Bringing RWAs to the Cosmos & Beyond - TOKEN2049 Dubai 2024

hey guys how's it going um I'll try to keep this short and sweet I know you guys will want to get some food um but really happy to share about what we're doing about bringing real world assets to the cosmos ecosystem and Beyond so just quick introduction John coo and co-founder live in Hong Kong but spent a lot of time out here in Dubai um been in the crypto space since 2013 uh built in centralized crypto exchange business brokerage uh we launched Mantra in defi summer 2020 so I've been uh all over the space um as always I want to make sure that this is NFA so not Financial advice everything that I'm going to be saying we have a live token so NFA and let's go so what is our origin story Mantra was initially launched as Mantra Da Back in uh summer of 2020 so we launched initially as a polka dot project um we were a permissionless def5 protocol that had a couple different products um focusing on staking lending uh we had a Launchpad called Zenit and a few other things over time we ended up getting listed on binance in March of 2020 and uh right after legitimately right after the D5 bubble popped um everyone shifted into nfts game five play to earn Etc um and we started to try to look for something that was a little bit more of a sustainable competitive advantage to our business in a previous life I had done some work uh in The Brokerage and token organization space in the United States we actually tokenized a professional basketball players contract um we offered it to the public and he basically did it under a regd offering uh for um effective like a a yield bearing uh stable coin or yield bearing product um so we wanted to basically reach back into our roots of Regulatory Compliance of Licensing and that's where we really transition from this Mantra da concept to Mantra as it exists today um Mantra is an existing token that was launched initially on ethereum um we have several other chains that we support including B&B chain and polygon um it is a hard capped token of 888 m888 888 uh we are very big into the numerology and uh very intentional uh to have a very fortuitous token uh uh hard cap that being said um over time we've decided to effectively build a layer 1 blockchain solution and due to toonomic constraints we have to expand the token Supply so earlier this year our Dow Community voted unanimously to expand the token Supply to issue an additional 888 million tokens on Cosmos mainnet which will be launching later this year and that's how you can see here today where we're going from 88 million to 1.7 billion in the coming uh months so why did we choose Cosmos and actually there's a number of reasons um but I'll take it back just a step and and kind of explain some of our Roots so when we were initially launching Montreal one of our earliest principles and Kunal in the audience knows this was we were running validator nodes and infrastructure for a lot of different proof of stake blockchains the idea here was that we would take the inflationary stake and rewards and use it as a way to buy back the token as some sort of like deflationary value acrel mechanism uh for the own token uh we were very early Genesis validators on a number of different uh POS blockchains including many of the cosmos uh ecosystem projects Cosmos Hub uh The Faded Luna um who who here was a Luna lunatic like me anyone a couple okay hopefully you didn't get as wrecked as I did but um anyway we had some roots in the cosmos ecosystem from this perspective and we got to know the ecosystem in the tech stack a little bit more and and and honestly it it resonates with what we believe in and and our story um Cosmos has always been the underdog um it's raised the least money for a layer one ecosystem it has this idea of a sovereign ecosystem of interoperable blockchains right and when it comes to building a layer one blockchain for real world assets you have to abide by Regulatory Compliance and having the idea of a sovereign blockchain that you can abide by your own validator set and update accordingly to various regulatory requirements it's very very important there's a few other reasons why we just chose Cosmos and we just believe that frankly the cosmos SDK is one of the best test Stacks available um whether it's kmm IBC or comid bft uh we believe that this solution in technology allows us to create a very easily scalable uh blockchain effectively out of the box where we have created our own specific use case which is rwa and asset tokenization um one of the other things that's really really important for us to to understand and focus on is the idea of bridging so if we're going to be bringing reboard assets or just Assets in general to a broader uh retail public you you really have to take away the idea of managing private Keys uh managing bridging like when you have to you know move from ethereum to eth l2s and IBC protocol and this interoperable protocol standard is really the the the gold standard in the industry for for transacting across various different Sovereign blockchain networks so our ecosystem comprises of this this idea of a an app chain right so manra chain is our app or protocol level chain uh rwa Focus L1 we just launched our test net the second phase of our test net called the Hong by test net uh last week we've already had over 300,000 participants um in the in the past few days testing out and participating on our incentivized test net earning rewards um but on top of that we have a very specific and purpose-built application which actually no one other than a few people now know that the application is no longer called montra Finance it's actually going to be called Omega so we're separating this idea of the protocol and the application and this is actually quite important because we believe that uh regulation uh is effectively implemented at the application layer not the protocol layer so separating these two things out is quite important for us we're in the process of getting licensing from Vara which is the virtual asset regulatory Authority here in in Dubai um we've been spending spending a lot of time in the region a lot of time in Dubai uh working with the regulator we believe it's a great home uh for what we're building and and obviously having a very clear regulatory framework about how we can operate um so effectively Omega is this multi-asset Dex protocol built on top of monter chain um it allows for asset tokenization 247 trading and capital efficiency it's effectively a central limit order book that sits on top of an amm so on the