4. FiatConnect & Connect the World - Using Competitions to Bootstrap Public Goods - Bogota 2022

hello everyone um we're very excited uh to have meric here um for those of you who don't know cell cabs and its uh Universe of related projects have done some incredible work in the public good sphere um encourage you to look up more and we're going to explore a little bit about um you know Mer's experience and like where his Specialties lie but um very very value line project so please go check out c um I know there also there's some T-shirts so feel free to grab a c t-shirt as well we'll jum right in and uh we're going to sit with this example of Fiat conect but before we we jump in I think for the crowd can you give us a little bit more detail about you know what's your background how did you journey to web 3 um and how did that evolve into the work you're doing today yeah absolutely um yeah so we started thinking about C five years ago um and when we started we actually started with with the wallet so we wanted to build a really easy to use Mobile Wallet uh that could work like a global venmo where anybody could send value to any anywhere in the world and it would be immediately useful even if you didn't have a government recognized ID and we tried to build that on ethereum and we learned pretty quickly that ethereum wasn't the right platform to build something that was super easy to use um and would enable the experience that we wanted and so that took us down the path of um launching our own platform solo um and ultimately that took us down the path of really spending a lot of effort on on and off ramps uh which which will be kind of the topic of today there were a few goals goals one was to achieve a very broad Geographic support I think there's already a lot of on andof ramps I mentioned a few the ramps the wires the moon pays uh they do an amazing job supporting um some of the bigger markets some of the develop markets um but and it makes sense you know they're going after where the volumes are highest and where they can make the most money um but ultimately if we want to reach a world where anyone anywhere in the world can cash in and out trivially from within their Mobile Wallet we need coverage globally um and so we structured the competition in a way where it incentivize um on and off ramps in in any country in the world to compete as long as you're in a market with over 2 million um people uh the the competition pays out the same amount uh as um if if you pick a market that's really really big um and that has this nice um property of leveling the playing field and incentivizing uh anybody who has a onoff ramp license uh typically a money transmission license uh to to quickly build out uh support for FIA connect and to launch anywhere uh where they may be um and I think uh doing that in a non-competition way would have been interesting it would have been I I think um it would have been perhaps challenging to reach those folks who have those MTL licenses uh whereas doing it in a competition that can get a lot of noise that people can talk about um we thought would have a a higher chance of of reaching those folks and then the other um I think really important piece was we wanted to actually reward folks retroactively for doing the work the last session talked a lot about the value of retroactive um payments uh and and that certainly uh is something that we believe in and something that competitions uh actually lend themselves really well to uh and so the prize money only goes out once someone has um actually integraded uh and launched and and then also meet certain quality metrics so they have to hit certain um acceptance rates um before they're um eligible for the prize money and and that's something that's a little harder to do with a typical quadratic voting um funding mechanism uh which again pushed Us in the direction of of the competition and I think one thing I want to emphasize that I thought was really interesting about the way that you structured it is it's almost a a two-part um program and at the beginning there's an incentive for early and like the the first adopters to take this up because there's a specific separate separate prize then on after that there's a support component for continued operation of this can you talk a little bit more about how you thought about creating two different prizes and components of it and the behavior that you were trying to create because of that yeah and we did that because of feedback that we got from on and offramp providers so the prize money goes um is a portion that goes um to the on andof ramp company as a reward for launching and hitting those quality metrics and then there's another portion that goes towards offsetting um any any fees that they may want to charge for their customers uh so that customers can can start using the product with no fees and so that they can grow adoption and the reason that they want wanted this piece was because they wanted to book recurring Revenue um and not just a one-time um kind of reward uh that would make it harder to go out and fund raise on all the progress they were making and so there's those two components and what's interesting is is because the payout is in is in um cell which is a deflationary asset has a fixed Supply um the um there's two elements that going to motivate folks to move quickly uh one is you know you have to be first in your country if you don't launch first you don't get the prize and so you have this pretty strong incentive to try to move quickly faster than others um but then the other interesting thing is um as the network affects of this uh standard grow um the value of um the network grows as well so if you get rewarded earlier uh then you're more likely to get rewarded uh at a that time before these full Network effects are realized uh and so you can actually also um um gain value by moving quickly relative to other people in other countries as well uh and that that we thought was was pretty interesting and we're seeing it play out now uh there's certainly a lot of um folks who who I would say um probably wouldn't have moved as quickly as possible uh if we just gave him a grant uh to do this uh because there's an ele of of potentially losing their reward if they move too slowly um folks are actually integrating quite quickly there's um you the program was launched in April and and there's already give or take around 50 companies that that are in flight for this and so that's a a pretty cool um that's a pretty impressive number um I think they're targeting um just over 50 markets some some of these companies support multiple markets but also some companies um overlap and are going out after the same markets so Nets out at a similar number of markets and number of companies that are doing this and I think that's a really great response to something that was launched so recently in a down Market we're definitely very pleased first of all it's incredible having so many teams already working and it's a it's a good proof of you know how this competition Can Be an Effective um means to create incentives I guess my