Mantle: from DAO treasury to an EVM layer 2

Transcript

GM GM welcome to web3 Academy your one trusted source to capitalize on the next big phase of the internet don't get caught in the hype cycle I'm Jaybird joined by my co-host car reidhead and we believe that l2s are going to change the world that's why we're carving a path for doers to confidently build and invest in web 3. Jay this was a great conversation I mean we obviously love l2s we talk about it all the time and that's what mantle is and so we of course dive into that journey and kind of what they're building but mental so much more than their L2 and I think Arjun did an amazing job of explaining that the story in this discussion really starts off I mean the first question I think I asked was how the heck do you

guys have 200 and what is it 60 000 each in their treasury so mantle has this long story that used to be a dow we'll get into it in the stallara down sorry but we'll get into it in the episode but just a a really really interesting success story of kind of web3 and following the ethos of web 3 everything from like governance community-led decentralization like all the things and they've been able to build some pretty incredible stuff as a result of doing that which is not easy and so Arjun just gave some incredible tips and advice for anyone building in the space so and then just the story of mantle was is incredible and origin's just an absolute rock star having previously been the vice president of growth at polygon where he was there for three years and

really joined in testnet or maybe right when they just launched mainnet and then was part of the rise of polygon and then left left polygon would have been pretty easy to just stay there but this guy this is a true Builder he is a doer at heart and he wanted to build again and so then he joined the mantle team and now as part of building mantle he's the head of ecosystem at mantle so he is really he's a Visionary that's trying to push get everybody all the trains operating at the same time and he talks about how they do that when there's so many things that they have shipped in the past six months it's it's incredible well he's been in the technology scene for a while and previous to web3 he was in Ai and I love hearing that because

most we hear a lot lately of people leaving web3 to go to AI he went and left AI to go to web3 so I think that's super cool and gives a couple extra brownie points for everyone that's for sure but well let's just get right into it because it's an incredible episode and so much to learn so we'll let you guys just go and soak it all in but before we do let's take a quick second to hear from our sponsors modern newsletters are built on paragraph that's right paragraph is a brand new newsletter platform that combines the best parts of web 2 and web3 to supercharge newsletters for both writers and readers build a community not just an audience paragraph uses blockchain Tech to allow readers to collect and own the words that matter to them this takes

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check out paragraph and capitalize on the opportunity of being early Arjun welcome to web3 Academy so excited to have you here today oh thank you for having me well let's start with you just coming off ECC we were just chatting before we hit record you're a little bit tired you're there for almost two weeks how was ECC what was the highlight so I think Etc was great this year a very high signal event great production value so super well organized you know something I was actually planning to tweet about uh later in the day but then like we had a like a huge turnout and huge number of projects I think almost 321 projects submitted for the eat uh Paris or rather eat Global hackathon but

I think one of the interesting Matrix movie was that 22 of the people who turned up had had never heard of web3 or crypto before so so I know there's like a lot of yeah oh so there's so much narrative out there right like oh web3 is like down and people are going to Ai and you know people have lost weight in this space but I don't think that's true I think when you go to these events you kind of realize that you know it's so early for us and majority of the people don't know about the space and and that's why it's a responsibility for all of us to go out there and tell people about what people are doing what we're building so that so that more and more people you know hear about electric space they get to see the good side as

well which is the building side the project side people are trying to you know actually create values so so I think you know I was super happy very bullish after HCC uh create quality greater out I think in terms for highlights you know I mean uh at the Disco sounding bias I would say that our Network you know mantle Network went live during ECC so for me that was the highlight and then you know we had a bunch of events where we had return out as well I think people are generally very happy we got some great feedback from developers from users about you know how they felt about the network what the UI ux was like so I think all things considered like that for Wheels main highlight but there were there was like a lot of good things about ECC in general and yeah so had a great time

yeah of course you know like almost 11 days was super exhausted but you know I think in Paris I didn't feel it one bit because the energy was just there and it was infectious and you know just get into you and then next thing you know like you're just literally sleeping two three hours a day you don't even feel it because it's just so much fun so so I'm super excited and I'm looking forward to the I think the next one is gonna be in Belgium so I'm looking forward to that one yeah and that's not you get home right after and you're exhausted and you sleep for like 12 hours straight it kind of hit me on on the plane back like you know I think almost all my meals you know I think the Arab sisters were very kind they didn't wake me up I just slept

power power naps so the entire flight conferences are exhausting there's so I don't understand how someone cannot know about crypto and end up at each CC like that's like one of the ones you're like that's like the ethereum based ones or the big ones maybe it's like permissionless or I don't know consensus they're more mainstream but that's that's wild but that's great news so there were a bunch of things it was not just Etc there was also the modularity something back where there was some amazing technical discussions by the way about like the design philosophy which we have also followed at Battle which is to build like modular design and and why that is the way forward there was like each global hackathon battles so they're like a bunch of different events so that's kind of why the turnout was very you could say uh well balanced where

they were like developers they were enthusiasts like all the funds or people like me from protocols so I think it was like a really good mix right interesting well before we get into man so I just want to get a little bit of a background of you you worked previously as vice president at gross at polygon would love to just get a little bit of an intro or take us however deep you want on kind of your background and your story and walk us through up until up until mantle okay so so I've been in index like throughout my life I started with software engineering then I worked you know across like a marketing business development like many different kinds of roles in in the tech space well I guess a turning point was in like May 2016 I was in an ID services company I was you

know reporting to the CTO at the time and then on a part of my job was to figure out like what would be the next growth engines in in the tech space so that's kind of when I was looking at AI I was looking at machine learning and I came across sort of the Bitcoin white paper and I like to tell everybody right you know I didn't get it the first time so I'd be like read it you know a couple of times and then I think what really struck me wasn't so much the cryptocurrency aspect of it it was mostly the decentralization this kind of a thought process or this kind of a thinking model of building decentralized account energy and the more I thought about it the more I kind of realized that how it solves some of the most pressing problems we face in the world

with the way how economics are structured and how you know things could be so that's kind of when it started um for me and then I started attending events it was such an interesting time in 2016 right like you'd go to this like event and they're like 12 people there like that that's it yeah it's like a totally different vibe back in the day but then I just made it a point that I turned up like whoever was there I made a point to you know stay in touch with the ecosystem see what's going on be careful part of some of the Discord channels at the time so the early once started reading about ethereum you know bought some meat to play around with the network and do all of that so and then after that you know I was for a time I was working on a computer vision startup

