Speaker 1: Hey, folks, were recording at the Injective Policy Summit, and
Speaker 1: joining me is Eric Chen, who is the CEO of
Speaker 1: the Injective Foundation. Eric, good to see you.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for having me.
Speaker 1: Eric, you and I spoke years back about injective. Lots
Speaker 1: has happened in the injective ecosystem, lots of adoption and more,
Speaker 1: and I'm excited to be doing this at the summit
Speaker 1: with you. Thank you so much for taking the time.
Speaker 1: Thank you so, Eric, Just so folks know, tell us
Speaker 1: a bit about your background. What led to the founding
Speaker 1: of Injective.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, initially we were primarily focusing on kind of
Speaker 2: resolving some of the common technical issues when it comes
Speaker 2: to building like a fully decentralized infrastructure, especially for like
Speaker 2: entering war book or like you know, like on chain exchanges, etc.
Speaker 2: And we kind of came up with this very clever
Speaker 2: like cryptographic primitive and applied it in a very creative
Speaker 2: way to resolve one of the core issues at the time,
Speaker 2: which was front running. And that kind of like uh
Speaker 2: uh started us uh you know, prompted us to build
Speaker 2: kind of decentralized exchange infrastructure, and then it kind of
Speaker 2: prompted us to build you know this uh uh layer
Speaker 2: two environment for exchange ecosystem, and then it allows us
Speaker 2: a transition into like a layer one blockchain for the
Speaker 2: exchange ecosystem, and then very soon after a blockchain both
Speaker 2: for finance and now you know, uh uh like the
Speaker 2: next generation of on chain economy.
Speaker 1: So what type of building are you seeing on the
Speaker 1: injective blockchain? Is it tokenization and much more? Yeah?
Speaker 2: So, I think the most recent exciting part uh for
Speaker 2: the ecosystem for us, it's about tokenization and also all
Speaker 2: these institutional adoptions and use cases, especially when it comes
Speaker 2: to you know, tokenizing not only just real world assets,
Speaker 2: but also data itself.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: And also a lot of you know, very interesting like
Speaker 2: aunting perpetuals on different types of r w as. I
Speaker 2: think these are you know, so far gaining a lot
Speaker 2: of steam. And of course this is on top of
Speaker 2: a very much uh you know or some blossoming a
Speaker 2: builder ecosystem that ranges from AI agents to you know,
Speaker 2: different types of defile applications, the lending to everything.
Speaker 1: You know, AI agents are all the rage right now.
Speaker 1: A lot of people are building infrastructure for that for
Speaker 1: the agentic economy. Do you see that being possibly growing
Speaker 1: bigger than tokenization or maybe second to tokenization.
Speaker 2: I think it really depends on the metric that you
Speaker 2: measure them against. So so we just to release the
Speaker 2: AI s t K design specifically for AI agents so
Speaker 2: that you know, it's a very much of a well harnessed,
Speaker 2: you know, safe environment for you know, different types of
Speaker 2: AI agents to engage with the injective blockchain and makes
Speaker 2: it you know, easier than never to integrate. So this way,
Speaker 2: you know, user don't even have to know how the
Speaker 2: injective blockchain works, not even users developers don't even have
Speaker 2: to know, and you can just tell the agents like, hey,
Speaker 2: like buy something for me, maybe uninjective, maybe not, but
Speaker 2: you know, if if it's uninjective for the AI agent
Speaker 2: will be able to acquire it.
Speaker 1: So, as a layer one, how are you preparing to
Speaker 1: handle the volume of transactions for not only tokenization but
Speaker 1: AI agents over time as that grows?
Speaker 2: I mean, scaling is you know, like a consistent priority
Speaker 2: and kind of what we've always been decently good at
Speaker 2: to say the least. So so being a you know,
Speaker 2: an ultra performance blockchain out there and you know, like
Speaker 2: being able to like scale as a specialized modular blockchain
Speaker 2: that you know can be opt typer optimized for a
Speaker 2: specific type of transaction. We have plenty of experiences, you know,
Speaker 2: lower the cost down to make sure you know the
Speaker 2: overall bandwidth of the blockchain and satisfy you know, all
Speaker 2: the agentic payments or you know, different types of like
Speaker 2: DeFi use cases or different types of institutional use cases,
Speaker 2: and you know, you can always be faster, and that's
Speaker 2: always we're working on.
Speaker 1: Oh. Absolutely, I know it's a working progress to continue
Speaker 1: to scale and make things better because we're in what
Speaker 1: Eric we could call it the innings of web three
Speaker 1: right correct now there are a lot of institutions that
Speaker 1: are looking to tokenize and do a lot more. What
Speaker 1: type of demand are you seeing from these institutions when
Speaker 1: they come to you and say, here's our plan, here's
Speaker 1: what we want to put on chain. Has that demand
Speaker 1: grown and are they looking to put stocks, real estate
Speaker 1: things on chain?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? I think you know, not only are they trying
Speaker 2: to put on you know, different types of equity or
Speaker 2: different types of asset. I think they're slowly starting to
Speaker 2: learn that this is a very unique fundraising environment or
Speaker 2: like a kind of like a capital discovery environment. So
Speaker 2: one of the really interesting example is that let's say,
Speaker 2: like you know, there's a there's an asset or an
Speaker 2: exotic asset that's kind of like having trouble to find,
Speaker 2: you know, the necessary buyers or investors via their existing
Speaker 2: rails within like a limited like user base or audience
Speaker 2: within the US, and then once they tokenize it, they realize,
Speaker 2: you know, hey, like turns out a lot of different
Speaker 2: folks in Asia or in Europe really love this asset.
