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Speaker 1: Check it out. Hey, folks, welcome into the Thinking Crypto podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm your host Tony Edward and joining me today, is itdo, Benatton,
Speaker 1: who is the co founder and CEO of Blockade. You know,
Speaker 1: great to have you, Tony. Great to be here. You know,
Speaker 1: excited to dive into Blockade because you are playing a
Speaker 1: critical role in securing transactions and platform and security is
Speaker 1: so important with this asset class. So I'm excited to
Speaker 1: dive into the details. But let's start with your background.
Speaker 1: Where are you from and what's your professional background? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I grew up in California. Yeah, my parents or Israeli.
Speaker 1: They moved there for work, both engineers, a group around computers.
Speaker 1: My whole life was programming since a really early age.
Speaker 1: And then we moved back when I was a little
Speaker 1: over sixteen, drafted to these cyber intelligence units if you're
Speaker 1: familiar with, in the Israeli Army, and then served there
Speaker 1: for a little over six years, primarily working on solving
Speaker 1: you know, and finding vulnerabilities and modern operating systems browsers.
Speaker 1: And my last gig was around kind of cryptographic implementations
Speaker 1: where I spent most of my time. So that's where
Speaker 1: kind of the level for cryptography came. A ton of
Speaker 1: team members ended up either starting companies or working for
Speaker 1: companies that operate kind of in the crypto space. Being
Speaker 1: kind of an incredible application for for cryptography, and so
Speaker 1: kind of leading up to finishing our service together with
Speaker 1: my co founder Roz, you know, we wanted to do
Speaker 1: something in the space. We thought it was incredibly exciting.
Speaker 1: You know, we became really passionate throughout our military service
Speaker 1: for like just users just like being U users in
Speaker 1: the space. Sought tons of parallels to we're both kind
Speaker 1: of computer networking nerds, so soft tons of parallels to
Speaker 1: the early days of like computer networking, and so we
Speaker 1: want to do something in crypto. We talked to everyone
Speaker 1: we possibly could. They told us security was a massive problem,
Speaker 1: and so that's what you built. And it's been almost
Speaker 1: three years since. That's incredible. Obviously, your pedigree being in security,
Speaker 1: cryptography and much more, and starting this seems like such
Speaker 1: a natural evolution of your skill sets and so for good.
Speaker 1: But I'm curious, what was like your first encounter with
Speaker 1: bitcoin or and maybe etherem or whatever it may be,
Speaker 1: and what was your AHA moment to say, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: this is something and we should go build into space.
Speaker 1: Oh man, this is pretty early on. There were there
Speaker 1: were a couple of I guess there were three phases
Speaker 1: in my life where where these things happened. I'll talk
Speaker 1: about two, maybe not the first. The first I was
Speaker 1: pretty young. One of them was, UH was around kind
Speaker 1: of early days of of of kind of my cybersecurity
Speaker 1: career before I got drafted, right, you know, spend time
Speaker 1: with UH, with different folks in the industry that were
Speaker 1: kind of you know, either building or playing with malware
Speaker 1: UH and kind of understanding how these things, what kind
Speaker 1: of how they kind of interact and operate and UH
Speaker 1: and through ransomwares and and and also kind of you know,
Speaker 1: how how these things are purchased and acquired. You know,
Speaker 1: not a great highlight of crypto and I don't I
Speaker 1: don't think a popular one today, but you know, that
Speaker 1: was one of the one of the early UH for ways.
Speaker 1: And then again, you know what happened you know continuously
Speaker 1: kind of throughout my military service, where you know, you
Speaker 1: deal with with kind of cryptography and finding vulnerabilities and
Speaker 1: cryptographic implementations and so you know, whenever there are you know,
Speaker 1: questions about crypto right in these like units, in these places,
Speaker 1: they they bubble up in these two teams like the
Speaker 1: one that I was on, And so while while not
Speaker 1: a critical or main part of my role was a
Speaker 1: was always kind of adjacent or kind of came up.
Speaker 1: But I think the love of it came from just
Speaker 1: you know, loving cryptography, understanding the space, and kind of
Speaker 1: going in and into kind of a deeper and deeper
Speaker 1: hole into how how these things work technically. Oh absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I can imagine that you guys started getting maybe
Speaker 1: bombarded with like lots of crypto stuff as the use
Speaker 1: of it started growing. It's obviously matured as an acid
Speaker 1: class in technology. But uh, whether it be good actors,
Speaker 1: bad actors, everybody started using it in one way or
Speaker 1: the other. Yeah, I think ultimately, like you know, the vast, vast,
Speaker 1: vast majority of users in the space are net positive, right.
Speaker 1: You know, I come from a cybersecurity background, so obviously
Speaker 1: I have to wear that that that kind of that hat.
