Ecosystem Spotlight: SRWA

Recorded: April 18, 2025 Duration: 0:51:51
Space Recording

Short Summary

In a lively discussion, industry leaders explored Kraken's workforce changes, the competitive landscape of crypto acquisitions, and the promising launch of a new lending platform on Radix, backed by significant grants from the World Bank.

Full Transcription

Thank you. Okay. Hey guys, can you hear me?
So let's listen a bit to migrate operations onto the XRPL network,
which sounds like a fancy way of saying they're trading one set of chains for another,
hoping it'll all magically reduce costs.
It's like being in a cult where the members chant about deliverance, but can barely pay their dues.
So buckle up, because as the tides of finance keep shifting,
we might just find ourselves drowning in the same old sea of disappointment.
This is Buzz Shipman, and you're listening to Delhi FM 68.8, where we deliver, or at least we try to.
Now, I'm going to the smooth sounds of Decred Deville delivering the hot tip.
Let's check it out. We'll be right back. Because that one dev team sure fucking can. Kraken sheds hundreds of jobs to streamline business ahead of IPO.
Sources say, well, folks, in case you missed it, Kraken's had a bit of a meltdown, laying off hundreds of its own like a family of raccoons fighting over a single slice of pizza in a dumpster.
This is the crypto world, folks, where dreams of IPOs dance like mirages in the desert.
The newly minted co-CEO Arjun Sethi is on a rampage, slashing jobs like a butcher at a meat market, claiming it's all in the name of efficiency. But let's be real,
it's just a fancy way to say they're trying to make the numbers look good before they take a
dive into the public market pool. Meanwhile, the rest of the industry is scrambling to polish up
their act, buying up businesses like they're collecting Pokemon cards. But we all know,
just like that last slice of cake at a kid's party, it's all a bit too late.
Kraken insists they're thriving,
but we've all seen that sinking ship
in the distance, haven't we?
It's like watching a circus elephant
try to ride a unicycle,
both impressive and painfully tragic.
This is Buzz Shipman on A Thaajitman,
and you're listening to Delhi FM 68.8,
the only station that delivers,
or at least tries to.
Well, let Litecoin lullaby serenade your soul with jazz and the ledger let's listen in Oh, okay.
So I can see a few of you in here already.
Maybe it's time to give it a go.
Hello, everyone.
How are you?
How are you, Maria?
Doing good.
Is everyone here?
Nicola, are you here?
Yes, yes. doing good is everyone here Nicola are you here yes yes hi Nicola
welcome to the second ecosystem space
so I got to my
my dams asking me what am i listening to
how come how could they not know like this is the latest this is the hottest thing right now
the first ever crypto radio station and we thought right that's buzz Shipman, launched by Eric. And it's his
voice, actually, and we decided that
instead of listening to X's
live elevator music,
we might as well just put our very own
radio station while we wait.
Exactly. So, sorry,
Timon, no Taylor Swift this time, but
we'll be having every week,
every bi-week, this The
Okay, let me see.
Are we all here?
Okay, let's get started.
Here we go.
So, Nicola, how are you?
How are you doing today?
