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Ontology Anniversary: Restaking, LST, RWA and more
Recorded: July 10, 2025 Duration: 0:59:01Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent discussion, crypto enthusiasts explored the evolution of DeFi, emphasizing its growth and the importance of yield generation through innovative staking mechanisms. The conversation also highlighted the need for accessibility and education in the DeFi space, predicting increased adoption and integration of real-world assets in the coming years.
Full Transcription
Thank you. All right, GM.
Hopefully you can hear me.
Give me a couple of emoji reactions if you can hear me.
And we'll get started in a moment.
We'll let it get a little bit busy here.
But in the meantime, GM, everybody,
welcome to another Ontology Spaces.
Pretty cool to have some of our regular listeners
and some new listeners
and also some of our community members here.
Barnavas, I believe.
Yep, you're requesting to speak.
Awesome, awesome awesome awesome and I should
have one more from Gamacho when you have a moment welcome to come up to speak
then I do see one more request to speak who I'm not familiar with, Berger2410.
If you are one of the speakers from our community
or projects partners, go ahead and just send me a message
to bring you up.
I just wanna make sure that we keep the conversation
pretty tight considering the time
and just how broad or deep
this topic can go to.
How's everybody doing?
All good here, Maya.
Nice to hear you, Garabaho.
Thanks for coming up.
Hello, dear Humphrey and GM to everybody.
What's up, Barnabas? Good to hear from you, too.
Yeah, happy to be here.
Excellent. And we have someone from, I'm going to mispronounce this, I'm sure, Exelux?
Yeah, that's right. Hi.
Did I say it right? Yes, yes. It's Exelux? Yeah, that's right. Hi. Did I say it right?
Yes, yes.
It's Exelux, yes.
That's how we know we're off to a good start.
Nice.
I'm usually pretty bad at pronunciating.
See, you could tell right there.
Pronouncing things, because I apply my Latin tongue,
and it's usually not right.
All righty. Well, let's usually not right. All righty.
Well, let's kick it off.
Jim, everybody, again, thanks for coming in.
We're going to be talking about DeFi
and how it's evolved over the course of,
gosh, how long has it been?
About 15 years since the introduction of DeFi?
I mean, are we counting Bitcoin?
I think we have to, you know?
At least we were attempting it then.
But probably like introduction of Ethereum
would be like the DeFi that everyone's familiar with now.
Yeah.
But even then, would you say maybe DeFi Summer
was really kind of the birth of it?
Or was that more of a general propagation of DeFi?
So I don't know if it has a birthday.
Yeah, probably DeFi somewhere, you know?
You can have these ideas out in the world,
but if users aren't using them, you know,
is it really DeFi?
That's a good point.
I mean, that's a good point i mean that's that that's certainly valid i i would think then that even the concept of defy today even though it has had a big moment you know for some time now
in the general populace of the world still i don't think many people know what it is
so maybe we're still waiting for its birth. And we're just here
during its late pregnancy period. And we're all celebrating what DeFi can become.
But already, I think DeFi has done a tremendous kind of job at changing the way
that money operates. And to that point, I think talking about Bitcoin as this first
introduction to sovereign money, right, which is yours without a middleman to give you ownership
over this money, to define how it could be used, right?
Because, I mean, it was being used to pay for pizza a long time ago,
even though the systems by which it operated were very rudimentary,
very primal kind of technology in order to get those transactions to work.
But really, that's the birth of DeFi,
some would argue is the first time
that Bitcoin was transacted in a public fashion,
beyond just the fact that you can own this money
and kind of define its use for yourself.
And no one really could intermediate those that those funds so with that said i also want to
recognize ontology's anniversary if you're interested in learning there's a couple of
campaigns that they're running right now uh these are all pinned in the message in the in the x
account you can check out what those are a lot of different ways for you to earn
count you can check out what those are a lot of different ways for you to earn
not just through the traditional staking mechanisms that ontology provides but also through some other
fun uh celebratory uh campaigns that it's operating with that said let's shift over
quickly to staking and i by the show of hands how many people in the audience and our panelists as well
have state anything, whether it be your ONT or maybe even an NFT.
Who has state anything before?
I'm going to see what hands raise over here.
raise over here there we go could i'm a whole year one i expect many of the listeners have
There we go.
Codamajo, you're one.
um they might just be looking or fumbling for the wave or hands up signal here
but unless i do see you fell off so give me a moment i'll bring you right back up
there we go uh yeah so i mean st, again, one of these mechanisms that predates,
well, predates DeFi in that was one of the early kind of Ethereum promises in terms of
how tokens could be used, not just to generate yield, but also to protect the network, right?
