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Tuesday | TezDay
Recorded: Aug. 12, 2025 Duration: 1:07:21Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent discussion, key figures from the Tezos ecosystem highlighted significant developments, including the launch of Etherlink as a layer two solution, the introduction of new yield opportunities through Apple Farm, and strategic partnerships aimed at enhancing the DeFi landscape. With a focus on community engagement and innovative features, the Tezos network is poised for continued growth and adoption.
Full Transcription
Welcome back to Tuesday Tez Day, the weekly space where we dig into what's happening across Tezos and talk directly with the people making it happen.
I'm Blanks here with my co-host Kryptonio and today we're joined by David Ryan from Trilitech.
He's been at the center of Etherlink's DeFi push from the early Apple Farm campaigns to
the new wave of dApps building momentum.
Before we get to David, let's run through some headlines.
The Q2 art recap is now up at news.tezoscomments.org.
And once again, there was way too much happening to fit into one segment.
April kicked things off with bold experiments.
The zero-contract contest invited artists to build fully on-chain.
River X Art opened a provocative show on masculinity in Berlin,
and Florence saw a gallery show called Libertà blend digital art with renaissance energy.
May kept the momentum going.
Object for object returned with 31,000 editions collected in just a few days.
Skirpy launched a contest called Beyond Imaginarium,
and collage artists got their own spotlight with Collagists Day.
Meanwhile, TTC turned three and this is a raid
kept the community energy high with surprise mints and support waves then june hit and the
tezos art scene went physical nfc lisbon featured large-scale digital activations, Art Basel saw big secondary sales, and museum-focused panels.
And Tezcon 2025 brought it all home with immersive installations, music, and 74 curated visual pieces in Seattle.
If that wasn't enough, NYC got a mobile pop-up show from Object and Unfold,
and Zancan launched Treeline at Bitforms Gallery in New York.
All in all, Q2 showed off just how wide the Tezos Creative Network really is. Underground,
institutional, global, grassroots, all of it happening at once. You can catch the full recap now on news.tesoscommons.org the july month at a glance
is out now at news.tesoscommons.org and this one is packed we've kicked it off with tesdev 2025
in can a full day of panels product reveals and live demos it was less what's coming up next and more look what's already here. We've got our first look
at Reaper Actual, a persistent FPS led by John Smedley and built on Etherlink. It looked AAA
and people actually played it live on site. Etherlink kept the momentum going mid-month
with a major kernel upgrade as the first ever sequencer vote,
officially passing the baton to Optimistic Labs.
Meanwhile, Season 2 of Apple Farm launched with 3 million in DeFi rewards,
pulling in more dApps and rolling out a new vesting model to stretch rewards over time.
Over on the protocol side, Sol was injected, Tezos' 19th protocol upgrade. It includes native multi-sig accounts, aggregated attestations for lower overhead, and smoother staking withdrawals.
A few other quick hits.
XU308, the uranium-backed asset, is now listed on three major exchanges.
The uranium-backed asset is now listed on three major exchanges.
Lombard launched LBTC, bringing liquid-staked Bitcoin to Etherlink.
Arthur Breitman was in D.C. for the Genius Act signing, putting Tezos in the policy conversation.
And Anchor rolled out official Etherlink RPC access.
No full node needed.
The full recap is on
news.tezoscomments.org
and if you haven't checked it out yet
it's worth the scroll.
Keeping up with Tezos
shouldn't feel like a full-time job
and that's where the baking sheet
comes in. A weekly recap
of the biggest updates, standout
projects, and community highlights.
No noise, no filter, just what matters.
You can grab it at bakingsheet.tezoscommons.org.
And don't forget the Tezos Community Rewards Program.
It's how we shine a light on people doing the real work behind the scenes. If you see someone building, helping out, or making the space better,
nominate them at tezoscommons.org slash rewards. Tag their post with hashtag Tezos CRP, or
go ahead and just list off the category you think these people are and post it up there.
We'll be looking. All right, well, let's get into it. For anyone new
here, Etherlink is a layer two built on Tezos. It brings EVM compatibility and faster, lower cost
transactions while still settling to the Tezos main net. David, thanks for joining us. I think
a good place to start is with the big picture of Etherlink's DeFi scene right now, and then we can dig into Apple Farm and some of the new projects you've been watching.
How are you doing, my man?
I'm doing quite good. I'm doing quite good. What a lovely intro, Blanks. You have an incredibly lovely voice.
Oh, well, thank you. You too, sir. I like the sound of your voice as well thank you you too sir i like the sound of your voice as well thank you
i was thinking i was sitting here listening and i was like um i don't know if you guys follow any
soccer as you guys would call it there's this football coach called jerkin club and one time
he was sitting in a press conference and someone asked him a question and he didn't answer it
because the guy's voice was super super erotic in his
words i'm not saying your voice is erotic i'm just saying it reminds me of this yeah you're smiling
oh i appreciate it no i i take that as a full-on compliment i know i thank you sir very much i
appreciate that all right well let's shift it off me and back onto you you've got defy growth in your
title which can mean a dozen different things depending on who you ask
how do you explain your role to someone outside of crypto oh gosh it's impossible i think i give up
98 percent of the time um i i i think i i actually don't think i can answer that question but what i
do i can answer what i do to you guys but to other people that are outside of crypto, it's really, really hard.
Basically, as you said, it means a whole lot of different things to a bunch of different people.
And that is true because it encompasses a bunch of different things within it.
And sometimes it's all at once, sometimes it's only one of them, and sometimes it's a few of them.
of them and sometimes it's a few of them. Overall, it stretches from everything from
product to marketing to strategy to more quantity stuff sometimes to data and then like classic
growth hacking stuff. So like looking at inflows from chains, which is something we're building
out. I can speak about a bit more about that later. And like having classic growth hacks
of what we could do using distribution channels
through different distributor networks
to acquire both new users and CVL
towards DeFi specifically,
but also towards ETHLINK overall.
I say ETHLINK overall just because it's a,
that's the main focus of ETH eflink right now i would say
not according to to like official stuff just according to me like that the main stuff happening
on eflink right now is just defy um with curve coming super and apple farm obviously so bringing
stuff to eflink overall to help grow what we already have and and make it even bigger
stuff to ETHLINK overall to help grow what we already have and make it even bigger.
