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Rise of DeFi - Top Innovators
Recorded: Jan. 28, 2026 Duration: 1:20:06Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent Twitter Spaces discussion, industry leaders from OKEx, Bancor, Celo, Cap, and MC2 Finance explored the evolving landscape of decentralized finance (DeFi), addressing key trends, growth indicators, and the importance of security and transparency in fostering user trust. With significant achievements like CAP's 500 million TVL and Celo's adoption in emerging markets, the conversation underscored the collaborative efforts driving innovation and user engagement in the DeFi space.
Full Transcription
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Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Thank you. Oh I Oh good morning everyone and good evening depending on where you are in the world today
give us a few minutes as we just bring up some of our speakers
and we will be starting very shortly. So tune in. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. all right okay some of our speakers are coming up i'm really excited for the space we have a
really good one that is going to be taking place today excited to hear all our thoughts and key
insights from our speakers all right give us just a few minutes as
we finish bringing up the rest of our speakers. Thank you for your patience and thank you for
joining us. Thank you. . Thank you. Okay, great. I think we have everybody. Excellent. Okay. Well, I think we can get started now.
Perfect. All right. With no further ado, let's get started. Hey, everyone. Welcome to today's
Twitter Spaces, Act Spaces, sorry. This topic is called the Rise of DeFi. We're going to be looking at some of the top innovators.
So I'm your host, Sonalia Giovino, and I'm from DeFi. And for anyone that is not familiar with
DeFi, we are a super app and crypto antivirus dashboard, helps you keep track of all your
DeFi assets, helps you stay safe and explore various opportunities as safe as
possible. And also, so today we're going to be diving into how decentralized finance is evolving,
who's pushing innovation forward, and where is the space actually heading to next. So DeFi has come
a long way from early experiments to real products used globally.
And today we're joined by teams that are actively shaping the future.
We've got an amazing lineup today from OKEx, Bancor, Celo, Cap, and MC2 Finance.
I hope I said that correctly.
Thank you all for being here.
To everyone that's listening, feel free to share the spaces and stick around.
We'll also open up if there's time to audience questions later.
We shall see.
But first, I guess, let's get into some, just to kick things off, we'll get into some quick intros from our guests.
So from OPX, can you introduce yourself and briefly share your
role yep thanks for having me uh uh i'm ray from okx ventures uh we are adventure on under okx group
and right now we are prioritizing the x-layer ecosystem and X-Layer is an EVM chain launched
by OKEx.
And so DeFi ecosystem is a very important factor for us to bootstrap the ecosystem.
And I personally, I joined crypto space since 2019, and most of my careers in crypto focus on
early stage investments in DeFi and infrastructure, early stage projects.
Yeah, maybe I'm the only one investment kind of background
panelists in this discussion, but happy to share any ideas with different guests.
Okay, awesome. Thank you. And from Bancor, welcome. If you can tell us a little bit about who you are and what you focus on.
Yes, hello. Thank you for having me. My name is Mark Richardson. I'm the project lead at
Bancroft. I joined the project in 2020, first as an anonymous volunteer, and then officially
as a contract researcher in January of 2021. After that, I was the head of research, then
the product architect, and now the project lead since October 2022, I think.
So what do I do? I basically, you know, on top of, you know, the various managerial efforts with
keeping the organization running, I also design the protocol and the mathematics that describe it.
on the protocol and the mathematics that describe it.
So I guess I'm sort of the, you know,
on-staff mathematician to some extent,
at least when it comes to the creative side of things
and then usually delegate those responsibilities
when it comes to implementation to smart contract engineers.
So sort of the high level sort of creative vision for the project.
Okay, awesome. Thank you.
And also from CeeLo, thanks for joining.
If you can share a quick intro, please.
Thanks for having me. Super excited to be here today.
Hey, everyone. I'm Michael. I lead DeFi growth at the Cee Foundation, who time has flown by already. I've been part of the Celo Foundation
for over four years now. The gist of what I do is I support new DeFi protocol launches of Celo,
as well as coordinate liquidity incentives as well, just make sure that ecosystem is robust.
Beautiful. Thank you. And also from CAP, welcome. If you could please introduce yourself to the audience.
Thank you for having me. How's it going, everybody? My name is DeFi Dave. I'm the head of growth of CAP.
We are a stablecoin protocol powered by a private credit engine. We've been around for a little
bit over five months, and we just crossed 500 million TVL, which is really exciting,
especially for a new project like us. My role as the head of growth, I like to think of myself as
the personality hire of CAP. I've been with the project for a year, like six, seven months before launch. And it's
basically my job to spread awareness of CAP. I also handle a lot of B2B or protocol to protocol
relationships with CAP. Been in crypto for nine years, DeFi for five. So yeah, it's been a journey
and I have to say CAP is the project I'm most excited about that I've worked on.
To say CAP is the project I'm most excited about that I've worked on.
Amazing. Yeah. And I know your team very well.
I'm really excited to hear also some of the updates of what you guys are working on.
Okay.
Yeah, no worries.
And our last speaker, Anne from MC2 Finance.
It's great to have you.
If you could share a quick intro and a little bit about your role as well.
Sure.
Happy to.
Chris, founder of MCSCO Finance and AERU with MCSCO Finance.
We are securitizing DeFi yield on the stock exchange.
Basically, we can bring DeFi strategies as an ETF directly on the stock exchange, giving institutional investors access
to it without having basically having it fully regulated and compliant. So a much safer route
than directly in the crypto space and therefore much easier. On the other hand, we are launching in March our next project where we are tokenizing rare earth metals as a reserve unit token.
And basically it's then an inflation hedge as well as a geopolitical hedge.
And it's pretty exciting to be here as well and looking forward for the discussion.
