Music Thank you. Music Thank you. everyone will give people another better to dial in you Looks like we're getting a couple more people from the discord and
thanks Thank you. Okay, let's maybe kick things off here.
Just want to say, you know, good afternoon, everyone.
Thank you for joining us today.
I'm pleased to welcome Sam from the FRAX team with us to discuss their latest proposal for the USDH ticker on Hyperliquid.
As everyone knows, the last few days have been really busy and exciting time for the broader community.
Lots of conversation and kind of active dialogue and discourse.
So just once again, I want to thank you, Sam and the rest of the FRAX team for your responsiveness,
not only on Twitter and Telegram and Discord,
but here today joining us live to kind of help share your guys' vision in real time.
So with that being said, I think let's just get things started here
by having you give a brief background on yourself
and what you guys have built so far at FRAX
and kind of an overview of your vision for USDH should you guys win the vote.
There's a lot of great stuff.
Are we the last ones to round it out
or are you talking to other ones as well?
I know I saw the Agora one.
You guys are the last scheduled one right now.
I mean, I really love how all of crypto, Twitter, CryptoX now is talking about this entirely
on every single podcast and everything.
I think it's just a really good signal of how big and important Hyperliquid
is to crypto, just like worldwide.
Like every single, earlier today, a bunch of journalists reached out and that's what
they're writing about, right?
Like everyone that's a crypto podcast is talking about it.
So I'm Sam. I'm the founder
of Frax. Frax is one of the shortlist bidders to issue USDH. I mean, technically, it's the
ticker to get the USDH ticker. But I think, you know, in effect, de facto, this is a very important seminal event for the stablecoin ecosystem in Hyperliquid.
So we're very happy to be on the shortlist to be considered.
I think Frax is one of the best brands and longtime Lindy, well-known DeFi household name.
And so, yeah, love to just get right down to it
if you have a specific structure of questions
or what to generally start with.
Yeah, no, the first question I've asked everyone is really,
you know, what makes FRAX the best candidate
to handle the build-out and distribution of USDH?
Yeah, so I think that it's a good and comprehensive question because I think one of the things
I've said before is if you look at everyone's partners and what everyone is bringing to
the table, a lot of it seems fairly similar, right?
I'm just going to be transparent about that, right? Like, I think there's a few, you know, teams that clearly if the Genius Compliance, for example, is a big one,
you know, Paxos is great. Agora guys know what they're doing. We do as well, right? Like,
you know, I helped actually draft parts of the bill, gave direct feedback. I was in DC in March.
We know all of our stuff. Literally everyone that says
they can do it in this kind of major league bidding competition can do it. I don't think
there's any distance between the major teams, essentially. I think the most important thing
actually for everyone to keep in mind is there are a few difference in vision in terms of like
what USDH should be. That I think is like a very distinguishing factor. Like I think earlier today
I heard Rune, who's the founder of Sky, formerly Maker, you know, proposed that, you know, USDH
should be as decentralized as possible, right? And so a different track than
Genius Compliance with fiat and institutional rails built into it with a multi-chain mint
redeem coverage directly to Hyperliquid, which is essentially our vision for USDH. It's how our
Frax USD flagship stablecoin works. You know, it has a specific locus, a specific area, and then it has a cross-chain redeem system similar to Circle CCTP, right?
I think the most important thing is can the team actually execute on what they're proposing? can they actually bring long-term value like DeFi integrations and things that other teams actually can't, right?
Like there's a lot of people that are already building on Hyperliquid, right?
But what about new people that can come in net, right, expand the actual ecosystem
and then also be able to expand the actual institutional adoption and bring in new relationships.
And so I think that FRAX is probably the best mix of all of those things.
It really depends on what vision everyone really has in the community for what USDA should be.
In terms of the reason why we think that our vision is correct, it's the one we're actually executing on at FRAX.
So for people that know about FRAX originally, we actually were one of the most successful algorithmic stablecoins.
It reached a TVL of about three billion.
And it has never actually like de-pegged in terms of an algorithmic issue.
So like there's basically the only time actually DPEG for a few hours was the USDC DPEG because
part of our collateral was USDC, which is actually hilarious because our mechanism design
has never led to anyone losing value or there being an exploit.