Do you remember the first moment you thought, okay, ETHLINK's DeFi scene is starting to click?
Yeah, I mean, it was kind of a, it's a good question because I have to think, I think it was around the time when I knew we were getting, it was before
Apple Farm launched.
So in March, and if you like look at the TVL graph on like DeFi Llama back then, there
was basically no liquidity anywhere.
And the protocols that were there weren't really usable to the level they are now.
But it was before Apple Farm launched
when we had started working with Merkle.
So me, Rohan and a few other guys from DeFi team
and started working with Merkle to build out
what would become Apple Farm.
And during this time we're building it,
I'm seeing CK Sync, I'm seeing Arbitrum,
sorry, not Arbitrum, I'm seeing Unichain, I'm seeing a bunch of corn, like I'm seeing a bunch of these massive names that have like Twitter mindshare that are like pretty big in terms of like in mindshare and what people are talking about on overall Twitter outside of the Tesla's ecosystem, launching stuff that we are launching and we're like slightly ahead of them in it. So like the Apple farm being an example, now you have Katana, you have, I can't actually
say there's a very, very massive chain launching an incentive program, just like we are inspired by
us, according to the guy who made it in just a month from now, which is super, super cool. And
like being early with that and like seeing that i remember seeing
that unichain are doing the exact same thing and with like i think 30 times or like 10 times the
amount of rewards we did in season one um it really was like wow we're we're we're here in a
pretty good time we timed this pretty well um yeah i think that was the time so i'm yapping a lot it's
a bit oh no that's great that that you're capturing some good energy there.
Now, Apple Farm has been one of the biggest activity drivers on Etherlink.
Looking back, what was the smartest call and how it launched?
I honestly don't know if there was a super smart call.
I remember that, I think, again like the timing thing was pretty good so
like when it was launched was a pretty good time to actually launch it um the the reason for this
is that the market i don't know if you guys remember like the first of april i think there
was a massive dump like everything was red um all over crypto and because there was a tariff
force back then um and as soon as we saw this, we were like, how can we capitalize on this being a thing
right now that's happening in the overall market on Etherlink?
So with the design of Apple Farm being quite dynamic, allowing us to change around the
incentives every two weeks and more than that, but usually we keep it to two weeks, made
us look at this and we're like, okay are gonna definitely move into stables because they're worried that um their eth their bitcoin etc etc is going to go down more
there's unrest in the world so they want to hold stables so what we decided to do is that we were
like okay let's put the brake on other things and just push stables quite heavily so that meant
putting a lot of incentives on or like even introducing incentives on stables quite heavily. So that meant putting a lot of incentives on, or like even introducing incentives on
stables and doing it not passively, but quite aggressively immediately, which saw quite
a big TVL spike quite quickly in the beginning of April.
Now, incentive programs can lose steam.
What's the hardest part of keeping Apple Farm fresh without losing sight of why it exists?
It's a very good question. I think overall on incentive programs, I think it's something in Web3 that's necessary right now.
Do I think in 10 years that this will be a thing or even five? I don't think so.
Which might be
interesting because it's my job um so i'm making myself obsolete here um but i i i it's it's a hard
question to answer because incentive programs in one one way it's really good to attract a lot of
liquidity um so attracting liquidity and when getting liquidity you're also getting exposure
to new users which we've also seen with like data we've gathered from from from D-Bank when we analyze the wallets that come in and stuff, which is really good.
The downside of this is that when you get in bigger into the ecosystem, they're usually there to earn yield and then leave.
Right. So which is which is which happens.
So it's not that that doesn't happen
and it happens in any incentive program.
It's about how you can mitigate the percentage of,
like basically how can you increase the retention?
So minimize the people that leave
or the percentage of capital that leaves
and maximize the percentage of capital
that stays for a longer time, right?
So one of the biggest things like i think in even
in april i was i was like pretty upset that i didn't do this or that we didn't do this was
launching apple farm with the best thing we have already because i i i i spoke to a lot of different
people a lot of very big different people that have like liquidity LP networks of like up to $2 billion and like even hedge funds, et cetera, et cetera. And what they were saying was that these,
the problem with Apple Farm Season One, which wasn't a massive problem, but what could have
made it better is having the semi-liquid reward. So like there to attract more capital, just getting
an arbitrary point is a bit weird, right? So you see a chain like Etherlink and it has like 10 million
CVL back then and you have really attractive APR, but it's only 10 million
CVL. You don't really know about it.
All the protocols on it are really unknown.
They're native to Etherlink.
It's not like you're on Uniswap or Aave.
So it's a high barrier of entry.
But then on top of that, you're getting a point
instead of liquid rewards,
which makes the cost of capital just higher.
So I wish we would have done the vesting thing a lot earlier.
And I wish we would have done that quicker
because I think that is also really good for retention.
Because if you're...
Sorry, I'm yapping a lot,
but I'll be done in a little bit.
Oh, no, this is designed to keep you going.
Please keep going.
OK, great.
So the thing that happens now that when you farm Apple Farm in comparison to season one is that now throughout your farming and throughout the season, you're exposed to the price of tests.
the season you're exposed to the price of tests um in season one you really weren't that exposed
to price of tests because all of the the rewards were pegged to dollar so like one apple was a
tenth of a cent right and that was true up until like the last week of apple farm or last two weeks
of apple farm when the twap uh when we started doing the twap so like a time-weighted average
price of what how much this three million USD is in TES, right?
So your exposure for TES is only really short.
It's only two weeks and it's also a time weighted average.
So you should be fine, right?
You can't have that much of a loss.
You can't have that much of a gain.
This is quite attractive to people.
Although it was a low on trust in the beginning, I think.
But now in season two, when you farm,
you're exposed to tests and you're exposed to tests
for quite a long time
because all of your awards are paid in tests.
Apple XTC is a one-to-one conversion with XTC.
So what happens is that when you farm,
you let's say you earn $10 of tests.
You can immediately choose to, once you claim those, you can immediately choose to redeem tests against your Apple tests, but you can only do 20% on the first day.
And then the rest of the 80% vests linearly over six months.
So your exposure test for at least six months
if you want the full reward ratio.
And if you don't want the full reward ratio,
you have to slash your own rewards.
Because if you claim early, the rest of rewards get slacked.
Which is a really good mechanism,
both because it gives users the option
to take out earnings early if they would want to do that.
