Morpho: Building a Unicorn from College with Paul Frambot

Transcript

what we really wanted to do when we started Moro is to move away from the central planning of having one governance controlling all the race management for a free market the interest in crypto as a technology to replace centralized infrastructures has grown a lot the most scalable and most interesting like value that is created in the web protocol is the value of the state the value of connecting people uh with with one another what's the hardest decision that you've had to make while building Moro and how did you come to to having to make that decision or how did you reason [Music] about I'm here with Paul who's the

co-founder and CEO of moral Labs Moro is a decentralized lending platform that has uh really C ured a lot of the attention in lending and borrowing on ethereum and so today we're going to be chatting with Paul about a whole bunch of things including um the uh the recent Morpho blue which I guess now Moro markets which has been around for some time the uh the activation of token transfers and a whole bunch of other stuff so uh thanks for going on Paul hey thanks for having me and uh it should be noted that I am a small angel investor in Moro but with that out of the way uh um yeah how you been how's how's uh how's your holidays been it's been awesome I just SP two two

months in in the US like uh in in New York and then in Florida and was really awesome to meet the community there like the the energy is really incredible like is really really impressive yeah like it's sometimes a bit surprising to me that you still live in France uh that you haven't moved to the US or like some other place uh how how do you feel about do you still feel bullish about uh sort of building in France and kind of committing to being a French Builder yeah I think like the the secret about France is that we have like you know amazing Engineers uh we we don't you know we don't always have like the best growth or product or marketing uh people and you know of course we also have like

excellent talents in in this category as well even though like you know more generally you find them in the US but engineering wise uh we have a lot of talent and and specifically we we have connections uh in the space to to serve great talent and so so we've been happy uh with friend so far but you know obviously more and more I spend time you know internationally at conferences but also specifically in New York uh and we have more and more uh people working for more for from New York actually six six maybe now seven maybe steam now we're like 40 maybe okay uh slowly but surely scaling a bit the team uh which is not something you see too often in D5 frankly like uh teams always remain

small but I want to take the challenge of like scaling I want to do more in general with Moro and you know it's just like at some point takes to add more people to the team and and and yeah so we're scaling a bit we're we're actually recruiting a lot yeah well it's it's been a hell of a journey I mean I uh I was thinking about this earlier like we first met at a uh small Meetup in Paris and you were still in school and uh I don't know there was maybe like 20 people there you're pitching the moro idea and like it's it's so it's so nuts to like think of your trajectory as a founder and specifically like as a very young founder this is like your first uh your first gig out of college right and uh and you but I actually had other gigs

at College in college but but but they were like you know very very small and none of them were successful uh but yeah in in my second year I I I I got to start Moro and was pitching the a actually the four co-founders of of Moro were still in their second year of University when we started and you know Mattis finished like last year and I finished like a year and a half ago approximately you were still in college while like building this multi-billion dollar company yeah so the the fun story is that we we raised I think 1.3 million in our second year yeah uh we did not drop out we raised 18 million with andw robits uh EnV varant uh in our third year and last year and we still did not

drop out like we we w wanted to go to the end and and we we finished like few months after uh so so that was fun uh yeah and and usually like us people don't comprehend this like they don't understand they're like what do you do yeah like I think it's it's really just a test to to the French mentality like you have to finish college exactly college is everything the school you went to your diploma like at some point if you're down and under you don't have like any money left at least you'll be able to get an A good engineering job at like sanui or you know sa yeah exactly exactly it's just and and by the way I don't I can't I can't explain why we did this except that we were completely brainwashed you know when we were

younger yeah and so we we we could not like just do it so whatever uh you know in retrospect maybe we we should have directly gone but now it's kind of a cool Flex to say that you know among the three years at Maro like we spent two at University yeah yeah that's great yeah you can say like I I least I have a college degree yeah no cool um so like this is the first time we've talked about Moro here on on interop like you've been on on epicenter before so you know I think people can but that was a while back actually so that was like I think you were still this was before more more for blue perhaps or just right yes um yes it was so like the protocols changed a lot now you know from the old days of the