so I was in a I was an AI company we were Building Technology for self-driving vehicles and I sort of you know the founders ended up exiting the company and and that's when in 2020 is when I decided to go like full time into web3 so that's when I joined polygon as a head of growth NPD and at the time polygons test net period had just ended and we were going into mainnet and I was basically about to you know build out the teams get the adoption and then sort of uh just focus on all of those different aspects developer relation a bunch of things and yeah so that's what I was doing for about three years I had a great time made some great friends I think it was a very very special time in my life I really looked back at it very

fondly it's you know we achieved many different Milestones as a company and as a team then last November is when I decided that you know I wanted to do zero to one again so then I looked out of the chains out there I met the mantle team and then asked them you know is this where where are we there is tested out they're like no even the test net is not ready yes it was great like it's proper zero to one so then I tried the company and then you've gone through the tested phase now we've gone into me net you know I think the team has done a phenomenal job so first thing shout out to the team it's always a team effort I think a lot of people don't realize that a lot of team members whether it's on the technical side marketing business development you

know all different aspects of or rather all the different things you need to do to be successful and and to take a network from test Adder to me net it's like a lot of things have to work simultaneously so I'm super proud of the team I think they should be byproduct of themselves as well so they've done a phenomenal job but then like I say that this is only the beginning you know now I mean it has gone live we need to do many things you know as a Community First Chain we owe we owe it to the community do the best we can and to build sort of you know the largest sort of or the rather the most impactful Veterinary community in the space and we have that now we have the resources and we have a bunch of things to help us do

that so so now the onus is on us to sort of deliver the best product we can and that's sort of the best community we can to web3 so so the work really Starts Now I imagine being at polygon during the last bowl cycle must have been a really fun time one of The Darlings of the of the 2021 cycle that must have been amazing and hopefully you get to experience that same thing with the next cycle here with mantle but speaking of kind of successes and you said you guys are doing quite well and have good resources first I'd love to get a little background of just what mantle is but you just have a treasury of 2.4 billion dollars that includes 260 000 feet and then that doesn't even count you guys just launched mantle the

token which I think was like another 1.4 billion or whatever that is where the heck did you guys get all this maybe walk us through the story a little bit of man this is how you guys accumulated this much this many assets it's wild it's also I think the story starts back in actually during my polygon days it's back in 2020 2021 you know what we saw was the binance marching like you know ban outside sort of launched by a smart chain they started building out in honest like you know the first 40 and we could say building a decentralized community and buying a smart chain was super successful you know that model of an exchange and a chain will together kind of proved its value which is very interesting because later you saw FTX Solana try like a similar kind of a building Theory but obviously you know

that things went a little different there but so Byron's smart chain was very successful and then what happened is that every exchange you know was like hey this is what we should be doing and then we saw like you know Kobe tried their own chain okay extra their own chain so you had the founders of buy bit so by bit was again you know one of the largest sort of exchanges in the space mainly focused on sort of you could say uh investors so it's mostly a derivatives you know sort of an exchange it had a pretty I would say healthy spot volume but the focus was mostly on derivatives options trading so uh so there was a lot of pressure on founders of ybit as well from their Community saying that hey where is our chain like you know everyone has a chain we should

be building a chain and that's kind of when the founders Survivor took like this very interesting approach right so instead of trying to build a chain what they decided is okay you know let's take our resources and let's build a Dao we'll build a Dao and then the Dow can decide whatever it wants to do the da wants to build a chain they want to build this that that's the Dallas decision but from our side let's let's try to do this in the most decentralized way possible and this is kind of when they decided that okay let's build this Dao let's have this darshan have its own token so that we can have governance voting Etc what Bible also did is that they took I think over 2.5 BPS of their volume of their daily volume Right and started plugging that back into the bit

down treasury so that there is a treasury War for the Dao to draw upon and and obviously during the bull cycle being a derivatives exchange on a daily basis they were doing huge volumes so all of those resources kept like sort of flowing into the Dow Treasury and after a while of course you know Bible like stop doing that and then the treasury you know reached a size where it became let's say in some sense it was there was high confidence that this could lead to multiple self-sustaining businesses like you know as long as the Dow made the right decisions so the Dao kind of started as an investment now you know they invested in game seven it invested in edu Dao so they were like many Focus areas so one Focus area was gaming where they made investments in game seven with the idea that you know gaming has the

ability to bring in like a huge number of users into web3 so we should do that they invested in eduda which was focused on you know research and education because if you want to take the space forward we need to do that as well and then I would say this was about last year if I'm not from July August or June actually when uh a proposal was put onto the Dao which hey why don't we build a chain and then the community started discussing that okay if you want to build infrastructure like what should it look like and and why should we build it so there was a long series of discussions after which a proposal was put through and it was passed and that's literally how mantle was born the mantle chain this whole team we see all of these resources which we have all of

them have come from the Dao and the chain was literally born out of a dial board so so we very decentralized from the day Zero and since we were born out of a community action right from day Zero we've had a very large community to back us and this is when Once the voters passed then there was another proposal for let's say all the resources we to get through the tested phase and then if once we go into minute we'll get these other like let's say extra resources to you know sort of build out you the main net phase all of the resources came from the Dao proposals the past you know folks like me joined the team that is literally you know the story of Manchester so sorry but it's super interesting I didn't realize it came from iPad I had no idea about that the

