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Rise of DeFi - Top Innovators 2.0
Recorded: March 25, 2026 Duration: 1:18:21Space Recording
Full Transcription
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Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music Music I'm I Oh Hey guys! hey guys how's it going what's up uh hang tight as we bring some of our speakers up here with us
and we will get starting really shortly so really excited about today's spaces
and excited to dive in so give us just a couple seconds while we get all our speakers up here.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. . Thank you. All right, thanks, guys.
As we were bringing up all our speakers, I think we almost have everyone here. one sec Thank you. amazing I think we have everybody now okay great awesome okay well let's get started okay all right so um yeah really excited today actually for today's spaces we have we have
another hit spaces on the rise of d5 this is top innovators 2.0 so now that we have all our speakers
here um okay we're we're gonna we're gonna dive right in and also um just a quick like if you guys uh
don't have your main account on here you're welcome to have your main account joined just
for like uh just for it to have a presence you can put it on mute that's no problem uh but it's
not no worries so all good but just that that's available. Okay. All right. So let's get started.
So first of all, here, everyone. Welcome to today's First Face.
This is the Rise of DeFi. This is Top Innovators 2.0.
And I am your host, Stanale Giovino. I am from DeFi.
And for those of you who are not familiar with DeFi, the DeFi dashboard, we're sort of like an aggregator of all the different DeFi opportunities and protocols that are available.
And we like to make it easier for people to find those DeFi opportunities and also stay safe, of course, with our security tools.
So you can investigate any tokens or smart contracts and just make sure
you're navigating the space in a really safe way. So we're definitely also big behind that.
Okay, so now today we're going to be diving into one of the biggest shifts that are happening in
finance where control is moving away from traditional systems and into the hands of the people. And so I'm really excited
because we brought together some of the top builders, I would say, who are actually making
this happen. So now let's get into some intros. I'm really excited to introduce our guest today.
some intros. I'm really excited to introduce our guest today. So maybe first off, we can start off
with OneInch, which is a huge OG DeFi protocol. It's been around for ages, since the beginning
of time. So actually, yeah, OneInch, if you could please introduce yourself, maybe what you do there
and a little bit about your project.
GM GM, here is Sasha speaking. I'm leading BD. I'm with Oneinch. Oneinch started as a DeFi aggregator. And now I would say we're the marketplace where we're aggregating both B2C and
B2B DeFi opportunities. Yeah, and that's who we are. So if you want to start and if you want to learn how to DeFi,
you can start from OneInch.
Thanks for hosting us.
Looking forward to the fruitful discussion.
I love that, Dosa.
Thank you for joining us.
Really excited to hear your insights.
All right.
Okay, so next we'd love to introduce Sonic Labs,
which is also another really OG project.
It's been around for a really long time, has weathered probably just about every storm, to be honest.
So, yes, if you could please introduce yourself, Sonic Labs, a little bit who you are, what you do, and anything fruitful.
Yeah, I just want to check if I'm audible.
Hi, everyone.
I'm Johan.
I'm a contributor to Sonic Labs.
I primarily look into DeFi strategy and growth at Sonic.
And here's a little bit about Sonic.
Sonic is like a very, very old EVML1.
It started off as Phantom Opera. And about a year and a half ago we long
sonic uh it's a extremely fast and capable chain uh it's capable of doing 10k tps uh single slot
like uh finality and uh you know ux is no longer a bottleneck. And essentially, you can pretty much build
any financial application on Sonic,
which is its unique selling proposition.
Beautiful. Thank you so much, Johan.
And up next, we would also love to introduce
another great project that's been around for some time. So Kelp
Dow. Kelp Dow, if you could please introduce yourself, who you are, what you do, and anything
insightful.
Hi, everyone. This is Inderjeet. I look after the marketing side of Kelp. Kelp has been around for a while. We saw restaking as an incredible
opportunity to make more value out of your ETH and we are currently one of the leading
LRTs on Ethereum. We obviously also went on to launch GAain, which is a suite of vaults, both for Ethereum and stablecoin holders.
And we offer automated yield strategies across three different vaults, three different core vaults and a few partner vaults, which are either there or up and coming.
and coming and recently we have set our eyes on a very interesting category which is trade
and payments commerce in the real world side and we are launching our own stable coin which
which is designed to generate a high yield from trade fire and pay firements. So high yield with no dependence of volatile crypto cycles or
market cycles in general. So that has been the journey of Kelp. Excited to be here. Thanks.
Wonderful. Thanks, Indrajeet. All right. And up next, last but not least, we have another great project joining us today. We also have Ape Bond. Ape Bond, if you could please introduce yourself and what you do and anything insightful. Thank you.
Oh, Lanky, I think you're on mute.
You might need to unmute yourself in case. All right, Linky, I'm not sure if you can hear us, Yvonne, but once you, maybe once you come back on,
feel free to, we can stop and we can get you to introduce yourself.
I know sometimes Twitter can be really buggy, so don't worry.
It's all good.
All right.
Okay.
So maybe as we wait for Linky to join us and get back in, we're just going to continue.
Okay.
And again, Ape on, once you're back, don't worry, we'll let you just, we'll, we'll stop what we're doing so you can do a proper
intro. Okay. All right. So today's conversation is all about breaking things down in a way that's
easy to understand. So whether you're new to DeFi or ready or like already deep in it,
you'll walk away with some real insights today.
