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Pryzm Alpha Hour - DeFi, Cosmos, & Future Expansion
Recorded: Sept. 24, 2025 Duration: 1:02:57Space Recording
Short Summary
In a dynamic discussion, key players in the crypto space explored the launch of innovative governance proposals and platforms, emphasizing the importance of collaboration in the Cosmos ecosystem to drive growth and user engagement. The conversation also highlighted emerging trends in yield tokenization and the need for community feedback to enhance DeFi functionalities.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. you
hey guys hey day doing well pretty good Glad to hear it.
All right.
I think let's just share in Twitter and Telegram.
If everyone who's already here can just like the space and share it just so we can try and get some more people in who might have forgotten.
And then we can get started in just one minute.
I see we have some guests.
So if you need to kick me off speaker, go ahead for room.
No, don't worry.
I don't think I'm getting limited yet. So do not worry, my dude.
Just setting people up, trying not to get rugged by
spaces
did you figure out how to add host yet
I still I try every
time but it's I just
don't know why it doesn't work
I just think like know why it doesn't work.
I just think, like, does Samsung hate me?
Does Android hate me?
I don't know.
Maybe.
I don't know what the deal is, but it's sketchy.
You're my boy.
Luna was able to do it when we did a Spaces.
He has the power.
He's got the power. All right, I'm going to try and do it when we did a spaces. He has the power. He's got the power.
All right, I'm going to try and do it here for you, Damon.
You can let me know if that's worked.
All right, cool.
Welcome, everybody.
So we've got Max today, who's been on before from Bolt Liquidity.
Mr. T, would you like to introduce yourself, sir?
Yes, GM, GM, hello, hello. Mr. T here, Paul of ARC Protocol,
and also new to the team of Bolt Liquidity.
And I'm happy to be here with you and Max, my comrade.
Nice one. And then obviously we've got Damon here speaking, who's a long time
yield master and community member from Prism and then you're my boy, Luna, who's one of the
top traders on Prism. So I've got lots of stuff that we can talk about today.
I think like, I want to start the space with an exciting one.
So there's two big moments I've been talking about for a while
that are happening right now.
are happening right now.
So if you go on app.prism.zone,
you can see your first ever
liquid governance proposal is live.
So this is signaling proposal.
So people can go and test it out
with their P-prism or their C-prism.
This is the first version.
So we'd love to get people's feedback
please do check it out
and let us know what you think
and that's on app.prism.zone
forward slash liquidvoting
so if you just go to the main app.prism.zone
and click on the more
and then click liquidvoting
that is going to
take you to the page and that's kind of i think i think for the
i i've never heard of another chain that um or another protocol that has leveraged voting where
you can vote with lsts on on chain governance and get um multiplied leverage voting pounds. So, you know, it's the first time anyone's done it.
So there could be interesting things or new things that come up.
So, you know, community feedback as always is really appreciated on that stuff.
And then the second thing that is exciting today is if people go to seal.deals,
they are going to see the very first version of the seal website.
Everyone can try and test out now on mainnet.
Wanted to launch it on the space.
wanted to launch it on the space like this is a very preliminary version like i would suggest
This is a very preliminary version.
using it with you know a small amount of funds just to give it a just to give it a test out but
again really excited to get people's feedback on it see what they think um you know this is
this is again like i think it's a first for d5 at least that i'm aware of, and much more mimics the way that things trade in traditional finance,
where an order is created here.
You as a maker can go and create your order,
and anyone that sees liquidity or your price target gets reached
on any centralized exchange or decentralized exchange
can reserve your order and say that
they're going to fill your order and then they can go and source the liquidity from the centralized
exchange or decentralized exchange and come back and fill your order so it's your probability of
getting filled is a lot higher and it's way way more capital efficient for market makers.
So, and also, you know, this works for general prism assets,
yield tokens, principal tokens,
all the kind of things that people were wanting to trade before,
but, you know, we're worried about the liquidity
or the price impact of those trades,
whether it was DCA trades or individual spot trades against the AMM
that had big price impact.
So yeah, really excited for this.
So please do let us know all your feedback
and try it out.
And then, yeah, other than that,
those are kind of like the two major updates of things that we're working on at the moment.
So sealed.deals and app.prism.zone forward slash liquid voting.
And then I thought it might be helpful given our co-hosts, or sorry, like our speakers on today.
We've said a little bit about Cosmos Yield, Cosmos Yield strategies.
I think, Max, I'd seen a post you put out
about Pendle kind of like being a, you know,
I guess like a linchpin now in Ethereum.
And I was wondering if you could chat a little bit more about that.
