Projects
![]()
No projects found
Investors
New
DAO Treasuries
DATs
Lend / Borrow APRs
Chains
Categories
Spaces
Stacks DeFi Show #58
Recorded: March 25, 2025 Duration: 0:57:30Space Recording
Short Summary
The discussion highlights significant developments in the Stacks ecosystem, including project launches like Zest Protocol and Valar, strategic partnerships such as Swike.ai's acquisition, and technological advancements like Alex Lab Foundation's AMM and taproot asset integration. Yield opportunities are emphasized with Stacking Dow's offerings, while growth is evident in milestones like Stacking Dow's TVL and Hermetica's stablecoin dominance. Innovations in decentralized finance, such as Valar's perpetual DEX and Alex AI, reflect emerging trends and the ecosystem's resilience despite market challenges.
Full Transcription
Hello everyone. Hello, hello, hello. Just checking if you guys can hear me.
Okay.
Amazing. Let's play some music while we uh, everyone is trickling in.
All right, I think we have a pretty full house.
So I'm just tweeting out that the spaces is live.
And I'm going to switch to my headphones and then we can slowly get going.
All right. Fantastic. Also getting up Lear and Methyl. But yeah, welcome everyone. Welcome to episode 58 with the Stax Defi show.
Generally, you know, every week we come together here at 10 am. Eastern Time to have a chat about the defy developments on...
you know, with all the great people making it happen, you know, on here.
So yeah, it's always always a pleasure.
Of course, and everything we say to be, you know,
taken for informational purposes only and not financial advice.
But yeah, very much looking forward to this show and this week,
because there are some cool things coming together to boost Defiance stacks.
But maybe before we go there, we should do a quick round of introductions.
I can just kick things off.
I'm Tyco, co-founder of Zest Protocol, which is the largest defyp protocol on stacks by TVL.
and is the lending protocol on the stacks chain.
So you can post your STX or staked STX or SPTC, right,
as collateral on ZS protocol to earn additional yield on it,
but also to borrow other assets, right,
like stable coins and more.
And next to that, I'm also contributed to stacks itself,
works a lot on SBTC, then I can vote to upgrade and things that are coming.
And also to stacking Dow, which is the leading LST for staking your STX and earning that juicy,
10% extra extra yield. So yeah, that's briefly about me. And yeah, maybe let's pass it on to
to Lear and Mithel and Adam. And then I'm also going to make sure that our friends from Restake are here.
GM GM, how's everyone doing? Can you hear me?
Yeah, yeah, I can.
All righty, yeah, I hope everyone's having a great week.
You know, I'm feeling bullish, feeling optimistic.
Hopefully we've bottomed.
I mean, always tough to call the bottom, but, you know,
seeing a nice kind of uplift in markets, a nice little bounce.
I think a lot of like the uncertainty is starting to fade a little bit,
mostly around, you know, macro.
But yeah, so I'm head of growth at StackingDow.
Always great to be part of these conversations every Tuesday morning.
Stacking Dow is the leading liquid staking protocol for the Stacks Network.
We make it super easy for users to earn the consensus rewards paid in either STX or SBTC.
If you want to learn more, go to stackingdow.com.
We are actually, you know, we've been doing quite well, even though token prices have been taking a dip.
We're close to 70 million STX TVL.
And I see Tycho just pinned one of my recent tweets.
We actually reached a bit of a milestone hitting 18 million STX BTC minted.
So it seems that, you know, our users definitely want to earn those nice SPTC rewards.
which again averages around 8 to 10% APIY on your stacks tokens while also retaining liquidity.
But yeah, great to be here and looking forward to your conversation.
Amazing, I'm just lining up all the conversation items above, but you know, using the time.
But yeah, Mithiel, do you want to go next?
Sure, I'm GM, everyone.
It's been a while since I've been here.
I'm so glad to be here.
And I'm Mithil Thakur.
I'm co-founder and CEO of Valar.
Wellar is the biggest community decks on stacks.
We have been building for two years, over two years on stacks now.
And very, very soon to be perp decks as well.
So I'm here to talk about it a little bit, not so much, but very excited to be here.
And like I think Leor was mentioning, maybe we have bottomed, maybe we have not.
I don't think it has ever mattered to us, at least for the stacks community and say this is for over two years.
I have to build the relationship.
Keep changing as they do always.
You know, like it's been a rough patch for the last few months.
Things have been slow, but I think things will pick up very soon.
Amazing.
Amazing.
That great, great stuff and looking forward to chat about all the Baylor-related updates.
There was a little bit of a small lag on the line when you were speaking.
I could hear everything, but just maybe quick, quick heads up on that side.
Sure.
oh vbn again uh yeah yeah it's uh it's biting it's biting all the makes sense amazing cool um yeah haddan do you want to
do you want to go next and then uh followed by last but at least david yeah are you guys able to hear me well
yes all right fantastic all right everyone i have pleasure to be here today uh my name is adan i'm the bd lead
with the alex lab foundation
You know, Alex is the, like in TVL terms, the largest decks on stacks,
not on any Bitcoin layer.
