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Mantle Network's Take on FBTC & the TradFi-to-Crypto Bridge
Recorded: May 28, 2025 Duration: 0:57:42Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent discussion, key players from MENTL and FBTC unveiled exciting developments including the launch of a new reward center and innovative token features aimed at enhancing user engagement. The conversation highlighted significant growth metrics, strategic partnerships, and the integration of AI in DeFi, signaling a dynamic shift in the crypto landscape.
Full Transcription
Music Thank you. Thank you. I'm Thank you. Hello! Hello.
Hello. Hello.
Hi, everyone.
I just want to do a little audio check before we begin, if that's all right with you.
Hello. Hello, hello.
Hello, can you hear me, Ro?
Hi, Jeff, can you just say hi so I can hear you?
I can hear you as well.
Can you hear me?
Perfect. All right.
Yep, perfect. Thanks, Jeff.
Elvin and Thomas. Elvin, can you just give me a little hello?
Hi, can you hear me yes perfectly and thomas
hey good morning hello hello good day good day okay cool okay and then we are good to start
thank you everyone for um you know doing a little audio check with me, appreciate that. And also welcome and good day to everyone.
Welcome to everyone to RAMA.
We're actually really excited to share some key updates,
including upcoming launch of our new reward center
and latest token commentary tipping feature,
both designed to bring more value
and actually a chance to engage with our communities as well.
So definitely, definitely very excited to speak today from the guests.
So I really want to let them welcome the guests from Mantle Network and FBTC, Elvin and Thomas.
Elvin and Thomas, is it okay if you just give me uh us guys a little brief intro
um and i also let jeff uh do so as well
sure no problem elvin do you want to start first yeah yeah okay no problem can you hear me sure
let's go yes we can yeah this is the oven uh i'm helping on the operation side of the MENTL.
MENTL, now we are building not only like the layer two, but we are also extending our on-chain finance concept.
And I also invite our colleague Thomas from FBTC, we have other coverage in restating areas like the MEs.
And recently we were rolled out our new feature, mental banking.
And also we have a new product called Mental Index 4, which is the index fund I will introduce later on for more details.
So Mento now is expanding our scope to coverage more on-chain finance stuff and want to bring the crypto into a real life for everyone.
And for me, myself, it's helping on the operations to engage, to relate to the user engagement and
also collaborate with the exchange partners and also our ecosystem partner to boost our traffic for our chains and also bring more users to our ecosystems.
Yeah, it's very nice to be here. Looking forward to the exciting AMA. Thank you.
Yes, Alvin. Thank you. Thank you, Alvin, for the brief and actual pretty informative introduction as well.
We're excited to have you as well. So yeah, let's go.
And let's have Thomas, if it's okay for you to give us a little intro as well, please.
Yeah, absolutely. Good morning, everybody. I am in Bitcoin Vegas right now.
I'm the CEO of Function's company behind FBTC.
I've been here for about four months. Previously, I spent a long time, just over six years at BitGo,
running all of sales as well as everything crypto native, including WBTC.
I'll give you guys a quick story to contextualize what we're doing here.
So at BitGo, BitGo hit 100 billion in AUC last year.
40 billion of that was just BTC.
And so the observation that I had was the BTC is not doing anything for the client.
It's just sitting there paying custody fees.
It's not being productive.
It's a simple store of asset.
Sorry, store of value. So the
question became, how do we monetize on this BTC that's stored in custody? How do we get our
clients to turn their BTC into semi-productive so that they can start earning yield on it, right?
That was a starting point. Fast forward to now, FBTC, we are backed by Ant Alpha as well as Galaxy and Mantle. We've got just under just
around 15,000 BTC and TVL now. And we're trying to solve this exact problem, right? Which is
if you're able, if our clients are able to stake, quote unquote, stake their BTC,
how do they generate yield in a safe, compliant, and secure way? So we're doing that primarily for institutions,
retail is in as well.
And I'm here in Bitcoin Vegas
trying to understand what the new narratives are
that are exogenous to DeFi,
more from the TradFi side.
Amazing.
Thank you very much, Thomas.
And thank you for also the little background info as well.
And finally, we have Jeff, our own research team from CoinEx.
We'll be asking, you know, Alvin and Thomas from their stars about Mantle Network and their view on FBTC and Triforger Crypto.
And Jeff, over to you for your introduction.
And also, you'll leave the questions to the guests, please.