But also, if you farm Apple Farm, you have to have some belief, well, and this might sound
very drastic, but I think this psychology is true overall. You have to have some sort of belief that
the price of tests won't go to zero in six months, right?
Because you have a six month vesting period.
And ideally, what you would want to do is that you would want to wait out the entire vesting period to get the maximum amount of rewards.
And you can probably do some like delta hedging on this, but it gets quite tricky to do that since there are so many vesting schedules you have to keep track of.
So, yeah.
I have completely lost what your question was. Oh, no.
You got it, too.
What's keeping it fresh?
What changes you've gotten into?
What you wish had happened?
You were right on track with the question.
You feel like you're rambling, probably,
because these questions have been, like,
I don't know, they're kind of tough on you.
I'm sorry.
I think I feel like it's like 32 degrees Celsius in my my oh are you are you are you burning up i'm sorry brother
take a deep breath well you we'll take a little break we'll we'll say hey welcome thank you for
joining uh tezos tuesday i'm here with david from etherlink this has been a great conversation so
far i just want to say well if it's okay with you, can we open up questions here around the last 15 minutes? We'll just go for an hour. Is that okay?
Yeah, I'm fine. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. I mean, the problem is that I have
a fucking beefy computer that is probably 70
degrees Celsius warm. I think my graphics card is around that right now, so it's like
I'm not helping myself by sitting here all day. You haven't spent like 12,000
on a mineral bath yet or anything like that?
No, I wish. A bath sounds lovely.
Okay, so on the fresh side.
Sorry.
Hey, what's up, David? How are you doing?
Sorry I didn't say hi earlier because my signal was weird,
but I had to jump in here with another question on what you were saying.
It's about Apple Farm. Like you mentioned, in Season 1 with Apple Farm, Etherlink was still
a little bit unknown in the AVM world, right? Now for Season 2, do you expect it to be easier now
that we have more jobs? Do you expect it to be easier to attract more users, more liquidity as well?
I also see that you are doing guides and stuff like that for Apple Farm to make it easier, but
generally, are there any other factors that you think will make it easier for Season 2?
Yeah, definitely. So there's a few things where I... Can you guys hear me? I think so. Yeah, definitely. So there's a few things where I, oh, you guys hear me? I think so. Yeah, okay.
There's a few things that, essentially, why I think about this is just lowering the cost of
capital, because that includes the perception bit. So the perception of an ecosystem, the better it
is, the lower the cost of capital. So if the perception is that this is an ecosystem with
S-tier protocols, with good security mechanisms, good governance, which we have, etc., etc., then the cost of capital will be lower overall.
And on the perception side, what really helps is having S tier protocols, as I mentioned.
So what we have now live and incentivize is Curve, which is the newest bit of them all.
We obviously have numerous new Midas tokens.
So we have MMEV, Mbasis MT bill.
They were there in season one.
But we also have the Univ3 fork.
So Uniswap DAO have actually deployed Uniswap with the OCU frontend.
So all of these things definitely, definitely do help.
So an example of this is when I speak to,
there's a bunch of liquidity groups I speak to
or like private LPs, even like private slash public
because they do like weird deals.
Anyway, these people, I spoke to them
in the beginning of season one or even before season one
and I was explaining my ecosystem
and they were quite hesitant about it back then
because they didn't really know what it was.
They didn't know what Superland was. They didn't know what Iguana Dex was. And they were like, about it back then because they didn't really know what it was they didn't know what superland was they didn't know what iguana decks was and they were like oh why
is this is this safe etc etc um when i speak to them now it's a completely different vibe it's
it's it's crazy like saying we have curves saying gearbox is coming saying uni down have deployed um saying we have jumper uh we have lombard like having all of
these things like help tremendous amounts on the perception side of them right um and and it's hard
like you might think the job is done once those protocols are just deployed but the the real work
is in getting people to actually know that the protocols are there in the first place. So if you see them there, you're like, cool,
but what does that mean?
The work has to be done to actually distribute
the knowledge of these things being live.
So you see a lot of projects before the public does.
You've dropped a bunch of names.
Which one really made you think this could really shift things up for Etherlink DeFi?
I think overall, I'm very, very interested in Curve and also STXTC, like the Stacey team.
So having liquid stake tests on Etherlink is really, really good.
I think that's a total game changer.
A lot of people I've spoken to outside of the Tesla ecosystem
that run these incentive and LP groups,
they also think STXTC or liquid staking is really, really good.
And that we have that on Etherlink now, it's incredible, I think.
Then we also have some more interesting stuff coming.
I know it was already announced that Gearbox is coming.
And I'll give a piece of information.
I hope I don't get any mad colleagues,
but that's going to be incentivized pretty soon,
which is the Gearbox integration.
We're going to have a vault live, which will be really, really good.
So we will be able to have a used DC vault live on Etherink,
which is really, really nice.
I really have wanted vaults for a very long time
because I just think vault UX is so much better
than UX of a classic lending market.
So when I do my own DeFi on other chains, et cetera,
I mainly use vaults.
Like I use a lot of Morpho, I use Gearbox on chains.
I even use Euler as well,
because it's just a very easy way to keep my money
and earn some yield on it, right?
The fact that we're getting vaults now is really, really good.
The first one will come, which will be a stable vault, which the first one will come next epoch.
So in a week from now ish, it'll be incentivized, which will be really, really good.
And we should see some, it'll be interesting to see what the APR will be around there.
So I'm the main thing I'm going to look at is what the actual yield people are willing to take incentive yield in a vault compared to like a normal lending market.
Because in a lending market, what you can do is you can technically always somehow loop, right?
You can do quite sophisticated looping strategies and earn more on that, which pushes down the overall yield.
I don't like that. I don't want that.
That's also another big reason for vaults being very bullish in my eyes, but also the overall yield. I don't like that. I don't want that. That's also another big reason for vaults being very bullish in my eyes,
but also the overall UX.
I think Curve as well, as I mentioned, is really, really nice
because of the pools that are there, just very cheap to trade
and STXTC on Curve as well.
If you had to give Etherlink's DeFi stack
an underrated feature award, what would win and why?
An underrated feature award. Wow.
It's a very good question.
I think we have some stuff coming up that we are looking into doing that is very unique in DeFi sense.
I would say Uranium here, but that is like a very RWA focused.
And I really like Uranium personally.