So let's jump right in and start from the top.
So let's start simple.
For anyone that's listening and still new, how would you...
Now, this is to our speakers, okay?
So how would you explain DeFi in one sentence and why it matters right now,
especially for, you know, some audience members that are wanting to explore and participate in onboard?
I'll throw this out first, maybe to one inch.
Sure.
Happy to.
So basically, I could give you the long answer, but I would maybe use the real world example right now when we're sending the messages from one person to another, we're getting them instantly. We actually all the builders want decentralized finance look like without third parties like banks
And this is why defy matters so to get your funds as
As soon as you can get your telegram messages
Maybe this is this would be my short explanation
Okay, I love it. Thank you
And uh, if we can also pass this on to Sonic Labs.
would define uh defy and what's like unique and why it's important is anyone with an internet
connection and uh i mean now you don't even need a web3 wallet because of you know softwares like
privy etc you know which allow you to lend borrow trade earn yield etc and essentially compete on
you know the same terms as like institutional players who previously had an
edge that's why it's like uh very unique and attractive and i think the reason it matters
now is that uh technology has involved so far that the infra is finally like fast and cheap enough to
move over the entire financial stack so i think that's why
defy is very important today that's awesome thank you so much um oh i think our speaker
from eight bond is available now i'll go ahead and uh share your intro if you like
i think we got as i think you just need to unmute yourself. Yeah. Hey, nice to meet you. Hello, everyone. So my whatever the actually I'm the VC's
call from Venture Cartels and I'm connected with like more than 200 plus VC's from T1
to T3 to T4. And currently my team is building something that is going to create Web2 users to come in the Web3.
And there is a lot of confusion in Web3.
Web2 people don't know about...
There are different types of chains and different types of chain fees like Sonic, BNB and many other chains.
we will get confused.
So Web2 people get confused.
So my team is building something that they don't get confused.
that they don't get confused.
In my opinion,
decentralized finance is the
replace traditional intermediaries
like a bank with automated
self-executing smart contract.
And we can see the key component
like permissionless transparency
and interoperability and self-custody.
Okay.
AS, sorry, just real quick.
Are you from Ape Bond?
I might have pulled up.
No, no, no, actually I'm not from Ape Bond.
Okay.
All right.
No problem.
All right, and we're back.
Okay, great.
And so I'd love to pass this, sorry, this question also over to Indrajeet.
Yeah, sure. I think there's a lot to borrow from all the comments that the speakers have
shared. And in my view, DeFi is simply finance without gatekeepers, right? And I strongly
believe we are in an age where finance is running on code instead of institutions.
And that's so cool, right?
Because it matters right now because of the first time you can actually lend, borrow, take, earn, yield without asking anybody for permission of any kind.
And that fundamentally changes, that basically changes who gets the access to financial tools and how they get it.
Really like the Telegram analogy, by the way.
So that's the how, and it's also the who.
And all of this is happening because there are literally no middlemen in DeFi.
Yeah.
Okay, thank you.
Yeah, and I think this sort of leads us actually to our next question and i i loved you know getting also a little bit personal with you know everyone's
personal journey everyone's personal journey has you know is a little bit different but of course
we have so many things in common in terms of why we joined def, like what has been your personal journey in that and what inspired
you to get into that. So, so the next, this next question is why do you, is sorry, I'd love to,
okay. So next question is what pulled each of you into DeFi and what made you stay? So what
inspired you to participate and get involved in the DeFi space in the first place?
And what is also inspiring you to also continue to stay?
You know, so I'd love to get your personal journey and experience on this.
So maybe we'll pass this over to OneInch first.
Sure.
So thanks a lot. This is a really great question.
And maybe I will mention both things from the team and from my personal experience.
It's my 10th year of crypto this year.
And I'm here just because of the beautiful people and the brilliant builders who are here in this space to improve the quality of
our lives by providing the innovative solutions also make our finance not only finance basically
general life more efficient and all of them are just widening my vision on the whole world and on dedicated things.
Like now the glass is not half empty or half full.
The glass actually has the texture.
It's cold.
And this is how the DeFi builders or crypto blockchain builders
thinking of the way how they think.
And this is how our team is thinking.
And the 1inch team is defy dreamers
and we are improving the user experience for our major product which is swaps and previously it
was just p2p swaps then it was uh uh aggregator of dexes and now we improve this with by bringing
the intent based swap so generally what motivates me and 1inch team
is to improve the user experience
and to make the infrastructure finally better.
So the thing is that we want to bring on the market product
where users don't need to think about what is happening behind,
why do they need to have enough gas tokens to make the swap happen.
And this is basically what drives us.
And a few years ago, DeFi was existing, but still raw for normal users.
And today, UAC is improving, liquidity is deeper,
and the conversation has shifted from pure speculation
to real financial utility uh by even like this big trend with rwas right now happening and we
see this big global adoption so before users had to jump between multiple apps bridges and chains
and just to make one trade now now it's the best products of now
trying to actually hide the complexity
and make it feel
really seamless. So,
this is what keeps us,
and we will never
stop.
I love
the passion.
I love the passion behind it. You can definitely
hear it in business words.
Johan, go ahead. Tell us about your personal journey experience.
What inspired you and what caused you to stay?