Amazing. Thank you so much. Really appreciate that intro. It's pretty exciting to be here as well and looking forward for the discussion.
Amazing, thank you so much. Really appreciate that intro.
Okay, so I mean, I guess we'll just dive right in now.
So to set the stage, let's zoom out just for a moment.
So each of your projects plays a different role in DeFi.
So just maybe to elaborate on a lot of these intros
that we've had so far, in one sentence,
how would you explain your value to someone
who's brand new to crypto and wants to understand
more of what we do?
I guess first, maybe we can start with Celo.
Sounds good.
In essence, Celo is a five-year battle-tested Ethereum L2.
You can think of us as like a payments network settlement layer.
So we focus on making DeFi accessible to anyone with like a mobile phone.
This will take like fast, low cost transactions worldwide, especially in emerging markets.
Okay, beautiful. Thank you. And Cap, if you can share a little bit.
Yes. So I like to describe Cap as basically this insured private credit engine, which has a stablecoin product, which is CUSD, and also its yield bearing counterpart, Stake CUSD.
And what makes CAP unique is that we outsource our yield to regulated institutions.
So right now we have the likes of Susquehanna, Flow Traders, all these guys are actively borrowing from the underlying
capital of our protocol. And the insurer part comes in with our delegators who basically
vouch for these operators slash borrowers, the institutions I talked about, in order for the
operators to access the protocol. So the easiest comparison I can make here is, you know how you
get a security deposit on an apartment? Well, instead of you putting up that security deposit,
somebody else puts it up for you.
And they basically get a little bit of a fee for doing that.
So that's capped in a nutshell.
Okay. I like it. Thank you.
And OKS, if you can expand a little bit more
on what you guys are working on
and it's for someone who might be new to crypto.
Yeah, so what OKEx is doing is empowering newcomers to crypto by offering a secure, intuitive platform for
stimulus, trading, earning, and exploring digital assets with low cost, low fees. At the same time, we provide robust security
and educational resource to build confidence from day one.
So we have a lot of like different part of the lines.
Most of the people are familiar with the trading venue,
but beyond that, we also have wallet products,
CD5 projects, and also Xlayer and OKS, DAX API.
In general, in short, our slogan is building and also X layer and OKS, Dax API.
In general, in short, our slogan is building a new money era
that provides fully on-chain, self-custody and verifiable finance.
I mean, to make crypto be part of like the user's daily life.
daily life yeah I like it that's really good MC2 if you finance if you can go and then we'll have
Yeah.
I like it.
That's really good.
that bank will go right after sure happy to basically we're building the highway between
Tratify and DeFi it's two big realms where in Tratify you have like 50 trillion stuck with 1 to 3% yield and DeFi with 10 to
like 25% yield depending where you're looking for and we are building the rails to trying to connect
them means we're making traditional finance my capital easier to access DeFi and DeFi easier to access commodities.
Amazing. Thank you.
Yeah, we have Bancor.
Okay. Yeah.
So I think it's worth pointing out that Bancor is like one of the oldest projects in blockchain.
I think it was the second application
built on top of Ethereum.
And if not exactly the second,
then certainly the top five.
I think the only one that really came before us
was Gnosis with their prediction market scaffold.
And then Bancor was immediately after that.
When Bancor launched,
DeFi didn't even have a name yet, right? That
acronym had not yet been coined. And I think that that's significant because Bancor launched
the first completely decentralized marketplace for tokens. And this was based on previous
thought experiments in how community currencies might run prior to that kind of infrastructure being available.
So the original version of the product was once envisioned to be launched on Bitcoin's colored coin and master coin infrastructure, which, for those who don't know, was the planned smart contract upgrade to Bitcoin long before Ethereum
was launched. And when the Bitcoin developer community decided not to embrace that standard,
that's when Ethereum was launched. And so Banquo made the hard pivot to launch on Ethereum
instead. I think we're best known for the invention of the automatic market maker,
think we're best known for the invention of the automatic market maker, which is probably
one of the most pervasive technologies on any blockchain you're likely to interact with.
So really, like a lot of the exchange infrastructure and primitives that are derived there from
are really directly attributed to Bancor.
And I say this without personal pride, although I am very thankful and proud to be leading
Bancor today. But this was long before my time. I joined the project in 2020. A lot of this stuff
came out in 2016. So it's really to the original founders of Bancor and especially Eyal Herzog,
who's considered the godfather of DeFi that we kind of owe that infrastructure to.
So we've had a fairly large and fairly significant influence in DeFi since its beginning, and
we're continuing to.
Mark, actually, that's a great reminder to just, you know, to be aware just how og bankor is i mean you know the fact that you guys are building in
2016 and you know before d5 was even really coined um that's really cool that's great to know
um our next question is uh so d5 adoption so d5 adoption is, but many users are still a little hesitant.
What do you think is the biggest barrier holding people back right now?
And if we could talk a little bit about that.
So I'd love to throw this question over to OPS.
Yeah, I think the barrier has shifted from maybe a couple of years ago, it used to be
more about the bad UX and the user experience looks too sophisticated for most of the users.
But right now, I think after several years of development, right now, I think it's more
fundamentally about trust and structural
agility so for for the retail trust the recent collapse of the let's say stream finance was a
wake-up call and users realized that when they deposit into the into these votes they are
taking on like around one hundred percent the risk. And while some curator often operating
all the things in the black box.
So we saw the issues like non-programmable execution
and some curator like use like too aggressive strategy
that was not super fully disclosed.
And the whole process is lack of enough transparency.
Yeah, I think this is one of the key reasons why we recently invest in projects like Accountable.
They use technology like ZKTLS to provide a verifiable data stream.
And from the institution side, we also have a lot of institution clients.
