Hey everybody, good morning, AGT, RIM project, I just invited you to speakers.
Just give me a second, I'm going to send a link to more people. What's happening, how are you doing?
Hello, how are you today?
I'm good, I'm good. So I'm just kind of like sending this link to all my chats now, and we're still waiting for little more people to show up.
Do you want to give like an introduction about yourself while we're waiting? Maybe like a little bit, how you come to be, what are you working on and things like that, you're joining crypto.
Sure thing. So hi everyone, I'm RIMberjack. I think I do recognize a lot of you here, nice to be here. I've noticed that WAX has been doing a really consistent job and I have been hearing that the community's been very excited about all of the chill and chill spaces.
So super happy to be here. I mostly work right now with Proximity, which is the DeFi vertical of NIR. It's like doing all of the DeFi stuff that the foundation can't really do.
Mostly we're investing and providing grants for DeFi projects on NIR and Aurora that need it in order to succeed and we want to support them technically and marketing wise and advisory services wise.
Before that I was at Open Forest Protocol, which is the kind of premier sustainability project on NIR. They do a platform for monitoring forests that are being planted, actually trees that are being planted, areas that are being reforested,
and then you are able to use the blockchain to store all of the information and make everything transparent and also really accessible and free for projects to use.
So that's a very interesting project. I'm now an advisor, no longer working there full time because I've moved to focus more on DeFi stuff.
And in general, I've been in the NIR ecosystem for more than a year and a half now, really by chance.
Ozzie Mendias, who, if you've been in the NIR space for a while, you will recall his name. He's now working a lot of the NDC stuff, co-founded Open Forest Protocol, also working on some other cool projects on NIR.
Also, I think he's part of MOVE Capital. He was a college friend of mine and one day he said, hey, I read this NIR white paper. I think it's the future. You should come join me.
And then I'm here now. So I owe my NIR existence to my good friend, Ozzie Mendias.
Okay, that's a great story. We're happy to have you here.
And I was going to mention, if you want to know more about this story, there's a podcast with Alejandro, and Rim is one of the guests. I think it's in the second or the third, correct Rim?
It might have been the first, but yeah, one of the early episodes.
Okay, I'm going to watch it for sure.
So let me ask you this, you know, you just said that your friend, you know, read NIR white paper, told you NIR is the future.
What is that like about NIR that makes, I mean, him, and I guess you also believe that it is the future?
I think it's more than anything, NIR, at least for me, and I think also the way that Ozzie Mendias, or I'll just call him Ozzie, delivered to me was, and I didn't understand that at the time, obviously, and I learned it while I was working in the ecosystem.
I think you have to have a vision, and then you have to have the technology and the actual grounds to support that vision.
And for me, NIR's story and narrative and vision makes sense, in the sense that the goal is bringing blockchain to mass adoption, because there are so many benefits that decentralization, censorship resistance, autonomy,
ownership over your own data and assets, you know, all of these things bring great benefit to what is the status, compared to what is the status quo now, especially in the financial sector.
And NIR is trying to bring that to the mainstream audience. And in order to do that, when you think about mass adoption, you need to be able to have the capacity to do that.
And in terms of blockchain, that's scalability. And I think more than anything, NIR's selling point hinges on the fact that it's super scalable, theoretically, infinitely through the nightshade mechanism.
And if you can't bring that DPS, if you can't bring that throughput, then you can't even talk about mass adoption when it comes to blockchain.
So on top of the user-friendly UI and the account model and being developer-friendly and being environmentally friendly, blah, blah, blah, at the foundation, it's the scalability.
You need to be able to deliver on that in order to talk about anything related to blockchain and mass adoption.
So I think in that sense, NIR was the future at the time that I joined NIR from my friend's point of view and now also my point of view.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And you know, even from the beginning, the crypto space, I was always confused, like, how are people saying that things like Ethereum can really be the future of blockchain and take like five minutes to process transactions and have like 15 DPS or something like that.
So I definitely understand that vision. But all right, let's move on. So you work in proximity, right? Can you tell us a little bit about what is proximity?
Yeah, so I think you can just think of proximity as what the foundation, like the DeFi version of the NIR Foundation.
So it's an independent firm. It's like a research development firm. I think at the time when it started, it had 350 million in the treasury.
I don't know what the value is now.
And what we primarily do is, just like how you approached in your foundation when you want to start a project and you want some kind of financial support, you can reach out to proximity.
Maybe you're a DEX, maybe you're an aggregator, maybe you do fiat on-off rams, maybe you're doing derivatives. If you have a solid DeFi project that you want support for, either in the form of a grant, but mostly right now in terms of investment, that's the kind of service that we provide.
And I think on top of that, the real selling point or value proposition in proximity is that it's a really full stack service.
So not only is there financial support that we can provide for DeFi projects, but we have some of the core protocol engineers that worked on the first NIR smart contracts.
We have people from ConsenSys, people who worked on the NIR wallet team, people who used to work at Google and whatnot, and they bring a stellar set of expertise.
And we can do advisor services, whether it's tokenomics, whether it's your go-to-market strategy. Maybe you need some kind of rerouting in the ecosystem because it's your first time here. That's what I do.