Because I think, you know, something we like for the Prism team and the Prism community
like Finding Cosmos is
people get a little bit segregated
and a little bit siloed
and I think there's quite a good playbook
on Ethereum about
how these
points markets
effectively have been created
and so it'd be good to get your
thoughts a
little bit around about that tweet you put out um maybe i can even try and share that in a little
bit and then also you know we can discuss a little bit more about cosmos yield opportunities
sounds great to me
okay nice one go go for it so uh sorry yeah explaining that tweet you did you did like
you know in cosmos or sorry in pendle specifically is it kind of something you've looked at quite a
bit yeah i would say so i mean i've known about pendle for a long time and honestly at first it
was quite confusing just because of this idea of the yield token versus the actual
principal token. But what I've noticed over time is that, one, people love to speculate,
so now you can speculate over farming airdrops, farming incentives, what have you, or to speculate
on whether you think the yield will actually increase based on when you're buying a yield
token. But what I've also realized is that
a lot of DeFi protocols in general have begun to leverage Pendle to not only bring in additional
liquidity, but really just get more users aware of their tokens and taking advantage of these
yield opportunities or discrepancies in the yield. So I just thought it was pretty interesting,
especially because, you know,
you can earn sometimes outsized yield just by using these DeFi protocols that leverage liquidity from, you know, all these different, you know, other, you know, perp taxes or lending protocols,
what have you. Yeah, I couldn't agree with that more. I think it's, I think it's been,
yeah i couldn't agree with that more i think it's i think it's been
you know we we we i guess like as a team have been in the yield space for a pretty long time
so i remember when we were like you know we were sat there building prism and um and pendle was at
like three million tvl and like a you know 1 million or 2 million market cap or whatever it was.
And I think we've kind of sat there being like, okay, well, you know,
we know for a fact that the interest rate and yield swap market
in traditional finance is like a $700, $600 trillion market.
It's like the biggest market by a long, long way.
But, you know, and there's all these sorts of yields in defy um that aren't necessarily you know people aren't speculating on or trading
on without you know doing full um fully funded kind of exposure to them and then so we kind of
like felt there was definitely market fit from that side. And then obviously Pendle really latched onto this, I guess, yeah, like, you know, this
narrative effectively, you know, a yield token being a point speculation tool or allowing
people to kind of isolate their risk and be like, okay, well, I don't want to own the
underlying asset, but I'm very happy to speculate on the value of the points and stuff that
I'm going happy to speculate on the value of the points and stuff that I'm going to receive
and then I think you know it's been uh it's been super interesting to see how basically any any
protocol launching any kind of you know liquid state or liquid yield bearing token um
of any you know hoping to reach any sort of scale is basically just now using Pendle as a way
of launching it and getting, like you say, like, you know, Pendle has existing users.
Although actually, you know, surprisingly, you know, when you go on
Etherscan, for example, and you start seeing the actual holders of some of these PT,
you know, the amount of holders of pts and that kind of stuff um the actual numbers i don't know if you looked at
yourself but the actual numbers aren't like astronomically huge in terms of like the amount
of users but like what you do seem to get is quite a lot of whales that participate in pendulum
will kind of maybe jump from points farm to points farm. And I think Pendle ends up being a way for protocols to generate a huge amount of TVL
for their liquid stakes and kind of like yield bearing tokens.
I think it's definitely something that we've, I don't know, frustrated is a strong word, but I think something in Cosmos that we've, you know,
I guess, you know, there have been good opportunities
potentially for stuff like this to happen in Cosmos
with maybe like the launch of Drops tokens
or the launch of USDN, Noble's tokens.
And I sort of, you can't help but feel things like these
end up like being a slight missed opportunity when there's quite a good playbook that's happening on Ethereum.
Well, especially with all the LSTs through like Stride and some of these other LST providers in the cosmos, there's definitely different tokens and liquidity that could be brought over to something like Prism that does operate similar to something like Pendle.
I mean, and like I mentioned this in my tweet when I talked about it, but when you look
at Pendle, they're bringing in significant liquidity from other major protocols, right?
Like Morpho deployed half a billion, Aave put in two billion, Hyperliquids brought in
over a billion. Aave put in two billion. Hyperliquids brought in over a billion. So like they're
sourcing significant capital from existing protocols. And I think that's something in
the cosmos is hard to do. One, because there just isn't that much value available. So it makes it
difficult to be able to like mimic kind of what Pendle's been able to do but that doesn't mean that it
couldn't be done at a smaller scale um that fits within like the cosmos um where the valuations are
a bit lower the treasuries are a bit lower but they still have plenty of tokens um and you know
underlying tokens available that they could be deploying to protocols like this where they could
either earn themselves or you know give a place for people to
to earn yeah agreed i look at something like you know usdn for example so people that aren't
familiar with it like that was nobles um nobles uh or is nobles dollar and it's not like it's
there's there's nothing there's nothing especially exciting about it it's like it's there's there's nothing there's nothing especially exciting about
it it's like it's it's kind of like a you know the dollar itself is like a worse like a worse
version of ondose um usdy because it's sort of similar yield but it's not in a liquid wrapper
so you can't you can't really transfer it off of noble or you can't really use it in defy um
but you know what they did have was a campaign
where they wanted to kind of like bootstrap liquidity for it.
And so they, you know, they ran that on Noble
and I think at one point they got up to kind of like
maybe like $150 million of deposits.
I think they had some sort of agreements with Wales
to kind of, you know, as well,
which kind of helps boost TBL well for them.
But because they didn't run a points campaign,
you know, like a leverage points campaign
with yield tokens, principal tokens,
I think, you know, kind of like my personal view
was like it was a huge missed opportunity for Cosmos because, you know, my personal, kind of like my personal view was like, it was a huge missed opportunity for Cosmos because, you know,
and we were sort of speaking quite regularly with them,
kind of a huge missed opportunity to really, you know,
do almost like an Athena style or something kind of yield tokenization in
Cosmos where people could just buy a yield token,
which gave them USD usdn yield plus points
at the moment if you wanted to get your usdn yield plus points you had to you know fully fund
with one us dollar whereas obviously with yield tokens it's a it's a fraction of that and you get
the exposure to the um to the points in the yield you get get more volatility, but it makes it speculation a lot more interesting.