Thank you, Vivian.
So, hey, everyone.
I'm GMGN.
I'm friends for joining this Twitter space.
This is Jeff from Connix Research.
And it's my pleasure to join this conversation with Alvin from Mentos Network and Thomas
from Mentos Network and Tom is from Functions BTC teams.
from Functions BTC teams.
So I think today we're diving into Mentos
and Functions BTC officials on their interesting products
and how they're bridging Chatfine and Quipto.
So yeah, let's kick things off
with a quick look at layer two space first. Obviously, it's a super crowded
field, like hundreds of L2s out there trying to craft out the niche. But here's the thing,
it's not just about the tag and raw performance anymore. I think we're in a new cycle right now,
and the layer 2 narrative is really shifting um it's not just
about being an l2 anymore um l2 is actually becoming the backbone for bigger um the franchise
stories um if we look at base um they're doing pretty well with the ai agent apps um or sonic
making waves in gaming um so i think the market is really asking like, what's the unique angle?
And I think in the crypto world, it's clear that we all want like better capital efficiency.
Just like Thomas mentioned, whether it's like Bitcoin ETF springing or institutional money
on chain or RWA or enabling faster circulation, I think the ultimate goal is really simple
to make every dollar count
and speaking of mental um i think is is really emerged as dark horse in this race since the
launch or in in 2023 they've climbed up to become the fourth largest l2 by tvl and so in less than
two years they gone from zero to a top tier player so i think it would be super exciting to dive into like
how they put this off and where they are head next and so yeah elvin um like to start with um
the the liquidity chain right you guys course have the liquidity chain all right and you guys
leveraging on modular architecture and partnerships like I generate with DA.
Can you share with us, walk us through how this vision boosts the capital or efficiency for devices and institutions? And more importantly, what upcoming features are you guys working on
to double down on that goal? Sure. Yeah, let me take that question.
Yeah, Mento is to build on a liquidity chain for the on-chain finance, which is to align
our narrative recently.
So, leverage on current module design, so we are using EigenDA, which is our, actually,
I think it's the first part with EigenDA for the layer 2 area.
We can have a high speed, high TPS, low cost, and allow the high capital efficiency and the fast settlement.
So it will help to give more feasibility for the DeFi protocols
to execute their transactions and also have more capability
to have the liquidity in their site.
And also, they set up also benefit both retail and institution to have the liquidity in their site.
And also, they set up also benefit both retail and institution users
by reducing the gas fee, enable deeper liquidity pool,
and also ensure the rapid speed on our mentorship network.
And for the upcoming one, we also
integrate the key 16th. So it will significantly reduce the bridge waiting period. Now for all year
two, when you try to bridge back to a late one, you will need wait at least seven days
you will need wait at least seven days for the charging period,
challenge period. But when we work with the ZK succinct, it will only take a few hours to pass the
ZK validates. So it also gives us a big advantage when users are trying to cause layer 1, layer 2. And we also
introduce more DeFi protocols such as the AVI and Compound and ETC to increase liquidity and
DeFi applications in mental ecosystems.
And for the upcoming features,
like we are rolling out our banking staff,
the mental network will be our fundamental staff to execute the transactions and also support real-time.
We will also bring more yield opportunities
for users who lend into their mental networks
and give more
yield opportunity and further optimize our capital flow
across all our DeFi ecosystems.
Yeah, I think hope is clarified.
Yeah, thank you, Alvin. That's awesome insight.
I actually want to zoom in a bit on Mendo's tech for a second because I think it's a big part of why you guys are able to, like, you guys are scaling to support such a great ecosystem, like ecosystem uh some people might say like l2 text is all the same but
um i i do think that like mental is designed is some unique arm strength that set it apart
because as a researcher at conics obviously i've looked at quite a lot of things and i think
mentalist approaches is definitely pretty interesting and what we stand as our like three key technical advantages uh like uh those parts
you mentioned including modular design or the decentralized sequencer and the identity and i
and identity integration is like mental was first out to to adopt that so yeah it is a brilliant
design and yeah and and next are i know you guys have been quite vocal about bridging chatfine and crypto, especially our LWA's being such a hot narrative this cycle.
And your mental banking initiative, like you mentioned at the beginning, is super exciting.
So can you also share with us the vision behind it and why do you think it's the right move to connect,
or try to find in crypto at this very moment?
Yeah, sure.
Yeah, I believe it's very trending narratives in this cycle.
