EtherFi's move from liquid staking to onchain banking

Transcript

I'm excited about doing things that you just you cannot do in in Trafy institutions and and some of that is going to is part of the some of the announcements that we're going to be making in Ether summer. >> Everyone knows that crypto can help to bank the unbanked, but what is an onchain neo bank and how did Ether become one? And what do crypto users need to know about all of this? Hello and welcome to the Milk Road Show, the podcast that knows that NEO banks are a lot cooler than Neo Pets and that's some stiff competition. I'm your host, John Gillum. Today is Wednesday, July 20th. We will be releasing this episode on Friday. And today we are joined by Mike Siligazi. Mike is the founder and CEO of Etherfy, a non-custodial Ethereum liquid staking protocol launched in 2022 that has grown into a crypto neo bank

offering staking yield products and many other related services. Mike is going to give us an updated outlook on one of the coolest projects in crypto. So, if that sounds good to you, make sure you like and subscribe. Share this episode with somebody who's going to enjoy it. A reminder, today's podcast is free and that would not be possible without our wonderful partners at Securitize, the regulated rails for tokenization. Keep an ear out for more information on them later on in the episode. We're big fans of theirs over here, so support them. And without further ado, welcome to the Milkro Show. Mike, how are you today, sir? >> Good. Yeah, great to be here. Thanks. Thanks for having me.

>> I'm excited to talk to you. There's a lot of big things happening at Etherfi. Uh but before we get to that, I wanted to kind of get an updated refresh for you. I I don't want to rehash the whole kelp situation, but I'm really curious. We've had a lot of hacks, a lot of, you know, problems in DeFi this year. A lot of those have been recovered from though, and I'm curious your thoughts on what is the state of DeFi now, and what is your updated outlook on the ecosystem overall here? Yeah, look, it's there's there's certainly a lot of uncertainty uh out there because obviously with these AI models being released, people have concerns that a lot of uh legacy protocols or uh just projects in general are going to get uh compromised because of this new tooling that's that's available. On the flip side of it, that

same tooling is of course available to projects and the ones that are, you know, well-maintained are using that tooling to try and find the vulnerabilities before they release anything. So, it's uh it's a bit of a cat and mouse uh kind of game, but that's creating a lot of uncertainty. Uh people uh in many cases we've seen have pulled back from from DeFi and you know, as in they're d-risking, they're moving stuff to centralized custodians. Um but we are starting to see people come back. Uh I think especially with uh Fable being released um at least you know initially there not appearing to be a a major wave of uh of hacks people are getting a little bit of confidence back.

>> Well I'm glad to hear some confidence is coming back. My confidence has never been shaken but I'm curious what your strategy is to try to win institutional trust for a non-custodial protocol like Etherfi. Is there a specific strategy or messaging that you kind of go to for that? Um and and yeah, how do you go about like building that institutional trust? >> Yeah, so there's a lot that we're doing that um in many ways is just highlighting all the things that we've already done. So of course, you know, countless audits at this point of the uh the protocols, a lot of security hardening that we've uh we've been doing, but we're also doubling down and then just doing a lot more. Um, one of the things I I talked about uh a fair bit after the uh the Kalp hack is that we are going to move away from a lot of

the decentralization theater that a lot of D5 protocols engage in which is where they make it very difficult for themselves uh to be able to uh protect their users while really not you know not materially impacting the level of decentralization of their uh uh their protocol. So for example, if a protocol has upgradeable contracts, uh you know, you can put a lot of uh uh you know, window dressing on that, but the fact is the the contracts are upgradable. Uh and so um you just want to make sure that uh you are able to uh take action if the protocol is compromised in in some way.

uh while preserving some level of transparency and uh decentralization that uh frequently takes the form of things like time locks, governance and you know other procedural things that go into making uh making making changes or or upgrades. >> Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. And I think that you know decentralization is great but theater is not. So I think focusing on real things is a good strategy there. I'm curious if there is still anything going on with DeFi United in the wake of the Kelp DAO attack. there was this huge grassroots movement to sort of like plug the gap from the hack and it was like really cool to see the ecosystem rally like this. Has that wound down now that like the crisis is over or is there still something going on with DeFi United? Where is that today?

