The Future of DeFi Intents | European Blockchain Convention

[Music] thank you Sophia is such a great opportunity to be here to talk about something that is really exciting I mean we were at a panel before talking about centralized exchange and I'm not sure that they were very positive about defi but here I am with the three experts so uh something that I thought was uh very interesting is the fact that actually technical Foundation are shaping the future of finance and and actually Defi and uh all of these amazing guide I have got uh a technical background so let's go around for some introduction and maybe you can say how do you think on how important is this technical background that you have got to develop Financial the future of financial product so uh I start hi everyone my name is Serge Kun I Am Co of 1 in my background is uh technical I'm soft engineer soft architect for 20 years uh some wordss to 1 inch maybe 1 in is um the first aggregator among the exchanges we invented it on the hackaton on a competition back in 2019 and nowadays we offer multiple Services non custodian wallets def portal software service for onboarding developers and also doing uh nowadays crushing swaps um among uh different Networks and to to improve the user experience here in the space um so regarding um the topic that uh I a software engineer uh contribute to innovate the traditional finances by introducing decentralized finan in web 3 it's really funny thing so I had no idea about traditional Finance at all have still struggle sometimes with some some products what we have right now on traditional space uh since the transparency is uh it's not there almost not there I would say it's difficult also to build products for the traditional finances that's why I decided as software engineer to play around with uh web 3 actually back to the days it was just crypto and blockchain and ethereum when we started to back in 2018 uh we as developer we have more tools more possibilities it's op environment we can build many Legos on top of many Legos so what we have actually did with one inch we aggregate among Union Swap kyber and Banker in their first first heon night and uh it opens possibil and also um introduce into Innovations yeah Al helps Innovation to to be built in this space right everyone I'm mun founder at baras Swap um like SG I also have a software engineering background for a few years and poft started as an experiment wanted to build the decks in the beginning and after a few iterations ended up building a What I Call Now a middleware that allows other daps to access ACC Market similar to what 1 in is doing and the particularity is our focus is more on the B2B side so Empower protocols like a so not only to make swaps but also to optimize apis to repay loans with collaterals and all of that um particular interest in t um was since the beginning because I always thought that the way we access uh dexes and on chain trading is way too complex and that also relates a lot to the history of Paras swap because when I started I wanted to build something for retail for everyone which didn't work at all like nobody literally was interested just because of the complexity to access the product so I think intense what they unlock is this abstraction of the onchain complexity in terms of gas abstraction but also in terms of user protection like M resistance and all of that so I think intense is the next logical evolution of onchain trading in crypto and web 3 in general hello everyone I'm Lis pastor and the CEO and co-founder of Tri timus uh which is a venture capital and a venture Builder I'm a computer engineer myself too uh I started on this uh being part of a startup in in Singapore originally as an exchange and did are pivoting to tokenize Art like that was long long time ago and um I spent uh most of these years working close to the to the industry uh working close to the institutions and at some point uh what I felt I was interesting to me I had a lot of things to learn about finance that was something that as an engineer I had to to learn but the way the things were designed from the software Engineers point of view uh amazed most of the financial people because of the efficiencies that they were made by defi uh and basically were provided to not only the the centralized exchanges but the whole chain of value and that's something that I'm particularly interested uh not only as an investor but also as a supporter of defi as I really see that uh this efficiencies transparency is going to drive the next future of Finance for the next uh 10 20 30 Years thank you Louis so um I want you to start with the uh um definition that you use s j internet based Financial product so that's that's interesting and um what is also very interesting is the fact that these D5 product they are very different from the product they exist in traditional Finance so can you maybe elaborate a little bit more what do you mean about internet-based financial products and perhaps you can maybe talk about some of the product that you are working at 1 in they are revolutionary compared to traditional Finance so in general if you look into the history of distalized finan we have seen um people thinking about how we can build financial instruments uh in our nice open environment on event Bas for example so founder of gnosis came to an idea to introduce an amm and published on blog post a formula mathematical formula what was used after that by Hayden Adams to build the Unis swap the mm based um um uh protocol not the first one the first one was Banker actually no one knows um yeah and it was revolutionary so such such products are actually something we have something similar in traditional Finance but they are not open to everyone so our technology offer to to um innovate and rein how we can build Financial products in completely different way and more efficient way so in terms of intense uh intense intense based protocols this is a next step for the for the industry in general so at the beginning everyone was taking care about creating transaction by themselves sending transaction to the m pole and getting front run by sandwich attackers MTH Bots and uh and of course we we were looking for a diff for a different approach and intent based approach which is one of the solutions uh of course there are some also disadvantages what what we see in terms of I don't know settlement for example um but