So I think our mental banking also wants to give more use cases
for the real crypto used in real life.
So mental banking is aimed to be a kind of game changers
by connecting with traditional finance
and decentralized finance.
So our apps will have a WAN account
to let users manage not only crypto but also fiat.
And in the future, we will provide on-chain investment.
Users can not only invest crypto in our apps,
but also they can unrun off rent to the fiat.
And also very importantly, we have FX functions.
So when you off rent to the USD, you can swap into other currencies,
such as the euro, even RMB and so on.
So users will have Swiss bank accounts compared with other kind of similar accounts.
So our bank accounts will support you
to use the multi-currency and also provide the yields
from the banking side.
In the future, we will provide more facilities
like the MEs we are doing for restaking tokens
and the wealth management functions for such as we have the index fund.
Users can not only use the crypto, but also earn the crypto from our mental bankings.
And we are trying to solve the current use case for users to hold their credit, but they cannot spend. So I think our
mental banking will have kind of new chapters in Mento and we will release very soon.
So if you want to get more details, you can follow our official data to get latest updates.
I think it will satisfy most of the people.
satisfy most of the people. Thank you.
Awesome. I think that's a great look at the
mental banking vision. Thanks for breaking
it down. I actually also come from a chat
background, so I've been keeping an eye on how projects are approaching
chatfied and devite as well. So I would be really looking forward to
how mental banking is
that uses manageable fiat and crypto in one account. Imagine if you got fiat and then you
deposit into mental banking and then instantly tokenizing into stable coins and from there you
can spend it or save it, invest it. Or jumping through just in one account and i think that's um the user
experience that i'll be looking forward to so yeah i i love the direction you guys going uh with the
mental banking and and i think uh let's talk more about um the mental in this for product that you
mentioned at the beginning as well um like i think you guys launched it following the Mento Enhanced Index Fund, which was launched last year.
So can you also break down the differences between these two products and explain how the MI4 products has a new standard for the crypto beta exposure, which is such an institutional-grade security?
Sure.
Yeah.
For Manto Index 4, it's the institution-grade product.
It's launched and securedized.
So in Manto Treasurer, we will provide 400 million
anchor investment from our site to make sure it will be safe for everyone.
And we are aiming to do something like SP500 of Cryptoops.
So compared with other index funds, the
difference is although the bucket is including BTC, ETH,
Solana, and stablecoins, but the difference is we are using
restaking format. For example, for the ETH part, we were
restaking the ETH to METH.
And for Solana users, we are not only to hold Solana,
but we also stake to the BBSO.
So for users to hold this index fund,
they can not only enjoy the price increase for the underlying asset,
but they can also earn from the restaking yield.
So when we do some past analysis,
it will give the index sum with 3% to 4%
returns expect from the price part,
we have the real use as well.
So it will cover the manual fee already.
So users can not only get alpha part, but also beta part.
So I think it will be very special in the current market.
And also, it's fully regulated and we have 400 million back assets.
So I think it's also safe not only for retail users,
but also for the institution users.
And recently we released tokenized stuff so users can not only invest directly,
but also subscribe from the exchange very soon.
Thank you, Evan.
I think that's super attractive.
I think it really shows like Mento is focused
on building products that's available for crypto
and chatfire
and institutional and retail users.
I always say crypto or even finance is all about liquidity, like making assets flow efficiently.
And I want to rewind a bit.
Near the end of 2023, you guys on MEDH which is the liquid
sticking protocol and then in 2024 you guys are going out CMEDH which is the liquid sticking
token like for even more or new opportunities and then around the same time you guys also introduced fbtc arm which we plan to function or like like earlier this year
and all this assets like mbth cm eth and function ptc arm i think they all form the foundation of
like the entire mentalist or on-chain financial and then all revolving around like new generation
chain financial and then all revolving around like yield generation like they're all the tools
for generating yield and unlocking liquidity and now since thomas is here i want to focus and zoom
in on function btc i know you guys are doing like a pretty great job awesome job like with such a high
tbl as today um and then you guys integrated with quite a lot of protocols already.
So I want to dive deeper into that.
So my question is, with BTC buy and local staking tokens,
gaining traction, especially in the cycle,
how does Function BTC enhance the BTC liquidity in DeFi
from your perspective? And how do you plan to expand these passions
across different chains, especially non-EVM chains?
That's a great question, JK.
So I can start from the end there on the non-EVM chain.