>> Well, so that was an initiative put together by a I believe that was specifically for the purpose of securing and stabilizing DeFi in the wake of the the Kelp hack. Uh so I I guess it's it hasn't wound down in the sense that uh uh you know the the assets are there. they've they've gone in, they've backfilled all the uh all the losses. Um uh but I don't know that there's an active sort of fundraising effort uh going on anymore. >> Okay, cool. Well, I think that was one of the coolest things we did in crypto this year, but um All right, cool. Mike, >> for sure. I mean it's it's a remarkable um uh example of a market that you know self-regulate just doesn't quite feel the like the right word but uh I think in in in trad and and perhaps you know

in certain uh you know situations in in DeFi what tends to happen you know when when bad things happen whether it's an attack or or you know losses that that arise from one reason or another is people sort of retrench they hide behind lawyers and you the customers, users end up kind of holding the the bag and and it's bad for uh for everybody and people often will look to I guess centralized options for trying to protect users against that for you know regulating the the market and in the hopes of uh making it safer but in the end what you know what it ends up creating is just making a market that's much more uh brittle.

This is an example where look it would have been very easy and perhaps it even would have been the default uh path that uh that people were on to to do exactly that to sort of reach ranch hide behind lawyers you know declare bankruptcy and then you know all of DeFi would have kind of uh blown up with that but you know a lot of people kind of rose to the the challenge came together you know put in money uh that they didn't have to put in you know it wasn't sort of directly in their uh in their interest to to do so it was more of a long-term play um and you know the the various players in the market just collegially worked together to ensure that uh the market was was stabilized. So this is uh I mean this is almost like the the uh

the dream right of of a free market that uh that actually you know ends up benefiting and protecting people better than more centralized alternative >> right yeah and the ecosystem takes care of itself. Uh yeah, so yeah, I really appreciate that commentary. I was really excited by that too to see that response. Uh Mike, I want to talk about EtherFi now. Um and I thought a good place to start with this conversation would be with reststaking. Um and if you could just give us kind of a refresher on that. Etherfi is the largest liquid restaking protocol. You guys secure more than 3/4 of the market for restaking.

What is restaking and why is Etheri still a leader on this? >> We have started winding down the restaking portion of the protocol. I think we're almost entirely just vanilla staking now. Restaking was uh the so staking is was our first product, right? It's part of a a whole suite of products that we now have as part of this this Neo Bank. Uh staking with restaking layered in was the first product. Look, I think it was a thesis that uh maybe arguably was either incorrect or too early. I think probably the the latter um that there was going to be a need to, you know, reuse Ethere Ethereum uh as a layer of security for other cryptoeconomic networks. The challenge is there's just not that many useful cryptoeconomic networks out there and

there wasn't this um uh ground swell uh you know of uh of projects that found product market fit. Um and so a lot of that has just started winding down. Uh so so we've we've pulled out a lot a lot of our ETH from restaking. um we're I I you know I'm still hopeful one day it's uh it's something that will reemerge but uh but for now we've we've added that. So for the most part uh you can think of it either by staking or stake product as just uh you know vanilla staking with I would say um additional security protections that we've built in uh like built-in insurance. I believe we're the only uh liquid staking protocol that has

built-in uh slashing insurance. So that's uh that's pretty novel. Uh we we also have a lot of um active monitoring protections built in. So uh what we have is the ability to pause and block malicious transactions. So uh there's a you know escalation and governance process around that. But it allows us to intervene uh very rapidly you know instantaneously if uh uh if malicious activity is is detected. Um uh hence my comments around kind of removing a lot of the decentralization theater. You know, we don't need to do a twoe vote uh in order to pause the contracts or or whatever. Uh we have the ability to to just do that. Um and a variety of other

things that we've done to to try and make the the protocol more uh more secure. >> Hi everyone, this is John. Listen, our Milk Road Pro analysts nailed this AI bull market. They had dozens of calls pay off in a big way for our community. If you want to see how our entire team of analysts are positioning for the crypto bull market that's going to come after this bare market finally ends, you can join us now at Milkroad Pro. It's just a dollar. Link is in the description. You'll get access to all of our analyst trades, their watch list, and see how they're navigating this in their portfolios and get access to ask us questions in Discord anytime, day or night. It's just a dollar. Link's in the description. Milk Road Pro. Join now.

