Big DeFi Energy - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2024

excited to talk about Sky IA Force the big launch tonight at 900 p.m. uh and usds on AA yeah it's going to be um it's going to be big day and and a big night so are you going to are you going to sleep tonight yeah I got to get up tomorrow you know got to be ready on the laptop like you said yeah yes so um well maybe I should just uh go over the the kind of the real basics of Sky uh formerly known as maker right so Meer upgraded to Sky the protocol itself uh the Meer protocol upgrades to Sky protocol tonight 9pm you can access it on sky. money uh upgrade your die to the usds stable coin upgrade your mkr 1 to 24,000 to Sky um and then also the unique new feature that's coming with the sky protocol that's accessible and Sky of money is native token rewards so what that means is just by holding usds stable coins you'll be able to get some interesting tokens uh including the sky token itself and then also the big the big surprise announcement today is that Chronicle tokens will also be available to get uh points of UNSC of money starting 9:00 p.m.

tonight and Chronicle is the original Oracle powering the mega protocol for the last 7 years that is now spun off into its own independent project uh and it's super exciting that sky. money users will be able to exclusively get points in this really cool Oracle protocol that's leveling up the standard for doing defi oracles and it's quite a interesting transition now run basically you've um you've been building defy you know since defi didn't exist and and you know we we remember the times where D5 was extremely small there's you know few hundred people just experimenting with with the technology and and when I started to build um aen actually it l back in the days one of the kind of like a biggest problems we had is that we didn't actually have a stable coin on ethereum so essentially Sky maker back then made it possible and then for us what it enabled is that we're able to create products where uh you could have yield um lending and borrowing and um rely on this uh stable value so now after all these years kind of um uh you're coming to this um end game of maker and um why it's such a big thing uh and and why why now yeah and I think I mean I think uh what um what's happening in defi right you like you call it a def5 Renaissance and people it's getting it's p it's people are picking it up it's a cool meme I think we should uh should push that uh and it's like defi has reached an inflection point where it's just obvious that there is real fundamental value in the Technologies we're building I mean especially Sky protocol and AA are these like massive you know product Market fit billions of dollars locked into the protocols generating actual serious profits which is I mean this is totally Unthinkable if you look back at like the early days when we're just getting started in some small upstart thing like now it's like a massive established business and the next step is making it easy to use bringing it to the mass Market uh and I think kind of properly tapping into that is the you know that's really the key aspect of why uh Aker basically did this total transformation into Sky cuz it's all about focusing on like what is the simplest what is the most relatable obvious relevant use case for regular users of a defi stable coin and that is savings right getting rewarded for saving up uh and then the entire structure of the sky protocol and The Branding and sort of the whole funnel is focused on this making that as simple and as accessible as possible um with usds uh savings uh usds token rewards that you can get just from holding usds and then also integration into places like Ava right so with Sky AA force that we announced um the major integration of the two protocols it's it's like unlocking new levels of efficiency in terms of what reward you can get as users and I think it's like getting that in incredibly exciting value and then bringing it to the user right that's what we should be focusing on everyone in this industry and it's really fascinating because we've we've always been building defi um protocols in in a little bit of Silo in the sense that uh Sky maker has been always um focusing on on the stable coin aspect and and and that liquidity aspect and for for a it's been lending and borrowing and what is fascinating to see here now is that we have and hopefully with the skym maker uh force is we're trying to essentially put forces together and and actually build things together so um what you see with the usds integration into a and these double incentive markets where uh you get incentives from um Sky ecosystem the the the a ecosystem with with Merit rewards U the the idea actually is to make these um defy users essentially relying on these multiple protocols because essentially we want to build a decentralized infrastructure and there's really no leaders um in defi there is only Heroes and these Heroes like are building these protocols and infrast infrastructure for the future and I think run you said something really interesting is that really kind of like for defi to be successful we have to unite and at the same time we have so much um centralization or not even centralization but we were talking about resiliency um we have a lot of infrastructure that is kind of like on chain but it isn't resilient we're using a lot of stable coins the biggest stable coins aren't decentralized at the moment um as an example so what do you think about the positioning of usds in this new uh endgame and and how do you get more um adoption and maybe even thinking about like what kind of role a it plays there or um where do you see things going for for more like uh resilient stable coins in terms of adoption I think it's kind of cool of like how how do the different pieces fit together and what that when you start thinking that way you get back to the kind of the basics like the the good old days of early D5 when we came up I I don't