Speaker 1: One of the great features of the monat blockchain. It's
Speaker 1: very fast. I read ten thousand transactions per second. How
Speaker 1: are you able to achieve that but also maintain security.
Speaker 2: That's actually one of the hardest problems to solve, like
Speaker 2: being able to have both speed and security at the
Speaker 2: same time. We know this because of the blockchain trilemma
Speaker 2: that has been touted for several years. At this point,
Speaker 2: monid is different because it is no longer bound by
Speaker 2: the same constraints that other chains are.
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Speaker 1: Hey everyone, welcome into the Thinking Crypto podcast. I'm your
Speaker 1: host Tony Edward and we're recording at Station three in
Speaker 1: New York's Financial District. And joining me is Unice Giata,
Speaker 1: who is the co founder of the Monad Foundation. Now.
Speaker 1: The Monad Foundation is an independent organization dedicated to supporting
Speaker 1: the development and adoption and growth of the monat blockchain protocol.
Speaker 1: We'd focus on speed, decentralization, EVM compatibility, and security. Unis
Speaker 1: great to have you.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me, Tony. It's great to be.
Speaker 1: Here, Unis. I am excited to chat with you. Last
Speaker 1: year there was a lot of news around Monad and
Speaker 1: I'm excited to dive into the details. But let's kick
Speaker 1: it off with your background. Where are you from? How
Speaker 1: the hell did you make your way into crypto?
Speaker 2: Yes, great question. It was a very circuitous route making
Speaker 2: my way to crypto. But I am a California native.
Speaker 2: I grew up in the Central Valley and was there
Speaker 2: all of my childhood, all the way through high school.
Speaker 2: And then I graduated high school, went to the East
Speaker 2: Coast for college, which is went to MIT, studied computer
Speaker 2: science and undergrad which is where I met Keoni Hahn,
Speaker 2: who is the co founder of Monad Foundation, alongside my work,
Speaker 2: and from there I went more into a typical path.
Speaker 2: This was I graduated in twenty thirteen, so this was
Speaker 2: like just around the first time that bitcoin was starting
Speaker 2: to get on folks's radars. Actually, a year after I
Speaker 2: had graduated, MIT actually gave every single student one hundred
Speaker 2: dollars worth of bitcoin in twenty fourteen. Yes, I just
Speaker 2: missed it, but you know what could have been. But
Speaker 2: I graduated and went into traditional finance. I worked as
Speaker 2: a rate exotics trader at BAA and then transitioned into
Speaker 2: technical product management and business development at a fintech company.
Speaker 2: Honestly just right up the street. I was at one
Speaker 2: forty Broadway and from there was continuing down the product
Speaker 2: route at Shutterstock. Then I pivoted entirely away from technology.
Speaker 2: I had a little bit of like a quarter life crisis,
Speaker 2: so to speak, and I worked at a restaurant, worked
Speaker 2: at Jean George as a chef de party in the
Speaker 2: pastry department just before the pandemic. Very wild, very different experience.
Speaker 2: But because the pandemic hit a year later, I found
Speaker 2: myself being blessed to evaluate the professional career all over again,
Speaker 2: and eventually I found my way into crypto because I
Speaker 2: had a lot of friends who from college or from
Speaker 2: professional life transitioning away from more of the traditional finance
Speaker 2: route into crypto, whether it was as a VC or
Speaker 2: as a crypto founder. So to me, that was like, okay,
Speaker 2: well either everyone's gone bat shit or there's like something
Speaker 2: real here. So I started doing my own research, learning
Speaker 2: a little bit more. I remember when Polygon was stillmatic
Speaker 2: and I came to discover smart contracts and was just
Speaker 2: floored by it. I remember in school there was a
Speaker 2: module and yeah, there was a module in school where
Speaker 2: we were talking about distributed computation and Ethereum was like
Speaker 2: bringing distributed computation to life. So I had no idea
Speaker 2: that smart contracts existed. I was fascinated and was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: there's something here, there's something real. I want to be
Speaker 2: a part of it. So fast forward to twenty twenty two,
Speaker 2: early twenty two, you know, previous college classmate Keoni and
Speaker 2: his co founder James Hunsaker, they were starting Monad. I
Speaker 2: was looking for potential opportunities to deep dive into and
Speaker 2: so I was brought on board. And that is the
Speaker 2: story of me getting into crypto and me being a
Speaker 2: part of the Monad story.
