Exclusive Interview with SOMMELIER FINANCE Co-Founder Zaki Manian | KBW2023

[Music] so we've taken an enormous amount of sort of deliberate effort uh working very closely with our auditing Partners taking a very sort of measured approach to like when we integrate new dii protocols into similia vaults um thinking very closely about the security of those interactions and as a result we've had a very strong track record you know similia has been in produ for more than a year you know we've been managing a fairly substantial amount of user funds uh uh for like most of the last six or seven months um no major security incidents and we continue to just have this like very deliberate secure by Design approach also the sort of use of this like sort of multi-chain architecture that we use where we have both the cosmos chain and uh contracts on ethereum and other evm chains we're actually able to mitigate many security sort of uh uh potential security issues at the cosmos chain level um and you know ensure that like malicious instructions aren't sent to those contracts um that would not be possible if we were just purely an ethereum app so our multi-chain architecture are sort of very close relationship and like sort of long-term partnership with our audit or macro um all of these things have contributed to a lot of security you know also just practically you know I've been running various block you know various blockchain systems that I've been involved in and designed have been like running in production for four years never lost any user funds to a hack you know there is some skill to sort of building these systems and I been doing it for a long [Music] time I think like one of the more important things to get right is permissionless interoperability um so if the only way blockchains interoperate is Central calized entities whether like they're centralized Bridges uh or you know protocols where you have to do a lot of Business Development with some foundation in order to interoperate yes we are introducing centralization vectors but protocols like IBC um have existed uh uh since 2021 these are protocols where all you have to do to integrate is interact with software and interoperability is sort of natively part of the infrastructure um I think it is important as an industry that we build these permissions inup protocols to sort of maintain decentralization I mean I think 12 months is right I think we have about eight months left I think September is going to be a really important month for Cosmos uh we have native usdc launching we have the liquid staking module um which I worked on for the last you know two years uh which is going to enable people to uh instantaneously convert staked atom into liquid staked atom goes live in 3 days uh we have dydx which is probably the most sophisticated app chain that has ever been built on Cosmos and potentially brings you know a billion dollars a day in trading volume to the ecosystem and you know hundreds of millions of dollars of usdc into the ecosystem uh launching in about a month uh all of this stuff this is like you know and you know I think it's important that the ecosystem understands um and that like the wider blockchain ecosystem understands that this is pretty much the opportunity you know Cosmos has succeeded in the that like our vision has become adopted by like the blockchain industry at large but for you know the specifics of comet BS bft Cosmos SDK IBC to thrive it really has to show that like all of these years of work actually have resulted in differentiated products and experiences and we'll find out in probably the next I mean it's really going to be the next 90 days that I think is going to really set the tone for whether or not Cosmos is a differentiated ecosystem [Music] I think like one of the biggest things is that the most sophisticated apps in Def things like simia things like dydx take advantage of the ability to customize a blockchain around a defi application um de dealing with things like governance upgradeability security me Etc at the at an integrated chain level and I think so the benefits of cross chain is building applications that like rival centralized platforms so like similia is designed to to rival and exceed the capabilities of a centralized yield platform like the earn platforms that are on all the centralized exchanges dydx is designed to exceed the capabilities of uh you know the centralized Perpetual exchanges but do all of this in a decentralized setting if we really want like Cosmos is the platform where people are building things that sort of exceed the capabilities of centralizing platforms and centralized exchanges I think like one of the realities of defi is that defi has been really hard to use and sort of the the killer application of the last cycle was cd5 it was deposit my funds on the centralized platform they'll go out and use D5 foring now all of the cd5 protocols rugged and lost everyone's money uh but Tomia delivers that same user experience the other Advantage is of sort of building as a def native protocol is these things are composable so that you can you know you can have lending protocols that can take uh similia strategy assets as collateral allowing people to leverage or get liquidity on their funds uh they're going to there are likely to be perpetuals protocols that like trade the value uh and the yields of similia assets sort of integration integratability and composability it's like one of the superpowers it gets from being like a web 3 native protocol but we're also delivering the sort of experience that like users clearly preferred which is as a way of accessing defi which is C defi uh people want to be able to deposit their money know they're getting the best yield not have to optimize their positions every day I think that we are in a sort of NeverEnding or like we have a long way to go uh in terms of the maturity of defi protocols decentralized exchanges lending protocols perpetuals Protocols are getting stable coins they're all getting much more sophisticated over time and that increased sophistication creates new opportunities for similia strategists um so I expect that like the sort of accessible market for simila is like sort of only ex increases as the defi ecosystem gets more mature