Sky Aave Force and the DeFi Renaissance | Stani Kulechov & Rune Christensen

Transcript

I mean the value comes from executing and and you know some like nothing else really matters so I think uh you know like I think it's more like this is just the natural the nature of crypto of greed of markets and so on but and and what's amazing is now it's coming full full circle right and the the the market and the industry and the community is like waking up to the fact that okay this is ultimately this is where the real value is yeah hey everyone this episode is brought to you by Supra the vertically integrated L1 for super daps uh they have a very cool new product coming out called Supra container so head over to supra.com that's supra.com

containers so if you're building on an L1 and it feels a little bit crowded or the complexity of L2 and l3s are getting you down just head over to Supra they'll get you sorted thank me later all right everyone welcome back to another episode of bell curve before we jump in quick disclaimer the views expressed by my co-host today are their personal views and they do not represent the views of any organization with which the co-hosts are associated with nothing in the episode is construed or relied upon as Financial technical tax legal or other advice you know the deal now let's jump into the episode guys welcome to uh an episode of bell curve here we're doing this live this is actually the first live

recording that we've ever done uh in the block Works office here we got stonnie and room guys welcome thank you thank you thank you pump that we could make this happen guys the iners is much better than the uh virtual I think for the podcast recordings uh so I I actually we're we're going to be talking about the sky a force um and I want to end this conversation on kind of a state of the union of defi defi Renaissance Etc but before we get there I actually wanted to rewind the clock back a little bit and just get a sense of the history of originally Maker Now sky and a and how you both kind of came up together as protocols when you launch around the same time in 2018 2019 time frame so could you guys just take us back in time to what it was like you know launching a

defi protocol back then and how did you of maker and a come up together and uh work together I mean r you have more history and and uh you were much more earlier with maker so maybe uh you can start well I if you go all the way back to like the really early days of of uh of ethereum basically I think the thing that really marks it is that there was just no money in crypto at that point right so everybody who worked on crypto were like idealists and sort of like crazy technologists there was no like business case or like uh you know it was all uh you know you had to be S crazy and sort of have this like sort of crazy vision of like oh my God one day in the no was debating value capture back then

we're just trying to make work is hon archist yeah like yeah like one day there will be many protocols and they will work they will fit together and people will use multiple smart contracts at once and it was like all very esoteric at the time yeah so I think um uh basically around the time when I mean so well so maker ear right so it's very idealistic very ideological very technology focused and that also meant that progress was very slow in maker because there was just so much like it was sort of people also just like you know really doing like Research into all sorts of stuff and so I think around the time when uh maker launched it was like it was basically right we spent like two years basically like researching and

preparing to launch and then was time I mean basically around the time the D the broader Defi and E land and armor came up right and was it was actually kind of the Vive started changing at the time so that's also what led uh to uh maker actually launching like actually shipping something and launching die was be like it wasn't even that we were like finished because it was kind of like it was it's kept you can always build more you can always do more research it's more like the Vib started changing and it was clear that okay things are launching now like Now's the Time to actually uh build things and and and be out there so I think that I mean there's that change has then just become more and more obvious I think over time and I

think it's s of leads all the way it's been a kind of a continuation of that that leads all the way to things like now like the Rebrand to Sky and like Sky arit Force and and everything that we're focusing on now is just like crypto growing up from this ideological crazy technology that you have to be crazy to believe in to just like I mean basically like big business to to a much greater degree right where of course we want to take us take along with us as much as possible of the original ideals and values and like the the technological Edge right but also uh in the end all of that is pointless if you're not delivering it to real people like if you're not if people don't use it and they don't get the benefits then

in the end it's just like a science project right and I guess at this point I feel like probably both of us we got sort of addicted to you want to have a real impact you know you don't just want to sit in a basement and doing some science you want to deliver products to real people and a lot of like projects on on chain is is pretty much like science projects so like I think this is has been also like discussion about like defy and ethereum and and whatnot like we want to see a lot of things happening on on chain and you know like non-financial use cases and and whatnot but like defi is is something that actually solidified to have product Market fit and not just that but like you actually have now like two significant DS that are actually having this U

Revenue generating protocols and actually I would say like I don't know if the right terminology is to say that they're real businesses or like you know profitable public goods but like they actually are something that generates revenue and and value in the ecosystem and I think that's a big difference because when when back in when we saw it and and for me personally it started as a kind of like creative project and then like hey what if we the whole Finance could exist on on on chain and and with smart contracts and whatnot but also like how we can actually make this a useful product because there's two differences between something that is interesting experimentation and an actual product that people will use and how do you get from like oh let's do

this on chain make it interesting but also like how this becomes like a really good product and it takes years to to to to build something that solidifies and actually grows uh as as the whole ecosystem grows yeah I think one of the things that got people excited back then there was this concept of Finance Legos right and okay there's you know a is kind of building a borrow lend protocol and maker is building this you know decentralized stable coin it's very cool and they kind of work together right and a I've always seen as kind of this you know if you're launching a new token it's a great Launchpad a lot of people like to Loop things on a it's a big source of demand for the token um it's a s it's been a source of demand for D over the years as well and there have

been some really great examples of collaboration in between maker over the years I think the d3m module is a really good example of that where when you know sort of borrowing variable interest rates on Baker or on a a rather would spike out of control that could actually be controlled by a vault from maker right so there have been these really nice instances of helping and I think that was a vision that excited a ton of people including me um and so it's awesome to see you guys continuing that vision and working together now and maybe that that kind of takes us up through the present time and uh before we get into the skyve force and how you guys are working together I think people I'm sure they've heard about it at this point but R I wanted to just give you um a little bit of a soap boox here to talk

a little bit about the transition again from maker to Sky what are all the like what was the motivation there and then what are all the different component parts of that and then that'll lead into teeing us up to talk about this alliance between the two of you yeah so the I mean the underlying shift is sort of I guess um sort of implementing the consequences of the kind of the the change I talked about of like how it everything in crypto everything in in ethereum and defi started off extremely ideological and Technology focused and now what's happening is sort of user and product focused and then I think it's just I mean uh I mean actually I really look at AA I mean and and back sort of a couple

of years back I remember thinking like a somehow got this figured out really early on so a was like maybe the first D5 project that felt like a product like it was like designed as a product uh maker is so old I mean it's the oldest defi project right it's so old that it's like older than ethereum right it was like built before ethereum even launched right so it's just so deep in that like extreme end of ideology and Technology right so and it's so in it was so the fact that maker fundamentally was technology was so ingrained in like everything it was and and things like like The Branding of mkr and die being like two completely separate brands that sort of are not really they they kind of

emerged organically separately over like period of like with years between him and so basically I mean the big shift to Sky represents this like uh Going Back to Basics and mean like what if you were to design this as a product fundamentally right so the goal is to get users to use it and like it's not enough to just build a cool technology you got to actually figure out how do you deliver that sort of as a as impact as as uh as value to users um and so fundamentally what sky aims to be is like the the best and easiest place to get rewarded for saving right so it sort of focuses on that the

