Mel Gelderman | Pioneer a financial life on Ethereum with a non-custodial banking replacement

hello everyone it's amazing to be here at a etherium taipei my name is Mel Gellerman I'm the co-founder and CEO of this company called monolith and we're based in London and today I'm going to tell you a bit about what we're about a bit about the future a bit about transcendence and hopefully what our lives will be like very very soon and so interestingly this story might actually start a lot closer than you may expect so about four years ago I live in Taiwan and in Taiwan this is this is at Din Tai Fung this was basically the size of the etherium community back in like 2015 and I had the amazing opportunity to meet a vitalik with her and there are some other amazing people here that you may recognize this is Alex Luo Jacob Lee some people from Microsoft Taiwan from the university some my friends Leo and Shannon and I think this was a journalist lady I'm not quite sure who this was but she was there and the reason we were all there was because I think deep down we all realized that we were standing at the start of this transcendental moment in human evolution right like the tool that Vitaly created was quite literally you know it probably is the most powerful tool of our lifetimes right um with aetherium for the first time in like in 2014 in 2015 people started to realize that we could build an entirely new type of society one that isn't controlled by you know the banks or the governments or by currency but one that is controlled by people and this is what my company is about monolith is about trying to materialize ëthere eum's transcendental potential and we want to do that in a very real way right so and you know it always frustrates me that well actually let me ask the audience so so who here believes that the future of our society will to some degree or other be powered by etherium or any like competitor or whatever right like I definitely do right like this is you know this is the the architecture for our future welds the reality is that even though most people here believe it very few of the people here will actually be trying to live this all right like no one you know we all think the future of our size easy theorem but no one's actually doing anything in their day-to-day life to make this real like like to actually try and live this right it's probably less than a thousand people in the world who actually you know tried to like say goodbye to the old world economy and are trying to live in the real world it you know in the etherium world today right and so this is what fundamentally our company what monoliths is trying to do it's trying to make a way for people to actually abandon the old world right to say bye-bye to Fubon bang right to say you know goodbye to Bank of America HSBC revolutes whatever you have right and to instead live a life that is powered by the serum economy and so let me look at my slides here there over there as well so yes we want to replace your bank we want to build we want to present the theory economy this magic that you know all these companies that are building any theory I'm a lot of them are here are making right companies such as digits such as maker you know we're all building the C theorem economy and we want to make the theorem economy usable to normal people to everyone right we're going to replace your bank we want us be noncustodial we don't want your money right hey you can keep your money and we think that leads to all kinds of bad situations down the line as the world is today I'll get I'll talk a bit more about that in a minute and ultimately and this is now I'm going a bit crazy like we want people to step through the portal we want people to become ëthere Ian's right because very few people are today and so this is a profile of our platform now you know we've had to look at how people actually live their normal lives right most people you know you know we fundamentally we have to build a platform that allows an average citizen of Taiwan an average citizen of you know the UK or wherever to slot in this etherion powered version right into their daily lives right it shouldn't be different you shouldn't have to abandon you know you don't have to live in a cave right to live with aetherium right like I tried this years ago five six years ago I quit University and I only lived with a Bitcoin wallet right it canceled my bank accounts I traveled the world with a Bitcoin wallet and this was basically impossible it obviously it didn't work but you know I fundamentally believed that the thing that a crane originally started was going to you know like I took it to heart I really believed it would be the foundation for a new economy and all this stuff and so here we are today where you know I've put all my time and energy into trying to build a product that does fit into people's daily lives and so for that the the original like MVP of this life is this is what we've built today is that we have a safer wallet right fundamentally so it's a it's a mobile wallet on iOS and Android it's available right now and it's a safer wallet because you know we don't necessarily believe in addresses instead you know people generate their own key and they then deploy their own contract wallets onto the UM network and the reason for this is because you know like we're ultimately this industry is going is that down the line you'll have everything of value right everything that's all going in your life will be with you in your pocket right there'll be everything from like