The whole premise behind staking originally was you have a token and you use that token to delegate,
to participate in some governance of a platform, community, or protocol.
of a platform community or protocol and from that there is some yield generation to the
people who are uh operating these nodes and these node operators could then share that yield with
their uh community the people who are delegating to them i for one one, I remember that's how I came in to DeFi, if you will. In 2017,
I came into the Ethereum ecosystem by way of an EVM project that had forked Ethereum
and had launched a staking token of which we operated a node and that node then shared its yield
with the people who delegate it to us and as a node operator we had a voice in governance
and we operated across a dozen blockchains ontology being one of them so that was my
first introduction to ontology was as a node operator and a community builder very early on
was as a node operator and a community builder very early on with them, but also a lot of other projects.
Anybody else here have any recollections or stories they want to tell of staking and kind of its early days
and maybe even the evolution of staking today with maybe NFTs or even some of the other more complex systems
like restaking that we're seeing.
I know, Gramajo, you have a lot to share there.
Yeah, I think for me, I would say Bitcoin was definitely my first
introduction into like spinning up a node and doing some mining as well.
And then I guess like the staking that people are more familiar with now with the Ethereum
model.
What have I been doing recently?
I do spend a lot of time in this space.
So like recently I spun up a Gnosis one, which is fun.
I have an ETH one.
Not necessarily like an ETH one directly, but like a rocket one.
A Monero one as well.
When Lightning first came out as well,
that was pretty fun to spin one up.
Yeah, it seems like a really good way
to get introduced into an ecosystem, have skin in the game,
and also just learn a lot.
So, like, you learn a lot of lessons when you go down that path.
We're happy to hear from other people.
Yeah, maybe Barnabas, I know you have been very active recently in the ontology ecosystem.
very active recently in the ontology ecosystem what's your experience with staking yeah so um
What's your experience with staking?
for me i think i started staking in cardano ecosystem and i with their ada so i didn't
know much about staking and i just said okay let me just uh put my coins to work but like the whole idea of staking I wasn't known to me that much but when I came to
ontology and then I I started working with ontology I kind of like understand what staking means
and the advantage of staking so I staked my aunt and was earning ONG.
Right now, I'm planning to start running my own knot, like a candidate knot.
So, yeah, the experience over has been a positive one.
And, yeah, I would love to be in the game.
Yeah, I love hearing about those experiences. I wonder if the person behind Exilus, if there's anything you wanted to share, feel free to unmute and share with us. staking and then how that like early kind of understanding and kind of decision to put their
money to work eventually becomes something more whether by becoming your own node operator which
i know on ontology a lot of people tend to do that there's great yield there there's different
types of staking actually i would even say like say like ontology is definitely one that I thought
from the very beginning when I was a node operator was quite unique,
which is a two-token staking model where the same governance token
is not your yield token.
So there's a opportunity for arbitrage as well
through the differences in the token price,
which is why the APY tends to be
pretty high. I know that there's other forms of staking that have recently started to develop
like restaking or even liquid staking, where you don't really have to lock up your tokens
in one versus the other one. you get a derivative token, which you
can then stake again for additional yield. Gramajo, I'd be interested if you could share,
because again, I know this is your world. Can you tell us from your personal experience,
what is the draw for you from one over the other.
So if you had an opportunity to stake
using some liquid staking token,
would that be more attractive to you?
Or is it more attractive to get some derivative token
of which you can kind of do whatever else
in like a platform's DeFi ecosystem?
Yeah, that's a good question.
I don't think I've ever thought about it
from the sense of which one I like more.
The concept of liquid staking definitely
was a huge unlock, I would say,
for me because you're now able to use that...
You can prove that you have some amount of staked.
And then with the liquid staking, you can then put that even further into DeFi to, like, unlock more funds.
Like, use it as collateral to go full, like, degenerate almost.
Or just keep it as well, you know, like it, it, it makes it easier for you to, uh,
move funds around.
So, you know, like you're able to, instead of unstaking, like doing that whole step of unstaking,
withdrawing from validating or being a node, you know, there's like a lot of steps that go into that just to get your funds back.
You know, you could just sell the, the liquid staking tokens.
So I do like that about liquid
staking in terms of earning a yield on another token um let's see
i get kind of wary sometimes of that uh a little bit um just more like from like
from what is the purpose of that token other than maybe governance.
what is the purpose of the token other than like
I think we see that a little bit with certain tokens.
We'll use it for governance or for prioritizing what features come next
or what people care about.
