We will see you in the next session.
Hello everybody just had some minor issues with X couldn't log in through my
iPhone so I had to go through my
Android phone, but anyhow
So thank you very much for coming here
This X basis with the Belladrome team. So we got here Alexander
Hopefully that was gonna join us in a couple of minutes as well
But anyhow, hey GM GM GE. I don't know what time zone you're in Alexander, but uh, welcome
Thank you so much, it's very good to be here
Perfect so so we've been we've been
tweeting sharing and and talking about our integration with and in the optimism ecosystem and
Belladrome is just one of them
It's one of the the key ecosystem partners for for the op
Some some of you might be already familiar with it
But if not, then Alexander, please
Explain to us what Belladrome is
How you guys and your team got started and a little bit of background on yourself
Whatever you can share without getting yourself doxxed
Well, I'm already fairly doxxed so yeah happy happy to give a bit of an introduction to myself and to Belladrome
Yeah, my journey to DeFi, you know was was pretty twisty-turning. I
Started my career working in politics and campaigns. I spent some time working in
big tech and then in consulting and then I think so much
similar to so many people
You know, I just started playing around in DeFi and was having so much fun was was learning so much
sufficient to make me just want to do that full-time and in one form or another so I I
Quit my job. I jumped deep into DeFi. I had no idea what that was actually literally gonna mean for my life
You know if I was gonna have to go crawling back to normal job again in a few months or or how it would
Sort of play out, but I'm very lucky in that. I met a great group of folks
who are all part of the initial launch of
Solidly on Phantom. We got to know one another and before we knew it we were launching Belladrome on optimism and
What is Belladrome? I think that the best way to think about it is that it is a
Decentralized exchange that combines the best parts of curve convicts and
Uniswap into a single streamlined design so it has some familiar elements from curve
Tokens each week to liquidity providers those tokens that can be taped
They can be taken locked used to vote to direct those emissions
You know rather than you know, depending on your preference for
Uni B2 style DEX's all of those AMM types are sort of built into one
streamlined package and you know that what that is
Accomplished is it is made Belladrome sort of the the leading liquidity layer on optimism
We also supported of course the launch of aerodrome on base, which is the largest
Protocol on base. And so yeah, we're we're very very happy to be here to talk a little bit more about it
Perfect perfect. Thank you very much. Alexander. So so yeah, I think we're also a metaphor just recently
Bridge our liquid staking token MPE to
To OP there's a little bit of background noise on your side Alexander
Anyhow, so for us it's that that was the first initial step just trying to get into the the optimism ecosystem and definitely
once we've breached our asset, then it's all about
having having the support from one of the largest decks over in the OP stack and definitely that's Belladrome, so
Definitely. That was our first step into into allocating
some some of the liquidity from from our meta from MPE over to the OP stack and so with this we started with a
A-bault over at Belladrome really excited about this one. You can see that pinned over in in
In the in the spaces, which is rap eth with MPE. It has our 29% APR
So that's folks. I want to get access also to a liquid staking token over on the OP stack
Without the need to go and stake ETH over in in in mainnet. They can go ahead and do so by buying
MPEs right from Belladrome. So really excited about that one more importantly for us
It's a chance to also engage the optimism ecosystem and try to to bring
those folks interesting in the in
emerging markets, right? And so this is where we think there's a lot of
White space to to grow and also for new platforms to be onboarded into into this region, right?
We had a initial spaces with optimism in Espanol
We invited Thabo from your team as well to be there and we discussed like the opportunities around
how DeFi can be a source of
And I'm not gonna say a source of
Growth more. So it's a source of it's a tool for survival, right?
And so this is very important for folks in emerging markets
Sorry about it. Got my kid here a little bit sick. So she's not doing that
Well, you might hear some noises in the background, but anyhow, hopefully everything's gonna be fine
Taking her to the doctor in a few minutes. But anyhow
so one of one of the important things here that we discussed was there's really no source of
Access to financial derivatives in the emerging markets, right? That's
Everything everything is set up for the one percent the top one percent and
That makes it very difficult for folks to find source of wealth creation
In in this in these regions now
What DeFi brings is access in a decentralized manner and more importantly
Ownership of the assets ownership of the value being created and this is something that is not typical in this region
right most of it, like I said is it's for the 1% and so
Here we are creating tools for survival, right?