Morpho Optimizer which were essentially kind of like a PTP layer on top of a and compound now to like Mor for markets being you know it's its own Standalone product and in fact the optimizers are now being deprecated I think right uh yes so you know for for people who are coming to this like not really understanding Moro or maybe not understanding how it's different like how how is it so different from other lending markets and you know the predom the predominant sort of model of uh over collateralized lending this the the sorts of like like a and compound and others right so so as you described like we first started with Moro Optimizer uh which was built on top of a built on top

of compound and essentially was providing better interest rates than avin compound with the same liquidity and and risk guarantees because we're building on top of them and building this matching engine that that could essentially provide competitive rates um and by doing so we realized that it was actually very hard to build large scale applications on top of of a and compound Etc we were the biggest user of a and the biggest user of maybe not compound but like we had two billion dollars deposited in those lending protocols so that was huge and and the reason we decided to go for another kind of protocol is because we could see as the biggest user the limits more than anyone

else and you know it's it was pretty clear that you had at least three of them uh resiliency efficiency and scalability and so residency was very simply but um we had to do a lot of War rooms right like whenever you had like a stable coin D pegging or a risk parameter that was not correctly set in one of those underlying pools well it's a mess like the protocol gets posed like do what we came to realize is that the way we think about a nav or a compound is that it's a fund right you deposit your money and they're going to manage it in a more or less decentralized way so you have like actual human being being involved behind the scenes that are going to tweak the risk parameters

every day that are going to pose the protocol when there is a problem that are going to change the code when they need to change the code to add new features remove features or remove bugs etc etc so it's a can you can think of it as a as a broker but decentralized right it's really what it is and as builders on top of those protocols we felt like what we needed is not a decentralized broker what we needed is actual protocol something like swap right that is fully permissionless where we don't have to trust anyone but the code uh it won't change it's completely immutable uh and we can promiss use and trading thanks to Unis swap was like this it was not the case of of of

lending and so more for blue and like the next version that we built was actually inspired by that idea that we should build something that's completely permissionless that's completely decentralized completely decentralized such that Builders like us like we were on top bave and compound could feel confident uh owning their own lending and borrowing use cases right so you can think of more for more as B2 b2c where we provide infrastructure for anyone to create their own landing and borrowing use cases and then people can build on on top of this like you know uh Moro uh uh you know building block and and provide their landing and buying services that are very similar to to a or compound so on Moro you have lending

and barwing you know use cases that look very similar to what you have on Arin compound some of them are much riskier some of them are much safer some of them are have different compliance you know uh restrictions so anyway think of Mor as a toolbox for anyone to build their Landing protocols rather than um an actual fund like what a is yeah the way I see it is like a is a lending product and the most simplest way it's like a is lending product and Moro is lending protocol and and the distinction is very might might seem uh quite small but it's actually quite quite important and the letting protocol allows you to build on top of it and and that's really the like

the main difference and allows you to create an ecosystem and and a market like uh small like U kind of a big big M Market of um of actors that are participating in the market and where as a it for you know for all its like uh for all for all its its um its value in the ecosystem I think like a is extremely valuable uh I use it and um it's a product that acts as a broker in between all of these different people who are providing liquidity exactly yeah yeah and and it's like a full stack protocol a very big monolith that is going to handle

everything from the code to the risk management to the product experience Etc and and everything in like one big very complex module that's going to handle everything for the user Morpho is more built in layers where you have the Morpho like markets on top of that you have Morpho volts to do risk management that are done by the risk curators that are external to Morpho those are permissionless anyone can come in and build their own Morpho volts on top of that you have like the user experience layer with what we call the Morpho bundlers etc etc so so much more layered and infrastructure based approach rather than a big monolith yeah so I'd like to spend a bit of time on the curators here because I think like they play a very important role in the system and I have

a few few questions about um how they how that like role came to be uh but perhaps just before we get into that like explain what is the role of of a curator and how are they interacting with the protocol and like are they a customer of Morpho or are they like a user of Morpho that have their own customers how do you Define that relationship between like the the lenders the borrowers the curators and Moro the most important layer of Moro is called the moro markets so you can think of it as unitop markets but for Lending so un Moro Market would be one collateral asset uh one loan asset and risk parameters so it could be like BTC like wbtc to borrow usdc uh with a given