stable coin use case but then specifically also the fact that with a decentralized stable coin you can deliver decentralized savings and rewards right kind of built into the protocol accessible with a stable coin um and then so so that's just one thing of like Sky the brands that represents it's approachable and accessible and it's uh yeah it's just like all those like Good Vibes a little bit kind of it's nice it's like night sky and stars like who doesn't like that that's great yeah and and I mean uh and then also what's cool is that the I mean it's one of the few cases where the token symol itself right Sky you can actually convey brand values just with the token simpol I I've always been obsessed about like

the the ticker name themselves they matter yeah they matter yeah because they matter a lot ETFs guy talk about ETF guys talk about it's a huge deal actually um yeah and I think it's a bigger deal in defi than anything else because everything's so interconnected it's like integrated everywhere right and when you do an integration like the only thing like the only way you can deliver on ux when you're integrated into something else is like usds or something right like it has USD in the name so you can tell from the name that it's a stable coin right and then like sky is like uniquely one of the few names where like it's a ticker length name and you can actually deliver some of that brand value which I think is pretty cool did that factor into the naming of sky at all can you tell us I

mean yeah like that and a whole bunch of I mean also the fact that you can connect it to the Stars which is sort of trying to simplify the I mean actually that's the kind of the other major uh piece of sky right it's so one thing is just like easy to use focus on the savings use case and and kind of abstract away the other parts of the technology mhm uh and then there's this thing of like um try to deliver kind of like the differentiated killer use case yeah of a decentralized stable coin and defi in general and like what what's something you can do with defi that you can't do with like traditional banking or just like other other alternative uh like alternative means of savings right and that is token rewards right so that's what the stars are

basically they're like these like independent projects incubated out of sky and then you can get them as token rewards and then the the first one is uh that's kind of back to this the history of of of maker and a right the first one is spark right that's coming right which is actually a fork of a that then like pav the way actually for the collaboration between uh sky and a like the kind of the level of collaboration that we envision now because it can be so deeply integrated because now sky has like the experience of the direct experience of the AA code base and as an end user if you use usds you can like you can receive these tokens in spark for instance as like a part of like you know you want to get rewarded

for savings well you can choose you can get regular rewards you can just get like more usds tokens or you can get something you know maybe you believe in the collaboration with AA well then you can get the spark tokens because they sort of represent like integration with DIY working on the Ava code base integrating with Ava and it's just like more options to the end user that feel more like crypto and unique to sort of what you can do with defi but it's the same like you're holding a stable coin ultimately right so it's like it's it's a very convenient way to get these things delivered to you so it seems like you know just summarizing what we've talked about so far in the very early days everything was super ideological everything was very technologically driven right because there wasn't there weren't any users there weren't any

products everything felt kind of abstract it was very ideologically motivated now fast forward there's much more of a focus on product and shipping things that people actually want and maybe that's just because it's been you know 7 years years and people want to actually use things and maybe it's because there's external competition now right there's uh you know usdc didn't exist back then and more centralized like stable coins like tether right provide a little bit of competition and so defi feels like it's in this place where it's trying to say hey what is the unique value proposition that defi has and that's the way that I understand um sky and kind of really leaning into things like token rewards that would be impossible for centralized competitors to um to do so maybe this would be a good um way to lean in or to uh

introduce the audience to this whole Sky uh a force and maybe stonie can I pick on you here to give us the give us like the scope um or like the outline of what this initiative actually is and then we can unpack the details yeah I mean it's maybe I we'll explain a little bit of the the the background story and and I mean um a and and maker and like basically Sky um we've contributed in the past for example like what you mentioned with the D d3m module so that was effectively a way to to uh mint die back in the days into a and and provide that um kind of like liquidity when we have liquidity crunches so like there's there's been uh there's been like

history of of different kinds of initiatives that we work together and actually when I had the idea about eand and you know creating this ability of like borrow against your Catal and one of the issues was back in those days is that we didn't really have a stable coin on ethereum which was quite funny like you you the only thing you could do actually you borrowed it against your coins like the very early versions of etland and then we had like um USD Peg it so you borrow like 1,000 USD um it that is picked on on USD and you return the same amount so you don't you didn't have this like token that represents uh stable value so obviously for us like when we started to see uh D

coming in um that was like a big thing because like we actually realized that you know actually you can now build um a really good use case and and because we came from the perspective of like how do you make this possible on chain without that stable coin and make a good product out of it and and it was really really Niche and almost impossible and D kind of like proved the case of like okay you have stable value so now you can actually create this use cases where you catalyze eat borrow die um other assets and and and so forth so that actually marked us little bit of like uh ability to to innovate and and build a better product so and at that point that was 200 um 18 early basically from there we we decided that you know to us to get

this whole thing to scale uh we have to just eliminate one step by step all these like middle processes of like how do you create a loan request and whatnot we changed into a more uh peer-to pool model instead of peer-to-peer model and try to eliminate each step and now over the years uh obviously AA has grown to be uh kind of like a leading uh lending and borrowing protocol and we've seen now that you know to grow this Market we have to go like beyond the existing uh defi ecosystem like we we we can't just like um satisfy the existing whales and like uh like the mar marginal people who come into the space but we have to like actually like put two big Brands together sky and a and and grow the

whole D5 Pi so that's the that's the whole um idea and and initiative behind and and obviously it's not just basically like you know me and run you know doing these podcast and like talking about it but actually there's product initiative there so so effectively one of the main things that we're doing is we're listing the usds uh into a and also uh activating the d3m uh based on all these different markets that a has so uh the main a market uh the Lio market and and future Market that brings opportunity to to Sky and this is just an example of like you know how two big D5 projects can actually collaborate across uh defi to gain more

um users into the space and and then obviously going in further what uh run mentioned about uh spark there's going to be a separate Market as well that is um it's a collaboration between maker sorry the um the A and and Spark uh communities where also you're going to have these stacked incentives so I think a lot of we we talk a lot about uh rewards and incentives but what run actually said a moment ago makes a lot of sense because it's a way of actually Distributing value or ownership across uh a financial uh infrastructure and that's also that brings people whether it's like retail or institutional uh down the line and our focus is purely on building just a better product that's how we wake up every day and try to um

improve and and and just build a better experience and close the gap between what where we are now in Defi and where rest of the world is actually interacting with financial opportunities uh can you explain uh just for the audience what we've now referenced this a couple of times the d3m module um just like how that actually works in practice mechanically and then why was that a part of the deal like what is the benefit to both um sky and um a in terms of activating this particular module like I saw there was aund Million facility for the Lido market for instance just help unpack for the audience why that's a part of this initia so originally um well the original maker protocol uh kind of um inventor at least

