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dForce X Velodrome
Recorded: April 18, 2023 Duration: 1:01:41Space Recording
Full Transcription
Hi all, can you hear me?
Hey, yes.
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Let's give it a couple of minutes for people to join us.
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So I see someone's joining.
The Accelerator X1-2-1 fun, CJ Ming up.
We're going to start in a couple of minutes.
Just hang with us.
all right so if you agree let's start with the first question very simple welcome first of all
to our AMA with DeForce and Velodrome and about that please introduce yourself to the community
yeah thank you very much for having me I'm excuse me yeah I'm head of strategy at Velodrome
and if you guys aren't familiar for with Velodrome it's a protocol that basically combines the dynamics
and the design of what the basic curve let's say curve convex and volume mechanics you know with
drive and vote mechanics and the pools of uniswap it combines it into one kind of cohesive
decentralized exchange we built it on optimism most people know it as a perhaps a solidly fork or
v33 or the type of centralized exchange which are now starting to pop off in different ecosystems
but Velodrome was basically the first one to get it right after solidly had crushed or not
crashed but crashed a little bit last year and we continue to to build up our presence on optimism
we now have over 200 million TVL and have attracted over 5 billion of overall volume this year and
excuse me my voice is a little bit off I've been a little bit sick but hopefully it's gonna hold up
through through the conversation I'm sorry to hear that but it's it's good we can hear you well at least
um okay interesting I mean on on a more personal note uh what is your role in Velodrome and how did you get there
yeah so um I have a background in finance economics and mathematics
um so my role in Velodrome initially was uh very much focused on the strategy and tokenomics
designing sort of like the right tokenomics for it for this kind of protocol um learning so so before
Velodrome I was part of the VDAO team if anybody was familiar with the solidly wars in phantom
VDAO was a protocol that basically enabled um this sort of like playing solidly as a service basically
like uh let's say uh denft as a service you know basically allowed anybody that wanted to participate
to get tokens and if you held uh weave tokens then you can basically be part of the team that was
strategizing around what was the best way to uh play the solidly games which included you know adding
liquidity uh locking and voting etc and as part of it at that team we realized this sort of uh perhaps
gaps that solidly had and we realized there was a better way to redesign the protocol so we were
actually the first ones to start exiting the solidly wars uh people were initially not happy with that
but eventually realized that we were right um and as a team we we came together with optimism we worked
with the autism team to deploy Velodrome and to build it out and um as I mentioned initially I was
part of a basically finance economics strategy now I'm much more involved also on the business side
and also just thinking ahead of what's next and um starting already to kind of lay out the groundwork
for what are the big next steps that we're going to take awesome yeah I remember the uh you know
all the the worst the big noise that the crony invention created and all the the dows that were
chasing the yield on on solidly it was a great time and I'm happy to see that then eventually the
the system the ve33 system expanded quite a lot uh at the point of reaching most of the chains like even
on the new chains there are always new v33 protocols and velodrome is absolutely crushing the market on
on optimism you are the leading up and I really appreciate d5 protocol in general that can deliver
something that people need and then know how to innovate and improve uh through time and I think
you guys at velodrome have been a game changer for optimism and that you uh are able to always
reinvent yourself and to head to in the right direction and support the users uh thank you
uh you're welcome you're very well deserved uh so let's talk about you know as a quick introduction
to the community on how d4s and velodrome collaborate uh so about d4s we are a decentralized
stable coin protocol powered by an integrated d5 matrix which is composed by assets lending
trading trading and bridging so uh the first decentralized stable coin we integrated is usx we
integrated into our matrix is usx which has a permissionless non-custody high capital efficiency
and multi-chain liquidity so usx is a decentralized stable coin whose peg is maintained mainly by the
liquidity stability reserve which enables users to swap usx with a number of stable coins
like usdc usd t and die at the one one ratio anytime and also we have other system like the protocol
direct liquidity provision which enables us to change the interest rate of usx to sustain the peg
for example when the market demand for usx is high and the borrowing interests are pushed up
then we can supply more liquidity uh to lower the utilization rate and make it less expensive to
borrow usx so these are many of the mechanics we we have uh to keep the peg another thing is
we enable we allow people to meet usx against a variety of assets with fixed interest rate
uh through the vault so each vault may implement different risk parameters based on the specific
collateral supported which is divided by the governance which in turn is led by the df token holders
so dforce and usx are available on seven blockchains including of course optimism
and here on optimism velodrome is our main partner as it hosts the deepest liquidity pool available for usx
in its stable pair with usdc so there is a usx usdc stable pool on velodrome currently having around
five million of tbl total value locked and an apm of around nine percent last time i checked
and to maintain this year you know according to the the means that your protocol have made available
uh we are bribing the usdc usx pool on a weekly basis and then we're leveraging the value emissions