So today we are on about eight different chains,
predominantly EVM. We have three non-EVM chain. So today we are on about eight different chains, predominantly EVM.
We have three non-EVM chains we're working to get onto,
and we should be before the end of this quarter.
Whether it's EVM or non-EVM,
we have several partners, right, including Layer Zero.
But of course, we will deploy natively when we can.
How do we strengthen liquidity in the ecosystem?
So I do subscribe and I do agree with you that DeFi is all about capital efficiency.
In the Bitcoin-Fi space, it's an interesting one because I would say that it really kicked off with Ordinals right back in 2023.
It was really kicked off with ordinals right back in 2023.
And then it went through a bit of a renaissance.
And then Babylon led the charge with the concept of Bitcoin staking through their protocol.
If you look at the yields within Bitcoin FI today, a lot of it is generated through Bitcoin LSTs that are sitting mainly on top of Babylon.
So what that means is you take the underlying BTC, you stake it, well, you give it to one of
these LST protocols, they stake it to Babylon, and then they mint their own LST on top of it,
which generates a baseline yield, and then can be used throughout DeFi for leverage looping strategies or farming,
et cetera. And having gone to a couple of conferences, Dubai, ConsenSys, and now I'm at
Bitcoin Vegas, I think the other narrative in crypto, the other characteristic of crypto is
that no narrative seems to last longer than nine months.
So the trend that I'm actually seeing is the trend around Bitcoin LSTs, whether or not they survive,
they've created this incentive mechanism and expectation for yield, constant yield. But when
you double click and look at a lot of these products that are being offered, underneath it, you have to question, where's the yield coming from? Is it sustainable
and is it scalable? To answer that, where's the yield coming from? A lot of it at the end of the
day is farming. There's nothing wrong with farming. A lot of the projects need to start with some sort
of farming mechanism in order to get off the ground, right?
But then a question comes around sustainability. If it's not sustainable after the campaign period,
then it's not a real yield, right? It was just marketing. It was customer acquisition costs.
And again, there's no problem with that. It's just that when it ends, what inevitably happens is the
deposits, the pre-deposits will shift to the next product,
right? It becomes a little bit of a mercenary capital. And lastly, around scalability,
that's what we care about. Because we are backed by institutions, they're not interested in a
capacity of 10 million, right? They want to deploy 50, 100 million at a time, and they want some
baseline sustainable yield. So that is the
hard part that we're trying to solve. The way that we're trying to solve it is we're starting at
the very, very baseline primitive itself. So unlike the LST projects that built yield generating
BTC or LSTs, right? We today, FBTC is not a yield generating asset. We started looking at the very,
very foundation of the problem, which is BTC itself today, obviously, does not exist in an
omni-chain fashion. So how can it be ported to all these different DeFi, EVM, or non-EVM chains
in order to generate yield? When we looked at the problem we saw that
the wrapped bitcoin space as it is today it's separated into two camps mainly around the
security assumptions and so the first camp i would say security assumptions mainly on chain security
schnor signature types where you have the sTC, IBTC, TBTC, right?
Fairly decentralized, the ethos of DeFi. Nothing wrong with that, but institutions are not going
to be underwriting smart contract risk on their BTC. So we don't really view them as competitors.
They're just a different type of user base. Then you have the, what I call centralized custody.
type of user base. Then you have the what I call centralized custody. So these are what you
probably know WBTC, right? With BITs Global, CBBTC, if you trust Coinbase, or if you want to
continue to feed the Coinbase machine, and a lot of people are upset about that, including very
large EVM and non-EVM chains. And then you have FBTC. So for us, we started looking at the security assumption of,
all right, well, we do not have a single party
that's holding all three keys or however many keys.
We have a MPC multi-sig,
and we have a security council today of four,
which includes Mantle, Kobo, AntAlpha, as well as Galaxy. And our positioning is we have the most institutionally reliable,
credible backing of the keys that's holding the BTC, right, behind FBTC.
And now we found ourselves in a pretty enviable position.
We haven't done much marketing on this
yet, but we should. I'm trying to figure out the narratives now. Two of those entities are now
publicly traded companies on the NASDAQ. So Galaxy uplisted two weeks ago, and Antalpha also
IPO'd on NASDAQ two weeks ago, two days before Galaxy. So when we look at the Bitcoin 5 problem,
we want to come in and say, hey, we are offering, and I hate the word wrapped because wrapped means static, idle, passive.