your you know from your ether to all your other tokens to your Netflix subscriptions to your even your identity at some points to like your house right your stocks whatever right all of that will be with you and with the current generation of wallets right key-based wallets if you make a single mistake you will lose all of it right there they're very very unforgiving and so that's why we decided to create a contract wallet so each of our uses deploy their own contract wallets of your will I'll be able to demo it a bit down the line and then and this is the most part the most work we've had to do in the last few years we've had to ultimately find a way to allow people to use the stuff day-to-day right so in in Europe and in America and in most of Asia the way you you interact with the world around you on a financial level is through a debit card right through a Visa card or a MasterCard or whatever and so we've we've basically had to build the the most purest noncustodial implementation of of you know a visa networ an ethereal network to to a visa network experience right and that's what we've done and for that in the process we've essentially had to build everything that a challenge a bank which is very European term as how to build this is like maybe you could have revolute or of mons o or in America you have like venmo and cash app I guess is the closest thing here's like wheat chats but that's mainland Chinese but um let me move on so some of the stuff we've had to do to get here is we've had to work with the FCA which is the local regulator in UK they were actually really impressed with what we've done because they say that like it decentralized a noncustodial implementation of a bank right is better for consumer protection because you know if we go flying tomorrow all of our users still have their money we don't hold the users money and this is in contrast with the traditional bank this is in contrast with most companies on in the blockchain space today so they're worried is that you know let's say coinbase day goes offline right and they're unregulated right now so and they but they maintain everyone's balances but who knows maybe they have they only have a fraction of the amount of Bitcoin and ether and whatever that they should have right and so yeah we've we've gone through the FCA sandbox some other things here I'm going to just highlight is we've had to build an AML system and a kyc system so when you soak a we see is no your customer so when you sign up through the app for the card specifically for the Visa card you take a selfie you take a picture of your photo ID and you put in your address and then if we check you know if we can verify that three days later hopefully you'll receive your card in the mail takes a week sometimes but and the other thing we've had to build to basically in like to show visa that this was the reason they trusted us we've had to show to Visa that we can do anti-money laundry AML on the blockchain right and so we've worked with other amazing companies one in particular called coin firm and through coin firm we basically check that you know it like when a user deposit sends funds into their contract wallet into their own control we can't take that money right it's theirs but what we can do is we can look at its provenance right we can look where it came from and so every time a significant amount of money gets sent into their contract well that we check you know did this come from like you know some hacks exchange or some Ponzi scheme or anything dodgy right anything bad and if that happens we we have to you know this is the agreement we have with Visa where we basically don't accept that specific money right we ultimately can like turn off their card and so we've only had to do this for like two users to date so that's a don't worry you want virtually no one gets caught and this is like super obvious so then let's see yeah a lot of other stuff you can ask me about this after the presentation if you're interested now what's right around the corner right we we're we're like at the MVP stage of being able to live a life on etherium right we're like if you already have a lot of ether you can live the stuff because you've got a Visa debit card you can use it in real life everyday or any token and you've got a wallet that's in your own control but this is not quite enough and so what we're like working on right now which is going to kind of complete this basic picture is that you can send money in that you can literally pay in your salary right that when you get paid from your whatever company you work for that money hits hits basically like a system and then the moment we get it we convert it to whatever token you want so you'll be able to configure do you want die or do you want like 50% ether 25% digits tokens whatever and this is this will like complete one big part of the flow and the other is we want to integrate the basic necessities of like decentralized finance right such as all the swaps so we're using or you know we love khyber and we love uni swap and all these others but specifically we're actually integrating aggregators because it's a lot easier so for that we're using total and we're using one inch which are really cool and ultimately we have to try and do this for every jurisdiction in the world right like right now it's only in Europe the card specifically and money in were also only be in Europe but we have to do this for the u.s. we have to do this for all of Asia right for Taiwan and so that's that's still in progress now the