And so I think that I'm certain
that there will be other opportunities
for people in the interchain like that.
But I feel like the interchain really has an opportunity
to try and work together to be greater
than the sum
of its parts um by finding these things and i think you know something's coming up as well is
you know interested in other people's thoughts if they've looked at you know i think neutron are
you know hyping quite aggressively at the moment this um max btc thing so i'm quite interested if
you guys have sort of looked at that what your your thoughts are on it. And, you know, whether you think that's the kind of thing where there should be kind of like
yield tokenization and points or whether it's kind of like too small a market.
Well, I never think it's like too small of a market. Like I think if you can provide something
that is going to provide value to users,
they'll find it or they'll, they'll use it.
I actually don't know much about what Neutron is doing on that end.
I did see some tweets about it and some people that were apparently getting really good yield on it. But I'm,
I'm not super familiar with what they were trying to do. So, I mean,
if you could provide a little context, that'd be great.
Yeah. So I'm, I'm, I i'm similar i guess on this and i haven't looked at it uh too much
someone sent over the um the announcement so i dug into the docs a little bit just to kind
of try and understand uh what it is doing because i think you know neutron i think uh I think are betting quite a lot on MaxBTC being successful.
I think in essence, what MaxBTC seems to do is
you will deposit some BTC on Neutron.
I think it will give you a receipt token for your deposit called MaxBTC.
a receipt token for your deposit called max BTC.
Your BTC will then be taken off chain,
sent over to Solana and used as collateral,
I believe in Jupiter protocol.
And then at the same time,
they're going to use some of your BTC to hedge out some of the other token risk in JLP.
So I think some Solana and some ETH risk can hedge that out with perps.
And then, you know, the theory is that you'll get a 5% to 10% return on your BTC.
return on your on your btc i think like why it's for me you know personally as someone that's
probably you know slightly more risk averse on these kind of things like i personally wouldn't
touch something like that with a 10-foot barge pole just because of all the different kind of
like smart contract risk custody risk um you know basis risk etc etc but i think like what what is interesting is neutron and max btc
and uh are kind of like incentivizing use of this to try and like bootstrap use of this
um and i think it would be you know it would be interesting to be able to speculate on the value
of kind of like the points and incentives that you're going to get but definitely wouldn't necessarily be wanting to hold max btc um itself just given the you know
given my risk tolerance and kind of like the risks that um come with it but like that's kind of an
interesting one that has a lot of you know neutrons you know has a has a you know an okay market gap
for cosmos chain and it's putting a lot of firepower behind
it. So it could be an interesting one for people to speculate on, I think.
Sorry, you were going to say?
Well, and I was just going to say like,
the thing is like when you want to get adoption of really anything in this
space, you have to provide incentives. Like if you're not providing incentives,
the, you know, no one,
most people aren't willing to take on any risk, like you're saying,
or even just try out something new. They need to see an upside in it. So I think it's a good
strategy to do what Neutron's trying to do by offering these high incentives initially just to
onboard the initial liquidity. But I'm in your boat, especially when it comes to
liquidity but i'm in your boat like especially when it comes to bitcoin derivatives it becomes
like really risky when you're when you're basically taking your bitcoin which is one of the most
like secure and you know hard assets you can have in this space for a derivative that could
ultimately go under very easily um and what does that mean for the tokens that you provided?
And that may be unclear.
So for me, it's a pretty big risk,
which means the incentive would have to outweigh that.
And I don't know what that would be for me personally,
but apparently with what they're offering,
it's enough of an incentive that they're getting
at least some people willing to take on some of that risk
for the upside.
Yeah, exactly. It's pricing that risk reward.
I think on a lot of these things like incentives or points campaigns,
and it's something we've learned a little bit as well from, from our own one is, you know, incentives and points campaigns like, but the, the, you know,
people definitely prefer current cashflow to deferred cashflow.
And obviously, you know,
a dollar now is worth a lot more than a dollar in six months or something
like that. So it's definitely, it's definitely been interesting, but I,
you know, I, I, I hope it, but I hope for them it generates a lot of TVL.
But it's kind of trying to think about where do the next interesting opportunities come in Cosmos
and what sort of yield bearing assets will there be or what assets will there be
where there's also like cash flowing yield because i think one of the things that pendle suffers from a little bit
um is like when all these points campaigns die down and a yield token is just getting cash flowing
yield then most of these protocols that are that are live don't have any cash flowing yield um to yield tokens it's just kind of like points uh a points token and so i think you know longer lasting you need to create
a framework where when points aren't necessarily the meta um you know you need to you probably need
to have kind of like actual real cash flowing yields and i think the market I don't know I see I see
some you know people put out some pretty insightful threads on like obviously like real
yield versus points yield and stuff like that but I think just my own experience you know the
the discount for a future dollar versus you know cash flowing yield dollars today is is pretty substantial in trad fi as you go out the risk
curve um but i think you know i think in defy it's kind of got price wrong a lot of the time
at least in my opinion and so it's going to be interesting to um it's going to be interesting
to see like yeah like what the what the value of rewards has to settle at uh for people to kind of
get interested in that.