I help you out, get acquainted in the ecosystem. I help you connect to community channels, and we can also provide developer support, whether you're building on Aurora or on NIR.
So I think we're trying to become a full stack support system for the success of the NIR and Aurora DeFi ecosystem. That's how I would describe proximity.
Got it. And why do you think it is necessary for proximity to be its own thing separate from your foundations, especially since they kind of get funding from the same source?
Well, it is a separate thing. So it got a grant initially when it spun out from the foundation, but it's entirely separate now.
But I'm saying, why do you think it's important for us to have this funding support arm for DeFi that is separate from the foundation?
Yeah, I think it's a matter of focus, right? When you have a foundation that's supposed to support the ecosystem in the protocol as a one-size-fits-all, you obviously lack some of the attention and detail that comes to each different field.
So you could say, hey, I'm an NFT builder, I'm a game file builder, I'm a metaverse builder, and everyone wants attention from the same source.
If you have different teams with the relevant expertise that are able to focus on the specific vertical and give attention to the projects in the way that they need to be able to speak the DeFi language, to give you the connections that you need in order to successfully raise your round,
from investors who are interested in DeFi and so on and so forth, that's the kind of attention I think builders want.
If they don't compare to just a general face or a general foundation, a specific vertical focus effort has a lot of value that it can bring to the ecosystem.
Got it. That definitely makes a lot of sense. Agiti, did you want to ask something?
Yeah, Rima, talking about proximity, the big friction point right now currently in the near ecosystem is the grant approval process.
How does proximity grant and assess projects and determines the funding, the milestones? This seems to be an issue right now in the near community.
What would you say are some of the pain points or the issues that are being surfaced right now or being talked about?
Well, I mean, a bunch of people receive grants early on and never really deliver their product.
How does the proximity ensure that whoever gets their grant meets the milestones and how do you guys determine the support?
Yeah, so I think that's also one of the reasons kind of similar to how a lot of the L1s have seized or slowed down, rolled back their grant processes.
Proximity has also shifted away from grants to investments, mostly because with an investment, you kind of have that obligation for both parties to provide and deliver on your promises.
With grants, usually it seems to be tailored to a specific purpose. So if it's a smaller size, we say, and let's say, for instance, a project wants to launch, they have the MVP ready.
And they say, we just need to get this thing done, and it will cost about like 10, 20K. Can we get a grant if it's the right team, if it's the right reason?
And we're pretty sure that they can deliver on this, then the grant usually goes through.
So I don't really want to speak too much on the internal processes because I'm not really sure what I can share and what I shouldn't be sharing just because these are internal processes.
But I would say that in general, that's kind of how a role for grants, smaller check sizes, and then usually more they focus on investments.
Okay, thank you. Can you talk a little bit about what types of DeFi projects are you looking for right now? And kind of maybe like what DeFi projects do you think are needed in the ecosystem that we lack?
I'll speak more from a personal point of view. I would love to, I generally really like projects that bring a lot of composability.
And I think composability usually means use cases with the same, based on the same fundamentals. So for instance, if there's a DEX on NIR or Aurora,
if you can build stuff on top of that DEX to either bring more usability or to bring more liquidity or provide better yield opportunities, then not only are you creating something that's composable, you're creating a lot of utility out of the same DEX and the same pools within that DEX.
So I think within the current NIR ecosystem, you already have the example of REF Finance and then PEMROC, which is built on, which is like a layer on top of REF. They provide better yield opportunities.
I forget how ever many, but through leverage yield staking. And then you will see some aggregators, I believe, coming out that are rooting people through pools on REF, probably also other pools in other DEXs on NIR,
to give you the best yield opportunities across the ecosystem throughout the different pools. So I think those are the kinds of, we call it DeFi Legos, right? The kind of DeFi Lego play is what I really like to see personally when it comes to DeFi projects.
So if you see a gap in the ecosystem in that way, maybe you say, hey, I see that there's a DEX, I see that there's a lending market, but I don't really see an aggregator or I don't see a really way to have a better way of creating a frontend which funnels the funds from a DEX into a lending protocol or something like this.
I think thinking about really being able to create ways for people to engage with DeFi either easier, faster, more efficiently, bring a lot more capital efficiency, or give them more use cases. Those are the kinds of DeFi projects that I would love to see more.
Can you talk a little bit about what is kind of like the vision, the goal of Proximity, I guess? Obviously you guys helped DeFi projects, but what is the purpose behind that and what is it you're trying to achieve with helping them grow?
Yeah, the way that I see it is, the reason that I believe that DeFi is so critical to the success of an ecosystem is that almost everything within the ecosystem relies on one thing, and that's liquidity.
And liquidity also, I think, by extension means users, number of users, number of active users, and the kind of money and resources that are available within the ecosystem. And I think that's a fundamental layer that you have to fulfill for anything else to really thrive, whether it comes to NFTs, whether it comes to socials, whether it comes to the metaverse and whatnot.
All of these things are linked entirely together. And for Proximity, I would say very simply that the goal is to lead the proliferation of DeFi on NIR and Aurora, and by extension that means leading to NIR winning.