ultimate goal here is indeed to build a trust us banking alternative and the question you know like and and and this is real right again this is not something that we're proposing now that we're starting to build for the last two and a half three years I've committed all my you know we're a team of 25 people today but like all my time as being committed to actually building this so we're you know we're on iOS on Android and we have right now we have a thousand users so a thousand people in the world just over a thousand this is like three weeks ago I haven't been back to Europe so I don't know latest numbers but about a thousand people have our card and the amazing thing about that is that a very high percentage of them use our card every day right so this is statistically significant because compared to other companies that have a card that are just traditional FinTech companies we actually are seeing a much higher use percentage basically showing that people like genuinely understand and love our products and this is great and I love the people who have our products but the foot but there's a problem right like there's only a thousand of them and and look we don't have a marketing team we're like 80% engineers and all this stuff but but I'm definitely a bit disappointed in only having a thousand people and I think you know rather than like pointing the finger at the world we need a as an industry we need to basically take a step back and we need to think what really is the value for people here and I think that you know fundamentally something being something running on etherium something being non-custodial and like futuristic and cool isn't quite enough right it's not you know for people in this room it may be enough but but for normal people you know who are not interested in the in the nature of the technology itself it's not enough and so people need a good reason to care and I think like most amazingly we we literally are at this turning point in the history of our industry like we're living through the most amazing time in ethereum history maybe even the history of of the you know blockchain 10 years now and because for the first time in 10 years we're at this point where our industry will become interesting to people beyond just speculation beyond just gambling right and so and and this is through decentralized financed path such as compound such as Sol chrome and dy/dx and whole bunch of others which haven't looked enough into but fundamentally these platforms are their money markets and they're they're decentralized and they're automated and they're providing people with interest and this is critical right if we take a step back if we look at what are the moments in the history of our industry that people have like become interests in this it's been in 2013 when the price of Bitcoin went up again in 2017 when everything went up and they were like a thousand icos and people the only reason people got involved wasn't because of the technology it's because they thought they would make money and if we can do if we can satisfy that desire of people without it being you know as dark and as dodgy as like pure speculation without be without it being gambling and instead being it through you know platforms such as compound etc through maker right with their there are new things I forget the acronym but it's like they're gonna give interests on die directly as well we're we're we wait for the first time we'll be able to actually provide a service to normal people who don't care if it's blockchain or not that actually will basically you know be better be significantly better than what they can get in the old world and this is a turning point right like you know again in 2017 it was absurd because at the beginning of the year no one cared about here and no one like knew and I co was or whatever what a token was by the end of it like you would sit in a bar and the people next you were talking about you know their favorite token right triple it here it's almost like triple at some point but which is obviously ripple but mispronunciation so I think this is critical like we think we've been working towards this for the last virtually the last you know three years towards this moment in time where the etherion economy will be useful enough for normal people and we're here to present it to these people in a way that they can fit right into their lives and now that we have amazing gaps such as compound and all the others we think we're ready and so we think you know very soon within the next six months we'll be able to offer people like hundreds of thousands of people and experience powered by etherion that they can't get anywhere else and this is like you know it's the death of FinTech it's the death of traditional banking and it's gonna happen a lot quicker than I think a lot of people expect so let me do a demo now bear with me here I just found out yesterday that the new iPad OS software actually supports HDMI out so I didn't have to buy a macbook and then return it today so this is our app and I have the most easy password in the world try and forget this so it's like it you know fundamentally it's it's it looks like most other aetherium wallets that you'll have used and and I just want to make a point specifically I think our industry kind of gets caught up in the idea that it's the UI or the UX that needs to change to make this real for people I don't think it is right like people use much worse experiences in traditional finance people use much worse experiences in you know it like