was really early of the like a really early system of the kind called the CDP model which is this like sort of you put it you you generate stable coins by um basically like putting higher value of eth and then you know if you put uh $50 of eth you can generate $100 of of stable coins and then now it's stable as long as the value of the $150 of eth doesn't go too low and then you liquidate all the kind of that's like the classic way that stable coins work right uh and then um what what uh basically was realized over time was that that's just like one of the many models you can use to p and and generate stable with so basically with Sky

uh this the system sort of transforming into one where um there's it's kind of agnostic around what is the way like what's the fundamental way that the stable coins are backed and generated uh there could be many different ways and and one of the ways is I mean and this is sort of the d3m model is you actually just deposit into other protocols uh so you just sort of like um you kind of I mean basically it's well the simple way to think of it is that sky can just generate usds tokens by putting like by basically depositing usds tokens into AA and then getting the kind of the Ava tokens in return and

just say well we can sort of create we can sort of pre pre-int essentially or rather it's happening atomically right but in a sense like you create the stable coin first and then you allocate it and then you get the collateral for it afterwards um and this is like fundamentally how usds Works in in in sky so this is all also how it works with like with like spark which is basically just a fork of a so that's the similar thing of like depositing like sort of creating a stable coin first and then allocating it to get the backing and you can also do this with like I mean you could also just allocate directly into something like tokenized uh treasuries you do the same thing like that's actually that's how rwa basically Works Curr I mean that's how it's been done in I mean that's Al how maker did

it for like for years basically a large scale interest so it's basically it's a new mechan it's a new way of creating the it's like basically new mechanism for minting the stable coin and the benefit is it's demand for the stable and then on the on the a side of things it actually helped you target a specific interest rate right like this was when there were liquidity crunches of something like d now usds on a you would there would be these crazy spikes in interest rates and now what you can just do is programmatically mint you know more and more usds to Target like a 4% you know borrow rate or something like that and then if it goes underneath that rate you can remove some of the supply and yeah and it actually we have to go back in time because like at some point

there was truly like liquidity crunches in in defi now obviously there's more liquidity but um essentially it allows that if there is a lot of demand um you basically have this additional liquidity Source um and and guaranteed liquidity there so so what you explain is accurate so if if there is too much demand it means that the rates of stable coins go high and at that point the only way to actually uh rebalance these rates um based on these algorithms is to get new LPS getting new LPS obviously take time and um you might have kind of like fluctuations between the cost of the liquidity so d3m is interesting because you can um pre-up liquidity so you can lower the actual uh rates make it

attractive at additional liquidity um and it acts in some ways um also like a uh liquidity distribution for for uh sky as at the same time yeah and what's so interesting is like I mean so basically in when when you discuss it you sort of discuss it as like from the Arvest perspective it's like stabilizing and sort of lowering the rates from Sky perspective it's kind of like it's sort of like tapping into higher rates and also kind of like being able to access wherever the like where where the need is right so um and and I think actually like I mean this concept again of like you know instead of having like the Maker's own native system that does this and then we like then the ecosystem

tries to kind of like make that win and dominate everything and everyone should use that that's kind of the old school that's like buildin they will come and of the technology thing and and again like the new way of thinking is like product focused and user acquisition focus and I like I mean the kind of the tagline I like to that is kind of in contrast to building they will come is meet the user where they are right and so that's a good way of saying it yeah I like that yeah like I mean and and and it applies to everything including like braining and and a bunch of other also yeah and like but then also with the with the the d3m model mhm um it's like that's it's basically like it's about like how to how to build something so that instead of having the users to come

and use some specific thing you like figure out well they're in a that's the most popular place like that's what borrowers like to use they feel safe they feel familiar going on ava.com and borrowing from there and they're I mean they're willing to pay a premium for that right there's way more demand for that than anything else because that's what they're used to so just use a yeah just use a yeah so so that's the right I mean that's the perfect place to deliver that stable coin liquidity right so sky can focus on growing the St like growing the part of that really matters which is the stable coin demand the savings sort of user experience and basically um Outsource you could say the the like finding the borrowers to somebody who specializes in that right you know why I like that too I mean that

also implies I I think there's been uh maybe a lack of focus on distribution in crypto as well and who has access to users and that sort of and I'd love to see that thinking uh start to creep in because I mean the space needs more users and uh it's interesting to see like the kind of the point of Leverage being also who has access to users and I I do have a question for you guys uh in just in terms of you know how how you guys think about um obviously you're not unilaterally in charge of either of these protocols but the future of um you know cooperation in between sky and a uh there's been a little bit of a convergence in terms of business model as well though because now uh a has go which is a stable coin and Spark as you

as you noted as a fork of a and so like very separate businesses now look a little bit more similar and so um maybe there's like a little bit of an area where you're competing a little bit so we just love to get a sense of like how much you guys think about like competing versus cooperating uh as like product lines converge a little bit well I have a good take on this because like um obviously like functionally speaking uh go the Aven stable coin it has uh one big purpose is it's simply to provide predictable borrow costs for the othera users so one thing we asked a lot of a users is that kind of like if if there will be a God for like you know for the product and they can decide anything

that could change you wave a magic wand exactly you have the magic wand essentially and and one of the things is that they want predictability on these uh borrow rates which is interesting because like over time you could quantify like average how much you're paying for the rates but the the kind of like uh the mental model is to understand how much you're paying um into the future and and that's where go essentially came um to serve that purpose and and and add also additional revenue for the avow but when I look actually like the competition I don't I don't actually see uh these models to competing in fact actually go is used uh mostly also used uh in in staking activity to secure the protocol and

bring that additional value also where uh usds is supplied and and back stopping uh the protocol but I think the the the real big point and this is something that run has been talking about is that the actual real competition is these bigger stable coins like USD usdc and and usdt and I think it's a really um uh big actually opportunity because if you look at the lending space and we look at the past five years um and I started build building e land uh back in 2017 when we saw a lot of centralized lenders so we saw salt lending blockfi coming celsus Genesis Lending and they all raised uh hundreds of millions of dollars um essentially just like to build a

business around lending and all of them failed because they were built in a very wrong way fundamentally whereas we have proven resiliency on on the lending side so and they looked Invincible at one point like the block fi looked like they had escape velocity and I mean they were like huge whales in defi for folks that missed this is like their trading desk was like they were pretty de gen back in the day they went to defi because you know because of the same reason they have the transparency they can see you know the execution you know there's guarantees from like the smartcoin checks and and governance and and whatnot so like that that's kind of is coming for theable coins as well so we're looking into resiliency so how we actually can create more resilient um

infrastructure for savings payments and and what not and if you look at the existing stable coin landscape it's very centralized and the more time passes it's going to be even more centralized because the same thing that happened with lending and all these uh businesses coming in and taking opportunities it the same thing will happen with stable coins so what we will see is that the fintex are coming in with their stable coins and and trying to capture the market share and and and profit from that then you have a new wave of stable coins where essentially you give a little bit of the profit and the next wave gives a little bit more whereas if you look at basically what uh usds is doing and and and sky is that they're redistributing everything out essentially and that's the kind of like