to award the funds of usdc usx as well as df usx uh we also uh taking part of the to the to dop
can you introduce that to the to the community can you talk about that a bit
absolutely and um one quick uh anecdote about usx is that um you know you we've talked we mentioned
some of the forks in different chains of v33 protocols one of them is equilibrate on kava
um so they're actually kind of friends of velodrome they reached out to us early uh before they forked
and sort of like just extended their uh let's say kind of kind of like their their kindness and
saying you know we're gonna drop you an nft because we're gonna fork your your code which we thought was
quite nice um so we actually kind of stayed in touch with them um and equilibrate you know being
on kava kava being kind of tied to the cosmos ecosystem as well it's it wasn't very easy to to
bridge initially any kind of tokens if you wanted to participate but usx was actually the token that
you could actually do it very early and since you guys have now become acquainted and actually really
good at playing the the b33 game i noticed that you very quickly were participating in in equilibrate
as well so it was very easy to bridge usx and they converted in in uh farm uh vara tokens that was
included token or still is the equivalent token so that was a nice uh surprise when i saw that
um very convenient yeah so we we try to you know catch the liquidity on all the blockchains we expand
to and most often the the b33 protocols are the the ones that we think are the most reliable and most
convenient you know you you really give the chance to protocols to take care of their own liquidity
to have a power you to have a say in that so it's it's really an awesome mechanism and we
we enjoy also your your folks i i would say also equilibrium of of course so yeah uh let's let's
you know i wanted you to to talk about the tour dop a bit because i think it's it's a great initiative
you're running so why don't you tell us about that yeah absolutely so so the tour dop
is a program uh that we are that we designed to basically incentivize protocols to participate
in certain way well protocols and users to participate in certain ways uh in using the
velodrome mechanics uh the the the big package for users is that we provide a lock bonus every time
they lock their velo so when you lock your velo you convert it to ve velo you can lock it up
for two or two up to four years and you can vote with it and when you vote you get all the bribes
and fees that the pool generates uh right now at the moment the average based on the last uh epoch
the average apr for your voting rewards was about 70 percent which is pretty nice you basically you get
your money quote unquote you get your money back um in a little bit over a year but you can still have a
locked uh asset that you can continue to use and get yield um but with this lock bonus uh users can
get on average it's been about 30 percent of the value back on an op token so we basically have a
about 35 000 op available every week that is that is split based on how much of the velo is locked
and uh also distributed based on the size of the lock per user so that's a nice bonus for anybody that
wants to lock velo and for protocols we match their bribes um so if they're bribing on velodrome
we'll give it we'll also deposit some op on top to attract voters and of course the the amount of
of bribes that are in a given pool will attract the voters and that will send emissions velo emissions
and with these incentives these pools uh that protocols are bribing tend to get about two to
three times as much value in emissions than the value they deposit as a bribe which is uh why they
can also build up more liquidity uh with lower with a lower budget uh say per se and um and yeah this is
basically a a really good way of uh engaging protocols by you know reminding them or actually
or um offering the ruffering this opportunity to basically get a boost on their incentives so it's
a double boost they get a boost because we deposit op and then another boost because velo emissions
tend to be much higher in value than what they deposit and even what we deposit so basically it's a win-win
yeah and one can think that you know having uh you know handling managing decks could be just you
know you okay you let people swap and that's it but in reality the market is always changing and the
market follows the incentives so you really have to stay at the same pace as the market and attract
the liquidity attract the project so and you guys are you know one of the best at doing that obviously
um with all these initiatives that you come out with so and and i think also the v33 model is what
really enables you to to play a bit on this it's not just a playing decks where people just swap but
it's there's a whole uh full world behind that yeah and um we we see right now this i mean it's
obviously been a very tough couple of years uh in the past two years so these incentives have
along with the design of the protocol have allowed us to basically stay strong and at least continue
to grow and build up and prepare for the actual next bull run whenever it comes i think we now we're
starting to get more convinces of hope but uh we would definitely like to see just the the type of
growth that we really expect for l2s on in terms of number of users in terms of tbl coming online
um and just overall interest outside of you know the the current let's say small group that it feels
like of actually crypto or d5 enthusiasts so um as as we as this growth actually starts to materialize
which i think we're very sure will happen especially in l2s um optimism arbitram uh and now
there's been the announcement of base coming up uh the coinbase uh optimism adjacent chain
uh so this i think is going to bring a lot of users uh to to this layer two era and that's when i think
we're going to see much more the the volume play like the pools that are going to generate the most
volume and thereby the most fees are also going to start getting incentives by themselves just because
those fees won't go to voters and now it's going to be sort of like an evolving uh kind of strategy
or or set of incentives for for voters and and now it's going to be complemented with bribes so i think