Speaker 1: But uh, but yeah, one hundred percent. Like, uh, I
Speaker 1: think as the space has grown over the past couple
Speaker 1: of years, you know, we we have definitely seen a
Speaker 1: critical shift kind of and how people think about security,
Speaker 1: how people, uh, you know, address security challenges, how the
Speaker 1: ecosystem kind of handles and deals with incidents h and
Speaker 1: I think they will just persist right as the space
Speaker 1: becomes more mature, as things, you know, continue to evolve,
Speaker 1: we will see organizations that will uplift the entire ecosystem
Speaker 1: and entire industry and how security standards are implemented and
Speaker 1: how security is treated and ultimately I think, you know,
Speaker 1: in a very very just and meaningful way, because when
Speaker 1: you think about at least today, the products that are
Speaker 1: built on top of crypto rails are ultimately financial products.
Speaker 1: And and when you think about financial products, a lot
Speaker 1: of the reasons and differentiation that people choose to use
Speaker 1: certain financial products as opposed to others is is security.
Speaker 1: And so I think it's you know, a really really
Speaker 1: critical piece of not only you know, not only finance,
Speaker 1: but also also crypto holistically. Oh absolutely, so on a note,
Speaker 1: give us an overview Blockade. What's your mission and what
Speaker 1: are the different services you offer? Yeah, so Blockade works
Speaker 1: with some of the biggest companies in the space to
Speaker 1: protect them and their users from broad fishing, different kind
Speaker 1: of hacks across the space. Right. The way that we
Speaker 1: think about these things and categorize them is both in
Speaker 1: terms of what we would consider low value high volume incidents. Right.
Speaker 1: This is like your fishing links, your scam tokens, your
Speaker 1: users that are defrauded in whatever ways. These are generally
Speaker 1: smaller amounts but happen all the time, you know, death
Speaker 1: by a thousand paper cuts. And the other bucket that
Speaker 1: we think about are high value, low volume incidents. Right.
Speaker 1: They have been all too frequently, but generally higher ticket
Speaker 1: items affect product. This is like a smart contract that
Speaker 1: gets hacked that blows up. This is a you know,
Speaker 1: even you know, even a phishing incident, right, which is
Speaker 1: kind of like bibit or like a broader cybersecurity incident,
Speaker 1: and many many others. Right. And so we think about
Speaker 1: both of these categories as the total attack landscape and
Speaker 1: the total kind of total attack vectors are encapsula encapsulated
Speaker 1: within that, and Blockade aims to cover that. Holistically. You
Speaker 1: can kind of think about the technology we built as
Speaker 1: like this engine that's able to look at transactions or
Speaker 1: look at entities on the blockchain as they interact with
Speaker 1: the space and then alert and find various different incidents
Speaker 1: and hacks before they take place. Right, So key examples
Speaker 1: of this are like our work with with meta mask
Speaker 1: and coinbase to flag various different you know, malicious transactions
Speaker 1: before users interact with them, or it's with you know,
Speaker 1: our partners like you know today we announced with HDERA
Speaker 1: and and we work very closely like with mystan and
Speaker 1: other kind of major protocols in the space to kind
Speaker 1: of monitor and find various different exploits across their space
Speaker 1: and prevent those from happening across different kind of smart
Speaker 1: contracts and things like that as well too. So really
Speaker 1: really kind of taking that kind of core technology and
Speaker 1: enabling you know, us to prevent these kinds of incidents
Speaker 1: both high value and low value but higher volume in
Speaker 1: kind of one holistic solution. So you have solutions for exchanges, wallets,
Speaker 1: blockchain protocols. It sounds like right because you're working with
Speaker 1: all these different folks like coin based, metamass, mist and
Speaker 1: so far the hash graph. So breakdown at which layer
Speaker 1: you are, you know, where where does blockade fit in
Speaker 1: the tech sect if you want to call it that,
Speaker 1: Where you are able to monitor these things? Is it
Speaker 1: an API integration. Is it reviewing the email server? I
Speaker 1: don't know, you know, wek us through that process. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so technically I think it's it's it's pretty similar. We
Speaker 1: sit everywhere transactions flow, and so we can look at
Speaker 1: blockchains passively, right just by reading the mempool or you know,
Speaker 1: indexing the chain, understanding various different transactions will take place,
Speaker 1: obviously contextualizing them to our customers and what they care about.
