely check in like what you have and what you can make if
you put in like a thousand AUSD and let's say FDV is like this, like how much you would make in a
certain amount of days on there so definitely
like again defy friendly those that are defy curious on there uh definitely play around like
it's great to experiment there are negative borrow yields on the morpho app on there so like getting
paid to borrow which is only in crypto right like that's the only thing yeah yeah so like definitely
definitely checking out if you don't have your ai agent do it manually
on the app on there but it's definitely something that we're working on really hard on and we're
really proud of staking once cat goes live will be will be live um ready to go and then quests
quests are fun too if you are just learning your defy it'll kind of take you through a flow of like
making your first swap making your first deposit into a vault on there, swapping for ETH.
And you get a couple of badges on here.
I honestly don't know what those points are for something.
That's something product is working on, like what gets that incentivized for what.
But if you're just learning DFAR or just want to experiment with it,
it's a great place to start as well of just like getting into the groove
of like what Katana can offer. and keep coming back to the app.
The app is going to be your, your one-stop shop of everything that's happening in Katana.
Again, we, we have a very condensed stack right here.
So like, again, one order menu, coming back to the Apple analogy, one iPad, one iPad,
one i5 pro, one iPhone pro, one Mac book, right?
It's all going to be here directly on here.
So all opportunities and everything will be available
to you right on the fly on there.
So yeah, it's a kind of a straightforward movement
that we're going with like a very concentrated
obtain for the lack of a better term,
kind of focused on DeFi and basically earning yield,
getting the most out of your money,
keeping the money active, right?
You don't want anything static.
You want things moving, working for you.
Awesome.
And yeah, we'll have all those links
that Billy has just shown
in the description of the podcast.
If you're watching us live,
I've just dropped them in the comments.
So you guys definitely check it out.
And Billy, as we're coming to time here,
we've seen, at least in the beginning of this year up to now,
a lot of bearish sentiment in the Web3 blockchain, DeFi space,
people, for lack of a better term jumping ship uh to other other opportunities um for those
people who are still in in the space or some people who might still be on the fence of whether
to see or not um how would you kind of describe the the opportunities that are still in the space of DeFi. I think right now,
blockchain, crypto technology has really shown
its value prop in the financial aspect of it.
Like escrows, payments,
payments has been blowing up a lot.
Those things that we were very excited about in 2020, 2021,
as new devs started coming in, are now showing its face.
Like it's a little bit more institutional now, right?
And so not so much DAOI, but more like structured on there.
DeFi is still extremely valuable with AI
and like, you know, kind of like logging
into like engineering jobs in a sense.
It's very hard for juniors to kind of get a start.
What is gonna set you apart is your ability
to understand how these mechanics work,
get your hands a little bit dirty with it
because experience is what's gonna make you set apart
on these kind of things, right?
If I didn't know about looping strategies or anything,
how can I design an MCP server around it, optimize, right?
So that's kind of your value prop of like with these things that you see like product
market fit, those are the things I really dove in on.
Some things I didn't see were product market and we're seeing like the market kind of faded
out.
Could there be another opportunity for it?
Absolutely.
You know, everybody always say consumer kind of apps.
We might get there one day, but the tech is just not there yet.
We're working on there.
If you want to be a pioneer for that, that's going to be a hard way up, but you could, right?
But if you want to, you know, see where like those product market, I mean, there's tons
of people, like you look at institutionals, they're looking for DeFi leads every day,
right?
So DeFi infrastructure, DeFi smart contract advisor, you know, curators, they're all looking for it
because there is value in that. So it's just that has shifted a little bit to a little bit
more institutional style on there. But it's not like there's not opportunity. And with AI,
it's kind of exciting because you can see a lot of creativity fly on there. And like with AI
auditing, in a sense, we're not there yet. Don't just use AI. But now you're not stuck on having a 50K audit before you can deploy your product.
I think that was a major stopper right now.
Because I can make a website and it's not financial, so no big deal.
But if I wanted to make a smart contract and deploy, a lot of ideas happen and they all
get stopped at that auditing cost.
50K, 100K.
And so that dream dies.
So now with AI and having access to to to get
much better idea and security maybe those costs will come down greatly and then like you can get
more experimentation again and we can start seeing some really cool ideas spark on there so like
both sides of the table on there of like what what can and can't happen on that Yeah, I 100% agree. And yeah, I mean, yeah, I've seen a lot of smart contract quotes
or smart contract audit quotes as pretty, yeah,
unless you already got the dough or have some VC money.
Yeah, it is indeed out of the reach of some people.
But there's other alternatives around.
And AI with where it's at today i i
think can squash a decent amount of like the the beginner errors at least um but yeah we'll see how
it evolves um i think yeah it is it is 100 exciting and uh yeah i guess with that uh we're at time
uh billy thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to come chat with us, dropping some alpha.
Yeah, I'm certainly quite bullish on Katana and really keen to see it continue to evolve as the years come along here.
Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Yeah, Katana team has been grinding.
We're literally working.
I don't think I've ever worked more in my life in the crypto space.
That's been pretty hefty. Yeah.
Very good stuff. Very exciting.
Thank you so much for having me, Darv.
My pleasure. Anytime.
With that, I want to
wish everybody a very happy Friday, happy
weekend, wherever you may be, and we'll catch you back
here for another episode of Devontel next week.
Until then, have a good one, folks.
Cheers.