But one thing I wanted to ask, like you're my boy, if you can hear me, is, you know,
do you think that people are most interested in speculating on points campaigns with yield tokens?
Or speculating on incentives?
Or do you think people prefer, you know, real cash flowing cash flowing you know betting on real cash flowing yields like for example i know you and i've chatted a little bit about um wrap state
for example which i think i need to refresh myself exactly but i think it has like a yield of like
two to four percent or something like that or on those usdy with it's like pretty stable, sticky yield of 4%, 4.5%, something like that.
Do you think people prefer, in Cosmos or in the interchain,
would prefer points campaigns,
or do you think they prefer speculating on real cash-flowing yield,
even if it's not that volatile?
I mean, it's hard to say i wouldn't want to try to characterize on behalf of you know
the core kind of um cosmos users but i'm more of a um i'm more of a real yield guy to be honest um
but sort of to your point there's just fewer of those opportunities available.
And so the points campaign mechanism seems to be a bit of the, I don't call it the flavor of the
month, but there's more of those opportunities. You know, not so much in Cosmos, currently outside of Cosmos, but in terms of putting my resources to work, I just feel a lot better about doing it when the yield is real.
you know, these, not just these campaigns, but the protocols behind them with, um, um,
you know, deals they may have made with, you know, market makers or Kohl's and just, I'm so wary of the,
the pump and dump, um, risk, if you will, um, that you just end up getting, I think you see a lot of,
end up getting, I think you see a lot of, I think you just see an awful lot of pure farmers coming in.
And again, that's just not my particular, my particular, you know, cup of tea. So if we're
going to have them, I would rather have, you know, I'm, this is a, I guess, a take that's biased by my, you know, fondness for the core mechanisms that Prism offers,
but I'd rather be able to see like,
if we're going to do them, like tokenize,
like allow the refraction and give folks an opportunity to,
you know, to bet, if you will, on either, you know,
leverage bet on the yield of the principal side.
So I don't know if that's the most common take, but that's, you know, that's my preference.
I'm more of an ondo.
I feel more comfortable, I'll put it that way.
I feel far more comfortable holding and refracting USDY over some of these more point-st points driven kind of derivatives that are out there.
I echo this.
Yeah, I agree with you.
Like, it's, you know, on something like USDY, like I think it's like underappreciated,
like, or at least for me,
like it's underappreciated,
like how cool it is to be able to hold something
that's so heavily regulated,
but is a liquid compounding token
of, you know, actual real US,
I said real US treasury,
like, but real yield from US.S. Treasuries.
And the fact that you can then speculate on it and some of the opportunities that have happened on prison,
where the prices have just, you know, gone a bit out of whack on it.
And then obviously we've tried to incentivize yield tokens on top of that real Treasury yield so that you can like hold underlying assets,
but also and earn real cash flow yield and then earn points on top of it.
Obviously that's, you know, like all good things at some point, that's, you know, it's
not a something that can happen into perpetuity.
But yeah, like I definitely tend to agree.
Sorry, go for it.
Yeah, I was just gonna say, I wish we would see,
I think there's such an opportunity with like Neptune,
for example, over on Injective.
Like they've got a really cool,
they've got some cool offerings there.
You know, and we've had their USDT and their USDY.
It's been tradable for quite a while on Prism.
And I think that's even more under the radar than USDY.
Maybe DY for obvious reasons.
They're a lot smaller.
But there's plenty of injective getting thrown around over there incentive-wise for different things like that, I wish they had or would consider doing something to boost their visibility inside the cosmos by adding some kind of campaign that we could also support.
Because that yield, it just varies, right?
As the market gets frothy and people
start borrowing more you start to see those yields creep up and then like that's perfect
the perfect type of asset to trade you know on a prism type platform is when you see that
volatility so it's not like we don't have opportunities, to your point about maybe as a lost one with, you know, with Noble's offering.
But, you know, Neptune, I think, is another one that's still viable.
And, you know, I hope we see some new creative campaigns, you know, coming from their direction.
direction yeah agree with that i think um i really yeah i really like neptune's usdt and usdc because
Yeah, I agree with that.
i think you know it definitely earning yield on a stable coin um that's also you know where you're
effectively also long uh you know, funding effectively.
So I think that ends up being something that,
and it's been pretty volatile and pretty high,
Neptune's USDT and USDC.
Like one thing I'm really hoping,
I think was a big lost missed opportunity
that we sort of flagged their team as well.
we've sort of flagged their team as well.
It's like, I think Mars deposits not being,
It's like, I think Mars deposits not being tokenized
has been a bit of an own goal.
But I heard a rumor that they're actually
going to tokenize their deposits
because if you deposit into Mars,
you should be able to go and use that,
your receipt token of your deposit in DeFi.
And you should be able to,
Mars, I think,
now having these things called Mars Fragments,
where you potentially can earn rewards on top of your deposits.
And so I think that would be an amazing kind of asset to refract.
It's like, it's way simpler than, you know,
putting your tokens into a multisig
and then going and YOLOing it on Jupiter.