Speaker 1: We can sit as it's kind of like an add
Speaker 1: on to a wallet, right, so, this would be by
Speaker 1: integrating with various different custodian solutions or self cusodian solutions
Speaker 1: like noses, safe fire blocks, squads and Salana and others,
Speaker 1: and basically living in that transaction flow as like another
Speaker 1: approver that basically goes and views, simulates validates transactions, runs
Speaker 1: it through kind of our policy engine, and kind of
Speaker 1: spits back, right should this be, should you execute this
Speaker 1: or not? And then we also sit inside directly inside
Speaker 1: of consumer wallets, right so, and we kind of simulate
Speaker 1: validate transactions in those cases as well. And we also
Speaker 1: work with different exchanges to prevent fraud in different interfaces,
Speaker 1: for example, like the withdrawal functionality preventing push payment fraud
Speaker 1: and things like that. So that's kind of like a
Speaker 1: high level overview. But can you can generally plug blockade
Speaker 1: in anywhere transactions flow? Interesting? I mean, you guys, like
Speaker 1: I said at the beginning, such a critical part of
Speaker 1: the infrastructure of this acid class and you know, with
Speaker 1: building trust and we've seen so many hacks and exploits
Speaker 1: over the years and people getting caught up in fishing scams.
Speaker 1: We need more of what you're doing to get this
Speaker 1: industry up to par, maybe with how TRADFI has, you know,
Speaker 1: run things. But look, TRADFI, there's bad actors in every industry,
Speaker 1: and but I think TRADFI has less because they've gone
Speaker 1: through all the iterations of scams. So maybe what are
Speaker 1: the common scams and vulnerabilities that you're seeing and maybe
Speaker 1: if you can highlight some examples that you stopped. So
Speaker 1: I think this is actually a misnomer, right, I think
Speaker 1: there's actually much more bad actors using dollars than there
Speaker 1: are bad actors using stable coins, right, I mean, when
Speaker 1: you think about it, it just doesn't make sense. Like
Speaker 1: think about like, let's assume for a second, you know Tony,
Speaker 1: you and meet your money launderers, right, and we're we're
Speaker 1: doing some nefarious stuff and we're trying and we made
Speaker 1: a bunch of cash and now we're trying to you know,
Speaker 1: wash that. Right. You think it's a good idea to
Speaker 1: go and take a million bucks somehow get it into
Speaker 1: coinbase and then from there, I don't know, move it
Speaker 1: to some sort of mixer and then from there move
Speaker 1: it to a different exchange only to get it back
Speaker 1: into cash. Like, I don't know. It just doesn't like
Speaker 1: you go through too many areas of traceability and kind
Speaker 1: of friction. In my mind, you know, the data we
Speaker 1: see is that most of the illicit activity and crypto
Speaker 1: comes from crypto. What that means is that it comes
Speaker 1: from cybersecurity incidents. Cybersecurity incidents that granted could be adjacent
Speaker 1: to crypto, like ransomware and things like that. It comes
Speaker 1: from hacks to different protocols or users. It comes or exchanges,
Speaker 1: you know, it comes from scams that sometimes onboard victims
Speaker 1: that aren't are related to crypto to these rails because
Speaker 1: they're better forms of payment infrastructure. And that's where the
Speaker 1: majority of the illicit activity comes from. In my mind,
Speaker 1: Sorry for maybe for maybe taking us off a tangent here.
Speaker 1: But but so you know, I think as a percentage
Speaker 1: of general activity of illicit actors, crypto is a very
Speaker 1: small piece of that, right, And I think tradfy while
Speaker 1: it has tried to you know, uh you know, you know,
Speaker 1: I think ultimately has not zeroed this out. Right. We
Speaker 1: oftentimes say to a lot of our customers, like, fraud
Speaker 1: is a symptom of success. Uh if you you know,
Speaker 1: if you have a really really great product or ecosystem,
Speaker 1: then users or bad actors will try to circumvent and
Speaker 1: do all sorts of things in order to achieve things
Speaker 1: that the system does not want them to, right. I
Speaker 1: think you know we can uh uh, you know, simple
Speaker 1: things is just like kids cutting in line, right, you
Speaker 1: know there's a line they you know. Sometimes it's not
Speaker 1: even with like super nefarious activity like in activity in mind.