a way of doing it in defi is that you build an infrastructure that is you know valuable and then you can actually distribute everything for for the for the sake of growth and getting adoption for the technology yeah and also I mean I agree that I think the fundamental way to sum it up is basically it's D5 versus tradire right that's that's what matters and and uh and it's just because I mean well it's because you know you got to right now the opportunity is to grow the pie right not compete over slices of the pie uh and I think actually that generally um like all di5 protocols will converge to kind of deliver mostly all

the same Primitives because it's just so easy to replicate like it's all there it's all open source it's like uh and so uh um and I mean I I encourage that I think that's great and it's kind of it's one of the key uh underlying ideas for the star model of like you want to have multiple um multiple sort of specialized uh small like smaller specialized independent projects in the broader Sky ecosystem and it's not like so the thing that sets set you apart in defi when when you replicate all The Primitives across like every project right so all the stars they'll also like sort of for all the basics uh and instead what they'll do is

they will appeal to different demographics and they will kind of I guess in their user experience they'll emphasize different uh different parts of what they can do because that's what fits to the market they're trying to Target right hey everyone this episode is brought to you by Supra the new blazing fast vertically integrated L1 which helps you scale your D if you are a builder you're probably dealing with some combination of cost complexity and fragmentation of existing Solutions so if you're building over an eel 2 land everything's feeling a little bit fragmented at the moment and if you're building in salana everything is fast and on one layer but maybe you're limited in terms of what you can do with your app space so Supra is rolling out a new product called Supra containers you can head over to Supras s.com containers um to learn more they

offer dedicated customizable app spaces running on Supra 500,000 TPS layer one blockchain that gives you complete control over gas tokens and fees so some cool things you can do you get the freedom to you can use use your own token create local fee markets or even go gasless whatever you want so this product isn't live yet but because you're a faithful listener of Vel curve you get notified first so head over to supra.com Containers thank me later you know what that actually reminds me of a little bit is you know you look at Banks right and say hey there's they're all banks right like what's the difference between you know Bank of America and City and Goldman and anyone that actually knows banking is like those are extremely different entities right some you know really focused and crushed Asset Management uh right maybe the Morgan

Stanley of the world and other make their money in different ways but you know what's what looks like a bank on the surface is there are many you know numerous different business lines and you know different ways that their customers like they position themselves differently for different customer segments do you think that's the way that it's roughly going to evolve in defi as well we're going to converge on this same set of product lines but maybe we're always going to think of Sky a little bit more from the standpoint of a stable coin and a a little bit more from the standpoint of borrow lend or is that roughly the way to think about it for a I would say the the main Focus definitely is the lending borrowing um and I would say like go will grow uh increasingly with the a actual deployments where it can facilitate

predictability of the the um borrow rates and that's for example what we we're working and focusing quite a lot is to bring go into these other deployments that we have and create that yield um well borrow cost predictability and then even even though so like we have all these different um protocols and and and dows end of the day you need that compatibility so if you look at traditional Finance the main they mainly deal with especially like investment Banks asset managers they mainly deal with other Banks uh effectively but the the the main point here is that what we're doing which is very unique with with um sky and a is that we're actually taking all the available incentives and

we're stacking them into the same kind of like liquidity Pipeline and that attracts that uh additional liquidity into this space and and interest because you know if if if we are able to create better opportunities that in Trad do it in a decentralized resilient way uh make it fun make actually useful products um that will be attractive like a holistic offering for for more people to come yeah I agree and I think also just like um the fact that you have these kind of initiatives like you have from Sky now have like building this kind of I mean really think of it like the no-brainer market right like it's going to be it's like the best of of both protocols right and you have something like that you have that kind of collaboration and you

have just like the more General positioning of like sky and a like it's kind of you know it's it goes beyond Integrations it's kind of like sending a message also which is the sort of fundamental message of like grow the pie right and just like be mature and uh you know like I mean if you look at I guess trfi you look at other other examples of like other Industries you have like I mean the really large companies the really large economic players I mean they all benefit immensely from like trading and interacting with each other right right so that's just I mean that should be the focus if we want to take defi to the next level and bring it to the mass market and focus on delivering it to end users and I think um crypto very much kind of is coming out of a

past that is a lot more Bitcoin versus altcoins or mem coin a versus mcoin B and it's kind of like it's a serome game and it's all about like if like if my C is going to go up that means those other they have to move the it's not enough that I win they must lose yeah but that's I mean that's kind of like that mentality has existed quite a lot even in defi I think yeah because it's just I mean it's just like immaturity basically I guess right and then I guess to the point you were making earli like now you have I mean AA and Sky suddenly they're making lots of Revenue just like value generation it's just like obviously unavoidably it's positive sum now so suddenly it just gets I mean just comes clear that this is where the real opportunity is to kind of focus on just

like growing growing growing and there will be there'll be enough for everyone you know well you there's so much opportunity completely and I actually see your both of your guys seat as being applications as being uh you know a lot of the tribalism in crypto is really between the Bitcoins of the world versus the ethereums of now it's ethereum and salana and everyone's kind of yapping at each other but uh both I think um a and sky are good examples of you know run I saw you in Singapore at breakpoint uh talking about you know expanding over into salana and I don't know Stan if a has explicit plans but I talked to Mark um and he was uh very enthusiastic about salana has been tweeting about it so I'm assuming something might be on the horizon there but it's cool to see you guys extending all of branches and going

in and I think that maybe will actually be really positive for tri I mean in aice perspective we already um we're also developing the U Move implementation for opas so like we're we're purely looking where are the users and and how we can expand uh beond evm so like obviously like we see a lot of value in evm and on ethereum ecosystem and and a lot of financial institutions start from there I mean black rock is a great example and there's a bunch of other ones but but like purely if you think about like software perspective like if if if if if we have a piece of software that enables Financial opportunities you know it should be everywhere where these users are so it it shouldn't look into even like what networks are and I think it's um the

battle like between like uh ethereum Solana is is it's isn't really productive because end of the day both of these communities have something to give um they have their user bases they have their like um communities so for for us it's actually like a great opportunity we're like well you know we just build everywhere where there's actually users and can provide value because we don't really know which one of these will be like you know the the future of like future Macs and PCs and whatever like or like iPhones in terms of distribution so we have to be everywhere from that perspective I have a question for you guys actually maybe when you're thinking about expanding over into salana for instance there are existing competitors right on the stablecoin front um and

there's existing competitors on the uh lending front maybe Camino would be an example of that and I actually remember doing um a podcast on with Lio we were talking with the chorus one team because they were very helpful and they initially um kind of built out the expansion for Lio onto salana and they didn't end up working for a number of reasons but one of them was like there is this like Community kind of tribal feel and the users are like I'm supporting the salana solution and there was also a question of incentives um so I think they were talking about it was difficult for them to compete with marinade at the time this was pre Goo even where you know 100% of marinades emissions were basically going towards this and Li was like well I can't you know emit every single chain that I'm on