We also have our sister protocols, XLink Bridge, that connects stacks, the Bitcoin
L1, and over 18 different networks with the liquidity aggregation.
We have a Lisa, our sticking liquid staking protocol.
And I guess, you know, the news or headlines.
As again, you know, last month, we had a very successful surge three round with over 111 million votes, 3.4 million staked.
We had some very attractive SBTC APRs and the double digits, one in the triple digits actually.
And April 4th will be the claim day for surge round three.
And then after that, we might make soon an announcement on the surge four round.
And really, the next big release that we're building towards will be the Alex Dam,
which is our discrete automated market maker, which is another way of saying that we're bringing concentrated liquidity to stocks into Bitcoin.
And that will provide LPs, greater opportunities to earn higher yields.
That will provide traders, better prices, less slippage.
And we hope that can really invigorate and breathe in some new life and excitement into Bitcoin Defi.
So those are headline items.
And we're looking forward to all the fantastic things that people in this space are building today.
Right on, right on, right on.
I'm looking forward to chat about all those, all those things and how, I'll close the AMM is soon.
But yeah, Davide, can you hear us?
Do you want to share a few words about yourself and RISIC?
Yeah, hopefully you can hear me okay.
If I'm too bad on the microphone, not too close, please do tell me.
Yeah, this is great.
Okay, okay, fantastic.
Yeah, my name is Davide. I work with Swight.aI, previously called Resteg.
We are part of a private equity group, which is a Swiss-based private equity group.
There is a bunch of businesses in this PE, but there is a Bitcoin miner.
They used to be one of the largest Bitcoin miners in Europe.
There is us and then there is data centers, AI,
and traditional data centers.
But most recently, we have rebranded from restake to Swike.
AI and we have created a group.
We now own two validator businesses following the acquisition
of a validator on the Cosmos ecosystem.
So we are currently supporting more than 40 networks.
We have give or take 300 minions in Assets and the Delegation.
We were one of the Genesis validators, as you say, Genesis signers for Stacking Dow,
and also part of the SPTC Council, if you will, so SBTC signers. So very excited about
the Stacks ecosystem. We decided to build on Stacks and to support the Stax ecosystem,
simply because we want Bitcoin to succeed. And so our interests were aligned,
and that's why we're putting all of our efforts into making sure that
his join becomes a reality posing here yeah amazing amazing and yeah of course the guys at restake
one of the trusted validators on the on stacking now since since day one right since an akimoto
release um yeah no awesome awesome stuff maybe we should go through
maybe a couple of a couple of the weekly weekly updates I mean I pinned in a few things here right we've got a bit of everything we've got you know Vailar teasing something we've got
and Zest protocol integration announcements stacking now reaching new new highs on the new state stacks PTC product maybe you want to kick kick off with that
Yeah, I think it's been great to see the response by our users and the whole Stacks community to this new product.
And I think it just shows also how resilient, you know, stacks Defi can be.
You know, the fact that we're reaching new all-time highs and TBL in terms of STX, even though, you know, clearly we've seen some really strong market weakness across the board.
But yeah, I mean, it's interesting.
I actually just published a thread earlier this morning.
You know, I kind of took a step back and was thinking about, you know, when you think about
defy and, you know, really any defy ecosystem on any blockchain and the activities and the
things you can actually do in defy, I think it just boils down to like five core primitives.
And I know we like to kind of overcomplicate things.
We like to throw around buzzwords.
We like to generate hype, but at the end of the day, like in terms of the activities and the value and utility that's inherent to defy, it's actually quite simple and straightforward.
So there's obviously liquid staking, which is something that stacking now provides, which I think serves as kind of like a bedrock or foundation for other defy activities to take hold, you know, as it allows users to both earn the consensus rewards.
while also tapping into the liquidity of their assets
and being able to deploy or deposit your assets
into various defy strategies.
So obviously liquid staking is definitely a key component
that I think unleashed a lot of just kind of vibrancy
across stacks defy.
You also have lending and borrowing, which obviously Zest has been kind of, you know, been leading the charge, allowing users to also tap into the liquidity of their assets.
You know, perhaps you want to mint some STSTX and lend it out on Zest to earn some additional yield.
Or maybe you want to borrow against those assets and, you know, perhaps even kind of lever up on the yield through a looping strategy.
So, you know, those opportunities exist on Zest.
Then you have swapping, which obviously now has been enabled by Bitflow and Veller and Alex, these decks AMMs that just allow you to trade in and out of assets without any sort of counterparty risk or relying on any sort of intermediaries that may block your transactions.
So that's another core primitive.
And what am I missing as well as stable coins?
Yeah. So, you know, I'm not sure if we have anyone from Hermitica joining today to touch on this a bit more.
