Institutions drive growth in onchain activity

Transcript

I think it's been the year that people in crypto have wished for for a very long time in terms of institutional adoption, but maybe they weren't actually quite ready for what institutional adoption meant. Bitcoin is fighting to hold on to this rally. The FOMO is intense, but what does this mean for people who are actually using crypto? And what do we need to happen for crypto to finally go mainstream? Hello and welcome to the Milk Road Show, the podcast that knows that none of us really knows how crypto works, but even if it's scary, sometimes you've got to ask. I'm your host John Gillan and today we are joined by Jess Holgrave. Jess is the CEO of Wallet Connect, the leading web 3 connectivity network that leaks over 700 wallets with tens of thousands of applications that enable seamless crypto payments, trading, and

interactions. Jess is one of the few people who actually knows what happens when you do anything in crypto. She has a ton of alpha to share with all of us today. So, if that sounds good to you, make sure you like and subscribe. Share this episode with somebody who's going to enjoy it. As a reminder, our podcast today is free and that would not be possible without our wonderful partners at Saber.money, the stable coin payments platform built for Asia. So, keep an eye out for more information about them later in the episode. But for now, welcome to the Milk Road Show. Jess, how are you? >> Hi, John. I'm good, thank you. How are you? >> I'm doing well. I feel a lot better after this Bitcoin pump that we've seen recently. Um, Jess, I I wanted to talk to you because you sit at a very

important point in in the middle of a lot of what goes on in crypto, but very few people, I think, actually know what Wallet Connect is or what it does or why it's so important. Could you just tell me a little bit in your own words about what Wallet Connect is, why it matters, and what people should know about it? >> Yes. So I think probably for most people wallet connect is familiar when they may have been using crypto. They've gone onto an application to do something and they've seen wallet connect as one of the options for how they can connect their wallet into an application. What we actually are is a connectivity layer, the default connectivity layer really in crypto and blockchains. So on one side of our network we have about 700 different wallets and those will be

wallets that retail users are familiar with like MetaMask or Trust Wallet. Um it's also a lot of the institutional wallets. So think Fireblocks, BitGo, Anchorage for example. Um and then on the other side of the network we have tens of thousands about 80,000 now applications. And an application can be anything from, you know, something that we might be familiar with in crypto like a DeFi protocol or an NFT marketplace for those of you who have been around for a while. Um, all the way through to payments companies, tokenized stock exchanges, um, compliance companies, banks, um, anybody who wants to be able to interact

with those wallets. And with an integration to wallet connect, it means that instead of doing 700 different integrations, you do one integration with us. That's the core value is just that interactivity with the participants on the network. And on top of that, we layer different products and services, compliance security um some payments products, um products for DeFi protocols, and products for developers. >> Okay. So, there's a lot to unpack here. Um you guys published a report that I want to talk about re uh as well. Um but I I wanted to start with this statistic.

You all processed over $27 billion of volume in the first half of 2026 alone. This is a huge increase from 2025. I wanted to get your thoughts on where you're seeing this demand and usage and all this volume coming from and and what has been growing from your perspective. >> Yeah. So the biggest chunk of volume uh that sits on the network today remains DeFi. has been the case for some time now and we're seeing obviously you know even that space is changing but I think the biggest area of growth is coming from more institutional use cases DeFi as a segment is uh has has big growth from the institutional side of course um but then we're seeing growth from um RWA tokenized trading for example um and of

course from things like payments these still make up a relatively small overall proportion of that volume, but they're the fastest growing um segments that we see at the moment. So, I think a lot of that volume, which is probably in line with what people are hearing and seeing in the market. We're seeing banks, we're seeing stock exchanges, all of these people start to engage with with this technology and we're starting to see that come through in terms of the volumes that we interact with. >> Hi everyone, this is John. Listen, our Milk Road Pro analysts nailed this AI bull market. They we 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 Milk Road 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. Links in the description. Milk Road Pro. Join now. I'll see you there. Okay. So institutional adoption, DeFi adoption driving a lot of this. Uh I also saw that USDC is leading the way with 155 of that billion dollar in volume and most of that was on Ethereum mainet. Um according to what I've seen from you guys published, you said that 93% of the