Dow though any idea how many members are in there and like did they all just come from like they were just X users or current users of buy bits or like how did that Dow get built out it's a pretty big mix actually so the when I see it the dog has equal parts Traders equal parts funds and equal parts let's say community members who want to take part in governance adding to last count we probably have anywhere from 25 to 30 000 members of bit holders who've been participating in governance now you can go to mantle.xyz go to govern and see our forums right and you'll see like all the different proposals again you know through mantle we'll have the ability to further expand the community so as we can keep giving out grants as we do like other investments in the space Etc we'll

be able to Port MNT so the token and the hands of more people and over a period of time you know continue to decentralize the Dow uh a lot of the MNT funds are by the treasury so we also have this delegation to where if you go to again matal.xyz go to governance you can go to delegation and then you know what we plan to do over a period of time is delegate what's out there to let's say pillars of the community to hackathon Winners so that you know good Builders good people are part of the governance process and that we're able to take you know better and better decisions in the time to come so that's kind of how we planned sort of ecosystem building Dao building and to ensure that you know that we follow the ethos of how the chain was born which is you know we

always focus on being community-owned community-led and Community government so this is kind of how we are designing like our processes internally so just to summarize what I'm understanding is so buy bit exchange doing very well could have stayed as centralized family team decided to go decentralized created bit Dao decentralized by bit which had huge revenues during the Bull Run took that Revenue put it into a treasury and then started investing in as you said game seven focused on gaming at judao focused on education we actually had one of the founders on edge udao on the podcast about a year ago and let's go and now

mantle as well as some other projects so that's how mantle now has this large treasury of 2.4 billion dollars which is which is wild to think about so what was the the reason or the the purpose of starting mantle what was the mission that everyone said okay we need to go build out mantle and build this layer two why do that so the dog like I said started as an investment outright but when you start doing Investments at that scale it becomes very tricky because you want to be decentralized but then you also have to follow let's say procedures of you know creating companies doing other things like let's say being able to manage all of those Investments and over

a period of time what I think the members of the Dao also realize that we want to have real impact on web3 if you really want to take web3 forward then one of the most core pieces of this entire puzzle is going to be infrastructure so instead of trying to make these investments in random places let's build this keep this infrastructure at the core and then let's build the ecosystem around that right and if you can do that then essentially you'll be able to like use the current value which you have to create massively new value right for the community and for all the token holders as well and then this in turn will lead to sort of mass adoption of web 3. so instead of sort of investing let's say randomly here and there we already have a piece of infrastructure and that focus

on sort of growing that piece because ultimately that's exactly what you'd be doing in any case except that now it was scattered now it's just focused so that's kind of why bit Dao is now mantle governance that's kind of why we rebranded the entire ecosystem to mantle the token from bit to MNT because this is kind of what we want to do so the dial now has taken on a new form where it is more of a product focused app right which is where we say that mantle is the first product where we can do Master value creation and build a great Community there are other products on the way so one of the things which you'll see on the website is liquid staking derivatives like an LSD protocol through governance you will continue to build out other new products but all of these products will be

synergistic in nature built around this core infrastructure piece right so if I want to talk about the entire ecosystem of mantle it's not just the Dao right so if you look at like for example for me if I were to describe it as a chain so we've got like a massive resources in a doubt right we also have the support of a large exchange right we also have the support of the Venture arm of buy bit right which is Mirana Ventures which is a LP in like every major fund you may have heard of like dragonfly Pantera lemnis cap foliage play Ventures animuka Brands so essentially it's a fund of arms so we've got a big ecosystem there we also have a few other companies like yeeha games which is bringing a webto games to web3 there's another let's say Autobook exchange called Apex decks so

it's a very large ecosystem of you could say of companies and bodies of decentralized bodies which are all working synergistically but around this one core infrastructure piece which exists today so if you look at it as a as a sort of an impact or a value creation engine like this is the best setup you can possibly look for and I was telling you earlier that with binance and with some of the other chains we've seen that the chain and the exchange model has the potential to create tremendous value the only problem we've seen is that in many cases because if they're run in a very centralized manner then there's a very high chance that eventually the system will be either co-opted by bad individuals what we saw in the FTX case or rather become sort of this Haven for let's say projects which

tend to destroy value like you know let's say pump and dump schemes so what you need in any model where there is a chain and an exchange where you have this engine of you know Mutual value creation which is can create tremendous value is that you need a system of checks and balances and this is kind of why our ecosystem is so interesting is that we have you could say a Dao right so we've got our own you could say decentralized sec to ensure that this entire ecosystem continues to create value because like I was saying that metal was born out of a Dao vote the Dao also has the power to kill Matt so tomorrow if you start doing all sorts of like you know crazy stuff on the Chain all of these bump and dump schemes Etc the Dao can decide that guys we

didn't sign up for this kill the product or kill the tea and then it would be like a hard refresh so so this is kind of why in any model like this and or rather in any model in the world whether it's chance of tremendous value creation there's always a chance you'll be cooperated by wrong people which is kind of why if you have a decentralized body like a Dao which has all the money and ultimate Powers you know then you can ensure that the system will always behave in a certain way where we are always creating value for the users versus trying to extract or destroy value and that's kind of why our setup is like so unique and you know why we feel it has like a higher chance of success in the long run really cool and so do you still have an

affiliation with buybit and just to clarify Jay when you give your summary they didn't decentralize buy a bit buy a bit still exists as a centralized exchange it's still its own thing they just share some revenues and send these at 2.5 or whatever it was over does that still exist and is there still this sort of affiliation or now that it's mantle has it moved and it's completely separate entity now and there's no affiliation so there's no reaction as such I would just say we would still work in a synergistic manner so I'll give you an example so what is an exchange warrant at the end of the day exchange wants high quality projects to come in lesser tokens so in mantle what we can ensure is that the projects is doing really well which are creating lots of value and you have built large

communities we can give them let's say preferential treatment or rather begin them like you know listed early on you know so that they're able to create even more values when you have like sort of this kind of a system where you have an exchange as a sister entity in some sense then you know you can play these synergistic games and you don't have you know teams don't have to jump through hoops if they need to for example get on an exchange and get out of a distribution so that's kind of how it works it's more like a federation so when I say like mantle treasury it's not as if you know I can go to the Dow take out like 100 million that's not how it works everything requires a proposal like if you go through our forums right from the Eco fund or you know what if

you really want to see your transparency go to mantle.xyz word of governance go to treasury monitor and this is something which is very unique which only we do right so if you go to the treasury monitor you can in fact pull that up right now you can go to the treasury Monitor and you can see every dollar which we've got from the Dow how we are spending it line item by line item you know I'd love it if you could like maybe share the screen and show her to maybe like yeah yeah I'm bringing it up right now let's take well if you just just look at that right so line item by line item you can see because all of the resources which we have have come from the Dow this is not VC money or this is not like somebody's pocket money right this is

the community's money yeah so click on mantle Network budget like just click on view and then you can see line item by line add up if you scroll down all the transactions which you've done and you can like go to usdc received sent if you like pull that down so we're seeing here 2.5 million USD sent out in May 2023 1 million for funding 700 000 for Workforce 23 000 for marketing wow you don't need much on marketing when you're an effective Network and this is updated like every two weeks everything we do is completely transparent you can see like where you spent what we've done and no network operates like this nobody has a real