I think what drives me towards DeFi or what continues to keep me into the space is my personal definition for how DeFi works is essentially designing or building incentives and
counter incentives to make the users you know who you do not know who are complete annons
follow a system which is uh you know as d if you're speaking as a dFi purist, immutable and cannot change.
So this is quite interesting. And it's similar to, you know, when you're in school,
you learn about different economic theories,
which actually can never happen in real life.
But, you know, in DeFi, you get to build things
and conduct a lot of experiments,
which is, you know, never possible in tradify and uh you know it's
full of problem solving improvisation and a lot of surprises like you don't know what's going to
happen uh you know something could work well for one week and then you know a few actors or people
come together and use the application in like a way that which nobody has anticipated and you know, a few actors or people come together and use the application in like a way that which
nobody has anticipated. And, you know, you get to learn like flaws, uh, only by doing rather,
you know, it's not theories, but you can put the theories to work because it's permissionless.
And like, all you have to do is like build out the code and ship and it happens so fast so it is extremely
fast-paced and exciting which keeps me coming back and why i love the space
that's awesome thank you so much johan um and then also from kelp dow
And then also from KelpDAO.
Yeah.
So what pulled me was a very personal experience.
Actually, I moved to Dubai a few years back.
And I was pretty much drawn towards tax-free intraday trading, which was the obvious entry point.
And you start there and you get comfortable with markets.
And then you start asking, right,
what else can this capital be doing
when I'm not actively trading?
And that question led me to DeFi.
And I'm sure there are many like me
whom I would like to believe as the Web 2 to Web 3 ICPs in marketing terminologies.
And so it wasn't through ideologies, but through curiosity about yield, rather.
And once you start exploring what's actually possible, staking, restaking, lending, vaults,
you realize that it's infinite possibilities and what can be done,
which all opportunities you would like to pool your money into,
where you would like to provide your liquidity into,
and where the real returns are for,
and the mechanics are obviously transparent,
so that's obviously very reassuring.
And then there's no going back to like, say, savings account experience.
Now, what kept me here is the speed.
Again, I think I echo the sentiments of the other speakers.
The speed was really genuinely strong and the space keeps creating genuinely new financial
primitives.
And restaking, for example, didn't exist like three years ago.
The idea that straight teeth can simultaneously secure Ethereum and bootstrap entirely new decentralized services,
was not even a possibility like three, four years back.
So what Kelp does is make that accessible.
And that's why I became a part of the journey.
Most people don't have 32E to run a validator.
So we pool assets, issue our receipt,
and let anyone participate in the restaking economy while keeping the capital liquid and composable
across multiple DeFi protocols.
So that access layer on top of that primitive, not the primitive itself,
is what we are building, the access layer. And that's what's keeping me going. Yeah, that's my
short answer. That's great. Awesome. Thank you so much. And I think that's what makes these sort of
like spaces so valuable, is we get to go a little bit
deeper in understanding also people's personal journey of like why they're in this space and
especially people who have been in in this space for for so long um so now i'd actually like to go
a little bit deeper into each of your projects if if we could. And I'd like to dive into what is the core problem
that your project is solving and why does it matter?
So maybe we can actually throw this over to Stonic Labs to take first.
Johanny, are you there?
I'm sorry, could you repeat the question?
Yeah, I'm good.
Sure, yeah, no problem.
So, yeah, so just diving a little bit deeper
into each and everyone's projects.
So what is, the question is,
what is the core problem that you are solving
and why does it matter?
Why, you know, how do we explain that to the audience?
Yeah, that's a great question. So, you know, Sonic has been around for a long time.
It's actually the second oldest EVML1 after Ethereum. So we've seen like different kinds
of builders come up. We been here you know through different
cycles and uh the biggest issue that we've kind of seen and i think a lot of other uh like
applications as well as blockchains are also trying to solve the same thing which is value
leakage and i think the best example of value leakage is Polymarket. So Polymarket is probably one of top five apps in the Web3 space,
extremely good traction, et cetera, et cetera.
But Polymarket is on Polygon.
And I think that a lot of people who use polymarket especially like the ones that use polymarket in
like 2026 or 2025 they don't even know that polymarket is like on polygon because you can
deposit usdc from like a bunch of chains uh it is only like the settlement and the you know the
order book that is on polygon so uh polygon or like the pole token barely like gets any value from this.
And like, in spite of the success of the app, like they're extracting a lot of the value and like the chain doesn't get any value in return.
So as a result, you know, Sonic is pivoted from becoming like a general purpose chain uh we
feel like there are too many chains right now in fact like more chains than builders out there so
uh the only way to sustain is to do something unique uh by unique you know something that can
only be done on chain a or you know in the case of us like only something that's only be done on chain A, you know, in the case of us, like something that's
only possible on Sonic. So, you know, users are forced to use Sonic because it gives certain
advantages. And we have started like our goal or journey towards vertical integration. And the goal
of this is like to own core financial primitives that generate revenue
or are revenue positive a lot of applications uh you know they a lot of them are in like growth
phase only where they're burning more money than they make uh like recently even balancer sunset
because you know they were not making any money so So this, oh, in fact, like Balancer Labs, sorry.
So this forces people to like rethink and kind of run,
you know, Web3 apps as businesses and not really charities.
So we've already taken our first step
towards vertical integration.
We launched USSD, which is our native stable coin,
in partnership with frax.