Speaker 1: You just want to do something that the system otherwise
Speaker 1: doesn't want you to do, and so and so. So. Yeah,
Speaker 1: fraud is like a it's like, you know, it's something
Speaker 1: we want to squash, but it's generally like a symptom
Speaker 1: of success. Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, if you're
Speaker 1: having success, you become an instant target. Right, you get
Speaker 1: this turn exactly exactly. I read that you guys have
Speaker 1: scanned uh like two point four billion transactions in the
Speaker 1: last year. How are you able to maintain the you know,
Speaker 1: tell us a bit about your team and your operations
Speaker 1: to handle big clients like coinbase and you mentioned a
Speaker 1: hash graph and then working with metamass and I think
Speaker 1: there was also Gemini at the crypto exchange. Yeah, how
Speaker 1: are you able to handle that? Yeah, we processed a
Speaker 1: ton of transactions. We process I think like a couple
Speaker 1: months ago, it was over five hundred million transactions on
Speaker 1: a given month. And so you know, when you think
Speaker 1: about our team, right, one we served with some of
Speaker 1: the world's kind of best hackers in these like cyber
Speaker 1: intelligence units that have built you know, uh software to
Speaker 1: kind of interact and kind of that that is deployed
Speaker 1: across you know, the country's uh most critical missions. And
Speaker 1: so you know that same team is is the one
Speaker 1: behind you know, this really critical piece of infrastructure that's
Speaker 1: able to secure probably most end users today and a
Speaker 1: lot of applications, right, And so you know, we we
Speaker 1: build things in mind in a way where it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, we know some of ours, our earliest customers.
Speaker 1: You know, we're some of the largest companies in the space,
Speaker 1: and so it's basically forced us to build things in
Speaker 1: a way that is incredibly scalable and and is able
Speaker 1: to kind of support their build their their kind of
Speaker 1: their growth and their you know, in their user base.
Speaker 1: What obviously becomes harder over time is is as obviously
Speaker 1: security threats you know, target these different kind of customers
Speaker 1: across our network, is understanding and piecing those things together
Speaker 1: and you know, closing those gaps incredibly quickly and making
Speaker 1: sure our customers are secure in the most meaningful way possible.
Speaker 1: But that that thing that is really hard also makes
Speaker 1: the product really great because because we see these threat
Speaker 1: actors across the the you know, the extent of our network,
Speaker 1: we're able to go and really really quickly apply all
Speaker 1: those different security learnings to all of our customers basically instantly.
Speaker 1: And so you know, when one when one more kind
Speaker 1: of customer joins, for example, like we announced a you know,
Speaker 1: hash graft today and we announced Gemini today, so they
Speaker 1: benefit from that extensive power of the broader network that
Speaker 1: we have in our kind of ecosystem, and so it's
Speaker 1: it's really really great to see how that's been playing out.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, so you can essentially share learnings like oh hey,
Speaker 1: coinbase got attacked with In this way, you can automatically
Speaker 1: alert the other exchanges to watch out for X or Y,
Speaker 1: whatever it may be. It's almost implicit, right, It's like,
Speaker 1: uh uh, you know, our engine takes these different threats,
Speaker 1: understands them, and then applies them holistically to everyone, right,
Speaker 1: And so it's you know, we don't have to go
Speaker 1: and call anyone up right, It's it's like, uh, it
Speaker 1: just kind of happens. Interesting, Are you providing any type
Speaker 1: of security training to these firms as well? So we
Speaker 1: work really really closely with our customers right on slack,
Speaker 1: on telegram with them twenty four hours a day, you know,
Speaker 1: three sixty five. Many of our customers see us as
Speaker 1: like an extension of their security team. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: while well we don't have any courses on YouTube today
Speaker 1: or things like that, I think I think a lot
Speaker 1: of our customers will say that, you know, we we
Speaker 1: we spend a ton of time with them and and
Speaker 1: work to educate them, and we put a ton of
Speaker 1: content right like across the space about new and novel
Speaker 1: kinds of techniques and hacks. So not only our customers too,
Speaker 1: but also you know, independent people or people across the
Speaker 1: industry or ecosystem that you know want to benefit from
Speaker 1: from these kinds of learnings. Yeah, for sure. Two part question,
Speaker 1: are you using AI in any way to help assist
Speaker 1: in managing the securities for these platforms? And two do
Speaker 1: you see AI agents or so being a threat and
Speaker 1: also introducing new securities, threats and vulnerabilities. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: it's core to everything we do, right, Like you know,
Speaker 1: whether that's in our detection capabilities, understanding what transactions you
Speaker 1: know are going to do, Understanding various different types of
Speaker 1: threats and uncovering those, whether that's across our understanding of
Speaker 1: various different other attack factors that are adjacent to the space.
Speaker 1: You know, we go through this extensive process of scanning
Speaker 1: websites to find various different threat actors that are leveraging
Speaker 1: those four scams for fraud, for all sorts of different things.