we're basically building up for that moment we're also planning on um preparing the the overall decks
to be more efficient we're going to build out um capital i mean concentrated liquidity pools which are
are more capital efficient as well in in the use of their liquidity and and able to compete with
with other basically top dexes out there like uniswap and um and we're also going to implement
adjustable fee levels for pools as well so that um based on the volume based on volatility overall
protocols can actually decide whether they want to uh you know use a bit of a higher fee level if they
see that there's a lot of volatility and that higher fee level can attract more voters or lower fee level
if the volatility is low and they prefer just to kind of keep the the current volume that they they
being able to attract so that's all going to be like adding layers of strength to the to the v33 flywheel
uh and basically again getting ready for for the real uh growth that that we're very confident will come
uh at some point yeah like the bitcoin halving is in less than a year from now so there's that and as
well you know the the whole defi uh landscape is really evolving day by day you you did an amazing
partnership with coinbase which will eventually help on board uh new people and you got to be ready for
hold these newcomers they you know they usually start either with bitcoin or either with highly
speculative coins that they've heard from a friend and but in the end i think most of them stay they
stick around and they use defi because you know it's difficult to ignore defi once you understand what
is it about exactly i i totally agree and i i agree with that as well i think coinbase uh deciding to
launch their own layer two chain is incredibly bullish because of course they will have an interest
in um kind of directing their large user base and perhaps even their large amount of funds that they
have uh attracted from users into more of the defi protocols um or perhaps integrating to their app
opportunities for users to use the the yields available on chain on you know by providing liquidity as an example
yeah and you know about adoption um fundamental thing one of the things that is driving adoption i think is stable coins
uh so let's talk a bit about that so uh some people are still skeptical about stable coins but i think that
2023 2023 is teaching us is showing us that stable coins can actually be more reliable than many solutions
so traditional finance uh or the you know the dollar like uh for example about the payments uh payments are still
expensive and slow like in europe if you send uh transfer wire money on a thursday there are chances that the the
the other person is going to receive it on the next wednesday or maybe tuesday if you're lucky so that they
it's still absolutely insane that that's slow and you know and this also can be compared with the developing
countries uh and one example that i like to bring up when talk about payments is remittances which is
the money sent from one country to another by for example workers who emigrated abroad and they want to
sustain their families at home economically so remittances are very practical and expensive
uh while payments involving crypto stable coins like usx don't require kyc they don't require minimum
amounts and they happen in a permissionless and efficient way uh you know this is one of the reasons why
el salvador has actually adopted bitcoin because they have a an economy in a great path relying on the
remittances so money that people bring in from you know from maybe they immigrated to the us and they
work there they bring money back to the family and that system was completely inefficient so they're
trying to solve that also by adopting bitcoin as a as a standard but you know there's a whole new
crypto universe that allows you to do that in several different ways and something curious is that
that a study by uniswap labs and circo estimates that the stable coin could reduce remittances cost
by as much as 80 percent saving uh individuals 30 billion per year and you know these are most often
people who are in need and i think crypto really provides them the right solution to to move money
instantaneously uh anywhere in the globe uh another point is custody so we live in a system of fractional reserve
about the banks and which is inherently vulnerable to bank runs uh in the last few months we have seen
how highly rated american and swiss banks can collapse in a matter of weeks and sink with users deposits so you know
this is not just a story that we tell each other in the crypto war that we said that the traditional
finance is not efficient no we've actually have been seeing this in the last months like huge banks have
collapsed and there had to be bailouts to to save the investors deposits with crypto instead users don't
have to rely on third parties to hold their stable coins since they own their own keys hopefully
and another important point is transparency so crypto stable coins uh decentralized ones in particular
like usx they maintain the peg with the dollar not because you trust uh d force you don't have to
trust the force but because you can check everything that is going on on chain uh users don't have to
trust our metrics but they can verify that every mechanism uh you know the the swap one-to-one
with the other stable coins etc they can check the liquidity they can do all of this
on each blockchain that we operate and while on the other hand it will be very difficult to predict that
you know those banks were going to collapse because people don't have the means to audit the bank
while you can kind of easily do that uh with a with a smart contract on on a public blockchain
uh another point which is often ignored but it's actually very important is that uh crypto stable
coins have yield advantages like they offer yield while banks uh they don't offer any yield they take
all the profit of their activity uh the defi landscape is rich with opportunities and you know in these
years of inflation i think it's very important to try to counter that and uh you know i wanted to