Oracle at a given liquidation loan to value that would be one market and that's completely immutable and you know can be permissionless created anyone can create such market right um extremely simple code as well like just 600 lines of code and that will remain forever uh like this right and so because it's permissionless you have a lot of those different markets you have SD to borrow usdc wbtc to borrow usdc etc etc you have a lot of them so that makes it a bit complex for the user right liquidity seems fragmented yes there is a lot more use cases but you know which Market should I be choosing as a retail user that's a bit hard to find right and so this is why we have on top of those

markets uh Mor of vaults right uh and those moral volts are essentially run by what we call creators where they welcome the deposits say usdc deposit the same way a would be welcoming usdc deposits and then it selects which Market is going to allocate liquidity to so let's say gaunlet or Steakhouse or block analytica etc those are like Risk experts in the field that are going to run their own morph volts and and let's say it's a usdc volt uh they're going to you know welcome some deposits in the vault and generate some yield by allocating it to the moro market so essentially VT creators are here to do the work of selecting you know what is the correct Oracle what is the correct

liquidation loan to value if there is a big dump in the market to be able to reallocate liquidity quickly and essentially do risk management such that the end user does not have to do it right and so the main difference with na is that risk management is not enshrined in the markets of Moro morph markets are immutable risk management is externalized in the morph volts and so morph volts select which markets is relevant for them right and um so yeah so that's how the the the protocol is is is segregated essentially yeah so was is is a curator role a consequence of how the protocol was designed uh or was it intentional like did do you guys think that this curator role would emerge and

sort of plan that that way and H you know have this this idea that it would become professionalized and uh or or was it just sort of happen St that like because the way the protocol was designed these um players came into the market and filled the Gap right so yeah it was you know I it was kind of planned all along like what we really wanted to do when we started Mor for is to move away from the central planning of having one governance controlling all the risk management for a free market downside of a free market is that it's hard to interact with right there's a lot of like Dimensions that you have to control and as soon as you have those Dimension

well there is no other option but to introduce layers layers of abstraction and when you have those layers of abstraction you need prosumers and consumers right and so our prosumers uh which are kind of like the B2B Toc approach of Morpho are the creators and so the reason we built the moro vaults and with the way we built them uh you know they can generate their own Revenue uh they have different roles we even have an interface for Vault managers to like build their own Vault and and create their own Vault uh Etc all of this was built uh for them to run actual businesses right and today if you look at like Gauntlet for example or Steakhouse or me Capital Etc they actually generate a lot of money like I

think gaet now is at like 5 million annual recent Revenue MV capital is is higher than that now I think maker is around 50 million so like all those players on top of the mor ecosystem we don't pay them like you know I don't have they don't have to be friend with me and or the da in order to get a payment from the da uh they they they they get paid you know through a fee switch that they own in their vault right and so it was all very intentional to create this ecosystem of players that can actually generate money so that they can reinvest into growing their vaults even more discovering new use cases building tooling for more for etc etc so the fee switch is at the Vault level right so there are two fee

switches you have one at the market level that is owned by the Dao so by the morod da and one at the Vault level right right which is owned by the risk Creator or the the the Vault owner essentially and those are two fee switches for two very different services one is more of a management fee you pay someone because you're not active you're a passive user you don't want to do do risk management right you don't want to you want someone to you know be here 247 uh to actually manage your money and make sure you know you you you to optimize your risk reward tradeoff uh so that's the morova Vault fee switch right uh on the moro Market Fe switch the value that is created by the market is

actually very simple it's bringing together lenders with bar right so when you use the moro markets the reason you use the moro markets and not the fork of the moro markets is essentially because it has a state it has a lot of like it's connecting opportunities right and the value of connecting opportunities is the value of the network right and so very fundamentally by the way I think this applies to like every single web free protocol like the most scalable and most interesting like value that is created in the web protocol is the value of the state the value of connecting people people uh with with one another uh and so in the case of Aid they charge a fee for the two services at the same time the value of the state okay why don't

you use the nav Fork you use the main a instance because it has more liquidity you can borrow more you can lend more etc etc but also for their management such that they can pay their Consultants that are going to work for them and update the parameters of the protocols in morall we segregate the two two different business models uh the main difference here is that it's open now so like you know there is open competition there is competition for steakhous and garlet and and M capital to like play on fees uh to you know minimize the cost for the user it's not one you know one Central planning that you have to trust to charge like a relevant fee and the fee switch a free market so the fee switch at the protocol level at the moro Dow level that hasn't yet been