I'll see you there. Well, this gets to the idea of safe staking, which I've heard EtherFi talking about a lot. You guys published uh an article on your website just I think earlier this month called safe staking from doctrine to code and I'm curious if you could explain to us this idea of safe staking as a concept and then how you've gone about like you know productizing this into your offerings today. >> Yeah. So I guess I kind of uh >> well you touched on a little but like let's drill down on that. Yeah. What is safe staking? >> Yeah. So I mean safe safe staking just refers to all these different uh mechanisms that we've put in place uh to make etheri liquid staking uh you know as as safe as it can be. So insurance is is one aspect of it. Formal verification

of the contracts is another aspect of it which is where um the smart contracts themselves are uh you can think of it as putting together a model like a mathematical model of the contracts and then uh proving that um certain invariance can't be violated. In other words, it just it uh uh it depends on how you construct the uh you know the invariance and the rules. But uh to some degree it creates confidence that uh the contracts uh can't be hacked in in certain uh certain ways. You know, putting in place a lot of these active monitoring measures. So the ability to pause or blacklist malicious actors.

This is something that has been a a bit of um a sacred cow I guess in a lot of DeFi protocols is the ability to blacklist uh uh addresses. But uh I mean we just think it's necessary in this in this environment. It's something that goes through a governance process in that you can pause or blacklist addresses and then it has to be ratified but at least it lets you act very quickly. Uh so those are just some examples. I mean there's other things we've done in terms of hardening our oracles and a lot of other kind of you know maybe boring technical things. Um but it's just our way of just really focusing on safety. Um because I think that's in this environment that just matters more than anything uh uh to people in DeFi.

>> Mike, we've seen record demand for Ethereum staking and record lows like there's nobody trying to get out in the staking queue from the Ethereum contract right now. Um I'm curious your thoughts on that. How do you think about this like you know swell of demand we've seen for Ethereum staking and what's Ether strategy to compete in that market? >> So yeah, Ether is the second largest DeFi staking uh protocol. Um, so we've done, I think, a pretty good job of, uh, of scaling. We are the most widely used DeFi staking protocol in DeFi. So, uh, you know, a lot lots of people just stake their ETH and hold it. Um, but when they use it in DeFi for, uh, you know, for borrowing, for leverage, for trading, uh, Ether tends to be the one

that they choose. Uh, you know, we're also the most widely used, uh, liquid staking protocol on that institution or DAT side. So that includes uh digital asset treasury companies like Sharlink. Um those are I mean there's a lot of work that we're doing to try and make it uh uh good and attractive. Um and yeah, those are just some uh some examples. >> Okay, cool. Well, you guys have moved beyond just staking uh and you're now offering some other products which I want to learn more about too. There's a yield vault product you have called liquid and a non-custodial spending product in the form of a card called cash. And I'm curious if you can tell us more about both liquid and cache and why you decided to add these product offerings to to Ether's uh suite of products.