I feel like that world, I'm not opposed to it
I think you just have to have
as a team if you're doing that
you have to have a really strong
use case for
that specific token so I tend to just
for larger sums I tend to stick
to just pretty
vanilla
liquid staking protocols
and that
and then earning an additional token I just have to vanilla like liquid staking protocols and like that.
And then earning an additional token, you know,
I just have to like be really knowledgeable of what, what drives the value of that specific token.
So like I recently have been having to do this exercise myself because I've
been diving deeper into the Rweave ecosystem.
And you can either spin up like a Rweave node directly,
or there's a lot which requires you to go into the terminal
and to do it kind of that way.
They don't really have like a GUI to do it that well,
at least that I'm aware of in my research.
But there's other protocols that, you know,
they could like,
that help you set up something so you're still participating in the RWE ecosystem.
But they also have their own token too.
So like, that's kind of where my brain's at right now in terms of getting yield in another token.
But happy to hear other people's thoughts if they can get me over the hump on that.
Yeah.
I mean, as long as no one's
raising their hands, and definitely anybody
who's in the audience and wants to pop up, definitely
let us know. We'll bring you up.
Conversations around the evolution
of DeFi, and we're currently talking
about staking mechanisms,
and then Grimach would just
introduce this idea of
staking on platforms like RWE,
which actually I wanted to ask you because I have not heard of that.
Is that a new staking mechanism that they've introduced?
And if so, do they have a token or what are you staking?
No, it's not necessarily that you're staking, but you're committing resources.
So you're committing your storage space,
and then you get rewarded in the ARWEET token.
And then...
Oh, that's interesting.
Yeah, so you're committing...
If you think about it, the global computer,
the decentralized computer, in this case,
it would be the decentralized storage.
So you're committing the decentralized storage and then, um,
and that you're going to have it like available at a certain, like it's going
to be available like 24, seven, three 65 and all that.
Um, and then, yeah, you get rewarded in the, the RWEB token.
And then people have taken that idea and it's the same thing that we see in,
in DeFi,
like in Ethereum as well as that.
Someone's like, okay, let's do that.
But you also earn like another token,
like a secondary token to increase the APY
that you'd be getting.
So you'd be getting like double,
you'd be getting two tokens,
you'd be getting the RWEA token and like another token,
which we see pretty,
we see that a lot in the Ethereum space.
Yeah, actually that reminds me, because that's more of a proof of work, almost, less so delegated proof of stake, I guess, in some way, or even like proof of stake, which is a very interesting system that reminds me of something
else that I used to be staking. This is, gosh, like two years ago. It's a project called IDENA.
They're an identity protocol, similar to what like ontology does with Ont ID.
And what you're staking is your time and effort. Like there was a set time every day, I believe,
if not like every few days, where you would log in during this window and you would solve puzzles.
And the whole point of solving these puzzles was to contribute to their identity, you know, kind of efforts in terms of like solving CAPTCHAs that would be used to prove someone's identity.
I forget exactly how it works, but basically it was through these actions that you actually earn tokens.
But basically, it was through these actions that you actually earn tokens.
And I thought that was a very novel use of kind of staking, if you will, or doing work and getting rewarded for it.
Similar to these staking mechanisms, but again, you weren't putting up any tokens.
You were putting up time and effort and human intelligence even to solve these puzzles,
which, like I said, then would go on to be used to prove someone's identity in the back end.
So I thought that was really interesting. And like that, I'm sure there's hundreds of examples.
Exelux, I wonder if you wouldn't mind sharing if this is something within your domain of
expertise. I understand that depending on the person who's on the other side of the call, this might be their thing or not. But how does how does Excel X look at staking in general as a platform?
First of all, let me introduce myself. My name is Elizabeth and I'm partnership marketing manager at Xolx.
And unfortunately, I don't have such a huge experience in this era because, you know, we are swap service and we don't have a staking platform or we don't provide staking ourselves. But we see a lot of users who exchange their
assets into staking friendly assets and we play an indirect but maybe an essential role in this. So we'll be providing the unramp to these strategies
in a way we can.
So it's a fast, private and user-friendly way
with our swaps, you know, that are open to everyone
because we don't have this KYC. We don't have signups.
Almost each user that even in
newcomer in crypto world that just
want to start with crypto or just
want to start with staking or some
other high models they can use our
platform and get assets they need to to start and um maybe that's how we
we take part part in all this procedure you know um
yeah actually you you bring up a really good point uh this whole concept of on-ramping and off-ramping
of an on-ramping and off-ramping, you know, either to crypto in general or from one token to another,
right? I think it's a very valuable service and a very important one to be able to provide
a system for people to participate either in an ecosystem or in crypto at large.