We believe that the market right now is at a structural inflection point. The crisis in
October in the last year was not a random black swan event. It showed that the whole
financial system in DeFi is still fragile. It happened
because we still lack of separation between execution, custody, and settlements. And so
there is now an urgent demand to fix this. And we can see the clear trend that institutions
are demanding verifiable reserve and engineer safety. And we definitely need to turn trust into an engineering problem
instead of fully rely on a kind of marketing promise.
So yeah, I used to work in a smaller fund before OKEx.
Back then, we are more focused on
defy community-driven kind of investments.
So whenever, I mean, Several years ago, when we were still in the nascent stage,
whenever we raised this safety or security kind of concern to people, most people would
say, okay, I agree with the idea, but it's not that urgent problem for us.
I think because at the end of the day, back then, the market is still nascent and the
money back then was still early adopter capital chasing the sugar game, like liquidity mining
and token inflation, those short-term games.
They tolerate high risk for high API, but it's super clear that that game is dying out and yields are compressing on-chain to natural levels of supply and demand.
So to penetrate the traditional finance industry, those short-term games don't work anymore.
We are seeing users and institutions are voting with their fees.
They are moving capital toward verifiable finance
and programmable balance sheets,
and also placing a super high premium
than before on safety than we've never seen before.
Yeah.
That's my observation to this user barrier question.
Those are actually some great points.
I see MCT Finance has their hand up.
I'd love to, if you'd have some thoughts like that.
Sure, it actually was a clap.
I think it's very good points.
I summarize it always as the additional risk
of losing the principal, and that's still very high i think
as a next big thing what i would wish for is that we all work together to fight much more against
scam and scam structures because they're still prevalent and even if i onboard like friends or colleagues into the crypto space, I first need to give them a training about how to spot such things, people and structures.
And that is a pain in the ass.
Like it's immediately a turn off for anybody who says this is super interesting space.
and beside of that we still with every new iteration we see then also that
protocols can fail and fail and that again is a share of losing a share of
your principal and that just still contains a big risk it's it's I agree
that it's now much simpler than even six months ago to operate,
and especially with the curator space where Cap, for example, also is in.
I think it's a great way of moving these things forward,
but it misses that we actually make it together safer for the retail user
to give them an experience that d5 feels simple and safe
yeah that's actually also a really good point thank you for sharing to us um and then i think
lastly i'd like to pass this over to silo if you have any thoughts uh on this let me know if you
want me to repeat the question also.
Oh, good. Yeah, I think I echo all the same sentiment
that was already highlighted by speakers.
I think maybe double-clicking
on the user experience and education side,
that's the perspective, at least from Silo.
We're focused on retail everyday users.
And so we believe that still the UX part
is still a bit of a barrier for onboarding.
Like we still made certainly a lot of stride on DeFi side, but still like some components are, you know, rather familiar in principles like, you know, think stable coins.
But many DeFi protocols still draw from, you know, complex financial infrastructure as inspiration that, you know, your majority of individuals like your grandma might not be as familiar with.
individuals like your grandma might not be as familiar with, right?
So I think a significant effort still needs to be made to make protocols just easier to understand and use
for the broader mass of adoption, at least on the retail side.
Example, what Celo has been doing to address this is we're trying to meet users where they are, right?
And really try to abstract that complexity away.
So what we have done is partner with the Opera Mini mobile browser, which has over 300 million plus users.
And we've worked with them to embed a stablecoin wallet called Minipay right in the browser.
So folks who are like browsing the web can also have access to stablecoins and DeFi.
But in this sense where users don't need to really learn DeFi, they just can use this
Minipay wallet to pay bills, send money and buy airtime.
And DeFi just happens all in the background
without them even knowing.
Yeah, exactly. It's like, how do we make this really
seamless where it's just easy and simple for users as
they're onboarding?
Mark, I see you got your hand up.
I actually have this next question.
It's going to be for you.
But if you have some quick thoughts on this topic, I see you got your hand up. I actually have this next question. It's going to be for you.
But if you have some quick thoughts on this topic, feel free to go ahead.
Yeah, I just wanted to offer, I want to say a conflicting opinion, but maybe a different
perspective.
I think that like a lot of the speakers were probably steeped in crypto.
Like we've already heard, you know, people from 2019
and even earlier than that.
It was like really during one of the largest adoption upswings,
not just in DeFi, but just the financial products in general, right?
It was the, you know, like the Robin Hood phase of things
and a lot of people from that age group and, you know,
during COVID who were flush with cash from,
you know, government handouts and other things were sort of learning finance and were excited
to try it out and that kind of thing. But it was a, I don't want to say like a one-off for that
kind of thing, but in general, the consumption of financial products, at least from a retail
perspective, is in the client and it's in
very sharp decline and if you have a look at crypto in general um you know retail interest in crypto
is also in steep decline and you can refer to things like um like youtube fluencer youtube
influence or fin fluencer statistics and the rate of engagement on X and other things. But just in general, I think that
there's a lot of, let's say, financial fatigue. And so it's not necessarily the case that it's
because, you know, products aren't good enough or aren't safe enough or things aren't accessible
enough. The actual audience that we have access to is diminishing. And I just think it's important to recognize that it doesn't
necessarily make sense to hold the industry today to the standards that it enjoyed in 2020 and 21,
just because the marketplace has shrunk and that marketplace being for user adoption more than
anything else. Now, that doesn't mean that DeFi is itself in decline i would say that the you know institutional
interest and that kind of thing is probably as high as it's ever been um and certainly on the
regulatory side um things have become a lot softer and so defy and blockchains are getting much
easier to use but it's a different kind of adoption certainly not the mass adoption that you know i think was the the guiding star
when d5 was in its infancy and whether or not we need to adopt a more pragmatic
perspective of who the users of blockchain are going to be i think remains to be seen
really good points thank you mark actually that's that, it's nice. It's refreshing me here. Also, that sort of side of that perspective as well. backbone of DeFi, of course. And one of the things I'd love to check in is how are you thinking
about sustainable liquidity in terms of long-term growth? I'd love to pass this one over to Cap.