Speaker 1: And so we definitely use various different AI agents and
Speaker 1: lms to basically, you know, understand what these sites are
Speaker 1: doing and categorize them in different ways. And of course
Speaker 1: it's in our development process and how we kind of
Speaker 1: go and write code and execute and ship things much
Speaker 1: much faster. So, yeah, AA is core to everything that
Speaker 1: we do across our company as far as you know,
Speaker 1: you could think about, you know, how AI empowers attackers
Speaker 1: is actually pretty pretty sophistics. It's pretty crazy, right, Like one,
Speaker 1: it's much easier to build malware and build you know
Speaker 1: software today, and so just like deploying new and novel
Speaker 1: variants of various different things just gets that much easier, right,
Speaker 1: and so that game of cat and mouse just you
Speaker 1: know accelerates in the bar to entry just lowers. We
Speaker 1: went through kind of a funny exercise right internally, how
Speaker 1: quickly can you go and kind of spin up you know,
Speaker 1: fake phishing website and kind of do this thing. How
Speaker 1: quickly can you go and see some sort of like
Speaker 1: you know, uh, you know, smart contract that's exploited, copy
Speaker 1: the attacker byte code, and then kind of repurpose it
Speaker 1: for your own from your own use, Right, you can
Speaker 1: use these oul on agents really really quickly to kind
Speaker 1: of go and and build these things out and so
Speaker 1: and so definitely it's lowered the bar for for attackers
Speaker 1: to enter the space one hundred percent and so I
Speaker 1: think that you know, all security teams, not only in
Speaker 1: crypto but across kind of the entire the entire world,
Speaker 1: you know, need to understand that that it's just become
Speaker 1: easier to do the thing is that you could in
Speaker 1: the past. And so we think the result of that
Speaker 1: is just that there will be more of them and
Speaker 1: so and so and and when when we see that
Speaker 1: in practice. Yeah, And most recently, I think it was
Speaker 1: on Reddit, I saw someone post a fishing site a
Speaker 1: clone of coin base, and I think I don't know
Speaker 1: if the person the person identified it, and they were saying,
Speaker 1: this is probably generated by AI, whatever it may be,
Speaker 1: because it it looks so similar like they usually sometimes
Speaker 1: if you're a bit sophisticated, you can see some flaws
Speaker 1: on the on the page and so forth. Right, But AI,
Speaker 1: to your point, will help make it easier lower to
Speaker 1: barrier entry and to spin these fishing sites up and
Speaker 1: and it will be perfect in a sense of an
Speaker 1: exact clone. Yeah, one hundred percent. Like we see this
Speaker 1: all the time. It takes seconds to do. Uh, it's uh.
Speaker 1: And so like I said, it's just become easier, uh,
Speaker 1: And so we'll see many, many more of them. You know,
Speaker 1: in comparison to other security firms in the industry, what
Speaker 1: what are your differentiators and where do you think you
Speaker 1: have the advantage? And you know, on maybe a two
Speaker 1: fold question, there is also you know, what's your vision?
Speaker 1: Do you do you want to see Blockade B kind
Speaker 1: of that security layer for all Web three transactions? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's a great question. You know, I think holistically,
Speaker 1: like the way I view this is that and we
Speaker 1: have you know, we're lucky to be in a space
Speaker 1: with incredibly talented competitors as well too. But you know,
Speaker 1: where we stand out and where we differentiate is is one.
Speaker 1: I think the caliber of team that we've been able
Speaker 1: to amass is just like UH by far and incredibly
Speaker 1: you know, it's incredible, like the talent we're you know,
Speaker 1: I think everyone that comes in every single data blockade
Speaker 1: is incredibly excited to uh to work alongside the people
Speaker 1: that that are here. I think, you know, it's that
Speaker 1: network of customers that gives us that ability to have,
Speaker 1: you know, this incredible data that's able to kind of
Speaker 1: power all of these things. And I think, you know,
Speaker 1: the last the last piece of it is I think
Speaker 1: that you know, we we We've been around in the
Speaker 1: space for so long and have seen so much, like
Speaker 1: through the work and through kind of these different things,
Speaker 1: and and you know, care so much about our customers
Speaker 1: that we really kind of give a tailored experience around
Speaker 1: every single kind of deployment, every single kind of integration.
Speaker 1: And then I think other people just don't in the space.
Speaker 1: I think our customers would definitely say that, right that
Speaker 1: working with us is kind of, you know, incredibly rewarding.