It's powered by treasury bills through, you know, wisdom tree,
black rock, et cetera.
And we have like a lot of other or new
enshrined applications along the way.
Apart from this, we have something extremely unique
called fee monetization which gives builders up to 90 percent of the gas generated by their apps
uh this is very similar to youtube where like creators earn a share of revenue based on the
number of views that they generate uh the same way like applications
get uh you know if they have more transactions they make more money and uh they can use the
money as like revenue which is not there on any other chain or they can use it to like
abstract or completely like subsidize the gas fees for that user. And that's like an onboarding cost for them.
So all this is possible on Sonic.
And I think these are a few of the problems
that we're trying to solve
and some of the unique selling propositions that we have.
I think that's great.
Thank you so much, Johan.
I think that's really important to you so much, Johan. I think that's really important to you when you,
when you, when we're sharing like some of the, some of the key problems that a lot of these
projects are working on because sometimes people forget or it's unclear. So yeah, I think this is
really good. I'd love to pass this over to OneInch. What is the, some of the key problems
you guys are solving and why does it matter?
Sure.
So at OneInch, we solve one of the biggest hidden problems in DeFi, which is execution, I would say.
And in crypto, two people can make the same trade and get very different outcomes depending on the routing.
And also basically liquidity and speed and fees so we focus on helping users and
partners to get better the execution because it's actually directly affects
some of the real money so it's like when you want to book the flight if you use
the right search engine you get the better role, so better price and less friction.
This is what we actually bring in to define the execution quality.
It matters the same way that you are using the search engine for your travel bookings.
I think I will stop because there is some projects also solving different problems.
I would focus on one of the most biggest that is related to image here.
Okay, sounds good.
I like your flight analogy and example, you know, how different browsers will give you
sometimes different information
when you're trying to book, and depending on which one you're using, sometimes we'll filter
out the best prices, price options.
I think that's great.
Thank you to OneInch, and I'd love to also pass this one over to Kelp Dow.
Yeah, sure.
I think the core problem Kelp is solving is capital inefficiency
at two levels first there's billions of eath that's staked and earning base rewards but still
idle beyond that and liquid restaking solves this right you stake eath get rse back and that rse is
composable across 40 plus DeFi protocols.
You keep earnings taking
and restaking rewards
while your capital stays productive.
And of course, on top of that,
you have automated vault strategies
to mark up your yield potential.
And the second capital inefficiency
that we recently ventured into is the RWA space through our new credit layer and KUSD.
We are solving a completely different problem here.
First is USD stable coins sitting in wallets earning nothing.
And with the new Clarity Act proposal, that's sure to stay. While trading finance globally...
And on the other side, on the real world side,
trade finance is globally starved of short-term credit.
So we route that USD to pre-approved institutions via KYB verified flows.
And the interest comes back on-chain as the yield on our KUSD stablecoin.
So that's real yield, almost 8% to 10% from real economic activity.
So, and that's like serving a very, like serving an underserved,
tokenizing a completely underserved category in the real world space.
This is possibly the first, the most unique thing that we ourselves are discovering as we explore this part of our business.
So now, why does it matter?
Obviously, most protocols, most projects pick a lane.
And somehow, by design or by choice, something mix of both, we built a stack.
by design or by choice, something mix of both.
We built a stack.
RSE is one of the leading LRTs on Ethereum
with over $2 billion in TVL, $2 billion in TVL.
Then there's gain vaults that take restake assets
and route them across DeFi protocols automatically
for optimized yield.
And then there is KUSD, which is an on-chain credit layer
and KUSD earns from is an on-chain credit layer,
and KUSD earns from actual trade receivables,
not, say, carry trades or token emissions or, say, relatively lower stable yields from T-bills and bonds,
but rather from actual commerce that is happening in the real world.
And it's unique because the token, which is kernel,
accrues value across this whole plethora of capital orchestration,
as I would like to coin it,
which is like there's capital getting managed,
then there is yield getting optimized,
and then there is short-term financing happening.
This is a full-blown capital efficiency
stack not a single product very few teams in my view are attempting this on the capital side of
things uh and uh that's what makes scalp in my view stand out that's right Thank you so much to Kelp Dow. So now also like to going into sort of another direction and taking a look at market adoption and how certain elements sort of affect the Web3 and especially the DeFi space.
So, for example, we're seeing more institutions, for example, enter DeFi.
So the question is, do you see that as a positive evolution, or is that something that challenges
the decentralization around DeFi?
I'll pass this one over to one interest.
Okay. I'll pass this one over to one interest.
Dosa, are you there?
Okay, maybe we'll wait.
Let me know if you're there, Dosa, if you can, if your mic is working.
It's okay, we'll pass that on to the next speaker.
Let's pass this one over to Sonic Labs.
So the question is, so we're seeing a lot more institutions enter the DeFi space. Do you see this as a
positive evolution or is it something that challenges the decentralization around DeFi?
I think it's definitely positive because, you know, we, like the DeFi community or like
the ecosystem would be making a big mistake if
we're saying no to capital and there is so much capital yet to come and institutions are like
already here in a big way uh there is like in fact i think like five uh you know at least five
to ten percent of like u.s treasuries are tokenized I think it's some
number uh something like that and Sonic's own stable coin is you know backed by treasury bills
and you know uh that big institutions like issued so uh like institutions in DeFi is definitely positive, provided that the architecture stays permissionless,
provided that, you know, anybody can use the architecture
or like gain access to the tokens, products, et cetera.