You know, everything's on chain on mars you know they've got a pretty clear mechanisms of how everything works and so i think something
like that tokenized mars deposits could be could be great and also i think like to get a really
a really good flywheel going generally around the inter chain if borrowing costs on the inter chain
and supply um starts to increase so we definitely
love to love to see more of that and i think neptune part of the thing holding neptune back
is it's just been um pretty complex ux for people to go and mint nustt and nustc um for those aren't
like super familiar with kind of how injective works and kind of wrapping and unwrapping um to factory tokens and injective but yeah i think i think it could be some really
interesting stuff with money markets like neptune and mars max go for it yeah i guess i just have
like a broader question like obviously in the cosmos there's a handful of like d5 protocols and use cases but there's not like a ton like what
what do you think like the answer is to attract more d5 protocols and like provide more use cases
or more you know yield opportunities what have you because when you look across like solana when
you look across like ethereum or dell twos they all have a ton of different products,
multiple products for each, you know, sector.
But it's like the Cosmos doesn't seem to have that.
We have a few DEXs, you know, maybe one perps protocol.
So like, what is the answer there?
Like, what do you think we need to do
to bring that type of use cases
and then therefore bringing more users and value to the ecosystem?
Yes, it's super interesting.
Like, so my, you know, what I'd say is from my perspective,
like what the biggest problem is with the interchain and then what the biggest opportunity is for the interchain is, you know, a really closely linked.
It's like I think the problem is you get all of these blockchains or protocols that are trying to not trying to collaborate and not trying to be greater than the sum of their parts.
And so I guess what I mean by that is, you know,
you're never going to build some generic L1 in Cosmos, to my mind,
that is going to out-compete Ethereum or Solana.
And so I'm generally really bearish
when that kind of stuff happens.
And so like, you know, we speak with the Neutron team,
you know, we've been chatting for a while.
Generally, like I'm really bearish on,
if Neutron goes in a direction, for example,
as like a generic general purpose L1.
So, you know, what would I put as generic
general purpose L1. So, you know, what would I put as generic general purpose L1s?
Like things like Neutron, Terra, Juno,
those kind of things where they don't have like very unique core modules
built into their blockchain that unlock some kind of like new token
or, you know, extremely exciting new utility.
And so if you have these chains that are just general purpose,
that aren't collaborating, then they're basically just trying to compete with Ethereum and Solana.
And I think that's kind of a road to failure if you don't have anything unique on your chain.
And if you do have something, some smart contracts that someone builds that's unique on your chain,
they can just pick up those smart contracts and go deploy them on any other chain which is you know what's what we've seen happen loads anyway i think like you
have some super cool tech in cosmos like dytx or injective like actual blockchains that have built
really cool stuff into the core of their blockchain i think injective you know was
maybe you know correct me if i'm wrong but like maybe the first proper perpdex.
They built frequent batch auctions into their blockchain.
And it was, you know, proper high performance perpdex before anything else was, you know, ever had been like done as an app chain like that.
Same with, you know, and then DYDX has come along.
DYDX has their megavolts, their deposits.
Again, like, for me, like, a huge own goal missed opportunity
where they could have tokenized their USDC megavolts.
And that would have been, you know, a great synergy
with loads of other protocols.
So, like, I think the main problem with Cosmos
is that you're able to build amazing
and way more sophisticated and high-performance with Cosmos is that you're able to build amazing
and way more sophisticated and high performance blockchains
or app chains in Cosmos than you can building with smart contracts
on a general purpose L1 like Ethereum or Solana.
But building the brilliant tech is not enough.
You need to
collaborate and have interesting tokens and interesting utility and generate more users
and kind of like share users amongst different um different chains so that's why i think like
for cosmos to survive or like for the interchange to like survive and thrive long term like i think
chains with interesting really interesting tech need to collaborate a lot more um to be greater
than some of the parts because the tech's the tech is amazing in cosmos and that's like the
reason that we built prism in cosmos but um the collaboration like siloed nature of some of the
um you know some of the chains makes it makes me means that there's lots of these kind of like
missed opportunities and own goals um in my opinion and as a result you end up missing out
on a lot of liquidity a lot of users a lot of opportunity and like you were saying max like a
lot of you know a lot of um you know different protocols and different things spinning up that are exciting that you know give people new new things to do so it's that that's kind of my sense like what it
like what do you uh what do you think does that kind of like echo what you think or like you you've
obviously like you're coming at it with bulk protocol or like from the liquidity side so i
guess it's something that you've looked at quite a quite a bit yeah i mean i tend to agree with everything you said um i think just in general user
fragmentation is big in the cosmos because there are so many siloed chains that you can go to to
to use their different apps um and yeah i mean like bolt that was like a big core piece of why
we built it was we there was inherent in the Cosmos with like liquidity.
Like I noticed it myself, like when you go to swap or do things, it was like you had to find the venue that had the most liquidity.
And even the one with the most liquidity might still not offer you an efficient price.
And it was like, how do we kind of make it so that regardless, like what chain
you're on in the cosmos, or even, you know, outside of there as well, but like, make it more efficient
so that a user can actually like participate in DeFi, without taking on, you know, costs via
slippage or via lack of liquidity right off the bat, because that's going to obviously discourage
a user from wanting to deploy capital
if you're in the hole 3%, 4% just on your entry.
And now you have to outperform that
to even create upside or yield.
So, I mean, definitely I've thought about it a lot.
I don't think I have all the answers.
For example, I think Bolt solves some problems
like fragmentation liquidity
and not having efficient pricing.
But there's still other things that need to be solved before, like, I can see, like, a true DeFi ecosystem really building out.
And there's only a few chains that are really tackling that.
I'd say Injective is definitely one.