question to you is like as this is developed how has the behavior met your expectations and what are the things that have emerged that you did not expect um has anything surprised you from the way that people behaved and the and the action that was created because of this um incentive system I think what what's been interesting is um certainly the interest has been good and and I think again that's really good for the public good I think that's great for crypto I can't wait for the day where everyone anywhere in the world can cash in and out trivially into into stable coins I think it's it's really going to um help on board you know all of those normies we're we're waiting for um The elusive normies um and so that I think that part is going really well the part that surprised me I would say is um the amount of interest in contributing to fiia connect uh I thought most of these on and off ramps would would simply implement it um but um I would say there's um a good amount of interest in in also extending it to support different payment types uh different kyc flows um even different authentication flows that people were were asking for um and I think that that's been both um like a pleasant surprise but also it creates more overhead on on the um uh on the F connect maintainers and so um it it's it's definitely a double-edged sword so let's think about the future after that so you know as a public good uh Fiat connect um faces some of the same funding issues that um a typical public good was how do you scale this by orders of magnitude how do you m ensure that it's maintained how do you ensure that the development is consistent how do you Foster that community that is is growing around it what do you think of the future of Fiat connect it seems like this uh this community competition is like a necessary impulse function to get the community going spread adoption and start like creating some of those Network effects how do you think of it in your head about like is there is there another model that comes into play for longer term sustainability of this project um is it continue to create enough value for the ecosystem of and related ecosystems that it becomes more of an ecosystem funded project or does it become something that has its own kind of Revenue capture itself or like value capture that allows it to self sustain yeah really great question um so it's certainly going to be bigger than just for cell I think there's um a whole bunch of wallets now that are looking at this that are outside of the cell ecosystem um that are very interested in in using this um certainly once there's uh hundreds of companies uh both on the wallet side and on the on andof ramp side using this and they have a pretty strong incentive to work together to to keep maintaining it um but you know like any public good you know I think it it always is a challenge to to fund um I think Walla connects an interesting I think parallel Walla connect is kind of this public good that connects wallets to daps uh obviously it's really changed the way that we we connect uh wallets and daps and has made it much much easier for folks to um implement the standard once and never have to think about about it again and suddenly they you know if you're a wallet developer you can connect to multiple adaps and vice versa um and you know I think they've done a great job of um um seeking grant funding from the broader community and and I think that's a really great um kind of Avenue for free connect in the future as well um I think maybe there's a a world where wallet connect might launch a token as well uh and so certainly something that FN will will look at maybe that's a path forward to too it's it certainly worked for other public goods um you can also just take a fee um without even having your own token um although there is definitely something nice to having um governance be uh in in a fully decentralized way as well for for public goods so we'll have to see how it plays out and one last uh kind of like prompt to throw over to you is you mentioned a few you know potential options like tokenization um you know existing Grant programs Levering some of the leveraging some of the infrastructure that's coming out what is as somebody who's been around this public good space for a while what are the most exciting things or the one or two top things that kind of catch your interest in terms of funding entity design funding mechanism design um like novel Concepts that are coming out that you wish people would pay more attention to I mean hypers cert I mean that was a really great presentation um you know I think in the cell ecosystem there's there's a ton of refi happening um in the ecosystem c um actually one of the first uh you guys might like this one of the first governance proposals ever done on the C platform at two and a half years ago was to offset uh the carbon uh that the platform um uh contributes to cell is proof of stake and highly scalable so it's not much carbon but already two and a half years ago we wanted to put a stake in the ground and say um that that c is is different and that it's um helping not contributing to to climate change and so that took us down the path of really looking into into uh um voluntary cbon offset credits um and and now there's a whole manner of really exciting protocols on Cell um and yeah I agree with the hypers folks I think um there is something amazing about um um how Capital markets can really efficiently deploy Capital uh when you create a system that that lets them do that um and so I'm I'm pretty excited to see how how it goes and how it gets applied to to other systems um just um as like one example there's a protocol on cello called Plastics and they've already started doing this for plastic offsetting and so if you're a GrubHub or another delivery company uh you're contributing a lot of plastic um uh waste and um simply by buying these these plastic nfts or tokens uh you can help incentivize um the collection and recycling of plastic from oceans and and from cities uh and so I think that's a really interesting example it's not quite carbon it's in the kind of refi space and clearly it works uh it's been working pretty well and so I'm excited to see how this can progress to to other areas not just refi but um a whole whole bunch of different public goods thank you so much Merck I I think we're at time um I will also mentioned two final things um cello has a lot of incredible work that they've done in the past I think there's a lot of very interesting way that you've designed like your protocol and your ecosystem around public goods and and the causes and like the mission orientation that you care about so I encourage people to look more at cell and the work that they do other than that I will say that there are Solo t-shirts um I know Amica has um been kind enough to bring a bunch out so please please grab them where you can um and I just want to yeah finally and stickers so thank you thank you so much Merck um really interesting the work that you're doing and excited to see what happens uh next if you connect thank you so [Applause] much