We, to our namesake, are trying to create this version of functional assets, right?
That's proactive, programmable, highly productive, right?
Around BTC.
And it's a functional BTC asset backed by two NASDAQ listed companies right that's
securing the underlying BTC and that is able to route to the most high integrity yield on Bitcoin
and when I say high integrity you're not going to see anything that's north of 10 percent plus
because those inevitably will just fade away.
So we are on the hunt for something that's reliable, something like a baseline 3% to
5%, 3% to 6% that you know will always generate that amount.
And it's not easy to do, but we're exploring narratives all around, right?
On RWA's, around Bitcoin treasury companies, like what MicroStrategy and MetaPlan are doing.
And of course, we're also working hand-in-hand with Mantle, right?
To become that, for Mantle to further its narrative as a liquidity hub,
for people to go to Mantle in order to access
this type of baseline yield consistently.
So no, there was a lot, but hopefully that answers your question.
Absolutely.
Thank you, Thomas.
Well, I would follow up on that actually because you mentioned the programmability, security,
custody, things like that.
Like in the functionality of Bitcoin, like with FBDs, it's easy aiming to enhance Bitcoin's utility and DeFi.
I'm just curious about your view.
How do you balance the trade-off between introducing programmability to the Bitcoin core versus preserving it in terms of the security and decentralization.
I'm just curious about it on that.
Sure. So to be specific, we're not a protocol. Today, we are just an asset issuer.
So you give me one BTC to my deposit address, right, to Mint, and then we will mint you a
functional BTC token, it's the ERC20, right, on ETH mainnet, for example, to your address.
So when I say programmable, I don't mean like smart contract programmability.
The way that I've viewed it today is if you have, if you're active for those on the call,
if you're an active user of Bitcoin DeFi, you'll know that the experience is often very fragmented, meaning,
okay, you go to this new campaign, it's got, I don't know, like 20 or new protocol, there's like
20 different volts, right, with varying amounts of yield. And then there's like 50 point programs.
I find it hard to believe that anyone can keep track of this stuff,
right? Unless you're an institutional liquid hedge fund that's dedicated to farming yields,
right? You have the capacity and the manpower and the attention and capability to do so.
So when I say programmability, I really mean like there has to be a very simple way where Bitcoin
DeFi almost looks extremely simple.
So the way that I envision it
is an on-chain Bitcoin earn program,
because legally I cannot say
that it's high yield savings, right?
Because we're not.
But you can imagine it as an on-chain earn program
where it's TradFi compliant with the Web2 UI UX, right?
Similar to what Mantle is doing with their UR bank. And it's got that DeFi
mullet in the back, right? That DeFi capital efficiency in the back. And it routes to just,
you know, do you want the passive strategy? Do you want the balanced strategy? Or do you want
the aggressive strategy? And it routes to the most optimal strategy based off of your risk profile.
So that's what I mean by programmability, not that the asset itself is. That said, however, we do differentiate because the asset is governable. So unlike
wrapped assets today, or if you're going to interact with LSTs, you give them the BTC and
it's often to an omnibus address or omnibus account and it's their multisit, you have no
idea what they're doing with it, right? There's no visibility on chain one-to-one um the way that we work with the LSTs and why
people use FBTC to go into the name your favorite Bitcoin LST is because number one
we actually don't give up full custody of the underlying asset. So you can actually see on chain that your FBTC
rather is still one-to-one at this address, right? So these LSTs cannot do anything nefarious with it.
So the transparency and verifiability. And then number two, we've set it up in such a way with
these LSTs in partnership that the underlying BTC is only routed or only whitelisted permissible to do Babylon staking.
So it's governable in that sense as well.
And then on a security side, yes, the underlying security assumption, obviously with WBTC is
BitGlobal, which is a civility with Justin Sun.
For Coinbase, it's 100% Coinbase, right?
But I would say those two are more passive
in their promotion, right?
The way that they've operated to date,
as I've observed is,
hey, here's CBVDC or even CBE, right?
How many of you guys know
that Coinbase has a CBE product?
But they're not playing the,
hey, I'm going to promote this product.
It's more of a, okay, I've created it for you, but they're not playing the, hey, I'm going to promote this product. It's more
of a, okay, I've created it for you, DIY, like a Home Depot, up to you to figure out what you want
to do with it and construct. We want to vertically integrate a lot of that and look more like an
Ikea, if you will, where you show up with an MNT token or with a BDC or FBDC token, right?
with an MNT token or with a BTC or FBTC token, right?