We have an impeccable record. The reason we've gone this very new route is that we believe that everything should be built on a regulated,
risk-free or as risk-free as possible digital dollar.
And so when we released FraxUSD with all of the integrated infrastructure, cross-chain system and everything. This is our vision.
We have other DeFi built on top of FraxUSD.
We have S-FraxUSD, which is a DeFi vault that allocates the underlying in terms of protocol liquidity, right?
And they go to curve pools, CDPs, also delta neutral trade strategies.
And we have actually a partnership with
FINA our view is that underlying there should be a base layer of safe dollars
which is why we released our frax USD stable coins that are focusing on the
base layer being a decentralized or algorithmic one even though it was
worked impeccably and I think that that's actually obviously I don't want to
the Hyperliquid team, but based on what they've posted that Genius regulated stablecoin is
highly preferred, but obviously not a requirement, I think they probably share the same thing
in the sense that one of the most important, if not the most important decentralized trading
venue in the entire world, it should be built on an extremely,
extremely safe, regulated legal digital dollar foundation. And that on top of that, as a second
layer, you can build everything else. You can bring DeFi teams, you can make it a cross-chain
mint redeem stablecoin, get it integrated in all these places. And if you actually look at it from that perspective, you should ask, for example, which team can actually deliver on that entire vision, right?
And I think that if you look at the experience, you look at the reputation, you look at both
DeFi prowess, but also institutional and regulated knowledge and all of these things,
Frax is basically the most well-rounded.
Now, there's clearly differences in vision.
In fact, someone reached out to me the other day and said,
you know, you guys were pushing the decentralized crypto ethos vision at the beginning,
and now you're pushing the very regulated digital dollar underlying
and then building the decentralized
And some people might not agree with that.
Some people might want to think about it in terms of what Maker is, for example, proposing.
But in the actual regulated, genius-compliant vision, I think that we have the most well-rounded
group of partners and institutions,
right? We work with BlackRock, Fidelity, Layer Zero powers are underlying. I know a lot of
other people work with the same team. I know, for example, Native Markets has a deep relationship
like we do with Bridge and Stripe. The point overall is that we have all of these and even
more in terms of experience and long-lasting relationships with builders on chain and DeFi.
So that's essentially the way that I look at it.
It's the most well-rounded proposal.
And if the vision for what USD should be on Hyperliquid, if you agree with that, which, again, not everyone might, right?
with that, which again, not everyone might, right? But if you agree with the base should be a legal
digital dollar, this is the team to execute on, in my opinion.
Awesome. No, I appreciate that a lot. And can we maybe just dive a little bit deeper on,
I know you kind of mentioned it high level, but just the partners that you guys do work with today.
You know, I think it's been honestly a lot really eye-opening for this past week, I'm sure for not
only myself and others, just like what actually happens under the hood. What is that zero to one
moment to take a stable coin from idea to fruition and really get it out to the market?
Could you maybe just shine some light just from your guys' experience and kind of how you envision
that happening as well with USDH? Yeah, yeah for sure so there's a lot of subtle things that
are very valuable and important uh that i assume because of like the speed and and like the the
the chaos kind of in in this process uh i heard hasib from dragonfly call this like a constitutional
convention earlier today in a tweet for for a stablecoin issuance. But there's really important subtle
things that have to be done right. For example, what you want is you want qualified custodians
and, for example, RWAs that are Genius compliant actually being things that back USDH. It sounds
super easy to be like, oh yeah, we have all of these partners and stuff. Some of them actually are not currently RWAs that are issued, for example, offshore, or they're not 28x7 Money
Market Fund, SEC registered securities. They're not compliant, right? And so everything that
we actually do and that we're working with and that we use in the Frax USD infra that we want
to actually build as the USDH infrastructure is meticulously vetted, meticulously looked
For example, our layer zero integration and deep partnership.
One of the things that we've done is we've made sure that all of the actual mint redeem systems between the chains go through an additional DVN check from our own
message passing frax DVN that is entirely sovereign and in our control. So that, for
example, if there's anything wrong with layer zero or libraries are updated in a different
way, we actually have final veto say.
And so things like this that will obviously get lost in all of the hours and hours of spaces and talks and things like that,
I think they will make a difference for whoever wins down the line, right?