activated no it's not been activated uh it's for different reasons so first like there a bunch of legal implications behind activating a fee switch of course uh and we want to make sure that you know we cover like all of them properly in in you know before activating the Fe switch and you know that's been the case on AO Dows make sure like you know everything is actually uh safe and sound for like all the stakeholders uh so that's one uh another interesting fact about the Morpho protocal fee switch is that we've tied the license to the fee switch so essentially the moroc code is BSL so you come forkit until we activate the Fe switch so the second we activate the Fe switch it turns open source and

the reason why I wanted this to be uh is because we're not a s business we don't create value from the code we create value from the state so if you're not happy with paying a fee with the mor to the Morpho code and if the state is not valuable to you then you can actually for the protocol and and build your own thing if the state is valuable if you need to meet lenders that you would not have met otherwise or borrows that you would not have met otherwise then you should be happy to to to to be charged the fee right and so so yeah so that's why it's a bit special but uh but I'm very happy about it and by the way I think it will become more and more common in in in the def space so once the fee switch is activated then the

then the code becomes open source and I understand that at the for a dow there's some Regulatory and legal implications to activate the Fe switch but for the curators uh because they're the difference there is that there are a kind registered business uh that can justify this fee and they can be regulated or fall within like some regulatory framework um have jurisdictional like how does that different between the Dow and the and the curators yes so so it's a good question so first there is a tone of like regulatory consideration when activating the fee switch uh for example the the tax consideration like if you

activate a fee switch who paying tax is it the token orders or is it like not considered like a taxable event uh which jurisdiction should collect the taxes uh etc etc which is not something you would have if you're if you're a centralized creators some creators are decentralized as well like some creators could be Dow right so they might have similar problems Etc uh and you know you have a tax implication you have you know regulatory regulatory concerns you have money laundering concerns like all those problems that you can have in Def there is also an impact on the qualification of the project of the token uh Etc so I won't go through all the problems that you have when when turning on the the fee switch and so like generally I'm Mor

for we've been on the conservative sides here and really want to trying to understand like you know uh what's going on before moving forward because it could have like big implications and also like you know truth is also that we've we've raised like you know 50 million recently the project does not need immediate funding uh in order to like you continue we could like the morer protocol now has close to6 billion of tvl and ising generating in ton of of money through like all the trailers so we could absolutely you know get some money from the fee switch it's just that we want to do it right at the right time uh and also want it to be like a a Community Driven decision etc etc on the the Creator side is very different every creators is is an owner of its own like

you know it's it's it's their own decision to make with their own like regular and and and and you know resoning and so and you know some are based in in in in different jurisdictions as well so they they may have different restrictions on that front yeah okay and so what is the model through which we should evaluate the trust in a curator you know because like you you create this market right and you like right now the I think the curators are fairly well-known actors in the ecosystem um curating uh assets that are respected and and high quality Assets Now like if Morro continues to grow that might include other assets that fall

outside of say the kind of crypto assets that we're used to maybe some rwas things like that where you know the traceability of the underlying asset may be different right the trust model might be different and so therefore you know for for for curators that are interacting with those you know there's there is a trust assumption that needs to be made in terms of like rebalancing the portfolios um of assets correctly so that people don't get liquidated as far as I understand um so yeah like with that uh how should people kind of evaluate a curator and what are some of the best practices that like you guys as a team has have thought about in terms of how people should interact with them right a few things I'd say number one is like the best guarantee you have

is the onchain guarantee um you know like I'd say like on on on Morel like uh the morel vaults like gives you a a set of like important guarantees with regard to like time locks under which like creators can take actions who can view this time lock uh and can interrupt like the management uh Etc so I guess fundamentally risk management has to be controlled and managed by someone like Risk Management is about an anticipating the future and minimizing the risk and so fundamentally you need an entity whether it's like more or less decentralized to perform actions right and so the question is like under which