live track pnl right but we have to do this because the way we see it it's our responsibility to the route we want to operate in this transparent decentralized manner so and we want to like put pressure on others as well that this is how you should actually run your chain you should be this transparent at the end of the day so this kind of gives you a flavor of how we think about these problems how we want to run the kind of culture which we built internally and what the community can expect and the time to come like we want to be very transparent and have like let's say community participation via sort of governance and sort of snapshots so that we can execute these things it's also a fine balance where we want to involve the community fraud critical decisions but on a day-to-day

basis let's say you want to run the company like the team should have the freedom to do it but because you have the tools like the treasury monitor we can always ensure that there's even when the team has the responsibility and the power to do things it's still transported so that's kind of obviously well I was just going to say so you guys recently launched the mainnet for me until we'd love to just hear kind of your thoughts around that how that went did anything happen didn't break did everything work smoothly what was that like and then I'd love to just have in the conversation of I mean we talk about lt's all the time it's the hot thing right now LT summer you call it although we've been calling LT summer for years now but finally we have it but it is heating up this competition there's a

lot happening there it seems everyone's moving there there's a lot of value moving to l2s so we'd love to hear is there a differentiator between mantle and the others or is it just there's so much block space needed that like we just need a bunch of these l2s and you don't even really need to differentiate would love to hear kind of your thoughts around that great question so I think coming to the midnight launch like again super exciting things have gone really well you know dashboard so as such the network has been Rock sorted like I said we've got like great feedback regarding like how responsive the network is how the user interactions are like so super proud of the team for having delivered such a great product in terms of like how the chain is structured we've gone with the op stack so we've gone to the

of the let's say the original op stack the ovm version not bad Rock so I think that's the next step for us but we've gone with the original op stack we've sort of built into it like you could say a modular design where for data availability we've got eigen layer so this is also interesting that we are using eigen data availability but it's eigen D is actually still not in production I think it will possibly be in production in another three four months so then we can console Source contracts and switch to eigen layers eigen da but we wanted to be a modular chain from the from Day Zero and to our extent you could say the market has kind of in some sense validated our technology choices because I recently saw the Forum post for what has been proposed for the cello L2 right and it's exact it's basically the

same design go with OP stack build around eigen layer so we were like super happy because in some sense it validates our design choices of how we wanted to build the network and you know we you know slowly the tvl is climbing I think we've gone gone past now 20 million and you know it's just growing on a day-to-day basis a big Focus for us as a blockchain is to you know build lots and lots of native apps so when you mantle for example um and this kind of ties into the other questions you asked me about you know this crowded space of l2s the core strategy of mantle is that we want to be able to build our own Blue Chip projects see when you have the liquidity you got the infrastructure right so you got liquidity you got the infrastructure and you have an exchange you have the power

to build your own Blue Chips right and we want to turn mantle Network into this even for like create Builders and great entrepreneurs to come and sort of build it sort of the next unicorns of the battery space because we have the liquidity and and sort of the distribution mechanism to help them so expect to see like a large number of native projects so you know for us the journey is going to be let's say the curve is going to be it's going to grow slowly but then that growth will will never stop right simply because you're going to see great protocols Come Out Create teams come out of mantle you know each creating sort of their own value creation engine and you know all sorts of new tokens and then we expect to see like a lot of value we you know be created on our Network and so

this is the core principle of how we want to like build our Network where instead of focusing on existing blue ships which are already deployed on nine or ten chains you know let's focus on Native projects first let's also prove our technology right like all the things I told you this is new tech it's not been seen in the market before and I think you know over a period of time more and more existing blue and some of the largest projects in the space will also take notice and then come work with us but we want to be there for the Builder right we want to be there for the Community First so that's kind of the focus which we have uh when it comes to putting out our Network we have like a a certain Niche like I mean like immutable is like gaming

polygon is I don't know big Brands nfts kind of thing and loyalties Etc you've got like arbitrary which maybe is focusing on D5 is there going to be a niche for mantle or what's your guys thought processor great question again like so in terms of the network we built a generalized smart contract layer which is like super low fees very fast transactions without like compromising security so I think technically you can build anything I think D5 is a very natural fit uh because of like I said the ecosystem advantages which we have but we're seeing lots of gaming projects also deployed with us because ultimately with the gaming whether you're NFD you know the problems you need to solve are still the same cross like you know when you look at it from an ecosystem perspective and we can solve those problems for projects we aim to build a

very composable ecosystem as well so I would not say that it will only be defiled probably start with D5 we are seeing a lot of interesting let's say growth in D5 as well right but different types of dexes now concentrated Liberty models per taxes you know perpetuals options so I expect to see a lot of that first but then a lot of games are also applying lots of energy projects as you know how to come so I think we will have a very composable ecosystem so I would not say we have a very let's say Niche but I think just because the advantages that she have I can kind of understand why D5 Builders would want to work with us and you know and why our strengths play directly into how you know D5 projects uh grow and scale coming back to the other point which you also talked

about that in this crowded like you know sort of L2 space so you're right so so first things I want to say is that I'm super happy that this is the state we are in but there are so many different chains it kind of shows you that over the last three or four years we've reached a point in web3 technology where the barrier to entry when it comes to building your own chain is reduced so much that you can literally launch a chain in like two or three months I think it's great for the space because it's still so early in terms of how we plan to differentiate ourselves is what I always tell people in web 3 and generally as a thought process is that in web 3 technology is open source right so what that means is that if you deploy technology on Monday like by Tuesday

everyone has access to the same or rather by Monday evening like everybody's got access to the same technology so in in open source technology right or rather than the open source World Technologies commodity right everybody has access to the same technology at the same period of time unless you decide that oh we want to license this because then if you start doing that you're back to web so when you have a world where technology is commodity the only differentiator or the only let's say measure of stickiness can be ecosystem right and when it comes to ecosystem we've got an overwhelming advantage in fact I would dare say that the advantage which we have is impossible to replicate like there is no other way where you can get like you know an exchange or use pool of liquidity this kind of a community a venture arm which is like