Thanks. Absolutely. how are you how are you doing today i'm good i'm good thanks absolutely okay we're gonna get right to it last time timon had a question for you so timon asked
what do you think is the biggest misconception about real world assets
tokenization and how do you see that influence that influencing the adoption for the next few
years so timan was our guest last time and he decided to ask you this question yeah yeah
absolutely thanks timan well i i really hoped we would start with some easier questions but
it's uh also good to start uh you know address the tough ones yeah basically you know it's it's a good to start address the tough ones yeah basically you
know it's it's a really good question and you know what the real world assets
really are you know are these only physical tangible assets or also
financial instruments and you know from a project to project uh we witness uh
a different uh definitions of uh real world assets you know so some would say that uh
stable coins like tether or usdc and uh are real world assets because they are pegged one-to-one to
are real world assets because they are pegged one to one to us dollar or some would say like
fine art or real estate are real world assets and for us we believe that anything that exists in
real world you know once it is transferred to the blockchain it becomes
the real world assets including financial instruments so basically we
started with the idea of tokenizing milk protein as you know physical good in New Zealand as the real world asset and we faced so many challenges
there you know how to store them all the logistics and you know management of these assets and then
relying them or calling them to blockchain so it was really tough and down the road what we
found out is basically we can use a financial instrument you know we just
needed the price of the milk protein and avoid all these struggles with the
logistics and still make it usable on you know in a blockchain so once we set out okay this
is the initial real world assets we want we want to deal with then we hit the
wall of regulatory compliance you know and why to use a blockchain in such environments when we still have a
huge centralized burden to deal with and you know
regulatory uncertainties and
The progress there so we initially thought okay once we build a solution and there are many challenges when it comes to
development of new blockchain technology then on the other side we saw how
difficult it is to basically set a proper virtual asset service providing in the lessons or Vara in Dubai or similar so that part of the development
for the product is still you know pretty much as challenging as a
development coding programming for itself so in next couple of years what we expect to see is
basically you know more push on a regulatory side and more interesting
development there in terms of okay now we can really have some securities or financial instruments you know usable on a blockchain because of today
it doesn't make much sense we still need to have everything lined up in a centralized way with all
the KAC, AML and you know ownership registration and transactions of for these assets and
blockchain seems still like additional layer unnecessary layer but on the other
hand you know when you witness development and you know new innovations
in DeFi ecosystem and how fast, how cheap and accessible these are, then you realize,
okay, traditional finance really needs to change. So we think, you know, and we want to get ready
and be ready once the regulation is there. We want to be a flagship team delivering,
enabling these real world assets on chain.
So I have a question for you.
Like how hard has it been working within regulatory frameworks when building?
Oh, what challenges did you find?
I can imagine you bumped into a carpet.
In a development or any other portion of building?
Development, I'd say.
For the development, well, basically, you know,
we started in 2022 with this particular use case.
And the very first question was,
how do we enable regular user, traditional user,
Web2 guy or gulls using this solution without struggle?
And we didn't know about products yet
you know struggling with the Meta mask and you know seed phrases and
Transactions and everything so it's so cumbersome. That's how it starts every time. Yeah. Yeah
you know for us it was a
For us, it was super easy and super elegant, but frankly, you know, it took me like three to six months to get my head around wallet and started using blockchain itself.
super easy and super elegant but
I cannot imagine someone, you know, just jumping in and using it per se.
it's fair per se so this was the the major challenge and before we figured out found out
So this was the major challenge.
the radix and it was thanks to radify announcement back in December 22nd we've you know explored and
researched different approaches by using different blockchains and different stacks
both EVM and non-EVM solutions and definitely you know when we figured out about Radix we knew this
is something you know that has potential I mean evidently we know it's not there yet
it's still a promise but it was a really good promise you know with all these security
obstructed away from from us like with the radix engine you know so we do not need to care that much about the security.
And the powerful transaction manifests where you know what you do and how you do it.
You read it. It's humanly readable.
So that was another one.
And also the scalability in the future forum.
In order to get to the point of mass adoption,
we really need as a whole ecosystem, you know,
we really need to address scalability as well.
So, you know, we took a deep dive, did our own research
on the technology stack and, you know, read white paper,
did some peer reviews on our own through our
advisors university professors in a blockchain sphere so we realized okay
this has potential let's do it on the radix and you know it's been like two
years I believe we have oned like five, six engineers
dedicated on script coding and Radix itself.
So you currently have five, six engineers working on Radix?
Correct, correct.
Wow, that's impressive.
So you said something around Radify.
That's how you actually got into or got got to know
radix about radix i'm interested to know how so where did you find it what what was what did you
hear in ratify that made you go okay this is it yeah yeah uh well uh you know the right by itself was an instant hook for for me
personally you know it's okay this is a solution for my problems that kept me
awake at night and how was that I think it was uh on the very first um x space from ivan on tech and i remember
lukas i don't know if lukas is here from uh from us he basically was participating in this
in this space so we got connected i've asked him some questions about Radix, then got connected with Florian and with Beam, with Wilson from Radical Staking.
So, you know, community was really open back then.
And I'm so happy so much community members are still around.
so much community members are still around and we even had the chance to meet in person you know
have a few drinks or dinner and discuss it further and how we can collaborate in the future so it's
you know really engaging in the really open community so I'm very thankful for that.