ask you now what what is your opinion on on stable coins and decentralized stable coins in particular
do you think they're needed do you think they're here to stay or not
yeah i mean absolutely i couldn't agree more with with the points that you made um you know
first of all we have to think when we think about defi adoption we have to remember that for most people
money is actually quite intimidating even at its basic level even like just you know opening a
savings account a bank account most people have no idea really how to uh invest their money um and
we have this financial system where it's really a lot about trust right like you just are going to give
the money to a bank and hope for the best and hope that the bank is going to make the that the
executives of the bank are going to make the right decision with the money um and what you're actually
only doing is you're lending them right even if you have a checking account or a savings account
what you're doing is you're lending money to the bank the bank then goes and does whatever they
want to do with it they can uh lend it over to you know 10 times a higher level to other uh interested
parties and and you hope that their lending services are going to be good enough so that when you want
to withdraw your money it's going to be available but if it's not then you know you can get a run on
the bank as we've seen this year so you know for most people they they do want to have the simplicity
of what a bank can offer um but also of course the opportunities to grow their their their money so
stable coins provide basically the the most the easiest the perhaps the the the most basic
translation from the call it the real world money to to digital money um so i i think absolutely we
should continue developing the stable coin infrastructure uh because it will be it will
make it very easy for people to use or easier for people to use and understand uh the the digital asset
environment and it's also very convenient of course in in times of times of um uncertainty to be able
to have stable coins or just if you want to just park a little bit of of cash on in crypto you can
always use a a stable coin that you can understand that you can know the tech behind it and i i agree
with you having the transparency and having the ability to actually read how the design of a stable
coin uh is and like the the code that backs it um is is phenomenal right you can actually you don't
need to trust the protocol you just need to be able to understand it uh and then with that you can make
a a an important decision on which stable coin to use um and i think over time the best design
stable coins of course are going to win out as we've been seeing this year um and and yeah again i think
i think a lot of people say that the us dollar perhaps is starting to lose its power but you know
for the foreseeable future at least it's going to continue to be the the top currency in the world
and even if it's not even if it's other currencies start to rise in prominence then those having stable
coins for those currencies will also be important so it's at the end of days it's basically creating the
the technological infrastructure to prepare for that to allow for different types of currencies or or
mirrors of real world assets to be exchanged on chain uh in a seamless uh cost effective and basically
globalized manner so that we can allow the system to be used uh for everyone um and yeah i think you know
once you get involved in d5 it's very easy to forget how much of a learning curve it can be
um even for people that have you know a background in finance or a background in economics you know even
because it's a new system so you sort of have to really learn the mechanics of how it works
um so for most people it's completely intimidating to be able to participate in d5 and i think as we
continue to make it easier for for users to be able to use again the d5 ecosystem and get some yield on
their on their tokens on their assets then in an easy way in an easy um sort of trustworthy way
the better it will be overall for the ecosystem because we can get that level of adoption from
people that don't want to take the big risks that perhaps that we'd like to talk about like dgens you
know there's going to be people that just want to park a little bit of of money and just get some
generate some yield in a coin that they understand that is uh perhaps tied to the us dollar and that
just grows over time and allows them to not have to worry or have to babysit their position too much
yeah so i i think you know the d5 landscape cannot be ignored for long so people don't even know that
when they deposit money in the bank that that money is kind of not theirs anymore and the bank is doing
business with this money and i think uh if you know what you're doing then diversifying using uh
decentralized stable coins yielding with them i think that's that's really a win-win rather than you
know relying with all your life savings to your local government and its inflation rates as well as
your local bank and whatever their manager is doing with your mom so i think you know if you
know what you're doing then for sure it's a it's a win-win
key point i think of course we will have to have at least some clarity regulatory clarity so that
the off-ramp the on-ramp and off-ramp can be easier for crypto so that it can be much easier to for
people to just go ahead and you know deposit their funds uh and then use them in uh also we can we
can create apps that are more approachable for people also to use d5 and to be able to access
call it the web 3 world um but with a web 2 interface i think that also is going to start to help and
that's why also can be i'm so bullish on on players like coinbase to start getting more involved in the
decentralized infrastructure so that they also can learn from that and translate it uh or at least
make it more approachable for their users
absolutely yeah and i don't know if you heard but coinbase is thinking about moving away from the us
so maybe i don't know it's just the news of today i i didn't read it through but there's also there
you know they always been close to talking about regulations and maybe they will find
their way through to reach the highest number of people uh but now coming back to you know v33