SO how do you guys think as app developers like the trait of like some of the complexities of moving to another ecosystem and maybe competing with some of the incumbents over there so actually I mean so I think with usds and uh this whole effort that gone into like really trying to position sky and usds and and what exactly how exactly does it go to market uh I think uh it has a very interesting and like very specific position which is that it's not you know it's not a it's not like a regular stable coin it's not a centralized stable coin like usdc and USD it doesn't even really try to compete with them directly it actually tries to sort of complement them as like the simplest possible step that you can take to go

into kind of like as much as possible what you can get from from D5 without making it complicated or like without uh yeah like like sort of starting to really get into you have to think about things like Risk right um so something like that actually doesn't exist on on salana at all currently like so and and also I mean I mean actually there's nothing nothing like it because of the the I mean the token rewards they're sort of the thing that really positions uh usds to like completely uniquely uh and you were kind of making that point earlier of like this is already cuz where stable coins are already going is they're going into these like yield bearing stable coins so the assumption is already that there's no profit margin like there's no there's no leftover

value uh even if you like if you just back your your token entirely with like something like treasuries or whatever right you have to give all of that all of that return to the end user and then you're still just like you're just making the bare minimum cut like this is like the starting point then you have to figure out how you're going to then make something unique from there right and so with with usds and Sky it's basically so one is the token rewards and then the second thing is the what we were talking about earlier like the the ability to allocate into like where the good returns are right so sky is the biggest in rwa and and has generated like really good uh the ability to off like give a really good savings rate based on on treasuries right but now the next

Frontier is like well tabbing into every every opportunity for Value creation on a for instance and things like uh Athena and like all these other things that that are able that that um Sky's been able to do that actually also is I mean the reason why suddenly sky can move so fast is because now it's kind of it's going through the spark process right so it's like a more specialized process uh and Sky itself just focuses on building more of these processes rather than kind of doing it directly itself M which then also is the thing that sort of like goes back around to the fact you can have the token rewards that represents each of these uh specialized processes and I I mean obviously I think

just like the the best product wins essentially that's what users want so like it's it can be like a while like you know where people they have like various reasons to use different kinds of protocols and but the end of the day they they want to use something that is um really powerful soles a lot of things for them and it's it's easy to use and actually like in in finance it's probably one of those fields where um there is not really like Winner Takes all it's there's multiple uh winners you know it's it might be from like five to 10 to even 20 different types of um uh projects essentially and I think that's a good thing because you need that diversification and I mean for for me when I think about salana like we talk

to a lot of these uh def5 Builders there and kind of like understand what perspective they're building what they are trying to attract and and and actually try to work with a lot of these people and I mean we've um uh I've been in in in collaboration with one of the earliest uh projects on on Solana that are focused on lending and borrowing so like Solana by itself isn't like something that you know is is new to me like it's it's it's something that I've I've been looking into for a long time but effectively I want to see people actually um creating that use case and getting excited about Defi and that's the same way for example what we've been thinking about optos is that there's a lot of great Builders and obviously that's a new code base a new language for us and we want to go and learn there

and support the ecosystem so I do think that that's really important that you know all these projects and developers feel comfortable and there needs to be some sort of a opportunity otherwise it's it's kind of like um you get into weird battles and and I think uh we're kind of like too old for for that I also think that like I mean I was I was saying this earlier right that like I think a is like the first the first like like D5 product that really like was became a product and I think like I'm like really I mean I think uh it is I has such a strong mode in like how it's build it's got sort of two right it's got the it's got the like the Lindy effect yeah which I mean maker also has that right and has that that's

like a major major point of right but AA has that plus this like very very unique kind of vibe and brand and culture right that I think is so powerful that like is just like there's a you're talking about raave right that's the I mean it's the whole thing it's like end to end and I feel like it's I mean I feel like you didn't you guys didn't sit down and design it you were kind of like it just happened it and very very organic actually yeah yeah I mean the same thing happened in mega was just more like it kind of groomed so many directions that it became less uh I think you you wouldn't like with AA you really just like you just know what you mean when you're talking about like the AA Vibe it's like very unique and it's very scaled up and uh so it's like but

and one of the things that's cool about it is that it's sort of I don't know how to put it like you know it's a little bit like uh edgy it's like a bad term right but it's like it's not I mean it's character yeah I mean yeah like I yeah I mean it's also like it's kind of like cute you know also right it's like uh we call it utility I mean I think that is so unique and so like I mean once I used I used to be fully in the build and they will come Camp so I used to be like why are they spending you know why are they spending so much time differentiating the vibe like this later I was like damn you know we should have been doing that the whole time you know but I just I really feel

or Sky now has a very strong brand though I think uh maybe in a slightly different way but it's also extremely differentiated yeah and but it's I mean sending the Good Vibes all around here in this this sky is like um I mean I think like sky is a lot more I would say trying to like do this kind of really broad appeal of like I mean I I feel like it's it's you know usds is like I mean if you look at the name usds yeah that Sky picked versus go for AIT right go is like I mean go is like the that's the perfect stable coin for AIT because it's sort of like it really it builds on top of the like it sort of like Taps into like I mean there's what is it Bill 20 billion that's that's they're like they're really locked in to AA I think

because it's like it's combination all these things and well and my point is that like uh obviously you can't I mean I don't think you can compete with AA on being AA right that's just AA is always going to win in that uh and then you have something like Sky which is like deliberately more trying I mean it's trying to be a little bit more I guess um I mean almost like generic in a sense right like really broadly appealing uh but then the real other part of that is then you have the stars that are like and that's an attempt to sort of uh kind of what if you could try to you can just you keep you make you have another attempt at getting something like what AA has but for a different demographic and then you can do another attemp and they can and you

can just make different versions of this but trying to Target these like different specific demographics you know why I deeply understand that is because blockworks actually we Define ourselves now as a House of Brands so there's the blockworks umbrella brand but B curve is a brand Empire is a brand forward guidance is a brand on the Mark it's the exact same thought process actually of hey we can actually Target different segments here if we cut up our customer base and create these unique Brands um good thing about that is that and we do that a little bit on the avar level and L and family is that you can create different audiences basically like while you know Everyone likes a cute logo and and whatever but then like you might have a completely different type of

audience you want to tap into that maybe isn't even here in in in in our space and you kind of like are trying to find a way to um attach or like create a way with with a brand so brand really plays a a big role and and for us for with the actual like the the the like the the utility or like the cute ghost It Started from the idea of like you know Finance in general like financial industry tries to be very serious like they Tred to like show like we've been here from like they 200 years ago like we're like you know see some of that gray hair exactly you try to like convince people and our idea was that well you don't need to like convince anything like because like everything is