remember who but like sort of the the space as a whole came up with money Legos yeah what what's so cool about this stuff is it all natively inherently fits together in really cool ways and I guess the big difference now is that now there's like really clear sort of leaders in each category and the way they fit together is just really natural and and and cool um and and yeah to your point like when you look at just totally basic uh use as currency um that's I mean that's that's the big PM like the big product Market take off in crypto right now I think is like tether and and usdc as well right they're really I mean especially tether is taking off like crazy as like a really useful product that normal people use to improve their lives no crypto Shilling no pumping don't need anything like that like this is just like proper utility and that's I guess the most accessible uh sort of end of the funnel uh and then usds is sort of positioned as like when you go slightly deeper into crypto then by utilizing defi instead of centralized Solutions you can get some unique features you can only get through defi in particular savings rate and token rewards so that's the entire focus of usds and sky right just optimize for get a savings rate nice and easy and simple and you know it's proven it the die savings rate has provided 6% uh and and and at sometimes much higher rates for several years to billions of dollars and that's going to continue to be available usds but then on top of that there are these native token rewards so that right from launch tonight 9:00 p.m. on sky. money um you can get Sky tokens I mean directly just for holding usds and you can also get Chronicle points so some other uh interesting opportunities there and this is I mean I think what's really interesting about this is that it's like it's more than just getting a simple reward for holding your your assets right it's you you get to choose a protocol you care about that you believe has a future you believe that there's something interesting about and you can actually uh get tokens from that protocol just for holding a stable coin and that's kind of yeah I mean that's that's really where usds and Sky wants to be the the leader uh and then if you go a little bit more like a little bit deeper then you get to lending and borrowing right and this is like how do you what do you do on the back end with this so you get tons of people that want to get savings well where do you actually deploy that capital and then that's where sky and a is like the perfect fit that AA is this massive sort of distribution mechanism on the supply side from the perspective of of stable coin holders in Sky uh yeah it all started with um spark right like that that when Sky well maker initially forked the Ava protocol to develop the first star uh which is spark that meant that uh the sky ecosystem just has this very intimate knowledge of the Ava protocol call and security and and how to deploy effectively into it so the the fact that we can build this really tight integration uh is going to unlock so much value I think yeah and the way we also think about in in a is that we we want to build the best product for for users on on on the use cases we have and that's thinking about borrowers suppliers and the very end user of of that and I think it it makes TS of sense of actually um having that kind of like um um I would say like a battle of market share with these more centralized stable coins because essentially there is so much value created from let's say um us usdc and bunch of other stable coins where a lot of that value goes directly um to the issuer and and the end user isn't really getting most of that so as an idea that's um kind of like a fundament important because that brings more interest rates and value on chain and that value goes back to the users and we see that at at a that the more easier we make the interactions and and that like a Last Mile experience uh with users um we can be in a in in a great place of expanding defi essentially and I do believe that the days of um of stable coins where there is absolutely no yield on stable coins is is going to be over it's it's a raise to the bottom for centralized stable coins to actually start giving out yield until the point that um most of that yield actually goes uh back to the user so if if you all think about it a little bit like um the angle here it's it's basically providing to all the stable coin holders something um where they get the most value that the stable coins can actually creade directly to the users and that's the same angle with for example with AES uh Native stable coin with go which is very synergetic with usds because you can use that in a and you can borrow against and you have ability to go to new interesting um Financial opportunities because for me what Defy is is a lot about is obviously the infrastructure and how it can actually creat this eal opportunity to to participate it's we really easily forget that um most of the people involved they don't have direct access to US Dollars um or even the yield component of that or they don't have that wide spectrum of financial opportunities and if you don't have opportunities and equal access to finance um it means that you are not provided with same abilities to actually uh preserve your value uh your your financial value and that's why it's it's it's incredibly important so defi will always have this idea of uh Distributing rewards in yields across all the users and and I think it becomes kind of like a borderless um Marketplace for that so that's why I'm personally super excited about the um Sky a force and and what's coming up next yeah and I think one thing I was think about is um right we are so focused on defi already has some much value let's make it easy to use bring defi to the mass Market uh yeah bring about the defi Renaissance that you know restores the balance of nature where defi is the central thing in crypto and not just meme coins and uh speculation right but actual cool