>> Yeah, so the the the vision for this was actually there really from day one. The the idea to build this integrated this vertically integrated platform that uh that develops into uh essentially a banking alternative what we call a DeFi bank or what some have called a crypto you know crypto neo bank. Um uh and in some ways this is the holy grail of DeFi, right? This is, you know, allows you to to have truly sovereign money to get off of Treadfire Rails to actually have control over your uh uh your assets. Um um and uh and have the you know, freedom, flexibility, and rewards that uh that offers. Um so, um you know, I mean, ultimately the reason it's

interesting is because it's just a better product. you know, if you're using uh Chase or uh or or any of the, you know, Revolute or any of the uh the Trafy institutions, uh what EtherFi ultimately offers is just a better product. It pays higher cash back. Uh it pays higher reward on your your asset, gives you more control and more flexibility. Like that's why it's good. That that's why this, you know, this ought to exist. It's not some, you know, gambly uh speculative crypto thing. It's just a better, you know, better fintech product. Better because it's lower cost to operate. um and it's plugged into a broader ecosystem that lets you earn uh you know earn rewards and staking was the first product in that line. Staking was the yield layer of the the neo bank.

The liquid vaults was the um you could think of them as defi investment uh or defy asset deployment non-custodial uh asset management um uh and then cash was the the spending and borrowing uh layer. So pulling it all together you you know that that was the uh the dream to be able to like wrap these things into a nice integrated experience that uh uh gives gives people you know just a better alternative to the traditional banking and we're seeing you know a ton of adoption of that especially in a lot of emerging markets where uh you know where Americans tend to be spoiled with a very wide variety of you know pretty decent banking and neo banking options um in you know many parts of the world

they just don't have that uh and ether Ether serves as as that for them. >> Yeah. So, this is something that stood out to me. The UX for all of these products is really improved and seamless and smooth. And I think that that's been a big problem that Web 3 has had. Can you talk to me about the focus on making these products not only like more advantaged in terms of the yield and the benefits you get, but like accessible and like you can use the cash card like anywhere you would use a Visa card. Like talk to me about that UX design and how you guys have prioritized that at EtherFi. >> Uh, for sure. Yeah. I mean, we in many ways, look, our UX in many ways is not that great if I'm, you know, being very very honest. There's a lot that can be

uh can be better. It's it's good in comparison to crypto uh typical crypto products. Um but compared to, you know, uh uh what you'd get with like a Robin Hood, I mean, there's a lot that we can we could be doing better. I mean, it's still uh pretty challenging to fund uh to move assets into the the product. uh there's still a lot of sort of crypto nonsense sort of sprinkled in uh that may be a little bit confusing and scary for for users. Uh so uh I guess it really just comes down to uh raising the bar for for crypto and um uh I mean this is why exchanges this is why centralized exchanges have been pretty successful because they you know they they uh focused on uh normal everyday users

pretty much from day one. Uh and so the result has been that uh they've had to build like these really nice polished experiences but in some ways many ways I think they undermined really what crypto was originally supposed to be which is self-custodial uh kind of hard money but they you know they they've you know they've created these really polished consumer uh products uh and if we want DeFi to go mainstream and self-custody to become you know a common common thing that that people look at then yeah then as I said the bar needs to be raised. It just needs to it needs to be a lot better than it is today.

>> Where are you seeing the most demand for these products like the the cash card? Is it is it like a certain user segment? Is it a part of the world or like where are you seeing the most adoption and traction happen with this? >> Yeah, where we see a lot of users today where we have a lot of users today is in countries uh like L well like Brazil and other Latin American uh countries. Uh we see a lot of usage in Southeast Asia. So, Thailand um see a lot in the across the the Middle East like UAE. Um we see it, you know, decent number of users in in Europe. Those are kind of the broad strokes. So, like you could almost say everywhere except North America, not really seeing a lot in Africa.

>> What's the strategy to drive growth there? Like is there a specific kind of user that you're targeting and trying to onboard or like how do you think about like growing Etherfi and bringing on new users? >> So, a lot of it has been organic. A lot of it is just people, you know, word of mouth referring uh each other. Um it's been, you know, online personalities, influencers a lot of times without us, you know, talking to them uh at all have just talked about the product because it's good and they uh you know, they uh enjoy it. Um uh so yeah, those are I mean that's that's really been a lot of the growth. We we have not done almost any proactive marketing. Uh it's all just been word of mouth and organic, you know, plus our own, you know, social

media, uh messaging. Um uh as we, you know, we're in the process of working on licensing and in a few different regions. Uh as we do that, we we'll start getting a lot more deliberate on uh on the marketing side. >> Gotcha. Okay. So, we talked about some of the gaps that you want to see closed like some of this UX things and and improvements there, but what are some of like the durable long-term advantages that you think that Ether has over some of these incumbents and like legacy players and and how do you see that being like a strategic advantage in the market for for Ether?