Because one of the important things is none of this stuff matters until something goes wrong. And then it does, right?
Like the thing that with stable coins is very, very important is the lindiness that it has always been safe.
And even in black swans, terrible times and everything, it is completely a safe haven that can be trusted,
and especially in something as systemically
important as Hyperliquid.
And for example, one of the things that I think is missed on by people is that even
the Hyperliquid team was like, you know, this is just for a ticker.
There will be other stable coins and, you know, don't worry and stuff like that.
And I understand why they're saying it.
Obviously, like people don't want to feel demotivated if they don't win. And obviously, you know,
whatever happens, FRAX is going to actually continue. We're coming to Hyperliquid already.
And if you look at our deployments and stuff, we've actually been expanding the cross chain
coverage to Hyper EVM way before we even knew this was going on.
But the thing that I think people are missing is the liquid bids and the actual quotes placed
on the hyper liquid per platform is in USDC.
If that becomes USDH, that will become the de facto, even though people are saying, oh, it's just
It's not just a ticker, right?
There's a reason why everyone's talking about this 24-7 around the clock until a winner
Once you build quoting liquidity around a specific unit, it is incredibly, incredibly
And the process that's going on currently, this shelling point of everyone deciding who
is the proper team to be the stewards of this and everything, it is essentially a coordination
mechanism for agreeing that, okay, after everything is said and done, after things are properly
audited and whoever wins, deploys it and stuff, the
quotes and bids will most likely start being placed in USDH, at least in some capacity
or something. And that is actually very important, right? Like people, people might be missing
how important this competition is, because, you know, they can call it a ticker competition,
but that's not actually the whole picture, right?
And so that's why we've taken this so seriously. We've been talking about this around the clock
and every single thing that we can bring to the table. So, yeah.
Awesome. Appreciate that. Very comprehensive. Maybe dialing in a bit deeper, you know, on the
point of, you know, this quote asset and kind of the longer term vision of USDH,
you know, you have any kind of insider steps you guys would take to approach,
you know, transitioning the liquidity that is really sticky to the USDC pairs
over to USDH and kind of how does that tie into your broader proposal,
you know, in terms of like revenue share or the underlying T-bill yield?
And I'll leave it there for you to answer.
Yeah, I think actually this whole process
has taught us at FRAX something that's very valuable
that I didn't really, to be honest,
I didn't think about until we saw what's going on currently.
I think the most important thing for a community,
whether obviously it's USDH as a stablecoin for Hyperliquid,
but there's obviously going to be other communities that have stablecoins and potentially want their
branded ones as well, is the important thing is control. I actually think that this is one
of the few things that doesn't get mentioned enough between anyone that's giving a proposal is how in control is the actual
hyperliquid token holders and community where it matters, right? And what I mean
by that is, for example, are the actual contracts under control of the hype
token holders in a proper way? Obviously, for it to be Genius compliant, for example, the actual keys have to be
in the hands of the issuer, but maybe the upgrade keys can be in the hands of the Hyperliquid token
holders. What is the structure of control? What is the fail safes that are required to on-chain
keep this token? The best of both worlds feature of compliance, regulated, totally safe,
but at the end of the day in complete ownership and control of the hyperliquid community and the
hype holders, right? That's one thing actually that I hadn't heard too many people address.
Everyone's kind of saying, oh, we're the best because of this, we're the best because of Y reason, X reason. I think an important thing for everyone to think about,
especially in the hyperliquid community that the validators have the vote and people can delegate
is which team actually has this in mind? Which team has the final sovereignty of the hyperliquid token holders in mind while also being able to
maximize the regulated, the accepted, the safety of the actual stablecoin. And it's a new area of
design, right? Like no one has really thought about it, right? So it's going to be difficult
to square those things away. But I think the most important thing is figuring out ultimately how the Hyperliquid community
owns every single piece of it from the way that the rewards are streamed that is completely
So before anything happens to the actual rewards, the location is completely under the control
of Hyperliquid token holders, the actual token ticker proxy upgrade contracts, all of these things, right?
I think that that's one thing that we are going to focus on in terms of our design.
And then in terms of the liquid bidding and all of these things, I think that kind of
follows from this, right?