But, you know, we have some fairly strong crypto backed stable coins.
Again, there have been launched by Hermitica and Arkadico as well.
So that's all to say that I think we're starting to see all the core primitives come together on stacks.
And maybe we can also touch on what's missing and what we want builders to build to really take things to the next level.
But in terms of the core primitives, I think it's always useful just to take a step back and just kind of see the progress that has been made on stacks over the course of the last 12 to 18 months.
Another thing I was looking at recently as well is, you know, prior to Stacking Dow launching in December of 2023, if you look at Total Stacks TVL for Defi, it was sitting at around 30 million STX tokens.
And just in the past 12 to 18 months, we've seen that really grow immensely to believe it's over 200 million STX tokens.
tvl across tax defy so you know even though token prices are down like you know if you want to take a step back
and that it's still some crazy growth and i think that we sell not to say that we should rest in the
laurels and there isn't more to be done but i i do think that we've we've definitely grown by
leaps and bounds and that's always something to be proud of
Yeah, no, that's right.
That's right.
I know it's true what you're saying, right?
Like all the, all the primitives for healthy DIFA ecosystem are here, right?
Staking, lending, trading, right?
Be it dexas or perp dexas, which, which, you know,
my sale is working on as opposed to Alex on the Bitflow on the deck side.
throw in a stable coin in the mix and yeah that's really really all you need right it's just uh yeah we're
we're ready for liftoff right as soon as there uh there will be more incentives available we can we can
we can really take charge but uh but yeah mithill like what's um what's what's been going on in your world
hey man um can you guys hear me properly now yeah this is great much better awesome i just changed my uh my internet source
It's always a issue in Dubai.
Yeah, so I agree with Leor and you as well, Tycoe.
I think the recipe is finally complete.
It took us a while.
We could have done a bunch of things earlier, but better late than never.
Nakamoto is out.
It's been much more stable now.
One of the reasons also we couldn't launch our pub decks until now for last few months
was because you're waiting for Nakamoto to go live first of all
and then also waiting for it to stabilize because...
you know as you all know there were a bunch of slower blocks and that would have affected you know the traders on our pub decks very uh
you know, heavily if anything was to go wrong, you know, or if market was volatile.
So, but now is the best time.
I think we as an ecosystem are ready for lift off.
We have also launched staking for the same purpose.
You know, I, it doesn't look much as of now, but staking is, is part of this base infrastructure that we, I always kept saying, you know, that we are building the, uh,
the you know user facing defy infrastructure on bitcoin i think staking will play a big role for valer in
future we have launched it and it has been uh insanely successful even without giving out
any rewards for now we have i think around
seven, eight million will are staked.
But just to give people a small perspective on staking first before PubDex,
of course staking will have more and more use cases and benefits for stakers as and when the products go live.
So starting from PubDex once we go live, which is hopefully before end of this month,
before this month ends.
So we are just final testing, everything, our integrations.
Yeah.
on the front ed and the production contracts have been deployed so hopefully if everything
goes well within next one week we'll have we'll be able to test out perps trading on stacks
on chain you know i mean uh that there was the vision over two years ago and it's um i mean it
it uh totally fills my heart at this point that you know we are finally making it live and uh
and the vision was going to see the light of the day finally so you are very excited about it but
for stakers there's going to be a lot of benefits as pub decks and other products of well are
goes live and as the ecosystem lifts off as we see volumes as we see uh you know more trading
activities and more of token launches you know our launch pad is ready to go live we are just
waiting for uh you know some this
this ecosystem to lift off basically and see some token launches happen i think we will see much
more of that happen in next few months after the pub decks goes live as well because it will
attract a lot of uh it will just attract a lot of activities and even let market makers they
participate in stacks on chain more even institutions and professional traders participate more
As soon as we go live, we are going to do something with Hermatica as well, which I think
will discuss later this week.
We'll do a separate space with Hermitica for it.
But very excited about the pub decks that we are launching.
Hopefully within next one week, it will be a GMX style perp decks like I have said before.
So very similar to how you use Velar decks currently.
So you know, so, you know, it will be.
you know, it will probably, you know, the first pair that we start with will be some form of
SBTC with some form of stable coin and people will be able to long and short BTC on stacks on chain,
you know, and it's finalized by Bitcoin. That was the ultimate dream to have Bitcoin,
to have leverage trading on Bitcoin, which is finalized by Bitcoin. So, you know, looking forward to it.
Awesome. No, that's, that's amazing. That's amazing. That's always what we are.
you know, what we wanted to see.
So, okay, so it's kind of like a bit of a stay tuned, right,
in terms of when the launch should be,
what the pairs would be, et cetera.
So any, they should look out for a spaces announcement
on the Velaar account.
Is that kind of what to look at for this week?
Yes, spaces announcement and the real announcement, you know, so it's like I said, it's within next one week, but always, you know, with any technical stuff, if there can be a small minute thing that can cause a 24 to 48 hour delay, so we don't want to finalize, we don't want to say the finalized date right now.