stable coin volume you're doing is still on Ethereum mainet. Why do you think we've seen such dominance from USDC and Ethereum? And do you expect them to continue to maintain this market dominance? So I think USDC has been the predominant asset that a lot of institutions will move in and out of for trading purposes. So if they are trading DeFi and they're moving from a volatile asset, they're going back into a stable coin. And if you're a regulated institution, USDC is the default asset that that you are using today. Um I think that will um that use will continue. I also expect though over time um certainly uh the the chains to diversify a little bit and

wallet connect started in a very EVM ccentric way. So it's no surprise to me that most of our volume still sits in the EVM ecosystem. Um, but I think we're seeing really strong competition as it were from Salana, some of these institutional specific chains like Canton for example. We launched a partnership with Canton earlier this year. Um, we're about to launch another partnership with a more institutional chain. So, we're starting to see that chain usage diversify. Um, and then from an asset perspective, I think it's early days, but obvious obviously Tether is also a a a big asset that we that we process for. And I think that one of my

hypotheses for 2027 is the predominance of non US dollar denominated stable coins is going to continue to grow. Um, I think this year we've seen early signs of that, of course, with the launch of the Hong Kong dollar from Standard Chartered. um and um and with other darham stable coins, for example, Brazilian Ray. So, we're starting to see um more non US uh stable coins and I think that that will be a trend that will continue through next year. >> Okay, I'm excited to talk to you about all of these things because there's a lot to unpack in that. Um but I want to go to this report you all published because I think this would be good for the audience to hear about this. You published a report called the state of stablecoin and crypto payments in 2026.

Um I I want to just start with your high level thoughts and takeaways from this report. What are you seeing right now in this space in 2026? What is so important for investors to to know about what's happening? >> I think the way that I would think about 2026 kind of thematically, I think it's been the year that people in crypto have wished for for a very long time in terms of institutional adoption, but maybe they weren't actually quite ready for what institutional adoption meant. Um which is [laughter] actually a lot of compliance and a lot of headaches. Um you know I think we've as an industry we've been excited about the fact that crypto and blockchains can um propose an alternative to the existing financial system um but actually instead of a like

one forone switch we're seeing this convergence of the traditional financial system with this technology. So it's not like everything's moved from one to the other but actually the way that these two ecosystems have to interact is really growing. um you know stable coins being used to move money cross border great but what happens at that last mile where you need something back into fiat um you know end users starting to want to spend crypto how do they do that easily maybe that's with a cryptobacked card there's compliance there's KYC all of this things these things that that come into it and I think this year with some of the regulatory changes that we've seen obviously mika has come into effect that's been really really prominent in some parts of the world

where we've seen some exchanges move out of different jurisdictions. We've also seen new requirements so you can't as an end user just copy and paste your address to remove that from remove funds from a regulated environment anymore. You need to actually sign messages for compliance purposes. A lot of this stuff has actually been really great for Wallet Connect because a lot of these problems we're able to solve when it comes to the interaction between a self-custody wallet or a wallet that's on our network and an application that sits on our network. But for end users, it's definitely created, you know, both opportunity, more things that they can do with their assets, but also this realization that crypto and blockchain

have to play nicely with the regulated landscape that we all operate in. And ultimately, >> well, crypto has never been fun about or a big fan of playing nicely with regulators, but um I I think a thing that stood out to me in this report was that you're seeing $46 trillion of annualized stable coin volume, which seems in like just an insane number to me. So, I'd like to hear more about where that comes from. But the other thing was that only 2% of this is retail payments. And it it kind of speaks to this idea of institutionalization of stable co of stable coins and of crypto overall. talk to me about what what's driving this and what we should take away from those statistics.