amm side you can swap both in the univ V2 or univ V3 style so concentrated and ambient liquidity positions as well as participate uh with a little bit more advanced trading functionalities on the actual Central limit order book itself uh we will have a permissioned market making module on top of it so hft firms uh trading partners market makers can come and actually earn uh both incentivized token rewards as well as um customizable fee structures and again all of this is going to be built on chain so it's self custodial it is a permission protocol so you do have to onboard you do have to actually uh kyc to participate but that is obviously because we're adhering to Regulatory Compliance where we where we operate the idea here is that we'll be able to bring Advanced functionalities that most uh users would not be able to do in a more traditional self- custodial Dex environment and what we mean by that is one you'll be able to trade all different types of assets under the sun whether it's crypto assets real estate protocol real estate tokens uh different types of uh rdba products um but you'll also be able to interact directly with your uh Fiat uh banking ecosystem and be able to transact between crypto and and fat very seamlessly and easily um from your wallet to your bank account to your brokage the idea here is we want to build a protocol and a platform where you can literally one click from your bank to your brokerage to your wallet and this idea of transacting on and off chains becomes simply uh the easiest thing you could imagine so one of the things that a big buzzword I know rwa is a big buzzword right now but another maybe even bigger buzz word is modularity and the modular ecosystem Cosmos is a modular ecosystem we we we subscribe to that that that concept as well um you know obviously Celestia has pioneered that um and we're big supporters of them as well but we do have our own uh take and spin on what modularity means to Mantra so what is our Mantra uh modular architecture it's effectively comprised of three things uh the first is an identity module so one of the issues with uh you know any crypto ecosystem uh or platform is you have to consistently kyc and onboard over and over again so you don't have a one SE seamless onboarding experience to binance to Kraken to coinbase Etc in our plan in our ecosystem you have a soulbound nft connected to your wallet um this allows you to passport to anywhere within our ecosystem so you kyc one time and you can access all the different protocols um we have a compliance module which effectively this like comp permissioning and guard module is what we call it I'll explain that a little bit more later and then we also have an AR tokenization module like the Mantra token service I'll also explain that later what this allows us to do is have a very composable def ecosystem on chain where you can interact both with the permissionless cosmos ecosystem as well as our um more permission side of things so monra chain itself is a permissionless chain anyone can build upon it it's very important that that we maintain that I believe in public blockchains and permissionless blockchains not permissioned blockchains but we do have a permissioned area uh for interaction with more regulatory focused uh products and assets so what is this token service that I was talking about um this allows issuers asset origin ators to seamlessly and easily issue different types of asset backed tokens or utility tokens security tokens whatever you would like um this allows us to effectively create this bridge between decentralized finance and traditional Finance um where you can effectively have redeemable backed assets moving between the onchain ecosystem and the real world in this case you could have an example of uh Tesla share for example um again Mantra actually will not be heavily focused on the US I'll make that very clear uh for a number of different reason reasons um but these these type of products are are something that could exist in our ecosystem and and something that we're actively working on um so the guard module as I mentioned um is very important because you have this ecosystem that's permissioned over here that supports rwas it supports uh um and know the decentralized ID it's all built up on kmm Smart contracts but then via IBC you can interact and connect with all the interesting and fun products and protocols out in the cosmos ecosystem dyds X say injective osmosis um Lana cuera Etc uh this allows you to basically seamlessly from one wallet interact with the you know the the crazy uh permissionless side of things and also our more buttoned up real word asset side of things um so this is this is a pretty cool uh Endeavor because it allows you to basically not have to separate your your dgen wallet from your your your more buttoned up side of of your uh portfolio and investment strategies so just to wrap up um we recently announced that we're going to be hosting a uh incubator program in the Dubai World Trade Center so we have an entire floor uh in the Dubai World Trade Center which is where Vara uh the regulator is based and where our licensing is is is also based um I'm personally going to be investing uh $100,000 into five different projects so $500,000 across um into five projects that are going to be building a mantra chain and you're going to have an amazing amazing experience this summer uh we're going to fly you to Dubai for a month to work with us to interact with Regulators to learn how to build on the Chain um then we're going to fly to Hong Kong for another month and then we're going to fly to Silicon Valley and then finally to uh Singapore for token 249 Singapore where we're going to be launching uh mon chain main net and obviously having these DBS deployed so if you're a builder if you have an idea if you just want some money and want to participate and have a fun summer maybe not the best reason to come and uh sign up but you know whatever come come hit us up um we're more than happy to talk talk to you um and uh yeah I mean we we're we're very excited about what's coming as I mentioned the hung by test net which is our second phase of our test net launched last week um mainit is scheduled slightly uh towards the end of the year roughly in September um so we have an incentivized test night and you can earn points uh which will be comprising of a 50 million Ohm token airdrop which today is worth pretty significant amount of money um so please check us out um happy to share more and maybe I'll take a couple questions if there's if there's anything left