Guy Young and Halil Mirakhmed - Ethena x TON - TOKEN2049 Dubai 2025

Hello everyone. Um super excited to be here today. We're uh presenting the product that we are coining uh the product for a billion people. So just taking a step back, I think uh there's very few products in crypto that I think actually touch the hands of a billion people. And uh you know the core mission that Athena has been driving towards is really trying to provide a dollar savings account for the entire world that they can access.

uh together today we're we're here to present Telegram, Ton and Athena coming together to use the incredible distribution that they have uh to share our products with the world. So we'll jump into it now. Thank you everyone for coming today. It's really great to see you all here in Dubai. So today we have Guy the founder of Athena and we have myself I'm Hil I'm the chief strategy officer of the open platform.

Uh we have 25 portfolio projects in total and we build very simple UX-friendly applications on top of the mass distribution offered by Telegram messenger as well as the scalable technology offered by the Tom blockchain. So the problem that we're solving today is that the world needs dollars and dollar savings. Uh most of the world's local currencies suffer against the US dollar long term and people's spending power, purchasing power drops over time. uh we did the USDT launch last year which was a great help for the developing markets. Now they can actually not just uh make money but actually hedge against inflation in the local markets and against uh the local currencies by just accessing us within telegram.

However, the it's not enough just to protect against the downside. We also have to offer some upside. Uh with Telegram, we have access to more than a billion monthly active users offering instant and large scale distribution for anything that we offer. And through our integrations into Telegram with the wallet and Tomspace, we're going to offer not just the downside with us, but also the upside in the form of a savings product powered by Athena. So there are going to be two integrations.

So one in the wallet in Telegram where we've created a bespoke earn section. So all of the current USDT that's contained within the wallet, all of these users will now have access to uh savings in the form of TSUSD powered by Athena. And on the self-custodial side, we will also support USD and TSUSD in the form of a bespoke UI and integration. So a bit of background on Athena for those who don't know. Uh we launched around a year ago uh on Ethereum.

um we have pretty deep integrations and I think have have sort of brought a DeFi native product into CFI in ways that other projects haven't done in the past. Uh so just for a quick recap on the DeFi ecosystem that we built within uh Ethereum uh you know some of the top protocols that are mentioned here on the screen uh Athena was one of the fastest growing assets that launched on a was the only DeFi integration that Sky and Maker added into in terms of the the backing behind I and during many many periods last year Athena actually accounted for more than 60% of the TVL that sat with Pendle. If we just take a step back and think about what actually drives or is like the structure structural plumbing that sits behind most of DeFi apps and it's really around dollars. So if you think about dollars swapping within AMMs, dollars are the collateral when you're trading per derivatives. Dollars are how you access leverage uh within money markets.

All of DeFi basically runs on dollars and when you can make the dollars more powerful and uh they have a structurally higher return uh that obviously you know helps to ignite uh DeFi activity on chain. So we launched around a year ago. Uh we grew from 0 to 6.5 billion in that space of time. So that was the quickest growing dollar asset uh that's ever existed within crypto.

And the illustration here is sort of like uh you know the real USP that we're sort of providing to the market which is uh accessing cryptonative sources of yield have a sense of alpha above what you can capture with treasuries and being able to capture that in a single token where you can actually distribute that to the world as a savings account which is embedded within a token we think is really one of the killer products of crypto and so we've had crosschain expansions before we've been to most of the EVML2 Salana uh uh really most of the chains that exist out there and have real traction in the space at the moment. This to us is actually the first time that we've actually natively launched uh our assets and actually deployed staking contracts on a different chain. So previously would used uh layer zero OFTs to just transport our assets across different venues. This is the first time that we've really put you know months of engineering effort to actually do a native integration and deployment on ton which sort of reinforces how important we're taking this uh collaboration here to to push the products and from day one uh many of the major centralized exchanges now who deal with USD will give you a gateway to to basically come directly from centralized exchanges to be able to capture the benefits of using USD within telegram and ton. Um and then if you're using D5 native uh sort of bridges to get through lay layer zero via Stargate is is another avenue that you can go through.

And the main venue for this integration will be in tonspace. So now we have over 120 million wallets within this product alone. We actually launched it during token in uh Singapore. Uh the main use cases for this wallet is that you can store, send, save, swap any of the assets that exist on the Tom blockchain. So not just toncoin itself but any of the jetins as well.

Um this is the first initial integration that we had but then from that one point onwards we continued expanding spending so that we can offer as as many ton uh native features as possible. So then we added staking and the most important thing that we added is the ability for you to send in a self-custodial fashion to any telegram contact. So even if you only have a custodial wallet on the Tomspace side, now you can you can actually just send via the blockchain, not just on the custodial wallet. Uh it's also fully permissionless and we're going to be doing a launch with it uh by the end of Q2 in the United States. And most importantly, uh this is the hub for any mini app on Telegram.

So if you have or you're building a mini app and you want a connection to a decentralized wallet, tonspace also exists as a mini app making it very convenient and easy for any of your users to actually go ahead and um have a balance on Telegram. We have created a very bespoke UI just for the this TSD Athena integration. Uh and we are also doing from the TON side a massive incentive campaign to get people excited about the product. So aside from the native TSUSD rewards that you have initially which range from 5 to 25% we will also be offering a 10% APY boost on top in the form of Tomcoin. Uh and from the Athena side there will be 5x Athena points in their rewards program for um for using TSUSD.