these risks are on the professional executor so we try to split we we try to split in two different domains one domain user Centric product and the other domain is infrastructure um environment so users user Centric uh now became very very well um uh kind of um got a very well environment in terms of uh how they use now web tree now for example for um intent based protocols like Unis a our fusion fusion Plus or cross chain product the user also Paras swap launch intent based protocol uh us to just sign an order sign intent what they want to get what they want to achieve and actually don't think what's happening under the hood the protocol on a smart contract just ensure how it's going to be executed like and also like how it's going to be securely executed for the user and this uh offer really a lot of uh new possibilities so user got seamless experience similar to centralized exchanges so right now if you swap it with our 1in Fusion that we launched 5 days ago uh cross chain you just don't even need to create a transaction you just sign offchain or and this is how it should be so and this can actually disbalance the whole Market with centralized exchanges from our point of view people are using centralized exchanges how already said on the panel before because they need kind of bridges you know they need to Bridge from from one blockchain to another blockchain exchange Bitcoin against I don't know um sui token or something and it's now possible with uh defy and we are setting also on standards so unop is working for example on standard uh together with across and we are joining as well I hope peras will also join us as well to define a standard how we should like work intent base cross chain uh to to improve the user experience interesting mon can you expand on that and talk a little bit about uh liquidity because it's kind of be a CH challenge uh but there are ways that you are looking to aggregate this liquidity and Al to boost strap liquidity in defi well I think definitely intern protocols help a lot on on liquidity because uh if you think about it it's like an egg and chicken problem you need liquidity in order to drive volume but Al liquidity is incentivized by volume and the architecture that intents provide there are different ways of building intents but one way is what we call batching uh where we can split orders in multiple chunks or like uh batch auctions as one in are doing where instead of like having a one or like one fi or nothing uh we can split the order into different chunks it can be either through pricing or through different auctions like we provide like I don't know speed like 20% so each 20% is going to be proposed as an auction to solvers or agent how we call them um that helps on maximizing The Filling rates and maximizing like liquidity you can say for for end users um but also helps on providing better pricing for users because each time you creates an auction it means competition which means also like providing better value for for users so I think aggregators in general provide help a lot on improving liquidity because simply they generate volume and they can just make up for whatever is available and that like solves the volume problem but in sense takes it to even another level that didn't existed before thank you uh I want to talk a little bit about investment so Louie uh as an investor what kind of innovation are you looking at to support the defi ecosystem well the defi ecosystem is complex there are obviously many kind of platforms and and product where we are looking at as we started and we have a period of investment of around 10 years uh we are looking at easy to use platforms that at some point are going to bring more adoption not only from crypto natives but also from people that they average users with no technical expertise that they really need to use this technology on their daily lives and I'm sure like that's that's going to happen um not only in regions that um Goods needed it uh because their economies are not that good but only in other regions uh like Europe for example our focus is mainly in Europe and Latin America so I think that uh ourselves in Europe even though the regulation is uh a big topic here so we'll see the institutions jumping into this so I believe that we are going to see uh thei as a service platforms that are going to be used by institutions uh real world assets and that's something that we are uh quite interested at the same time um also we look at Latin America and countries like for instance like Argentina that they have and they're creating now a proc crypto regulation which is super interesting for for everyone they need this techn this technology uh by the way four out of 10 wallets in Latin America are open in Argentina that's something really interesting and we are looking at that market the developers are super job and um in an natural so we want to look at startups and platforms that favor adoption with easy uh to use interfaces also in terms of security something that we really need uh is these platforms that provide real monitor on auditing that's something that we are looking at at the same time uh I think that we are see more and more products related to insurance that something defin Insurance products that's something that we hope to to happen in the next few years and uh I would say that also related to liquidity we are looking at uh OB obviously solvers agents that they are unifying uh liquidity any other kind of providers that going to be there that's something that uh is going to is going to happen and the the last one I would say that uh is interesting intent based architectures are interesting for aggregation but are also interesting for many other topics and we start to see startups on lending and borrowing that they provide these architectures that can bring the good things of the file and at some point with a better uh user interface with a better experience less problems on security uh probably uh more liquidity I'm really glad that you mentioned the point about security because that's a big concern and that's why you know we have got regulation kind of be on defi so much so Serge um security how do you approach this topic and what you are doing to mitigate risk on one inch for our our last release Fusion plus the cross chain intend by swaps Atomic swaps uh our foundation spent $500,000 for security AIT and we have really small small smart