Speaker 1: So it's fascinating that you mentioned twenty twenty two, you know,
Speaker 1: with everything that happened and the gravitational pull of crypto
Speaker 1: brought you back in and now you're a fan, which
Speaker 1: is really cool. When you were a MIT because I
Speaker 1: remember hearing about courses at MIT around blockchain and crypto,
Speaker 1: and I think former SEC chair Gary Genser thought there,
Speaker 1: I think you might be back there, But was there
Speaker 1: any courses or anything happening there you when you were
Speaker 1: giving away to the bigcoin and so forth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, at the time of when I was there, none
Speaker 2: of those courses existed yet. For blockchain, I think it
Speaker 2: only started appearing thereafter. But I've actually had a few
Speaker 2: classmates who have gone back to a lecture for special
Speaker 2: series and things like that at the Salon School, so
Speaker 2: a little bit after my time, and I think is
Speaker 2: maybe why it took me so long to find my
Speaker 2: way into the blockchain space, because when I was just graduating,
Speaker 2: it was still kind of like a nascent technology. You know,
Speaker 2: people were using it for black market purchases and things
Speaker 2: like that, and it took me a while. It took
Speaker 2: me a while to circle back to the technology and
Speaker 2: look at it from a lens that wasn't as skeptical.
Speaker 1: So what's it like look looking back, given that you know,
Speaker 1: you saw a bit of it in the early days,
Speaker 1: bits and pieces along the way, and to see where
Speaker 1: it's at now. It's grown significantly as an acid class,
Speaker 1: as an industry and the technology is being used by
Speaker 1: the biggest institutions in the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I really really started taking a look at it
Speaker 2: with a closer look in twenty twenty one. So that's
Speaker 2: the perspective that I have, and of course anecdotally from
Speaker 2: the earlier days before that, but even within the past,
Speaker 2: you know, four years or so, it's four or five
Speaker 2: years ago, it's been fascinating to see the chain, sorry,
Speaker 2: the changes, the uptake. Yeah, and to your point, I
Speaker 2: think it's becoming more and more of a forcing function.
Speaker 2: Like you know, institutions, enterprises are not ignoring it anymore,
Speaker 2: but starting to consider what opportunities there there are for
Speaker 2: whether automating certain flows or breaking down some barriers to
Speaker 2: business use cases for blockchain.
Speaker 1: So tell us about Monad and what is it, what
Speaker 1: makes it unique? And you know, what's kind of the mission?
Speaker 2: Fundamentally, Monad's mission is to scale ethereum. That has been
Speaker 2: the mission from the very beginning when we first started
Speaker 2: out in early twenty two all the way to now,
Speaker 2: which I think is pretty cool that the mission has
Speaker 2: stayed the same for the past like four years of
Speaker 2: working on this project and technology. What makes it unique though,
Speaker 2: is the way in which we have in the way
Speaker 2: in which our team has been able to satisfy the
Speaker 2: scaling needs of Ethereum. And you know, we've seen a
Speaker 2: lot of conversation come about recently about the method by
Speaker 2: which Ethereum has chosen to scale up until now. But
Speaker 2: with Monad, the idea has always been fundamental performance at
Speaker 2: its core. So how that translates is introducing a new
Speaker 2: technology by having a new execution client and a net
Speaker 2: new consensus client from scratch. So the execution client is
Speaker 2: based off of the Ethereum Virtual machine written in C
Speaker 2: plus plus the consensus client written in REST. And what
Speaker 2: makes that unique is the fact that you can tap
Speaker 2: into the inherent performance that those languages afford as a
Speaker 2: part of the development cycle.