Thank you so much. So when it comes to long-term liquidity, I think you have to think about it as there's
endogenous liquidity and exogenous liquidity. Endogenous liquidity is like liquidity that
comes from within a system. And historically, that's how DeFi has operated. And gradually,
you've seen a shift towards more exogenous liquidity, where you basically have outside actors earn yield from their activities.
At CAP, we have a unique system where, as I said earlier, we outsource all our yield operations
to people with edge, to people with experience, to these regulated Wall Street operators.
And I like to call what CAP is doing an Uno reverse card of
sorts, because you have a lot of DeFi protocols that, you know, they may do RWA, they may wrap
something and try to get adoption on Wall Street with wrapping. But once you wrap and you step
off chain, you deal on their turf, you deal with the friction that comes in TradFi. What we're
actually doing is bringing the institutions, the operators, the borrowers on chain. They're coming on our turf and they're using our tech and our protocol for their bottom line. And so I think it's a chicken and egg
problem because you need to have liquidity, but also you need to have sophisticated actors
and lenders and borrowers coming on chain. So you create this flywheel of sorts to happen.
And we're seeing it start.
We're in the early innings of that flywheel starting.
And to kind of echo what everybody was saying before, right?
Institutional adoption, I think is going super well.
I think it's going great, both on a technical front, both on a regulatory front.
But right now it's like really retail that's exhausting.
And that's probably what we hear about a lot.
But in terms of institutional adoption,
it's happening, and we're seeing it on-chain,
and it doesn't come from speculating on tokens.
It comes from actually utilizing the protocols,
such as CAP themselves.
Hmm, okay.
I appreciate that.
I'd love to pass the same question over to MC2 Finance, if I could.
Sure, happy to. Like, one thing that we see now is generating sustainable yield and sustainable returns.
Most of the liquidity in the last years was very mercenary if you did not offer like 60 70
80 percent yield on whatever token you want to use then people just didn't want to use your platform
that was like this short term where is currently the high yield and we run through and as soon as
the yield drops we jump to the next one we saw a lot of layer tools having
this problem of having immense assets under management tvl and as soon as the incentives
drops everybody's gone and now i think since about four months it's much more prevailing that
about four months, it's much more prevailing that whatever return a protocol is doing,
the protocol is putting into a treasury and the treasury generates permanent yield and
the permanent yield is then distributed to the backer.
That makes it much slower in the growth, but this is a much more long-term valuable growth on the structures. And the benefit is that
protocols with such structures can achieve long-term locking of the tokens because the token holders know that the yield here is backed again by real financial assets
that generate constant yields that is growing over time and therefore building up wealth over time.
So it's much slower and therefore for a different kind of audience, but it's much more sustainable.
Awesome. Thank you. i appreciate that chris um
and uh lastly i'd love to pass this one also over to bancor if i could
all right would you mind repeating the question for me sorry i had a oh yeah no problem um so the question is liquidity is the backbone of DeFi. How are you thinking about sustainable liquidity in terms of long term growth?
view liquidity. So I think that there's sort of prescribed liquidity models. And this is where
like market makers and even AMMs to some extent, sort of fill a very specific need. And, you know,
that need is that people expect that when they view a price on the internet, that you're going
to be able to buy or sell the thing close to that price. And obviously that's contingent on how much, you know,
bidding or asking depth there is close to that price.
But you know what I mean?
When people see the price of gold is $5,300 an ounce or something,
they think, oh, great, all of this gold that I have,
I should be able to sell it now for close to that price.
But really, liquidity is just a function of how active
the market is and how many participants are there. I think the trustworthiness of prices that get
reported are dependent on how many people are actually trying to buy and sell at that price.
Now, it does make sense, I think, in traditional commodities markets and even stock markets to some extent, that there is a person whose responsibility it is to make sure that that assumption remains good.
the DeFi in me wants to reject that prescription. And I think that it's okay for things to become
illiquid, even just occasionally illiquid, if not permanently. And that assumption that there
is a specific price is something that I've been very publicly critical of, you know, for a very
long time. And as a lot of the gold bugs and silver bugs are
discovering now that even when you know you've got a market as deep as things like precious metals
that you know the disappointment that the kilograms or something of gold that you've
been holding for the last 10 years um won't sell anywhere close to what the reported price is um
won't sell anywhere close to what the reported price is,
I think is, is dawning on people. Right. And I think that, yeah,
it's, it's that perspective of liquidity that I try to embrace that no one has
any responsibility to you to offer you the price that Google is reporting,
right. For a specific asset,
and that you really do need to go and find someone
who is quoting a price to you.
Now, if you want to bring about the kind of prescription
that centralized exchanges enjoy
and things like Forex desks and that kind of thing,
then fine.
You know, those markets can be forced to be liquid, but someone needs to take the fall.
And those market makers in those markets usually can operate at relatively tight margins just
because of the sheer enormity of volume that is moving through them.
And I think that that's kind of my point, is that if you have
a very, very large number of people that need to participate in a market, then that market will
kind of just emerge even without that prescription. But yeah, the idea that we need to force people
into a market, like that market should exist even if no one's interested in it is, you know, is something that I, that I do reject.
And so my perspective on the whole thing is not necessarily that liquidity,
it should be there,
that there will be liquidity for things that people are interested in and
that's fine, right? Let the, let the cream rise to the top.