Speaker 2: And and this is how you do like instant permission lists,
Speaker 2: like in a sense like investor discovery and buyer discovery.
Speaker 1: So you're kind of putting assets to work that would
Speaker 1: just sit there idly and giving them a market, giving
Speaker 1: them liquidity exactly.
Speaker 2: I think that's what crypto is truly extremely amazing at,
Speaker 2: is that you know, you find liquidity on like a
Speaker 2: global marketplace easier than any existing financial infrastructure. And we're
Speaker 2: kind of shown this with the recent IPA to organization
Speaker 2: et cetera. That's shown a tremendous amount of attraction and success.
Speaker 1: So on that note, with adoption and institutions looking to
Speaker 1: get involved, many are waiting for the Clarity Act. Obviously,
Speaker 1: this summit. You know today there's a lot of talks
Speaker 1: around that we're here in d C. Do you think
Speaker 1: when this bill passes that it will unlock more building
Speaker 1: an innovation on injective and other chains.
Speaker 2: I think, honestly, it's a pivotal moment. We've all been
Speaker 2: you know, holding our breath to see, you know, like
Speaker 2: how how the bill comes out, you know, like the
Speaker 2: ETA at et cetera. And then as soon as it does,
Speaker 2: you know, what you're probably going to expect is that
Speaker 2: we're probably gonna you know, uh, upgrade the existing Artaba module,
Speaker 2: upgrade you know, different types of like inner workings of
Speaker 2: the chain itself to make sure we're one of the
Speaker 2: first blockchain to be compliant, you know, out of box
Speaker 2: and make it as easy as possible for builders to
Speaker 2: be compliant with the Clarity Acts. So then you know,
Speaker 2: it becomes kind of like the very first environments where
Speaker 2: institutions and different investors and different users will look at
Speaker 2: it and say, hey, like this is a very easy
Speaker 2: platform for us to be you know, touching within the
Speaker 2: three world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it absolutely makes sense. You want to build the
Speaker 1: pathways and the roadways for these institutions easily on board
Speaker 1: and establish themselves in less friction over time, right, correct? Yeah,
Speaker 1: do you think that? Well, let me back up, because
Speaker 1: there's different legislation for different regions, like the EU has
Speaker 1: the MEEKA regulations, the UK I think just put out something.
Speaker 1: How are you prepared to handle the different jurisdictions because
Speaker 1: Ejective global right global blockchain.
Speaker 2: I mean, honestly, it's just about conquering or you know,
Speaker 2: approaching them like a region by region. So we just
Speaker 2: released the make our white paper which allows us to
Speaker 2: you know, like kind of proceed with all the EU
Speaker 2: like member countries, and then UK's on the list as
Speaker 2: well as well as you know, a lot of the
Speaker 2: different region It's a you know, it's a continuous, long
Speaker 2: grind for us to approach every single jurisdiction given that
Speaker 2: every one of them have kind of like their own process.
Speaker 2: But you know, we're we're talking a long and we're
Speaker 2: trying to scale out of that process.
Speaker 1: And I'm assuming with the programmability of the injective blockchain,
Speaker 1: whether it be stable coins or tokenized assets, it can
Speaker 1: be programmed to fit the respective jurisdiction based on their rules.
Speaker 4: Correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's fascinating how to how that's all gonna work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's why you know, we have a generalized blockchain
Speaker 2: for it.
Speaker 1: And you know, as far as your roadmap, what can
Speaker 1: you share that's that's really on the roadmap for this year, I.
Speaker 2: Think, you know, like for for the past year or two,
Speaker 2: and you know, for basically like for for for a
Speaker 2: foreseeable rest of the year. It's going to be a
Speaker 2: lot of theme around our WA tokenization, institutional adoption and
Speaker 2: you know, like engaging with different types of like institutions
Speaker 2: and also like investor base, especially in the US, especially
Speaker 2: at the precipice of you know, significant kind of like
Speaker 2: regulatory clarity and regulatory changes. So that's going to be
Speaker 2: just a recurring, repeating theme. You're going to see like
Speaker 2: major institutions kind of like tokenizing their assets on top
Speaker 2: of injective. But and you know, one interesting surprise is
Speaker 2: that we've actually been working on you know a lot
Speaker 2: of really interesting and groundbreaking kind of consumer products so
Speaker 2: that it becomes extremely palpable for the impact of all
Speaker 2: these kind of like infrastructure and regulatory kind of regimes
Speaker 2: that we've been working with to showcase you know, the
Speaker 2: power of power of like blockchain or like power of crypto.
Speaker 2: You know when it's completely under your rock, when it's
Speaker 2: just a protests like fintech app.
Speaker 1: Right, So in the future, Eric, and I think you
Speaker 1: alluded to it earlier, this technology will be running behind
Speaker 1: the scenes. Consumers wouldn't necessarily need to know just that
Speaker 1: their money, their assets. Everything settles faster and cheaper and
Speaker 1: it and it's just this is powering the financial markets
Speaker 1: and ecosystem. Correct. Wow, Eric, great stuff and enjoying the
Speaker 1: summit so far, and thank you for putting this together
Speaker 1: and looking forward to our next interview.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, appreciate it. Thank you so much
Speaker 2: for having me.
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