Financial technology build with blockchain but to to make that happen we got to be appealing we got to uh you know get less boring and and more exciting and and able to sort of compete with things like meme coins for attention and that's why for for Sky I mean that's the reason why basically the ecosystem went back to the basics and did this complete Rebrand and um a big inspiration for that is actually AA like a I think uh and I mean I think this is such a big key to the success of AA that you guys actually managed to hit that real sweet spot quite early of like it's a simple concept it's simple to explain it has this sort of distinct uh identity um yeah and then you also just did another Rebrand recently I mean which is really cool and even the original brand I mean that's kind of the original you had that's kind of the big inspiration for Sky because of course no one has seen the the the kind of the freshened up look that you made but um yeah what do you think about like how to how to sort of make that U how to how to make it simple to use how to get regular people into just like the basics of like lending markets savings stable coin I mean it's it's a lot to do about the accessibility and I think we learned the very hard way um because when we started to build with with heatland like our technology was pretty complex and overall like like non-custodial transactions and and and protocols were really complex and it's it's kind of like how technology evolves always you know you have the the infrastructure that starts to evolve first and then you have the application layer that's basically then improved by the The Experience layer so we kind of realized at some point that we have to make lot of this technology accessible and accessibility doesn't just mean really nice design or nice ux but also having an appealing branding and having that touch with the users in in the community and and I still think we're really far away so I I like the the the um the the D5 Renaissance uh as a movement because it also states that even though there was like a this big defi summer where a lot of these protocols were made and a lot of opportunities um actually there is now really good time to engage with Defi and build and make it more accessible and that's what a lot of people are actually focusing now so most of the cool Innovation isn't necessarily happening on the on the back end of the defi on this infrastructural level but actually on that like front end of defi how to make this technology more accessible easier to integrate into existing Financial um ecosystem and and we're not really that far away so maybe we're two years away where we could see def5 protocols being integrated into um existing payments applications fintech applications it's more about how we do it in the right way so so for example being able to build resilient protocols like sky and and like a we have much better infrastructure so the things that really set backs set back the Indy are always relying on some sort of a speed to Market um centralization single point of failures and that's basically are the things that sent us back but if you are able to build this resilient infrastructure and remove that risk aspect or mitigate it we're able to see more of integration so maybe actually like a might be that that last uh mile or it might be some sort of integration into existing payments application but what's important for us is that this infrastructure is is based on something that is resilient and can't just crash all of a sudden and so our whole thing is making defi simple and meeting the users where they are so you know you should be able to get the benefits of defi without um having to be super smart about how blockchain works and so on but I still think it's also cool to talk a little bit about what is it that's getting abstracted away and presented to the user as something like you know a stapon app where you can get native token rewards on sky.

money or just like the front page of of where you just like put your your money and you get the get the rewards um and you know so it's like one I mean a really key feature that actually now that I think about it you invented this in the first place actually many many years ago right but that is the ability for the sky protocol to hook into other D5 protocols and basically inject liquidity um and uh that's another part of Sky AA Force right one thing is like the the the sort of the flagship integration on the main AA Market that's coming soon coming really really soon uh and where you can get I you know I I I would imagine this will be the best rewards possible on Ava with usds on the on the primary Market uh but that's just one aspect of Sky Force it's it's not just uh a single integration it's a whole it's a whole movement right it's like a first step to really solidify the def5 Renaissance and then the other thing is basically unleashing um the scale of sky and the die stable coin and the usds stable coin uh and in injecting that into the various AA markets um it's interesting because the the module that is used to actually um inject liquidity into these a markets is the d3m module and that's actually was our first collaboration uh few years back back ago where we kind of realized that you know we have in defi all these lending markets and um Financial opportunities but there's always liquidity crunches so that was the kind of like solution there and and that piece of technology is is now something that we want to even Double Down um essentially when the usds is um integrated into the a market the idea is that then the d3m can be also integrated across multiple a markets so the way a works is that there's one main Market where you can Supply different kinds of assets use them as a collateral and then draw liquidity so borrowing against uh your collaterals um and every Market has essentially a risk profile but new markets can be created so what actually Sky will do with the 3M module is that um Can inject Capital into different types of