I would say the only risk would be that, you know,
walled gardens appear in DeFi.
So like on Solana and like a lot
of other uh blockchains that are like prop amms and a lot of custom like lending markets uh options
markets etc and uh you know if like the challenge for d5 here is that, you know, if DeFi cannot provide the same or similar user experience like prop AMMs or centralized services that like existing institutions are using, we risk losing out like a lot of business and a lot of liquidity. So it's definitely positive, but they are a lot more demanding
than the users that were here
like maybe two or three years ago.
So the users are like more sophisticated,
a lot more difficult to please
because they've come from TradFi,
they have high expectations.
So if DeFi,
like if we cannot provide decentralized infrastructure
that match their requirements, then, you know, institutions will just pivot,
you know, build their own wall gardens.
And then that is like a big risk to DeFi.
But overall, I would say it's very positive.
I think that's a really interesting, that's a really good point, is like the positive
side and then also the challenges that brings in terms of like expectations that maybe institutional
investors have, you know, are bringing to the space.
Yeah.
I'll pass this one over to, let's see, Kelp Dow.
Thanks, Sonali. So yeah, I agree. I think it's very positive and it's a sign of maturity
in the space. Of course, we'll have to keep our eyes open, but let's look at the positive first. Institutional capital brings liquidity, legitimacy,
and as I mentioned, forces the protocols to grow up to governance
and the right set of security and transparency.
Recently, BlackRock tokenizing a treasury fund.
It's a good sign. It's not like, it's a good sign.
It's a signal that infrastructure is ready.
The risk factor now,
or say the slight pinch of salt factor over here is
institutions obviously carry this whole centralization pressure,
which is KYC gating, whitelisted pools,
kic gating white listed pools regulatory capture risk and i think that comes with any any sort of
regulatory capture risk.
natural maturity or progression and uh i think our job the job of this industry is to make sure
permissionless participation stays the default while compliant lanes coexist. Compliance can come in, but I mean, the inherent permissionless
participation cannot go away. And those two things are, they aren't mutually exclusive.
If you are intentional about what you're building, it only gets dangerous when compliance becomes
the excuse to quietly remove the open layer entirely.
And I think that's all we have to watch out for.
And since this entire institutional wave comes in,
I think it only makes us more mature to watch out for these leakages.
So, yeah, overall positive.
I think it is only going to get us to look at our industry
more maturely.
Awesome.
And Joseph, I'm not sure if you had any thoughts
you want to share on it.
If not, we can go to the next question.
Joseph, are you there?
From One Inch?
I don't think we can hear you at the moment.
One second.
Okay, no problemo.
As we get...
so that was down sasha joining us again we'll be we'll continue okay all right so now this is like
this order takes us into the next segment um which is where do you where do you see the biggest opportunity in DeFi over the next couple years
because we have so many different uh opportunities coming out and so many different products and
you know products that are just absolutely trending uh so of course you have different
things that are trending in different years but where do you see i would say the some of the biggest opportunities in defy uh taking place over the next uh couple years maybe this
is something you're working on maybe this is something you foresee getting bigger uh very soon
um let's just pass this one over to you so maybe sonic labs first
yeah i mean uh i think there are a lot of opportunities but if i could like put my finger
on the most like the simplest and the lowest hanging one but i would say like uh also one
could argue the most important one is like scalable low risk yield on uh not just us dollar stable coins but like uh like it can be on
anything so I think even a few months ago Vitalik made a post about this so if we are able to figure
out you know it's not for example like you could argue that lending is you know lending on our way already is that but there is like a lot of layers of
risk that a lot of people don't see you know if a new collateral is added or some risk parameters
are changed it could add or it could like completely change like the risk profile of
your portfolio so uh you know whoever cracks like a scalable way for stablecoin yield uh and by
scalable i mean like in the billions i think that uh definitely has product market fit and
it's the easiest way to onboard new people to like the web3 space as well like uh they can on ramp with you know into stable coins uh and just do
two transactions like approve and deposit and they start earning yield uh they don't have to worry
you know where the yield is coming from what kind of risk they're exposed to and ideally all of these
users will be doing this through their mobile phones and not like laptops that we're using
or PCs that we use today to access DeFi.
So I think that is like the single or like the biggest opportunity in terms of like EVL.
This would definitely be it.
And then sorry. Yeah, thank you. And then also helped out yeah uh sure thanks so um i think we uh everything out there is a big opportunity right now firstly let's let's look at the uh look at the numbers i
mean uh we are at 33 around 33 billion and that's happened in like two years and this is still a
rounding error relative to where we can go from here uh i'm just talking about the rwa rwa spectrum
right now and uh and in in this passage of 33 billion in TVL,
what have we done?
We have tokenized assets or like say categories
that were pretty much equitized in the real world, right?
Stocks, real estate, treasuries
and on the DeFi space, obviously we have yield aggregators.
So I think the real opportunity is tokenizing something
that cannot be institutionally accessible,
like say on the stock market
or through different institutional gateways.
And that is the real power of crypto and DeFi, right?
And obviously,
I am very bullish about short-term or long-term credit lending to the real world. So, I mean,
actual credit, you know, the stuff that runs economies, like say invoice financing,
trade receivables, short-term institutional borrowing. These are things that cannot be, say, converted into a stock tomorrow.