>> Yeah, so I think um when you think about adoption, where does adoption come most easily? It's where there's really big gains to be had and also where there are fewer decision makers and fewer behavioral changes that are needed. Um this is why if you look at the payments space, it's growing. But if you double down within the payments space, B2B payments are growing faster than consumer payments. Why? Because in a B2B payments flow, you really need some CFOs to agree that this is a good way of moving money. Obviously, you need your compliance department to sign off on it, but you get very big gains very quickly.

I can suddenly move even within a company if I have different entities in different parts of the world. I can rebalance my balance sheet and my capital allocations instantly. Whereas before that was taking me days and I was tying up loads of working capital. So, I can suddenly start to make these decisions and and move much more quickly. When it comes to something like pure onchain consumer payments, that's going to take a longer period of time because you've got to change the way that merchants accept crypto. For end users, you have to educate them and give them different user experiences than the ones that they're using today. Um, so that's why I think depending on the decision maker, depending on the target audience, depending on the the magnitude

of the efficiency gains, you're seeing different elements of this ecosystem move at different paces. The nice thing is I think all of those actually make a circular loop. So once a business is moving onchain, more likely to want to accept payments on chain, more likely to want to pay their suppliers, make their payroll on chain, more people are receiving funds on chain, they're going to want to spend those those assets. And so eventually everything will get get there. I think it's just a a question of pace. So that's one area on the payment side that I'm I'm really excited about.

And I think that um you know, as I said, we are seeing fast growth there. Although those absolute volumes um are are still relatively small in the big scheme of things, that other piece, that really big chunk we we're still seeing continues to be trading. And that's no surprise probably for anyone who's been in crypto for a long time. And and that continues to be, you know, I guess what dra what attracts a lot of institutions to this space. But within that trading bucket is not just like the crypto trading that we might be familiar with from the last few years, but is also things like tokenized assets, tokenized stocks um equities bonds whatever that is. Um, that's, you know, anybody who is on crypto Twitter at the moment

is seeing that. You know, Bass recently launched tokenized uh tokenized stocks within the app. We're seeing that from Robin Hood. We're seeing that from from many, many other participants. and and I think that will also continue to to drive a lot of growth over the coming years. >> Okay. So, there's a lot in there. Um, but something I wanted to get you to expand on was another thing that stood out in this report. 90% of high throughput chain volume is from bots uh and DeFi, which is not commerce. Um, and I wanted to get your thoughts on that.

Like what what should we take away from that? Does that mean that most of the people using stable coins right now are bots and DeFi traders? Um, and you do you expect that to change? Do you see that growing and h how are you uh seeing that play out right now in the market? >> Yeah, so I think um yes, most of the activity is trading. It's it's still DeFi. Um obviously crypto markets have have have gone down and not been performing so well, but the actual volume of activity there continues to be to be pretty high. I think we've seen a bit of a transition away from maybe like the retail trader that you know who's trading from a self-custody wallet like a MetaMask or a trust wallet for example and and the balance has shifted towards

more institutional wallets. So hedge funds, businesses, anybody that's a bit more institutional who's using these custodian or institutional wallets to do to do trading. Um, so that's one shift that that we've seen, albeit within that like broader growth of of trading. >> And are they doing it mostly with bots? Is that the takeaway from this? And what's a high throughput chain? Like how do you define a high throughput chain? [gasps] >> High throughput chains um for us is anything where there's like very fast settlement time which makes it great for trading. So um you know Ethereum continues to be as we as as the report shares in Ethereum continues to be the biggest volume in absolute terms on on

the wallet connect network. Um but chains like Optimism, Arbitum, Canton, um a lot of these that are more designed for very fast settlement I think are are the ones where we see particularly this like segment of bot activity that those tend to be the chains where that is active which makes which makes sense right it's the same as any other if you look at traditional financial services where do you see the algorithmic trading taking place it's in very fast uh you know like much more fastpaced trading environments um versus like a traditional long short equity environment for example, >> right? Well, I think it's helpful for our audience to know who they're trading against. So, that's a good context right

