Yes, sir. Loud and clear.
Metapool, I'll send you a speaking invite.
I don't know if the request to speak is working, so if anyone wants to speak, maybe send me a request and I'll approve it.
Nice. I see you're up here now. Yeah, let's go to a few more minutes and more people will join.
So, Yarn, we love making videos and we have one coming after this Twitter space that is particularly funny, so make sure to check it out on the Yarn Twitter right after this.
Metapool folks, are you okay to start?
Just want to make sure you can talk.
GM, GM, good night. Good evening, everybody.
So, thank you, everybody, for joining. This is a little mid-vote Twitter space.
I wanted to spend some time with Metapool. It's been a little while since we had Metapool on, so I thought it would be a good time to catch up and get a little refresher on anything and hear about new updates.
First, I want to give you some quick stats about YEATH.
We've got a little under 6,000 youth deposited. It's like $14 million and yield is around 4.5% as of a few minutes ago.
And if you're hearing about this yield and about YEATH for the first time, this is a higher yield than most LSTs and where does that come from?
Well, the yield comes from all of the underlying LSTs, all of the incentives from inclusion and weight votes, and the fees that come from the trades that go on inside of YEATH because YEATH is an AMM on its own with a swap fee today.
We have seven LSTs in the basket from Fraxwell, LIDO, Stater, Coinbase, Manifold, and Rocket Pool.
And the vote right now, the inclusion vote for Metapool, ends in two days, 10 hours.
So, if you are a staked YEATH holder, you've got two days and 10 hours to vote. Don't forget to go on there and vote.
So, Claudio, I know you and I have talked at length a number of times, but I want you to introduce who you are, how long you've been working at Metapool, like what else Metapool does, and if you want to, like what you did before you were in crypto, before you were at Metapool too.
Hey, Horn, happy new year, my friend. We haven't talked, so this is a chance for me to say so.
Yeah, I haven't. I haven't seen you since Dev Connect.
Exactly. Hopefully, we'll see each other at East December. So, anyhow, it's been quite a ride, to be honest.
It started in crypto in 2018, speculating, I think, as everybody, sending XRP tokens between my central IKEA accounts.
At that time, we didn't have any fees on it. So, anyhow, leveraging that a little bit during that bull run.
Got exposed to Ethereum in 2017. It was through being part of a small investment fund here in Mexico, that they were trying to do a liquid fund when those were a thing.
And eventually, that didn't go well, because at the end of the day, a liquid fund is a security.
You're selling startup equity in the form of a digital asset. So, anyhow, full on. And then that's how I learned about security.
And, more importantly, got exposed to my Ether wallet. So, I ended up creating the long cash and the same phrases and whatnot.
And then, more importantly, I got exposed into the Ethereum ecosystem and selected these smart contracts and trying to find somebody that knew about it on Reddit and all that stuff.
And to be honest, it was not a great experience. But then, all of a sudden, the bull market started and then started speculating, but not building.
And then, in 2019, through a beta invitation to Coinlist, I participated in most of the IDOs or ICOs from Coinlist, Lockstack, Nier, Solana, Avalanche, Celo, I entered into Peter Protocol, Nina, Rally, and a couple of them, right?
And so, with that, I started building on top of them through the different hackathons.
And so, through Nier is how I met my co-founder, Lucio, who's here as well. So, shout out to him. It was through the Nier Discord.
I also think during the pandemic. And so, we started talking. He, at that time, Lucio, was running our wallet, which was the MetaMask for Nier, a Chrome extension wallet.
And yeah, one thing led to another. And then, he said there's this thing called liquid staking. And so, a little bit of background liquid staking is a form of derivative from a proof-of-stake token.
And so, in this case, it was Nier. And so, we launched the first liquid staking token on Nier called StakedNier, or STNier.
And what STNier is, is it's a token that is representing the Nier being delegated, plus the accruing staking rewards, without the need to locking that token.
So, it helps. And then, a very important factor here is, at least for a liquid staking platform, decentralization should be at the core.
That means that whatever delegation you are assigning to that liquid staking platform, it should delegate to as much validator notes as possible, so that you can avoid centralization aspect.
And so, yeah, fast forward, we launched on Aurora. We started exploring EVMs. Then, last year, we successfully launched in July, July-August, we launched NPE, which is Metapole, which is the liquid staking token on top of MainNet.
And then, in September, October, we supported SSB Network for the Distributed Validator Technology Framework, which allows us to distribute the delegation of ETH to as much ETH node operators as we can.
And so, it's been quite a ride, to be honest. Mostly, my background is software-as-a-service, selling apps through the Latin Marketplace, Sandesk Marketplace, Salesforce Marketplace, and whatnot, have done a couple of apps that have done zero to one million recurring revenues.