you know so well known and and as a well-oiled engine and all of these other companies also working with us like the cold start problem for us is a solved problem like all we really need to do is deliver great technology ensure that we support these ecosystems apps for building with us and as long as we can do that we kind of we could say have a short growth in some sense so I would say that our ecosystem Advantage is a core differentiator and and like I was telling you earlier that I feel is the only differentiator you can have it should stand the test of time because over a period of time technology is going to become even more commoditized it will only become easier to launch chains in the future but will it become easier to launch ecosystems I don't think so like for those you need those

ecosystem growth inverse and we've got like a unique let's say set of ecosystem growth levers which which like like I was explaining earlier this is possible to replicate so that's kind of how I would explain it I want to dive more into the ecosystem but before I just need to make a comment on what you said that you can now launch a chain in two to three months that's not far off like you know you say that kind of like exaggerating but you guys went from testnet in January of 2020. well I'm not exaggerating at all months later the data point I'm going off of is the r Zora team who's able to deploy an OP stack I think in like about 60 odd days right so I said two three months it's actually it's already lower than that and right so it's gonna be like two

weeks in in just maybe another quarter or something like that right which is great I feel that barrier battery has to go it has to become super easy right which is kind of why we are seeing these layer 3 app chain narratives come because people realize now launching a chain is not a big deal anymore or running them or doing all of these things but building ecosystems that continues to remain The Challenge and that will only become more difficult with time you know that barrier is only going to get tougher and tougher and tougher so which is kind of why you need like a real like interesting mix there so man so network tl2 is clearly the the Baseline infrastructure of mental ecosystem and a very important piece of mental ecosystem what are the other main pieces we sort of touched on the mental governance MNT token the fund let's can

we go through a few of those main pieces maybe starting with the token and break that down and how George should support the ecosystem very interesting let me explain it like this all right so when you look at a equal system let's talk about the ecosystem growth parts and I'll kind of talk to you about how the mnd token fits into this entire scheme of things right so what are the moving parts we have so we've discussed we have the chain right where essentially the MIT token will be used for gases it'll be used for infrastructures taking in the data availability layer it'll be used as the ecosystem token so all the D5 all the gaming everyone's going to use MNT so that's a chain then we have the Dao right marginal governance where again you have the m t token you'll be using to make all these

critical decisions whether they're related to Capital or to let's say you know growing or developing this ecosystem then we have the exchange where essentially MNT doesn't have a use case at all it's it's essentially just listed there where you know we just want to use the exchange to give projects distribution but it's a part of the ecosystem apart from that we also have new upcoming products so for example we'll be building a liquid staking derivatives product so if you see our treasury we've got almost 266 000 each in there so we we felt that where we you know create a LSD protocol first number one secure ethereum number two use those tokens to restake on eigen layer and secure our own network for added security and then we will also get yield which we can further use to develop our ecosystem and MNT token will have a use

case here as well right so if you think about the m t token it is kind of like you could say an ecosystem token where over a period of time it will capture the value or rather all the value which is being created in this entire growth engine whether it's a chain whether it's the LSD product or possibly any other future products right so this is the kind of you could say thought process which we wanted to go with that we continue to build more and more utility and more and more use cases into the MNT token and if you can continue to do that then we can build a big ecosystem or the governance will have more meaning because now it impacts like a series of products right so it will become a truly large ecosystem and then the token will capture all of this value so that's kind

of how we've structured this now in between we also have the other growth engines we've got Mirana Ventures like I said the Venture armor hybrid now Mirana Ventures is also interestingly running our 200 million dollar sort of ecosystem fund because it makes sense these people are experts on investments have all the tooling all the processes all the right people so they'll be helping us run our 200 million dollar ecosystem fund we also have a grant program where you know we want to give grants to upcoming projects and we've now revamped the process after doing the first cohort are going more and more detailed into projects and trying to see you know which ones would add the most value to our ecosystem we are exploring other ways in which we can involve the community and solve this decision making and you'll see some of those proposals

out in the weeks to come so we're doing like a bunch of different things to sort of impact the ecosystem and expect to see more and more use cases like I said the trajectory of the Dow now is to be a product focused now and to create products which is synergistic with this entire ecosystem so in some sense you will see MNT get wrapped into more and more and more and more products as time progresses and and luckily we have the resources to continue to take those kind of bets often you are new on products and yeah so that's kind of how you've designed the entire ecosystem and the token economy when you guys are talking about let's say you're just strategizing about you know the future of mental and that the Synergy I see here is Mentos like a country right like you've got

this new L2 which is like the real estate that's the land of the country you've got the Dow which is the government you've got the token which is your currency and then all these products and all these additional things being built are either like your cities or like the businesses the big buildings that are being built and you're basically trying to create a brand new digital Nation essentially do you guys see it as that way because that's what it feels like to me that is a great explanation I must say I can't say I visualized it exactly like that but I think now that I'm beginning to see it that makes total sense that's exactly what we're doing like at the end of the day if you ask me that you know Arjun all this value creation and all of this stuff why are you really doing all this

and then I would say that our objective is to build sort of you could you know the largest and the most impactful community in battery like you know use all these resources all these advantages that we have to really take battery forward right from bit daus like uh case or even if I go to even the creation of beta the focus always was on decentralization and answer if you know to have sort of faith in in token government technology so I think that's just such a great explanation it's it's exactly like this it's exactly like a country in some sense and we won't build like the most awesome country out there I love that and the interesting thing to me is the ways that you guys find revenues and I love the idea of you've got this big treasury I mean you use that treasury to obviously to give

grants and bring builders in and incentivize people to build and mantle just like countries do when they want companies to come in they give tax benefits they give grants Etc that's just how it kind of works but I love the idea of well we've got this big treasury why don't we stake it that helps to secure the underlying land that we're building on right and you can stake it two ways you said you guys are going to stake it on ethereum but also using eigelair which then stakes in and secures your own network so you're sort of like you're securing multiple different pieces of the infrastructure which I think is really interesting now this has been a I don't know if I'd call it fun but there's been a lot of noise about how you guys are going to stake this much Ethan where I saw a bunch on