Speaker 3: Pardon the interruption. Hi, I'm Tony. I'm the host of
Speaker 3: the Thinking Crypto podcast. I wanted to ask you if
Speaker 3: you can please support the podcast by hitting the like
Speaker 3: button subscribing. If you haven't as yet, you can leave
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Speaker 3: get your podcasts, please be sure to follow and hit
Speaker 3: the five star rating. I'll let you get back to
Speaker 3: the content. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: So a big question I think a lot of folks
Speaker 1: are going to have. Is this a layer two because
Speaker 1: monnat is stated as a layer one? So how is
Speaker 1: it helping etherorem to scale?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: Is it running parallel on top below? What's the construct there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Etheroreum is entirely a separate l one altogether, so
Speaker 2: it is not Ethereum. However, the virtual machine that that
Speaker 2: exists to run the blockchain is based off of the
Speaker 2: Ethereum Virtual Machine spec. In the same way that there
Speaker 2: are a couple of other alt EVM blockchains out there. Monad,
Speaker 2: I guess, would also be like an alt EVM blockchain.
Speaker 2: So what is cool about Monad's version of the EVM
Speaker 2: two is that it follows the spect to a t
Speaker 2: such that composability or rather portability of existing smart contracts
Speaker 2: that are deployed on Ethereum can seamlessly migrate to Monad
Speaker 2: with essentially no code changes.
Speaker 1: Very interesting. And then the protocol I read is monad
Speaker 1: bf T is that proof of steak or what is
Speaker 1: that product? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Great question. So the BFT part of Monad. BFT stands
Speaker 2: for a byzantine fault tolerant, and so it's a type
Speaker 2: of consensus mechanism basically, so mana BFT is the name
Speaker 2: of the consensus mechanism. It follows the assumptions and security
Speaker 2: guarantees that you get from BFT protocols. So that means
Speaker 2: for a network to continue to run and be maintained,
Speaker 2: two F plus one nodes must be healthy in comparison
Speaker 2: to an f number of faulty or bad nodes. So
Speaker 2: to speak, it basically means that it's very resilient to
Speaker 2: potential attacks, especially in the case of a decentralized network,
Speaker 2: which is something that Mona does support. The validator network
Speaker 2: right now supports about two hundred active validators in the
Speaker 2: active set, So those are the nodes that are not
Speaker 2: just participating in the network, but are also voting on
Speaker 2: behalf of the network. And it's all around the world,
Speaker 2: so geographically distributed, truly decentralized, and you gain security guarantees
Speaker 2: through those properties.
Speaker 1: So one of the great features of the monat blockchain
Speaker 1: it's it's very fast. I read ten thousand transactions per second.
Speaker 1: How are you able to achieve that but also maintain security.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great question and that's actually one of
Speaker 2: the hardest problems to solve, like being able to have
Speaker 2: both speed and security at the same time. We know
Speaker 2: this because of the you know, the blockchain trilemma that
Speaker 2: has been touted for several years. At this point, monod
Speaker 2: is different because it is no longer bound by the
Speaker 2: same constraints that that other chains are in a sense
Speaker 2: that if we think about the trilemma, that's often because
Speaker 2: you're using the same code base, and so there's only
Speaker 2: a few triggers that you can change with with a
Speaker 2: given codebase. If you think about like a string, like
Speaker 2: a tide string with three different pegs of like you
Speaker 2: know the trilemma, if you pull on one peg to
Speaker 2: make it like U further from the center, then you
Speaker 2: have to inherently push in the other two pegs based
Speaker 2: on like the confines of that string. Now with MONAD,
Speaker 2: that string no longer applies, or rather, what we've been
Speaker 2: able to do, what the technology has been able to
Speaker 2: do is expand the parameter of that string. Because it
Speaker 2: is net new technology, it's a new clients for both
Speaker 2: consensus as well as execution. So the security guarantees that
Speaker 2: the new consensus mechanism provides is provided because of the
Speaker 2: communication optimizations that it inherently has. The way that the
Speaker 2: nodes come to consensus is way faster, the round trip
Speaker 2: times are much more efficient, and not only that, but
Speaker 2: there's also efficient message passing as well. So that's just
Speaker 2: a very high level way of breaking it down.
Speaker 1: Recently, Metallic Booter in twitted about roll ups and layer
Speaker 1: twos and that had a lot of people a bit
Speaker 1: confused and wondering what's happening. But it's also maybe confirmation
Speaker 1: of what Monad is doing as a layer one that
Speaker 1: is compatible with etherorem Do you think in the future
Speaker 1: give what Vitalic is saying, there's less layer twos and
Speaker 1: there's more parallel chains, so if you want to call
Speaker 1: it that.