But that everything should be liquid all the time, I think is a fantasy. I think that that's my right let the let the cream rise to the top um but that everything should be
liquid all the time i think is a fantasy i think that that's my perspective on it
makes sense yeah yeah sounds realistic with some conservative aspects in that too
okay um just due to time i'm just going to move on to the next question sorry
bit of time. I'm just going to move on to the next question. Sorry. Now, DeFi is global by default,
which is one of the biggest, which is one of its biggest strengths. So DeFi is global by nature.
Are there any specific regions or communities where you're seeing the strongest organic
adoption? And I'd love to pass this one over to OKS.
Yeah, I think this is a good question. At OKS, we have a very unique vantage point because our
user space is truly global. We see data from every corner of the
different regions. If we look at the landscape, we see adoption happening into this thinking wave.
In Asia side, historically, this is where our routes run deeply. And organic adoption here is
incredible. Asian community are home to some of the most sophisticated
power users in the world.
They are the ones eager to test different new protocols,
driving on-chain with velocity
and providing that early liquidity in some sense.
Then in general, I think the community people
the community people are acting super fast to have different new things.
are acting super fast to add different new things.
And in the US size,
it has been a massive focus for us in the last couple of years.
And we have made heavy resource investment in the US,
not just in branding and marketing, but also compliance kind of things.
And the reason is that we see the US market maturing rapidly and
and the growth we are seeing here is coming from the user who demand a regulated and secure environment.
So we obviously see a lot of energy and speeds coming from Asia side and we can also see the structure and institutional capital rising in the US. And add one more point to the last question. I also have some comments about
the long-term kind of build a sustainable community and liquidity and infrastructure.
I think this is right now is we are phrasing this question is more about trillion dollar
questions in the next 10 years. So when we're looking at how to build a more sustainable
user space and liquidity and community, we first need to look at what these kind of people and
the liquidity is actually doing. So in the last couple of years, I also like pitch a lot of, to a lot of like, Trap5 people from Apex side,
such as like Sequoia, like Tamanseek.
Those guys are super, have super strong interest
in DeFi design in general,
but one of the big doubts they have back then
is that they couldn't fully understand
what's the use case.
For example, for the classic use case,
we deposit ETH to
borrow out stablecoins just so we can turn around and buy more ETH. In this sense, the
capital was spinning in circles. It was leveraging for the sake of leverage. That's the main
reason why people don't fully understand what's the purpose of this technology or primitives.
But right now we are seeing a very massive shift and whatever in US side and in Apex
side is maturing to what we call a real balance sheet layer.
We aren't just serving financial speculators anymore.
We are seeing fintechs and asset managers,
more and more camels, not necessarily from the US side,
but also from a lot of APEX countries
bring like different real assets on-chain.
So yeah, and they are used
differently for the same operations.
And it's more like a value case. Awesome.
So I think it's very clear that DeFi people Sorry, could you mute?
So for liquidity and the user space to be more sustainable and long-term, I think we
don't need another super crazy 30% or 40% API incentive point anymore.
So we need to build an infrastructure that are ready to connect to the real world so right now we have we have seen a very clear trend that's the d5 people still on the on
the table our buildings are focused more on standardized like several specific things for
example connecting like off-chain cash flow uh to on-chain credits and do the proper risk management,
do the risk changing, and try to design more
like hedging toolings to the real world institutions
because they won't come here without enough protection,
et cetera, et cetera.
Yeah, that's my general comments for this simple questions.
Got it.
That was from OKX.
I'd love to pass the same question to Celo, if I could.
Let me know if you want me to repeat it as well.
Oh, yes.
Can you repeat the question, please?
Sure.
Okay.
So the question is, so DeFi is global by nature and are there any specific regions or communities where you're
seeing the strongest organic adoption got it okay thank you appreciate the repeat on that
yeah i would say for the cell ecosystem we're pretty globally distributed
as of lately we've especially see strong adoption in the global south.
So users throughout Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia have really leveraged DeFi
on Zello.
So think from on-chain FX via our Mento stablecoins, the use of Aave, Uniswap, Carbon DeFi for
lending and swapping.
We have a particularly strong user base and still have been seeing a massive growth in
Nigeria, Ghana,
and Kenya in particular, just because that was the initial launch markets for our Opera
MiniPay stablecoin wallet, which we have, I think about over 12 million users onboarded
so far.
Now that we have launched the Opera MiniPay wallet across on a global scale, we're now
seeing a lot of use cases around remittance corridors that connect to those African markets. So think like UK to Nigeria, US to Nigeria as an example.
And what's pretty interesting is like that has been like that core organic use case that's driving like sticky activity.
And a lot of that idle wallet fund that when it's not being used for remittances is kind of being plugged into our lending and index liquidity and other mini apps in our cello ecosystem.
So there's like a pretty clear liquidity flow just driven by like the organic usage of remittance
use cases throughout our user base.
Okay, awesome.
Okay, awesome. Thank you. And so now let's, I'd like to touch base on trust and safety. I know
this is a really important topic, especially in the DeFi, in the DeFi space. Even for us, for,
you know, our project DeFi itself, we're really big on this um so security and
trust are still top of mind what what's one habit users should build today to stay safer in defy um
if you have any comments on that i'd like to pass this one over to mc2 finance
I'd like to pass this one over to MC2 Finance.
Sure.
I mean, the first one...
The first one is verify transactions before signing it.
A lot of the wallets and services already integrated,
also third-party services now available,
verify, even if you copy paste addresses,
there's a lot of like address spoofing, et cetera, going on.
So I think verify every transaction is the first thing
that you need to learn because you need to understand
finality means final
and not you can talk to a bank service advisor and saying oh that was not what
I wanted yeah I think that's that's the first thing that still most people don't
do enough and don't verify enough. Like now with safe accounts, you can add external signers to it who again verify your transactions.
And they even already sign us out, which even ensure your transactions.
So if the signer says, yes, it's good, but then it's wrong, then actually they pay a loss.
it's wrong, then actually they pay a loss.