That's what we want to see. At the end of the day, we want to be able to proliferate the DeFi ecosystem so that there's more liquidity, there's more activity in the ecosystem, and so that NIR can be a winning L1. That's what we want to see.
Got it. That's what we want to see, too. Hopefully, that happens.
Okay, so before we move on, I just want to tell everybody we're going to have an AMA today, right? So we'll bring people from the audience to ask some questions.
We'll probably do it in around like 10, 15 minutes. But for now, guys, just please, everybody, we tweet the pinned tweet, help us get more people, and we move on.
So, you know, one thing that I think everybody who's been in the ecosystem for long enough knows about DeFi is a lot of DeFi is like kind of pump ish, dump ish style things, where obviously there are products that have like very specific utility, like swaps and things like that.
But there are also a lot of things that kind of, you know, just like create this complicated mechanics where you need to stake it there, you need to leverage here, and we're going to reward you with this.
But at the end of the day, they're just like giving you a token, they created out of thin air, and unless there is like more money going inside that closed system, it starts to collapse as soon as people start to withdraw money.
What is kind of like your guys view in proximity on those types of projects? And like, how do you deal with them? Because from my experience, that's almost like the majority of things in DeFi.
Well, I mean, I think we have the privilege of saying no. So if a project seems to us, and I'm also leaning on the expertise of my other team members who are very experienced in DeFi, way more so than I am.
And when we do our due diligence, we simply just say no to the projects that seem like scams, or even if they're not mal-intentioned, they just don't have the chops to support the idea or the grand vision that they seem to promise in their pitch deck.
So the first filter is that we just simply don't support or get involved in projects that seem like a mere pump and dump.
And so we have some internal criteria, obviously, for the projects that we choose, but I can assure you that whenever we have these discussions, our primary focus is that are they long near? Like, are they really serious about near? How much do they know about near?
Are they just including near as a quick cash grab, because they're like rotators and they want to go to every L1 that's profitable, or are they actually serious? That's a really big criteria.
We also look at some of the track record, like if it seems like they've done pumps and dumps before, obviously, we would be very suspicious of that kind of project.
And then you obviously look at the product design and the business model. If the product or the business design or the strategy simply just doesn't hold up, and it quite looks like a scam, then you don't want to support a project like that.
And I think whether if you look at near as a whole, Proximity obviously hasn't supported every single DeFi project that's on near, but if you look at it near as a whole, I don't think it has had prominent rug pools or scams, at least within the arena of DeFi.
And I think that's been part luck and also part decision making that has kind of brought that about. So that's something that I think one of the reasons that I really like near is that we just don't have a lot of scams and rug pools and we didn't have to go through all of these terrible things.
But I mean, I'm happy to be pointed out to be wrong if you've been personally rug pulled or scammed by something and I just wasn't aware of it.
You're definitely right near. It's doing way better than any other blockchain with scams and rug pools. I was just kind of talking about DeFi ecosystem, like DeFi in general.
And it's not even really about like rug pools or scams. It's more about that a lot of these like yield forms and like aggregators are like, you know, designed to not be rug pools, but like, you know, they're paying out rewards in the talking that we create out of thin air.
And unless they're doing like, unless they're creating like any value at all, then it ends up, it always ends up bad, you know, like people just keep selling their words on their words on their words.
It doesn't keep dumping, dumping, dumping. But that's true. New York has been doing good so far, I guess, partially made because of you guys being diligent and maybe partially because it's a new ecosystem.
So we haven't really had that many projects launched in general. And maybe also because like the liquidity side is pretty low. So there's not much like incentive people who want to do cash grab go somewhere where there is more money.
But, okay, we see like nears pretty young ecosystem right now, right. And there you can already see like kind of blueprint on other blockchains, how their DeFi has developed that has like, you know, a lot of more projects that near you guys at proximity or maybe you personally, how we want to answer the question.
Are you trying to kind of like bring near ecosystem up and build it up to what exists on more like bigger, more popular blockchains? Or do you have like certain different direction and like different vision to make it into something that kind of like hasn't existed before?
Yeah, I think a little bit of both. So I would say that I'm personally looking forward to some categories that we will see emerge or either have emerged on near and for them to really kind of take bring a lot of momentum back into DeFi.
Obviously, you have to wait on the market to pick back up. We can't just like, wait for one project to save us all. It also has to go hand in hand with the general macro conditions.
But I think on the one hand, you see this order book decks category form on near we have tonic spin and orderly. And I think there's a lot to bet on that. In a way, we could potentially expect a boost in the ecosystem that Solana experience with serum and radium.
And I think with these order book decks is launching working with, you know, great liquidity providers being able to, again, provide their liquidity back to traders, both on the retail and institutional side.
That's the kind of new flow of liquidity and capital that we'll see that we haven't seen before. So I would be I would kind of be hope optimistic about the order book taxes and especially the derivatives that will be launched on top of those taxes.
And I think with spin, I think that's the most developed one so far. They've already launched perpetuals on mainnet orderly. I think we will also see something like perpetuals and other derivatives launch either Q4 or Q1.
I assume based on what they've been talking about in their roadmap.
Those are some of the things that I think will be super interesting. That's something that we are, I would say, following quote unquote, the trends of other chains, right.