Speaker 1: You asked, you know, if we if we go and
Speaker 1: share these kinds of things and stuff like that, if
Speaker 1: you know there's learnings or trainings or stuff like that,
Speaker 1: I think, you know, the folks that work with us
Speaker 1: definitely learn a lot more and and and kind of
Speaker 1: you know, leave much more secure. And so you know,
Speaker 1: that's kind of how I see us against kind of
Speaker 1: some of our competitors across the space. And and I
Speaker 1: think ultimately, like when you compare, there's no comparison right
Speaker 1: when you go in put us side by side. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: the experience with us is pretty phenomenal. And most recently
Speaker 1: I read that you guys security fifty million dollar series
Speaker 1: be funding led by Ribid Capital, So you're getting additional
Speaker 1: funding your scale and your business is kind of what's
Speaker 1: happening right now. Yeah, so I think, you know, the
Speaker 1: space is growing incredibly quickly. There's a ton of demand
Speaker 1: for not just security, but all kinds of infrastructure across
Speaker 1: crypt Now we see this across all of our all
Speaker 1: the parts of our business, right, all our company, all
Speaker 1: our users are expanding, all of our you know, all
Speaker 1: of our customers are kind of growing in scale, a
Speaker 1: number of transactions and so and so. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: the way for us to keep up is definitely, you know,
Speaker 1: working harder, growing the team, and just like you know,
Speaker 1: continuing to support this this kind of this this ecosystem.
Speaker 1: Let's say, okay, it's twenty thirty, fast forward five years, right,
Speaker 1: what does securing digital assets and platforms look like to you?
Speaker 1: You know, I think there's two questions there, because one,
Speaker 1: it's what does the industry look like in twenty thirty, right,
Speaker 1: like what is what is there? And then what what
Speaker 1: is what are you secure? Right? You know? I saw
Speaker 1: this tweet after kind of the circle uh new circles,
Speaker 1: new chain kind of announcement around how you know, you know,
Speaker 1: your merchant you know, uh, receiving payment from your customers,
Speaker 1: you know, and USDC on circles new chain, but your
Speaker 1: payment terminal only receives right uh uh stripe USD on
Speaker 1: strip chain and then you have to go and pay,
Speaker 1: you know, but you custody with Bank of America and
Speaker 1: so you have to take Bank of America us D
Speaker 1: and put that on on on b of a chain
Speaker 1: and then you know, you have to pay your vendors,
Speaker 1: but they're on on JP chain with JP coin, and
Speaker 1: so I think, like, what's incredible is that a lot
Speaker 1: of that And that's just again one use case for
Speaker 1: payments will be seamless, but will happen, right, And so
Speaker 1: we're gonna see a lot of these like really really
Speaker 1: really complicated networks created over the next couple of years.
Speaker 1: And that sounds kind of crazy and scary because a
Speaker 1: lot of folks in crypto or consumers, but that's actually
Speaker 1: like that the level of complexity is actually not terrifying
Speaker 1: or horrible if you have applications that abstract it, right,
Speaker 1: like we shouldn't care that that's what's happening. We should
Speaker 1: see a dollar here and a dollar there, and that's it, right,
Speaker 1: and everything should take care of itself behind the scenes.
Speaker 1: And for that to happen really really securely, you know,
Speaker 1: you need a really really great security layer to go
Speaker 1: in kind of just like encapsulate these different things. Right,
Speaker 1: And so I'm a big fan of kind of early
Speaker 1: day Internet, and so when you think about the early
Speaker 1: days of the Internet, you know, that kind of scary,
Speaker 1: you know, complicated network that I just described is actually
Speaker 1: not too disimilar than how the internetworks today. Right, Many
Speaker 1: people don't know this, but like you know, in crypto,
Speaker 1: we talked about bridges for moving money from one network
Speaker 1: to another on the Internet. Those things are called routers,
Speaker 1: and people don't know what routers actually used to be
Speaker 1: called bridges and the bridge between two networks and the
Speaker 1: early early early days of what we now think about,
Speaker 1: if the Internet started with what we're called or what
Speaker 1: still are called local area networks or lands. Right, these
Speaker 1: are just like a couple computers connected to one another.
Speaker 1: And as things grew and as networks became connected to
Speaker 1: one another, you had to connect multiple lands. Those became
Speaker 1: WANs wide area networks. And so you can kind of
Speaker 1: think about your metropolis network, right that connect multiple houses together,
Speaker 1: becoming like a wide area network, and you know, between
Speaker 1: every single one of those lands to those lands is
Speaker 1: like is a bridge, right, and between those lands to
Speaker 1: other wins, there's other bridges. And you know, there were
Speaker 1: firewalls and all sorts of other security products that were
Speaker 1: introduced to go and protect those networks in different ways,
Speaker 1: whether that's you know, blocking and filtering different transactions. There
Speaker 1: were all sorts of piece of anti virus that were
Speaker 1: introduced to network connected computers to block and filter out
Speaker 1: these different things. And today what happens, like quite literally,
Speaker 1: is like for internet connected device to connect to transferformation
Speaker 1: with server, it doesn't go through one hop, right, it
Speaker 1: goes through seven or eight on average, and that all
Speaker 1: happens in milliseconds, incredibly quickly and incredibly securely. And so
Speaker 1: you ask kind of so that's how I think about
Speaker 1: the space in twenty thirty. Where I think blockade fits
Speaker 1: in is at every single part in that space and
Speaker 1: every single part in that stack, providing security solutions for
Speaker 1: our customers to ultimately ultimately make that thing happen in
Speaker 1: a way where one you definitely don't see it happening
Speaker 1: and you don't care that you know, money is moving
Speaker 1: in these different ways, and two in a way that
Speaker 1: you're definitely not worried you're going to lose all your
Speaker 1: money and that it won't ever reach sustination and that
Speaker 1: maybe it'll reach the wrong destination or maybe some contract
Speaker 1: that it's touching will blow up. And I think a
Speaker 1: lot of the core products that we're building today really
Speaker 1: fit into those things really really nicely, both pre and
Speaker 1: post transaction, to continuously kind of you know, cover the space. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, well said, I think there's a lot of
Speaker 1: parallels and comparisons between how the Internet works and how
Speaker 1: we grew and where crypto's at now. Yeah, we won't
Speaker 1: necessarily be thinking about how it works, just that it works.