I think it's a great project.
And I think it's really, really cool.
And all the plans they have, like the expansion.
I think one thing I tweeted about this last week,
I think that I am very excited about is bringing Uranium to DeFi.
So being able to use Uranium as collateral in lending markets, et cetera.
That is super, super cool to me.
Instead of just passively holding uranium,
you'll be able to just do stuff with it as well.
But then there's some interesting stuff with your curve LP positions.
We can also do, which I'm very excited about.
For example, using your curveve LP position as collateral.
There is something that's super, super cool to me.
I think that's something we should keep looking into a bit harder
and see if it's feasible and worth doing.
I know there was a proposal on Aave governance
about using Curve LP as collateral.
And eventually they were like, oh, this is too difficult.
But I think it's a really, really cool use case
and a really, really cool thing we could do that differentiated us further.
I'm going to shift it a little bit here just, you know,
because I think we should touch on this and maybe I apologize.
But some people in the tezos community see etherlink
as competition for the l1 or they don't fully understand where it fits how do you explain
etherlink's role in the bigger tezos picture to someone who's skeptical
yeah um it's it's a it's an interesting one because obviously from my from my side every
single day i don't only work with folks
that are doing stuff on Ethelink.
I'm also working with people that are doing stuff
on L1 every day.
So I'm still tapped into everything L1.
Although my day-to-day work is way more focused
on Ethelink at the moment.
But if you look down the road, what will happen
in however long the timeline now is, is Tesla's X, right?
We're all combined into one unified love bomb or whatever you want to call us.
And having this is literally really, really good, right?
Like having that down the road means that our aim here is to build up this ecosystem
as much as possible towards teslos x and then
keeping that and retaining that in teslos x so that when teslos x comes around there's already
a massive defy ecosystem existing on the on the l2 that will like be very seamless towards the
towards the overall teslax plan so i think it's it's easy to understand i understand why that is
a thing that people are worried about or that people think um i think obviously having stuff
like a three million dollar incentive program wow is is very telling of that and like i know
there's artists that wish that that would be spent towards art etc etc but i think separating the two is really healthy to do
um i think they're two completely different things i think both have like a massive massive use case
in in the same ecosystem and they can be separate right but they are in the same ecosystem at the
end of the day and both are really really needed and and also just sort of give a quick comparison
to i know that i mentioned mentioned a very big chain is
launching an incentive program at the end of this month, early next month, that's going
to be way bigger than ours. It's like 10 times the size. So in comparison, we're giving away
quite little compared to other incentive programs for chains of this size. So like I'm speaking, including Tesla's here, um, in the ecosystem.
Um, and I, and I understand the thing and I understand it might be hard to get
into because ether link is very different from L one right now in terms of like
what happens on it.
Like if you, I think if you look, I might be wrong here and I'm, I don't
want to speak for the, for the crowd over there, but.
I think if you look at ether link from an L1 perspective and what you like doing in L1 is buying art.
I was going to say FX hash, but those guys went in another direction.
You go on object and you collect art, et cetera, et cetera.
And you're in that sort of community, which I've been a part of, right?
I've spoken to a lot of these people.
I would classify myself as friends with a lot of these people.
You would look at Etherink as being like, wow,
what is this weird thing that is getting all this attention?
Because at the end of the day, DeFi UX is still very bad
and it's still quite complicated to understand what's going on.
And I'm not saying people don't understand it.
What I'm saying is that overall, if you would have told me two years ago what is going on on Iflink right now, I'd be very confused.
I'd be like, what is an apple farm?
What the fuck is an apple?
You know what I mean?
And it's hard to sort of bridge the two in a very good way while still staying on the goal of like, we want to get new users.
We want to get new DeFi. And then how do we please the current community as well on the goal of like, we want to get new users, we want to get new DeFi.
And then how do we please the current community as well
on the L1 side?
Liquidity is the lifeblood of DeFi,
but attracting it isn't just about high APR.
What's the lever most people overlook when building here?
I think it's a bit weird because the reason you would traditionally put liquidity somewhere
is because you would want to facilitate trading and you would want to earn on those trading
fees, right?
So I'm a very big proponent of being app first, which might be a bit different to what other people think.
I don't actually think so.
It might not be a hot take at all,
but I'm very app first and app focused.
Like you can see this with like Hyperliquid, for example.
So like Hyperliquid has its own blockchain,
but it's also just like a protocol that is really good
and has a really good use case.
And that's the reason it became big.
So I'm like building out an app layer that and then that first and the liquidity second is quite important nowadays.
Like having deep liquidity is obviously very important, but that can be solved.
Like people use market makers, et cetera, et cetera.
It's a bit of a hard one because you want to facilitate trading,
but that trading will only take place if the underlying ecosystem has things
that would be traded.
So for example, if there was a massive NFT collection or some massive game on
Etherlink that has a ton of volume, a bunch of people need to swap stuff back
and forth, then you need that deep liquidity.
But if that's not there, you have deep liquidity and nothing else.
It's not pointless, but it's not as valuable.
It seems like anything that doesn't have a purpose ends up being pointless, ultimately.
Sadly.
So what's something about building on Etherlink that consistently surprises new teams, good or bad?
Do you mean
other teams that I speak to?
Yeah, as they're coming over, you're meeting these people.
Like you said, at the beginning it was like,
okay, you've got some in-house shops,
but we don't really... Now we have
some other established names that are like,
this is legit, we're here, you should come.
I mean, are you...
Is there anything that surprises them as they come over?
Is it a lot smoother than they would...
I don't know. I'm trying to envision what it's like
for these people to come over.
It depends because most of the protocols
that we've gone over recently are all EVM-based anyway.
So I know before, and this is months and months back but like they would
have surprises that were like etherlink might be a bit quirky compared to like a like an ethereum
native native chain but now now it's not like that much anymore um i it's there's no real like
surprises that they get faced with i think one interesting like thing
quite related to this is that um like apple farm season one obviously attracted a bunch of tvl and
the thing you see on like the metrics that is posted everywhere etc etc but i think one of
the biggest wins if not the biggest win with apple farm is all of the protocols that decided to
Apple Farm is all of the protocols that decided to integrate because of it.
I think the Ethernet ecosystem would look incredibly different in terms of protocols and integrations without Apple Farm.
Jumper, I started the conversation with them back in December last year because they knew we were building Apple Farm.