That's awesome, that's awesome that you actually got to meet even face to face you know people in real life from the community
and OGs like you're saying even Beam, Lucas, Florian
all of these actually got you into Radix so I think
these people, these community members
are really keeping Radix together
because whenever someone comes to you
and he immediately engages with them
and sees how enthusiastic they are about being here,
you automatically feel like you want to be part of this as well.
So yes, thank you guys.
Thank you for always doing this.
Yeah, I totally agree. While I haven't met anyone in person, for the short time I've
been here and interacting with you guys in Telegram and in Twitter, everyone answers
any question you have almost instantly. And they also have quite a good sense of humor,
instantly and they also have quite a good sense of humor which I always appreciate so totally
agree with you there. And so besides the community how tight it is, the humor, the vibes, the meme
culture, what else got you to choose building on Radix instead of any other chain yeah yeah thanks so basically for
us it's a constant battle you know how do we you know let's start here when when
you use email you don't care if you use SMTP pop three or other
protocols you just sit and type and send email you receive email and it's
straightforward for you and I believe blockchain should be the same in the
in the future you know our customers
future you know our custom
case for new zealand dairy farming some of these high net worth individuals
that intend to use radix as a protocol they don't they really don't care about the
the protocol the blockchain and everything they just want a seamless,
traditional banking look and feel experience.
It's a big challenge to enable them this kind of journey
with other blockchain solutions.
This is where Radix is really
good at and we believe
we can utilize that very well
in the future.
So that's why, that's number one.
That's for sure.
Yeah, it seems that
institutions are showing interest
in solid layer ones
that are truly scalable
like Radix. So yeah yeah it's a good choice
um maybe i sound a bit biased but it it seems like a wise choice
100 you know and uh uh you know we run this um acceleration as uh as well you know I have to mention that and throughout the
acceleration program and even investing phase we got like 5% or even less
questions about the technology and why radix or why blockchain so all they want to know is you know what's in it for
for me because uh you know what's your business model what's your addressable market
how do you approach that what's your scaling opportunity how will you make money for me as a
investor and uh it was tough there you know and also the compliance
so there is mica regulation in europe there is vara in middle east you know different vasp
licensing models in new zealand so they were pretty much focused on that side.
And, oh, yeah, you're using blockchain.
And which blockchain? And so for them, basically, I feel like they are still not there.
And they don't have to, to be completely honest.
They just want to have railways built and they can use it.
I feel like I had this conversation the other day.
So a friend of mine who works in sales leadership at Maersk in Asia told me that the company
actually looked, so I'm talking about Maersk.
These are the guys that are shipping products like Inditex, Lululemon,
the guys that are moving globalization.
So these guys, she told me that they actually looked into...
Can you hear me now?
Is it good?
I can hear you.
I can hear you.
Maybe he can't.
Maybe he can't.
Yeah, so just in case he didn't hear it, I'll salt over.
Maybe he catches something about it.
Because it's actually interesting, I think.
So I was saying that MERS, they actually looked into using tokenization and blockchain to track shipments.
They're mainly taking care of maritime shipments
and a bit of flight as well.
But it got dropped because ultimately they didn't move forward
because the blockchain protocol they were considering had some problems.
And I mean, it was on the sides of the protocols to push this initiative because it's in their own interest.
And it didn't happen, but it's a good sign.
It's a good sign for the industry and for tokenization protocols like yours.
Okay, let me, because I am the one handling tutor spaces uh i just noticed that nicola
had some trouble and i'm gonna add him as a speaker once again
invite speakers
this is crazy twitter always twitter or X always does this.
Yeah. You know what we need now? Our own platform?
For spaces.
Someone build it.
This is a great idea. Please.
I can see it's back.
I guess I'm back.
Welcome once more. I assume he his back. Hello again. I guess I'm back. Welcome once more.
I assume he heard nothing.
Just a portion.
That's okay.
I was giving you hopes for your industry.
It's okay.
We can continue this conversation in DMs.
But now I think Farah had a question for you.
So I wanted to ask you, so I saw that you were actually, you got backing from
World Bank. Is that right? Yes. How was their interest? So can you talk a bit about the interest
from those outside of crypto about SRWA? So for example, example world bank what was their reaction when they found out what you're
doing or about relics in general yeah yeah it's a really good question uh so basically uh i've
mentioned this um acceleration uh program so it's a local uh catapult accelerator run by Serbian government,
where we have a core technology team.