Yes, there might be a company doing it, but this cannot be immediately converted into
a stock.
It is the gateway for tokenization, only and only tokenization.
And this is a multi-trillion dollar market that still moves on like say Swift
or Faxpeed rails currently. And bringing it on-chain will be, yes, for starters, it's a DeFi
product, but I think it's an infrastructure replacement in many ways. It's an overhaul on
the current way we operate in the world's economy. So I think that's a strong first.
And the second opportunity is cross-chain composability, right?
DeFi is still to siloed.
Capital should move across chains as frictionlessly
as information moves across the internet.
And the protocols that solve that plumbing cleanly will be very large.
And yeah, my eyes are on these two avenues.
We're trying to solve one at Kelp, the other one very excited and all my wishes to whoever solves
for it. All great, great answers and great insights welcome back welcome welcome back
Dowsa so maybe we'll throw this one to you too so you can also join so the
question was where do you see the biggest opportunity in DeFi over the
next couple years because there's so many you know different um uh products that are trending right so you have
like liquid staking and you have incredible opportunities and restaking and then there's
there's so much more as well um so what do you see as some of the biggest opportunities in defy
over the next couple years maybe stuff that it could be something you're working on or it could
be something that you just see to be very promising coming soon. Oh, yeah. Thanks a lot for this great question.
And can you hear me well now? Just checking.
Loud and clear.
Great. Beautiful. Finally.
Yes. So I would maybe also connect to this question.
So first, that was related to institutions that I wasn't able to talk.
that was related to institutions that I wasn't able to talk.
With this big trend with RWAs, I would say the institutions is a big opportunity for DeFi,
and I think it can be positive evolution if it's done the right way.
Institutions can bring liquidity, credibility, and larger use cases.
can bring liquidity, credibility, and larger use cases.
And the key is making sure that the space does not lose what made DeFi powerful,
which is basically openness, programmability, one, two, three,
fragmability, one, two, and user choice.
So these three things I would say we should keep. And another big challenge
for the DeFi is basically the fragmented liquidity. And on one side, we are trying to solve it
through another new product called Aqua, which is a shared liquidity protocol.
And basically, in one to next years, I would think the biggest opportunity is making on
chain finance feel invisible and the usable that i already mentioned previously so better trading
better yield access better payments and better infrastructure for the wallets and platforms
this what we this is how we can win and the winners will be the projects that turn complexity
into a smooth user experience and this
what we want that we're trying to do with our improvement for the swaps which is intent-based
swaps and cross-chain swaps as well as the aqua shared liquidity protocol so and the
uh to sum up it's just like cloud infrastructure become huge uh because it basically made building easier defined and
I hope if I will also grow because it makes financial products easier to
deliver so I think it's kind of maybe maybe wider but still something that I'm
looking forward to.
I think that's great.
Great, great answers, actually.
Thank you, Daza.
So actually, this sort of like brings us to,
I think it leads us into sort of the next segment around,
and this sort of covers the area of adoption.
So, I mean, a lot of us have been working in the Web3 space for what feels like eons in crypto timeline. I feel like crypto time is like dog years, you know, like one year is, I don't know, several years is like in Web3.
in web3 um so now there's still a large uh population of people that don't understand web3
um that want to understand that but but still don't understand and and and there's like a bit
of uh sometimes uh a barrier there and so as more people are joining, and more participating, what would you say,
what is the one misconception about DeFi that you wish more people understood? So for people
that want to understand, what do you think is the biggest misconception about DeFi? What are people
not understanding or not knowing that's creating a bit of a bottleneck, you know, for them?
And how do we how do we break through that?
So let's pass this one maybe over to Sonic Labs.
Yeah, I think the biggest misconception is this is a very cliche answer.
So I apologize for that.
Is that it's complicated
uh and the like the analogy that i can like give most people is like a lot of people and i'm
referring to the people who know about defy but they've never tried it uh you know you can read
as much as you want but the only way that you know you're actually going
to learn to use it and uh be get comfortable using it is actually trying and it's not as hard
you know today compared to like three years ago because uh you know you don't need a wallet you
can just sign up with like a social login uh it's pretty easy to on-ramp money and uh it's quite easy to use it so like
one advice that i would give people is you know you know uh it's okay to judge it's you know it's
not as hard as you think just try it it's not that hard and you know once you learn how uh easy it is
to use and you know the kind of freedom that you have over your own funds and
essentially like your own destiny like an example that I can use is if you in traditional finance
like a lot of people just go with like a portfolio manager or like mutual funds or index funds if
portfolio manager or like mutual funds or index funds if they want to invest so what they do is
they put money and they just hope that it goes up but in defy you know you are in custody of your
own funds and thereby like your own like your profitability and your success is in your own
hands so that's quite empowering and to go back to like an earlier question that you asked,
like this is also one of the reasons that, you know,
I still use DeFi and continue to do it every day.
I love that.
Ended with a personal passion experience.
Let's pass this one over to
KelpDAO.
Yeah, sure. I think
one of the biggest misconceptions
even at
the later stage
DeFi user is that all
DeFi yield is the same. It's not.
There's yield coming from
token emissions that relies on
continuous new capital coming in, or there's yield coming from token emissions that relies on continuous new capital coming in.