you know you build on Smart contracts you can build resiliency you know you have this transparency like you don't like you you don't need to basically because everything is like on chain and and contracts and and and whatnot so why don't we just make it more playful um and also like it it it played out really well and and and that was a big bet as well to do because we were like either this direction or that direction and we just like basically followed our heart hearts and we were like well let's just try something fun and see how it how it plays out yeah I think it also I mean it's you you know it's gamification yeah in part right and um that's also I mean that that's the same I mean maybe one answer is that the user base is is changing I mean it's

like like def5 for young totally I think it is too there's a even since I'm not as OG as you get but even like 2018 to 20 like blockworks got founded in 2018 and it is a completely different industry and in some way it's less ideological I think than it used to be I will say also I think the average caliber of person in this industry is higher probably than it was at various points like maybe I just have a very event Centric focuses but we used to host event you know we've hosted events for a long time and the even though the industry is much larger but I think there's more serious like the human capital of the industry has expanded quite a bit in the last but how have you guys seen it change like what are the big changes from your perspective well I I've seen more kind

of like institutional interests like and I've I mean I think like both of us we've we've we've had this like Bank meetings like years ago and we walk into a uh financial institution and you know we educate you know a bunch of people in the boardroom about you know Defi and everyone no one asks questions doesn't really care and you you leave from the meeting basically like thinking of like okay these these folks will never get it you know what do you guys wear when you walk into one of those meetings are you are you walking like this yeah yeah it's uh usually like I mean um well maybe like you have a bottom down sometimes but like it's mainly like this I mean this is a this is like our like outfit

like I feel like it works yeah um what is that I mean what do you guys think so now there obviously are it's like the meme but the institutions are slowly coming right and black rock is probably the best example of this we've got Bitcoin ETFs eth ETFs but also they're really building things on chain right like bidd actual onchain funds rwas and so you know if the final boss here is trafi how do you guys as protocol Founders think about that are they there obviously is some amount of Co operation uh there's a little bit of maybe long-term uh competition maybe it's coopertition like how do you guys think about working with the institutions as they're here today I mean I think that uh what's I mean so uh maker did the

whole rwa thing like maybe two years ago started really scaling it up so I think a couple of years ago this kind of phase began where institutions were willing to like work with crypto because they could make money and it's was like oh they pay and so we can do some work with them now and it's like der risked enough that if they pay us we'll do some work with them I think now what's what's coming uh is this I mean I think a realization of the values uh embedded in like sort of modern Defi and modern crypto being like actually having a competitive advantage and and like so uh so for instance this idea of like the best way to make a compelling D5 product is to have some gamification into it right and and don't

make it like fully like gray hair uh and I feel like that's now like one thing is well the user base is like younger and a different generation and so on so they it appeals to them but I also think what's happening is like when I talk to the people from Black Rock right and they call their token bidd and they have this whole explanation of why it's called B but I mean it's obviously it's like I feel like that's a little bit of a gamification black rock is that is definitely doing through through D5 right and I think I mean also when uh like and what that also kind of unlocks now is that uh that people from blackor they'll see like how well the fact that you have you know the native token rewards built into Sky that you can get

with usds it makes sense that by having different options and the different tokens they represent s of different brands and different values and that's going to give different options to the users that are ultimately going to be the source of demand that can then like allocate into their treasuries and I think that you know they that was that was way too advanced and sort of out there a couple of years ago and instead now they're sort of they're trying to learn cuz like they're they're taking it seriously enough and I guess actually I mean a guy from Black Rock explained this to me that it's like they need to make money from it first before they even bother like thinking about the future like yeah they don't like experiments that are like you know it's a bunch of promises and like we're going to do an experiment and if they start

making money from it then suddenly they'll start like really like they're like okay we're making money now so how can we make more money you know yeah it's it's kind of the best and worst thing about Finance right it's just very honest about what they're after right it is like we are here to make money and there's no bones about it it is you know it's not the idealist that I think a lot of us in in crypto kind of operate um you know there's a lot of idealists here but it is honest in a sense um and it's cool that they can make money right like it's cool that they're actually incentivized to take this industry seriously and build things out and I I think um the the more we see institutions coming into the space uh the bigger these Network effects are within the space so yeah I think these

early ones early adopters they have the biggest kind of like U Arbitrage distribution like the biggest opportunity so and obviously like um it makes sense that these are like you know asset managers instead of like Banks because banks have higher uh fiduciary responsibilities so like we'll see more and more funds coming in and I think this is like um really exciting because like we've we've been building this for years between like kind of like you know if you look at like def summer back in uh 2020 you know it's a lot about like Distributing like governance power Distributing like farming tokens coins and and whatnot and and and and we actually might have a interesting opportunity where you know we're

bringing the whole like Financial space into onchain and and these two innovations uh both sky and a are like in in the like Forefront so like we kind of have an obligation to be here now like it's it's just feel feels like we have to be here because there's this like a big transformation of uh Financial infrastructure and and the way we think about you know Capital the the way we build products and um distribute wealth and value and it's going to be like a big shift that is happening but it takes like next couple of decades to actually progress yeah what do you guys think I mean maybe final closing question here is this uh you know catchphrase D5 Renaissance um has been getting thrown

around a and I think what that just really means is I don't know if you guys remember defi Spartan uh or DJ Spartan put that like defi be Market you know 36-month tracker for a long time which is really funny and honestly around the time that tracker ended I feel like honestly both a and you know maker and now Sky were good examples of okay uh you guys were actually printing real uh you know generating real fees and there was actually activity on these platforms and honestly not that this is the point but it's always nice the token prices have done pretty well um in the last year or two um and so I think one of the other nice things too is there's this you know high fdv low float sort of meta and a lot of the you know the tokenomics of both sky and a look a lot better than

some of these new competitors and so I would love to get a sense of you know when you hear this def Renaissance like what does that mean to the two of you and what are you guys kind of excited about uh from the D side of things like be it some of these new institutions coming in obviously there's the whole Rebrand and you know onboarding stars and all that type of thing but what do you guys kind of excited about in the realm of Def well yeah going back to these token economics I I I do think that um both of these um projects has been able to actually first of all the the hardest thing build something really valuable that is uh useful and also actually in both cases uh useful for any type of a market cycle essentially like they they

have a really strong utility and then having a strong of community that actually is attached to the project and actually um and that's a great thing because like you actually are you you're building this publicly with with uh group of group of people that have different T types of uh goals within the community being able to do that and being able to be profitable so you know if you look at if you think about governance in general like it's it's more closer to uh governments than like you know hierarchical businesses that can operate really quickly fast so being able to operate in in this more like governmental kind of like a structure is is really uh interesting

it's it's not easy uh but that's something we we've been able to do um I personally I'm super excited about obviously everything we're doing now with uh with with sky and and a and and this collaboration and where it actually go goes to Growing the pie and then more of like a a bigger kind of like initiative that we have with OB by 2030 where we basically want to keep building Innovation as the defi space grows uh rv4 is is is big uh part of that bringing a lot of interesting uh Innovation from like liquidity premiums and more Capital efficiency and and just basically more risk management tools like we we just want to incrementally build better and better software and