contracts so this is very important for us to to introduce really high grate of security I guess um we are on the place number two right now on the market with most security audits the first one is Oiler Finance so they learned from the last hack they they faced um that security audits are are very important so um actually almost from the beginning we when we were able to pay the security audits we uh we started to to um uh kind of um yeah order as much as possible so as many as possible to a so um in terms of um security uh we should also think about uh compliance it's not just Security in terms of smart contract contract or backend services or frontend services like applications it's also in terms of compliance we see a lot of hacks happening there's hacker group um uh North Korean hacker group uh hacking around uh they're very SU successful and they exchange assets uh on decentralized exchanges on aggregators as well so intent base approach the architecture itself allows to introduce also high grd of compliance because now you have to additional layer where you can just monitor that the user who is malicious actors a hacker with dirty funds stolen from someone cannot really create order or share it with the network so also resolvers our professional market makers Arbitrage Traders Pro traders who are involved as a as executors they also have own compliance in place use all the term Labs so at one inch we have multiple checkpoints we have also own compliance team security team who is sitting uh try to cover the the whole globe in terms in terms of time zone and watch and monitor and also set on a Black List uh those malicious hackers who try to exchange assets on on onein network this is very important in terms of Al the regulation so um M regulation separated uh centralized approach distalized approach but anyway if if there's there are no specific rules in terms of decentralized uh exchanges dexes and aggregation itself then we from our side we try to just set set standards to to ensure that we have really clean environment and we prepare us also for institutional grade customers with a new additional product that we plan to launch next next year um it was also huge learning for for for us um to understand what the institutionalsales and based on this experience we we we have built our in 10base protocol to to be able to introduce full kyc environment for the user uh KYB as well for the for the business customers and also on the professional Market maker side on the resolver side Al a high grate of compliance right now we are doing all the KYB on the resolver so no one is operating as resolver at 1 in without passing KYB and passing the ml uh screening from our oneish foundation so it's kind of the plan to integrate all the safety measure to make defi platforms more appealing to also traditional Finance player yeah we need to become seriously yeah so and we are seriously here to to to innovate to to adapt uh the standards uh the really World standards with what we need to follow if you don't follow you you see what happens with tornado cash so um Unfortunately they had they they had not enough time to do that maybe I I'm not sure but um I would like to avoid this situation in in our aggregator industry that uh someone faced these challenges in in life mon do you have anything to add on uh the security regulation aspect no I think Ser Fram it very well uh I would add also something very important in this space is the quality of the teams so I think nobody should do any compromise on the especially people who are working on the critical Parts like building a smart contracts uh monitoring the system or anything that has to do with exchange which maybe covers the whole team um an example that happened to us we had few months ago like six months ago in exploits where our team was able to like in few hours do a white hat and recover the 3.5 million and that's something that was very complex a very complex operation so I think the quality of teams plays a huge role in the safety but also if something was to go wrong you have Al always the right team to cover for it and like secure the users and make them safe so you mentioned about the hack so one of like the challenges that is the an in crypto Is Not Jus defi is governance so um governance is kind of like uh I think it's like a Humanity problem and the one token one vote doesn't work and you know rug PS and stuff like that so how can we think about making govern more decent decentralized system Power by a better governance I think what protocols are doing right now I mean yeah I agree it's very naive to assume that like one vote is going to secure the protocol that's very naive because simply you can have governance attacks and we've seen that with compound I think a few weeks ago um what I think works there's no Playbook right because it's still in emerging space um there's a Playbook that works where you have some service providers that's what a Moro are doing where they have contractors who work with the da and have like a system of Guardians that are also voted by the da and you have criterias it's like a constitution like how can you qualify to be a guardian how can you qualify to be a service provider and what kind of responsibility and then the day-to-day operations look like a normal project like a normal company because the service providers have all the flexibility and DOW holders they can V tool but that's a process that takes time so I think we have like the benefits of centralization between codes while still being decentralized that what have like came up with as an ecosystem as a solution so far whether it's going to stay or maybe it's going to evolved we will see time will tell Lis if you have anything to add on that and also um you mentioned before about bringing the fight to the next level and kind of improve liquidity is AI playing a role in this well I mean just regarding cyber security and governance two very important topics uh I just think that um just related to cyber security there is a framework in banking that is called Dora that is about cyber resilience that is super complex I hope that that's never applied to D because of the complexity but still like uh we can get some learnings out of that into into the defi industry um related to the AI I think that um well we are still on a lot of hype about AI uh we know that it's powerful and we can all use it for many