The Future of Money: DeFi and Stablecoins | European Blockchain Convention

foreign [Music] hello everyone thanks for joining us today um if you've ever seen stani at a rave you'll know that the dancing you saw earlier was nothing compared to it's nothing compared to that FYI few so I'm gonna we only have 15 minutes so I think I'll do a quick intro and then we can get straight into the questions if that sounds good yep sounds good okay I'll do me so my name is Jun Ian Wong I co-founded something called acjr which is the association of cryptocurrency journalists and researchers acjr.network and we're really an industry body trying to improve the depth and breadth of independent journalism in the space and as we've seen with things like FTX this is really really critical so check it out if you haven't already and now on to stani I mean a man who needs no introduction you know I remember following you guys you and Jordan and the rest of the team back before you were Avi you were either land and you've pivoted over the years rebranded quite successfully so you've seen your share of you know crypto Market Cycles so I guess as a scenes that are where do you think we are now what's your sense of um where we are in terms of the space the technology and the market yeah I I think uh um I think we progressed quite a lot so um I've um I've been building um within the space for for the past uh six six or so years um and when I entered into to the space you know there wasn't that much of um um you know D5 wasn't a thing right so you know there there wasn't barely stable coins you know usdt was the only stable coin and that was in a Omni blockchain as well so like it was very um early in in that stage but what was interesting is that there was this like um very exciting uh developer Community um specifically on ethereum because um it allowed to build uh new things because of the ethereum virtual machine you know but basically um okay I can hear you fine it's just the mic oh GM GM okay we're back okay we're not let me try this one yeah maybe I will talk like this okay so um yeah call this Leverage let's let's let's uh take the leverage off let's be safe um speaking of um yeah so um about the uh Innovation so because with ethereum virtual machine you basically could you would be able to you know program Financial applications on blockchain a very very exciting uh progress from uh what we've seen you know from from Bitcoin as as a network of transferring um soaring uh value and now looking back and and how much things are progressed it's it's quite impressive I've I for example would never um in my life would consider even being able to talk to people that are uh institutions about blockchain and decentralized finance and actually um seeing people getting very excited about it and um we also have a lot of protocols that are are actually very well battle tested so you know the crypto Market is very volatile um and especially with the past months what we've seen with some of the protocols including um other that you know they show resilience um they show that if you carefully design system and you know involve enough people and stakeholders you can design something and govern um a financial application that uh really um takes into consideration all the um Market movements and and actually build a very uh functional Financial uh product and I think even further a public good that is accessible to anyone so D5 is getting more and more battle tests and it's becoming um in my opinion that the right choice of building uh Finance do you detect a um I think we have to share this one do you detect a Thor in the crypto winter at all is there more demand for credit in the D5 system uh I I think there definitely like the one thing that is very good in my opinion is that there's less leverage you know that's the case always with bear markets that you have less utilization um of Leverage which means that there's less amount of cash as well on chain on chain Cash Cash work us you see and and you know stable coins um die and and go in the future um but the the yields are obviously way much lower which has sparked this kind of um um you know idea of finding what you could actually build uh to increase uh the financial opportunity and even the yields are low I would say that um you know I I usually have been looking at decentralized Finance more of um access um technology so so any um especially me and many people here you know grew up over the Internet so you know getting access to information globally uh being able to merge connections across across the world with people with uh that share the same ideas um and being able to do Financial transactions and get the same equal Financial opportunity across the world um it's a big thing to me um and and it it really um puts everyone on the same kind of like um three on everyone on the same level and I I think that's the part what we're trying to achieve when we we look at the tech that we want to build but in general in in D5 space I've seen a lot of movements towards how we can actually you know use this liquidity that we have on chain um transparent transparency that it gets provides and also the smartphone check execution and and use it in real world and that's why we've seen a lot of exciting projects around um tokenizing uh some of the Securities and also being able to um the super deal from the treasuries to to on-chain infrastructure so I think that's that's something I've seen recently happening I want to make sure we talk a bit about some Avi products right like go and and lens um so you know Ave is one of the leading uh lending protocols right now um you know doing well battle tested as you said um so why the big push into a stable coin and particularly you know algo stable algo Stables don't have a great rep now right and of course people say oh go is another Alco stable so maybe just walk us through walk us through that yeah yeah so it's not I'll go stable coin and I I really don't understand the term I understand like there's some sort of algorithm in in some of the algo stable coins that you know make them a bit different but like the the uh the go stable coin it's uh it's pretty much based on the proven model of over colonization um you know the the same idea behind of for example the die stable coin or the Ave Market uh over colonization when you borrow other stable coins um so it's a proven model for over the years um and and similar implementation but um besides that I think we've seen for example with with Bitcoin that we try to solve um uh payments in terms of being