You click stake with one button and, you know, magic happens, so to speak.
And then you get yield in return.
Thank you, Thomas.
I'm actually, I apologize for the confusion of the question.
Actually, I'm not asking from the protocol's perspective in terms of the programmability. I'm actually curious about your own view with regards to the introduction of the programmability into the Bitcoin core.
But anyway, I think you gave a really clear and detailed explanation about the FBDC.
And I just have one more question
upon that.
You said, like,
in terms of what you mentioned,
the sustainability of a certain narrative.
So what's the view,
like, in terms of where are we
or in terms of the BDC-Py development stages?
Yeah. Where are we in terms of the BDZPY development stages? I would say it is a...
So I would say BitcoinPY and any game in DeFi is really a function of two things.
It's a function of how do I lower my cost of capital, right? Because Bitcoin is the best form of collateral. And so often it's used as collateral to borrow stable coins, whether they're USDC, USDT, or their yield bearing and give you return like USDE or USDG, which is a newcomer.
USDG, which is a newcomer.
So of course, you want to lower your cost of capital when you're using BTC or FBTC to borrow these assets.
And then on the other side, you want to maximize your yield to your risk profile.
And so I would say in this current setup, the different types of yield in DeFi, endogenous to DeFi, it's hard.
I would say it's, if you look at the size of WBDC plus VBDC plus FBDC, which I think is about probably 200K BTC in total,
I would say my view is that is the current you can throw some assumptions around it
right if you say that it's mostly a whale game and an institutional game on on wrapped assets
um i would say it's it's probably like around 100 whales with that amount of btTC and it's just moving around.
I am starting to be more interested in TradFi because TradFi has way deeper liquidity
and it's packaged in such a way.
I mean, this is funny, right?
I think I'll leave you with this.
The funny narrative that I'm seeing come to light is
for those in a Bitcoin DeFi,
everyone's looking for yield
and the new narrative is actually less
on the bitcoin staking but more rwas so there's a lot of trad fi participants that are looking
at crypto and saying oh i can tokenize this rwa and you know get a yield and meanwhile over here
in bitcoin vegas there's a lot of dFi people looking at TradFi and turning TradFi companies,
whether they've listed on NASDAQ or elsewhere, taking them over, turning them into Bitcoin
treasury companies, turning them into DeFi wrappers, ironically, and tapping into liquidity
there. So it would be funny to see how this shakes out, but I feel like the two sides are trying to
capitalize really around the same thing, which is yield, but they're doing it in a little bit it'll be funny to see how this shakes out but i feel like the two sides are trying to capitalize
really around the same thing which is yield but they're doing it in in a little bit different um
different ways thank you thomas i i think that's a great look at like how function bdc is shaking up like bd is fine and i think it's clear that likeos and Functions are thinking really big, not just about Ethereum or BBM chains, but also about making assets like the BDC flow freely across the entire ecosystem.
So yeah, I actually want to shift back into another hot topic like which is the AI. AI is obviously a massive narrative in crypto right now.
I think Mento is leaning on it with the MentoX.
So Alvin, back to the time, can you
share how MentoX plans to integrate AI
with DeFi or maybe in areas like liquidity
or optimization or like new generation as well.
And are there any specific AI-driven projects or partnerships lined up this year?
Yeah, for mental acts, actually we don't have much data so far, but we will explore the kind of instructions of AI and DeFi.
So we will call it DeFi AI.
And the goal is to use the AI to bring more smart capital allocations and also to align our liquidity chain and also on-chain finance steps.
So we will provide more personalized users' capital allocations, but also generate more
yields and adaptive risk management to the on-chain finance.
So for the liquidity optimization, AI modes can dramatically predict the user's demand and also DAX activities.
And it helps us and also the partner protocols locate liquidity more efficiency.
And for the U-generations, in the ideal ways, we will recommend the optimized use
strategy and shift the access between staking, lending,
and other different DeFi protocols
based on the real data and the use.
In terms of user experience, ideally, we will provide the one set stop solutions for users to give them monitoring their profile or so power to something like the AI chat. some experiments when we hold some events last year.
It's called AI Fest.
We have some collaboration with different AI protocols
such as the scope chat, Nalien and ETC.
So a lot of the protocols are also complete the TG this year.