But within hopefully 99% of everything goes well within next one week.
Got it. Got it. Exciting. That's very exciting. That, yeah, really great stuff. I'm very much, very much looking forward to it. I also have a bit of news to share on the on the zest side, which is what we announced last week on Thursday, I believe, is that we upgraded the Oracle to Pith. So that's that's a really great.
great development.
So Pith is like, you know, one of the most,
or like the most robust Oracle in the space, right?
And certainly the most robust one that is live on stacks, right?
Like there's other oracles to think about could be, say,
chain link, right?
Which is not integrated on stacks.
And yeah, Pith has basically grown to this, you know,
gold standard of DFI, which is now also integrated
inside Zest protocol.
So yeah, what does that mean?
Right? So obviously a lending protocol needs to be aware of the prices of assets, right, as most defyp protocols need to need to be.
And they need to get those prices from somewhere.
So if SDX drops a lot, they, or rises a lot, they need to know that so that they can, you know, that the protocol can then liquidate loans, etc.
So you need to configure something in your smart contracts as an Oracle, right, where price is going to come from.
And yeah, for that to be the best, most decentralized network is obviously great, right, for the ecosystem and to make zest more robust.
So yeah, that was a piece of news that we brought out last week and that had a lot of great, great engagement.
So, you know, just...
Just dropping that here as well.
And then, yeah, and then, Leo, you also wanted to share a few words about the, about the, about the, about the, about the, about the, about the, that stacking now has, has running right now.
Yeah, absolutely. Actually, let's touch on this a bit later just because I know
Mythel has to run in a few minutes. So we can give the floor back to him. But yeah, just a
question for you, Mythel, like maybe just to take a step back in terms of the perp decks.
Like, what do you view as really being like the big unlocked here? You know, is it greater capital
efficiency? Is it access to leverage? You know, how is, and another question as well is like,
how does everything tie back to Bitcoin? So, you know, maybe you can touch on some of those things.
I didn't quite get it.
How is everything tied back to Bitcoin?
So I have a, so I started Valar with a theory, you know?
I mean, so I started, I took like 10 steps back when I started Velar and I started thinking after FTCS went down and after it, you know, after it took my business down, which was my hedge fund with it.
I was like.
traveling around India and I was thinking like why did why was why did crypto began in the first
place you know it was the thesis of self-custody and decentralization and building this whole
parallel financial infrastructure which has nothing to do with banking and you know when maybe hopefully
when our kids grow up and they turn 18 they can choose to not have a bank account at all and choose
to run their day-to-day lives from
trading, investing, just, you know, like lending, holding, everything, day-to-day banking, payments,
using a financial system, which is totally decentralized, not governed by banks or one entity,
and, you know, it's built on Bitcoin. So the first step to do that was, you know, was to take Bitcoin away from
from centralized systems because as of today like I've said it before 90% of all trading that
happens happens on perps so all trading volume 90% of it is perps but 99% of that trading volume
of perps trading volume is on centralized exchanges so in a way centralized exchanges which are also again governed by
by central authorities are the one that are deciding many things,
including how people hold their custody, how people trade,
and of course, as we know, how manipulated the centralized exchanges can be
and how non-transparent they can be similar to what happened with FTX.
So the idea was that the price discovery of Bitcoin should also happen on Bitcoin.
Because major volume used to happen on centralized exchanges,
the price discovery of Bitcoin, which means price basically is a function of supply and demand at any given point in real time.
And if that price discovery happens on centralized exchanges or on centralized systems, that again doesn't make sense because Bitcoin was built on this thesis of decentralization and self-custody.
So the whole idea was to bring back.
price discovery of Bitcoin from centralized systems to decentralized systems.
So the idea behind perp decks was that if perp decks,
if perps are anyway,
anyway,
they are more than 90% of the volume of any of,
any financial instrument in crypto, then that should happen in a decentralized way, but also that shouldn't happen on a chain that's not governed by Bitcoin.
So it should happen on a chain that's governed that runs on Bitcoin.
So Bitcoin L2s were the best way to, were the, were in the sweet spot with that had Bitcoin finality, which would allow you the infrastructure to build perks.
on top of it and that's where tax fits in perfectly.
That's tax provides two things.
It provides Bitcoin finality and it provides the infrastructure for us to build
perps on it.
So the idea eventually is to bring all perps markets on chain,
but not just on chain, but also on chain that's
finalized on Bitcoin. So that was the idea we started with. Of course, it's still a long road ahead.
You know, we need proper Bitcoin finality. SBTC needs to grow a lot. And probably there will be
few other L2s as well because, you know, we also don't want maybe or maybe not. There might
be other L2s that can or other...
technologies that provide us Bitcoin finality in some other way like BitVM.
So we are open to that in that manner to build on those L2s as well.
But Stax also provides a great option and that's why we started on Stacks.