Curve was also interested in being included.
Oh, and obviously this is because these guys want volume,
liquidity, et cetera.
But they looked at an ecosystem before
without any incentives that was like,
okay, wait, there's neither volume or liquidity here.
Why would we deploy?
But now that we've sort of bootstrapped that,
we've been able to get all of that attention.
So it's sort of us coming back to them
and re-eagnizing conversations that we had before
where they might have not wanted to prioritize these things.
The surprise to them now is that,
wow, this ecosystem is quite big
and maybe we should have integrated earlier.
Okay, so here's sort of a spicy one.
If Apple Farm disappeared tomorrow,
what's the first thing you'd want to spin up
to keep momentum going?
Wow.
That's a very hard question to answer.
And I mean, it's fair.
If you don't have anything right off the top of your head,
you don't want to give away some spice,
that's fair too.
Sorry, I have a couple of these for you.
No, no, no. I'm enjoying it. I'm sitting over here smiling.
I'm trying to think. What would you do?
Obviously, A, I don't think that would be good.
Let's just be transparent here.
transparent here that wouldn't be a good thing if it just ended tomorrow randomly both from a
That wouldn't be a good thing if it just ended tomorrow randomly.
perception perspective but also for the protocols that we have told them we're getting incentives
on no one would be happy essentially but what i would do is probably as fast as possible
i think i would accept the fact that liquidity and tvL would probably be lost. Because really, again, I don't think the app layer on Etherink
is as good as it can be yet.
And I think that needs to happen while Apple works live.
I mean, you said we're attracting the names to start building.
Is that they instantly have fortresses and build foundations here
immediately when they came over?
Yeah, I mean, you're right.
I think we've attracted some names that are still interesting.
There's still good things you can do anything.
I mean, I think I'm downplaying it a bit.
I'm quite like a perfectionist when it comes to these things.
If it isn't the best, I'm not really super, super excited i guess um but there's still like a bunch
of like exciting things on the on the appler side like the midas stuff lombard now um uranium etc
um and i think with like being able to do curve lp uh doing those things would still be interesting
so there's still a bunch of interesting things you could do on Etherlink. And I think now what I would do is that I would make sure that there's immediately or as quickly as possible,
try to pull the quickest levers to get the app layer going on a bigger scale,
to really utilize all of the underlying DeFi infrastructure that we have.
Whether that is expanding the uranium side of things
into more things.
I don't want to, I can't spill too much here or doing that somewhere else.
I think that it's key to involve community here and like building apps that really utilize
the community as well, but also obviously underlying the DeFi liquidity side.
So obviously underlying the DeFi liquidity side.
What's a DeFi trend right now and anywhere, not just here, that you think we'll look back on and laugh about?
Okay, I don't know if this might be a hot take.
I remember thinking this in Denver, and eve denver in february um but i think the idea that we're all now very
very into blockchains as a thing um or like as a specific thing and it's like oh i am a blah user
i'm a this user blah blah um at the end of the day i think that's going to go away um in like 10
years maybe i aren't not fully in 10 years but i think that's going to go away um in like 10 years maybe i aren't not fully
in 10 years but i think that's going to be way more obsolete as more retail comes in i don't think
really it should matter what chain you're on i think eventually one two three chains will win
and there won't be this um need for all of these like a ton of chains like the reason i'm saying
this as well is not because like there's um not because like oh we don't need ethereum bitcoin or like a bunch of these other chains
what i'm saying is that i know we all will say we're exhausted about all of the new layer 2s
launching in like 2024 and 2023 and 2024 and 25. i think there's been like a stupid amount of
blockchains being launched and I think
it's also like stupid to launch this many blockchains. I genuinely don't see the need for
so many of them, they're not that differentiated. It's just like oh here's another VC backed
blockchain, Baratrain for example, why is that here? I think our infestuation with
blockchain specific things will eventually fistle out.
And I think I'll sort of look back at it and laugh myself,
thinking about all the Baruchain things that were happening on Twitter, etc.
So basically, Tezos will win.
Yes, exactly.
I love it.
All right, so everyone has a weird first exposure to crypto.
What was yours and how did it lead to working on Etherlink?
Yeah, I think, oh god, I don't remember my first exposure per se.
I grew up behind a computer, so I had two older brothers.
They're 9 and 12 years older than me. So I was a lot younger than them.
So I grew up sitting beside them, watching them play video games.
Eventually they got girlfriends.
So I got to steal their computers, which meant that I was exposed to everything internet very early on in my life.
So I saw crypto quite early and I was looking into it, but I didn't understand it.
I didn't really look too deep.
I was trying to set up some Bitcoin stuff like ages ago.
Very sad I didn't do that.
But everybody has that story.
But I remember in, I think it was 2020, which is the time, like I am quite a young guy.
which time like i am i'm quite a young guy so i was i was going to school back then
So I was going to school back then.
um and i remember one of my friends in school he had won a raffle to be able to mint an nft
um this was like during the beginning of this nft craze and i was like what the
is this this is stupid i thought um and he he minted the n NFT and then sold it for like 15 grand.
And like, as I mentioned, we were in school, so we were all like, what the fuck?
What is going on?
And everybody or like not everybody won.
I'm talking about like four people here, including me and my friends, my other friends, they were
like very interested in starting trading this because they all wanted to get in on like the
trading side of things. They're maybe the type of guys that would have wolf of wall street
as their favorite movie um but i wasn't really interested in that at all um i i'm way too risk
averse so you're you're more big short guy not wolf of wall street yeah yeah i'm more sophisticated
exactly um but i was very interested in like the behind the scenes of this thing
first of all how how did and why the did someone buy his nft for 15k and why did it have a perceived
value i think that value perception thing being a digital thing didn't like really exist um back then i think counter-strike
skins was a big thing um even before nfc in terms of like the the eyes and the value i'm
a big counter striking enjoyer so i always did that stuff and i always thought that was interesting
but here comes this digital side of things where there's these massive communities
so i got very interested in that and i started going around in a bunch of different communities
and I started trying to figure out
and trying to speak to these people behind these things
to understand what they were thinking
and understand what they were doing
and why they were doing it.
And you met some very shady people, obviously.
There's tons of those back then, but even now.
And that's sort of how I got into it.
I started just hanging out
in a bunch of different community sites.