I think Neutron's trying to also, like, build, like, a DeFi ecosystem.
But outside, and then, of of course there's DYDX,
but they kind of are, you know, their own thing, I would say.
So like, I don't know who like the next in line will be
to start to like really innovate on the DeFi side of things,
but we're hoping like with Bolt
that it can be a key infrastructure piece
that teams can use as like a building block to build cool DeFi products, leveraging what Bolt's offering.
So, I mean, that was another big piece of why we did it is like we can see this being part of many different types of platforms, whether it's like a lending protocol and you use Bolt for the liquidation side.
Same with like the perp side of things,
it could be used for liquidations.
But yeah, it's really like,
how do we help build some of the building blocks
to support more DeFi applications being built
or use cases?
Because ultimately that's what's driving user activity,
driving fees to all these different protocols.
It's not really like the NFTs
or some of these other things that you see
built. It's almost primarily
just DeFi products that are
becoming sustainable, like
businesses.
Yeah, agreed.
I think
I do think, yeah,
if teams end up
collaborating, there are
loads of interesting opportunities but
i think that i think you're you know and we've definitely come across it from conversations
with other teams there's definitely a mindset of oh no i i need to have all of the activity
happening on my chain and people using gas on my chain otherwise um i'm not really interested and then i feel i feel like
you end up with this kind of like really small-minded um attitude where you're like
no that is like you know you're not really becoming like an export economy um you're just
becoming like some very like insular island nation.
I don't, you know, I just don't think that ends up being,
I don't think it ends up being kind of like the right way for long-term success.
Like I, you know, I guess our hope with Prism is that we can create,
you know, as kind of, we can try and, you know, get liquidity,
you know, more liquidity. And I think, you know, get liquidity, you know, more liquidity.
And I think, you know, more users can come in this platform.
Like, I think we want to build tools like we have done with sealed.deals
that kind of like increase interchain activity and increase like utility generally.
Like it's not something that's like specific to our chain
and people like have to come to our shop and have to
spend our special tokens that we make people buy in the shop um to use it and so i think i i feel
like you know when when people stop thinking about you know just getting people to spend their gas
token and gas fees are so negligible
in terms of like trading,
you know, revenue that chains generate anyway.
I think then it becomes,
you know, then that people will start focusing more
on like the, you know,
the user experience and user utility
and stuff like that.
And it's definitely more of an area
that we want to, I guess,
like work and specialize in.
JG, how are you doing?
I know it's something you've thought about as well.
Yeah, I was just thinking about the Gatsby profitability.
It's just funny.
It doesn't do it.
It's not going to do anything.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
There's so many better ways to drive value to a project's token than Gatsby.
Well, and I think that's something we've learned over time, right?
Is like some chains can do that.
Like, for example, Ethereum,
because the cost of gas is more significant
and the amount of transactions occurring is more significant.
Solana's kind of proved it can be a viable way
to earn for the protocol.
But in the Cosmos specifically,
just the gas fees alone are incredibly negligible.
You're talking like a cent, sometimes fractions of a cent, and we don't have the volume or user base
to make that a material amount of fees being earned. So therefore, you have to offer a product
or a service that actually can earn real fees.
When you look at a DAX charging 25 basis points for a swap or what have you, it's because they're providing a service where a user is actually willing to pay a little bit more to get whatever they need out of that product.
And I think that's a big piece that's missing with these protocols is they're not building apps that are fee generating. And that's a huge thing that needs to be done if you want to build something
sustainable. Because again, like you guys mentioned, relying on gas fees alone will
primarily in the cosmos never be an option unless someone decides to significantly increase the gas
fees. But we've kind of seen, and I know from Archway's perspective, we ran into this.
We tried to up the gas fees at one point to something more material, even though it was
like four or five cents and had immediate pushback from the community and people basically saying
like, hey, this is too much. And so it's like, there's not really an appetite in the cosmos for
that. So it makes it even more difficult for protocols who may understand this problem,
but still can't fix it because it could cost them
the users or activity on chain that they have,
which is already typically much smaller
than what you're seeing across these other ecosystems.
yeah i can like completely agree it's just it's just like a slightly funny weird blockchain thing
Yeah, I completely agree.
that um people seem to do i i think like from from day one on prism you know we were like you
know we kind of felt strongly that you know making people hold a token specifically just for gas and people actually couldn't even come and use your chain or use any of the products that you know making people hold a token specifically just for gas and people actually
couldn't even come and use your chain or use any of the products that you were creating or utility
you were trying to create until someone went and bought your special token so they could use it for
gas was just like horrible ux i think we you know we've always tried to make it so that any of the
tokens that people bring to our chain, they can actually use as gas,
so they can just ideally get an experience
where they don't need to go and buy Prism
or go and buy AWU or whatever if they don't want to.
Ultimately, the tokens that they do spend on gas
all get sent into the treasury anyway,
and then can be used to buy back prism
so like you kind of like it's you know a similar thing but like this this this model where it's like
oh i'd love i'd love people to go and buy you know ten dollars of my of my coin and hold it
in their wallet so that they can like gradually pay gas um when they use when they use my protocol and hopefully they buy more
than they need and then just hold it in their wallet and it you know takes some of the take
some of the stuff out of supply like it's kind of crazy i mean we definitely have had you know
slightly bizarre conversations with other other you know ibc connected l1s where they're like hey would you like to build a um a smart
contract based version of prison that's worse functionality than the chain that you have at the
moment but launch it specifically on our blockchain um so that people will pay some gas along with the fees that you guys will charge
so we generate some revenue from our blockchain and you're like okay so you're suggesting that
we give users like worse functionality and worse experience just so some gas can get paid on your
thing and I think it's just that kind of mindset. To be devil's advocate, though, it could be a good way for like Prism itself to accumulate more value to the protocol, right?