there. Um I I want to get your thoughts on the rise of AI agents and what they're going to do to change this landscape because there's been a lot of talk of agentic finance, agentic commerce, um but also micro payments and how all that kind of intersects with with crypto but specifically with stable coins. Are you seeing any impact of that yet or what do you expect to unfold in that space as that starts to play out? >> I think we are seeing what we are seeing right now is experimentation and innovation. I don't think we are yet seeing great volumes. We are seeing people building really innovative solutions. At Wallet Connect, we've developed an agent SDK so that your agent can use your wallet on your behalf. Um so you use wallet connect to

connect to your wallet so your agent can buy things and and do things on chain. So um there are things like this that are being built and obviously teams working on things like x42 the cloudflare announcements recently I think are very interesting with their with their wallet specifically for agents. Even the big firms Visa and Mastercard are thinking a lot about agentic commerce about all the security implications of agentic commerce what that means for chargebacks on cards etc. And I think stable coins are a really good uh like primitive for agentic commerce and agentic activity. They're fast. Uh they're instant settlement.

There's no chargeback risks, etc. And so it makes it a really useful prim primitive for that. Um but I think we're still in the pretty early days of of consumers actually using this at scale. I'm I am a big uh AI user and I cannot wait for the day that it's really easy for me to just ask my agent to do my grocery shopping. Um I'm like I'm I'm gunning for it. But the fact that it's still really hard for me to use this in in practice aside from some of the like X42 type implementations, I think it's going to be a while until we see meaningful volume on that side.

I used to when I worked at Black Rockck, I knew very closely one of the the guys who worked on our AI team and I used to go by his desk all the time and be like, "Have you made me obsolete yet?" And he'd be like, "No, John, it doesn't work like that." And I'd be like, "Well, hurry up, Matt." Um, so yes, I I think we're all looking forward to to letting the agents handle the friction of groceries and things for us. Um, Jess, I wanted to get your thoughts on on something that's happening this week. On on Friday, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Kevin Worsh, is scheduled to speak at the Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium, which is a fancy word that means that the central bankers are meeting Wyoming to talk about policy.

But the the title of the symposium is uh financial innovation implications for payments and policy. And this seems really directly related to what you're working on. Why is the Federal Reserve so focused on stable coins on payments and the implications there? And sort of, you know, what are you expecting to hear coming out of this symposium? So I think if I was a central banker today um this would be probably even higher on my agenda than than AI would be. Why? Because ultimately currencies are the monetary policy are the monetary tool that we have to control economies. Right? So when we

think about monetary policy, the assets that we're printing, um how those circulate in our own economies and how those uh those currencies interact with our um like balance of payments with other economies i.e. global interactions with with other countries all of this dictates ultimately the value of our currency. So whether a US dollar is doing well on a global scale or doing poorly on a global scale is related to the monetary policy as well as obviously things like fiscal policy but most specifically to monetary policy and with

the dominance of US dollar stable coins globally at the moment I think that puts a lot of pressure on the US to maintain that position. The US has always been the reserve currency of the world, the pro dollar, you know, that's that has been the case for the last 60 or 70 years now. Um, but I think with the velocity of of like M M0 money supply, it's something that I would be concerned about if I was the Federal Reserve. I would be more concerned about it, I think, if I was uh the head of a central bank for a non US dollar denominated currency. Certainly, if I was uh, you

know, at the ECB right now or um at the Bank of England, this would be really top of my mind. Um because the last thing that those countries want is for the US dollar to be the predominant uh currency that underpins all of their trading and and commerce. Um because that will um reduce the impact that they can have on their currency's performance with monetary policy tools. Um, so this this is really going right down to the core of like global uh global economies and how they interact with each other.