Uh this is in uh comparison with Ethereum which only has 2x Athena points. So it's two and a half times better to stake directly on Ton rather than use um use Ethereum. So to summarize, there will be a native integration within Tonpace. There will be multiple incentive campaigns to get this going. And uh now on to a very important part which is spending.

How do you actually take tospace or any other wallet and spend the tsd that you have? Yeah. So I think for me this is one of the most exciting pieces uh which really brings it together as a full product. So uh if we just take one step back and think about what is what do 95% of retail want as financial services across the world and the answer is really just you want access to a dollar to be able to save in that dollar and earn a yield and then spend money that really is like a neo bankanking experience that you can capture within a single token which is really what Athena is providing uh launching within uh you know a month after our initial rollout uh of of the custodial wallet. We'll have a native integration for payments where you'll actually have a card that's issued and an ability to actually spend directly on Apple Pay within your within your Telegram app.

Uh to me, this is just one of the most powerful use cases where you can be collecting yield in your account just before the second that you're about to spend and with zero friction having to go into, you know, USDC or other assets, you'll be able to spend at any merchant that Mastercard and other providers are are connected into. Uh so for me that's like you know fully completing the full life cycle of sending to your friends as easily as you can send a message uh being able to save uh you know powered by Athena rewards and then uh having the payment functionality that's built in uh very seamlessly for for all of the users. So on the Telegram wallet side us has gained huge popularity since we launched it at token last year. Uh and because we are a global product, it really depends on where you are in the world for you to find out what is the best way to use user t. In Europe, that might be that you hold it for uh use in DeFi.

Uh somewhere else, it might be hedge against inflation and going against uh local currency. In other places, you might just use that fe fiat on an off-ramp or even remittance. So, for that reason, we're a global product. US is absolutely crucial for us and systemically important. However, we haven't previously actually given people something to do with their US when they just hold it, which means that people are encourage encouraged to constantly cycle their us in and out of the wallet, but never to actually keep it keep it and retain it.

So, this is why we're launching an earn section within the wallet and this will be uh this will be powered completely by Athena. So, you have used the T, you deposit it to the earn campaign. on the back end, we use Athena to reward people um uh to reward people with both Athena and then points. And this is going to be a huge change because now we can just not only cycle around the US within the wallet, but actually keep it and earn whilst keeping a balance somewhere safe on the DeFi side. Guy, yeah, I think I touched on it earlier, but I think the original sort of go to market for Athena was really based on Ethereum uh DeFi.

Um at its peak we'd accumulated around $6 billion of D5 TVL that came directly from Athena. Um the D5 ecosystem within TON I think is one of the most exciting but also one at a very early stage of its maturation and life cycle. Uh so at its peak Athena just by itself was actually much larger than the whole TON defy ecosystem by itself. And really what what we're wanting to do is bring what we view as the killer product of a dollar with a structurally higher yield and then plug it into all of these different applications whether it's trading within uh swap protocols, lending on money markets, uh interest rate product uh products uh like you see with Pendle on ETH and then providing the full suite of uh services that we're describing around savings and card payments and we really hope that this is like a good catalyst to actually supercharge the DeFi ecosystem that exists on Ton uh today. So I know that it's crucial to have Athena for a lot of DeFi protocols, especially ones such as FIFA offering fixed uh fixed yields.

However, I think I truly believe this is the biggest launch we've ever done in terms of resources from the entire ecosystem to support one specific protocol. So from the decentralized wallet side other than Tonpace, we also have all the other major uh TON wallets such as Tonkeeper, Myton wallet, and TonHub, which have all come out with their bespoke uh UIs and integrations for Athena. We also have the other D5 uh other D5 protocols such as uh Fever, Factorial and EVA. Uh on the Dexter side we have Stonfi, Tonkco and a few and a few others but also specifically um Stonfi which have developed a a DAP that is curated completely to Athena where you can not only just swap from UDT to use the E like on a normal DEX but you can actually stake all in one motion which makes it very easy for Ton users uh who might not previously be that acquainted with the whole process of how to actually get Athena uh to actually start staking all in one click which is crucial for our retail audience in terms of the road map. So this May what we have coming is the launch on tonspace telegram on telegram wallet as well as all the other uh defi uh dexes decentralized wallet integrations as well uh and then later on in June July uh in June July and late Q3 we're working on more and more integrations with Athena to make sure that this is the cornerstone of our ecosystem.

Yeah, and I think from our perspective, we really want to take users through the journey where you have simple experiences within the wallet where it's easy to understand, you're just staking a dollar and uh saving and getting a return out of it to then take that user along the journey to bring them into the payments ecosystem and then eventually uh the DeFi apps and the expansion through uh TONDI more broadly. And so really what we're trying to do is you know have the initial hook with users in an app and custodial wallet that they feel most comfortable around and then take the same asset to then distribute them along different pieces within the Tom ecosystem and take them along that journey as we go as we go on it. Yes. So I really think for both of us it's not just one more integration. It's really this is just at the start of a really promising and growing partnership which is not only just savings but actually expanding with more and more use cases for Athena on.

So to summarize here today we're offering a savings product for billions of people worldwide to support ordinary people in their quest to actually get out of um local economic problems and have access to dollar savings through Athena. Thank you. Thank you. [Applause]