different things but still we we have uh room of improvement we see that it could provide a level of exraction on top of intents for in for instance uh that could be like a writing uh prompts on uh B basically uh natural way to speak in terms of coding you don't need to code anything you just need to speak to the machine uh your intents it would be much easier but uh um there's by the way a startup in the event uh in the pach battle that is doing right that uh AI with intents but um having said that I think that we have to be aware of the limitations of AI in terms of uh we don't really know some sometimes behind the scenes what could happen there in terms of the code uh weaknesses and also uh it could be that at some point the automations that we are seeking here are not working that well as we expect we are focused I know on the what not on the how but sometimes we can probably that level of attraction can be complex and that's something that we have to be aware of I mean definitely the defi ecosystem has grown up a lot since 2021 so um maybe we can uh kind of close down with some closing remarks uh uh from each of you about how you are aiming for this Mass adoption which is one of the defined tense really and also the element of Education which is still important and that's why we are L here um you mean how do we aim for adoption what do you think adoption is going to look like well I think definitely I mean the topic of today is one of should be one of the main engines for adoption so you can imagine now uis would no longer have like disconnect wallet and install metam mask and all of this you would have just like sign in and fill your login and password and you just need to click a button basically and make your tradeing uh so I think now we are very very close to the robin hoods and ichoros of the world in terms of user experience um we just need like that might becom in a cliche like the apps but the good news is that the protocols themselves like us one inch all all of us have apps so I think we would be also one of the leaders of this Mass adoption growth because we build the tech but also we build distribution channels through our partners but also through our user interfaces so I think we are very very close to have this end game type of user experience that where user just need to push a button and do action XYZ but also with with AIS maybe users be able to do more complex um task by just like a type in natural language so I think we're not that far away from this end game that we would like to see which is like a trade file like user experience where users or maybe even better than trade five where users just need to push a button to do action XYZ so my bet is uh in the next 5 years we will have uh stock trading on our Tech stock rwa uh whatever out there um since our technology is most efficient compared to the traditional Finance the traditional Finance was built because they had no other options they started with paper phone internet and now it's time for blockchain blockchain based uh transparency and um efficiency so that's my better I think the next few years uh we'll see like Mass adoption because the industry like drew a lot hopefully one healthy thei summer and um I believe that all these architectures uh intent based are bringing the best in Defi and hopefully that brings like um a lot of adoption for or also average users that are not crypto natives that they need this they really need these tools so that's what I hope for the next probably 10 years okay thank you so much I'm going to leave the opportunity if any of you want to ask a question we have just couple of minutes okay no so I'm going to ask a question um how important are partnership for you to bring uh one inch to the mass adoption to the integration with trf are you working on that actively and also for you mon as well so from our side it's very important from the beginning we are just collaborated we have built our aggregator on top of other products Unis swap Banker kyber who supported us very well so the whole web three is about compability so it's about to work together to build together and also to compete together so if you take uh on on one in in Paras swap uh user get better experience because we compete and we compete in healthy manner we are we are coming from hackaton like we are from 1 inch uh we are hackers Builders who build things on hackathons on competitions and uh we are always um love to to build new things inovate things and it's beneficial for the user um adding to to to what I said uh obviously we're competitors but we were one of the first uh aggregators to integrate 1 in amm uh so because we see this as a positive sum game for the end user especially uh but also the particular path we took with poft is to focus more in Partnerships so 85% of our volume comes from third parties and that's made by Design and the protocol is designed to uh be more optimized for third parties to integrate it uh than our UI which is also considered as a partner for for the protocol thank you last question for uh Louis I'm very interesting about this Emerging Market in Argentina so how big they are in defi are there any you know many product developing uh many companies developing defi product I think is important you know we are in europeo and not many knows what actually is happening in South in Latin America well I think that uh they always in Argentina had the need of crypto because of the economic situation they had in Crazy inflation a lot of things happening with the bank politicians unfortunately uh a few of my partners are from Argentina that's why I'm also very aware of what happens there the talent that they have in crypto is totally amazing and now that they're going to have this regulation I I expect to have a boom in startups so there is a few events happening uh next year like launching not only the the regulation but also launching startups a lot of communities are going to be there I even heard that the defco might be there I'm not sure if that's confirmed but uh but at some point I think that Argentina is going to be a a leading player in crypto in the in the next few years I read somewhere that uh there are really there is a big massive uh pool of users of usdt in Argentina so uh definitely Emerging Market is a place to watch any anyway thank you so much to all my panelists and thank you all enjoy the event thank you thank you thank you