Speaker 2: Like mona, potentially yes. I think it's very tricky to
Speaker 2: scale at the L one and that is probably why
Speaker 2: we've seen the methodology of scaling via L twos up
Speaker 2: until this point. The problems that Monad has solved is
Speaker 2: continuing to solve is hard and is challenging. So that
Speaker 2: might mean that the L twos that do stick around
Speaker 2: have to find the right type of PMF and we've
Speaker 2: seen some examples a few examples of like app chains
Speaker 2: that have been successful, So you know that that might
Speaker 2: be a round as well, But I fundamentally believe and
Speaker 2: what we're doing at MANA Foundation, we believe that ultimately
Speaker 2: the L one layer is going to be what facilitates
Speaker 2: the future of finance and the future of on chain
Speaker 2: activity because it provides the level of security guarantees that
Speaker 2: you need and that institutions may needed, and that enterprises
Speaker 2: may need. It provides a level of composibility as well,
Speaker 2: because if we continue to live in a world where
Speaker 2: app chains, sorry, where apps are extremely siloed from one another,
Speaker 2: the experiences and the benefits of being on chain are
Speaker 2: quite limited. So l ones afford a lot more than
Speaker 2: what an L two can afford.
Speaker 1: So dumb question for you, So make sure I wrap
Speaker 1: my head around it, and maybe for the viewers and
Speaker 1: listeners as well. So IFEMA has these layer twos and
Speaker 1: monad as a layer one, will they also have layer
Speaker 1: twos or how are you able to I guess segment
Speaker 1: the different businesses and institutions that are building on monad.
Speaker 1: How do they maintain privacy within what they're trying to
Speaker 1: do if they want to keep certain things private is
Speaker 1: it like side chains with it within mondad some whatever
Speaker 1: you want to call it. Is it kind of like that?
Speaker 2: Potentially? Ultimately Monada is pretty also in that there are
Speaker 2: opportunities to scale specifically at the L one level, but
Speaker 2: for business functions that might need a specific layer of privacy,
Speaker 2: or you know, like the way that Intranet exists for
Speaker 2: certain companies versus the Internet. That's kind of like a
Speaker 2: separate chain that might be able to communicate back with
Speaker 2: a bridge or something back to the main chain. That
Speaker 2: could be a possibility right now, though, the focus for
Speaker 2: a mono foundation is making sure that the primary mon
Speaker 2: Ad L one chain is performant and has all of
Speaker 2: the needs and fundamental expectations for most, if not all,
Speaker 2: use cases.
Speaker 1: So let's talk abouit about the use cases. What are
Speaker 1: you seeing folks build on mondad? Is it a tokenization,
Speaker 1: I don't know, whatever else stable coins or whatever may be.
Speaker 1: What type of things are you seeing?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's a combination of a lot of things. Okay,
Speaker 2: but two of the things that stand out to me
Speaker 2: right now, both from like where I imagine will continue
Speaker 2: to progress and what seems to be grabbing people's attention
Speaker 2: right now is one high frequency finance or what we're
Speaker 2: calling high frequency finance to mean, uh, the adoption and
Speaker 2: migration of mainstream finance flows on chain. So this could
Speaker 2: be you know, pretty complex things like global payments or
Speaker 2: cross border remittances, you know, treasury management, things along those lines.
Speaker 2: And then we're also seeing a lot of AI use
Speaker 2: cases and crossovers. So I think that there may be
Speaker 2: a future and we're already seeing snippets of this of
Speaker 2: like autonomous agents acting on behalf of users or institutions
Speaker 2: and managing certain you know flows. Of course, I think
Speaker 2: there's some uh, there's some needs to ensure that those
Speaker 2: agents operate with a certain level of risk parameterization and compliance,
Speaker 2: but I think we can definitely get there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I I'm excited to see how AI
Speaker 1: agents are going to operate with the blockchain tech integrated.
Speaker 1: You know, I've talked a lot of folks about this.