better and better products and and just win more users and win more adoption and that's the kind of end game so like if we can get um in Institution is more comfortable on the technology on the brands and things we're doing uh we're going to see big waves of adoption yeah I mean I think that def5 Renaissance means that now D5 will sort of return to its rightful place as basically the main thing that defines crypto and the thing that the king yeah and I mean well briely happened during defi summer but actually for the most like for a very long time like def like mostly it's been I mean people have been into like meme coins and like weird

infrastructure stuff where they don't really understand why it's value so it's potential Pure Play you know so that's like all that kind of hard to monetize as well those infrastructures yeah it's like I mean and it's all the I guess it's all the I mean it's the thing that really defines crypto it's both the good and bad of it right that it's so driven by greed and the problem is that the real use cases I mean it's taken a long time for it to really find the product mark because that's just how it works if same for like you look at the internet or whatever right obviously doesn't happen in one day so the problem with Diva has been all right there's potential but then like it's the only place where real stuff is happening but then when you used to then actually look at the numbers it's like okay well so

the real things are happening but not that much of it so let's go and and kind of instead fantasize about this stuff that where it's like pre anything happening so it could be sky's the limit right well and then what happened now is well we did the hard work basically in I mean particularly sky and AR but also some of the other protocols right yeah people actually just went to the in the trenches and they built and they shipped and they started thinking about users and they started thinking about product Market fit and and delivering the last mile all of this stuff and it succeeded and now basically sky and a particularly is generating massive revenues and and you're sort of you're getting to the point where like I feel like it's almost like um I don't

know to call it something like sun cost fallacy of like the the market and the mind space like the M people are not they're not ready to accept that they have been distracting themselves with stuff that fundamentally it was appeal to them because it didn't really do much real things right and it was more like these OG like sort of like old school crypto stuff that didn't do anything so you can it can go anywhere right well I got a question for you on this as well uh maybe this is a little bit more of an ethereum specific question but I saw Kane tweeted out a couple of months ago you know something to the effect of what wasn't super happy about um like his perception of how the EF has talked about uh defi in on ethereum in general and you know it was kind of this idea of

like hey guys you know you know there's 40 50 billion worth of tvl on the chain and this is what people come to ethereum to do and you know it seemed like there's a little bit of more of a maybe a distaste of some of the more speculative elements around finance and Defi and it's like hey we should be building other things X Y and Z and you know Kane's perspective at that time was well this is what people this is what has been built and this what people are using like have you guys ever felt that at all before or what's your perspective on that I mean I really don't I think the I mean the point of what what let's call it Blue Chip defi is doing right Sky AA and some of the other top ones like the point is these projects don't

need some kind of blessing to succeed right and that's that's the that's what all the other stuff needs because you don't know what they're actually doing right you don't know where the real value comes from for the for for the for like the established D5 protocols I mean the value comes from executing and and you know some like nothing else really matters so I think uh you know like I think it's more like this is just the natural the nature of crypto of greed of markets and so on but and and what's amazing is now it's coming full full circle right and the the the market and the industry and the community is like waking up to the fact that okay this is ultimately this is where the real value is yeah uh and I mean and stani

basically came up with the perfect way to kind of encapsulate this with D5 Renaissance right of like it it's and it's sort of catching on and it's I feel like it's still like seen as like uh like sort of alpha right it's kind of like it's not like it's not yet like consensus uh because people are still there you know that I mean they they they got some pretty big backs some you know infrastructure number 700 or something right and it's going to take a while to go to kind of process that yeah and I I think like a lot like there there's so much infrastructure in it feels like you know like if you're starting to think about like kind of like about like a financial platform like you start to seeing like so many networks LT and effectively they're all like finding

from the same users right and there is like some of them like do not have any um Innovation some have like incremental Innovation there and you still kind of like create that Network and you're trying to like attract the same kind of like projects and whatnot and I mean we sold from Office perspective by just being everywhere um but also like we're not sure like how these projects they will solve their you know monetization profitability because you know sequence of fees those will go down like users they don't like there's going to be expectations that users don't want to pay fees down the line and the more time passes you know the the more it becomes clear and I think the the the EF perspective run said really well like

you know that's defy by itself will stand whether like you know people give a blessing or or or not because effectively it has all the fundamentals there why it's needed it it has that pure you know protocol like protocol Market fits and um there's need there's like a high utility for that and and they're agnostic to use cases like stable coins savings you know borrowing lending that they're applicable as a financial layer to to um inject into these opportunities so I think I would say that uh effectively uh from EF standpoint like obviously it Serv um ethereum as a community andf to see these new use cases emerge obviously

it's also um servicing us because let's say if there is like a interesting like uh let's say social um uh ecosystem and and Dent social ecosystem there's interesting refi ecosystem and they all need Finance for some reasons then defi can plug into those things so it's it's actually a good thing for us that people build all kinds of stuff uh on chain but fundamentally now people are realizing that oh it's actually about how these networks are profitable how they can sustain themselves because if they can't you know then it's got hard so we've we've were in a kind of like a decade where all the sustainability was based on like inflation rewards um uh

basically um kind of like uh incentivizing by Distributing ownership but now it's the time of actually seeing like which one of these protocols actually paid out and uh sustain and if you sustain then you can actually grow and have good economics there and I mean one thing I want add is also like I I don't want to Trash Talk infrastructure projects right they're or the EF in general like I just respond all these are super we love infrastructure but they are super important to like grow love it we love it it's there to like it's there to scale scale the industry right but the thing is it's not going to I mean you were making a point like it's not going to scale if it you know no one coming who the end user needs to right

the the benefits of of crypto which I think primarily I mean it's basically stable coins and Defi and that's going to merge so it's really just defi right that benefit needs to be delivered to more end users and to do that you need apps right you need the app layer and it's kind of the old school thesis of like you have infrastructure and then you have apps and you sort of switch between and now the the balance is Shifting towards the apps and that's defi Renaissance right that's like like a that's like the Ian that's a really like I said of this very original D5 product uh with I mean with the transformation to Sky that's actually also I mean that is also it's not just like a change to being product focused it's also actually that Sky itself has its own app which is actually brand new

right so that sky. money is like that is now like now there is like a single app you can go and use it that that wasn't the case with maker is like more like a pure infrastructure in that sense and I think like yeah it's just I mean it's amazing that it's it's now coming to this these Protocols are growing took almost a decade but now we're here yeah but but I mean but it's going to happen like I mean and I've I mean we're seeing it like AA is like growing like crazy uh uh you know maker and D like had this massive growth explosion in defi summer it went to like 10 billion die then it stable like then it fell when sort of the bar Market happened right and and D kind of stabilized around 5 billion and basically the supply of D had been like