So, anyhow, I'm in charge mostly of doing Twitter spaces and whatnot, talking with the marketing team and investment teams. And so, anyhow, more of the sales side of Metapole, and Lucio is the lead developer in the Metapole DAO.
Now, to wrap this up, and sorry for saying a little bit.
Metapole is a DAO. When we launched it, and the reason that I got off my cushion wall is, can we build a platform which allows its users to retain most of the value?
And I've seen this in marketplaces, right?
If I'm telling you that I helped create apps that were doing one million recurring revenue, that means that the marketplace itself was recaining around $300,000 per month.
And to be honest, yes, they created a platform, but at the end of the day, I don't see that as fair anymore.
Maybe in 2016, 2015 it was, because you're helping to strap the platform, but it comes into a point where you have the problem the same with the App Store and Play Store, right?
Which you are relying on these platforms, and you are taking a big tax hit on them, prior to paying taxes.
And so, when Lucio said, hey, we're going to create this liquid-taking platform, and it's going to be run by a DAO, and governance token holders will be the ones retaining most of this value.
For me, I was really excited to build something that was by the community for the community.
And so, anyhow, and so here we are, the first 2000 Ethereum are going to be, all staking rewards are going to be allocated to support Ethereum-based projects in the merchant markets.
And so, we are here to support everyone here building on top of Ethereum or near.
And so, yeah, so just a quote unquote there, we're fully decentralized DAO. So, anyhow, really excited about that as well.
So, MPEthe started in 2021 or 2022?
Got it. So, in there today, how much TVL is there today?
Yeah, it's close to 870. Let me get the latest stats.
So, MPEthe can be minted today, and it can be redeemed also?
Yes, exactly. And this is something really important.
So, right now it's 861.11 ETH, so it's around $2 million, $2.05 million.
So, this is very important.
One of the designs, and this is Lucio to be credited here all the way, is that MPEthe is accruing value every second.
And so, that allows anyone to go delegate, and you will get immediately who's taking rewards at the very next second that you delegate.
This is important because in the emerging markets, you cannot wait a full-on epoch in order for you to redeem your stake rewards.
And so, that's something that was built on the core of MPE.
Very important, it's not a rebasing asset.
So, that means that you don't have the problem, such as LIDO, that you have to go to RAPSTE in order for that token to be accruing value, all the stake rewards.
Because the problem with the design of LIDO, or the challenge more so, is that it takes a full-on epoch, around 24 hours, in order for that token to accrue the stake rewards.
With Metapole, it is something that is done every second.
So, do you want to describe your validator stack, like who they are, what hardware, what software clients are used, how you manage private keys, that kind of thing?
Yes, so that's where we're leveraging SSB network.
So, SSB allows for the private key to be distributed to four operators, direct distributed validator technology operators.
Where one of them is, we are running it.
On the neural and technical side, I think Lucio, Lucio is kind of more, if you can bring him up, that'll be great.
He can describe more so on the hardware that is running, and the software.
But what DBKey does, is that it splits this key into four, and allows each and every one of the operators to be, how can I say, maintaining the consensus mechanism, and more importantly, validating transactions on the beacon chain.
And so with this, we also, of course, slashing is a very important issue while in any proof of stake protocol.
In the case of ETH, you are exposed to losing a good chunk of your asset, if the validator node goes down, or if it goes wrong.
So it's very important for the how do you hedge against slashing.
And so this is where the DBKey technology comes in, and basically allows a platform such as a metapole to hedge against this scenario of slashing.
If one of the operators goes down, then all transactions and the how you start validating all transactions, you rely on the other three operators, right?
You will get penalized internally through the SSB network, but you don't lose your ETH.
So that's one of the good things about leveraging this DBKey technology, and why we're so excited to be supporting SSB networks launched last year.
And so that's basically right now where we are.
On the tech side, I think Lucio is the most appropriate person to answer that question.
But anyhow, Lucio, if you can answer on the past comments as well.
On Twitter, that'll be great.
You were doing perfectly, Claudio.
You are the technical founder now.
Dude, I've heard this discussion with the debt team so much that I can just rely on memory, man.
But then again, I don't want to put all my ETH in this brain.
SSB, moreover, we launched even before SSB, and we were ready to use them as soon as they go into mainnet.
So it's really a great technology.
As Claudio described, you have, let's say, distributed keys and distributed validation.
It means that in order for a validator to stop validating, let's say they'll receive some penalties.
You need for at least two operators to fail at the same time.
And more than that, we are monitoring all the assignments of load operators.
So even if that happens, you have the time to create a new cluster and assign to other validators.