But Solana, I won't really talk about.
That's something that's both innovative because I think when it comes to L1s, no L1 has really won that order book decks category yet.
So we're both following, you know, what's trendy in terms of doing perpetuals and doing these kind of derivatives, but also trying to win the category of having a really good order book, being a really good order book decks chain,
and having really good derivatives for other people from other chains to come to NIR with a specific purpose to be able to use these products.
So I think that's something that's super interesting to look forward to. And then some of the other things that we could do or hopefully we'll see builders do is really utilize some of the technical proficiency that NIR is able to provide.
Like you're able to operate, determine your own parameters and customize the kind of project or depth that you want to build by utilizing your own shard on NIR.
You know, you kind of have that build your own app chain or build your own layer one, but you do it within the same maintenance so you can operate your own shard, whether privately or whatnot.
So I think these are some of the technical capacities that are super interesting, not really sure how immediately that will crystallize in the arena of DeFi.
But as we see more like L1s or actually dApps, you know, if we think about DYDX running as its own layer, as we see more dApps outgrow even the growth of an entire layer one or an entire network, I think operating dApps that operates as its own shard in the way that Aurora is operating as its own shard, we'll see more of those.
And I think that's going to be super interesting for what's both trending in the market when it comes to DeFi and also the untapped possibilities that are provided because NIR has that sharding capacity.
So that's just something that I'm thinking about really off the top of my head.
Graham, I want a quick plug-in. Next, it's a perpetual order book on Aurora, and you can already do 50x leverage. Actually, it's been going on for a while. And you can counter off some of your losses like I do by getting the NIT token.
So just a plug-in that there's an order book in Aurora.
Yeah, for sure. I'm familiar with Next.
Can you talk a little bit about some of the most successful projects that you guys helped come to life in proximity?
Yeah, I think right now it's a little bit a sad time to talk about success stories because back then, before May, we would have said,
you know, we helped Bastion or we helped Origami. And when you looked at Aurora, TVL was above 1 billion. I think it was at the highest, almost up to 2 billion.
And now you can say it, but it's less impressive because the previous metric of success was much higher than the current metric.
But I guess that's an example that you could give. And then I'm a little hesitant to mention because there are also not so much that I am able to say personally.
I don't want it to be misrepresenting anything, but I would say a lot of the core DeFi protocols we've supported either, not always financially, but both financially and immaterially.
And even if we're not directly supporting a project, we're always helping them out.
So if you're like a DEX or an aggregator or you're like a wallet and we are not technically involved in your project and we're not supporting or anything, but you still ask, hey, we're still looking for marketing support.
Where can we go? I will still help you. Proximity will still help you. We'll make connections because we do really fundamentally want ecosystem projects to succeed.
But that's, I think, all I'll say about that.
Okay, thank you. Now, on the flip side, could you talk a little bit about like maybe failures or some challenges that you guys had to face with all these projects coming your way?
I think the main challenge is, I think two main challenges. I think one main challenge is that we're not able to help everybody.
Like resources are limited and also we want to incubate or we want to support winners, right?
I think right now what NIR needs more than anything is a blue chip project, a blue chip DeFi project.
If you say DeFi on Solana Serum, DeFi on Avalanche, Trader Joe, DeFi on this L2 or ROLA, GMX, VYDX, you kind of have to have a household name.
And that's what we're really laser focused in right now at Proximity to be able to create this one household brand that's going to bring a lot of attention to NIR.
And then you can have millions of different creative and experimental projects and people will pay attention.
But right now, you kind of have to have that bootstrapping phase. So that's been the main challenge that one, finding them, finding the right builders, finding their builders with the right idea, finding the builders with the right idea and with a plan to execute and a team to execute it together
and the timing that we find them and they find us and feel like NIR. So that's the main challenge.
And then this challenge that is implied from that is because we're focused on projects that we really, really think are going to win and are going to be strong, we also can't support everyone, right?
So for me, like on a sentimental level, I'm sorry that Proximity can't support everyone and that we can't be a supporter for each DeFi project.
And I know because my friends are builders and they're outside of work.
I have people within the industry who are all starter founders and it just sucks when you can't help them out because you know that it's a struggle and not everyone's making money and you have to pay the bills.
So I would say that on a personal level, that's another challenge.
Wouldn't you say we already have that household name with REF Finance?
Yeah, 100%. I think REF has been a super successful case within the NIR ecosystem.
You know, I think just a few weeks ago, I was looking at this. I think it might have been DeFi Llama and REF was like by TVL top 10 decks.
We were the top 10 decks. So REF has been a great success within the ecosystem.
But when we say brand recognition, name recognition, I think REF also still doesn't have that.
No one is saying like, hey, DeFi on NIR, REF Finance in the way that people are saying Trader Joe or DYDX, right?
So we're still getting to that level.
I guess, but that also might be connected with the fact that NIR itself is not as big as like Avalanche, for example.
Yeah, and I think it's a flywheel. You have to expect the flywheel effect.
DeFi is going to benefit from NIR growing big and NIR is going to benefit from a DeFi project on NIR growing big.
So we have to think about the virtuous cycle that will hopefully come sometime soon.