able to transact value um in a borderless way um and and and store value but at this point there hasn't been very uh efficient initiative to actually um get um let's say stable coins or even crypto in general into uh the current payment infrastructure and just to give a just an idea we have now roughly um 5 billion worth of 5 billion people online at this point um and we're using pretty much the Legacy Financial systems for online payments right so things are moving very slow um going even you know a decade decade and a half back you know people were scared to put credit cards online and and buy things from um e-commerce and I think now with the scalability that we have and the technical infrastructure with layer twos we actually have a very plausible uh opportunity to um get the stable coins into online payment infrastructure so it's very nice that we we have um a financial ecosystem around D5 you know with with which provides yield opportunities um liquidity but I think that the real excitement happens when you know we see more and more adoption uh from the uh the tech we built and that's that's our goal and why people need stable coins in general um I just think it's you know it's it's better faster stronger Finance because you know you have the transparency you can quantify risks uh more accurately because you have the transparency you can have you can see the over colonializations within the other Market you can see um you know how much of a particular asset is minted across different networks across and sitting in different protocols and smart contracts um and by Nature that should actually um you know improve the way we improve our own Financial ecosystem and the last thing that is important is that D5 protocols they are governed by the communities the people that that use them and it pro brings the finance and that decision making making an access to decision making closer to them so it's more about people being able to build um and use finance that they really relate to and and want to see in the future so um you know go launch on uh test net last week I think um how is that going and you know are there any stats or insights you can share with us on the road to Main yeah there's um I think last time I checked there was like 15 000 uh go tested mentors which was a surprising you know has anyone meant it Go the test net go address there's there's a few uh nerds here so it's uh it's nice nice to see yeah um it's actually surprising because uh test Nets are becoming quite a useful way to to test the infrastructure um so it's very nice um adoption and obviously you know it takes time to to go further in the main net um but there is a lot of excitement and I I think it's because you know Ave as a community has been known as um quite um risk-averse in in ways that um you know we we've built technology um that is very resilient um and obviously the harder part actually is the governance right so how do you set exactly good risk parameters within your community um and within the other community you know there's um two different risk contributors um so the way the the dial works is that you know once once a piece of software is deployed uh we really can't do any changes into that so it's up to this formal governance process uh pretty much the other token holders come together and vote um and also they vote about how they distribute the treasury most of the treasury is used to build technical pieces so our company is also one of the contributors and and there's other builders as well and risk contributors so there's Gauntlet and Chaos Labs that are on an ongoing basis giving their modeling and giving suggestions of how the risk management should be changed and they actually do on-chain proposals that the governance is voting in so that's the kind of like uh latest and you know it's um now it's a time period where the code is public and anyone can review it um I wanna we only have about a minute left but I wanted to switch over to the lens really quickly which was also a hotly anticipated thing launched last year RV companies acquired um uh sonar as well last year as part of that under that umbrella I think um and you know now there's apps like Leinster and orb out there that you can start using uh this decentralized social network so I guess how is that progressing um any any stats or or other insights that you can share with us yeah it's um the lens what for example just to explain um to the audience what lenses so you know the lens is a way to create a profile um online profile uh that is secured by the blockchain and you can connect with other profiles um and those relationships are also secured by the blockchain and you can distribute content um and that content can be tokenized as nfds as well so it has a bit of building monetization features so um you know the reason we build lens is that we we wanted to expand the concept of ownership not just relating to the assets that you might hold or want to use as payments in the future but also on your online presence and it boils down to the idea that you know uh from that five billion internet users almost equal amount of users are using social media um and they create a lot of Social Capital so they create content uh but they're not they're not able to actually own that um Social Capital so you if you um for some reason hate uh uh Elon and Twitter you know you and you leave the platform you know you can't um you can't take your followers with you um to somewhere else and what lens is trying to do is change the Dynamics where um actually um the power is given back to the users so so the users can actually um you know they hold those relationships and all the applications are built on top like the ore blencer and these are by the way all um pretty much you know some of them are open source some of them are just apps that want to build Next Generation social but they are small teams so most of the development teams are from one to three persons and they've been able to create incredible uh experiences so if anyone wants a lens handle just DM me uh one of the uh Legacy uh social media platforms and and I will um I will help you to to to test the uh the the better protocol awesome thanks so much our time is up but I think there's one burning question everyone wants to know which is what's the best way to get a rave ticket real quick I it I I it is hard to get one uh it's uh it's unsure when when is the next one but it's yeah I don't know it's it's called I know it's hard but you know keep trying right thanks Donnie give it up for stani thanks everyone