So there's a lot of things available to help you further secure your
DeFi and that's where I would start.
Okay, great.
And Benko, I see your hand is up if you have some comments.
Feel free.
Yeah.
So I 100% agree with the previous speaker and I would actually push it a bit farther.
I've gotten into arguments with people on Twitter spaces before about what I'm about to say,
and I think it's because it doesn't necessarily lean into that mass adoption idea.
But I actually believe that if you can't understand the implementation of the smart contract that you're interacting with, you probably shouldn't be interacting with it.
And that's like, I understand an extremely extreme view.
But I think that that goes right back to the core of verify, don't trust mentality.
So like some general advice is that you should probably spend a lot less time reading white papers and a lot more time reading developer docs.
And if the marketing language has sort of bled into the developer documentation, then you should probably not be interacting with that protocol.
is not verified if you're using an Ethereum compatible blockchain,
then those contracts ought to be verified on whatever its block explorer is,
meaning that rather than just getting the raw bytecode,
you can actually see how those functions are written and what they do is key.
But then, lastly, you should also go through and make sure that you agree with the audits.
It's not enough that a protocol is audited.
You actually, you know, you should develop the habit of reading the audit
and making sure that you agree with the auditor's conclusions.
And, you know, I think that that's an enormous amount of effort to go to, but you don't need to do this for hundreds of protocols.
You only need to do it for the handful that you're actually using.
There are probably some protocols like Aave, for example, and some of the really big battle-tested protocols that some people may espouse that it's safe to interact with even as someone who doesn't understand smart contract code
but remember you know we've had you know just in the last year uh 100 million dollar exploits for
protocols that were sitting around um relatively battle tested or what people might have judged as
relatively battle tested for years um only to find out that there is, you know, a fairly
obvious bug in the way that it was implemented, sometimes, you
know, a more obscure bug that might have been hard to find,
but still nothing that I think was outside of the purview of
what I would consider to be an intelligent, well informed,
even self educated user of DeFi. And now some of that stuff I
think is like enough. But then, you know,
there should also be documentation about how the design perspectives, right? What design decisions
were made. Sorry to interrupt. I just, I think there's an audio issue going on. can everybody hear uh mark uh if you can maybe just put a heart or something or say you
can yeah okay great awesome thank thank the defy gods okay it's just my audio good old good old
spaces um sorry i'll let you continue if you had any last words there. No, that's fine. I think I've rambled on long enough.
But I think that my point is clear, which is that, you know, you should really treat
DeFi and smart contracts and blockchains as really embracing that verify don't trust
mentality.
That means not trusting the auditor, not trusting the developers and so on.
And so if you really shoulder that burden,
you're going to protect yourself from some of the most obvious exploits in global blockchain.
Okay, great. And I'll pass the same question over to Cap.
Yes. So I like to think of it as, you know, before the early users of DeFi and protocols on chain, they were kind of, they were like the experimental users. They were comfortable with being super risk on.
They were comfortable with being super risk on.
This next generation of users that are coming on board,
they're much more practically minded, much more risk averse.
And so you have to build with them in mind.
And so what we're personally doing at CAP
is we have this whole security stack
from what we're doing as a team
to even letting users opt into different security, safety, and insurance measures.
So, for example, we're working with OpenCover to have right on our UI insurance against
our contracts, insurance against DPEG risk, and insurance against Pendle.
And it's literally just one click on a UI in the same transaction that you meant, you're
insured.
And so this is much, this is catered to those practical users in mind.
And other things, and like I said,
there's this whole security stack
different protocols can do.
So along with doing your standard audits,
quarterly audits,
like what we're doing at CAP
is we have real-time monitoring
with a protocol, with a project
such as Hypernative and Oxane.
And so every single push to production is monitored in case there's anything.
And every single action that happens on chain is monitored as well.
So it's really important to have all your bases covered.
There's a lot of things protocols can do themselves.
And in the same way you opt into self-sovereignty and opt into, you know, not your keys, not your coins,
that ethos, that mentality can be used for implementing and adapting safety measures as
well for users. Okay, amazing. Thanks. Thanks, Cap. Sillo, did you have any, sorry, brief comments
you wanted to share on this? Yeah, sure. I can do a quick one. Yeah, I did you have any, sorry, brief comments you wanted to share on this?
Yeah, sure. I can do a quick one. Yeah, I guess piggybacking, especially on Mark's response.
I guess for folks who have interacted with protocols, potentially who have not done as
much due diligence, I think it's always good to have just good wallet hygiene. I always
recommend folks to revoke token approvals periodically, like use tools like revoked on
cash. Every time you interact with protocol, sometimes you might do some sketchy stuff like unlimited token allowance.
And in that case, if that protocol gets hacked,
you're exposed.
So periodically, especially for protocols
you aren't really using,
revoke permissions as much as possible.
Absolutely.
Something really simple, but also effective, helpful. All right. So now also going on to the next one. So not every project will survive, very unfortunately, but that's a sort of like a painful reality.
um what kind of innovation do you think will separate the winners in defy from the projects
that will eventually fade away what is that defining um you know uh elements that you I'd love to pass this one over to OKX.
Yeah, I think in in 2016, we see the DeFi ecosystem maturing to
kind of like a single stack with four different layers.
We have like regulated dollars at the base
and we have derivatives that help professionals, trade or institutions to hedge risk.
And we have a lot of like credit machine-native or AI power workflow and
automated workflow as participants in DeFi and trading space. So I think the project that will
kind of have more chance to survive are the ones to resolve the specific problems within these different layers.
So for us, for OKS Ventures, this year we're actively looking at areas such as
markets, plumbing, for example, projects improving executions, providing privacy where all the flows or institutions don't get eaten by those front MBEV.