Twitter going on if you guys going to put this on Lido and then laddle's a touchy subject in the ethereum ecosystem so now you're talking about potentially making your own walk us through what happened there and kind of like what you guys are thinking about in terms of how you're going to stake you know well I don't know how much you're going to stake you've got 260 000 each so I'm sure you'll do a decent proportion of that again like you know this has to go through governance so I can just give you an idea of how we're potentially thinking about this but ultimately the community will decide what has to be done next that's kind of why those proposals and those discussions are so important so that we also understand the voice of the community like there's I can have this opinion about what we

should do but ultimately the Arbiter is other token holders and so this is kind of why we have these open proposals and we'll continue to have what you know coming back to the LSD protocol like you said the many advantages in terms of security in terms of yield there are also other second order benefits like for example when you have like 260 000 eat it also roughly gives you maybe like point five to one percent of the block space on ethereum just via the nature of the stake so you can then build like some very interesting Atomic transactions between L2 and L1 and then sort of like really streamline those um sort of you could say transactions as well so it becomes like better UI ux and opens the doors for new kinds of D5 Primitives so they're like some second order effects as well which I think

would be very interesting it will set us apart as a network but coming to what you discussed I think I think it was first of all I really got a sort of really thank and give a shout out to the Lido team number one they built different they've done a phenomenal job they built a great Community I think they have a great product and it was so nice to see them you know put out a post out there come and support saying that hey you know we've got all the seats let's do something with it let's secure ethereum yes you're right that there's been also this other narrative that you know has Lido become too centralized do we have like too much power in one liquidating derivative should there be more I think having diversity in LSC protocols is a good idea ultimately like we say having diversity in clients or

light clients for for the network as well it's always good for the robustness of the network and reduce this part of failures so building our own Energy Products like kind of made sense to us as well where we could do this we could also then take the liquid state tokens and liquidity provision other protocols on the network so they're like some other like second third order effects in which how you know we can use this to create value for the MNT holders and and for the chain as well so this is kind of how we were thinking about it now the discussion point for us is that okay you can build your own LST product you can stake your own tokens there you're only there but then should we take like let's say a portion of the eat and then stake that with Lido and with other such

well-known and battle tested protocols right and as you could say as a contribution to ethereum and decentralization that's something which we were discussing internally that if yes then how like how much should we stay what should be the criteria because like I said you know this is the way we operate this chain and the way we operate the chain is is not just us like the team doing some research a day like the community has a say so we're trying to figure out what options we can put in front of the community the community can then vote and then you know we can like exercise those options so again this these are resources which belong to the Dao so we have to be like super careful like there are a lot of new let's say Liquors taking derivatives protocols which reached out to us but we also kind

of realized that we would only want to risk this these assets with let's say battle tested protocols you know who withstood the test of time versus maybe some of the new upcoming protocols so so to be trying to like figure out how we can like do this in the best manner so we'll put some options in front of the community soon and then kind of take a vote on that and you know find an interesting or rather let's say the best way to utilize eat and extract you know add the most value to the network and then also be able to create like new value for for the ecosystem yeah absolutely really interesting interesting I want to dive into the token a little bit more you guys just recently launched MNT right yeah MNT can you walk us through I don't know how much you were involved in that but would

love to just hear what that was like I know it when it happened I mean you guys obviously raised well not raised but now the market cap is what 1.4 billion so it's quite a bit so I wouldn't say it was quite successful what were the things you guys were thinking about when doing this I mean obviously we know why you did it it's going to have some utility throughout the ecosystem so it makes sense but was there any lessons that you guys learned that you did really well that maybe you didn't do so well but yeah what were your thoughts kind of as you guys launched that so I think number one before we launched mnd right and we went on this let's say rebranding phase we kind of realized that the narrative was very confusing there was the bit token then there was a

mantle chain like it was very confusing for developers and users we also kind of realized that the trajectory which the dog would take would also have changed now it will become a product focused hour versus an investment in doubt which is kind of weird we felt that not only do we need to change the name and then the token essentially is one is to one per token so it's not as if like we've changed the token economics of distribution it's literally the same but what we kind of realized is that if you're taking a different direction and now that the goals have also changed towards you know focusing on products building utility for this token through the chain and possibly other products in the future you know rebranding makes sense and and having let's say a new let's say Focus for this entire ecosystem also makes sense we've

actually put a proposal out there in the Forum which you know you guys can look into and you'll have all the details there of what we did but these were like some of the things which which stuck out to us I think in terms of doing well I think the tokens swap has gone without out you know has gone without a hitch I think there were some small red headings where for example there were some delegations which we had done by a bit some of those got revoked because the token didn't wasn't there so these are small you could say points which which are technical in nature which again the team is I think already found a way to fix uh there's a tool now on layer one where you can go and swap your token one is to one so I think all things

considered it has gone really well I don't think there's been any major failure anywhere I think the tricky part was that that since bit was already listed on a number of exchanges we would have to like do that one step at a time which is kind of why you will see that m t is on a few exchanges right now but we continue to grow that list and get Mt on more and more exchanges here we have to get legal opinion on the on the new token of because of the way it will be structured as an ecosystem token as well so so I think there were some of those things we need to solve some of the things are still solving but over in all I would just say that it's gone without Gone without a hitch like I can't say we faced any major problem till now and uh

I think the reception from the community has also been pretty positive where did the name mantle come from yeah so so I think it was something like you know what supports you could say like all the civilization and everything which happens on the surface of the Earth you've got the mantle which supports all of that so it's kind of that kind of a thought process and yeah the community is like run with that man like I think there was a decks which is going to be magma and then I think we gotta go full geography the network so I expect to see like all sorts of and I'm just waiting for like volcano or fears or whatever have you yeah but yeah so that's kind of the thinking for us that something that supports all civilization and everything and all the life which happens on on

earth like is the mantle there that's kind of what we aim to be so with so many aspects so many uh pillars of the ecosystem the the governance the community the token the chain what's the priority or the focus over the next you know short term next I don't know three six months 12 months you pick the time frame how do you stay focused and what is the real Focus now how do you stay focused actually all of these things have to do have to be done simultaneously I cannot say that we could say that oh we wanted to chain first to governance we can figure out no that's that's not really how we model on the ecosystem which is kind of why like for us it's been super

important to build these very cohesive and tightly in the teams all of these teams working together this is kind of why I think we use successful why we are where we are right now and where we will be in the future is is thanks to the kind of team and the setup which we have which allows us to work on all of these aspects simultaneously like if you think about what happened in the last three four months we've read we've changed The Branding we've done all the marketing community building the chain is has gone live the token has been exceeded like everything has happened simultaneously it's not as if we have to stop anything so it will continue to happen this way and again like Testament to the teams were able to do that I think over the next three to six months we need to do a