And yeah, it's just launching Perps is just first step.
You know, I mean, and how it brings, the second thing was how it brings more activity or liquidity or how it allows institutions to come on board is that is, you know, there are many ways to look into it because there are, uh,
Because like I said, it all comes back to the most of the volume because it's on perps.
It also is the instrument that a lot of institutions use on a daily basis.
A lot of HFT traders use on a daily or, you know, like microsecond basis.
Because there are multiple ways to trade.
There are long-term traders who...
who just want to maybe, you know, trade on a trend.
And perps and decentralized perps are the best way because you don't get liquidated,
you know, on a, you're not affected by crazy price fluctuations.
Because because perp decks like Velar runs on a, you know, runs on an oracle,
price fee basis while centralized exchanges there are always manipulations going on which which sees a lot of
price volatility in very short term which liquidates a lot of people that's why we see every month we see
there was a billion dollar liquidation happened on by bit or they're not two billion dollar liquidation on
binance so there are so many fundamental things that are going on in wrong in centralized systems which which perps on
Pups in on chain perps with Bitcoin finality can solve in long term.
Of course, we are not saying on day one will be perfect, but I think all these things will
eventually attract not just retail users, but institutions as well.
And the idea is to bring back price discovery of Bitcoin on Bitcoin chain.
Yeah, that's awesome. It's really, really cool. And, you know, definitely looking forward to the launch of that new product. And yeah, I think perp decks, like a perp decks, like what you're building is definitely another core primitive that we need in stacks, defy. As you mentioned, you know, everything's settling on Bitcoin. But I think to my understanding, and I think it was an interesting point that you made that, what was it, 90% of all trading volume is perps rather than.
rather than trading spot, which I think is a super interesting.
But that includes, yeah, that includes options as well.
Other ins- like that includes not just perps, but futures, options, spot and perks.
Got it. Combined all four, 90% is perps. Yeah, makes sense.
But I think to my understanding, like a big value proposition for anyone that wants to trade, you know,
perks or futures or some sort of derivative product as opposed to a trading spot is just access to cheap leverage, you know,
and the ability to magnify your position. And, you know, I think this was like largely initiated by Bitmex years ago.
So, you know, the fact that BitMex, I think, kind of took it to the extreme offering like 100x leverage, meaning that if there was a 1% move, you know, that goes against you, then your position could be liquidated.
But that being said, you know, it's not just DGens that want access to cheap leverage.
You know, it's all different types of investors, traders, institutions.
So, you know, is that kind of what you view as a key value prop?
Yeah, even like one direct value proposition is for projects like Hermitica, because Hermitica
generates yield on its Bitcoin-backed stablecoin, that's USDH, by the method of arbitraging
the funding rates. Funding rates are basically, you know, the fees that you pay to your counterparty.
If you're opening a long, you pay to the shot for keeping your long open. You know, it's
That's basically a way to see how much of people are either long or short.
And a lot of that funding arbitrage happens on perps, on centralized exchanges.
And that's how Hermatica basically generates its yield primarily.
So now instead of relying on centralized exchanges for generating their own yield,
they can use a platform like Valar and they can feel more,
secure about probably, you know, about their whole trading strategy.
Awesome. Yeah, let's bring in David from Swike. Yeah, man, how's it going? What's the latest and
greatest? And I'm curious, so you rebranded quite recently from restake to Swike. You know,
what was what's the thinking there? And yeah, what do we have to look forward to you guys?
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely.
And I was very interested in what you guys were saying.
And if I can just add to that, you know, I hope that in the near future we're going to be seeing a lot of...
options, activity on stocks perhaps,
to the same tone that Derribut is doing, right?
Obviously, we're not going to be able to match the liquidity
that there is on Derbett,
but I think there is a space and a need for something on chain
that resembles Deribut.
And I use that a lot myself to buy calls mainly,
and most recently to sell some cover calls.
And but, you know, and it's one of those reasons why I think putting stuff on chain makes a lot sense to provide transparency and, you know, avoid any...
any potential counterparty risk let's put it that way um in terms of the rebranding they just
asked me about we it's been in the works for quite some time in all honesty and we've been sharing
updates for for you know since since i joined the stick which is in in april last year we've been
sharing you know a monthly update and
In the last six months, we've been using bars that we're going to completion next to the rebranding and it's finally there, which is very exciting to see.
We employed the best in the business to make sure that we were conveying the message that we are trying to convey,
which is that restake is an evolving business.
So we were called restake way before eigenlayer was a thing or any other restaking protocol that has come online in the last few months.
But when we talk to people, they straight up think that we are behind eigenlayer or that we are doing that our core business is restaking, which is not.
So we were thinking, well, maybe it's time to refresh our branding.
And since we are at it, you know, let's do something big.
And that's what we decided to do over the last few months.
And also, you know, if you look at it, our logo, it gives you an idea of a group.