Speaker 1: And that's going to be for the majority of the population. Obviously,
Speaker 1: those who are tech savvy and very much in the
Speaker 1: weeds with crypto and blockchain will kind of understand how
Speaker 1: the back end works, but majority of people, they just
Speaker 1: need to know it works one hundred percent. Yeah, what's
Speaker 1: on your roadmap? I know you talked a lot about,
Speaker 1: you know, the things you guys are working on, but
Speaker 1: anything else you want to highlight? Yeah, I think we
Speaker 1: covered a lot actually, like through the conversation, a lot
Speaker 1: of our roadmap. I think, uh, you know, customers have
Speaker 1: come to learn about blockade through our kind of you know,
Speaker 1: pre transaction simulation, validation engines inside of wallets. We do
Speaker 1: a lot more than that right around monitoring for different
Speaker 1: kind of exploits across smart contracts. We do a lot
Speaker 1: more than that in terms of working with different you know, UH,
Speaker 1: institutional UH and UH and enterprise customers to you know,
Speaker 1: through our co signing product, which basically is like a
Speaker 1: co approver for transactions across these different wallets, leveraging the
Speaker 1: same kind of technology in our in our in our wallet,
Speaker 1: in our kind of consumer wallet business. And we do
Speaker 1: a lot more with different exchanges to detect over these
Speaker 1: different kinds of fraud and things like that. You know,
Speaker 1: the roadmap is basically just continuing to kind of execute
Speaker 1: across those those those those product categories UH and continue
Speaker 1: to serve our customers and the best way you possibly can. Oh.
Speaker 1: Very cool. I would love to get your thoughts on,
Speaker 1: you know, what's happening overall in the crypto market. Obviously,
Speaker 1: we had the Genius Act passed into law that's huge
Speaker 1: for the stable coin market. We got the Market Structure
Speaker 1: Build a Clarity Act coming up for votes in September.
Speaker 1: You know, what are your thoughts on legislation being past,
Speaker 1: this industry getting the clarity it needs and its tradi
Speaker 1: fi is coming in and much more so. We talked
Speaker 1: to us our customers across the space. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: Genius UH is an incredible piece of legislation because before it,
Speaker 1: crypto was literally lawless, like there were no crypto laws uh.
Speaker 1: And so you know, you could argue how how much
Speaker 1: of the Wild West it is, but it was, but
Speaker 1: it was literally lawless and so and so whether you know,
Speaker 1: Genius itself changes the level a lot or a little
Speaker 1: for the space and practice. I think it changes everything
Speaker 1: because it's it's just the first crypto law and then
Speaker 1: the second part of that. And we talked to a
Speaker 1: ton of customers across the space ton institutions. There is
Speaker 1: a lot. So we're seeing the activity on chain grow
Speaker 1: right when you one one metric we look at is
Speaker 1: kind of the movement between activity on centralized exchanges to
Speaker 1: you know, dex is on chain and we've seen that
Speaker 1: grow ten percent over the past ten months and ten
Speaker 1: percent over the year beforehand. And so this is a
Speaker 1: metric that's been growing regardless of market cyclicality. And what's
Speaker 1: what's kind of incredibly exciting to see and here is
Speaker 1: while you see that kind of metric moving. When we
Speaker 1: talk to some of the largest institutions in the world,
Speaker 1: one thing that they're worried about before moving on chain.