>> So, I mean the two things uh the two straightforward things are we have a lower cost structure. So if EtherFI was a traditional uh fintech institution with the number of deposits and usage that we have uh you know we'd likely have 500 employees uh uh or so uh if you just look at comparables and whereas Etherite today has about 40 employees. So it's just a much lower cost structure. It just allows us to operate uh uh you know much cheaper uh than uh you know than other uh comparable institutions. And those savings get passed on to users. Like when you figure out a way to make something 10 times cheaper, it just allows you to have a product that's that's better. Uh the second thing is the rewards are higher

because it's plugged into DeFi. And you could think of it as a lot of tooling that's traditionally only available to institutions like lowcost borrowing and um access to money markets uh uh other yield opportunities. Those typically are just not accessible to uh to you know average people. they may be they are typically accessible to high net worth individuals but uh DeFi kind of democratizes access to that. So what that means is you just get higher rewards. You get higher rates of return on your uh pro you know historically you would have gotten higher rates of return on your on your assets. Um um and and there's a lot more flexibility. There's a lot more that you can do when you have a self-custodial uh product. So so those are I mean those are like three pretty

basic things. It's cheaper. you you get more out of it and it gives you more flexibility. >> Gotcha. Okay. Um I think like the question I have just generally right like as somebody who is like deep into crypto and uses crypto and hears about all these different products. Um I I'd like to hear your pitch in terms of what differentiates Etherfy like if I have Ethereum and I'm looking for a place to deploy it right or you know versus hodddling it just or staking it myself or running my own node or all these other things. What differentiates EtherFI from other things that are already out there on the market and and and why EtherFi?

>> Well, so if you're talking about ETH specifically, I we tend to have the highest staking rewards over at whatever period you want. We tend to have the highest staking rewards. So, if you care about that, you probably want to look at Ether Fry. Uh and then it lets you use your ETH. So, you can borrow against it. Uh uh you can just hold it. Uh you can deploy it using some of our our liquid uh vaults and earn even, you know, even more DeFi rewards. uh on those. Um so uh that's on the ETH side, but to to use EtherFi, the the sort of the broader, you know, DeFi bank. Uh you you can use stable coins, you can use Bitcoin, you can actually use any number of uh assets. So you can use dollars, you can deposit fiat from your bank account into

uh into Etherfy and then spend on your card, get 3% cash back. Uh you can earn these days it's five or six% on your uh on your stable coins with our earn vaults. So that's the, you know, that's the magic of it is you can you can just use any any assets and earn uh better rewards than you would from your your bank. Your bank's definitely not paying you 6%. >> No, they definitely are not. Yeah, I think that's an important point. It doesn't have to be ether denominated there. You guys can work with any asset that somebody wants to to bring in. Uh Mike, I want to talk a little bit about the future looking strategy here. And you know, in earlier in the conversation, you said that, you know, you're kind of winding down the restaking thing, but you said that you think it's too early, not that it's, you

know, like a bad idea or something. And I'm curious if you see restaking coming back into Ether strategy at some point and and what that might look like when that time comes. >> Sure, we're we're open to it. I mean I I again really hard to say what uh uh what the future looks like but if there uh if there are opportunities if there's products out there product market fit then uh yeah I mean of course we'll you know we'll continue to look at it real world assets like funds treasuries and private credit are still running on rails built decades ago gated paperwork heavy slow to settle everyone's talking about tokenizing them but far fewer can actually do it and do it without cutting regulatory corners securitize can It's the SEC regulated infrastructure bringing real world assets onchain. Nine

years in native tokenization not wrapped backed by Black Rockck, Morgan Stanley and Kathy Woods Arch Invest and chosen by the New York Stock Exchange, VanbNy and Apollo to do it at scale. It's the regulated bridge between traditional finance and crypto tokenize the world at milkroad.com/securitize. Okay, cool. uh looking down the road, you know, like you've you've got liquid, you've got cash, you've got stake. Those are like kind of the three products of the DeFi bank that you guys have built on. Are there any other things on the road map that you want to talk about?