And that's what we are trying to become, or what we have become, to be honest, which is a holding
of high quality businesses.
And that's why most recently we acquired another validator and we've got our eyes on much
bigger MNA opportunities now in the market.
I'm really hoping to share something by the end of next month.
Let's see.
Let's see how that goes.
But yeah, so yeah, that's the reason why we rebranded.
We're very happy with it.
I understand this like is a new word.
And therefore, it's very hard to remember when you speak to people.
Risk take is much more user-friendly.
But, you know, sometimes you just got to take some risk.
And that's what we did.
Amazing. And is that is that also going to create new business lines for you guys or are you still sort of going to be still focused on what you were what you were focused on?
Oh, thank you for that actually. So
Our core business is still going to be in the validation space.
So as we're saying before, we're validating over 40 networks.
You know, we've got hundreds of millions in AED, which in this bear market is very good, right?
Just like for stacking now, what's really important here is the units of assets that you're staking and not necessarily the price because the price fluctuates quite a bit.
you know we've seen fluctuating like 30% in a day right so whenever we speak about
tvl and etc you know i've got to check coin gecko you know to see what they're trading at
but you know what's very important and you know to the same tone as stacking now it's really the
the number of tokens that have been put to use and locked.
Right.
You're reaching ultram eyes after all time highs.
And that basically means that there is a lot of effort behind the scenes.
And that's the same goes for us.
We've also been reaching new all time eyes in terms of tokens.
But also we are expanding our horizons to be a little bit more ends on.
So we've already built stuff in the past for SWI specifically.
So we've built open source tooling for other validators to join the SWI ecosystem.
And now we've got new engineers on board that are helping us build some new infrastructure
for other protocols, which I'd be happy to share more about in the coming weeks.
So that's one.
And then we're going to be focusing on research.
and we're going to be focusing on ventures, you know, as the market gets a little bit better.
Got it. Well, exciting to see that.
Excited to see that. Maybe there's some, uh, going to be some good opportunities to, um,
to build something on on stacks. But, um, yeah, I mean, speaking of which I think, uh,
maybe Haddan has something for you with the, the decentralized AMM, which needs like,
concentrated liquidity configures, but, uh, I'll leave that, I'll leave that to you. But, uh,
I mean, that's true, right, Haddan, like, that's, there is like a very clear opportunity to build on top of, uh,
the DMM.
Absolutely.
So yeah, let's definitely, you know, connect off chat and, you know, absolutely collaborate.
That'd be great to do.
So I'll give just a bit of a closing spiel because after this I do have to hop back on to a boat.
But I would say, yeah, in the next day or two, we're going to publish our monthly newsletters.
There's a lot of exciting headlines.
One is that over the past month we've crossed 2.6 billion in total transaction volume.
which is quite respectable.
The others, again, are AMM decks with concentrated liquidity,
which will be great for multiple protocols.
Even as we mentioned with Zest,
it can increase the amount of a USD that can be borrowed,
since there will be a greater capacity for there to be liquidations
around certain price points.
Concentrated liquidity also provides leverage by other means,
and that if you're an LP focusing your liquidity around that 1% trench,
you know, it's relatively high risk,
but if you've ever used platforms like, say, Meteora,
within that band, sometimes you have APRs and the triple digits.
as an opportunity as well.
Another item we've got on our 2025 roadmap is Alex AI,
which will essentially be using like AI powered smart contracts to reduce friction in defy.
So, you know, like not only is it like a chatbot interface where you can ask how to stake,
how to be a liquidity provider, what does that involve.
but you can just give commands like swap 1,000 USDT into BTC and it'll walk you through all the steps.
And so that's one way of onboarding a greater mass of users is just by abstracting away as much of that complexity as possible.
And we see all these pieces coming together.
Like for example, we're working with Joltz, which is a taproot asset wallet.
It could be that as soon as in the month or two, Tether launches USDT natively on Bitcoin as a taproot asset.
Taproot assets, they're not ruins.
They're not ordinals.
They're their own L1 asset class made specifically to be used with the Lightning Network.
But they can be used just like any other Bitcoin L1 transaction.
So by integrating those, we can essentially get to the point where a Bitcoin user from a Bitcoin wallet can come to the Alex Decks, do these swaps between Bitcoin and USDT.
And by using cross-chain hooks, we can compress that confirmation time into as little as one Bitcoin block.
And so, you know, these are some of the bullish developments that we're working very hard on and look forward to providing steady updates as Q2 progresses.
But yeah, I think as a whole, you know, good to see the upturn in the market.
I do think there'll be, you know, a change in sentiment.
You know, as Alex OGs, we started building in 2021.
We've been through a deep bear market before.
So this isn't anything new for us.
We aren't shaken.
We know that the cream will rise to the top and that the best tech will win.
And that building on Bitcoin finalized by Bitcoin hash power is without a doubt the best long-term move.
to be. And so yeah, very excited, you know, to share the spaces with all of you today and everything that you guys are building.