>> You know, one thing we've talked about a lot on this show is that crypto is quickly becoming a huge part of the global payments infrastructure. And nowhere is that more obvious than in Asia. But if you're actually running a remittance company or a payment business, you know that the hard part isn't moving the stable coins. It's dealing with local banking partners, compliance, liquidity, and all of the operational headaches that come with sending money into places like India and Southeast Asia. That's why today's partner is Saber. They give payment companies stable coinpowered infrastructure to collect and make payouts across Asia without having to build all of that complexity themselves. They've already processed more than $3 billion in transactions across 40 different countries. So, this isn't just a concept. These guys are actually doing this for real. If you're building payment infrastructure or expanding into Asia, make sure you check out

saber.money. I think this is really important and I want our audience to understand these things because most people in crypto who watch YouTube videos are not really interested in stable coins but there is a multiundred trillion dollar war being fought and crypto and stable coins are at the center of it. So I think this is really important. Um you mentioned this a little bit in in your prior answers but the the Mika legislation in Europe you know just you just mentioned the European Union the European Central Bank. um that Mika legislation has rolled out and it pushed I think close to a thousand different crypto businesses out of the European Union. Um some of them Tether, Binance, some of the biggest names in crypto. Can you talk to me a little bit about the impact of this and what's the strategy that Europe is pursuing and chasing so many

crypto businesses out of the continent? >> Very very good question. What strategy are they pursuing? >> Um [laughter] I I can't tell something's going on, but I I would love to hear your thoughts on the whole thing. you could you you don't have to guess what their strategy is, but like what what is happening and what do we need to know about that? >> Yeah. So, so like I think um even outside of crypto and stable coins, the European economic area um and and particularly like the Euro zone is has all these questions in mind. How do we retain sovereignty as Europe, right? um you see it outside of crypto, even in just like the regular payments space

where there's been moves recently to promote payment methods that aren't controlled by US companies. So, um card payments, Visa and Mastercard are still the predominant form of of commerce here. Um but actually those are US businesses that's driving um you know profits for companies that sit outside of the European outside of the European Union. Um and so this kind of push to we go and to other kind of European native payment methods is is part of that strategy too. So there's one thing which is like how do we bring more things into Europe and make sure that it's European

c companies delivering for the Europe zone so we're less reliant on businesses that sit outside of our outside of our control and outside of our economic area. The second thing with respect to to the Mika legislation and the crypto environment more specifically I think is you know the the EU has always had a uh slightly more conservative perspective on this industry. It's less been about like just go and go and do whatever you want. Um there's a huge amount of concern around consumer protections um on disclosures that that fall in line with other European legislation. Look at things like GDPR for example. The eur

Europe has always kind of been at the forefront I think of of some of those policy decisions. So with Nika, I think it's been about trying to create a framework that satisfies all of the member states in terms of how they would approach this type of regulation um and make sure that there is a strong regulatory framework. Now I think Nika itself you can argue there's good and bad things about it. One of the positive things I think is it does deliver clarity. Um which is something that in other parts of the world we haven't had for a really long time. So at least there is um you know this it's very clear what you can and what you can't

do. Whether those boundaries are drawn correctly at the moment I think is really the big debate. Um but clear regulation ultimately is actually very helpful for an industry. But but but to this point on where those boundaries have been drawn, that's what's forcing some companies to to you know not want to comply with that regulation and therefore not operate in in Europe. I think it causes probably more problems for consumers than for anything else because if I'm holding lot of tether and suddenly it's very hard for me to move in and out of that asset. Um you know that's a that's bad for for consumers.

I think there are there are edges around that polic, you know, th that regulation that mean that you can still put those funds onto an exchange and and um trade them into something else. You just can't take Tether back out again. Um so I think it's not necessarily great for the consumers that that are operating today and making that transition. Um, but I think there's, you know, ultimately probably some good consumer protections that come in for that next wave of people who are who are starting to hold these assets.