And we applied for this acceleration,
but it is a general accelerator.
So out of 23 startups,
we had three startups dealing with blockchain and others were like e-commerce ai
cosmetics and so on and so forth and uh basically i've mentioned uh you know they didn't ask much much about blockchain or technology or so
so they're kind of investing into developing the
local ecosystem and the program was designed to teach us about
fundraising and then we got a one- year time frame to go out raise funding get an investment so
they can match it one to one up to 300k euros we did our homework we found an
investment and closed the pre-seed funding. It was a price round
and we've got
the co-investment
grant from the World Bank
and the European Union.
That is huge.
Absolutely.
Wow. How do you
recommend others as well if anyone
else wants to apply to these
types of grants? What steps can they go through yeah so well I believe they are it's
not like a unique grant structure I believe most developing countries have similar locally developed startup development schemes and accelerators and granting programs, which are in most cases supported, at least for Europe, supported by the European Union and the World Bank.
by European Union and the World Bank but I'm pretty much sure there are
different programs in other countries as well and for instance we've got an
invitation to participate in FINMA UK sandbox mode for you know going out testing out what we have in you know closed
regulated environment to see how it goes but frankly all these grants programs and government
led programs are way too much overloaded with administration and paperwork.
For this FINMA, as a case, the application and the questionnaire there is like 90 pages
of all different questions.
I mean, if I had answers on these questions I wouldn't be
here at pre seed or seed stage so it's more like a design for enterprise corporate spin-offs to go
out and test some new projects but yeah they're definitely you know I'm also aware of the
Radix grants
and I think you guys are really
doing a great job with
your grants as well
we're going to release some more information
about that shortly
or anyone else wanted to start using SRWA right now?
How would the user journey look like?
Yeah. Yeah. So right now, SRWA, I mean, when we started, okay, we chose Radix and we announced,
we started okay we chose radix and we announced we took a look at the ecosystem there were like
a couple of decentralized exchanges you know and a couple of nft projects and everything else but
lending and borrowing was an empty space so we were first to announce okay we are going
to build lending and borrowing on radix and it somehow comes into the hand in
hand with using real world assets as collateral to get loans in the in the
future and fast forward we got left and root finance in the lending a
borrowing ecosystem so you know once we've launched as a sandbox mode it was
use DC and radix lending and borrowing with a limited cap of total deposits that we
can handle just in case something blows up we were sure we have reserves to
cover up and all the potential losses from for the users so it is closed now and we are working on launching the second iteration which
should be live perhaps sometime in May maybe by the end of April or early May
we will see now it's more like a business decision than a technical decision because it's it's ready to go
live and this is how you know users would be able to experience what what we offer for now and once
we get the vasp licensing and all the regulatory settlement there in New Zealand then we will start
bringing milk protein and what we are doing there for for the farmers hopefully
available for let's say Radix community retail users as well as institutional
investors retail users as well as institutional investors.
Okay, okay. So talking about that, let's get into what do you have next? What do
you have? So I know that you have been cooking a lot
and you have been working a lot.
So what should the community be excited about?
What do you have coming in the upcoming months?
Tell us more about that.
Well, I think, you know,
it's really hard to,
and the more we work the more we witness how hard it is to give exact
you know roadmaps or plans even this year you know I've launched okay this is roadmap for
SRWA for this year and you know the first one is checked in we've got an investment
and then the second one is actually the launch of the platform and it should
happen in the previous quarter but it's like two months behind the schedule so
it's really hard to predict what's what's next but overall we have a kind of a roadmap that what milestones
we need to to achieve in order to get where we want to be and you know basically the the first
big milestone is to sort out the marketing plan for us. Finally, go out and publicly speak about the investment
and support from the World Bank we've got.