So, and you also brought up another point we've never really introduced
ourselves so that's uh that's a really good thing uh we kind of just skipped over that so
thanks so much for introducing yourself thank you for also introducing this new topic which we can
uh definitely sidestep to and have the conversation but before we go too deep on that
barnavas why don't you give us an introduction to yourself and then we'll do the same for Gramajo, which you were kind enough to come up and speak with us.
OK, my name is Barnavas, and then I
am a habinger in Ontology Network.
Awesome.
Gramajo?
Hey, guys.
My name's Gramajo.
Just a user of DeFi, going deeper and deeper every day, been in the space for over a decade.
Too humble, Gramajo. Both you and Barnabas, too humble.
a little over a year and Carabajo is one of these creators who is constantly looking for
new platforms to experiment with and then share your insights with the world. So I think your
newsletter is a really good one and your content is very good as well. And so you definitely need
to, we need to promote that a little bit more,
what you're doing over there at Area 51.
And Barnavas, again, you too, very humble,
but Barnavas, you were someone who participated
in a hackathon recently that Ontology supported,
which was solving or creating solutions in the DID space.
You came in, you participated, you contributed in a challenge,
and I believe you might have actually placed in the hackathon.
And you reached out and said,
I really am interested in what Ontology is building,
primarily in the DID space.
And you've since joined as a contributor,
Harbingers, as Ontology calls them.
And yeah, so definitely credit to you for being very involved in being a hacker and tinkerer as well.
As for myself, I'll give a brief introduction.
My name is Humpty.
I've been in the space since 2016, came by way of staking, node operating, as I mentioned. One of those nodes being on the Ontology Network.
Became very curious about what decentralized identity was.
And back, what, three years ago,
started contributing in that space of DID with Ontology
and have now continued to just develop more of content
that goes beyond just
like out of the financial rails and talks about like the creative efforts of Web3.
So those are some of the things that I do and very happy to be hosting this space here with Autology
and talking about DeFi and celebrating their anniversary at the same time.
So with that said, I think right now it's a good opportunity to kind of go into that new direction that was kind of shared with us, which was on ramping.
for engaging non-crypto users to basically get their first token, whatever that is,
or for being able to then interact with other tokens based on any yield that you might have earned,
either passively or through some other proof of work?
If anybody has an experience that, I'd love to hear it.
Okay, I think I'll go first.
So, you know, crypto is like too, let's say, complicated to some people, like to non-to-way
to users, let's say.
But if we can simplify it, like just simplify the terms, we should stop using the big big words that will confuse them
because some people are thinking that if I come into this space it might be very very difficult
for me to get a grasp on what Web3 is or blockchain and for them to kind of like understand
the dynamics of how crypto works and how to get their first token how to
kind of like make transactions on the on chain um so for them is some some like some people think
they have to study a lot they have to lose a lot of terminologies but if we can simplify it
explain to them that oh this is how it works in in terms. I think more Web 2 folks will come to Web 3.
And, you know, the education around Web 3 is kind of like very complex.
Like what happened, I think, I don't know whether you guys know about it, but it was last year it wasn't 2023 i think it started 2023 when the wave of airdrop
via telegram came in a lot of people came into web3 they kind of like okay i need to
start maybe tapping or logging every day to claim some coins and after the airdrop has launched i'm
going to get this certain amount of money so a lot of people
came in if they don't get the money like they expect their expectations were set high and then
the airdrop disappointed them they are just going to be like okay web3 is scam and then they will
just go away and they will not be like um interested in web3 again. So I think the education matters, if you can simplify it. Yeah,
I think a lot of people will come in, get their first coin and see maybe it's something that
they can continue using. Yeah.
Yeah, that's a good point. Education, I think, is very important to, not just in terms of solving a problem
and creating a platform,
but being able to engage people.
Again, and I think the keyword you use there,
which I think is very important,
is in a way that's super accessible to them.
Go for it, XLX, I see you unmuting.
Yeah, yeah.
I just want to say that I agree.
And I think that one of the biggest challenges for everyday users
in DeFi is still complexity and onboarding. Things like, for example, switching between chains,
managing wallets, understanding how different earnings strategies work or even lack of privacy, you know, these things, they can be overwhelming for people who just come from traditional finance and who just starting with crypto and the really ground production, you know, I think that we need to make the fire feel safe, simple and accessible for everyone.
And it doesn't matter where someone lives or how much they know.
They just have to know that they can come, try and everything is going to be OK.
And, you know, maybe services and trying to remove this friction that doesn't have a registration, doesn't have this need to connect a wallet. It's something that we need for now to bring more new users, to attract more attention for DeFi.
And I think that's the best we need to follow for now.