So back to last year, we have also a lot,
I'll attract a lot of users to try out some AI agent
and also the chat styles AI.
So we saw a lot of the potential to use the AI on chain.
That's why we are building such functions called
MentalX. But for now, we don't have much details to
post for users to know. But we are planning to roll out
maybe end of this year for these products.
So I think if you're interested,
or still can follow our official data
or our blogs to get more details.
Thank you, Alvin.
I think that was a really incredible deep dive
into both mentors and functions, f fissions and products and before we
wrap up i actually want to touch a bit a little bit on the or the mnt token as well or it's not
financial advice but because i think it's the key piece of password as well or unlike many our l2s
that use our e for gas our mentor uses MNT, which gives it a unique
weather proposition as well.
And I think what's really cool
is that the token structure,
because all uncirculating tokens
are actually managed by the community
through the treasury,
and there's no future unlocks.
Compared to our quite many other
L2s with massive unlocks are compared to or quite many other L2s with massive unlock schedules. I think
M&T's low market pressure makes it really healthy at best for the long-term growth,
especially as you can see from this high market cap to FDE ratio. And here is some output for
And here is some output for everyone listening.
Because at Kornix, we're actually running our mental MNT mining campaign from May 26th to May 30th.
And that's right, you've got one day left only.
But you can still stick on the CET token, like our platform token or MNT to share the pool.
So come take a look and join the mining campaign as well.
So, yeah.
So thank you, Elvin Thomas.
It's a great conversation with you guys.
And I think I'll pass the time back to Vivian
who will have the Q&A section as well.
All right.
Thank you, gentlemen, Alvin and Thomas.
Thank you for your insights.
And also, obviously, Jeff with their comments, insights, and also their questions.
They are absolutely lovely.
Actually, we were debating on which kind of questions we were like talking about um from
the community because they are actually pretty ace um so all claps for the listeners and
participants um so i think there is one that's kind of creating a little spark but also a little
bit of a uh something that elvin and thomas can also like um have your say really. So this one is from Echo.
So E-C-H-O underscore T-shirt, T-I-S-H-A.
From this participant, they have this question.
Elvin, Thomas, I think you guys can have a choose
on how you would like to share this.
Web3 keeps promising to help everyone.
But what about people in places with barely any internet
or don't get any tech at all?
How's Mantle making sure Function BTC and MNT token
aren't just for crypto bros,
but actually reach those who actually need financial access the most?
I think it's a bit of a spark but i want you guys
to kind of comment on your stance i can i can tell me that one first thomas sure yeah so i think you
just start with how do you acquire fbtc in the first place and i think for these locations where it's tough for users of Internet,
I think it'll be tough for them to explore on chain products in general.
Right.
So what I mean by that is has to be packaged up and served to them
in such a way that they're familiar, right, whether it's a simple banking
application or anything like that.
And the one analogy I'll give is right now we have a partnership with
Bybit. And on the Bybit website, if you're a Bybit user, you can go to the earn page and you can
click a simple button and stake your BTC for 2% APR, right, for 45 days. You have no idea
that it's actually FBdc plumbing the background helping
you generate yield on your btc so what i mean by that is we are actively packaging that as a as a
pilot program we're packaging that as a product and working with these btc retail platforms so
my vision would be it would be more of a collaboration of sorts with the local BDC retail platform, exchange, brokerage, right, for that user to download.
Because, you know, I don't have a big budget, unfortunately, so I can't market to retail directly.
But working with like a CoinX and where CoinX users are, right, or pick your favorite local exchange in Latinin america right they can for them they get a
bitcoin earn as a product for their users in a simple integration and their users also start
earning on their btc as well thank you very much thomas and hopefully that will also answer your
question echo and elvin would you like to comment on this question as well?
Yeah, for M&T, we are in a lot of the exchange.
So also we are doing the events with CoinEx.
For the reward part, we are running just the mentioned, we are running the mining,
there's one day left, you can get the reward from CoinEx now. And we're also running the
Unchained reward stations, users can lock their MNT and get a return from our reward stations users can lock their M&T and get a return from our reward stations.
We have now 1.5 million M&T rewards.
And in the past, we are giving out 65 million rewards to M&T holders.
And in the future, all our products will benefit M&T holder as well.
So we will see the, I think, it's more utilities for our M&T,
but also generate more use for the M&T holder as well.
Amazing.
Thank you very much.