And more importantly for folks to really become sovereign individuals of the value they create online
And so for us is just that initial step right and it's of course accessibility
We know right now gas prices over an ETH mainnet are impossible, right? I was
Something on uni on uni swap and it's like twenty thirty dollars for a swap
So lending another thing right twenty five dollars twenty six dollars. That's
Impossible in emerging markets. It's just not it's not it's not suited for that type of audience
And so here I think it's where OP the OP stack shines and where Belladrom's come comes in
I would like to know a little bit more about this. How do you see?
Belladrom grow in emerging markets and how do you find that narrative behind it Alexander?
Yeah, I mean you are of course describing I think very well
What are some of the reasons all of us are are in this space right and why is so attractive that?
That we're building, you know, totally
These mechanisms are permissionless. They're accessible
Everyone is sort of equal
They don't have the same same weight or structure associated with them
Some of which has you know, kind of created these not great outcomes in the past and so
It's what makes the space I think
So exciting right that that we have an opportunity to solve very real problems in in new ways
we're in a unique position because I think as a
You know, our role is really to support
All of these right, you know
Dex is really infrastructure for for the rest of you all and for for the broader ecosystem and so
We of course build by the like deepest DeFi principles are contracts are totally immutable
A lot of people take shortcuts there these days, but you know, that's been a principle of ours
They are accessible to everybody in the ecosystem
You know, all you need is a is a wallet and some gas to start using them
But once you evolve from there, you know, we're all about growing
These ecosystems and so, you know when when folks like you guys come and say hey, you know
We're just looking for a way to to grow we're looking for a way to give more people access to the things that we're doing
How can you guys help us to do that? I think that's where we really shine, right?
We can come talk to you about optimism the sort of
overall vision of that ecosystem
The role in which like retroactive public goods is built into the very core the way in which the super chain
You know presents this opportunity to scale
Ethereum in ways that we haven't seen before really make it possible for for more mass market type products
You know and hopefully in doing that right we set you all up to be be successful
We make it easier for you to you know
Have deep liquidity on your token to introduce yourselves to new people and sort of all of that fun stuff
Let's play what once I go he's doing a game
Hey folks, sorry about that. I don't know it's
X is acting really weird. Sorry about that Alexander
What the hell is happening here, but anyhow no worries, okay, so
Tell us a little about about your governance structure and bellow. I think that's a very interesting
The token omics behind below drum I think for for some of our listeners who are just hearing about bellow
and bellow drum, I think it's important for you to describe where value creation has been allocated to the
to the users of the platform and
If there's any governance around it also, please explain
I think that's something really really interesting and that here in the medical doubt. We're really fond of projects that have
That are putting token holders front and center of everything they do and I reckon a decks
You it's it's a source of livelihood, right? The amount of LPs that you have the tokens that they're depositing
I think the the point that you've made of immutable contracts
I think that's super important and people need to be aware that if a contract is upgradable
The chances of a user or an LP getting rugged are pretty high
So yeah, really bullish on on bellow and the commitment that you have to keeping users fun secure
Yeah, I can talk a little bit about it so I mean yes
I think you know sort of from the first order here is that yes
The the contracts and the protocol is immutable and so, you know
What that means is, you know, we can't go in there and change major assumptions
We can't go in there and mint more tokens, you know, we can't
Sort of majorly shift this moving machine, right and that
Gives you a bit of security and in the sense of like, you know
That reduces the chance that bad actors or an exploit could potentially result in in like the the loss of funds
But it also means that people can participate in the system
Knowing exactly how the system works and the system will continue to work, right?
If you are if you are jumping into a system whereby the rules are always changing
You have to sort of bake a whole different set of risks and assumptions into that versus one where hey
You know code is law in this case. And so this is how the system works. And so if you opt in to participation
You know will continue to work that way. So let's let's dive into like very specifically what that means. I
Think the whole point right of us building
Decentralized systems is that
Or the the beauty of them is that that means these things could work
even if you know those of us who
We're part of the the development of the underlying code were to disappear
right the code would continue to live on to operate as it is and
It can only do that if there are active participants basically
Ensure that the protocol operates as it should. So how does that work on velodrome?