Yeah, thank you. That's a good point.
I wonder, Gramajo, what are some of the best resources you've seen?
I wonder, Gramajo, what are some of the best resources you've seen?
Just because, again, I keep coming to you because I know I lean into you or onto you
in terms of your experiments on-chain with DeFi.
What are some of the best tools you've seen to learn about DeFi?
Is it usually produced by the platforms themselves,
or are there good third-party solutions that we all should be looking at um it's sad but like i would say it's rarely the team themselves you know uh
like at least early on or and it makes sense if you really think about it, you know, a lot of these people are
spending a lot of time essentially making this concept, like proof of concept, and they're
putting it like on the blockchain, and they're spending a ton of time on like, you know, just
making sure everything works, things aren't breaking left and right. And, you know, they get to the end of it and it's up.
And it's like, how do you get people now to participate in your ecosystem?
And we see this happen a lot, you know, where like,
we have very talented engineers or technical folks,
just super gigabrain.
And then, you know, the delivery maybe doesn't land
the way they think it will.
And I think that's where, like, content creators
and, like, can come in and support some of that.
And just people that are, like, tinkers.
So, like, I'm always, I wouldn't say I'm like the most technical person,
but I'm technical enough where I can open up documentation,
open up the terminal and set it up.
And then, you know, usually I'll like create some visual
or even like video, just walking people on like the steps.
Um, and then sort of like of it being out there, then, uh, like a better version gets made later, you know, with like, not just like my version, you know, like, it's like
everyone's building on top of each other's work.
So like the, the documentation that the first engineer, the first person that sets it up is probably very technical.
They're probably like, I don't understand why you guys can't follow along on these instructions.
And then there's me who can kind of understand a little bit of what they're saying.
And then I'm like, I have tips and tricks on how to, if you run into issues, how do you beat that?
And then someone behind me you know will do something else and then hopefully like after iteration then we have
actual like people you know like bigger accounts being like hey i set this up and it wasn't that
hard you know and also like in that process hopefully that tool gets easier to set up as well, you know?
So I think it's just a natural progression of where we're at with some of these protocols, you know?
Like it used to be very cumbersome to set up a node or something.
And now, you know, they're like in Docker containers.
So like if you're familiar with Docker, it's like kind of straightforward.
And then if you're're familiar with Docker, it's like, kind of straightforward.
And then if you're not familiar with Docker, then like a year or two, they'll probably
be like a GUI version or a front end version that kind of holds your hand and lets you
do it. And then really like the Holy Grail is kind of like the I don't know if you guys
saw Jack Dorsey's like, BitChat.
It's like you download an app. You like download an app.
Well, that's the whole meme, right?
Because it depends how you write it.
It could mean two different things.
Yeah.
So like the BitChat example is like, you know, we have all these examples of like,
the deep end environment, or like the world where like,
it's like,
if you want to be a validator,
you need to have, you know,
like M2 SSDs and like,
you know,
all these crazy records,
the hardware.
And then you have some physical infrastructure staking or whatever,
where they're just like,
you know,
Hey,
we don't need you to do this.
It's kind of like what you were saying,
Humpty,
like it's either going to be proof of work.
Like you're putting your work in it or like proof of work, like you're putting your work in it,
or proof of storage, like you're going to give us your storage.
Proof of computing power, CPU.
And then, yeah, I don't know.
So I think that's just where we're at with DeFi as a whole,
is that we have some that are just starting and they're very hard
to work with and then hopefully in a couple years you know you just pick up your phone and that's it
like there's not much more that you have to do. I think you bring up a really good point and I
think this question would go to XLS and to ontology so I could speak to this maybe a little bit but
do you think then Gramajo and Barnabas as people who
are from the community, who are building and finding like your way maybe at a very high level
before you yourself help to like digest some of this very complex information, distilling it and
sharing it in a much more easy to understand way. Do you think that there should be programs then
hosted by these platforms, these platforms, whether they are a restaking platform or just
generally a DeFi platform or a payments platform that basically bounties work for documentation and creative writing with things that have to do with, you know, a product
or a feature so that people who aren't extremely technical can get that information from somewhere?
Like, and have you seen that already happen or happening very well?
happening very well.
Yeah, I think it's going to get better.
Like, so in the tech, like, Humpty, you're probably familiar with this and some other
people too, like in the in the software world, you have like technical writers, which is
people that like write technical documentation.
And we've reached a state now where like, you know, not to bring up AI,
but like essentially like we've reached a state now where you can actually just like upload a video.
And there's like technical writing tools that like write documentation for you.
And then obviously AI is AI.
So like obviously a human should still intervene and look at it.