Do give a follow for the Alex account and those updates. And look forward to joining you all next week. Again,
always a pleasure to talk. Take care, guys.
Yeah, love to hear that. Love to hear that and see you soon. See you next week. So good, good luck and make sure to reach out to Davidei. But or David, we'll be sure to reach out.
All right. Thanks. See you guys. All right. Yeah, yeah, David, check your DM soon. We'll be in touch. All right, guys, take care.
The building never stops. The building never stops. That's what we love to see here in Stacks.
Yeah, I do just want to make a quick shout out.
So if you go to our Stacking Down Twitter account,
you'll see we have a post.
It's actually pinned up right here.
Stacking Down partnership with Lunar Crush, the data platform.
And Nakamoto 1, we're launching a $500 meme coin giveaway
We opened this registration for this giveaway last week, and today is actually the last day to register for a chance.
So, you know, if you have one to two minutes to register, you'll get a chance to win some fun stacks meme coins.
Basically, the droid meme coin that was launched by Lunar Crush and Nakamoto 1.
So, you know, go to stacking down Twitter account.
You'll see the instructions there to sign up to be eligible to win.
I just had a question real quick about that contest.
So if I hold $100 in STSTX or STS-BTC and have it locked up on Zest,
you know, are, are, am I still eligible, Leo?
I'm sorry, you could that?
So if I, if I have my STSDX locked up in Zest, am I still eligible or does it need to be inside of my wallet?
Oh yeah, absolutely. I should have mentioned that in order to be eligible, you need to hold at least $100 worth of one of our LSTs.
So that's either STSTX or STSTX BTC. But yeah, you know, if you're deploying it in stacks defy in any way, whether letting it on Zest, maybe just pausing it into a Dex AMM, we can track all that on chain. So just make sure that you're holding at least $100 of the LST, but you're 100% eligible.
Right on, right on, man.
Yeah, it's been exciting to see all the building going on,
especially like with the Biddle battle going on this week
and then seeing the winners and, you know,
seeing Rosarwood with Blaze as well.
And congrats to all the winners.
It's been a fun week.
You know, we've got a lot to look forward to,
especially with like, like,
They're teasing perplex this week, along with the SBTC cap being lifted and withdrawals being enabled.
We've got a lot of bullish catalyst going on.
I'm very bullish right now.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
No, great.
Any I see Jack is also up here.
Anything you want to say, Jack?
Yeah, good morning.
How's everybody doing today?
I'm here on behalf of old hermetica.
You know, we're really excited to see where the ecosystem's at today.
You know, as it's been alluded to in this space already, you know, we've just been super early to the Bitcoin D5 meta for years now.
And, you know, if you just zoom out and look at the progress that's been made over those years, and then especially within this last, you know, six months especially, we're on the next level.
So, I mean, we're sitting here talking about Bitcoin Defi, which really is the cornerstone.
It's the engine that's going to power a decentralized economy built on Bitcoin.
That's what we're really discussing here.
And so that's, you know, that's why it's so exciting to see Hermitica out here with
a stable coin that is fully collateralized by bitcoin and you know we talk about stable coins a lot
we're going to be talking about stable coins much more that's going to be something that is
you know as as mainstream adoption gets closer we're going to we're going to see more and more
investment into stable coins
you know, more infrastructure and regulations around stable coins.
And so you have hermetica here already ahead of the curve, because at the end of the day,
would you rather have a stable coin that is still ultimately fiat at the end of the day?
Or would you rather have a stable coin that is fully Bitcoin?
And so that's really what's exciting about what we have going on here today is that we are in the Bitcoin ecosystem.
We can drive the Bitcoin economy and we can do it with all the tools that are already here developed and the tools that are coming.
We're so far ahead of the curve.
It's not funny.
And...
The only reason that someone couldn't be bullish right now is just the side effect of having been so early for so long now.
It's not easy being early, guys.
If it was, everybody would do it.
Facts.
Like, I love to see all the building going on.
And, you know, just to see how far stacks has come, you know, within the short time frame that I've been here within the last two, three years.
There's, there's been so many leaps and bounds made.
It's crazy.
Especially, you know, seeing today that like, you know, SDSDX, BTC, uh, surpassing the $18 million TVL, that's, that's some more bullish.
Like, you know, everything's got me like feeling very hype right now.
Uh, so it's kind of, it's kind of hard for me.
Like, I'm trying to keep myself, like, keep my composure and like, try not to go bullposting a thousand things at once.
like yeah like i'm i'm really excited jack you know you made a lot of a lot of good points there
you know we are early to to b tc phi here and uh there's so many awesome ways to earn so um
what's what's not to love man like i'm i'm having fun yeah that's right and jack you joined hermetica
that's that's news to me
Yeah, yeah, man, it's really cool. I've been a big fan of her medica since I realized what they were building last summer.
And so I've I've had a chance to, you know, work with America in the past.