couple of things for sure so one of course we need to double down on our ecosystem development plans so we want to find like out of all the like I think 100 plus projects now building on mantle like which are the ones which which are going to be unicorns first so we're closely watching the ecosystem trying to see how we can you know actively manage the ecosystem help like projects connect to other projects what do those processes look like what's sustainable what's not so I think doubling down on ecosystem building is super important and as a addendum to that like focusing all of our ecosystem growth labels like getting the ecosystem fund launched and that proposal is also passed now getting you know the grant program really well oiled so that you know over a period of time we stop giving grants as a team and you

know give it more and more to the community to make those decisions so ecosystem development definitely super important number two in terms of Technology roadmap we bought like very Cutting Edge deck to the market but you know technology continues to evolve the time you know over the last year I would say since January of this year we've been studying cka technology we've been like looking at what is the new or rather the next leap we need to take as a network in terms of technology so that we're able to you know have the base infrastructure which can support Mass adoption so should we go ZKA should we do something between how do you decentralize it you know like the gene more and more and how do you make it more and more permissionless so on the technology side as well we have to like you know get back to the

community in the next couple of months about okay guys like now that we have this live what will happen the next six months or rather after six months is this right based on X study which we've done so we'll continue to sort of focus on on technology and and and see how we could take this modular stack idea and build out all of those different modules maybe work with other partners like for data availability instead of building and ourselves going with eigen layer possibly maybe for the sequencer for the proverb you know we could do another partnership and grow as a community so what is the ecosystem development like roadmap look like and what are we doing there what the technology roadmap looks like what are we doing there so that our users in the community can get a sense of what what to expect six months from

now is something which we need to now do the next couple of months and like I said we've been working on that for a period of time so I think communicating that and then sort of getting started on that roadmap is very important this is just the beginning so so many things need to work in Tandem and and we will do everything simultaneously that's just how we've created elvisible teams and that's kind of how we work internally as well so expect to see a lot of these things and yeah expect to see like a lot of adoption as well a lot of interesting the apps go live it's a new Builders come and you know build exciting new projects on mandrels so that's that's kind of given over the next like three to six months here's the thing that's on my mind you guys have accomplished a

hell of a lot right you guys have built so much and you're doing it as you said like like all at once you're building so many different things together and so there's a lot happening all at the same time and you're doing it via a doubt Dallas became a big thing 2021 really is when they like took off everything was a doubt everyone was like everything's got to be a dow and a lot of them failed right A lot of them realize really really hard to work in a decentralized manner in terms of decentralized governance in terms of just getting work done like getting done in a dow is very difficult and a lot of downs realize that over the last couple years you guys somehow though are I mean there's not many that made it through this bear market and like by made it I

mean actually built things of value and like are now more valuable than previously how the heck did you guys do that like what's is there a trick like what did you notice just being a part of that because it's very difficult to make decisions and to go and execute so many different things especially the things you guys are trying to tackle any advice there on how you guys bring able to manage that and work together throughout the style which is I think you said thousands of people it's it's obviously it's a little bit challenging I will not say it's easy but I think what made it easy for us is to be very clear about what decisions the community needs to make versus what the team needs to make right so first have this bifurcation like the operating team like you know my team and you know marketing and you know

all of us together need to be able to take a certain number of decisions on a daily basis so that we can run day-to-day operations right and all the major decisions like you know Capital calls ecosystem fund what should we do with the ease we have like all those things those have to be taken by the community where because it's the community's resources and this is kind of once you have this bifurcation it's super important now the advantage with the community side is that everything by governance is super transparent so you know what's happening everything the team is doing sometimes can be tricky which is kind of why the treasury monitor exists so this is kind of how we decided that okay if we are taking decisions we still need to be very accountable for what we're doing and and having the treasury monitor out

there which is updated like every two three weeks where we put a line item online atom what's happening it sort of enables us or rather you know you could say that it's also a trust problem the community might have that you know oh hey like you know the operating team has like these millions of dollars what are these guys doing we have no idea like there's this clear transparency there and when you have that that's kind of when you can run effectively as a unit so I would just give this advice to any like Dao government project that be very clear about what decisions have to be taken and then be transparent so that the community knows like what you're doing with the resources that the community has given to you and then you know have this dialogue with the community right so the kind of conversations we're

having right now is also a way for me to get the word out to the community to answer those questions so I really appreciate you know you guys doing this and and from our side like we will have to continue to communicate or rather over communicate with the community about what we're doing how we're doing these things so that that level of transparency is maintained throughout as mental Network continues to grow and as ecosystem continues to scale so I would say that this is like sort of the core way in which uh we solve the problem which we feel is a very effective way in in way that you know you can be token governed but at the same time be you know execution first incredible I'm so impressed I want to talk about your upcoming nft collection so this is your first Native nft

collection citizens of mantle can you tell us a little bit about this I think you're in whitelist right now and the mint is coming up soon yes yes so this is super interesting that this is sort of a dynamic nft which you will get if you're part of the whitelist and then as you continue to interact more with the network the nft will continue to mock your time you know and gain new attributes and things like this so essentially we wanted to turn interacting with the mantle Network into like an RPG game where your character the character evolves the period of time and then it's clear to everyone right so if you have that nft let's say as you let's say Twitter instead of a profile picture then people can see that oh this is like you know and then we plan to have a leaderboard where you can see you

know the top citizens of Vandal and then you know where you know we could incentivize people with like possible incentivization schemes or even delegations for voting maybe uh on the Covenant side so so this is kind of how we want to do it where essentially turn interacting with the chain into like an RPG game create a leaderboard where you can see other top citizens and then find ways to you know involve them even more within the community and the core operations of what we're doing so that's kind of the plan and it's it's by a celebrated artists as well Chen man has come up with these like awesome designs and she's done that before as well so we have confidence this is going to be really amazing really awesome collection and again kudos to the team who came up with this came up with this design and I think

it's going to be super exciting for the community yeah the art is amazing I was looking at it last night she's an incredible talented artist can anyone get access to the whitelist or is it only for mantles opening it up so we had the initial let's say a lot of people who signed up and then we'll continue to open this up so that you know you can gain citizenship to the citizens of metal is the country to the country it fits like such a good example I should explain it yeah oh wow there you have it right it's your passport and but one look you can tell us it's cash stops it doesn't matter so so this is kind of how we want to do uh yeah so so I think I think that's that's a great way I would