So I feel like the iteration of this whole process is going to get quicker.
Am I seeing this happening faster?
Yeah, I would say yeah.
You know, like it probably used to be like some of the DeFi protocols
that we've worked with or like we've acted on, they've been around for three, four years.
And I'm sure setting up a kind of do staking maybe three, four years ago was like, hey, you have to go to the contract if you want to withdraw and do this or that.
Maybe that's what it was three, four years ago.
and then now it's like you know you could do it all from a front end like you could deposit
And then now it's like, you know, you could do it all from a front end.
withdraw like do whatever you got to do through a front end and it's not it's probably like less
complex now um and they either got through there through time more users complaining hey i have one
i don't want to go to a to the contract just to update XYZ or do XYZ.
So yeah, I think we're iterating through it a lot faster nowadays.
Yeah, I think those are a lot of good points.
Barnavas, if you wanted to show here too, you're definitely welcome to.
I know that you've been participating in hackathons, so maybe you've seen something similar.
Yeah, I think for me uh
when it comes to documentation even though i'm as a developer i kind of like um i'm kind of like
i've had time like completing it so i would just go to an ai paste it there and maybe kind of like
dissect it for me but for me i think when it comes comes to like simplifying the whole DeFi thing, maybe
the platform themselves have to come and kind of like explain what DeFi is and how the process
is to people for them. Like, ah, yeah, they are creating trust. And also some of the DeFi, I think, platform
can also do that.
But for me, I think when it comes to, like,
let's say making it accessible to everyone,
it can be in a video form where I think,
when it comes to like following instructions,
instructions. Video form is the best.
video form is the best.
The documentation is hard to follow through and finish.
But like I said, if it is in a video context, that would be a lot better.
And for the devs, they should stop making things complex to non-technical people and kind of like simplify the whole language for them to understand more better.
Absolutely.
Also, it looks like Exilus is having trouble.
They keep going down and coming up.
Exilus, let me know if you need me to bring you back up.
I believe, at least on my end, looks like you're on speaker or listener mode again.
So feel free to raise your hand to be brought back up.
Just to add a little bit to Barnabas as well.
Yeah, I feel like the most successful projects I've seen is like,
they have it like written, written with
pictures, video,
and I think a key
thing that gets missed in some of these
DeFi protocols and ETH
or just projects in general
is just multi-language
support, or
not even support, but
just like the documentation
in another language.
I think we, we forget that, you know, to me, DeFi is like, needs to be accessible by everyone. It shouldn't be just one. It shouldn't be just people that speak English
in America. It shouldn't just be people that speak English globally. And, you know, to me,
it needs to be...
The things that get me excited about DeFi, RWA,
and liquid staking and all these other things
is not how we can better serve Americans,
even though I live in America.
It's more like, how do we...
How can we serve, like, Spanish-speaking people
in, like, rural villages in Central America
or people in Africa or people
in Brazil. And we're seeing some really good examples of this right now where
like in Brazil, we see a lot of like, you know, it's Portuguese, but it's not, it's Brazilian
Portuguese, which is very different from Portugal Portuguese, you know?
And little nuances like that does make a difference
and makes DeFi, what to me it means is,
it makes it more inclusive to everyone,
which is what it should strive for.
So I think if you're someone that has a protocol
or working on getting as many users, you know,
don't just focus on the English-speaking crowd
is kind of what I would say.
It's interesting you say that because, first of all, I agree.
But I wanted to kind of bring in an anecdote
from outside of crypto, and that is Mr. Beast.
You know, I follow the creator space pretty closely. At least I tried to. I know that it's very fast moving, especially with so many platforms. It's hard to get information that's pretty comprehensive. totally like hit me so hard. One of the things that he mentioned was his videos where he speaks
English are the worst performing videos that he makes. The videos that blow up and go viral for
him are the ones that actually don't have any words. And the reason for that is because the rest of the world, which is the majority of the
world, doesn't speak English, right? English is not their first language, second or third.
It's some other language. So when you remove the barrier of language, you open up an opportunity for your product or content to perform much higher than it would if you make it exclusively for English.
One thing that he was saying, which I think connects with what you were saying, Gramajo, is that he translates some of his content.
Sometimes, I think historically with people doing the translations,
but more so regularly now using AI
to translate the content for him
so that it could actually connect with different audiences.
And the one thing that he was asking for,
which I don't think that this necessarily connects too much,
is that he was asking these platforms to build in to their product an AI translation
so that he doesn't have to go
and create different videos for different languages,
but so that that content can be consumed
by different cultures around the world
and different language speaking communities
around the world. And I think
that that's a really interesting thing, both because, again, it connects with what you were
saying, which is we need to be creating content and explaining this technology that's quite
not just novel, but important to people outside of just English speaking communities, but also, if possible, to do it
directly in the platform where you don't need to necessarily create different types of content.