I never traded an NFT basically back then.
I think I did two trades while basically full time doing NFT stuff,
whether it be like, I think I literally started off as a discord mod.
I can't lie. That's my,
I have a come up story where I started off as a discord mod and I was just
very interested. So somehow I got more and more trust to go to different places,
eventually started working for an agency,
and that's how I got into it.
Crypto is a wild place, man.
It's not like you're going to some doctor's conference
and finding out some new experimental procedure
to go do surgery on people.
Like, nah, man, you're good with people come on yeah exactly
it's so fucking weird and i come from like a small town like there's 25 000 people where i'm from
and you don't really leave um so like telling even telling people around there that i'm
like oh i'm doing this thing they're like you're. Come build a house instead.
Oh, man.
All right.
Well, hey, for the last 15 minutes, I will open it up for questions.
I know we had requests earlier. If you have any questions for David or about Etherlink, go ahead and throw up those requests.
We'll get you up here.
I do apologize.
I wasn't ignoring you.
I promise.
Now, David, what's the most off-the-wall DeFi idea you've ever had for Etherlink that you still kind of want to try?
I mean, I'm like, I'm a DJ and I want gambling, but I want DeFi gambling.
I don't know if I can say this on the air without being put on some watch list, but I do enjoy gambling myself um and i would want a very easy access crypto gambling but not
like classic casino stuff like more more decent stuff i saw some really cool project that is like
just launched that you can put like like like trade with crazy leverage so you can put like a
line on like very short term so you like but put like, Oh, in the next three minutes,
I think Bitcoin will go down 0.13%.
And you had like stupid leverage on it.
And there was like no liquidations cause it's the liquid.
I don't understand fully how it works yet, but it was like,
I think it was the liquidity seeded from like prediction market markets already.
So it was like some, some fun stuff like that. Some more like snappy things.
DeFi is overall pretty boring.
So I think some of those gambling snappy things would be fun to see as well.
I'm an old casino dog.
You got my ears perking right up when you said gambling.
But yeah, anyway, we have Tezos Teddy up to join us.
Welcome, welcome.
Thanks for coming up.
Did you have some questions for Mr. Ryan?
Hey, Blanks.
I don't have any questions.
I just want to say I pretty much familiarize myself with everything Etherlink, and I'm in it in a full capacity.
And I just want to say I think David and Meta and the full Etherlink team. You guys are doing a great job,
and I'm super proud that it's with Tezos,
and it's been amazing, 100%.
So thank you so much, David, for everything
and doing this interview too.
That was very kind.
I'm bad at taking compliments like this.
I'm blushing.
Thank you so much.
I mean, hearing stuff like that means a lot, but I don't want to take the credit away from all of the other people that
are like are working on this because i'm like i enjoy being on twitter um sometimes not all the
time um but i enjoy being on twitter so i'm one of the guys you might be seeing um hear more or
know about more but there's also other other guys that are more stealth than like that are still putting in
the work and like doing this to full degree so there's like a big team of people working on this
that also deserve their praise obviously it's hard to give them because you don't really know them but
i just don't want to take all of that credit myself look at him tossing the flowers around
what a great guy uh kevin swedish oh makes sense. Okay. You probably make some great meatballs.
No kidding.
Kevin, welcome.
Welcome.
Are you here?
Are you past the transitionary phase?
I have a bad habit of asking you questions when you transition.
I'm here.
I've transitioned and I feel embodied in myself.
Do you feel like you are the real Kevin representing yourself?
I mean, too many of us.
Too many of us players.
Such an arrogant question.
Yes, that is true.
You have to have stamina to be in crypto.
If you want to deal with the highs and the lows.
Or you can be a seasonal person.
Kind of like a Christmas and Easter search attendee versus a year-rounder.
Yeah, or just Christmas.
Just Christmas.
I have a hypothesis that seasonal people don't actually exist in crypto.
That's just the coping mechanism.
They're just longer-term holders.
They don't quite get the short cycles
no no i'm just saying there are no there are no actual long-term guys um i'm saying like people
that call them it's like oh i'm only here for the season this is not like the down i think it's cope
um i i think i'm saying this because i know that i stress out way too much when something goes down
and i could never be one of those people.
So maybe I'm just jealous.
Well, I mean, for me, it was always like stay away from looking at the charts every day, the markets and focus on building.
And remember that in down times, people who are building, those are the people who do the best in the bold times.
Not just because you have, like, maybe you're not even necessarily like building a platform.
Maybe you are just a trader who holds whatever.
You are investing in the knowledge and you're getting the knowledge in the bare times.
And that's what pays off the real dividends in times good.
Whereas everyone else is always like 10 steps behind.
And then by the time they figure something out, it's too late.
And that's why most people lose money.
But anyway.
Yeah, you're definitely right.
I could never do that.
Yeah.
So on a later note, the STXTZ,
and now the rise of the liquid staking tokens,
that to me, I think it's so understated,
not just how important that is, but also the fact that it's being instrumented within the Etherlink sphere in the manner that it is.
I mean, this is something that, like, this is the direction I hope to see more of.
Even for, by the way, quick question, about the tether, that's bridged that's on Etherlinkether, that's bridged in from somewhere else?
Yeah, it's not native.
Okay, so it very easily could be the native, though.
And that's very important because Tether, and I've noted this a number of times,
I've made sure I'm trying to let TF people know about this, that Tether did drop about five chains over the last two years that were low volume performance, low utilization.
And if you take those out, if you go to Tether.2 and you can see the charts of all the chains they're on and what's out there and everything. Basically, we're on the chopping block for next.
So getting utilization higher for Tether is pretty important.
And I say this as someone, especially because I have a stablecoin.
I want Tether to be here and I want them to not leave.
That would be very bad for everybody and me.
I want to attract USDC to come in natively. I want other stablecoins and usdc to come in natively um i want other stable coins
and all the startups to come in natively so that's something where it's like we have all
the technology we can do it um so and uh blends you didn't mention that like there were uh like
scrutiny or criticism i think there it's not a model i think there are different paths i think
there are people who were confused completely
Those are a lot of the questions that I felt
Unfortunately, Kevin, I sat in communities
That specifically asked those questions that I asked David
No, no, no, about the other thing
They were confused entirely
And sometimes I think that gets played out
This is always with everything in Tezos and I think all of crypto, it's like,
well, why isn't it like this?