Basically what what you have is is a system by which every week there's a pool of emissions
So those are new Velo tokens, right that that are minted and each week the Velo holders the VE Velo holders
So those people have locked their tokens for four years get to choose which pools to direct those emissions to
Those are the rewards for liquidity provider
So if you direct a lot of emissions to a pool, it will attract a lot of TVL
If you direct a few emissions to the pool, it'll attract less and those pools by virtue
Then you have traders swapping
liquidity providers and they're providing that liquidity in exchange for those tokens and all the
The cool part about below is all of the fees all of that value that that's being created. There is being
To the voters. So, you know, why do you show up each week in velodrome to ensure that it's
Optimally distributing its rewards. It's not out of the kindness of your own heart, you know
Maybe it is but doesn't have to be it's not out of like some sort of principal detachment to decentralization
It's that the system has designed incentives
To make it such that you want to show up and you want to choose the most productive pools the highest rewarded pools
to direct emissions to and then that creates a natural
An automated sort of self-optimizing mechanism to the system such that yeah
You don't really need a team in place to keep that flywheel going right?
You don't you don't need all of this other stuff. And so I think it's very very cool
And you know you see people across the space
You know, I think often, you know, it's almost become a meme right this idea of
The the uni swap fee switch of like when will they turn on the fee switch?
When will uni holders, you know
have some sort of incentive flowing from the protocol to them and
That have that by virtue of not like hard coding that thing in it's a question of if it will ever
Exist right and curve, you know what they did is they they said 50% of the the fees will go to the liquidity
Providers and 50% will go to voters but that 50% that goes to voters that's gonna be socialized amongst them
So everybody gets the same amount
Proportional to their their voting power so you could be voting for you know, the highest volume pool on curve
That's generating a hundred thousand dollars worth of rewards or you could be voting for like your pet token
That's doing no volume. No fees generating a hundred dollars of rewards
You're gonna get the same amount of rewards at the end of that as a voter
And so the system doesn't optimize for performance, right? It doesn't self optimize for the most productive pools. And so
When we think about governance, you know, it really is it's not like
Not forums it's not any of that it's that in the end this protocol the mechanisms mechanisms behind it are are very simple
The people that control them are the token lockers and all of the rewards generated go back to those token lockers as an incentive
Right, let's keep it as simple as possible
So I think that's what makes it that's what makes velodrome so exciting and I and it's why you see it actually
You know velodrome aerodrome are often up there in the the top ten
Protocols in all of DeFi in terms of rewards flowing to token lockers because there there's no
Nobody sort of cutting those rewards in half. There's nothing going to a treasury. There's none of that, right? It is just
Everything generated all those rewards from state
LPs and all that sort of stuff. That's all flowing to the token lockers. That's the incentive. They need to participate
That's why the system works
Thank you very much, I think that that's like a through
Throughout explanation on how velodrome works and I think it's important right for folks to understand
That this is not just a walk in the park, right?
And where that is used and where that is used
and where velodrome is created for the platform, because at the end of the day
you would need to build a platform
Any planning platform, right?
And we got asked that question yesterday during a spaces with this with
Espacio Crypto, right? It's like, okay, how do you find sustainability?
And so I think it's important for folks to understand that at the end of the day is
One that you provide a secure environment for folks to do trading for folks to also reap the rewards as an LP and
more importantly for those rewards and also very importantly their funds to be secure and
Then have a say as well on the platform, right? I think that's something very very
Has been a tough lesson learned this couple of years, right? We've seen the different big platforms grow and
Governance starting to be very much at a stay us at a standstill, right?
We see maker Dow as well, right? Those governance structures are quite
Difficult to navigate once you have what once you reach these certain growth
and also very importantly
Become one of the main liquidity providers as well, right? And so with velodrome tell us a little bit
Tell us a little bit more on other partnerships that you're excited about for bellow
Bellow token holders and more importantly for the optimism ecosystem
So I think one way to think about velodrome
Is that we are kind of the the front door of the ecosystem?