protocols uh so you know dforce is built to reach the highest number of d5 users and to achieve this
goal we are always looking to expand our d5 suit and stablecoin usx to new blockchains and you know as
we expand we also want to provide the most seamless service to new users meaning that we want to provide
them with the deepest liquidity for usx basically everywhere and to do so we always search for the
decks is available on each blockchain and v33 as i said it's a system that has been very useful for us
as it relied to uh as it enabled us to rely on partners such as velodrome to build sustainable ecosystem
and incentivize liquidity in the long term which you know liquidity is a very key factor in d5 and
you know you lived in your this expansion yourself you said you work for bdow on phantom so surely you are
one of the probably the most expert people on the topic so uh where do you think the v33 protocols are
headed where do you think you're going how do you think the next steps of v33 is going to be
yeah it's a good question and i agree so when we think about this a lot too um so i think at least
a chain until we see a better design i think v33 is going to be the design of of a decentralized
exchange that will continue to dominate at least each chain that is created so there's going to be at
least one big winner i mean well i guess we saw an arbitrage from camelot which has uh their own design as
well i'm more bullish on v33 but let's see how that plays out um but i think we're going to see at
least one one of these types of protocols win out in in each of the chains um v33 is not an easy
technology to to dominate per se it's it's a very complex smart contract architecture um as as we
discussed solidly had a lot of bugs in our v1 version of velodrome fixed most but still had some
smaller gaps that we're actually going to fix with the v2 launch uh v2 protocol launch that we're gonna
it's coming up actually in the next basically this month where we basically we design the architecture
from scratch to make sure that is now exactly how we would like to have it um so we're gonna see a
lot of v23 protocols pop up in different chains um some are gonna get it right a lot of things are
still gonna get it wrong and that they're still gonna have some bugs or or they're gonna have
issues with the complexity i mean just to to give you an idea at the moment uh velodrome has i think
over 20 000 v nfts that have been minted so with those 20 000 v nfts um you have to check on chain um
whether first of all the combination of the nfts with users um which we've had over 10 000 users
uh then you have to check the combination of the nfts with gauges uh which are approaching about a
hundred gauges that are receiving rewards and then check within those gauges which ones have tokens
for rewards so basically to to pull up whether a user has any voting rewards in terms of bribes and
fees you have to check the combination of uh over 20 000 v nfts a hundred gauges uh for fees and a
hundred gauges for um bribes and then i think we have over um also like a hundred white listed tokens
so you have to check the combination of those which the number gets pretty astronomical very quickly
and you have to do it very very in a very fast manner so that it loads quickly um while you're actually
also serving the other parts of the of the decks like swapping and whatnot um so it's a i think
it's one of the perhaps the or the most complex protocol that is out there so for a lot of teams
and it's not going to be a cc to to manage um and in fact you probably will see when a protocol
launches it's a v33 protocol it's going to be buggy initially um so they're going to have most
teams are going to have to continue to adjust um but if they get it right and um they can continue
to evolve the tech implement the features that that i mentioned earlier like concentrated liquidity on
top etc i think those taxes are really going to dominate uh their chains now when we think long term
we believe that at least for the layer twos there's going to be continued continued um um kind of
progress in interoperability between layer twos which means that it's going to be easier for
users to be able to use pools in different chains for trading and still get their assets on their on
the chain that they're on so um you know and if you're an optimism and you want to trade and get
grail token the camel token you're going to be able to do it more easily at some point
um or you know whatever else right if you want to tap into a big pool of usx for example if you
want to tap into the optimism pool in usx but you are on base as an example and perhaps you know the
pool hasn't been as developed there yet it's going to be easier to do so uh because i think aggregators
are where first of first of all the technology for cross-chain messaging on layer twos is going to
improve um and aggregators are going to evolve to provide services for trading across chains um you
know just like now we have one inch um defy llama matcha etc providing aggregation at the chain level
eventually they're going to provide aggregation across layer two chains as well because it's just
going to be that it's going to be much easier to do so so again you can it might be better for
eventually for protocols to just build one huge liquidity pool in one of the layer twos because
anyway it's going to be tapped uh from aggregators uh to perform swaps across the layer two chains
that's a little bit further away but in that world where it's easier to transact across layer two chains
because again they have shared the shared security of ethereum so uh it does make it a bit more tangible
in terms of being able to develop the technology to do so then um uh by then the the real strategy will
be who is going to be the dex that can really attract the most liquidity for certain assets even if it's
in a single chain because anyways that liquidity can be used across the layer two chains uh so but in the
current phase so i think phase one is the v33 uh slash you know uh kind of comprehensive decks are gonna
dexes are gonna continue to dominate their respective chains and eventually could even dominate uh volume