Yes, M&T has also listed with us guys coinx and also
like jeff have mentioned uh the mining side is also here i've already participated since day one
um because you know mining is always an exciting game and also um i would also uh like to uh
have one more question um because I love this participant.
I've actually been listening throughout and from Lucy Loveland,
L-U-C-Y-L-O-V-E-L-Y-N is their comment says,
love Thomas breakdown on how these yield are generated.
All these yield are generated.
High integrity yield are cool.
However, would you guys mind sharing some of the risks associated with these strategies?
Yeah, so I think the short answer is no one's really figured out this high integrity yield
and where it's coming from sustainably, which is why people are still looking at RWAs and TradFi. There's a few risks involved, right? And there's smart contract risk,
counterparty risk, duration risk, right? If you're locking it up in like Babylon and you need to
unstake it because the market goes south in the other direction.
A lot of it is probably hidden around counterparty and credit risk. If it's in DeFi,
then you know exactly, call it the threshold limits for your collateralized loan on Aave,
right? So you can get liquidated, et cetera. But when you're lending and there's a lot of these actively managed hedge funds that say, hey, I can generate north of 10% on BTC if you give me BTC or north of 15% if you give me stables, right?
And on some regards, the math could work.
But then the question is, what are they doing with it, right?
A lot of times they're just running leverage looping strategies or they're deploying onto multiple exchanges.
they're just running leveraged looping strategies or they're deploying onto multiple exchanges.
And when they're deploying multiple exchanges, you have counterparty risk that the hedge fund
doesn't run away with it. But they might say like, okay, I'm using a hidden road type platform.
Then you have to do due diligence on hidden road and what kind of platform they are and what kind
of permissions. And then when hedge funds are running these strategies on the exchanges,
oftentimes when it's on an exchange, it's centralized and opaque.
Right. You don't actually know how much they're taking out in terms of margin or where their strategies are.
So I guess it's to say that there's a bit of a fragmented reality on the other side of how people are generating these returns.
I have no doubt that they are. Right. But then the question is, okay, can this hedge fund take in 100 million to run the strategy? Not sure. So there hasn't been,
to me, a very native, clean way to do it in DeFi. And maybe it's just because DeFi just hasn't
grown to that size where there's enough primitives and enough TradFi type liquidity and institutions
are coming in, right? So maybe it's just a function of time. But for us, we're certainly hesitant to throw our eggs
into one basket for a certain narrative, right? Which is why we don't have an LST. If we had an
LST, I think now we will be looking at the space and thinking, number one, how do we continue to
feed this narrative that FBTC provides, I'm just gonna make this up, at least 6% of yield, right?
I have to constantly look for yield structures that are on the higher end of the risk curve.
And then number two, we're pretty small teams.
We just don't have the bandwidth of resources to figure out the administrative overhead, you know, across 50 points campaigns.
Understood. Thank you very much thank you thomas for the detailed answer um and hopefully uh lucy
loveland uh thomas has answered your questions um about the race associated with the strategies that
thomas has mentioned earlier during the ama all right All right. I think I do appreciate Elvin, Thomas and Jeff's time.
And I also just would like to remind the participants
to reach out to our BDA account
if there's any other following inquiries,
any collaboration opportunities.
And thank you so much for your time, gentlemen.
And yeah, if you guys have anything that uh you guys would
like to you know shout out or who like see who you want to have an ama next we'll try our best
to reach out um as well um so yeah let's let's go for it and like jeff had just mentioned as well
um the mining side for mnt could do do a bit of support as well from there on and yeah have a great day great uh evening
ahead of you guys so have have a great one thank you everyone thank you and um guys do you want to
have a little uh you know comment on anything else that you guys uh want to before you know saying
wrap up and bye goodbye to everybody
elvin thomas Or, you know, saying wrap up and goodbye to everybody?
Alvin Thomas?
Good for me.
Yeah, I would say stay tuned. I think the energy here at Bitcoin Vegas is very jubilant, I would say,
is very jubilant, I would say,
around this whole Bitcoin treasury stuff.
So a little bit way more than Toronto consensus.
So I'll just keep track of what comes out of Bitcoin Vegas
because I think we'll start seeing more of an overlap
between TradFi and DeFi.
Absolutely.
That's something that we also look forward to as well. So amazing. Thank you very much, gentlemen, and have a great one ahead. Thank you. Thank you all participants and listeners. Cheers. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Goodbye.
Good night. Goodbye. Thank you.