And we believe it will be out
in some more traditional media outlets
like Forbes, Bloomberg,
and this kind of press and online media because this is
where we find these traditional investors not that much into into
crypto space and we believe you know they will get interested into radix and
eventually become a part of the radix community once they realize oh this is interesting let's
take a closer look so after this marketing rollout we have a pending product launch which would be
more focused on existing communities so we are building up some incentive structures to continue with the og badges which
we've built in collaboration with radical staking and also austin helped us there a lot and we want
to bring some volume in the in and tvl for the the protocol explore there further and then we anticipate
this huge busp license milestone which is also you know unpredictably
managed because it's a third party it's a government-led thing we have applied and now we
are swinging back and forth with uh with them waiting for it to to land and again announce it
in a traditional media and afterwards uh what we have at the table we are speaking with some institutional
players trying to get a letter of intents to have a boost in TVL and
confidence to scale it so this is somehow you know on the timeline and what we really you know look forward
into is basically expanding partnerships I you know I'm so proud of a
partnership with radical staking you know they helped us build up SRWA node node run it and go from basically zero to currently third on a top hundred list
the node you know it's 100% uptime and what helps us there is zero piece so you
know they will also get participation in future airdrops that we plan and
so on and so forth. So guys,
if you haven't staked
anything in radical staking,
please do so. They're amazing.
Thank you for the shout out. I was just about
to ask you if you wanted to shout
out any other project in the ecosystem.
So I think you just did that
how can we avoid Eric
and what he did with
the radio station
it's amazing work
that was awesome, that was really
really good
it's actually a simple idea,
but the way that he implemented it really got a lot of traction,
and it's literally never been done before.
So really, really well done. Well done, Eric.
Well, if I may add, you know, we constantly, I think Almas said that,
constantly,
I think Al Musk said that,
you know, the biggest problem
is that we
over-optimize
the things that
shouldn't exist in the first place.
You know, as engineers, we want to make
something so good, so perfect,
but, you know,
the simplest ideas are the best.
Exactly, exactly, 100 exactly 100 i mean it went viral on reddit on just for one reddit post
i think it was on the cryptocurrency yes it went viral just because of this you
know so really it okay i don't know what to say
i've been listening to it all day it's
it's in my background while working all day I think I think for most of us too
same exactly exactly yeah also you know astralescent is constant in the
breaking these bridges to other chains amazing work there you know and I really like
also the work of the progress of liquefy from Austin yield farming that
beam developed so you know I really you know love seeing the ecosystem and new
projects emerging and building so it's really amazing being in this kind of ecosystem.
That's for sure.
This is really, I think, the vibe we need
where everyone is actually supportive of one another
and we're all working towards one goal at the end.
We all want to see Ralex succeed.
And if any of us, any of the projects on Ralex in the ecosystem actually does that,
then it helps all the others.
So we should, like you said, that's what we should focus on,
really pulling each other, pushing each other forward.
So glad you feel this way.
Definitely, definitely.
You know, I see Photon here in the list, when way definitely definitely you know i i see photon here in the list when photo
you know when photon uh i see back here really amazing you know i had a chance to
not in person but we had a few calls uh you know discussing how we can collaborate in the future. So it's really amazing how collaborative all are.
Also, Radix charts, really good job.
We use their API for our protocol.
So really good work there.
Okay, so now we have two fun rapid-fire questions for you. Are you ready?
I think my connection broke once again. Yeah, I'm ready. I'm ready.
You're ready. Okay, we're going to shoot two fun questions, okay?
The first one is, if you could tokenize something in your personal life, what would be what would the first thing be?
What would you choose to tokenize?
In my personal life identity
Something in your life. Yes, any item and anything my identity
Why do you want it to be public for everyone to see on the blockchain
do you want to control it in a better way i i guess you know i don't know how fun it is but
you know when i got into blockchain and realized how you know everything will be tokenized in the future. And I realized, okay, my, for instance,
health data will be in my hands,
not in hands of health institutions.
And I will be the person deciding
what my doctor can see or can't see,
not the other way around.
So I think, yeah, my identity would be the very first thing
I would like to have tokenized.
Interesting.
And if you were to pitch this to any powerful figure,
please don't say Elon Musk, who would you select?
You're actually free to name anyone.
Your imagination is the limit
but yeah yeah i feel like that's the figure everyone thinks about um if that's what you
want you're a free man go ahead nice one well uh you know it's more like uh i mean coin guy
uh i mean coin guy i guess uh you know i would rather uh like to have some time with michael
sailor or knight kelly oh you're breaking up a bit okay okay i'm here now yeah yeah so i guess you know ilan musk is more like a meme guy because of the all
the dodge coin thing and department of government efficiency and everything i would rather like to
speak with michael saylor or naip bukeo these kind of guys really you you know, I believe see the future the way it should be.