You know, we in the Roo community, we have a, you know, Bitcoin Rune called Runez, R-O-O-N-S.
And we actually...
When we were taking that to market, we paired that with USDA.
We're the only run with a USDA pair.
And that, you know, because the idea was just so cool to me.
The concept of being able to, you know, participate in stables without having to lose a position in Bitcoin.
And then when you get down to it and you can stake and earn yield on a stable just based on,
You know, the actual mechanics of like, like, uh, Mythel said, you know, the arbitrage on, on, you know, have, having, get in a short position paid essentially.
So it's a very cool product, and I'm super privileged to be a part of this and very thrilled.
You know, Hermetica is the biggest stable coin on stacks right now, and I'm extraordinarily pumped for where it's going.
Same here.
Same here.
Some big things coming.
Yeah.
But...
Maybe on that note, unless someone has something, something else to share, we should maybe slowly round up, but just, you know, giving the window here for if anyone wants to, wants to share something very pressing.
But seeing as I don't see any unmutes right now, maybe we should do a quick, you know, part.
passing around the horn for final CTAs or things to do.
Davy, do you want to start?
And then we can just go Kevin Lee or Jack and go like that.
Yeah, look, nothing more to add than, you know, last time I said that we were going to go to the moon and there was going to be a banana zone or something like that.
I still believe that, to be honest.
And I think the next couple of months are going to be insane.
Liquidity is coming back online.
If you don't know what I mean by that, you can just check my profile and see.
the projections and how Bitcoin is moving compared to global M2.
A lot of people talk about that, so I talk sharing that thing daily.
And the signs are very clear, to be honest.
So I wouldn't be surprised if we reached 100K by the end of next one.
So that's my very bullish and optimistic take.
And that's also I want to end it here for me.
Buy Bitcoin, guys, buy Bitcoin.
Yeah, and stocks is very correlated to Bitcoin as well, right?
Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Amazing.
Yeah, I mean, I'll just go next, but great to be here as always.
I want to echo some of the sentiments that DeVie just mentioned, you know, seems like we're getting some confidence returning to the market.
Now is the time to really double down and press on your winners or the projects that you think are here to stay.
And I think one barometer of that is like, who are you seeing continuing to ship, continuing to build,
continuing to put new products out there, you know, being receptive and responsive to community members and users.
And I think, you know, stacks is right there.
You know, stacks, we're doing all the right things.
And when bullish sentiment kind of comes back into the market, I think we're just very well positioned to take advantage of that.
And last call to action, if you want to earn 8 to 10% yield on your stacks, go to stacking dow.com.
You can mint STSTX to earn stacks rewards or you can mint STXBTC to earn SBTC rewards.
And we also have our native stacking pool as well if you want just straight Bitcoin L1 rewards.
But as always, great to be here and see you next week.
Yeah, I think the important thing to remember here is nobody really likes spending their Bitcoin, right?
Like it always hurts when you have to when you have to spend your Bitcoin on something.
And yet here we are in a situation where everyone's going to want to use Bitcoin and buy Bitcoin.
And this is where you find the Y for stacks in so many ways.
And this is why Defi on Bitcoin is inevitable.
Because this is the means by which people will be able to use Bitcoin, not necessarily have to spend it, and be able to capitalize on the fact that everyone is going to want Bitcoin.
So you're early, guys.
The fund hasn't started yet.
Bottoms in.
Let's get kicking.
Yeah, that's right, Kevin.
Any in the last words?
Yeah, yeah.
You know, we're building the change here.
You know, we're really, really getting in there.
And I second what Jack has said, you know, we're very early.
You know, I am now trying to grow the community and the stacking down in both Zess and stacking down discords and
spinning up some fun initiatives for the community.
So definitely jump into the stacking Dow and Zest discords and come kick it with the community.
Get integrated with the really awesome passionate hardworking community.
And let's have some fun while we earn and bring Bitcoin to the masses.
A more programmable Bitcoin is important.
But let's remember to have some fun while we're doing it, guys.
I hope everybody has a very, very blessed rest of their week.
Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah, make sure to give Zest protocol follow as well as stacking now, of course, and to stay up to date on all the latest on Stax Defi. We've got some big things coming in the in the next few weeks. And any of if you have some spare SVTC, make sure to put it on Zest protocol. The yield in SBTC that Stax offers is now roughly 2.6, 2.7%. But on Zest, you get another full percent on top. So you're
you're getting like a 35% yield boost almost so um you know make sure to uh to make make the most of that
and um and yeah then um actual next week 10 a m eastern time uh for uh for another stack sifa show
where we hear more we've already have perps we probably have many more exciting things to uh
to talk about so um yeah the train doesn't stop keep checking in and then uh see you guys 10 a
Tuesday next week. All right. Appreciate it, guys. Thank you. Cheers, guys. Bye. Bye.
Host
stacks.btc
from
Stacks Staking