Because then if you deploy it, let's say, on other chains and you get access to those users and they start using this because it's on like a chain they're more familiar with or a chain that they're accustomed to using, you can earn fees from that.
more familiar with or a chain that they're accustomed to using, you can earn fees from
that. And there's nothing saying that you couldn't take those fees and bring them back to Prism,
right? And put them in your treasury or buyback tokens or what have you. So you're giving up like
a negligible gas fee to potentially get more business that then adds value to your protocol.
And now your Prism token can now have more value. like that's the big thing with cosmos in general
is most of these tokens are pretty much strictly governance because they're not earning enough fees
or building a treasury that makes the token valuable so the real the only real value it has
is like governance and security um but without like a treasury or treasury or fees being generated, what's the point of even holding it,
right? Because you don't have control over anything. When you look at an Aave or even
an Aerodrome or something, they're generating significant fees. So holding the token and
having control over governance in the treasury has real value, like intrinsic value. So that's why those
tokens are obviously valued, you know, where they are. Whereas the Cosmos, I think the reason you
see a lot of the bleeding is one, you know, inflation and the tokenomics are probably not
great, but then there's no intrinsic value underlying them outside of governance.
So I guess my point is just like, I understand where you're coming from 100%. Like you don't want to reduce functionality for a user
and turn them off to your product.
But if they're, for example, like DYDX
or someone with significant volume was willing to deploy it
and you guys got to keep the fees,
that could always be repurposed in a way
that's actually a value add to Prism itself.
Yeah, no, like if there's the opportunity to um expand somewhere
else like and do that kind of thing like i you know i i completely agree but i think like you
know i i think one of the things about cosmos at the moment is you don't actually you know and the
way these chains work is like i think people the the mindset of you know, I'm on this chain and I'm familiar with this chain.
Like if I'm on osmosis, I'm familiar with osmosis.
Like, I don't think like, I don't think you need to, as a user,
you know, when I'm using osmosis now or when I'm using, you know,
I don't know, Mars on neutron or something like that.
Like I don't, I don't, I don't feel to myself like, Oh, I'm on this chain or I'm on that't i don't feel to myself like oh i'm on
this chain or i'm on that chain i just feel to myself like this is an app i deposit my tokens
into the app using my kepler wallet uh or deposit my tokens into where i need to deposit them to be
able to do the thing and then i'm just i'm just on that web application doing the thing that i
want to do like it's not like um you know it's that kind of
thing on a centralized exchange where you like you've got your tokens in your uh self-custodied
wallet and you're like okay well i'm going to go trade on binance or i'm going to go trade on
okx or mxc or wherever you want to go trade and you're like um you know i'll just deposit my
tokens there do the thing that i want to do Like, I don't necessarily feel a huge brand loyalty
to like one or the other.
Like I kind of like think about the risks
of one versus the other maybe,
but like, you know, you don't necessarily think
about brand loyalty and you're just like,
what's the user experience like?
And what's the purpose that I'm trying to go for?
And like, how does it help me out?
And I think on Cosmos, like, you know,
the actual chain you're using should be largely irrelevant.
Like it's more just, you can deposit your tokens
wherever you need to using your, you know,
GoSkipBuild or Kepler,
or just basically with IBC underneath,
and then just use whichever web app you need to use.
And so, you know, it just gets back to, you know,
the fees and gas argument from chains
that don't really have any other purpose
or like aren't really creating a lot of utility.
It's definitely, you know,
you realize that with chains that,
where their protocol is doing something cool
versus chains where actually their protocol
doesn't really do anything
and their token doesn't really have a use case to it.
And I mean, I agree with your point on like this,
say Aerodrome or Uniswap,
and if and when they ever turn the fee switch on
or Hyperliquid,
from my perspective,
yeah, like big fee generating cashflow tokens.
But I think the Uniswap example is a good one
because it's like,
it potentially could be generating a huge amount of fees,
but there's no real cashflow to it at the moment.
I think it's, you know,
tokens on all these things are
basically being pitched as um as uh liquid equity you know liquid
equity and at some point you know that equity might end up being uh you know paying out yield
which effectively is just a dividend otherwise it might not i mean you know there's you know
in as it has happened in know, for centuries or whatever
in TradFi, you know, you'll buy a token
pre it paying out any dividends in the hope
that at some point, you know, the business
is gonna become cashflow positive
and it's gonna have some revenue and some earnings
and it's gonna hopefully, you know,
decide to make a distribution with those revenue
and earnings if cashflow is what you end up wanting
to do with it. So it's interesting. Like, it's definitely interesting. Like, I feel...
Sorry, yeah. I would just say, like, with traditional businesses, though, it's even a
little more different because there's a lot higher likelihood of, like, a buyout of, like,
the company where that equity could still generate value or an IPO or something of that nature.
Whereas with a lot of these crypto companies,
it's a pretty low likelihood that you would see that.