So if you are protocol that's thinking about building on layer twos
If you are a protocol already on optimism or on another l2 or l1 looking to move over
We are basically, you know, we might be reaching out to you and saying hey, come on over
You might reach out to us and then we say here's why you should come here and get started
And so, you know, we're really excited about bringing as many people as possible to optimism
That that we are about to make
Velodrome is going to begin to extend into the optimism super chain
And so if you're not familiar with the optimism super chain
It's basically the idea of an interconnected
set of individual chains all built on the same underlying technology stack the the Opie stack that
interoperable and scale to the point where
you know all of the differences from a UX standpoint in terms of
Moving between them operating between them are are abstracted away
So it doesn't feel like multi chain or cross chain
It truly feels like one chain but with the benefit of each of these individual chains
Being able to operate independently tweak the underlying assumptions associated with them
So you could build like a
Opie stack chain optimized for a game you could build an Opie stack chain
Optimized for defy you could you know do all of these different sort of things a social media app farcaster
Of course is in the process of building one world coins in the process of building one
But for this to work, they all need to work together be connected. And so
That's where somebody like velodrome
Comes into the picture where one of the great needs when you do sort of
Have these separate but interoperable chains is that liquidity so that the tokens the ability to access the tokens trade the tokens
Incentivize the tokens that make up these different ecosystems that can't be fractured, right?
You you can't have a tiny bit of opie liquidity in one place and a tiny bit in another place and and you're needing to
Bridge and swap and do all this sort of stuff in order to move between the chains. So
Going to be be basically the the primary the central liquidity hub of the super chain and
What that means most tangibly
In the near term is that you're going to begin to see velodrome
Extend its presence on to new blockchains building on the opie stack
So, you know one one great example that we're talking to right now is is mode network
Mode is building a very cool model
whereby you know referrals whereby
sequence of revenue generation is returned back to the protocols and individuals that that are doing that work and and that's
Enforced kind of on a on a contractual level. So there's there's sort of a built-in
Incentive and funding mechanism
directly into the network and as they begin to ramp up and they begin to grow
We will basically, you know extend to chains like them so that velodrome can sort of service the liquidity needs there
Just in the same way. It serves as the liquidity needs on optimism and by virtue of that
It being the same primary liquidity layer make it very easy for for those chains to incentivize
Users to move between them. So you could imagine a world where
Mode is incentivizing its liquidity pools highly on on velodrome and thus the voters are voting to direct the emissions
Protocols and users are moving to the chain where the emissions and rewards are highest
And other chains are also competing in that way. And so it gets to this very exciting future
But once again, the idea is, you know, you don't have to leave the the security of velodrome
You know in order to to do that. It's the first step towards that idea of the multi chain
components are beginning to
Disappear into the background and in the end you're just participating
Like as a VE velo voter in directing incentives optimally across the super chain and you will take your rewards
You know from whatever super chain is the highest bidder
Nice nice. Yeah, like super excited about the super chain, right the OP stack. I think it's something that
Is yeah, I think it's following a little bit kind of like that the the cosmos
Roadmap right and and and and for optimism to become the osmosis of the OP stack
That's super bullish on on what you're building. So definitely congrats
Really excited about everything
A velodrome related in the next couple of weeks and months
Do you want to is your team gonna be heading to East Denver or maybe East LATAM or some of the ethereum events?
If you want to show that if you got any any online events as well
Feel free to to show no worries about that. Alexander is the is the meta pulled out community getting to know you and so definitely
We have team members all over the world and so we do our best to ensure that that
Dropping into the different conferences
It really is a great opportunity. I think to put faces to names
Right. There are people who you know, I will have spent a year speaking to
That I have no idea what they look like what they sound like and and it can just be so much fun to
actually meet up in person and get to know one another and and that's of course where a lot of ideas get hatched and
Cool things happen. It was actually
Eat Denver last year that we were meeting with the the optimism team
And with the base team and the initial plan for for aerodrome came together
So, you know, we'll definitely have a presence in these places
no, like formal events or anything like that planned right now, but
Yeah, we we love being there and it will be exciting to see what comes out of this year's
Perfect perfect. So I think it's a I think part of this
Space is also to bring up some folks from the audience. I want to ask questions
I think that's one of the cool things about this
Format. So if anybody wants to come up and ask a question to either us or the velodrome team go right ahead
I think that's an opportunity right now to get in front of the mic
So raise your hand and for sure we'll bring you up
Okay, so we'll continue with this spaces right now
one of the good things that we've
Few years that we building we've been building on blockchain technology. It's just the
how the compounding effect of
The different tokens once their pair and and and and brought to to a
To a dex right and so here I'm a little bit shilling my our own our own token, right?