Which is just really another way of saying, I don't understand this.
Like, you don't know what it should be.
Nobody does.
But like, you're just, you're putting out a suggestion.
You don't, it's not terribly qualified, but, but that is kind of the way the, I think the
brain reacts to stuff, trying to make sense of it all.
And it usually, it comes in like, well, here here's what we should maybe we should do it this way and then there were others
who are like okay kind of like this but um maybe in a different form or refinement which i think
even those that are the most embracive of whatever project is going on the way that success is
achieved and sustained and improved is you're constantly looking at what's the next, what makes this even better and never like congratulating oneself or whatever's going on.
And I do one thing, this is more just kind of a general note.
We've seen over like the past seven years of Tezos, we've had a lot of once in a a while, we'll get like a big name partnership. And we get very happy about that. And we, and Tether, I guess, is one, but like,
we don't, we always forget about, like the strategy and like how to refine that. And it's
usually, it's the hardest thing. You don't hit it out of the, you know, park the first time it takes
multiple iterations, but, you know, we tend to want to just be okay with things
as they are. And it's like, no, everything will take care of itself. And that kind of celebratory-ness
prevents, I think, the iteration that's needed. So it's more, I think it should be like when the
big name partnerships come in, it's like, okay, now we have a lot of work. So Tether, I think, is just one of those examples
where there was this assumption, I remember back then, 2022, where it was like, well, that'll take
care of everything. They have billions and billions of capital, and that'll just flood liquidity in.
And it wasn't. So the opposite of that. It's like, well, yeah, because they don't really have any
reason to want to push on Tezos. They don't have people on Tezos.
There's nothing else to do.
It's hard to get in stablecoin liquidity, as you know to do.
It's very, very hard.
Particularly, well, not just in Times Good.
Even when things go south, people are thinking, well, the market might turn around again.
Why would I want to have USD exposure? Yeah, if you're in crypto and you have these crypto assets, it's very hard to people to go in for USD
liquidity. Did you have a question, Kevin?
Blanks, don't do
that to me.
I think you were preparing that from the start.
It's just like, when's he going to slide
in? What's going to be his thing today? I waited for you
to take a breath. Did you like that?
Actually, I did have a
question when Kevin finishes, of course.
But I didn't have a question for David.
That was more of a comment as I prefaced it, Blangs, if you're payingable within the L1 to L2 to bring in that native
liquidity from the, now I did post a video today and this was like from Q&A from Arthur
at TezDev where he even talked about this and he was saying like, because I think the
question was more like, well, besides transaction finality,
like what do we use the L1 for?
It's like, well, for the main token and then other tokens.
He even said, I even recommend
the pattern of minting on the L1 and then bridging it over to the L2.
He mentioned because then you can just bring it to any L2,
but also you have less withdrawal at that point as well.
And I think it's pretty logical why,
because it's insulated under multiple abstractions.
And so even though you can pull out, of course,
it's just you're more likely as a person to be like,
eh, keep it there, why not?
And then it just is able to build a life of its own.
And then that would supply not only TVL and the L1, where the Tezos economy and all the other L1-type assets live, but also Etherlink as well.
And it exposes people to the bridge.
And it exposes people to a TZ1 address or TZNE address.
And it kind of wins on all fronts.
So that's the good friction that I mad on if anybody read it,
this thing that I put up top.
I also put up that Arthur video.
But yeah, so what's the plan after?
I don't know what the question is, to be honest.
Oh, for more things like the STXTZ bridging
and incentive programs related to native liquidity
bridged over to the L2.
From L1?
Yes.
It's a good question.
I think overall, what happens with STXTZ or why STXTZ is very important on the L2 itself
is because, as we mentioned, all of this new liquidity has come into the Tesla ecosystem on Etherlink.
So it's come from other EVM chains into the Tesla ecosystem via LPs, etc.
So that's on Curve, that's on Superland, and so on.
I think there was one thing missing for quite a while, which is good utility for XTC, for our native token.
And I think that SDXTC really provides some very good utility in terms of the
yields you get on it from the get-go, the native yield.
I think that's the main thing, right?
So that's, as you mentioned, that's the good thing.
It's there, but what do you do from there?
I think the main important thing is adding utility
and adding ease of access to that. It's sort of like what I said in the beginning of this space
when I said, now we have all of these protocols, that's great, that's super, super good, but
the real work is getting people to know that these protocols are now here and getting that distribution going. And I think that giving more and more utility to STXTC overall on Etherlink is the best way to go about this,
whether that is through vaults, whether that is through the curve pool that was put live last week, I think on Friday,
and getting it in more places and getting it into more people's hats,
whether that is through incentives or without incentives.
I think giving people exposure to it
in as many ways as possible
through good UX is crucial.
Yeah, I would...
David?
Sorry, Kevin, you had a follow-up?
Yeah, yeah.
Go ahead.
We've got to wrap up soon,
but yeah, go ahead.
On that note,
I mean, how much of it is
coming from the outside
world and how much of it is
coming from Tezonians?
it's harder to track
because we don't do the bridge.
But the
capital... Because the
concern would be, and I do see a lot
of these whales whales they are coming
from tezos and it's not you know that that's fine it's money there they want to get the money um and
but like then there becomes the risk of capital flight where we're not we wouldn't be attracting
more money to tezos but uh because we aren't starting with the native value advantage that's
understood but rather positioning money more towards the over-justification effect in which people are like,
well, this is the money that goes after the incentives.
If the incentives expire,
well, then it goes to the next incentive,
particularly if it's on platforms where it's very easy to,
maybe even by one click,
go towards adjacent markets which aren't even necessarily on
Etherlink or Tezos at all.
So how is that being tracked or is it being tracked?
Yeah, it's being tracked.
So we track inflows from both L1 and L2 and the majority of all liquidity on Etherlink
right now comes from outside of the Tezos ecosystem.
I don't have the exact numbers on me, but that is a fact.
So like, yes, it's a lot, but it's a lot more
that comes from outside, if you will.
I don't remember the exact split, but I believe
it's like 75, 25 or something like that.
I don't fully remember those.
So I would have to cross check this another day.
But it's the overwhelming-
No, we need facts right now now get on your bike and go to
the office i'm leaving blank go go come on where do you find these people they don't even come in
with all the but they don't even have the facts right kevin i request oh my god i sent you this
info a week no i'm kidding david i'm sorry to put you on the spot
oh kevin does that answer your question, though?