even in FinTech right like our wallets are kind of good enough right like they can definitely improve there's no question they can improve a lot ours can improve a lot and but like it's what people really need is you know a reason to use this stuff a reason to care so let me just walk through this all of these tokens here again they're not on a key they're in your own contract wallet so when you sign up a monolith actually deploys a contract wallet on TV theorem network for you we pay for that but when we deploy it we put your key the one you just generate when you signed up as the owner and so that literally means that you're the only one that can interact with your contract wallet and when you do so you can actually set it has these two functions the white list address and the daily send limits which together and like are like are like significantly safer than just a key right because you can set how much money leaves your wallet per day so this is five eath remaining for me per day if I have a hundred eath right no one could steal more like I could Alicia give you my key right now and you couldn't steal more than five e per day right the more you do that I'm going to withdrawal to my white listed address right these this is hard-coded in very V one right you can't change this after you do it I'm gonna be able to withdrawal to like a backup I have this qui no me wallet backup anyway when you decide that you actually want to use you know any of your tokens in the real world you know your this is in your own custodial control you can go to the card screen right and this is linked to my card over here which again is a Visa debit card which works everywhere in the world virtually and you can you're literally it's the most purest implementation of this of how we could do this where you're physically sending any Theorem transaction from your own wallet right from here you're physically sending it to the card which which is done by this top up button so I'm actually gonna do this now and so let's choose I believe me spending all my token so I only have a lot of eath laughs so let's do 3e so now I'm physically sending etherium from my own contract wallets it selects fast see gasps we go so I've now sent it from my own control to a back-end service the moment it hits it after one block or three depending on the amount hopefully it's one but this is a lot of money so the moment it hits the backend within about like 15 to 20 seconds it will update your card balance with that amounts of money in pounds in my case because I have the pound card so we can actually look at this transaction on e theorem and watch it confirm there we go that was very quick Thank You vitalik okay there we go so this should now reflect should turn well hang on she'll turn blue any moment now any moment live demos there we go and then I can go back to the card screen and it should and again this is the like the visa part of the system which takes longer right like they're so slow oh my god so this this can take another like 15 seconds to update and but it will update and in the meantime I can actually show you some of my card transactions there's probably something very embarrassing here oh there we go look it did actually update so this now should be here at 415 and so I've now gone from having complete full custodial control of my own tokens for having it on a card usable in the real world right here you know Family Mart or seven lever wherever in about 30 seconds right and this is the most pure defy implementation you could imagine money theorem today so yeah I'll show you a few of my transactions this was so last week were we were in in Osaka for Def Con which is amazing and yeah you know the list goes on and on so there's this more functionality so if you click on the card you can see your PIN which I guess I could show the whole world all my numbers but let's you know just imagine my pin is behind that I could freeze the card if I won I can replace it I can see the limits everything and I just want to say this is however the star of the experience right like this isn't where etherium like you know ends right the future of wallets is going to be a lot closer to you know playing like Legend of Zelda breath of the wild where you have all your assets in your own control and all the stuff rather than like a you know this bit of a fin tacky type experience but this is all very futuristic so let me quickly go back that's the demo done is it am I only gonna have am I gonna have time for questions few questions okay great all right come on Oh sir yeah do you have a cushion there we go sorry yeah yeah that's right that's right so this is back in the old world this is with one of our program managers in the you well our program manager in the UK which is Cantus which is an Emani licensed company the idea fundamentally is that you could have you know a hundred thousand pounds getting you know seven percent interests on like compound in your own control and then whenever you want you can send like you know a hundred pounds or five hundred pounds to the card right like there is no way to have all the benefits of you know this old world right of this expansive visa network which probably is the biggest you know the best thing about the traditional finance world to use to leverage this in in like there are more u XE you know better experience ways but like right now the best purest way is what we've tried to do okay thank you do we have any more questions yeah there was just the fewer things so I just wanted to give a shout out to