Speaker 1: They're not going to use cash, obviously, they're going to
Speaker 1: use stable coins and steal payments, samely with humanoid robots
Speaker 1: and not gonna run around with cash or something you
Speaker 1: can have like a crypto wall. They're built in and
Speaker 1: running on blockchain.
Speaker 2: Rails right, And actually that's something pretty exciting with manad
Speaker 2: as well. MANA as a protocol supports both ERC eight
Speaker 2: y or zero four as well as the x flour
Speaker 2: or two standard. It enables trustless agents as well as
Speaker 2: this payment standard that AI agents could potentially utilize. So
Speaker 2: it's a pretty cool unlock.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's exciting new world. I can imagine having multiple
Speaker 1: AI agents going out and doing things for me while
Speaker 1: I'm sleeping as well, and then having a humanoid robot
Speaker 1: which is also using the same tech going to home
Speaker 1: depot and get and getting me something. So it's pretty
Speaker 1: wild to think about that. I read recently that there
Speaker 1: is a multi Verse hackathon to tell us about that.
Speaker 2: The idea behind multiverse is to be a playground for experimentation,
Speaker 2: to see how agents act and are enabled by a
Speaker 2: chain that has in some sense like boundless creative potential
Speaker 2: by having that element of high performance, low fees, and
Speaker 2: hopefully an element of fun, and just see what happens.
Speaker 1: So we've seen that generally in the crypto world. They
Speaker 1: said Ethereum is the enterprise chain, while Solana is the
Speaker 1: retail chain. Where does monad fit is it targeting all
Speaker 1: these use cases, and while it's a decentralized network, anybody
Speaker 1: can come build things. What is the foundation targeting specifically.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think we're excited about different ways in which
Speaker 2: people can use Monad as a blockchain. So it's neither
Speaker 2: one thing or another, but we have pretty strong convictions
Speaker 2: that Monad is a great chain for high frequency finance,
Speaker 2: and that might look like a combination of enterprise oriented
Speaker 2: or institutionally focused flows. But at the same time, you know,
Speaker 2: we're seeing, uh, we're seeing a lot of interest in DeFi,
Speaker 2: and DeFi continues to be the bread and butter of
Speaker 2: what makes cryptos so interesting and unique right now, but
Speaker 2: maybe the transition is now a metamorphosis of what DeFi
Speaker 2: looks like to begin with. And then in the agentic space,
Speaker 2: you know, we're also seeing a good number of folks
Speaker 2: who are coming in from maybe more of an exploratory perspective,
Speaker 2: others who might be looking for utility plays in in
Speaker 2: deploying l l ms in a decentralized manner and seeing
Speaker 2: how different clusters can work together in a distributed manner.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I think the the TLDR there is why
Speaker 2: not both?
Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely, I'm excited to see what additional use cases
Speaker 1: pop up in Web three. Obviously we've had NFTs, we've
Speaker 1: had I think we're seeing healthcare and different industries start
Speaker 1: put data on the blockchain. Now this is a hard question.
Speaker 1: It's twenty thirty five. What does Web three and crypto
Speaker 1: look like as far as adoption?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think if we're if we continue on the
Speaker 2: trend that we're seeing now, it's going to be pretty
Speaker 2: much ingrained in how we operate. And it might also
Speaker 2: be ingrained in a way that we don't even know
Speaker 2: it exists. For example, the world Wide Web. You know,
Speaker 2: the Internet HDP is a protocol, but I think most
Speaker 2: of us don't know how it works, and yet we
Speaker 2: are able to benefit from it on a day to
Speaker 2: day basis. I think it might look like that in
Speaker 2: many ways. And so examples of that are X four
Speaker 2: O two is an example, just extracting away some of
Speaker 2: the manual steps of needing to specify payment or something
Speaker 2: along those lines. Of course, like there's parameterization that needs
Speaker 2: to be put in place, and that's something that I
Speaker 2: think we will need to figure out as we go
Speaker 2: and understand how technology can be a benefit and not
Speaker 2: something scary We've seen this before as well with finance
Speaker 2: in general. So you know, we were talking about like
Speaker 2: how the NISI floor has looked very different from how
Speaker 2: movies portrayed it in decades past and what it looks
Speaker 2: like today. So before the Internet, finance looked very different.