across layer two chains yeah like there's a lot to do but i think we're on the on the right path uh there's
some you know some features to be added some aggregators among multiple blockchains also before
some enable swaps uh from different blockchains as well but only with our native tokens and you know
about going multi-chain it seems like the majority of the builders today are dedicating their efforts in
the layers uh layer twos of ethereum such as optimism between and new ones that are coming so which
advantages do you think that building something on top of ethereum rather than from scratch brains like
you know you i don't know if you're an optimism maxi but you know you're really building something
there i think ethereum has a global vision something that goes uh beyond what we usually can think of when
when you stick to its token and speculation so uh how does it feel how do you feel building on top of
ethereum and what which advantages do you have by doing that yeah um so i'm i'm definitely a layer
two maxi one or an ethereum uh which now is becoming kind of like the layer two evolution maxi um and
well the the main advantage of building on on the ethereum uh infrastructure is that you you get the
security of ethereum uh with the advantages of having you know the scalability of a layer two which is you
you know you you get lower fees eventually you're also going to get faster transactions faster
throughput um and for the next wave of users i think it's going to be much more attractive to
start using a layer two right you can all perhaps remember when we first got into d5 and and how crazy
it is to transact on ethereum especially when the when when the demand is high and you have to pay you know
50 or 100 uh per transaction which is just insane for for the majority of the planet um so layer two is
where you can actually do it perhaps for a few cents um i mean they can also get a little bit more
expensive when when the demand is high but uh the the scalability is going to continue to improve um so
again you get the security of ethereum with better scalability um i and then now over time you get
the the narrative of course that then what you know that layer twos are the base for growth and i agree
with that which i think is going to attract a lot of interesting protocols that we want to develop as
well um i think a lot of the maintenance protocols will also want to uh participate in the the growth of
layer twos and will continue to deploy on layer twos um whether it be arbitral optimism i actually
i'm happy that any of the layer twos grow because the the obvious conclusions when you see a layer
to growing is that the they're all going to grow uh in line right um it doesn't always play out some
layer twos perhaps don't take off but once you get a significant level of growth then they grow together
so um again i think layer twos will be the place to be uh for the next wave of users and that's basically
the future we're preparing for yeah absolutely i agree with the fact that new comers cannot go on
ethereum layer one and you know we cannot expect them to pay a hundred bucks to approve a spot contract
and then another 50 bucks to uh to make a swap so i think that's that's really something that we should
focus on and you know as soon as we we got the first alternative blockchains uh with some defy on like
one or two years ago then we had this huge influx of of of people coming actually more than two years
ago uh so you know looking at the future looking at the next cycle surely all this layer two are going
to be fundamental for people to still uh understanding that they are operating on uh ethereum somehow but
with the cheaper fees so i think that's a really strong narrative that will uh convince most of the
newcomers and you know about this topic let's start the ama session uh i picked the question asked on
twitter guys uh for whoever's following if you have questions you have the button here to comment
directly on the thread of the twitter space you can ask anything and we will go through your questions
in the next 10 15 minutes so um question was asked was asked by the accelerator uh who asked how do you
see the new competition from zk rollups so you know huge topic now uh what's your view on it
uh so i'm actually also quite bullish on on zk rollups uh i think there are i mean the technology
is very complex um i've tried to invest the time and effort to to understand it but it's obviously you
you get to a certain level where um you know each of us can get to the third level of understanding
but what what i can see is that it's going to be technology that will be will be able to use beyond
um kind of like a literature chain and be able to use uh uh in a lot of different types of um financial
transactions um and even in in systems such as uh voting uh you know for public government etc so
or just digital identity i think it well you know it's it's again it's really cool to see this coming
out of crypto crypto being the one that uh kind of pioneers the technology like like ck proves um
the in terms of the implementation for layer two what is neat about the ck implementations is that
you can batch the transactions um at a much bigger rate um so the more users you get the cheaper the
the transactions get which is uh pretty cool at the moment it's actually sort of expensive if you
if you use certain apps i don't know if you have played with some of the apps that are out there on
ck sync for example some of the transactions can actually be quite expensive up to 50 dollars but
it the funny thing it's it said it's because it has just a few users but as the user grow you i
mean as users scroll then um and they uh submit more transactions and the cost per transaction is
going to come down um which is neat and i think as i mentioned earlier i don't i don't see layer twos
as being in competition with each other i mean in the short term it could feel like it right because
the protocol can choose to deploy on one or the other or a user could choose to move funds to one or the
other but in the medium term it's all going to be about where you know about attracting users right
any of the chains can attract users uh or capital on that chain and then it's just going to be very