I'm sorry for cutting in there.
Yes, yes.
Well, that's encouraging.
But yeah, it would be, I think that's definitely the question I get a lot,
like more than anything else, about for people inside,
and people who use it, actually, that they want to know that.
Because mostly, obviously, they're Tesla's people.
They're like, well, Tesla Tesla's people or the others but yeah and one thing we're building out on that side
as well which is more on the like external because like as I said like the majority of liquidity is
from outside of liquidity that's bridge from L1 so one one big thing that we're or what I'm trying
to build out at the moment is getting way, way better data on inflows
and on the users that are doing the inflows themselves
and like giving tags to addresses that come over.
Are they a DeFi user?
Are they a builder?
Are they an NFT collector, et cetera, et cetera.
It's just like putting a bunch of tags
and getting a bunch of good data
so that we can have a way better understanding
of the liquidity that comes in,
whether where it's abridged from. So the source chain,
what protocols the wallet address uses on other chains,
but also what bridging are they using? What aggregating are they using?
Glasses? Is it gas.zip? Is it jumper? Is it the layer zero bridge,
et cetera, et cetera. With this data,
it's really easy to conduct experiments.
So what I mean by this's really easy to conduct experiments.
So what I mean by this is that we do smaller experiments,
a lot of them on this, using this data
to try to increase distribution from,
or inflows from other chains.
So we can look at the, oh, there's a gap over here
where we're getting quite a lot of,
we're getting quite a lot of inflows already,
but there's really no big push,
but it seems like the users over here are actually interested how can we set up a campaign whether
that is through bridging incentives through uh distributor network on turtle club or like
something like that to to attract more users so like we're building out that way more um to get
it better because i agree it's like it's it's super important to to to have it uh super transparent
yeah and i think a lot of attraction points,
and these are like they even
that come from outside Etherlink itself.
So can you hear me?
Hold on.
Yeah, yeah, you broke for a second,
but you're good.
Like one of the,
like I'd say there were,
I don't know,
three big points of improvement
that I think of a lot.
One of them were, was with the dot Etherlink address,
like whatever, that was a big misstep because it's like,
that silos off of all things identity from the Tezos ecosphere.
Whereas at the same time you see the dot eth or ENS and they're like,
no, we're positioning dot eths for all the EVML2s.
So you bring it with you where you go.
So things of that attract people towards the scene,
okay, a Tezos native identity and a Tezos native economy,
Tezos native value advantage.
That's what really draws people in from the outside and keeps them here
beyond whatever the short-term incentive is.
Otherwise, it's just like renting. from the outside and keeps them here beyond um whatever the short-term incentive is otherwise
it's just like renting and then um you know uh i don't want to rent you don't want to rent you
want to own i would like to own well in general ownership yes like when i don't have the resources
to effectively own then renting is an option because that responsibility falls on the owner
i mean this is play time and place for everything, right, Kevin?
And you are Gen X, as you've established last week, correct?
No, I'm, as Herman calls it, I'm a geriatric millennial.
Not even elder, I'm geriatric.
You're a what?
Geriatric millennial.
Okay.
You're a geriatric millennial
no because i mean i'm the last rung of the millennial or it was i don't know maybe the
they they added a whole another generation astrology science sir they're gonna keep
changing shit that's true they did they no but they there was the oregon trail generation i did that i did the
oregon trail i have the oregon trail yeah people who remember if you remember oregon trail generation
or oregon trail you're part of the oregon trail generation if you're not then you came after that
then you're millennial that was but i think now that there's been some distance oh shoot kevin
we're over the hour do Do you have any more questions?
I'm sorry, but Kryptonio did have a question.
Let Kryptonio go.
Yeah, I think it was, what was it?
Oh, right, yeah, about the RWAs.
David, like, do you see a good fit with all the RWAs?
Okay, we got Uranium, we got Midas, we got Spiko bringing in more,
more tokens, but how do you see the RWA tokens fit inside the DeFi space? Because they are like, you know, if I may say a little more boring as tokens, as investments, you know, for the
DGEN crowd and for the DeFi crowd.
But how do you see them fit inside this DeFi space?
That's a very good question.
So first of all, there's a lot of what we have currently on chain is good, but it can definitely get better.
And I know there's a lot of people doing a lot of work to improve that a lot, whether that being through the uranium side,
expanding that more and potentially doing other rare earth minerals
and then seeing how we could do that to corner that side of the market a bit,
which would be super, super interesting.
I think that's one of the things I'm most bullish on
and I think it's super, super cool.
And the Mida stuff as well, obviously.
But then when it comes to the usage of this in
DeFi, I think I mentioned this a bit earlier
that I am very very keen
on getting
X2308 uranium token as collateral
so you'll be able to use that
as collateral on Gearbox for example
or Superland
and borrow USDC against that
and then you're using your uranium or
your other RWAs,
whatever it is, in a more active way.
You can already do that with MTBill and Mbasis as collateral.
I think doing that with our own sort of native RWA protocols
as well is super, super key because to be completely honest,
like I barely have stocks.
Most of the things I do is that I put money somewhere,
borrow from it, and you put that somewhere else.
So I'm quite actively doing these things.
So I agree with you.
Holding Uranium might be, I think is really cool.
And I do hold Uranium.
But at the end of the day, if that's all I can do with it,
then I can't use it in DeFi fully.
It's a bit boring.
So I think expanding that further is super, super interesting to me
and something I want to push.
Well, big thanks
to David for hanging out with us today
and sharing his perspective on where
Etherlink DeFi is
headed. Now, before
we wrap, a quick reminder.
If you want to keep up with Tezos without spending
hours scrolling, check out
the baking sheet over at baking sheet dot Tezos comments dot org.
It's a weekly recap of the biggest updates, standout projects and community highlights.
And the Tezos community rewards program is how we make sure the people doing the real work get noticed.
If you see someone building, helping out or making the space better, nominate them over at tezoscomments.org slash rewards. Tag their post with a hashtag TezosCRP or add a category if you're not tagging.
We're here every Tuesday at 8 p.m. UTC, so if this is your first time, check out some past episodes or join us next week. Until then, stay curious,
stay connected, and we'll catch you next time. Thanks for joining. Thank you.