Speaker 2: The trading floor operated off of paper, off of like
Speaker 2: hand signals, and even when we go to the bank,
Speaker 2: we operated off sorry, when we pay for things really
Speaker 2: go to the bank, we operated off of physical checks
Speaker 2: and physical cash. And while some of those things still
Speaker 2: exist today, well there's the advent of Apple Pay and
Speaker 2: Google Pay and credit cards and things like that that
Speaker 2: all run on the internet. So blockchain, i think is
Speaker 2: very much synonymous to that, where it's the next formation
Speaker 2: of technology and how that will continue to shape the
Speaker 2: way in which we and everyday people use a new
Speaker 2: layer of technology and making pays more frictionalists and making
Speaker 2: payments more accessible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that definitely makes sense. And you know, to
Speaker 1: your point of the New York Stock Exchange, and we
Speaker 1: were talking, like you said before the recording of how
Speaker 1: quiet it is now and all these folks are looking
Speaker 1: to go twenty four to seven like crypto or crypto
Speaker 1: started at all, twenty four to seven, three hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty five, no holidays, It is just running and I
Speaker 1: think a lot of these folks are recognizing that. And
Speaker 1: that's where we see the big race for tokenization and
Speaker 1: opening up assets to the global economy and markets and
Speaker 1: more liquidity coming in. And I don't know how we're
Speaker 1: going to handle that. Maybe to your point of the
Speaker 1: AI agents will be handling some of that while we're sleeping,
Speaker 1: because are people going to to be out at three
Speaker 1: am trade you're not trying to do right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we still need sleep. You haven't quite transcended that
Speaker 2: element of humanity, Yeah.
Speaker 1: For sure. But it's pretty profound right to think about
Speaker 1: that market's running twenty four to seven, even though crypto
Speaker 1: has been doing it. But with the traditional markets on chain,
Speaker 1: with the trillions, I mean, it's going to be pretty wild.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And that exactly illustrates why the
Speaker 2: technology that supports things on chain, that supports finance on chain,
Speaker 2: needs to be robust, resilient, scalable, secure, and have the
Speaker 2: speed that it needs to tackle and support the expected
Speaker 2: use cases that we're seeing in the traditional markets today.
Speaker 2: But for a non chain future.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely so what's on your roadmap for this year?
Speaker 1: Obviously launched last year, I'm assuming there's a lot of
Speaker 1: building that's going to happen this year.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, performance has always been the goal and
Speaker 2: continues to be the goal. So as new mips come
Speaker 2: about and those get folded into client upgrades, will continue
Speaker 2: to see pushes towards more efficient technology, so faster, better,
Speaker 2: cheaper kind of thing. But alongside that, there's some research
Speaker 2: going into what it looks like to have pre pre
Speaker 2: trade privacy, so you know, to the point where there
Speaker 2: might be some actors on chain who very much value
Speaker 2: the very much value not having people know exactly what
Speaker 2: this transaction is attributed to. There's Yeah, we're looking into
Speaker 2: how that might be folded into the protocol on a
Speaker 2: native capacity.
Speaker 1: Is it that is that like a privacy element Where
Speaker 1: exactly are you using like ZK zero knowledge potentially?
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, so it's still in the research phase, but yeah,
Speaker 2: ZK may be a component in the event solution.
Speaker 1: Hmm. I think you I asked you a question related
Speaker 1: to this earlier, but I just wanted to make sure
Speaker 1: I cover all my bases, so can institutions build like
Speaker 1: and it is maybe too early to answer this question,
Speaker 1: but can you use manad to build their own permission
Speaker 1: private version like an intranet you mentioned in house, but
Speaker 1: they're bridging to the public version or bridging to other
Speaker 1: chains like the etheroerem.