If we have a good cadence with the community, with the Hyperliquid Foundation and the core team members, they will feel very you know, creating their own Hyperliquid, you know, quoting and all that.
And that's true. And that's actually a fantastic feature and with builder codes and everything.
the main bidding and liquidity venue,
what is going to be the actual quoted asset
and what do the hyperliquid token holders themselves
and community feel comfortable with?
And that's what's really at stake in my opinion.
No, I appreciate that answer a lot, Sam.
I think you guys have clearly taken your time
to kind of really evaluate
all the kind of second, third order you know once you have the ticker um you know i think there
is definitely a lot of trust placed in in the team that you know does win this vote um
they're kind of two sizes coin right you know it is just a ticker but it also is more than
it kind of symbolizes you know the community's first real true governance voting process there's
been a lot of eyeballs and attention on this space. So I appreciate the kind of thoughts you guys have put together
to be able to formulate here on the space for everyone.
You know, a question I've asked every team so far,
you've kind of alluded to it, but I'm just going to ask
just so you can maybe just dial into it more.
But if you guys do win the vote, what is your six weeks,
six months, and six year timeline?
And what does success really look like for you at the end of that, you know, the road here? Like, where do you
kind of see this? Or what would you kind of look back and be like, okay, that was what we set out
to achieve. And we're really happy we did it. Yeah, that's a great question. Because I actually
ask other FRAX partners and all of our, you know, calls and when we get institutions on board,
actually ask the same thing. So it's a very, very good question. So first six months, to be clear, I think the most important thing
is to set up the infrastructure so that we actually have a ability to issue a Genius-compatible stablecoin in the USDH, and have regular cadence community input,
maybe like a weekly or biweekly, obviously it depends on what the community thinks,
full update, a direct person that is a Frax hyperliquid ambassador that works directly under
us, the executives, the founders, and directly is a
person that's 24-7 available to the community, runs these things. People like me with the
ambassador always have the community input into how the launch should go. In six months,
I think we should, what is six months from now? What is that, like February 9th or something,
What is six months from now? What is that, like February 9th or something, February, March?
We should be able to have not only the full integrated stack to issue USDH, but also at the same time,
entire the FraxNet fiat on off ramps, virtual cards, institutional onboarding,
so that our institutions like RWA issuers can
integrate this as like a subscription and redemption assets so people can
actually subscribe to emergent tokenized products in USDH in addition to the
standard USDC which is what's currently used right we want USDH to be literally
not just the first-class citizen but honestly like like a top-tier choice and preference because of the
power that Hyperliquid brings to the table, right? Everyone has seen, you know, Jeremy Allaire
saying Hyperliquid, and then we're super excited for this and that. And I think everyone has kind
of bowed down, which shows that Hyperliquid's power and its ability and its reach is awesome,
but it needs to be converted to value for the hyperliquid community, right? That's great that
people can, you know, dunk on, you know, like people trying to, you know, tweet that, oh,
we love hyperliquid, we love hyperliquid, but it needs to turn into real tangible moneyness and usage for the USDH stablecoin.
And after probably like 12 months, I would say,
what we would like is for pretty much everywhere that USDC is accepted.
So for example, in places that right now in VisaNet, USDC is like a settlement
asset. That's not just conversion to fiat. It is a settlement asset. So a lot of people might not
know what that means. That means that Visa literally uses USDC as the asset on their
international network to settle between merchant acquirers and banks and customers in their entire internal network. USDC, as far as I know,
is the only one. Someone actually said, I think, was it Bo from Paxos that said USDG was used? As
far as I know, I have not seen that, so I could be wrong. So I don't know if Bo is in the audience,
seen that. So I could be wrong. So I don't know if Bo is in the audience, but it could be USDG and
USDC. But the point is, it's a very, very, very short list of assets. And our goal would be to
make sure everywhere that these very, very, very valuable under the hood integrations are happening
that people likely miss. USDH is right there with USDC and is one of the most important units of dollars in the world.
It's only fitting, right,
if hyperliquid is one of the most important ecosystems
and L1s in the world, right?
Like that's the actual level of success that's required.
And to be honest, I think you said 18 months.
And if I'm just being completely transparent,
I think it's very difficult to actually predict anything that far.