Definitely 100%. Can you talk a little bit about like what value do DeFi projects even bring to the ecosystem?
I guess we all understand like DEXs, but besides that, like why is it so important for NIR to help a robust DeFi ecosystem?
Yeah, so on the one hand, if you think about, I'll just use REF as an example.
So what's happening on REF? And I think also, for instance, if you look at a project like Arctic, for instance, that's that recently launched in Aurora,
I think these two projects show something very interesting in the sense that when we didn't have Arctic or we have REF as it is right now,
which is basically a Rust version of Uniswap, right?
And if you think about the traditional AMN DEX model, what you do is basically you swap between token A and token B,
and you can provide liquidity in a pool and get some tokens that's called yields farming.
So you have these ways of using your tokens, exchanging them and creating some revenue or generating some income out of them.
That is compared to, for instance, what UNI-V2 versus UNI-V3.
That's a specific set of use cases that is separate from, for instance, UNI-V3, which is concentrated liquidity,
which services a different audience, so traders, people who are trading higher volume,
people who are able to look at their portfolio all day, manage their positions and go for a higher reward,
but also with greater risk of impermanent loss.
Because UNI-V3 has that technical and product provided for that audience,
that new class of traders are able to enter into DeFi and also, by extension,
bring that kind of liquidity that wasn't available before to that DeFi ecosystem.
So when you think about why is DeFi important?
Well, because you want liquidity in your ecosystem, because you want users.
Why do we need different kinds of DeFi?
Can't we just have a DEX because people primarily want DeFi to swap tokens?
Well, even the kinds of DEXs and the possibilities that different products of DEXs or different approaches to DEXs can provide
open up a new entryway for new classes of users, new classes of traders, and bring in more liquidity potentially.
So I would say that the focal points, from my perspective, are liquidity, and then you have to have the right products.
You have to have products that fit the market in order to attract that liquidity.
The products that you need, for instance, in a bear market, to bring in users in liquidity are going to be different than in a bear market.
In a bear market, all you need is a token. You don't even need a product, and people will come to your ecosystem.
In a bear market, for instance, real yield was a concept that was trending a few weeks back.
You have to be able to provide some kind of value or product that captures people's attention and makes them want to bring their money over here and in pursuit of greater profit
in order to really vitalize the ecosystem. So I would say that that's kind of where I'm thinking of when it comes to why does DeFi matter and why do we need more stuff in DeFi?
Thank you. I also want to hear your perspective on this. In four minutes, I think we're going to start bringing people up. That's just my last question.
So I feel like some time ago, there was this narrative as in that decentralized finance is kind of like an alternative to centralized finance.
And just like we want to see the global financial system be decentralized and just like this general crypto idealistic narrative.
But recently, it seems that that one completely got away and now DeFi has more just like different products for like DJs and traders to just get some extra yield and more opportunity in crypto ecosystem.
And it kind of became that category that's mostly 100% is like catered just towards the crypto people.
And especially since we're talking in context of near ecosystem, which is I feel like it keeps in mind a lot like the average person that is like non-crypto native and how to avoid them and how to give them use cases.
Like, do you feel like there is any DeFi products that are actually useful for people who are like outside of near and even more maybe like DeFi products who would be so useful for non-crypto native people that it will actually make them on board on the ecosystem?
Or is DeFi at this point just like tools and games for crypto DJs?
So I would fight that perspective and also partially agree.
So on the aspect that I'm fighting is that money and finance is pre-crypto, right?
People have been looking for profit.
People have been exchanging goods.
People have been using finance, you know, just look at TratFi, like making money and looking for money.
That's a basic modus operandi that precedes crypto.
Like when you say, can DeFi attract non-crypto native people?
Because if you're able to provide ways of actually realizing profit, if you give ways of people to lend capital, exchange one capital for another, use that in order to support whatever other activities that are doing.
Like if you're able to provide financial opportunities period, yes, that appeals to people who are non-native to crypto because that's simply money that is outside of crypto or non-crypto.
That's just simply the way that things work as long as you're within like a capitalistic society.
On the other hand, if we're talking about, you know, this is just niche, you know, use token A for token B, it's not real use case.
I think that perspective is also, you know, partially admittable.
What I would say to that is that I'm super interested on that regard of stuff that are blending, you know, the on-chain world with the off-chain world.
So that could be something like the real world assets category.
So maybe you're doing stuff like using on-chain capital to provide off-chain loans to, you know, real merchants and small enterprises within your region.
You're able to make that utilize on-chain liquidity in order to provide actual, quote unquote, actual fiat money for people who need it for their businesses.
That's a potential that is on lock with DeFi. That brings a lot of capital efficiency.
It brings a lot of accessibility because you're doing it a way that is, you know, you're opening up access in the way that blockchain and crypto is supposed to are people who cannot do that within the traditional system or within the status quo.
Right. And you're also able, for instance, especially if we're talking about developing countries like Latin America, if you think about the African continent, being able to service to these people through crypto and through blockchain.
You're also able to capture a lot of new audiences and bring down barriers because you're talking to people who are essentially unbanked, people who are using and super familiar with mobile payments and they can plug into crypto really quickly.