Speaker 2: That is certainly a possibility. If that were the case,
Speaker 2: it probably wouldn't be on Monad specifically. It could potentially
Speaker 2: be using like Mona technology or you know, something along
Speaker 2: those lines. The primary focus for the Mona Foundation right
Speaker 2: now is to focus more on Mona as an l
Speaker 2: one as opposed to having like this multi bridging system.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, that that definitely makes sense. So I would
Speaker 1: look to get your thoughts on the Clarity Act, which
Speaker 1: is the crypto market structure bill that's in the Senate
Speaker 1: and everyone's waiting in anticipation for it to pass, because
Speaker 1: that will give a lot of clarity as it's or
Speaker 1: its name. Yeah, and maybe we could see a lot
Speaker 1: of innovation and building and a lot of institutions come
Speaker 1: in who have been on the sidelines. Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, whether it's this actor or something else, clarity is
Speaker 2: certainly needed, and that's probably what has stymiede innovation over
Speaker 2: the you know, over the decades that crypto has been
Speaker 2: in existence so far, so certainly, I think it makes
Speaker 2: a lot of sense to have very specific regulation in
Speaker 2: place so that folks that are acting in folks can
Speaker 2: act in a compliant way and still help innovate and
Speaker 2: encourage the boom of the blockchain future.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm hoping they can get it done this year.
Speaker 1: I think that would be so big for the market
Speaker 1: and not necessarily like price action, just builders innovators can say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I know what the rules I wrote are, I can
Speaker 1: go build, and I'm curious what you know some of
Speaker 1: these big institutions are going to do after that. We're
Speaker 1: seeing some of it, like you're saying, hey, we're tokenizing,
Speaker 1: we're looking at custody, we're looking at stable coins, we're
Speaker 1: looking at ets. Well, what else are they going to
Speaker 1: do and what else are they going to put on chain? Right?
Speaker 2: And I think we're seeing this in other countries as well. Korea,
Speaker 2: for example, there's more regulatory clarity coming out as well
Speaker 2: over the next several months in this year, and so
Speaker 2: some of the conversations that we've been having have have
Speaker 2: alluded to that as well. The regulatory clarity allowing whether
Speaker 2: it's securities companies or banks to be more exploratory in
Speaker 2: taking things from just a proof of concept to then
Speaker 2: operationally productionizing it.
Speaker 1: That's a great point because I know some people they
Speaker 1: get very excited by news like oh, this bank is
Speaker 1: doing this shit, but it's like many times to your point,
Speaker 1: it's like a proof of content right in sandboxes. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, still great things because that's step one.
Speaker 1: Step one, but we want to see production right go
Speaker 1: to the consumer and in the real world. But we
Speaker 1: need the rules of the road there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the great thing about things being on chain
Speaker 2: is that that productionization can maybe happen very quickly.
Speaker 1: So there seems to be the tokenization race happening. Everybody
Speaker 1: and their uncle looking to put stocks on chain, gold,
Speaker 1: money market funds, and different types of financial products. Larry Fink,
Speaker 1: CEO black Rock, I think a couple of years ago
Speaker 1: said tokenization is the future of finance, and boy was
Speaker 1: he right, because everybody's trying to do it, and even
Speaker 1: the sec the chair he's like, yeah, this is the
Speaker 1: future of the markets. So obviously there's not going to
Speaker 1: be one blockchain to rule them all. There's gonna be
Speaker 1: many different blockchains use across the globe. To tokenize different things.
Speaker 1: What are your thoughts on how that market is growing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's certainly growing. I think, not including
Speaker 2: stable coins, the tokenized RWA market right now is around
Speaker 2: twenty five billion. I want to say, if you include
Speaker 2: stable coins, that's like upward of three hundred billions, So
Speaker 2: it's pretty massive and then growing because, like you know,
Speaker 2: the I think when we think of the financial market together,
Speaker 2: we're talking trillions and then some so, but certainly a
Speaker 2: lot of interest right now. It's fun to hear about
Speaker 2: whom or sorry, which institutions are interested and or starting
Speaker 2: to adopt movements toward or like continuing advancements toward. Of
Speaker 2: course black Rock is definitely one of them. And then
Speaker 2: we're also seeing JP Morgan and Nisy most recently. They're
Speaker 2: strong drivers amongst very established players, you know, migrating into
Speaker 2: the space or doubling down even more. But that also
Speaker 2: highlights again the need for the underlying technology, meaning the blockchain,
Speaker 2: to have that element of reliabilities, security, scalability, you know,
Speaker 2: all of those traits and characteristics that are expected of
Speaker 2: institutional great technology.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's still wild concept for me to think about
Speaker 1: them putting all the traditional assets on their real estate
Speaker 1: gold and but it's going to open up a lot
Speaker 1: of opportunities and maybe one day I'll be tokenizing my
Speaker 1: house doing something a DeFi I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, as much as it's easy to tokenize everything,
Speaker 2: I still think that there has to be like a
Speaker 2: fundamental reason to tokenize something, Otherwise we might just get
Speaker 2: into a situation of you know, like what does this
Speaker 2: even mean? So utility should definitely be a part of it,
Speaker 2: but we're certainly seeing that today, whether it's from breaking
Speaker 2: down literal barriers or reducing settlement times or providing accessibility
Speaker 2: where there previously was non Yeah, I think those things
Speaker 2: should still be maintained as we think about like what
Speaker 2: are the right things to tokenize.