That is really a very interesting technology.
I want to tell you, I think everybody's data should be, or at least a very big part of all the staking should be done with distributed validator technology.
So the use of that technology and the way your value accrues immediately, would you say that those are the two shifts in value, the two things that makes Metapool unique?
Yes, I think it's not unique.
There's a lot of protocols using distributed validator technology, of course.
But having the reward distributed every second, that's quite useful.
Also that the token is directly an interest accruing token, that you can use it directly in DeFi without having to wrap it.
And another thing that is interesting and unique, but it's sometimes not understood, is that we added an AMM swap pool into the contract itself.
So if you want to an mistake, you have two options.
You can do a delayed mistake that is asking for the protocol to disarm a validator and get your it back.
Or you can do a fast mistake, and the fast mistake is an internal pool into the contract that allows you to do a swap of MPEs for it.
And the big advantage is that you always do that swap at the real price.
So we have a backstop, let's say, so we don't depend on third party pools in order to quickly convert MPEs to it.
So it's an all-in-one contract that includes not only liquid staking, but also an internal AMM, an ad hoc AMM that has the true price of the token and allows you to quickly get 88 if you want.
That sounds like a good model. It kind of sounds like Wyeth.
So where do you guys see MPE like one year from now or five years from now?
What are your short-term and long-term visions for this?
Yeah, so for us, we're building a platform where anybody that's interested in staking can go to and find different proof-of-stake tokens from the different blockchain ecosystems.
But more importantly, focusing on emerging markets.
That's why, for example, on ETH, I know that the gas prices right now, or it can be sometimes ridiculous.
But, for example, you can delegate 0.01 ETH, which is around, more so or less, $20, $19, $20, depending on the price fluctuation.
Of course, on Gatsby, you got to place a little bit more.
We're trying to find out how ways to subsidize gas as well, right?
It's going to be through the out-voting that we validate these mechanisms, right?
For example, right now, all of the staking rewards are being assigned not to the Treasury, but being delivered directly to governance token holders that vote for different initiatives that help grow the medical ecosystem.
And more importantly as well, the blockchain ecosystems that we're part of.
Right now, we're part of three and four, sorry.
We're part of Aurora, Ethereum, Q-Network, and NIR.
And so it is fully unfocused, as I said before, right?
It's built by the community for the community.
Yes, we bootstrapped it, Lucio and myself, and a couple of us, and the Metapool Dow team.
But at the end of the day, we would like this for it to be as decentralized as possible.
And this is where we are right now, right?
We're at a stage where we're onboarding new private stake tokens, and we are focusing in helping those ecosystems as well.
For example, right now, we're working with the global Chinese community on how we can set up a specific pool for their community, for their donors, to donate that ETH, and then for them to delegate, and then for all staking rewards to be allocated to projects in that region.
We're doing it right now in the NIR ecosystem with like $20,000 in the next MP Dow grant round.
And so those are initiatives where we're focusing on the users, the community, and the people that are delegating, and then mix that all up and hopefully find sustainability in the Metapool Dow.
And so, and it takes the ability, right?
It takes each and every one of us to delegate Ethereum, Aurora, or NIR, and Q, and then sustainability, hopefully, is going to be through people being really proactive in helping the protocol grow.
That means acquiring or helping us acquire more delegation.
And then the partnerships that we do, which is, for example, with GERN Finance, which we believe it's a truly, truly important protocol in the ETH ecosystem, and that we want to support.
And we want to help grow as well, right?
And so this is where composability brings in, and the DeFi, LegoBricks vision can truly materialize into helping the community grow.
And so with a community growth and focus mindset, I think we can, we've survived this bear market, hopefully, in that next cycle.
We will bring in more exposure to other regions and more importantly, helping bring value to users, right?
That's why we're building this.
And so hopefully we can do this in a decentralized way.
Lucio, I don't know if you want to add something there.
No, if you want to go a little in detail on the Ethereum side of the multi-chain, of our multi-chain initiatives, I think Ethereum needs to diversify a little.
The liquid is taking tokens. And to be honest, liquid is taking is mostly commodity at this point.
So that's why we think that these are small differences, like you get the rewards every second since every 24 hours.
It is cheaper to get an accruing token on the first transaction.
That could create some difference.
But the final idea is to have, I guess, several liquid is taking providers in Ethereum in order to avoid centralization.
And I think Jern is doing a good job of solving the other problem is that once you have several liquid is taking tokens, you get fragmentation.
So I think we are doing well.
It's not easy because we started last year on Ethereum.
So it is difficult, but it's not impossible.
That is the reality of entering an already saturated market.