explain it like this going forward okay before we wrap up I just want to give you a chance to touch on anything that you would like our listeners to take action on whether it's your grants program the Eco fund we just talked about citizen of mantle go subscribe to the whitelist and become an nft holder become a citizen in the country how can people get involved in the mantle ecosystem so I think number one definitely you know follows on Twitter be a part of our Telegram and Discord channels you know that's kind of where we post all the latest information and updates from the network so you can continuously stay updated on what's Happening and and all the different things that we're doing uh I I think the other thing would also be that you know if you're interested in governance then I you know sort of you may want to let's

say find a way to get hold of let's say the m t token or if you want to take decisions yourself you want to delegate those decisions and you can be a part of our active governance process where and and at the start with you can go to the forums and you can see the kind of discussions which happen and then you know if you decide you want to be a part of those governance decisions as well it would be amazing I think at the end of the day the more active participation we have in our government is the better decisions we can take as a community and as a team that's another way for interacting with us and then you know please like you know try out our Network please give us some feedback on what we can do better what we need to do

you know what we need to improve on I think the more feedback we get from the community the easier it is for us to make changes I'll give you a very clear example as well like a currently uh L2 beat which is uh you know bartek and his team had put out you know some information about you know how we need to our documentation needs to be clearer so you know I met him in HCC and immediately within 48 Hours like our team was able to make those improvements and and so much so that the l2tb team also said that we're very impressed so when we get feedback like this from the community it gives us a chance to become better and improve you know and that's kind of what I was telling that team as well that you know please keep you know pouring over all our information and

keep please keep telling us you know what we can do better so I think the more people go to our dogs go through our code be a part of our Network the more feedback we can collect and that just allows us to be better and better and then deliver even a better product and a better experience to the community so I've just like implore upon the community to please please do so and share your feedback with us and and then you know we get there's something to fix then we'll get rid on it fantastic okay quick speed round some just some personal questions have some fun before we wrap up here Arjun first question what's one prediction you have for the rest of this year tough one that's a really tough one I would say one one prediction I would have again at the Disco sounding biased is that by the

end of the sale you know we would have anywhere from four to six unicorns on mantle right in August yeah so I would say that yeah yeah okay one thing you've bought recently for under 100 that brings you Joy very interesting for under a hundred bucks it doesn't need to be a digital asset oh it doesn't have to be a digital asset okay no no um well I did buy some nfds though which which have bought me I would say considerable a lot of Joy but I think the one really Lifesaver piece of thing which I bought as I bought this like very interesting I don't have it with me right now this very interesting multi-block which is like region agnostic where I could just go and you

know whether I'm in Europe I'm in the US not much it has been it is under 10 bucks and total Lifesaver I cannot tell you whenever I walk into this like when any hotel I just walk in like more confidently with my chest out knowing that you know I can charge my device with like with this so if you travel a lot get one of those like multi whatever charges it's it'll be a total yeah total Game Changer when it cost to just dealing with those problems airport whatever it doesn't matter wait a second you buy nfts recently nobody's buying nfts right now I gotta come back to that what nft okay so I don't want to like take specific names per se but but I think like I was actually exploring nfds uh

just to give you a quick just like one of the ways I was talking to okay let's say I was talking to someone at a very like a very well-known nft Marketplace and and this person like gave me this very interesting piece of advice where he said that the way you look at erc20 tokens where erc20 token is not this one thing right that governance tokens the stable coins yield bearing tokens utility tokens there's so many different types of tokens you need to look at nfts the same way where nft is not just art or it is not just culture or not just music like there are many categories there's a sculpture category there's like sort of the T5 nfts like you see the unib3 so if you look at nft is the same way you look at yashi 20 tokens it kind of open two like different use

cases and how you need to view the rft space so I think I was just like you know it's kind of changed the way I look at nft somehow so I like when I look at annotes I'm not like this is an nft or this is an nft it's more like this is a category than this nfts you know is is like non-fungible tokens a broader or a general idea of a token type and how these are like some of those different use cases so that's kind of why I was like looking at different types of nfts not specifically like look at a collection but like looking at what are the different types which ones can I buy or the utilities like so that's kind of what I was what I was doing explain that were you buying for investing purposes or were you buying

for the utility or the access I was wearing it mostly for the utility in the access I must also say that I'm a terrible investor so so yeah so it's mostly for the utility and the learning aspect of it so yeah you should subscribe to web3 Academy Pro will help you very much with your investing of that so definitely I should thank you I'll come back yeah awesome okay last question speaking about nfts what's an nft you'll never sell okay so I have this one nft I had bought way back I don't know if you've heard of this art Batar nft which are these like some cool face

masks yeah I don't think I'll be selling those I think those are like yeah because there's no liquidity left or because you you really like them I would check I don't know if there's any totally possible there is none but I think it's just one of the first like nfts I bought so wait dude he's got meeting um yeah yeah I don't think I everybody remembers their first time yeah they special experience at the time see what's that origin this was a a great experience chatting with you Kyle and I greatly appreciate your time shout out to the whole mental team to the whole ecosystem to all people that are involved in

building this incredible project that is so focused on doing so in a decentralized way and really living the web through ethos we greatly appreciate that we need more Builders like you in the space I can't wait to uh follow along and see the progress of mantle four to six unicorns by the end of the year there's the prediction to watch out for we'll have you back on in uh in early 2024 to see if you were right oh no I'm not just kidding the dresser foreign [Laughter] listen we will only get there but but I must say thank you so much for for having me and you know asking me all these questions like I said it's so

important for us to continuously engage with the community to get the word out there and cover these doubts and questions so thank you so much for having me and listening to me and forward to our our next conversation thanks so much for listening and everybody have yourself a great day thank you for listening to web3 Academy you're one trusted source to capitalize on the next big phase of the internet if you enjoyed this episode please share it and subscribe or follow so that you don't miss the next one while you're at it there's a link in the description for a free newsletter where we provide timely and relevant web3 insights so you can confidently build and invest in web 3. make sure to subscribe today one final note this podcast is for educational purposes only and nothing we say is financial advice crypto and web3

are risky and you should never invest more than you're willing to lose thank you friends and see you in the next one