12 months is pretty good, but if we are extrapolating in 18 months, what I would like to think about is that USDH is actually accepted as a deposit asset in many U.S. banks, which is actually one thing we're
working on with FraxUSD itself. After Genius is out and the OCC is actually giving licenses,
and that issuers are in fact licensed and they're stable coins that have the Genius stamp of
approval, banks can actually accept them as deposits after that event. So that event
itself will probably take 12 months or so for that process to roll out. The OCC take applications,
approve, and what we want to make sure to do is, USDH again, is at the forefront of all of this,
and it is being accepted as real, true money in the U.S. and as an extension of the international banking system, right?
And that's what success would look like for us.
And I think that that's the maximum success a USD stablecoin could have.
And through all this journey, by the way, obviously, the important thing is being able to bring that value back to the hyperliquid community
And so as this stablecoin grows, as the actual underlying deposit income for the T-bills
grows, all of that goes back to the hyperliquid token holders and the moneyness and usefulness
of the hyperliquid chain as the central place where this token exists and can be actually used as banking assets, right, of how to actually build a stable coin
that is worthy to be the default stable coin for Hyperliquid, right?
Love it. Next question, a little bit, you know, kind of flipping the switch here, but,
you know, if you were a validator and you had to vote, but you couldn't vote for FRAX, you know,
who kind of, which of the, I guess, current proposals do you think is like the strongest
or kind of more generally, like what are you looking for in the eventual winning proposal
to ensure that kind of future of USDH is in good hands?
Yeah, I really like this question too, because I think it was asked in the roundtable earlier
I'm actually going to slightly change that and actually give two as an answer.
So hopefully it's twice as good.
The two I would probably pick is the first one I would pick Agora because they are extremely well-rounded in the same way that I think the Frax team is.
Fun fact for people that didn't know, before Drake founded Agora with Nick, he was at Frax.
We worked together to build FraxLend, which is one of the successful isolated lending
Drake is extremely talented in the DeFi space and the engineering space and
understanding all of that area. And then Nick is the perfect complement with obviously the
traditional financial background, deep connections, and obviously his family name doesn't need any
introduction, right? And that is a very, very powerful combo.
And so I would pick Agora.
And then the second one that I would pick is Paxos,
because I think that they also embody a good, well-rounded vision.
I think that they have obviously the regulatory chops.
Just like us, where before we had a 3 billion stablecoin with the original decentralized
frax dollar that I was referring to, Paxos also managed BUSD, which was Binance's fiat
coin, if people remember.
And so that had billions and billions. I forget the
exact amount. It was like 10, 15 billion something. So they have a very, very good track record of
being able to competently manage the infrastructure for a large multi-billion dollar stable coin,
regardless of how much their current amount is. Being able to do that successfully is no small feat. So I would tip my hat off to them.
That doesn't mean any of the other proposals are not good or anything.
I actually think that if you disagree with the Genius-compliant base digital dollar,
The Genius compliant base digital dollar, I think the Maker Sky proposal is really good.
If you do not actually want the base layer to be a regulated stablecoin, and that's a
But obviously, if you do, then that is a premise that you wouldn't accept.
And so I would pick the two would be Agora and Paxos.
Awesome. No, I appreciate that.
Yeah, I've asked everyone that we've had up here.
It's been interesting to hear everyone's takes on it.
You know, I think, again, appreciate that.
Who are the most common takes by others?
I would say that, yeah, the ones that you echoed i mean i think like generally speaking right there is a there actually isn't that many
to choose from um you know there's kind of really like five six i guess now we did have athena come
in today as well um you know so it's been it's been really interesting to see just you know these
kind of huge names in this space come into play i think there's probably some others that people
were maybe expecting but honestly the the turnaround time was just so quick that if people weren't
really on the ball and probably already thinking about something like this, they were probably just
a bit too slow to move, which is also, I think, encouraging to see that there is so much attention
and quick action here from very large teams like yourself and Athena and Maker to really put forward a strong
proposal and get their name and kind of community engaged. So I appreciate that a lot. Yeah, I think
it's very clear everyone on the shortlist, regardless of who wins, whether it's us or
anyone else, they're kind of the major league issuance kind of teams.
And I think a few of them have already said, you know, whoever wins, they would be more than happy to work wherever they can with the winner.