And I've seen some projects do really, really good at this. I mean, I think one of the companies that
I remember, again, this is very early in my crypto career that was doing this very well was Binance.
I think Binance does a good job at translating everything around the world. And I think because of that, it's they have the platform
or the audience that they do. It's no coincidence, I think, right? But I think all of us, no matter
what we're building, there's a benefit to be able to communicate in different languages.
And I'll just tip my hat to Ontology because they do have multiple communities that speak different languages to be able to communicate with them. I see Francisco in the audience, aka I don't care,
who speaks to the Latin community in the audience, you know, and so he connects through telegram and
through spaces in a different language. And like him, there's others in the community that do the
same. So just recognizing that and understanding that that is a very valuable point and something that we
should all always strive for. As we're reaching the top of the hour here, I want us to put our
prediction hats on and or our futurist hat on, if you will, where we look at the future and think
about what DeFi will look like in the next six months to a
year, and then how it will look like in the next five years. I know it's really hard to even look
down six months, let alone five, but maybe this is more of a personal bias, what we'd like to see.
We'll start with XLX, if you wouldn't mind just sharing some of your thoughts about what future
you think DeFi will have, and maybe some things that you personally
would like to see oh yeah that's true i'm sorry for my uh troubles with connections it's awful
today you know the space is just doesn't uh working properly i don't know why and i i don't know what to do with this and I hope you can hear me well yeah yep
loud and clear yeah okay so what can I say so looking ahead you know I think
that maybe the next way of the fire adoption will be driven by real-world use cases like recognized assets, integrated payment tools, better connection
between traditional and crypto plans.
And also, maybe now we can see early signs of how AI can play a role in DeFi earning, you know, by helping users find better strategies,
personal risks and automatic complex decisions. And as these tools develop, you know,
earnings in DeFi could become more efficient, I hope, and more accessible to everyday users.
At Xolex, personally, we are preparing for this future, and we are focusing on access, simplicity, And we support for now swaps across more than 200 blockchains.
And we are working on even increasing this number.
And to make experience even faster and more cost effective,
so users can move between ecosystems easily and no matter
when your opportunities appear and our goal is to help people interact with
DeFi tools freely you know without any barriers unnecessary complexity or compromises of privacy.
And as the lines between on-chain and real world finance bloor,
we want to be on one of the bridges that make this future possible.
Thank you for that. Yep, thank you for that.
Barnabas, it's funny, when I heard Gramajo say Barnabas,
it just sounded different in my head.
I normally call you Barnabas.
Again, my Latin tongue taking priority there.
Any thoughts in terms of like your futurist thinking
in terms of the evolution of DeFi
moving into the next six months to five years?
Okay, so I think the short term,
that's like for the six months.
For me, I'm looking at stabilization and like growth.
So after like the big hype cycle,
people want safety and clearer ways to kind of
like end when they stake their coins and then we should expect more i think we are going to expect
more from restaking improve liquidity staking as well and for I think better user experiences should be there as well.
So I'm kind of like looking into it
as people get to have like a better experience with DeFi.
And for the long term, for the long term,
and that's like in the next five years,
I think one should be a real world integration.
For now, DeFi is like isolated, but in the future, I think it should be real-world integration. For now, DeFi is like isolated,
but in the future, I think it will blend in
and then will become a real-world asset
like property, treasury, or inverse financing.
The next one is DeFi and AI automation.
I think SmarterTools will help people automate
yield strategies and help them in order to kind of like
make better decision if they want to maybe stake,
trade or anything in the DeFi space.
And adoption, I think more people will get to understand
and know and maybe picked an interest in DeFi.
And since like right now they are making it to understand and know and maybe picked an interest in DeFi.
And since like right now, they are making it like accessible to everyone and simplifying it in so many ways that people wouldn't get confused.
So for me, I think adoption will be there.
There will be more people that will join.
And I think the last one is global usability like we've
discussed they just focused on the English speakers that's like some of the
ecosystem they just focus on the English speakers and not the non-English
speaker so but if you can make it like a universal language where we get to
translate each and everything into people's local language that will be that'll be awesome and that would be great in order to kind of like tell people,
okay, this is the awesome technology that is happening right now.
And then if you join us, this is like the benefit and the advantage.
So that's, I think, my prediction for the next six months and then next five years.
That's awesome.
Yeah, adoption is a huge one,
increasing the visibility and usability of DeFi
to new communities, 100% on that.