So you are just basically speculating on expected future value
or expected future cash flow that could be distributed.
So I completely agree there.
But I just wanted to also kind of get back to what you were saying
with really the user experience in the Cosmos where it shouldn't really matter what protocol you're on or what you're using, just be able to connect your wallet and use it. And I think that's, that's fair.
rely on certain teams, I guess, to have that functionality, like you were saying with Skip
or Kepler. You need them to integrate your chain and basically play ball or else that user experience
isn't very clean or easy. And that does become like a barrier. So that's like a very difficult
part, I guess, about the Cosmos right now is there's very few teams that are really in control of the overall UX because so many people use Skip or Kepler that you pretty much have to rely on them.
Otherwise, if you can't get integrated, it creates real barriers.
And I know with Bolt, that's something that we're struggling with right now.
We never wanted to be a front-end decks.
We understood that fighting for users and volume is a tough battle.
So we wanted to build something that would be more or less back-end
and would plug into existing DeFi platforms that already have users and volume
and just provide a really good service, which is more efficiency on your swaps,
more efficiency of your liquidity.
But it's been difficult because, again, you're relying on getting these integrations with
like Skip or Squid so that users actually will get access to it.
Like at the moment, you basically have to go to our front end, which is like on our
Connect dashboard for Archway.
But pushing a user to go there and then actually getting them to consistently go there is difficult.
And we always knew that was gonna be the case so i would say that's like another just like key pain point of
this of cosmos is like you have a couple teams that are really controlling who whose like products
are going to get integrated into these like aggregators or wallets making that user experience seamless like you'd expect with the Cosmos.
Yeah, I'd agree with that from our experience. Like, it definitely has felt like, you know, definitely stuff like,
because obviously, you know, they've built things that are useful.
And so people do want to integrate with them
and they have limited bandwidth,
but then they end up in a way becoming like gatekeepers,
which can make it a bit of a struggle.
I think we've, you know,
and I think, you know, we found that with things like,
I don't know, say, DowDow or MintScan
or some of these other things
that we haven't yet properly integrated with.
And I think, you know, there was a, you know,
we're a sort of community funded project.
And I think, you know, you're sat there and you sort of,
okay, well, we have to pay a huge amount of tokens
in order to be able to get this sort of mint scan
and we have to pay, you know, $150,000 to get on DowDow
or, you know, to get DowDow deployment on our chain
or something like that.
And you start looking at these things
and you start weighing up, it's like, okay,
what ends up being like critical infrastructure for us
and things like getting integrated
into go skip build has has been um you know has has been a really positive catalyst for us
the support we got from kepler uh has been amazing as well um and that's sort of they did that uh
you know free of charge without sort of rent seeking on it when, when they very much could have done probably. So yeah, it's just been,
it's, it's being beholden to other people's bandwidth and who wants to kind
of like rent seek and who doesn't want to rent seekers has been interesting.
Well, yeah. I mean, and that's great for you guys, obviously, like it's,
you'd love to hear that, like a team like yourself, especially being community funded is, you know, getting that support. But it's not necessarily like how that goes for everyone, you know, every team in the space. initially working with Kepler and the integration fee for like the full features was a couple
hundred thousand dollars, which for a lot of teams is just not feasible, but it's also almost like
necessary if you want to become like a core, you know, component of the Cosmos. So that's a,
I guess something that I think would be, would really greatly improve the Cosmos is if we just had, you know, the users we do have are able to use whatever products they want
without this barrier that can be created when there isn't these tools that help
kind of piece the, you know, interoperable Cosmos together. So, I mean, and that's like an issue that
I think can easily be solved, but it's not necessarily like a simple or cheap fix and i think that's kind of the core
problem is you have teams like um with skip who just they have to limit the resources and focus
on what they think is going to have the most value because they don't have a ton of people
and that can ultimately hinder other teams just because they're at the the whim of of whenever
they'll have that resource availability so i sympathize for sure with those teams like they're at the whim of whenever they'll have that resource availability.
So I sympathize for sure with those teams.
They're trying to figure out how to best use the resources to maximize the value, which
is kind of your fiduciary duty when you're running a protocol or application.
But it also does create these kind of gates or, you know,
barriers for,
for teams that are trying to build cool,
unique stuff.
Yeah.
Completely agree with that.
All right,
cool.
I realized we,
I realized we blasted past the hour as well,
but yeah. Thanks very much everyone for joining.
That was super interesting.
I think,
I think as well, like, yeah,, I want to say thanks, everyone,
to all our speakers today.
I really appreciate it.
And also for those that joined later,
the kind of like two big bits of news are go out and vote
on the first ever Leverage Liquid Governance proposal, please,
and give us your feedback.
Like really excited to hear what people think of that.
And then, you know, obviously, if that all goes well
and people are happy with it, then we can start, you know,
doing the things like C-PRISM unbonding time
and some of the other things that are important for governance.
And then also, please do go out and try sealed.deals
and leave your first, you know,
cross-chain limit order that can be reserved
and let us know what you think of the UX on that.
And if you have any questions or feedback,
try it out with a small amount.
Let us know what you think.
You know, we'll do a video guide.
We're going to do a Discord walkthrough next week on it.
So yeah, very,
very cool.
Thanks very much,
everyone.
Thanks,
Ollie.
That was great.
Yeah.
Thanks for having me on as always.
Appreciate it.
Thanks.