easy and seamless to move it from one to the other so even you know i'd be happy to see ck sync succeed
and attract a bunch of capital and a bunch of users which then will also be looking over to optimism
and perhaps use velodrome or you know or in the future where cross-chain transactions becomes much
easier and much they can become faster than any user on ck sync could tap on a pool on velodrome
on optimism if they wanted to so again i'm very bullish on the growth of layer twos regardless of the chain
um and in in in that case i'm very bullish on the growth of crypto overall even if there's a an
alt l1 that pops up and i think they're going to continue to pop up like solana did in the last run
and attract a ton of users with their own design i think that's fine uh as long as it can be maintained
right or as long as there's something fundamental that can keep the users around but i think it's all
about continuing to make crypto more approachable for the the the people that have not used it yet which
is the vast majority of the world rather than you know trying to out compete the smaller group of
users that we have currently uh in chain on chain yeah you know i also see the potential in the zk
technologies but i don't see the strict competition between the the layer twos i think we're still in a
stage where we need to compete of course but in a healthy way because we still have a lot to grow we
we are far from uh being done in d5 we have still have billions of people to reach uh you know about
you you mentioned about this in in our call you said that the the b33 protocols are quite complex
uh very complex so another question that was asked is uh how do you uh can you tell us about the
solutions that you offer to prevent you know hackers stealing the farm explore or ugly stuff like that
yeah absolutely so um you can see you can imagine a v33 protocol as having a few different layers
the basic layer is the liquidity pools um so those are have been battle tested and proven because they are
actually um they were the original uniswap design um so you know they they've been audited a million
times we also did an audit for our own for our own v1 and now we're going through a very comprehensive
audit for our v2 so liquidity pools are where the majority of the funds are contained and again those are
probably the the safe one of the safest designs that you can see out there in d5 so those are going to
be are again have been battle tests that have been out of time so those are are the safest design we have
for liquidity pools then on top you have the gauges those contain the the rewards you know they capture
the fees they capture the bribes um those gauges um have also been audited those are a little bit of an
innovation of solidly in terms of the design i mean it took some of the uh basic blocks from different
protocols but those will be would be would be the kind of key innovation on on solidly ports or v3 ports
those contain a smaller amount of rewards or a smaller amount of funds and um again they're going
through a we're going through a very very comments about it to make sure that uh they are totally safe
but the risk is anyways much much lower because again these gauges basically just contain the the
rewards so they contain them only through the week where when people haven't claimed them yet most weeks
people claim the rewards and the balance drops a lot then you know maybe increases throughout the
week and then drops a lot so they fluctuate in terms of the funds but it's not a large amount
and again we're working with we're currently working with spearbit which is perhaps the top or one of the
top auditing groups out there um to make sure that uh they're top notch and that we're going to have a
for v2 that we're going to launch we're also going to have a bug bounty you know we're going to go
through all the steps of security to make sure that everything is is very well and very comprehensive and
very well designed and beyond that the the rest of the protocol uh doesn't contain funds so nothing
else can be uh tapped there yeah i think with experience the community is being more and more you
know uh and putting a lot of attention at security of course rightfully and you know we at defaults
followed a similar process we we we try extensively products and we audit them a lot before actually
deploying them and it's a really uh important thing to do i think for for any protocol for any
protocols that is here to stay for any protocols that consider itself serious and i'm i'm glad you
you could give such a you know uh in you know such a complete explanation it means that you really know
what you guys are doing and you know this and you can see this in in your protocol in in the seriousness of
your protocol uh someone was asking us uh when will the v2 or velodrome be released sorry if you could
repeat that just one yes we're actually in the in the final step so um ideally by the end of april uh if
not early may but in the next two or three weeks um we just need to make sure everything is is perfectly
fine but very very close to to release yeah yeah you know some sometimes just things come on your way
and you cannot define a uh a date but you know but in the end you will get um i'm sure yeah we will
we will announce for sure we will make an announcement an announcement all right another question uh a bit of
topic uh by someone who's listening right now is what is your advice to someone who would like to
start working in crypto one day so for example what is your personal experience if you can share
some of that what did you do before uh working into crypto and is it something you you will suggest to do
yeah um i mean i i i really enjoy working in in crypto to be honest i think um what is really nice
about the teams that you get to work with is that i mean if you find the right team is that um each
person is really just focused on getting stuff done and well it's like working on a startup where
you just have to be very uh very practical and just focus on on continuing to build and continue to
add value to uh whatever project that you're working on so i really enjoy that uh in my experience so