And especially if we're talking about international payments and remittance, then you're also able to blur borders and do borderless transactions at super cheap fees on a global scale without a bank account just attached to your wallet, which hopefully you can pull out and cash out using fiat off-ramp services.
Yeah, that's, you're talking to non-crypto native people, you're talking real world use case, you're bringing benefit to the world because you're able to unlock the capital efficiency, the decentralization, the autonomy, the empowerment that blockchain is able to provide.
So on the one hand, 100%, there's a lot of degeneracy in this space. There's a lot of, you know, simply putting in token A for token B and creating money out of thin air. That's 100% true.
But I also see it as a larger, in a larger sense, all of these are parallel experience for us to get to something real and crystallize into something concrete.
And sometimes that will be for pure moneymaking for the sake of moneymaking.
Other times it will be for benefiting people who are shut out of the system in the way that crypto has been idealized before.
And I think that is actually achievable in many ways.
Thank you. That is a great perspective. So I think we're going to start bring people up for the AMA.
Also, don't forget to retweet the pin tweet.
And I'm going to bring the first bunch of people.
Hey, let's make it a little bit spicy. Talk about the US and fiasco.
Oh, yeah, let's hear about that. That's a great point.
That's like the most important question of the whole AMA and we can get an answer to that.
That sucks. You know, but the good thing is that near ecosystem of soap, they're pretty, you know, pretty well. I once forgot about it and then we're moving on.
But like, OK, actually, that's a great subject.
So I understand we cannot talk maybe like in certain specifics, but just a topic in general, like the decentralized algorithmic stablecoins and things like this.
Kind of after this use and experience, what is your guys perspective on that?
Like, is it just is it a bad model or idea by itself or was just a bad implementation and we're still like bullish on algorithmic decentralized stablecoins.
And like that narrative still exists. How do we see it?
Well, I think with the upcoming regulatory uncertainty or upcoming certainty, let's just stick with what we have.
Let's kind of just put the experiment to the side and wait for the time. It's just not the time's right, I think.
Coming from strictly my personal point of view, I think what makes crypto really sexy and interesting for me is the fact that you're able to defy the pun intended defy the status quo.
And yes, there are 100 percent regulatory concerns will not force anyone into it because legal risk is real.
But as a ecosystem and as a culture, let's still experiment with decentralized stablecoins because stablecoins are such a huge market.
There is a undeniable demand for it. It has such great use cases. People use it and people need it and people want it.
We just need to have one that's super successful decentralized and decentralized.
And I think probably the closest is like die from makers out when it comes to both the level of adoption and also the level of sufficient decentralization would also love to see more of things like that.
And I think stablecoin is the interesting thing about them is that you can take very vastly different approaches to stablecoins.
So MakerDye is one model. Frax is one model. You know, there are various ways to do it.
And I would love to see more experimentation in that regard, though it's probably risky at this time and it still stands to see where regulation will speak on this.
But I think it's still very necessary because we if we're at least trying to say that DeFi has value because you're able to create a financial system which can resist censorship that can resist centralized parties shutting you down and cherry picking who will get access and who doesn't.
Then let's at least continue to try and fight that. And that's really just like my personal point of view and things.
So Rim, you're saying by your hands, die will survive.
I hope like five die. So I don't know if that will help make it survive, but I like the idea of it.
But do you think like we need our own stablecoin in here or are we going to be fine with just like having native versions of other stablecoins, whatever it is, like use the C, use the T, die.
Like, what is the need for near to have its own?
I think it would be interesting. And I would like to see that happen on near even if, you know, if even if it's not something like US and even if it's some other project.
I mean, there were other stablecoins on near right there.
Like there was OIN, the USDO, there was ROSE and whatnot. And I think from a personal perspective, it would be interesting because when you have a stablecoin that's specific to an L1.
And if especially if it ties it with the L1 native token in some way, then you have a different flywheel and you have a different force, like a driving force, then a centralized back currency or like an ERC 20 stablecoin.
Because you're working also, you're factoring into the power, the growth of the ecosystem to boost that stablecoin or vice versa, that stablecoin to bring growth to the ecosystem if successful.
So when it comes to the potential effects that could benefit the ecosystem or that L1 chain, I would see it as an interesting approach.
But, you know, it's also all about execution, right? You have to do it right. Otherwise, it's also going to be detrimental to that ecosystem, if done wrong, as we saw with UST, for instance.
So it would be interesting. I'll just leave it at that.
Can I ask one more question? Rim, like shifting gears just quickly, you know, you are a very prominent orator on spaces. Any advice for folks in the audience who are trying to develop their personal brand and speak in spaces, any kind of guidance?
I think more than anything, at least for me, I'm driven by curiosity. So if a project, often like I don't have a lot of options when it comes to spaces because I am either requested to do them, or I have to address this because it's like a new project or a new farm.
So I have to invite them on because they should be advertising this information.
In that case, but in any case, I'm driven by curiosity, like I want to know what you do, especially because I like near and you're doing something that will potentially bring benefit to your ecosystem.
I want to know why you chose near. What's your angle? How are you different from other people doing the same things? What's your story? Why should we be interested? What do you want from us as a community?