basically been been stable in this like really tight band of just like this is how much D demand there was and that's that's it and and just oscillated and sort of was really really stable and actually like like the community was look I mean this is a big part of the transformation like the community is looking like what's like why is it why is this happen like why is it not going up and down why is this staying exactly like this right and now with sky with the new brands with the new uh use cases sort of the unique the the unique value prop of like you can get the token rewards and you can use it on the app and it's all branded into in to be more easy to use for the first time we're actually seeing that now the the total Supply is going up so like the demand

for this stable coin is like starting to actually kind of incrementally you know slow and steady it's starting to increase and and I I mean it's you can't I mean it's hard you can't exactly it's very hard to track users in defa right but I don't think it's a it's a stretch to attribute that to the fact that some new things have been released and they've actually been in this like app focused and product focused way of like we know who we're trying to appeal to and then we build products that are sort of appealing to them and then what's coming next is like then you have Sky Force and the integration of usds I'm super excited for that right I'm expecting that to grow you know total I mean that's going to grow deposits into AA that's going to grow total uh demand for usds and then from there it's just

going to be more and more of this and every time there's going to be I mean obviously there's going to be the you know the superior Solutions in D5 they're going to convert users over but also there's going to be something now that it gets a little bit more mature a little bit more value generating and it's going to be enough to like draw in some more people from the outside right and then the the pie grows and eventually one day it's going to triggle down to the infrastructure layer even you know so that's it's for everyone you know yeah and interesting here is that these initiatives they're not like VC driven or like VC kind of like um suggested tactics these are like they come from the community people have brainstorms brainstorm how to actually make efficient protocols make efficient um economics there as well so like

that's that's I think something that um we get quite often wrong because like you see all this new defi Commerce and you know they R raise bunch of money from VCS and you know and then they go and try to like do the same playbooks but like they always forget like you know you have to build a community and you know the closer you are to the users in the community the more actually you can you can you have a higher chances to succeed and I think that's something that's um both of like uh sky and and and also a has has done really well being able to like uh build around gr good group of people what do you got last final question for you guys I know we've gone on a little while here but one other thing in crypto that at least

I've noticed is it seems like when something really works you kind of copy that thing and you don't really think first principles is about trying to solve the problem that you're trying to solve the example that I would give you is that Bitcoin was the original right it was kind of the pioneer and it pioneered all of these things there's proof of work there's also like a very flat transparent Supply schedule for the token and there was this design philosophy of being super minimal right like that's kind of like optimizing for Simplicity over complexity and actually you see a lot of that in ethereum I think ethereum has also optimized for a very flat U sort of surface area right and they've kept um you know they wanted to push a lot of that complexity off of the base layer onto other layers like layer twos and you can't really do that

as an app right apps have are kind of the opposite is you actually want to eat that complexity and manage it and solve it and that's how you get your reward and so have you guys noticed similar like how I think that a lot of uh protocols I would be curious how you guys think of the approach to eating complexity versus being very minimally thin and I guess this is kind of related to governance as well but how do you guys think about that you going out there and trying to eat complexity and build and ship products are you trying to be kind of decentralized and thin and neutral I mean this is definitely a really essential um question and challenge that the transformation to Sky aims to address right with from maker because we we had exactly like maker had exactly this problem of like it it as it

grew bigger and it had to handle all this money uh it got more complex and the governance couldn't really handle it so now there's kind of like two fundamental Solutions being being introduced with sky right so the first one is um it's kind of get the best of both worlds but actually keep that thinner more decentralized uh kind of characteristic uh but enable scaling up and that's just through like subdivision right so that's the Stars that's the Stars basically like you kind of carve out the complexity and put it into these different uh specialized projects right that can focus on the different challenges and then they can have their own governance and that governance can be more it just it's just going to be more smooth if it's not distracted by having to do everything but they can

kind of focus on the one thing that whatever that particular Community is good at yeah then the other thing is just like actually you got to actually just directly address the problem head on because I think fundamentally I mean I believe fundamentally Surplus value and like profits inherently uh comes from basically eating complexity yeah like if you're just like a simple like I mean you're basically saying I want to make a commodity so I want to get commoditized and there's not going to be any value to capture there which is I mean Noble and great and awesome so like thumbs up to the infrastructure layer for building all those awesome Commodities right that the apps can build on top of but you want to be able to handle it I mean you want to be able to deliver the user what they want right right you know why

should somebody else do it why not whoever whatever whoever whatever project you're building right why shouldn't that be the one that does it and the way to really do this and really scale it up and really sort of like capitalizing this that's by um just by I mean being faster and better and today what that means is integrating AI into your process right so I think that's going to be like the top apps that succeed in Defi and crypto just like the top companies in the whole world I mean everyone's dealing with this right now but they're they're going to integrate AI into the governance that's going to be like essential way to like how do you how do you maintain the fundamental characteristics of defi how do you maintain that decentralization yet become able to

deliver these very complex uh you know like value propositions and Abstract all that complexity away right I mean with sky is like it's a stable coin and you can get token rewards and that doesn't sound so complicated but under the hood it's like you know incredibly parallelized and optimized and has all this complexity but like you don't need to deal with that as a user you just need to trust that it works and look at the track record Mak yeah Simplicity scales and you know I think one of the challenges usually is in in defi is people create this like very narrow complex like you know Primitives on top of Primitives that you know you have a niche audience but I think like first things first is that we have to build things that scill

to every single person in the planet because that's how you get the technology to adopt it so if it you know if you built for 1 billion you don't get the same uh thing as if you want a full like penetration so I think that's really important and and for us like obviously it comes with with the product development and and also how we actually position ourselves as well and I think um the more we get that complexity out the better and I think ethereum's case is that that Innovation should happen in al2s but I think kind of like some of the most of the l2s are you know they they're just copying the same stack and and kind of like using the L2 for them like you know not to fight over block

space but there are some interesting uh Innovations especially on the ZK side I mean all the ZK rollups from like um ZK sync scroll polygon and um Stark they all are doing uh very interesting Innovation there also like in terms of optos like their goal is to upgrade their Network as as soon as possible whenever they have Innovation and that's an interesting approach for something where you want high frequen high frequency up toate uh Innovation as well so I think that's something that ethereum has to um kind of like think about down the line like where is going to most of that Innovation happen you know and and that hasn't been really settled so everyone is kind of like

building towards their own uh directions um but yeah Simplicity Simplicity scales and the more we make it simple for Norm is you know the more users we will have guys you've both been super generous with your time thanks for coming on and talking to all the listeners about um all this stuff if folks want to find out more about um you know Sky a force or follow the two of you like what's the best way to do that well we we're both on lens uh and obviously on on X let's go awesome yeah I mean uh for for Sky the really important domain is Sky money that's a new website that's where you can see everything and use it yeah you can follow me on X run K or Rune on lens I got that I got that you got the Rune I

got that name there massive Simplicity Simplicity exactly Rune um all right guys this has been a ton of fun thanks for doing this we'll have to do it again sometime soon thank you so much than you