scope can it perform like some actions in the case of Ave they have a time lock it's it goes for a vote and so as a user you trust that the processes that they have in place you know won't go Rogue and you know no one is going to buy a lot of tokens or the multisig owners are not going to go you know crazy and and and and change some things in the protocol that could be critical uh in the case of Moro We Are setup agnostic so a Creator could have a very short time Lo because they want to remain Nimble and and make changes that are critical fast uh which could have an incident in in the trust that people have on those projects right the problem we have is the readability right like

how do we convey to the user the idea that one setup is safer than the other as an infrastructure what's even worse is that we can't have opinions like we can't say precisely oh uh we like R7 a lot or we like m a lot you know we think those are great people and and and that they're never going to do a mistake or we like we don't know like the the reality like no of course we have relationships with lot of them and I personally believe they're completely you know fine people but I have no idea if if like the the their setup is is like completely safe Etc so and same thing with any Dow it could be with the compound Dow with the Avid da Etc so what we're looking towards is like

providing as much insights as possible uh through us you know scrapping like the the data of what is available and pro providing it in the most digestible way possible but also working with third parties experts in risk assessment uh and you know the for example like the S S&P 500 the S&P or the moodies of the world uh you know the those players have equivalent in in Defi and crypto and they can work towards like assessing the Vault right for example and so a vault would pay to be assessed and have a risk rating for example so those are like the things we've been working on um makes it overall much harder because we're in

infrastructure like if we had only one VT run by the Morpho team like what a as the only thing you have to trust is the a brand right and behind the brands the brand is essentially a proxy for The Trusted setup right in the case of Moro the brand of Moro is a proxy for the infrastructure but not for the management right and so yes you have the the brand of gaunlets you have the brand of M the brand of A7 Etc uh but the reality is that uh for the users it's hard to digest right so having one single trusted third party which is the risk Raiders like S&P moodies Etc and and display like a a risk score for example uh could be one solution to

approach the problem and those are like problems we've been thinking a lot like lately yeah I think that's a good way to approach it and having yeah I think like keeping the moro brand separate from uh the ecosystem players and so that you know the curators and like these uh risk rating participants makes a lot of sense especially where you're a Marketplace you know if you you look at say Amazon for instance as a Marketplace well like Amazon is not responsible for like the products that are being sold to you like if you have an issue like a warranty issue or like shipping issue you typically deal with the shipper uh and that's like made

clear in the um in the agreement right like the terms now the this what's what's sometimes complicated there is that as you as you alluded to like users will confound you know your your brand and the pro and the and the people who are uh participating in the market and like keeping that separate I think is like one of the biggest challenges that you have um rank term yeah it it it definitely is is Moro um should be thought more as a Unis swap right where if you interact with Unis Swap and buy like a scam token or a token that has a a vulnerability in it you'll get scammed right and and Unis swap does not prevent you from doing that right uh however

uniso does a lot of work at you know indexing the prices making the right warnings in the interface Etc just to make sure people are aware of what they're getting into yeah and by the way unof does not even have opinions on tokens like they use centralized exchanges price feeds uh those kind of things to to add to to their interfaces the the tokens and so we have similar concerns with Mor it's been tough in the beginning to have people differentiate the two Brands especially because we had you know players like a saying oh you know Morpho is responsible for everything that's happening on on Mor of course not like the protocol is permissionless the functions are public uh it's it's pretty obvious that uh were you know like some BS will break on Moro

some markets you know the very first Market that was created on Moro when we made the the prodal public was scam market like literally seconds after we we we announced the moro not seconds but like few hours later we saw some people creating some fake markets and trying to introduce some scams right so so yeah so it's more about like readability and how do you present things to the user yeah interesting uh so like you in November the token was made transferable um why was that the right time to like I I guess one one one thing we should talk about is like why you guys took so long to make the token transferable I think this was like a a a decision that really