You know, whatever stuff like that. So if you're curious, if you're genuinely curious and you like listening to people talk about their perspective and you like to be able to be like the gadfly.
I think that's the word that Socrates used to explain the way that he interlocutes or he has a conversation with his interlocutors is that he's a gadfly.
He will ask the right questions to spark out a response that even the person answering didn't even expect that they would have.
So if you like putting yourself in that position and being of service to the people that you're speaking with to bring that idea and answer and perspective out of them, then that's what you can bring to Twitter spaces also as an orator.
So I would say that if I have any authority on this to share my advice, that would be my advice.
Thank you. We are happy with every feedback. So let's start and bring people up because we only have like 10 minutes left and we have like eight people who are like 12 people who want to speak.
I know they're going to be mad at me, but what can I do? So let's start with crypto Lord.
Hello, everyone. Thank you for bringing me on to ask my question.
And my question is, you know, I believe that money as driving goods in different markets, but rising gas charges and network congestion limit users for taking full advantage of divide potential.
So I just want to know what do you think is the most urgent problem that needs to be resolved concerning this? Thank you very much.
I think one thing that should. So I think the question was like what are some of the challenges or problems that need to be addressed or solved in order for DeFi to actually be successful or thrive.
And I think the one of the biggest things is security and risk management for sure. And I think it has been a very sad month or a sad past month because we've seen so many hacks and exploits and unintentional failures of eco protocols.
And a lot of that has to do with, first of all, the nacency of the space, which is that we're still learning the best practices. We're still learning the best ways to prevent these things from happening.
And there's also going to be necessary to have internal review, internal investigation and outspokenness about failures and the humility to accept and move forth.
So as a space and as project builders, I think that's what some of the things that need to be solved or is being solved actively within the DeFi space is that being able to create products that
I won't say won't fail because failure is not above any of us, but I guess I would say none of us are above failure, but that will be able to be safe and tested and tried and be able to guarantee a measure of security because I think that really also prevents a lot of people from entering the DeFi space.
Thank you very much. So for now, thank you very much.
Hello, thank you very much. So I said one of the challenges you actually face is actually onboarding or educating the masses or the users because of lack of educational resources.
So I want to know, is there like something you're planning to do, like a kind of name to actually help this user learn more? What medium are you planning to use now to create this education?
Yeah, that's a good question about education and I guess approachability and accessibility of DeFi for general users, right? People who are not necessarily DeFi agents or specialists.
And I think on my end, that's kind of my role that I think that I'm providing of service to the ecosystem is being on these Twitter spaces, hosting Twitter spaces, being able to connect people to the right projects,
being in the community channels like on Telegram, on Discord, answering questions. I feel like that's what I'm doing personally in order to help people get educated and answer their questions and lead them to the right directions so they can get started.
And I know that struggle. I have to learn everything from scratch. I didn't know anything about DeFi or finance or blockchain when I entered the space. So I'm very sympathetic towards those.
So I try to do my part through social media, through the community channels. And I think from the proximity side, we're mostly trying to support it instead of directly doing stuff like I guess on the one hand from the proximity side,
we are definitely doing these research articles. We published two medium articles so far, one about NIR's composability, about its scalability and interoperability, and another one about the rise of order effects on NIR.
So these are more academic research articles that highlight the technical and the emerging use cases of DeFi on NIR by Res. A lot of you must know ResDGen who's part of Proximity.
They are great resources if you want to get started and also take a deeper look into what's going on in the NIR DeFi scene. And in general, I'm in support of community channels and community leaders doing these efforts.
And I want to say, you know, WAX and AGT here, also Odin and I see Naomi. A lot of these people have been putting in great efforts to create Twitter spaces and do this educational work.
And I think in my way, my way of supporting the ecosystem is through supporting these people who are very passionate and who want to create more educational opportunities for people because I think that's how we can approach and attract more people into the ecosystem.
I really love the concept of blockchain as a whole. It's a complex way, it's like that. But with what you are doing, I know it to be easier to reward people. Thank you.
Thank you, Spark. Let's move to the next question, famous.
Okay, actually, my question is, I wanted to know if you can actually enlighten us in the ecosystem because a lot have happened on the ecosystem in the past couple of months.
So I want to know where do you actually see the ecosystem going through in the future?
That's a really good question. I have been thinking about that more often recently. I don't really have a concise answer to give you other than the fact that I joined near the near your system.
I would say April last year. So even comparing from then, like, and then just three to four months ago, the ecosystem has changed a lot.
And you would have noticed on the foundation level, I think also recently with the stuff like NDC and the more efforts decentralized and bring a community drivenness to the ecosystem and the way that it functions.
And the level of growth that near has objectively seen more projects, more builders, more users, more social media presence and whatnot.
It's very different. I would say it's very different. And I have no idea. Honestly, I have no idea where it's going.
But I do think there are at least some strands of efforts and movements that I've personally witnessed that everyone will be seeing that makes me hopeful about where near is going.
I think there's a great deal of focus on bringing BD and driving growth through partnerships, through I think also I'm very happy about the way that the regional hubs are going that people and foundation has been setting up hubs in India, in Korea, in not in Lisbon before Ukraine, the Balkans, in Kenya.