And we also actively looking for those institutions
oriented DeFi products.
For example, I also talked with several products
that provide kind of like yields operating system
for all the wide-label solutions for institutional, such as OKEx and other custodians.
And we also like looking, actively looking
for different programmable balance sheets,
not just beverage, but also platforms
that connecting real world credits,
like invoice and treasuries onto the chains.
Yeah, and I personally, I love to follow up those machine native
or AI workflow native apps.
That's, I think, in the long term, it's still very huge.
Although there's too much hype on, too much noise about this area,
but I think trying different interesting apps is also my personal interest.
So in general, I believe that building APIs and infrastructure for AI workflow, not just
UI for human beings, would be a very interesting opportunity in the long term. So yeah, that's the
several areas that we are actively looking for opportunity to deploy capital to make investments.
Okay, thank you. That was from OKEx.
And lastly, just curious if MC2 Finance has any thoughts on this one.
The question was about which areas will grow next.
I can repeat it.
So what would you say, what kind of innovations
do you think will separate the winners in DeFi
from projects that will fade away?
So generally for, I think the blockchain has two key innovations, and that is composability and decentralized community.
And I believe that you need to build around the core of the innovation and not against it. Like for example, in Web2, one of the core innovation
was content is always free. Everybody can re-change, adapt, build on top of it. And everybody who tried
to lock this content down failed in Web2. And there were hundreds of projects, thousands of
projects and VCs invested in them who failed. And I truly believe that in Web3, it's composability,
meaning building an open network where we together build composable finance components
that help each other grow. And if you make it for like public consumption that everybody can
use your infrastructure to build something better, even on top, you have a great flywheel that you can build up. And so when I'm looking into projects,
I always look, do they violate the core principles or not? And that gives me the first hint of okay perfect thank you now this sort of like leads us into our next question this is a really
reflective one as well um if you were launching your project today from scratch, what would you do differently?
Now, um, uh, let me be able to send this to like a few speakers.
So if this really resonates for you, put up your hand.
Uh, I'd love to first pass this one over to Bancor.
I mean, it's interesting.
I've often asked myself the same thing.
And hindsight is always 20-20.
You can always sort of look at how things have evolved between then and now and think,
well, I just wish I had had this idea earlier or worked out this specific engineering problem
earlier and then we could have got to market with the product earlier and so on
but actually I think you have to remember that these things exist in a certain time period
with a certain appetite with a specific audience and I think that in that sense the AMM was exactly
what the doctor ordered you know at that point in time. If we'd released something like
concentrated liquidity four years earlier,
I don't think that it would have been adopted
at the same scale that AMMs were
just because the market and that audience
weren't ready for that kind of product yet.
And so I'm actually convinced that our specific um like product
pipeline is always kind of at par with what the market is expecting um and i think it's important
to not do something sort of too radical too quickly and so in that sense you know looking
back i don't think that uh bancor should have changed anything i think that the the first
product was a perfect first product um maybe you know it would have been better to be less um let's
say i don't i want to say less compliant but maybe a little bit more risk uh you know risk on with
respect to how the developing landscape um in crypto regulation might evolve the you know risk on with respect to how the developing landscape um in crypto regulation
might evolve the you know the original bank or amm for those who weren't there was like completely
compliant it had you know if you wanted to start a liquidity pool there was a kyc process for that
specifically because you know bank or was under the microscope in Switzerland and the United States is operating, you know, an on-chain exchange.
And so that kind of regulator attention necessarily meant that there were these kinds of, you know, compliant processes in place.
I think looking back to be, I don't want to say fearful of law enforcement,
I don't want to say fearful of law enforcement, but let's say it might have been more advantageous
to be a little bit more argumentative or to plead a little bit more strongly with regulators
as to what decentralization meant and what self-custody means in these kinds of contexts.
But in terms of the product pipeline, I don't think I would have changed anything.
Okay, beautiful. Awesome. Thank you. That was from Bancoror and also i'd love to pass this one over
to cap if you had to start from scratch what would you do differently Oh, okay.
I think we lost Cap there for a second.
Okay. Maybe I can pass this one over to
OKX for now while I get Cap back on.
I think I'm wearing the investor hat more than the founder hat, so I won't pretend to give advice here, but I think...
I'm back, sorry.
Yeah, you can go.
Yeah, what part did you miss? What part did I get cut off at?
From the beginning.
I actually, sorry, my audio is going a little in and out. It's okay.
Just if you want to repeat just a little bit of what you last said and continue from there.
Yeah, I said that I would use simpler language.
I would use language that people can understand, language directed towards a broad audience.
Maybe not be so big brained and complex because, you know, a lot of times there may be a temptation to go deep into the mechanics.
No, you just want to get your main point across how it works.
Use metaphors.
So something we've been doing at CAP is, you know, people might not know what financial
guarantees are, but they know what a security deposit is.
And they're basically the same thing.
So simpler language, speaking in a way that people can understand and speaking in a way
that gets people excited and engaged because people are really looking for an experience
when it comes to, you comes to using these protocols.
And if you want them to stick around,
you got to give them a reason to stick around.
So simpler language and give them an experience.
Okay, awesome.
Thanks so much, Cap.
And sorry, OKEx there for the interruption.
If you had any thoughts you'd like to share in terms of what would you do differently if you had to start everything from scratch?
Yeah, I think I would.
I kind of like get heavily involved with different entrepreneurs journey more from the investment perspective.
more from the investment perspective.
So I think recently I heard a very interesting,
I think it's a great feedback from a founder I really love.
Although the journey was not super successful from some extent,
but she shared several lessons with me that I completely agree with.
It's more about, I think, I agree most of the point that previous speakers talking about.
It's more about timing and mindset.