Falls outside the norm of most protocols that make their token transferable much much sooner I mean Moro have been live for several years now how do you think that has impacted uh the if you can talk about this um the the price and like right now we're basically at alltime highs um do you think that that transferability caus this recent Spike and Retail interest I I don't have answers to anything uh to everything frankly just because I I don't know especially with regard to price action I I yeah like I'm not always like fully comprehend like why

the price is going One Direction or another however I can comment on on you know the the strategy here and the thinking behind like making the token non transferable for you know at least two years uh it was nontransferable so the at was the following like we we think of tokens as a way to bootstrap Capital by selling tokens to investors bootstrap contributions by giving tokens to contributors and bootstrap usage and network Effects by giving you know tokens to two sides of the market such that the market gets bootstrapped right and is actually working properly um and and doing this from first principles did not require us to make

the token transferable like doing this only required us to distribute tokens to users but nothing really actually specified that we should make it transer right and so we did this with morph Optimizer and for me I really wanted to have a very clear long-term Vision that was public uh which we published like a a few months ago like moro's Mission and and why we're doing what we do and what we should be aiming at like 20 years from now I really wanted this to be public for any like investor that is from the public that we had not you know any touch Point directly could actually make made like a reasonable investment out of it so to me that that was like

very important to make sure that you know the the vision was was was open and and frankly back in the day we were still experimenting right we were still like figuring figuring out what what was the the best products Etc so we we did Mar Optimizer it grew super well we were we had like in 2023 we were the biggest growth of the entire defi space but still I was not convinced just because of like it was built on top of a could not grow bigger than a and we we saw all those limits of Landing protocol so I was like let's just rebuild everything again and and we were right because today like we have almost $6 billion dollar in tvl you know a year later and so as soon as it became clear that we had you know bootstrap Mor for uh the

second version and that was the way forward that it was the model that we were going to pursure over the long term once we had a very clear Vision then we had everything aligning correctly to actually open up to to the public uh like the the the token Etc I will say though that it took some time like not not everybody like was agreeing in the community with the timeline so we had a lot of like back and forth and and debate for this like three months or something uh but eventually like we we you know like the different stakeholders like decided to to agree and and we we ended up launching the token and you know I don't I don't look at the price like every day but I think so far it's been like doing quite well and even though I still think

that's like short-term price action compared to like the long-term vision of Moro uh I think if we were to do it again I think we'd do similar yeah I I think uh that waiting to launch the token uh was such a such a great move and and and one that I think more more protocols should should adopt right this position of like basically like launching a token before you have real product Market fit and um and usage of your product like should become the norm some of the teams in which we invested right as a fund now doing that and I I would hope to see all more protocols do that and um and and I think that the EOS of Po will benefit from from that sort of

thing 100% And and I I would say though that I think to tokens are like an extremely powerful tool like in in in in web free like if you want to if you want to get people to do stuff in your project you can get them to do anything by Distributing tokens and so I think the right mental model is you it should be used solely to bootstrap like for example uh bootstrap things that have Network effects so for example in the lending Market you need like the lenders to have bars coming in so you can use tokens to boot trap the market and once the market is bootstrapped you remove the tokens right and you decrease the Intensive rates Etc and so yeah I think

it should always follow this pattern of like where are my network effects where are my multi seted markets and let's try investing some amount of tokens in it to bring players that are fake players essentially and then remove the incentives and see if I successfully bootstrapped something and and if I did not then it's probably because I don't have PI right yeah yeah no absolutely so so you guys are uh now doing like a grants program and there's there's a few things happening on the on the governance Forum should go check that out so one is this um MIP 87 which um uh basically approved Moro to be just

uh to be um deployed on like 15 or something chains um so that'll grow the pie I think quite a bit in terms of Moro usage and there's also this grants program um that is calling upon Builders to like build new things on top of Moro so I'd like to talk about this separ separately maybe we can start with um with with prop 87 um one of the things here that I find interesting is that the the deployments um you know the moral deployments will basically be the same but you're encouraging Innovation at the UI level um so H how what's your what's your philosophy there and uh what are some of

the things that you're hopeful will happen as you allow like these different communities uh from these different evm chains to uh to create the the UI and sort of the interface layer between the users and the protocol right so few things first Mor is not managed it's a mutable code so it's very easy for us to deploy in like 20 different chains like it only takes like you know uh few minutes to like click deploy and and and get the smart contract to to to be on on each chain um the reason is because we externalize risk management right like anyone can come in then and build their own landing

and barring use cases and so we're doing this and and just because it's a way for us for for multiple reasons so first we've had a lot of like inbound interests from people you know obviously chains Every Chain would want like their a landing protocol to be deployed on their chain but also most interestingly from Builders like people want to build on top of Moro and people want to build like their landing and baring use cases and for and for this they need the moro instance to be available and so we essentially realized that it was a way for us to strengthen our like developer Network right essentially and so that was a big part of the concern also you know I was a bit like personally I I I just also a bit fed up with like some