In order to give a face to near to the regional community and then talk to the developers there, talk to the community there, get them interested, get those projects onboarded and really expand the reach of near.
We also see it with Banyan, which is a US focus near events as a service project where they're doing hacker houses throughout I think the year through multiple states right now.
They're in New York. They were in Austin before. They're going to do another one potentially wherever and they're creating a great culture and great entry point for developers.
And I think you kind of see this. You see it also with proximity. We're going out there talking to developers and trying to get on.
So you kind of see this across the ecosystem where the real focus and real endeavors I think that are meaningful are happening, which is that people are focused on talking to developers, bringing them on and providing and filling gaps or bringing innovation onto the blockchain.
So while I cannot speak for where near as a protocol will be next year in six months in two years, I do think that there's a lot of momentum building and direction that is being directed that we can be hopeful about.
By the way, we have near NYC from the Banyan collective, the New York hub.
Hey, guys, we're omnipresent.
So thanks for the shout out, Banyan is doing on-the-ground work and thank you guys for looking these Twitter spaces for us to have a hybrid way of educating.
But we definitely need to amp up our educational efforts.
Every Wednesday in New York, we have a great stop on different topics.
We had our dear black do a Twitter marketing session a couple of weeks ago.
This will actually have a deep dive into web through financing with one of our projects, free artists.
So if anyone is in New York, please come on down.
And even if you're not in New York, go check out our stuff on Twitter.
Follow us so you can be in the loop and see what opportunities might pop up near you.
You're doing a great job.
All of the points that you've brought up are so valid.
And let's keep doing each our own part.
And I love the mention of Socrates.
He's my favorite philosopher, the father of all philosophers.
And the Socratic approach of questioning and really displaying our curiosity is key to prospering in this space.
Thank you for coming up and giving us a little speech.
So we're going to move on to IB.
How is your time looking?
You got like five more minutes for this last question?
Thank you for bringing me on.
My question for proximity.
I noticed you guys are more particular about DeFi projects.
And I would like to know why DeFi.
And also, I noticed you are also interested in projects on near protocol.
I want to know what's so special.
Do you think near has the major advantage for you guys to focus mainly on near over the rest of them?
I would say that the need for something like proximity is I'm just an observer to, for instance, the near NFT space.
Like I like NFTs, but I'm not super active in that community.
But I've noticed that there's been a lot of frustration with the NFT community.
And I also recall that there had been some ideations about having an NFT studio or DAO focused on growing and funding and supporting NFT projects
And I think that's the same idea for DeFi and that's proximity.
And I think the vertical model, I will just call it the vertical model, has been pretty successful, at least from my point of view.
Like we're able to give people who want to do specifically DeFi on near or the attention that they deserve, give them the resources appropriate for them.
And probably that's something that most DeFi's that deserve, most verticals that deserve that kind of attention and expertise would benefit from.
So I would say that I'm personally a fan of the vertical specific approach.
And probably that's also why something like proximity was created, because we realize that we do need a lot of focus and detail in order for DeFi to thrive on near.
And why we're focused on near, do you mean like why we're focused on near versus like other L1s like Cosmos or Polkadot or something like that?
Yes, yes, that's my question. Like why on near compared to the rest?
Yeah, so it's not like we're a VC, like it's not like we just raise money and then we chose near.
It's more like near needed something for DeFi and then proximity became a thing.
So it was always for the near ecosystem and that includes Aurora.
And I think if you ask the people at proximity, why do they like near? Why did they come to near in the first place?
I think it's first and foremost the tech, just like I answered in the first question by WAX.
Like we do believe in the tech a lot. We do believe that this tech is the right tech for mass adoption because it can actually scale because it can actually bring 100 billion.
Oh, no, sorry, not 100 billion, the first billion users on chain.
And I think near has a lot of great potential to actually accommodate for real life, real world use cases and give people the benefit of blockchain that we're always talking about like decentralization, like autonomy, blah, blah, blah.
So I would say that it's in short, it's because they're all near maxis. So that's why we're focused on near.
And I think just maybe to do a little bit of context, maybe it wasn't so clear, proximity is not like a project building on near.
It's more like one of the arms of near foundation for funding that fund specific projects. So they're kind of on near because they're part of near, I guess.
Yeah, but I do want to clarify that we're not part of the foundation. It's a near specific, you know, DeFi support system, but we're like, we're not part of the foundation.
We do support like, if you're a DeFi project on near, you'll probably contact us first, I would say that.
Got it. All right, guys, we've been live for like over five minutes now. I'm sorry, it's not a lot of people got to go with questions this time, but we have another space on Wednesday. In fact, we have two spaces on Wednesday.
Let me just announce them real quick. So one is going to be with with straightforward.
And then we have like a community space a little later. So as always, 12 p.m. is Steve. There's going to be everything posted on my account as well as our telegram group. Same as always.
The winner for the giveaway is Famous. Famous, DM me your address. And thank you, guys, for everybody who tuned in. Everybody who asked questions. Thank you, Rimberjack, for coming. Thank you, AGT, for helping me with hosting.
And yeah, I guess we're going to rob you now. Goodbye, everybody. And thank you, everybody, for showing up.