Yeah, totally. It feels like it suits more SRWA's vibe, more institutional, more tradify rather than memes.
Correct. memes correct um i'm gonna take a no yeah go on if i can comment on the uh meme coins uh you know
my past was in uh digital marketing and advertising i led a digital agency uh for
facebook and instagram and all these social media back in 15 years ago or so so you know
the power of community is something that we cannot underestimate at all and I
you know honestly I think I'm underestimating it and the power of
meme coins and you know communities
there and we have really but you know hard proof on on radix as well with the
early and hug and now the radio station as well deliver so it has a kind of moments or elements of currency as well so you know
unfortunately I'm not that involved there but a huge shout out to guys who
you know just build the community and have the power there it's really important
and while i'm gonna open the floor if anyone wants to ask a live question um i'm gonna you
can you guys can request that uh but in the meantime while i'm doing that do you have you
remember how you were asked the question by Farah?
This was Steven's question from Astrosen.
And one thing we're doing in our X spaces is allowing the founders to pose a
question for the next project on this biweekly X spaces.
So what would your question be for the next project?
Mind you, we haven't said, we don't have a name.
So should I ask a question for the next project?
But try to keep it a bit generic, because we
aren't sure which one is going to be two weeks from now.
So try to keep it as generic as possible,
taking into account that we don't know who is it for ah seems he dropped okay he's back oh not again he's black no he's not okay
okay nicola we need a question for the next I should ask the question for the next person yes
not knowing what that who that person might be 100% I know what's the the biggest challenge they're facing in Moscow. Okay.
Mid-term, when they want to deliver what they're delivering.
Okay, I'm noting this one down.
Nicola is looking for some insight.
Hmm, smart.
That is smart.
Okay, so we're going to open the floor now for community questions.
Who would like to speak?
Who would like to ask Nicola a question?
Or just come on here and just say hi.
You can also drop your question on Telegram or in the chat, anywhere you'd like.
Wow, so many people at the same time.
I can't choose.
It's getting busy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay, I'm going to nominate someone because it seems... I can see Adam said...
Adam raised his hand.
Is that... You want to join?
Okay, let's have Adam on.
I have the power now. It's my choice.
Okay, let's go. I'm going to add Adam as...
I've met you a speaker.
Yeah, now you can hear me.
So my question was, what is the most surprising thing you have come across building SRWA?
The most surprising thing?
Well, when we started, we really got engaged because we knew this is something that cannot be built overnight.
It's not like a three to six months project or so.
You build it, you launch it, and you go out and build some other things in your life.
And what keeps me, you know, exciting and interested in it and you know what keeps surprising me is you know
how many challenges there are in in everything what we are doing you know I'm not coming from
the legal and compliance background and I was really surprised how you know they understand
at least some people you know concretely in European Union and Mika regulation
how much they understand the whole ecosystem and how much they try hard to make it possible for us to build and you know surprisingly this this this was
huge for me i thought you know they're like a bunch of regulators doing nothing knowing nothing
about blockchain tokenization and and everything cryptocurrencies and everything what we are doing. But they really know
and they really
try hard to make it possible.
So this was,
I think, number one surprise.
That is really good to hear.
Like the legislative
frameworks, the projects
need, having
that being worked on behind the scenes is stuff
that crypto Twitter don't normally see being worked on. So
hearing that is really positive in my mind.
Thank you for letting me jump in with a question. Farah and Maria. Thank you for participating. Thank you for letting me jump in with a question, Farah and Maria.
Thank you for participating.
Thank you. Okay, we have Beam up next. He did not raise his hand, but I'm just nominating him.
Okay, let's go.
Come on, Beam.
I invited him to speak no okay doesn't seem like he can join okay then this is it for this week's
space, I hope you all enjoyed it
and please tune in
what spaces we have
today, oh we need to give a shout
out to Machinist
Machinist is launching
I've started Dijan today
what's happening today
yeah I'm really
looking forward to it.
Okay, so we'll see.
And I think they have the space today as well, right?
Felix and machines probably have a space today as well.
So please everyone tune in and we'll see you next week.
Thank you for joining.
Thank you, week. Bye-bye. Thank you for joining. Thank you, everyone.
Bye. Thank you.