rune the founder of maker Dow because last week at Def Con in his presentation he actually went on stage and he pulled out a token a monolith card our our card and this was like there's no reason putting this in the slide oven to just say this is probably one of the best moments of my life so far so yeah that was really cool thank you rune if you see this yeah and he specifically said I'm paraphrasing here but he said something to the extent of this is making it real right like this is making you hearing economy real and and that's that is what we're trying to do so that was really cool and then yeah thank you all and follow me on a follow us on Twitter or me specifically if you want to hear crazy crazy tweets and again I just want to thank you theory em Taipei Finney specifically thank you for hosting me here you guys are amazing I'm really appreciative and and thank you for topic for creating the best tool of our age so yeah that's it well thank you very much this amazing presentation and do we have any questions from the audience hi I'm just wondering will you be able to use in Taiwan yeah good question when can we use it this is like yeah this is the worst part this is like the one question I hope I also didn't get because the like we don't know yet the the problem is building anything wallet that works of the whole world is easy right you just create you know this is wallet and it works everywhere doing the same with like the traditional part of the world is just takes a lot of time so we've only been able to do it now for for all of Europe except Switzerland we're doing it for America for the US and right now the the first one in Asia that we're looking at is actually Korea and then I promise you Taiwan will be right after Korea so yeah yeah I do want to bring it here as soon as possible yeah and and what to be clear the wallet is useful beyond just the card right like we we're integrating DAPs natively we're integrating swaps natively we are still trying to be the best like pure defy wallet but we're just adding in all this like traditional finance as well to make it usable yeah thank you great yeah that's a problem right next time I come here and thank you I would like to ask what's your opinion on the anonymity on blockchain and how does KY c ml work in your case where the data is stored and if I get a card does it mean that I just lose the anonymity because there is a way to associate the dress of a wallet with my real real world ID yeah so that's a good question so fundamentally the agreement we have with visa with the FCA is that we have to do kyc and we have to do AML on people good know your customer and anti money laundering and so that means that as a company we indeed do you know know who you are as a user we we do like analyze where your money has come from right in 99.9% of cases everything is totally fine but like some of some users are definitely trying to abuse our system and this is the agreement that we do our best to prevent this now if the question so you have to trust us as a company right but hopefully you know we can be pretty clear that if there's one company you have to trust in this new economic paradigm it should be us right ultimately where we're going is where we think we're gonna be the first decentralized wallet on etherium that actually does like kyc for users and so will be the first wallet and I hope no like no other wallet implements this like now that I'm gonna say it but will be the first one very soon I'm not gonna give a timeline but issue all of our users kyc tokens right that we like kind of give back you like your own identity in a way and that you can potentially use it for other services when it when it and your first question about privacy from the outside we are very much concerned about that so indeed if you you know if your friends know your address they'll see how much you get paid ultimately they'll see what transactions you know what tokens you'll what you know transactions yeah you're doing and so our CTO mishit our field is looking at aztec protocol which is another like tech like company based in London I'm the wrong person to to talk about this specifically but yeah we're definitely we're trying to ultimately what we'd like is to have some sort of black box right where the users contract wallets is some sort of black box where we can see we can interact with you and see your transactions but no one else outside can right and yeah this is a too much math for me to explain because I'm not the mathematician yes do we need a microphone because it's for the recording sorry so when you say you need to check where the tokens come from what you have to block someone who's used a mixer before yeah that's a good question so Argent's kind of screwing everyone over so right now money coming in from mixers actually through like coin from the service we're using they think it's fine it's yeah it's what they're classifying as bad is services that have been hacks that are like like explicitly like darknet markets addresses that are known you know that have been used like frauds and all this stuff mixes are okay but yeah it's I don't know where this is gonna lead right like right now we're happy with it but also many if if the regulator says like mixes are bad yeah we don't you know we will have to like comply with that yeah any other questions all right that's a shame if you have any more questions please feel free to yeah you just come to me I'm I'm nice I think thank you thank you very much thank you for your presentation [Applause] you