Speaker 1: Even when we talked to some institutions that are already
Speaker 1: operating in crypto but just on centralized exchanges, they're really
Speaker 1: looking out for the clarity kind of clarity bill to
Speaker 1: pass and the market structure build to pass before they
Speaker 1: go and kind of are much much more involved in
Speaker 1: defy and much much more involved on chain. And so
Speaker 1: I think that's really really exciting and we're going to
Speaker 1: see a massive unlocked there in terms of you know
Speaker 1: what that does to both institutions that are not currently active,
Speaker 1: but also institutions that are active just not in DeFi
Speaker 1: or not not as active on chain, right and so
Speaker 1: and so I'm really really really excited about that. There
Speaker 1: was an executive order path there were two executive orders passed,
Speaker 1: you know from the White House. We were really really
Speaker 1: excited about, uh. The first one, Uh predominantly they had
Speaker 1: a whole sextual on security, which is incredibly exciting to
Speaker 1: see kind of this shift in and I think this
Speaker 1: shift is beginning to start right legislation. Legislators that I
Speaker 1: think think think today a lot about the market or
Speaker 1: a lot about crypto as you know, just another network
Speaker 1: of moving money, but it's also a network of computers.
Speaker 1: And so when they think about it from the prism
Speaker 1: of a network of moving money, they think about illicit finance.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know a lot of us think
Speaker 1: about it because we've been trying to think about it
Speaker 1: this way actually when we kind of you know, peel
Speaker 1: the onion a little bit more and try to look
Speaker 1: at like what is that illicit finance and where does
Speaker 1: it originate from a lot of it is cybersecurity and
Speaker 1: fraud related, and so we're really excited to see kind
Speaker 1: of regulators start to talk about cybersecurity and fraud related
Speaker 1: pieces of legislation, which I actually think are much more
Speaker 1: meaningful than illicit finance to the space holistically. Like a
Speaker 1: funny anecdote is like when you think about the Internet, right,
Speaker 1: the Internet you know moves money too, right, You have
Speaker 1: credit cards there and things like that, and so you know,
Speaker 1: no one's asking a user before they enter a website
Speaker 1: to kind of KYC right across the Internet, right, And
Speaker 1: it's because they don't view this in the realm of
Speaker 1: like elicit finds. But they do. But there are legislation
Speaker 1: an around big enough businesses around data security and access
Speaker 1: management and cybersecurity controls because they know that it's prone
Speaker 1: to these different risks and those risks lead to these
Speaker 1: bad outcomes. What I think kind of, you know, the
Speaker 1: SPACE has not yet understood fully is that if we
Speaker 1: solve our cybersecurity challenges, we will actually solve a lot
Speaker 1: of our listed finance challenges. And so that's really excited about,
Speaker 1: like from from some of the new legislation that's coming
Speaker 1: out of SPACE. Yeah. Absolutely. And the services you guys provide,
Speaker 1: are you able to provide this to even tradified institutions
Speaker 1: like banks who are now getting involved in crypto they
Speaker 1: want to build their own blockchain into great blockchain percent Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so like we work with a bunch of traditional
Speaker 1: finance customers too. We can't mention many of them, but
Speaker 1: but but yeah, we one hundred percent do. Many are
Speaker 1: kind of you know, dipping their toes in, and some
Speaker 1: are and are some I think are going to dive
Speaker 1: head first. And so I think a lot of them
Speaker 1: are waiting and looking at to see, you know, some
Speaker 1: of the pieces of legislation and what kind of unfolds.
Speaker 1: But you know, I think, as with a lot of
Speaker 1: technology shifts, Uh, it may take longer, but it'll be
Speaker 1: bigger than people think. Oh absolutely, you know. I got
Speaker 1: some wrap up questions here for you. First, if you
Speaker 1: could create jo own metaverse, will the theme be a
Speaker 1: metaverse where no cybersecurity incidents take place? I don't know
Speaker 1: exactly what that means, probably like the exact opposite of
Speaker 1: like the matrix. I don't know. Rapid fire questions. Favorite
Speaker 1: food I like a Burger, Favorite musician or band. I'm
Speaker 1: a fan of the Arctic Monkeys. Favorite movie. I'll give
Speaker 1: you the favorite movie I saw recently. Maybe The Fantastic Four,
Speaker 1: the New The mar the New marvel On. Favorite book.
Speaker 1: I'm a huge fan of Asimov. When you're not working
Speaker 1: at Blockade, what are you doing for fun? Dude? Working
Speaker 1: at Blockade is incredibly fun. That's that's kind of that's
Speaker 1: what I do. If I'm not if I'm not if
Speaker 1: I'm not working at Blockade, maybe I'm maybe I'm working out. Okay, cool, cool,
Speaker 1: you know, great stuff, and like I said at the beginning,
Speaker 1: you guys are a core part of the infrastructure for
Speaker 1: this acid class to continue to mature and function well. Securities,
Speaker 1: of course one of those pillars. So I'm looking forward
Speaker 1: to the future updates. But thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining me, Tony A pleasure, Thank you so much.