risk profiles and and that is really interesting way how composable Defy is so Defy is not just human composable like we're here sitting and explaining uh some of the technology but actually the whole financial system is going to be glued together and that's why we decided that we we have to put these forces together and just think what's best for the users um and adoption and I think the end result here is going to be that we're going to have a a a really transparent auditable resilient Financial infrastructure that is providing access to to everyone and it's built on top of uh incentives um layer which means that um if you participate in this in these opportunities you also become a member of that community and can contribute and make decisions and um I mean r you have different opinions and takes about um governance but maybe one important question for you is that as maker is is one of the old Dows in the space um how basically the end game will affect uh the the the sky as a as a dow so uh that's a I mean there a key motivator as well to sort of the whole transformation from maker into Sky is to rethink how governance is done because it was such a big deal like it's such a big part and big part of sort of the original maker identity that you had this everybody gets to uh vote on anything and you can vote on whatever you want and it turns out it gets very chaotic you really want to have experts kind of make much more focused decisions about the things they actually know about uh and then what really turned out to be apparent as maker scaled up to a massive size is once once a decentralized ecosystem gets too big it just gets really hard for for all the stakeholders to align so that's actually the motivator behind the creation of the Stars which were um used to be refer to subd basically smaller subdivisions of the broader Sky ecosystem that specialize in different functions the first star is called spark and I mentioned that earlier that that's actually like the main protocol of spark is a fork of AA which actually sets up spark perfectly to be the part of the ecosystem that specializes in allocating into protocols like AA so Sky itself doesn't have to be able to go through the entire governance Machinery of hooking up into all the different AA markets cuz there's a lot of I mean aa aa is a lot of things there's a lot of of AA markets to connect into and there's no reason why the economic scale of sky and usds should not tap into all of that like 100% of the opportunity that exist in a but to do that you need a lot of flexibility and and stars that really help enable that uh and one outcome of that is uh you know better returns better risk at you as a return for sky and as a result better rewards than usds so you're sort of packaging that benefit back out to the end user that all they have to do is go to sky. Money Hold usds and and choose what token rewards they want and you can start doing that from 9:00 p.m. tonight uh the other thing is also like a benefit to the all the different protocols we integrate with so for instance um as we've talked about before like at some point spark will be capable of deploying scale I mean Capital at scale into go and help the the Arvest stable coin as well right which that might see counterintuitive but but the reality is that everyone's everyone's in it together in Defi and this is again the defi Renaissance I think is about really uh realizing this I I like one thing that kind of like might sometimes go unnoticed is the this um idea of like quality of the uh yield Source essentially and what I like about the the the model of like um the the um Sky governance and the DMS and also with these um different a markets is that it's very easy to to create a governance system based on that well easy is not the right one but it's it's it's interesting to create a governance system based on what kind of yield sources to to support because a lot of thinking goes sometimes into defy that there's a lot of yield sources based on let's say governance mechanisms um with liquidity mining but there's actually a lot of yield that is um coming into the space from rwas and in some ways like Sky becomes a like an allocator of of capital of of these different yield sources and that's the kind of like a thinking we also have in in a markets is that where actually what kind of markets should be incentivized and how they should grow and I think eventually these DS will become quite substantial and that's why people are talking about D5 Renaissance because there's not only the technology but there's actual decentralized organizations onchain with onchain voting that are profitable they make revenue and they redistribute the value back to the users so after like you know eight seven years whatever we've bu building we actually achieved to build something very meaningful and actually something really profitable which is a very rare thing but a great example why and and how it's possible to do in defi so as we wrap up uh I just want to share possibly the biggest Alpha you here all day uh we I didn't even say this at when we opened the main stage so you get it as a thank you for coming to the sky stage now and setting this one out so uh right tonight 9:00 p.m.

sky. money the sky protocol launches you can start receiving Sky token rewards and Chronicle token rewards and there is this thing called early bird bonus program where if you sign up before the launch you get double rewards for the first month so what that means is you still got about 6 hours or so to sign up for the early bird bonus and you'll actually you'll get these double rewards for the next month and this is exclusive to people who sign up before the launch at 9:00 p.m. so this is your last chance and hopefully soon you can use usds on on ala as well and run you forgot to mention where's the Afterparty oh yeah the Afterparty is uh top of the marina base ANS yeah I I hear there's some uh major uh major personalities coming there pretty uh pretty fomo thank you so much