the way that i got into crypto was through a dow that um was called information token uh this was led by a
guy uh that was uh would go on twitter as a name uh under the name of galagool he actually ended up
committing a few um sort of like uh scammy transactions um and and actually got uh you know
exited crypto twitter for for a while but thanks to him to be honest he created this dow where you
could get in by buying his nft early on that nft was sort of cheap so i did that and it was a really
um comprehensive group of people that joined the dow some people had a lot of experience in crypto
others a bit less but just like uh getting involved in that server i started learning about you know
different opportunities and we launched vdao as a group through that server um so that's where the
sort of journey began and i i got more involved with vdao uh just because i was trying to add my skills
i think the the best way you can get involved in crypto is by first just you know providing a you
know adding your skill basically trying to volunteer uh with your skills and trying to add value to a
project without expecting much in return um and then as you get more involved and you know you start
getting to know the group better then that's when you can perhaps uh discuss whether you want to be
compensated and whatnot but the first step and we've seen it also in velodrome a lot of people
while we were building it out and designing it kind of uh reached out they wanted to get involved
where they reached out through friends i think that's also a good idea if you know anybody else
within crypto and they're working on a project just get in touch with them and just try to uh provide
value to to their projects especially the project is in its early stages they're they're going to be
more open to on board um kind of new contributors and uh if if you're lucky then the project does well
and you can go with it otherwise you can just leverage the network that you're starting to build
with these projects to get involved in others that are also uh perhaps in their early stages but
i think that would be my personal recommendation just kind of get involved in projects that are in
early stages because again they're going to be more open to to onboard contributors more mature projects
are probably already going to have their team sort of complete um of course if you have the skills
um if you know how to code if you know um anything related i mean i think something that is uh under
uh appreciated is is um work related to just development of a front end right or of course
if you know smart contract development then that can be very valuable in crypto but just uh you know
front end work as well um and or willingness to learn from it we have for example at velodrome somebody
that is has a background in data science and just started to learn solidly i mean solidity
and just getting more involved in smart contract work and now he's one of our uh devs basically he's one
of the uh he's part of the dev team but initially he was doing analytics for us but he just kept
telling us that he was learning smart contracts and started getting involved in the conversations
and now as part of the dev team which is really cool to see just that level of growth and involvement
um so yeah that would be my recommendation yeah yeah and i think the the crypto space is really
orthographic like it doesn't matter how old are you it doesn't matter if you started at the
harvard or not but if you can do things if you can prove that you have experience in what you're
doing then you're gonna be uh you're gonna find your place in crypto and you know you gave the perfect
example of it uh with this guy you you hired in your dev team exactly yeah exactly all right
all right now please continue no i was gonna say just that's it right um if you can if you can prove
that you're willing to do the work first and then you're gonna you're learning and you're adding value
i think any team will be happy to have you because yeah there's not that many people that uh come with
that kind of mindset and are willing to just kind of contribute early on and continue to learn but yeah
i agree it's it's very very meritocratic yeah all right uh the time is almost up uh i think that was
the last question that our community had to ask you uh you know we've been through a lot we we talk
about what is validrum is quite a complex protocol uh but it's very useful for projects to bootstrap their
liquidity and i think users uh can enjoy using it as well of course and we went through you know our
collaboration our uss what is usx and now is it integrated on validrum we talk a bit about stable
coins in general why they are important uh for people you know there we have seen uh rising adoption in
countries like turkey lebanon argentina and you know you never know what is the next country and you
know i think eventually that's gonna spread like an avalanche and everyone one day will know about
decentralized stable coins and d5 uh we went through v33 you know you talk about the future of it
and layer twos uh i hope i asked i asked you all the questions all the most relevant questions that
my community wanted to know i see some excitement for the b2 of belladrum and i you know i'm one of
the ones who are really looking forward to it so tao thank you so much for being here today
uh we will stay in touch and you know if you want to say bye to the community that would be great
yeah absolutely thank you for having me it's been really great to work with dforce you are awesome
partners very easy to work with um and you also i think have very much the right fundamentals in place
and um i'm excited to see the growth that you're uh having uh across chains so i look forward to
continuing to to work together and again thank you for having me on spaces absolutely no same about
velodrome you you really are innovators in the space and you know we we can you know hopefully
have this call another time soon and you know and continue working together week by week through the
the products and all the systems that you have created all right thank you tao for being here thank
you everyone for attending the call i'll see you next time thank you so much cheers