So MPE as you know is a liquid staking token on ETH mainnet. It is accruing in value every second. So it allows
The user that is has delegated its ethereum to start earning the staking rewards every second
so it makes it also very easy for folks to also fast on stake or delayed on stake and get all the
Staking rewards at any given moment in time. So you don't have to wait a full-on epoch
And so that's why we've we built this thinking of folks in emergent markets
Right that cannot wait all the way to a full-on epoch or 24 hours to get their rewards
If you're like if you're staking with MP or you get access to an MP token
You just rest assured that that tokens value is being accrued. The second rewards are being accrued every second. So
pairing this up with the wrap wrap ETH is a is a is a nice way for folks to get extra extra APY
Liquidity pool as well and on top of that you'll get the staking rewards as well
so I think that's one of the things that we're looking forward to keep expanding and we're gonna make our our
Proposal to the optimism community to have an OP
Liquidity pool soon. So hopefully they'll get voted. We'll get some OP rewards on top of that as well
So that's one of the next steps just giving a little bit of alpha to all our folks listening right now
So we're just getting our feet wet. We start with some a simple
Pair and then we're gonna go and hopefully we'll have some bellow MPs as well
Alexander from your point of view like what are some of the most exciting tokens coming in into the optimism
Stacked and that Belladrone will soon be supporting as well. We want to give some a little bit of alpha for folks here
Get a get something out of this
Spaces and and come out of that excited about what's coming and more importantly the new projects that you're gonna be supporting also in
I'm probably a little bit limited in what I can share in terms of
what's coming up, but I think what I can share, you know for folks if
if you're just not as familiar with the optimism ecosystem, I can maybe just just highlight some
Tokens or things within the ecosystem that might be worth checking out
So, of course, you know one of the easiest ways if you've never used velodrome before just to get started
And to experiment a little bit is to provide liquidity
Obviously, you can provide liquidity
Metapool pools on on velodrome, but there are certainly a lot of other protocols
You can then earn back those
Fellow tokens if you're interested in getting deeper into the flywheel you can lock them
You can begin to vote and direct emissions and all the stuff
we've we've already spoken to but yes, if you have not already spent some time in optimism and
They are of course one of the largest though currently the largest protocol
Building on on optimism. They likewise have a have a number of other protocols sort of built off their underlying
technology like Lyra like failures and
Like Quinta if you're looking at sort of that the leverage trading kind of stuff
So there's a lot of great options
You know if you just want to keep it simple and and provide liquidity
There's there's ways to do that auto compounders
You could look at tarot or extra finance
Our great options or beefy is another good one
But you know, I really think you know my personal opinion. This is this is how I
learned so much or got into defy is like it can be just very enriching at times to
Scroll through, you know, some of the top tokens on on something like velodrome because the the vast majority of
Of the ecosystem are on velodrome. So you just scroll through them, you know drop them into
something like coin gecko learn the protocol that they're attached to and
Then just go play around with it
right and and see what you can do and earn rewards and take those rewards and
Begin to LP within and earn more rewards. It's like you can read about all of these protocols
Endlessly, but there's really nothing that compares quite to the experience of just trying things right playing around with things
And so I definitely recommend it
Optimism is it got a very diverse ecosystem
It's also very cheap. Of course to transact on layer 2 aetherium
To be honest, I I barely have the stomach for going to mainnet these days after just experiencing the
Speed and cheapness of transactions and by the way with EIP 4844
Transactions are about to get a whole lot cheaper on on layer 2's which is super exciting
I would say if you haven't tried optimism bridge something over start playing around with velodrome play around with some of these other protocols and
Yes, we will be bringing more and more protocols to the table as things evolve
Excellent excellent. Thank you very much
Alexander so let's try to open up the mic if anybody has any questions
Please raise your hand come up on stage and ask your question either to the medical team or to the velodrome team
It's I think we've we've done a good good
Back and forth on the opie stack on what's coming for velodrome how medical is integrating with the opie
Ecosystem as well as well as with velodrome. So really really excited for what the next few months are coming in
There seems to be some some some feedback from the community in regards to usability right the UX behind
I know that it's it's not easy right to create a seamless experience
Don't know if you can you can shine some like there if if the experience is gonna is gonna be a little bit
I don't know not jumping through hoops. I reckon there's there's a few
There's always the room from improvement
But at the end of the day, that's gonna be that's something every protocol and and and and every platform is is
A battle from from the day zero, right? How can we make this seamless?