other protocols like going after huge grants and farming grants from like chains which I think is like not the way forward uh in in many different ways and so I was like hey let's just deploy everywhere like we don't we don't need to farm like a huge grants and and squeeze like chains to to get as much money as we can from them uh and and and so so yeah so that's also a way for us to compete from strategic point of view right so I guess that was the initial thinking uh yeah behind behind like cross chain deployments and uh do you anticipate uh uh so o other uh lending markets uh have will will be deploying

on uh some move-based chains do you anticipate to Fork Moro in uh in move or perhaps other languages uh like Soul salana uh to deploy also over there right so it's a good question um and by the way to your point like this is true like soon after uh we we published this proposal like a published that they were going to deploy on more chains right main difference here is that for us it's very easy to deploy on new chains right like we don't have to manage uh liquidity across like you know 50 different chains employ more people to do so Etc we we can just do this in a very scalable way yeah um and the only

thing that is not scalable and and I want to uh and the reason why we're we're not you know propose anything to go to the sui like whatever like move or or svm world is we have such a like it it takes so much time for us to actually come up with secure H and secure smart contracts that we want to make sure that you know the only the things that we ship are like completely reliable and and it's very hard for us to divide focus of our development teams for other languages not to say it's impossible yeah but just saying that the cost is huge and the risk is almost as huge as it is uh so so yeah so we we

have you know one of the the best solidity developers in the world and and and you know we we haven't like the actual human resources to work on like those different languages yet at the moment uh do not mean will never get there just saying like solidity is probably like building building on svm or on move VM is less of a security lift than building on the is um and so perhaps no that's that's completely true yeah yeah no no that that's that's completely Fair Point uh in the equation of like deciding to move to a new chain or not like solidity is very hard to secure uh very very hard

and I think it caused a lot of like problems in the eum community that's what it is um so yeah but I think it's more of a matter of focus for us like do we do we focus on one chain or the other and and yeah well I I would love to see you guys deploy in movement because movement is going to support evm smart contracts out the b um so weekend I well I'm I'm happy to help make that happen if uh if it hasn't if it's not already in the in sort of in the works um well yeah and then on the other side of things like on this um on this grants program U what are some of

the most exciting things you're seeing there have to be frank I did not look into it like uh so I I I I don't know what are your hopes like what what do you hope people will build like if there was like your wish list of like top top things that you would love people to build what uh what right so first things first I think Grand programs are a trap for Dows like it's very easy to give away a lot of money that is not well invested yeah like we're not VC investors right like we we don't do uh like you know like being a VC is is a job right a full-time

uh job and creates like huge companies Etc so I I don't I don't think grants should be used to fund uh relevant businesses uh building around Moro so I think the objective function here is more what kind of open tooling that is going to benefit the entire stack that is you know often times you know most often times like going to be like a public good uh that anyone can can reuse it's just going to empower and make the network more valuable overall and this is more how I think about grants that they should serve like to fund more public goods that are open and and reusable by the entire stack uh rather than you know trying to fund like new

businesses Etc which to me is like is essentially not the job of the morod to do this right and and so what we've done is okay this is just a theory like in practice I don't know what it looks like so I I I essentially thought that maybe with with Kirk like that is leading everything governance on our end that it would be better to have a pilot program where we try things out with a a budget and we see where we where where it gets right so you know we don't we don't have big principles yet on how the grand program of moru should be done we're just going to experiment but I'd say the intuition is that we want to be funding public goods rather than companies

yeah okay now that I think that's a good approach like for you guys to as a dow right I mean it doesn't make sense for you to try to figure out what are the best business model is uh but building public goods that other businesses can use and that Moro that the moro community and Moro product benefits from I think like is a is a reasonable approach um you be taking a step back here and looking at the space more broadly as we near the end here because I know got you've got to go in a few minutes but um do you do see fentex and Neo Banks adopting defi infrastructure in the near future and yeah perhaps more broadly what what do you think is the institutional defi landscape look like for