Gramajo, what are your six months
to five-year projections of DeFi?
Yeah, I think I'll go with a little bit
of what Exelix was saying, which is just more
focus on real world assets or RWAs.
I know we're seeing early signs of that right now.
A key thing about it is definitely it being interoperable between whatever ecosystem you're
engaging with.
I think that will be very key for the user experience and adoption.
But the big things on my mind is just like,
as we move more into this world,
it's just like bringing maybe different kinds of, you know,
quote unquote assets into the blockchain that ones that like really unlock mobility for, for
people that probably didn't have this level of accessibility to financial services in
the past, you know, I'll give you like an example that, that I that makes me bullish is like, you know, I have like, I collect like rare Pokemon cards,
graded ones, and you know,
they're valued at money.
Like, if you've seen some of the YouTube videos,
there's like, you know, if you have like a rare Charizard,
you know, they're worth like 300K.
And it seems nuts to me that like, you're not able to put that down as an asset.
You know, like when I bought my home here in the US,
and this was only like a couple years ago,
when you're listing all your assets,
I actually listed my Bitcoin and a couple of my Pokemon cards.
And the bank just laughed.
And I was like, dude, this is like, is like this is real money like I know it's
not something you recognize but it's something that other people recognize so like it just seemed
a little odd to me that they didn't recognize like Bitcoin as an asset even like three four
years ago and now that's changed obviously and it's going to keep changing. But I think about like, you know, like farmers and like rural areas, like my,
my dad lives in a farm and I'm like, it'd be actually really cool to like,
I don't even know, tokenize your cow or something, you know,
like part of it and give you more mobility to do,
you know, to just help yourself, you know,
like maybe you don't want to get rid of the
account necessarily, but you need help. Like you're in a pinch right now. Like there has to be
like things that we recognize that make it easier. And if it's not a traditional banking institution,
then maybe it's some other person halfway around the world that does believe in that, you know,
like maybe you have land in Oaxaca that's beachfront, you know, like maybe you have land in Oaxaca, uh, that's beachfront,
you know, and maybe your bank doesn't recognize it, but me, I'm like, Hey, worst comes to worst.
I have land now in Oaxaca, like that's beachfront. I don't know, just things like that. So that's
kind of where my, my ideas go is like more, more RWA, more adoption, and also just bringing more
assets that traditional financial institutions don't recognize,
like bringing those on chain and letting the market kind of figure it out.
Yeah, 100%. I like the idea of that.
I'll give my two cents personally,
Personally, just because I am really interested and deep in the creator space, I would like to see a DeFi ecosystem that abstracts the complexities of, you know, kind of getting your first crypto where it's more fluid in the economy of that experience.
just because I am really interested and deep in the creator space.
So tipping being like a big element
of supporting your favorite creators,
subscriptions, you know,
which I think are another big form
of supporting your favorite creators.
I think, you know, there's other things
such as like newsletters and whatnot,
but I would like to see a future
in which creators can tokenize their time things such as like newsletters and whatnot. But I would like to see a future
in which creators can tokenize their time,
you know, kind of mature the value of that effort
based on the experience that they gain
and the ability or reputation that they earn over time
in terms of being a good creator
and really, you know, being more of a quote unquote
journalist and less of a shiller, right? Who's not going out there and just pushing information
just for the sake of getting paid, but more so to educate people. And again, this is less so even to
discuss the fact that they need to be making content around crypto, more so about the fact that they can get paid in crypto and then giving them a way to easily exit so that they can pay their bills.
You know, because a creator needs to pay their rent or mortgage, a creator needs to be able to pay, you know, for their lunch and whatnot, maybe even travel.
for their lunch and whatnot, maybe even travel.
So I would like to see a future
in which creators can leverage DeFi
in a way that is super simple
and then recognize that their time and effort
and maturity in the space.
So that's my two cents, if you will.
With that, I want to say thank you
to everybody who participated.
Exelus here for being a really great
partner and showing up uh and then barnabas and gramajo uh for showing up as well and
spending some time with us this afternoon
um with that yes for sure go ahead excelix yeah uh I just want to thank you again for having me here.
And it's been a pleasure to talk to you.
And I learned some interesting things because I'm not an expert in staking and all this stuff.
And it was very interesting to be here.
And happy to join you next time if you ask me again.
Absolutely.
We meet here usually every Thursday.
We have different conversations, so tune in next Thursday.
I think we're going to do the final chapter of our on-chain gaming,
and we're going to be featuring several speakers from the
Farcaster ecosystem. So definitely tune in then and until then have a great weekend and the rest
of the week for everybody else. Bye everybody.