Like I know you guys got a call in August about some things plans for the rest of 2026, but just generally like where do you see the progression of the growth of this DeFi bank and and and what's kind of like on the road map that you're excited about? Yeah, what I'm excited about is just that you can do things and you will be able to do things that are just not you can say that what you can do currently and you know with the uh with etheri are versions of things that you could do in a trify institution right like okay we have a credit card okay you can get a credit card uh you know we have cash back other people have cash back um uh so okay the quantity of rewards is different but it's sort of fundamentally similar you can hold your assets in ether you can

hold your assets in a, you know, in a bank. Um, uh, so all of those things are are kind of, you know, uh, better versions of things that that exist. I'm excited about doing things that you just you cannot do in in Trafy institutions and and some of that is going to uh is is part of the some of the announcements that we're going to be making in Ether summer. um uh we're we're just going to be uh launching these really exciting things that um that are you know the the first iterations of uh of things that you just cannot do in uh you know in Trafi. Uh one of the things that you may have noticed is uh uh as just a I'll give sort of a hint and a a preview of that is you may have noticed some aip uh coming out where they're going to be

launching or we are going to be launching in in code collaboration with a a dedicated a v4 market for etherf uh and so you know maybe you can uh you can use your imagination what that might be might be used for but there there a lot of things that are going to be pretty exciting uh with that >> uh Mike, just so everybody is on the same page, what is EtherFi Summer and when is that happening? >> Yeah, so it's happening August 13th. Uh I mean, it's just a big release uh a big uh there's a number of things that we're going to be announcing, not just product uh uh related. Uh but we're we're going to be sort of packaging these things up into kind of like probably either um uh quarterly or maybe by annual kind of big

uh big releases. and ETH price summer is one of the uh the first of these where it's just sort of a package of really cool product things that we're uh we're shipping. >> Okay, cool. Yeah. And I just wanted to make sure people know that that's coming to to be on the lookout for that when that when that arrives. Um Mike, I I think that there are a lot of questions I had prepared and wanted to ask you about Ether Summer. Um but because that's still on the horizon, I won't press you too much on that. But um I'm I am curious to hear though like you know we talked about this like talking about your view on we started the conversation talking about your view on DeFi overall and I am curious about like your vision for like what you think the the the

trajectory looks like from here. We we are getting uh you know a regulatory environment that's much more friendly to digital assets in the United States and clarity from the SEC and the CFTC and maybe the Clarity Act. like from here, you know, you said you want to see DeFi offer products that the traditional system can't. Talk to me a little bit more about what that looks like and and what that world becomes as we see these things start to continue to evolve and and new products come to market. >> Yeah. So, I mean, the regulatory framework I would I guess that there's a 50% chance the Clarity Act passes. I you know, >> that's as good a guess as anyone. So, yeah. Right.

>> But, uh look, things are at least moving in the right direction. you know, we have uh uh I guess what two more years of uh of crypto friendly administration and uh after that I mean I we'll see how much work can can get done um so that things are sort of locked in place uh after that. I mean who knows maybe maybe they clamp down again maybe um or maybe crypto is now you know enough of a lobby group where it's just whatever parties in power uh you know has to uh provide some value I guess to the ecosystem. Um, but look, I I mean, it's a good thing. I I think at least the the really aggressive and bad faith enforcement actions have stopped. I mean, that's