Or there's yield coming from protocol fees generated by real trading activities, funding rates, etc.
There's yield coming from Ethereum staking which is securing a 300 billion network.
And then there's yield coming from say RWA now.
And these are all completely different risk profiles.
But they are dressed in the same language.
We don't speak enough about the source of yield in DeFi.
And I think that is the reason why this misconception is there.
I mean, we don't, obviously, we all speak about it through different languages, but not in the same language.
And I think the word APY has done serious damage to the whole investor literacy
in this space so yeah ask i would just say ask where the yield comes from if no one can answer
that clearly that's your answer and yeah that's the biggest misconception i feel is not too many people know where the DeFi yield comes from.
Yeah, yeah, that's more or less what bugs me about the DeFi misconception subject.
Indraji, I think that's a really interesting point, actually. I think it's a really good point. I love
if you could go a little bit more into that.
So, like, for example, what would you say,
what would be some examples of where liquidity and yield comes from?
Yeah, so when you think about yield,
there are multiple mechanisms in the back end, right? Something that should eventually change and maybe not be a concern for most investors, but you have lending, looping, you have basis trading, you have yield coming from treasury bills. These are all different mechanisms and different risk profiles, different risk
assets. And Athena is basically giving you maybe at a yield of 12 to 15% on your stable coin in a
bull run, you know, because of basis trading and the funding rates are high. But when it's a
bear run, your yield is completely diminished. And a lot of people are going after the apy oh it's 12
there's going to be game changer why do i even need to have a savings account and then suddenly
the bear run comes and they're like oh my god i'm losing money on this and similarly like even
anything that is having any sense of say, and I would say that benchmark of greed
would be anything above 4 to 4.5% APY.
It comes with a, say, terms and conditions applied.
And one has to really dig deep into understanding what are the different strategies that you're
investing in, rather than the APY that you're following through.
Very good points.
That was from Kelp Gal.
And yeah, let's pass this one over to Zausai,
if you can share.
What do you think is in the... Yeah, go for it.
So in terms of the misconception,
I would say maybe um we are on
the trading space and one misconception in defy that we are touching is that defy is only for the
traders and speculators for the ggms and in reality it's not a defy the financial infrastructure
actually and trading is just one visible use case underneath and you also can have
a settlement liquidity you already were already just sharing what the yield access the program
program and basically defy in general is a programmable defy logic and like you have to think wider.
And in a similar way to saying that the internet is only for the social media,
where they it's just one use case.
The real value is the infrastructure layer behind everything.
That's what DeFi is.
And think about DeFi as the new internet, but for the financial services,
not just trading.
That's my humble opinion on that.
I think these are all great answers. I just have to say this because each of you guys are touching on something completely different in terms of different misconceptions that are there.
And I think this is great that we're actually touching on this because these are legitimate misconceptions
that people have.
So this is very refreshing
to actually speak about them.
So as our spaces is coming to an end,
let's do, we'll throw in one last question here
before we close up.
And let's see now okay so I guess last
question we could put in here is what would you say what would you say
separates the projects that will survive the long term from the ones that
won't? And I'd like to kind of combine maybe a little bit, two questions in one. So yeah,
so this question is like, what will, which, you know, what separates projects that will
survive the long term versus those that won't? And also, what is something, what is a last message that you would like to
give to the audience about DeFi right now sort of thing? How would you like to close that to
invite them and to inspire them to join and participate? All right, let's pass this one over to Sonik.
Yeah, it's a pretty good last question. And I think what separates, you know, projects that will continue to build, you know,
who've been there in the past, who are there now and who will continue to build is ones that actually, you know, they're realistic. They're upfront with the issues that face,
like most of the builders in the Web3 space
and, you know, treat it like a normal business.
I think revenue, it's time that, you know,
a lot of people focus on revenue.
And last cycle proved that token emissions and tvl
you know it's not a metric because all of these like token emissions don't last forever and tvl
is always borrowed because uh you know money or funds always have an opportunity cost the moment
that you know you're able to offer something lower than that it will rotate so
moral of the story is you know don't try to build anything that you know won't be durable for
multiple cycles and you know since i'm part of sonic labs i can also speak from like a chain
point of view uh i think the age of general purpose chains are kind of done and you can even
see that with like new launches like tempo etc uh they kind of focus uh master and own a vertical
and try to become industry leaders in like one vertical and build the u UX around like excelling at that and uh my personal favorite example of
like an application or blockchain that's doing a lot of things correct is hyperliquid because they
owned uh they pretty much own the entire stack and uh they generate what revenue from a key primitive that they own that's driving value to their token
and we're trying to take these lessons and imply uh you know try to uh utilize this day-to-day in
sonic and that's why we've made a pivot towards vertical integration so we are in this for the long run.
Revenue is very important
and we're trying to optimize for that.
Beautiful.
And any last words also on message to the DeFi audience
of why they should participate?
why they should participate.
Yeah, I think, you know,
right now it's called DeFi,
but, you know, I hope people will stop,
you know, the day people stop using the word DeFi
is when we've actually made it.
It's pretty much the same thing, you know,
TradFi is, you know know you're doing the same
stuff but on a private ledger defy just gives you like the infra to do it on a public ledger so
hopefully i think you know the natural course is for it to merge and hopefully uh you know in the
future complete financial activity will be on public ledgers and you know it won't
be called defy anymore so uh if you want to be part of something uh which is the future very early
you know there are like you know uh there's a lot you can learn uh plenty of opportunities you know
from uh like a yield perspective, career perspectives.