>> I don't know if you would have transparency into this or not, but have you seen any meaningful change in European adoption or usage of of stable coins or of digital assets crypto in general since this framework came out? or like because I kind of wondering if like so many businesses got chased out of the European Union, does that mean that like Europeans just kind of can't really do much in crypto anymore or like have you not seen any meaningful change after this happened? >> Um after Mika came in, we saw some change in terms of the volumes and the movements kind of crossborder of some of this. So um we saw definitely like a big outflow like reduction of USDT volumes from the European area and and that was somewhat replaced by USDC for example.

So we've seen we have we've seen some behavioral changes. I don't think we've seen overall though like a drop in usage of the of digital assets as a whole within within the European area. >> Okay. Well, that's helpful context and I appreciate you sharing your perspective on all these things because there's a lot going on. Um, you know, you mentioned the Clarity Act which is hung up in Washington that may or may not get through Congress. We'll find out, you know, in a month or so. Um, but the Genius Act has gotten through Congress. That has been passed into law. And I think a lot of people may not know this, but that doesn't go fully into effect until January 18th, I believe, of 2027.

Um, what changes are you anticipating that will happen for Wallet Connect, but also for USD stable coins in general once that legislation goes into full effect? Does that just mean US dollar stable coins like take over the globe or like what actually happens once we hit that point? >> My expectation is actually that not much is going to change in January. I think a lot of the impact has been priced in already. Um and by that I mean the main impact that I saw from uh from from Genius when it was announced was um you know it was giving institutions confidence about how they could operate.

Um and I think we had seen for a very long time banks um other institutions especially regulated institutions who have had you know a whole plan and a strategy that's been written in board decks for a really long time but the big you know the big red writing at the bottom of those was like oh regulatory uncertainty and as soon as that went away people were able to take those board decks off of the shelves and say yep we now feel confident to actually start implementing this. Let's start building products. Let's um start thinking about this, you know, not just as like nice press releases, but things that actually touch our core offering to consumers. How do we bring the benefits

of this technology to our customers? So, I think a lot of the impact of genius has already taken place in terms of um institutions and companies being much more confident that they can operate within a very clear regulatory framework. How are you seeing these different players like the European Union, the United States, China trying to take action to promote their currency? Because you know, you said earlier that the currency is the most important monetary assets and tool for controlling economies and like how these central banks, you know, express their will into economic outcomes. uh what actions are you expecting to come in response to the USD like stable coin act genius from other countries and like

just how do you see this like currency capital war evolving from here where we are today? I think probably the main impact is that some some governments who may have been pretty reluctant to have a stable coin have move are moving forward with it. Nevertheless, um Euro zone is a good example there. We're not going to have a CBDC. We're not going to have a CBDC. We're not going to have a CBDC. Oh, we might have a we might have a Euro stable. We might have a Euro stable coin. Um, and so I think reality is hitting probably for some of those um some of those governments that if you don't have a stable coin that makes it easy for people to to use in your currency, people will just default to the US

dollar stable coins and that's obviously something that you want to avoid. So whilst you might not like the idea of having a CBDC probably is still preferential than having the the the US dollar become your kind of the reserve currency of of your own country. So I think that's probably the the biggest effect. I think then within those um within those um places you see maturing approaches you know once you it's very hard to say you can't use US dollar stable coins if there is no alternative but once we start to see those alternatives emerge and become realistic I think then we may start to see those places say you can't use the US dollar

stable coin you've got to use the Hong Kong dollar the euro euro stable stable coin whatever that is because there is a viable alternative. So I think it's probably two phases is this growth of um more local stable coins and and it's probably only once those reach usability maybe again this is bit of a hypothesis but maybe once we start to see those reach usability people will start to crack down a little bit more on the you know certainly which US dollar stable coins and maybe if you can use US dollar stable coins in certain environments at all. Well, I'm looking forward to watching how all of this uh currency wars play out. Um and and uh yeah, because there's going to be

a lot of I think moves and counter moves by all these players and it's going to be interesting to see how that develops. I want to drill down a little bit more on something you touched on in your answer, which is um ease of use and usability for users, for customers, for like the end user. That's something I think that Wallet Connect uh is a central part of your like product offering of just like making crypto accessible, fungeible, connected. Um, can you talk to me about what steps need to happen to make crypto more accessible for the everyday person because usability has always been a big problem, the UX, the UI in crypto. Um, how are you all thinking about that and what are you what are you doing to innovate there?