So in general, the lesson is that
when an opportunity arises,
just aggressive without hesitation
because the opportunity for very early stage founders
to cross each chasm is splitting.
Especially in this field,
usually attention span is super short and missing one small
opportunity might amplify the domino effect.
And more importantly in crypto where the wealth effect is so rapid versus compared to the
traditional industry, cynicism and nihilism are easy to grow in this space.
So if we were building today,
I think at least for myself,
I would force myself to think more,
do more thinking from first principle,
fundamental perspective.
And that's the only way I think to stay pragmatic
and keep my productivity at a high level and just
stay away from the noise and don't let the asset price action affect our like product
roadmap.
All right, beautiful.
It's like don't get distracted by the noise and just stay
really focused okay so I think as we're having our spaces coming to an end we
have one last question here be sorry before I ask this question if there's
any of our speakers that wanted to have any other comments on this you know
question that we're finishing?
Feel free to put up your hand.
Let me know.
And the question is, if you were launching your project today from scratch,
what would you do differently?
Any last comments there?
If not, we'll move on to the final question.
Oh, okay.
So we have MC2 Finance that would love to share some comments.
Feel free to go ahead.
Sure. Like, I think some years ago, technology was all the mode. So if you built the right tech,
you showed it to the people in the scene, which were easily found, then you could get some good traction. But I think that time is over. Technology itself, there are some financial markets which are still creative and interesting.
But most of the time, it's now about distribution and how you actually get your users.
So getting capital first, like capital as traction in your protocol is now so much more
important than the technology that you're using,
that I would definitely focus on that first.
Beautiful. All right. Thank you so much.
Okay. And then final question we have is for someone who's listening, who's listening in, who hasn't used DeFi yet.
What would you say is one simple first step that you'd recommend they take right after these spaces so that they could get started?
Now, I'd love to pass this one over to Bancor.
Get a hardware wallet. It's literally like it's the easiest thing you can do to prevent the most
heartbreak, right? I think a lot of people when they're getting started, just because of convenience,
they kind of install the MetaMask app on top of whatever browser they're using.
And I promise you, it's not a question of if, it's a question of when those private keys are going to get compromised.
Just get a hardware wallet.
It doesn't really matter which one.
There's a lot of tribalism about which hardware wallet's the best.
which hardware wallet's the best, I assure you, they're all pretty much the same thing.
I assure you, they're all pretty much the same thing.
And yeah, before you come anywhere close to a blockchain, you really want to make sure that
you've got a hardware wallet. It's a very, very cheap insurance policy.
I agree. I agree. That's actually a very good good simple step of very valuable for anyone who's new
wants to get started um and i'd love to pass this one over to okx what would you say
is a simple step someone can take right after the spaces so they think they can get started into defy
started into DeFi?
Yeah, I think people can just start for the people who are not super familiar with DeFi
products. I think it will be nice to start with those products that have master abstraction
experience. I think in this cycle, I saw a lot of founders now come from like a deep traditional finance background.
They understand, like Chris mentions, distribution is super important.
They are expertise to how to distribute their products.
And then they know how to like present risk and rewards with a very proper way without like
scaring people away and i think compared to like several years ago we uh is lucky for the the
current users uh because they have much more like uh comprehensive uh not uh information uh to familiar
with the to to learn about the products and uh and for these new founders or newcomers,
they are also building the interface that even for the existing DeFi,
they still improve their products.
They are trying to like building the interface that feel like just using
a very regular thing to apps that we already use seamlessly and user friendly.
And at OKEx, this is also our first principle to build our products, into apps that we already use seamlessly and user-friendly.
And at OKEx, this is also our first principle
to build our products, to give you a great product first,
instead of like to emphasize that much
about technology to the users.
So whether it's our internal like CD5 products
or the partners from outsiders to integrate
with our WebSuite wallets, we handle
the complexity on the backend side in the backgrounds.
So it's not necessary for the users to know everything about what's happening on the backend
side.
So yeah, so the first step, just download the user-friendly products or wallets, just try
some very simple stablecoin saving or swapping, etc.
Yeah, that's my personal view.
Awesome.
All right.
Thank you so much for OKEx.
And then if you have any final words and thoughts, I'd love to pass this over to MC2 Finance.
Thanks.
One thing that I like to recommend, which is maybe a little bit funny, I tell my friends,
set a specific low amount of funds, like $20 or $50 that you're willing to lose.
Put this on a wallet and then try things out.
Play around and expect that you will lose this amount.
Never put in more money that you are willing to lose.
And the first times you use crypto to use DeFi,
it's so different than anything you experience in finance.
And it's so different than anything you experience in finance.
And it's also so empowering, but it means that you will do a lot of mistakes.
And so only do it with minimal amounts that you basically define as play money in the beginning, because this is the maximum learning curve you can get when you put it into different
protocols. When you try out get when you put it into different protocols when
you try out leverage you lose it you learn 100 times more than if you listen to 500 hours of
youtube videos about how to do it right in the first time awesome all right well thank you so much and okay i'm not sure if you had your hand up or if you
were doing a a clap but uh yeah either way as we are coming yeah so now we are coming to the end
of our spaces um so first i'd like to give a huge thank you to our guests from OKEx, Bancor, Celo, Cap, and MC2 Finance.
Thank you for sharing your insights and very valuable perspectives.
DeFi is still early and still evolving.
And conversations like this help bridge the gap between builders and users alike.
So to everyone listening, thank you for joining us.
Please make sure to follow our speakers and stay plugged into what they are building.
And also be sure to follow DeFi as well on our X account and also our Telegram.
And until next time, stay curious, stay safe, and keep exploring the future of DeFi.
keep exploring the future of DeFi. Have a good day to the rest of everyone and thank you to all our
speakers. Thank you guys for joining. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Goodbye. Bye-bye.