And I would also say that we're still very early.
So if DeFi is something that interests you,
I would highly encourage you to dig deeper
and go down that rabbit hole.
Beautiful, I love it, thank you.
Let's pass this one over to Oneinch. That's his last question.
Thank you. Thank you. So related to the projects that will survive long term, I would say the real utility, strong execution, and maybe the ability to adapt, this is what will keep the long-term projects to survive.
A lot of projects can ride a hype for a season, but long-term winners solve the real problems.
So we already talked about the misconceptions, the problems that all our projects are solving.
This is the way to survive and build through the cycles and keep earning user trust.
So Hypo can get attention, but only products can keep this attention on. And the last message,
I would tell we're all fighting or maybe talking around the first billion of users.
And I would tell we all are responsible to bring this first billion users to the DeFi,
to crypto itself.
And my message is go today outside, meet one person
and educate this person on how to DeFi,
educate on how to use the wallet,
educate on what crypto is.
And if we will do it on the daily basis,
at least on the weekly basis,
maybe at the end of the year,
we finally make this mass adoption
or at least first billion of users happen.
And this is my message to all the listeners here.
Class educate users.
This is all our responsibility to make this happen.
I love it.
I love it.
All these inspiring ending messages at the end are great.
All right. Let's pass this one over to our last speaker from Kelp Dow.
Sure. Thanks. I think this is a great time to discuss this, what separates long-term
survivors from the rest. I mean, we are in the anti-fragile era of crypto and DeFi, thanks to the 2022 massacres that happened across FTX, Terra, etc.
And we have already grown up.
And now it's about understanding how it's not about winning anymore.
It's about surviving, as you put it right.
It's about surviving, as you put it right.
And I think the two things that I believe will be the separators for long-term survivors from the rest is,
A, real revenue from real activity, not from their own token.
Any protocol whose unit economics depends on token price appreciation is on borrowed time.
And the second would be the scope of ambition
and i'll come to that a bit later when i have a message for everyone else over here the protocols
that survive are the ones solving problems that exist not just within crypto but outside crypto
not just optimizing within crypto and that's going to be a very strong, say, lens by which I personally feel survivors would look at themselves.
If you see, Ethereum still needs securing,
whether we are in a bull or a bear market.
Like global trade finance still needs capital
regardless of what Bitcoin is doing.
So building for demand that doesn't disappear
when sentiments shift,
like this phase that we are in currently, I think that would be a strong lens for a survivor project.
What would be my message to the community?
If you're starting or if you're already there, I would say, as I mentioned earlier, don't start with yield.
Start with understanding. Pick one protocol.
Read how it actually works.
Understand the yield source and what the risks are. Put $20.
Have some skin
in the game. $20 won't change your life.
But because of
the skin in the game, you will learn.
The people who onboarded in DeFi
gradually and carefully are still
there. Most of the people who came in that
chasing phase of
2021-2022 are not there
the technology is genuinely
powerful right so it rewards
people who treat it seriously
think about it we built the internet
and gave access to information
then we built payments
and then gave everyone access to commerce
then Uber then Airbnb so many information. Then we built payments and then gave everyone access to commerce. Then Uber,
then Airbnb. So, so many things. DeFi is doing the same thing to capital. Lending, borrowing,
earning, securing, infrastructure, financial trade, all of it open, programmable,
accessible to everyone with internet. That is not a small thing. The people in this room
are building financial
systems, all of us, like that the next generation will hopefully call normal. It will be like what
e-commerce was like 10 years back. But today we shop like as if we are breathing online. So I think
building for the next generation so that they consider this state of DeFi normal
is the real win.
And for that, we need to look at this space
very, very maturely and act accordingly.
And yeah, that would be my message.
Be responsible.
Okay, can I just say something?
I think for our three speakers, that was probably the most inspiring closing I've had yet on any spaces.
help Dow for sharing your insights on everything related to DeFi, especially as being projects
of some of the top innovators.
This is a 2.0 of this segment.
So as we close this spaces and with such a meaningful, like beautiful and even inspiring
message from all our speakers on the ending there.
Thank you again to all our speakers on the ending there. Thank you again to our speakers. Really appreciate you sharing all your insights.
And to also thank you to all our audience members and our listeners and our community,
to everyone who's listening, whether you're new or you've been part of these spaces for a long time.
If you got, if you get value from this, make sure to follow our, make sure to follow
the speakers, stay connected with them, keep learning.
And we're still so early and the conversations like this are how we all grow together.
So I appreciate you all.
And we will see you in the next spaces.
This is a lot of love coming to all of you from DeFi and the DeFi community.
Um, take care, have a great day or great evening wherever you are. This is a lot of love coming to all of you from DeFi and the DeFi community. Take care.
Have a great day or great evening wherever you are.
Much love.
Thank you for having us.
Beautiful.
Thank you so much.
It was a beautiful conversation.
Yeah.
Thank you so much.
Amazing.
I loved it.
Even I got a lot from it, so I think this was great. All right, guys. Thank you so much. See loved it even i got a lot from it so i think this was great all right guys thank
you so much see you guys next time take care and bye for now Thank you.