Speaker 1: That's a great point because there has to be a market,
Speaker 1: there has to be liquid, it has to be demand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: right exactly, Just because I tokenized my houses, I mean
Speaker 1: people will care what it? Right, so there.
Speaker 2: Has maybe that's the future like bed and breakfast, you know,
Speaker 2: it's like a timeshare, right.
Speaker 1: That's it. Yeah, So look, maybe people tokenize rare artwork
Speaker 1: or cars, you know, things that there's a demand for
Speaker 1: people like or they want and they can participate, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but maybe not my house, but maybe you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know, We'll say, depending on where it's at. You know,
Speaker 1: maybef I go buy a place on the California Cosa
Speaker 1: Cinta Monica or.
Speaker 2: Something, then oh yeah, I will join you in that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So it's really really fascinating to see how this
Speaker 1: is all going to play out. You know, in regards
Speaker 1: to stable coins, we're seeing a lot of adoption on
Speaker 1: that front as well. It seems everybody wants to launch
Speaker 1: your own stable coin. You know, do you see that
Speaker 1: market continue to grow? Maybe there might be some consolidation
Speaker 1: because I don't think everybody can have a stable coin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do think that much. I do think that
Speaker 2: consolidation is probably in the future because you know, to
Speaker 2: your point, there needs to be a sufficient amount of
Speaker 2: adoption in liquidity for any token to gain and maintain traction.
Speaker 2: So while a variety of stable coins may offer different benefits,
Speaker 2: it my personal guess is it probably doesn't make sense
Speaker 2: to have like a thousand different USD variants of a
Speaker 2: stable coin. And you know, also in ensuring that the
Speaker 2: appropriate security and collateralization is behind these assets as well,
Speaker 2: all r you know, it.
Speaker 1: Got some wrap up questions here for you. First, if
Speaker 1: you could create your own metaverse, what would theme be?
Speaker 2: M I think probably something restaurant themed. Ah, so I've
Speaker 2: never played restaurant Tycoon, but that's kind of like what
Speaker 2: I'm imagining. Something like a diner dash or like a Oh,
Speaker 2: the Overcooked game. I love that, something like that.
Speaker 1: Oh, very nice, rapid fire questions. Favorite food.
Speaker 2: Right now?
Speaker 1: Pizza, pizza, Favorite musician or band.
Speaker 2: Oh, I've been playing the Delta album from Mumpford and
Speaker 2: Suns on repeat.
Speaker 1: Nice favorite movie?
Speaker 2: I don't have one, but I like documentaries.
Speaker 1: Nice favorite book?
Speaker 2: Dan Ariellie predictably irrational.
Speaker 1: And when you're not working, what are you doing for fun?
Speaker 2: Handstands?
Speaker 1: Handstands? Yeah, okay, wait, I was like, wait, did I
Speaker 1: hear that right? So it sounds like you're gymnastically gifted.
Speaker 2: I'm very much not. But I've been picking up yoga
Speaker 2: a little bit, and inversions I find very fun. So
Speaker 2: handstands are a part of my practice.
Speaker 1: Very cool, uness, great stuff. We're gonna have to do
Speaker 1: round two as things progress this year, but thank you
Speaker 1: so much for joining me.
Speaker 2: I would love that. Thanks so much, Tonny for having me.
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Speaker 3: so much.