that's a huge positive thing. Uh, people at least are free to experiment now. And and I think that's been mostly a good thing. Interestingly, like we're seeing less we're seeing fewer blowups and scams than I think we were seeing during the time when there was very aggressive and punitive enforcement because in a sense when you had that kind of aggressive and bad faith enforcement, you know, the only people willing to really work in the space were the scammers, right? Because boy, they they didn't they didn't care about that. They were offshore. They were they were hidden. And so it just led to this proliferation of of scams, you know, whether it was bad exchanges, centralized entities or bad DeFi protocols. Uh whereas today, I mean,

it's it's actually much more dominated by, I think, well-meaning players like us, like a lot of the uh RWA, you know, real world asset providers. Um like the market seems to be much more about those kinds of uh uh real things that provide actual value rather than just the speculative uh you know, gambling stuff. So anyway, so these are all positive. I mean, I don't I don't have any crystal ball and terms of where things are going to go, but I'm optimistic that at least uh uh you know, things are in a better state and will continue to improve. >> Okay. Well, when you find a crystal ball that predicts the future of crypto, please let me know because I'd love to talk to you about it. Um Mike, I I do want to ask a question here. You know, you said that Ether has mostly grown

through word of mouth, through referrals from users who really love the product. And I I feel like a problem that a lot of the the players in the digital asset industry have had is sort of cutting through the noise and getting the marketing and the messaging out there about what they're building. There's a lot of, you know, hostile players telling, you know, talking about scams and other things that like kind of m make the the dominant branding for the industry overall. But like does Ether have a strategy to try to like get that word out there more and do some more marketing and like let people know more about what they're building and and sort of u get the word out, so to speak? Uh yeah, we're working on it. I mean, we we have a uh a marketing team of one uh right now and you know, yeah, we're

working on investing uh uh more into that. Uh we we are as I guess I'll preview like a little bit that as part of Ether Summer, there's going to be a bit of a brand refresh. Um not a complete rebrand, like we're not changing the name or anything. Uh but just a bit of a, you know, a bit of a refresh. um it's going to be a lot more friendly and it's part of a an evolution I would say you know if you looked at Etheri let's say a year ago or you know a year and a half ago it would have been like hardcore DeFi totally impenetrable to you know a normal person whereas today I think a person going to our site and downloading our app uh you know you can tell it's crypto it still looks a little bit maybe intimidating or

confusing but uh uh but at least you you kind of get a sense like okay this is some sort of banking you know fintech like thing. So, this is along that continuum where it's it's going to be much closer to a normie friendly uh product um while still uh you know being plugged into kind of stable coin you know banking. Um so uh yeah so that anyway I guess that's that's part of the Ether summer uh refresh. Is there anything else you want to tell me about this uh collaboration with a that you alluded to or like more details you want to give me on that the previous what's coming?

>> I mean I think I've said as much as I can but just look it's a dedicated a lending market uh for uh for you know etheri users uh as you can imagine I mean you probably do a lot of things uh with that um uh so yeah so we're I think it's going to be really cool. Okay, Mike. Well, I won't push you for any more details on these things, but I am really looking forward to those announcements in August. I think there's going to be a lot of cool things coming out of your product and the ecosystem overall, and I'm just excited for these innovations. Um, Mike, I I really appreciate you coming on the show and sharing a lot of what you're building with our audience because in a bare market, it's always exciting to see who's building and what they're building. So, thank you so much for

being here and for sharing with us. Where can we send people to find more of you and your work online? >> Just go to ether.vive and try out the product. Uh, tell me what you think. That's simple enough. Mike, thanks so much for being on the Milro Show. >> Great. Yeah, thank you for having me. >> And thank you all for joining us. I'm glad you all were here for this today. Thank you so much for being here. Until next time, stay safe, stay educated, stay bullish, and we will see you all on the next episode of the Milkro Show. Bye. Want insights on what's moving crypto markets and how we're trading each event? Subscribe to our channel, join the Milkro Daily and Pro Newsletters, and start investing like the top 1%. This show is for educational purposes only. Nothing we say is financial advice. Investing is risky.