Does your Metapool DAO grants program extend to people who want to build on Ethereum?
I didn't know you guys had a program like that.
I don't know if you want to expand on that.
But yes, yes, it is to grow.
It is a two way street, right?
It is projects that are being built on Ethereum that can help the Metapool ecosystem grow.
Yes, we're totally open to it.
This is we can't say it's chain agnostic right now.
So if you're building, like I said, on Aurora, on Ethereum, on Q Network, on NIR.
It costs you nothing to propose, right?
And I believe here, Francisco, you want to pin the MP DAO grants link over in this Twitter spaces.
And so folks can understand a little bit more on it.
But yeah, it's open to everybody.
That is on the chains that we're building right now.
Grants programs are particularly powerful these days, especially.
So yeah, guys, thank you for coming on again.
Is there anything that you want to mention as we part ways?
Anything about Metapool coming up?
Yeah, so so we're one of the big one of the big things we've done last year would actually be announced that that connect during Staking Summit is that we are supporting the new ecosystem to become more decentralized.
And that's something we want to do also on Ethereum.
We're going to work with that, hopefully with the networks as well.
But we're onboarding enterprise mode operators to the near protocol ecosystem.
And so that's something for that might not be totally related right now to GERN.
But I believe that decentralization is important.
It is why we're building on top of these different blockchains.
And it should be core core for every platform that is building on top of any any blockchain technology, right?
How are you helping decentralization?
I think GERN is going to great job here by the reverse support with their YE token and diversifying delegation of Ethereum as well by supporting different liquid staking tokens.
And so so this is something that is core to us, right?
And when we go to any any blockchain protocol, we want to support that, right?
We want to support decentralization.
We want to support the community.
And I think this is something that is that we believe will drive sustainability for medical down.
But more importantly, impact for regions, right?
And this I'm going to quote my my co-founder in this one, right?
We're building tools for survival in in emerging markets, right?
Right now, for most people living in Western countries, something, well, maybe now in the US, you're feeling a little bit the same, right?
With the hyperinflation and whatnot.
But for emerging markets, you cannot have a savings account in your own fiat token.
It doesn't make any any financial sense.
And so we want to build this tools for this new generation of all of the digital citizens to retain, control and own all of the value they create online or digital format.
And so if you are aligned with that vision, please reach out to us, right?
Tell us how we can collaborate.
Tell us how you want to see us grow in your region.
Very much focused in emerging markets.
But anyhow, so this is this is what medical is, what medical does.
And more importantly, where our medical is heading.
So really excited to be heading over to that con in Bangkok and really see the South North and Southeast Asia and exploring it as well and getting to know the community over there as well to learn.
Let's find something for for that time during a having a non-alcoholic beer in in each number.
Lucio, you want to wrap this up?
That's everything you said is important.
That's a huge, addressable audience.
And I know you guys are traveling all over the world talking about medical.
And I'll definitely see you in Denver.
Yes. And one last thing, right?
We are launching localization for the medical DAP.
So you will get the DAP in what is a simplified Chinese or Mandarin, of course, Spanish.
Everybody at the from the medical dial speak Spanish for two years as well.
And so we got three languages that we're going to be supporting.
And so this is just one small step we're taking into helping bring this tool for digital value creation to emerging markets.
So Lucio, you want to wrap this up?
No, no, it's perfect. Perfect.
Just the idea that we intend to create these tools for survival and to facilitate.
And this is something that we were discussing about the Rome at 2024.
We believe that the next revolution or say that the crypto revolution will be really deployed when you have a large number of sovereign individuals,
people that are capable of keeping their own kids and managing their own money, the really own money, not in the bank, in your kids and their own data.
But in order to be there, you need to help people reach that point.
I think everybody here, everybody in Webtree, we are used to we know how to manage keys.
We are enthusiastic, if you like.
But if you really intend to involve one billion users, it looks like it won't happen just by trying to teach people to open accounts and manage five keys in five different blockchains.
So we're also trying to create the tools to help onboard people from the basics into becoming a sovereign individual.
Yeah, tools for survival. That's a powerful message, but I get it.
Well, thank you for coming on, guys.
And for everybody, if you're a staked wife holder, you've got two days to vote.
There is two inclusion votes up, one for medical, one for redacted.
And thank you, everybody, for coming on.
I will be back with more wife Twitter spaces in the next epic.
Thank you very much for your support. And also check out the give it for the coming round. We're doing as well.
So it's all about giving back to the community and help them grow.
So definitely check that out.
And porn, I'll see you in a couple of days, man.
I'll bring something from from from from the medical team to you.
So you're ready for something.
Thanks. See you soon, guys.
Everybody have a great kickstart to the week.