>> Yeah, so I think um it definitely has been a core focus for us for a really long time and and remains a core part of of what we try to bring to the ecosystem. I think the good news is that we've made a lot of progress in the last even 18 months. um you know gone really are the days that people need to write down 24 words and store them under their bed and store a second copy you know with their cat or whatever that is. So um some of these basic things like seed phrases from a user experience perspective I think we've I think we've solved we've largely solved you know gas sponsorship for example needing to have native token as well as the token that I want to trade in and some of the

friction that's caused there a lot of that has gone away and so I think you know we are we're at the like we've moved from like a Dminus score to like maybe a B score right now as an ecosystem Um the issue is that that that scorecard is not just isolated to crypto, it's isolated to all the other things that everybody uses in their day-to-day lives um you know today. So from a payments perspective, the benchmark that the consumer wants is I walk into the store and I tap my phone [laughter] and that's it. My payment is made. And that is a really high benchmark. But billions of dollars and tens of of years of of innovation have gone to making

that payment so so seamless. Um but that's the standard that we have to hold ourselves to as a crypto ecosystem if we want the everyday consumer to start using this this technology because whilst you and I are happy to bother with the you know three or four clicks etc because we kind of just like crypto and we want to be able to use it that's not what what my mom is going to be able to use um or want to use because she's she doesn't care what the underlying method is. She just wants to be able to make a payment. And if it's more complicated for her, she stood in a store and the 10 people behind her in the queue are huffing and puffing because she's taking too long to make a payment. That's a really terrible user experience. So, I think we've done some

really good things. I think there's a lot more to come. Some of the things that we're innovating on are tap to pay, recurring payments, making authorizations and and policies really easy. Um, we work with a lot of the um the chains on things like this. There was an announcement today around a new standard called 8130 for example. That's a new account abstraction standard um for the EDM ecosystem. So these are some of the areas that we um get involved in with the goal that we can create better user experiences and therefore drive more adoption where where it matters.

But yes, still still a lot of work to do until we get that kind of feature par with what consumers um expect. >> All right, I have a very specific ask for you guys. Somebody listening to this knows the person running marketing at a crypto or AI company that should be advertising with Milk Road. We reach more than half a million investors across everything we do and Q4 is filling up. So don't be the brand that waited too long. And the cool part about sponsoring the show is this episode is still going to be getting plays months from now. So send this to them, look like a genius, and tell them to go to milkroad.com/sponsor.

>> Jess, I really appreciate the work you're doing to make crypto accessible and more um just like human usable. And I am still one of those people who keeps my seed phrase with my cat. So thank you for recognizing that that's who I am. Um Jess, thank you so much for coming on the Milk Road Show and sharing all this insight and wisdom with us. I think this is something that's like really really important and you have a front row seat for all these things. So I really appreciate you sharing this wisdom. Where can we send people to find more of you and your work online? >> Um so me personally I'm on Twitter at Holgrave. Um best place to find more about what we do at walletconnect is either our website walletconnect.com our Twitter handle or exhandle um wallet connect.

>> Thank you so much for being on the Milkro show. I hope we can talk again soon. >> John, thanks very much for having me. And thank you all for joining us. I hope you all learned something today. So until next time, stay safe, stay educated, stay bullish, and we will see you all on the next episode of the Milk Road Show. Thanks for being here everyone. Bye. Thanks for listening to Milk Road. If you enjoyed the show, make sure you like and subscribe. And if you're struggling to find winners in the market, that's [music] exactly what Milkroad Pro is built for. Our analysts have called some of the biggest winners early, and Pro lets you see what they're buying next, every trade they make, and the research behind every position.

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