2025 good question um two years ago like my interactions were with institutions were more okay they want to learn and take my time essentially to learn more about Defi and crypto Etc and things have changed a lot in the last six months so so okay there is like this election that you know obviously helped maybe uh but even before that like the the interest in crypto uh and and the the the crypto stack in general as a technology to replace centralized infrastructures has grown a lot right and and it's been very impressive so I think you know if you're fintech for example or if you're a new bank but

especially finex or or exchanges you own a lot the distribution right you own an increasingly big share of the financial industry but you don't own the infrastructure right if you're like you know Robin Hood or revolute or like you know all those big fxs they rely on traditional Finance to you know sell ETFs or to do FX uh or to do repo or like those kind of things and so it takes a lot of time for them to be finally integrated like deep down into the system uh but usually they don't own the infrastructure and when you think about it defi for them is such a nice way to become owner of this infrastructure and shortcut the entire

traditional Finance system like building on chain for them is essentially like we're going to provide not only do we own the distribution but we're also going to own the infrastructure and in order for this to happen you need defy protocols protocols that are permissionless protocols that they can you know configure and they can you know tailor to their and C to their specific use case to their specific risk to their specific compliance and you want resilience right you want to own the code meaning that you you don't want the code to be upgradable you you want the code to like you know be fully in your control so so immutable uh you want to be able to fully control your risk management your compliance management etc etc and I do think morph is a

perfect fit for that right like it's it's been built intentionally for B2B to see and and and I think those those players will find like high interest in in using the morphos stack and uh well one one thing also I wanted to ask you is like a little bit scattered here as we come towards the end because I have so many questions but um like when uh when when I first saw you at that first meet up uh I I believe my recollection was that you know your position with regards to a and was that you know you've you you you wanted to work with them and there was this idea of sort of like collaborating with a to optimize for for

AA users to to to optimize their their borrow and lending rates has that changed is your is your intention now to displace a as the largest leting as the like leading Ming Market in in cryptos well when we when we set you know you know objectives like in the organization with the with the contributors Etc we don't talk about a this much right like obviously they're an important that meeme like I don't think about you at all like uh oh what's that uh oh yeah yeah I think I have it but whatever and and my point is like we we we when you think about like moro's

structure and the way incentives are structured in Moro and and the long-term mission of Moro is actually very different from a a is building a great bank for to users and Moro is building public infrastructure for the entire world to build financing use cases right and it's a much much bigger markets that market that morphos targeting uh a much more ambitious road map right which forces us to take design decisions especially you know going for a free market approach rather than a central planning approach uh that a would not take with regard to their objectives with their ambition uh Etc so yeah I think you know as a function of like the ambition of our mission of course like you know some Morpho vaults not us

directly but some people building on top of Morpho will outgrow and out compet a in in my opinion uh but uh just because a is one specific use case right and and and Morpho is aiming for financing in general yeah uh across like all use cases and and and of course much Beyond like crypto and and and crypto usage uh today so as we wrap up here me one one last thing um you know as a as as as a Founder I think like I've you know we we we've interacted a couple of times over the last couple years and as a Founder I've just watched you grow uh quite a bit and it's been really impressive and uh I think a lot of people probably have

that that same opinion um what's the hardest decision that you've had to make make while building Moro and how did you how did you um like yeah how did you you come to to having to make that decision or how did you reason about like that decision that's a that's a good question I wish I could say the hardest decision was sunet sunting morph Optimizer which was like a super successful protocol and yet we decided to completely like deprecate it and and and to go for Something Completely new that no one had tested before in practice that was not super

tough just because I was like highly highly highly convinced that this was the way forward uh and so I I we did not even have many doubts like when when going into this I think the hardest decisions always have to come down to to the people like you know as a startup as you have to maintain the very high Talent density and you know that's vital for the project to move forward and you know oftentimes that means letting go uh some some people that you know for some reason don't align you know fully with like you know the mission or or just the pace and and the level of the company and and I think by far that has been like the toughest

thing for me as a Founder is like uh you know dealing with those situations and making sure that more folk can have like the highest Talent density uh is has been very very tough personally yeah I I hear that all right Paul thanks so much for coming on it's been great chatting and catching up and uh hopefully we can do this makeway soon cheers [Music] [Music]