How can we make this secure at the same time? And how do we give?
Solvering individuals full control of the assets, but I think UX is something that
We're still continuing to to work on and I don't know if you want to shine some like there, Alexander
Yeah, so the the biggest focus for us in
In UX is is trying to be sure that at every step of the journey
You know that the actions that you know the actions that you are taking and
so often when it comes to exploits or
Places where where people end up
Losing funds, right? It has to do with somebody has hidden in
By virtue of you just not knowing what you're doing
When you're taking a particular action, you can do something. That's that's irreversible and
You know the the primary I think organizing principle for us on velodrome is that whether you are a very
Experienced DeFi user or whether you're just getting started when you are doing something like a token swap
We're not going to embed in that token swap
You know four different transactions, right?
It would be appealing just to make that a one-click sort of thing you click it once you get four transactions in front of you
You sign through them really quick and the rest happens. What we're gonna try to do is
Kind of educate you along the way of hey, you've got to approve access to token a you've got to approve access to token B
approving access is of course one of the
Primary inflection points for security if you approve unlimited you're at major risk if you
Don't know what you are approving. You're at major risk. So we're gonna walk you through that
We're gonna check things off as you go, right to sort of show you gone through the necessary steps
And then we're gonna give you the option to you know
conduct that swap or deposit that that LP and and the hope is that you know
If you're an experienced user already mindful of all of this as a security, you know
What token approvals are all that it's just reassuring just to see it all
Displayed and clear and easy to understand
but if you're a new user, you're really kind of just learning how defy works and
That is going to be something that's going to you know
Empower you as you're using other protocols and things like that
If there are other things, you know about the the experience that are ever confusing or
You think could be better, you know, definitely join our discord
There's plenty of people in there who are who are willing to to help
For suggestions if you have specific ideas or tweaks
So yeah, we'd of course love to hear more
Perfect perfect. Well, it's under any closing thoughts on
And more importantly on emerging markets, like what are you excited? I know for sure. We're gonna see each other in person
In Bangkok for DevCon. That's that's that's a total. Yes, but anyhow
tell us a little bit where what are you what regions are you most excited about in the emerging markets and
Yeah, any closing thoughts go right ahead
Yeah, I mean definitely excited I got a bit conference out at the end of last year
It was ready for a great night most everyone. Yeah
Yeah, but you know, I'm feeling refreshed feeling ready to go ready to get kick things off again for the new year here
But yeah, otherwise, you know, I would just say, you know, we're very excited
This year to be launching our concentrated liquidity to be launching into the super chain
We're so happy to have you guys a part of that journey
And thank you everybody for for listening to me talk about about Belladrome a bunch. Don't be strangers
Hope you hope you get involved and and yeah, thank you so much for having me
Thank you very much. Alexander really excited to be partnered with you. We understand security is something really important and and I'm really really
Impressed on on the way that Belladrome addresses it
I know sometimes is a little bit of a cumbersome process
But any anyhow, just if that is putting token holders front and center everything that the Belladrome team does
So congrats on that one. And yeah, let's hopeful that the technology brings more seamless experiences as we progress
But for now, it's keeping users
Token secure. That's first and foremost on anchor uncompromisable
So thank you very much Alexander for coming in. Thank you very much Belladrome team for creating such a great platform
We'll see you in the next basis. Thank you very much. Everybody stay safe. Cheers