And obviously it's the winner's choice, right?
They don't have to bring anyone else in the fold. fold, but we would be more than happy to work with anyone that wants to participate in this
stack of this vision that we have for USDH.
And I actually really like this question.
I actually think we should take a tally of it because it's very similar.
I don't know if you've heard of a Canadian beauty contest where the whole point is like
it's actually for pricing assets, which is people don't try to price
an asset, they try to price what they think everyone else prices an asset of.
And so it's like an example of a beauty contest where the judges aren't told to rate the beauty of contestants, but rate what the judges think everyone else would rate,
the beauty of each contestant. And then it turns out that if you ask the question like that,
there's a very deep shelling point because everyone is trying to guess what the most common
salient average answer is. That's why I really like this question.
I think we should actually get a real like tally for that
from all of the major league teams and see who would win.
I think that's a very valuable answer.
Yeah, no, I love that perspective.
Yeah, I think it'd be interesting to kind of do some,
you know, back testing or just kind of like, you know,
once we, I guess the boat passes,
weekend on the 14th it'll be interesting to see kind of how everything shakes out um yeah regardless
i think it's really exciting and encouraging hopefully a lot of the teams you know who have
said they're going to continue to build in hyperliquid follow through on that you know if they
do end up not ultimately winning the ticker so i think that'll also be a good a good kind of you
know community test um to see like who's going to follow through on that but um you know just maybe um you know as
we're kind of wrapping up here any last closing thoughts or just like things you think is really
important you want to highlight sam to you know the community as they're um you know underwriting
kind of all the proposals i'll pass it over to you to finish things out. Yeah, for sure. I think so. So two things. One is
we'll definitely be around and building. In fact, like I was saying at the beginning,
we're actually preparing to bring our issue and stack and FraxUSD to Hyperliquid when this
proposal actually just popped up. And one of the things I haven't said
often, but I've started to bring up is I actually talked to the core team and Julian and some
others like months ago in late or mid 2024 about their stablecoin strategy. So like this is not
just something Frax has just jumped into. We've been
thinking about this for a while. In fact, one of the things I asked the team was, how are you guys
thinking about this? Because you guys are literally losing hundreds of millions of dollars
of revenue. Educate me. I'm not here to sell you like, you know, a Frax product or something. And I've been thinking about it for many months.
And actually, we've been trying to figure out the best solution.
But they actually told us, I think now it's very transparent, clearly.
They actually told us, hey, right now we're not thinking about it.
When we are, you will know.
And I think the world knows that they're thinking about it now, right?
yeah. And the important thing is we'll be around regardless of whether we win or not. But the important thing for people to consider is who are making the decisions that are good stewards of the
USD flows in and out of the hyperliquid ecosystem and who's the most well-rounded to be able to make the
right considerations both from a regulatory and professional aspect, but also from a DeFi
and crypto native aspect.
Because there's a lot of, you could be very, very, very overpowered and heavy on one aspect,
And you could be very weak on the other. And then
you could be very powerful in the super duper decentralized like DeFi aspect and like the
best DeFi yields, but completely think that, you know, regulations or whatever are distraction,
right? And what I would leave to the community to think about is what team is the most credible that when they talk about regulation, genius
compliance, they've, for example, have been in DC and like us, right, and have actually
participated in the legislative process, formed the proper current relationships with qualified
custodians and US institutions to actually back that up.
And then when we say we are very, very important in DeFi and everyone knows us and we've been
around with the household name brand, who is that?
Everyone has used FRAX, if they've used Ethereum, DeFi, and even other chains, and we have
an impeccable track record there. And so I would
leave it to the community to consider who's actually backing up their words as much as
possible in the best balanced way with evidence rather than just like logos or like very quick,
you know, one-liners and things like that. And because that takes a lot of years of work in both areas,
And that's what I think Frax's proposal speaks for itself.
Well, once again, thank you, Sam.
I hope everyone, you know, had some good insights here
to your guys' line of thinking.
Appreciate what you and the Frax have done, you know,
not only for USDH, but broader for the entire, know d5 spaces last couple years um so appreciate it and on behalf of
myself the rest of the team here at flow desk and everyone else in the hyper liquid community
um just once again thank you and that'll wrap it up for today thanks guys take care bye yep bye .