Meet Joshua, BBB Steward & SporkDAO Treasurer

[Music] We're here at ETH Denver 2025, the year of the regenerates. And I'm here with Josh and he just gave a really cool talk on stage and he's all over the space. I mean, if you're at Ethenver, this is the guy to know. It's the guy that has been around for the longest time ever. But I'm really curious.

You talked about a bunch of stuff like what do you do day in day out? Day job. Do you have one of those? I do have a day job. Yeah.

So, we're uh we're building Azos Finance. Uh it's a stable coin that's uh similar to makers framework, but instead of using ETH and Rap Bitcoin and USC or uh Treasury bonds as collateral, we're using climate finance debt. So like uh carbon credits and then eventually like water credits, air credits when those exist, uh like soil biodiversity credits. Um but also green bonds which are when like um a country lends another country money for a big renewable energy project like a hydroelectric dam or something and the smallest ones are like $2 million. So these are all really big and they're increasingly coming on chain.

Uh renewable energy certificates and PPAs. So, what makes that a better stable than your traditional things that you're seeing out there that just buying government bonds left and right? A good question. Uh, so I would say better in some ways, but for the most part different. Um, so you've got stable coins that are backed onetoone by treasuries.

These are like more centralized like uh like Circle and and Tether. Um, and then you you also have stable coins that are backed by uh crypto assets which are highly volatile. They're over collateralized, which is good, but they're kind of at the whims of the market. We saw a lot of liquidations earlier today uh when uh and the ETH and Bitcoin market caps are still low enough that they could be manipulated. And so you've got a stable coin that is backed by a highly volatile class of assets, right?

Uh what we're doing is we're taking real world assets that have a market value to web two companies and to governments and and have a real world impact in this effort to like stem the tide of of like global climate change. Uh and so these carbon credits have a market value. Uh and so even though the markets go up and down, these carbon credits still have relatively stable Yeah. value. same with the green bonds which are essentially uh T bills but very specifically for renewable energy projects.

Now I mean I see this as a huge win for people that want to support the things that they care about right because honestly if you go to a regular stable coin you're just supporting Circle or Tether or whatever it is but now you're kind of flipping upside down and you know with these different types of bonds and carbon credits you're basically supporting things that you care about. Yeah. And uh so our our our our collateral assets can be anything that's impact not just these. So uh one of our partners is Glow Dollar which they have basically forked circle but instead of a centralized company with VCs taking trillions of dollars out of the economy which is I mean they provide a great service for the ecosystem but it is extractive. Yeah.

And what they do is they have uh a system by which they give grants via this um like four to 6% that they're earning back to the community. And so it's very similar to USC except for money is coming back into the ecosystem and we're able to use them as a collateral source. Okay. So now here's a little fun question. I happen to make money on this so I'm not worried about it.

Um USDC deped because of a weekend. Did it really? Oh yeah. a while back it did because banks were closed and they couldn't, you know, show that they had the money. I'm sure you remember that some people opened recently.

I do remember this like a year ago. Exactly. A year ago. So there were pers that were created like on the spot and people were trading. I made money cuz I'm like it's going to come back.

I know the assets are there. Uh so did I actually. Um and this is the like an advertisement just just use a right. So um I don't like selling ETH. And so like when someone's like you should angel invest.

I'm like all right. So I'll collateralize ETH. I'll borrow USDC or die or tether on a and then I'll invest the stable coins and when that deep happened and uh the stable coins got to 92 cents I was able to arb them against each other to lower my debt. No, that that's awesome. Like do I need to worry about that with your new stable coin?

Every stable coin has a risk of dagging and there are unforeseen you never know. What I will say with this specific example, it is less likely because uh USCC had their DPEG because nobody knew how much value was in the treasury. However, with overcolateralized stable coins, you can see exactly what's in the treasury. So, as long as everything's onchain and you know, people have their Dune dashboards and everything's in the the metrics that traders follow, uh you shouldn't expect to see that massive DPEG. And now this is a little beyond because now you're saying that everything's on chain.

So there's transparency which we don't get a lot of. Yeah, absolutely. Why do it that way? Isn't it better if you can just not have everything on chain? Like what's the idea behind having it on chain?

That sounds antithetical to the web 3 ethos. I I I I need to be the contrarian here. So you give me a good answer. Everything should be on chain. T tokenize everything.

Tokenize everything. Y'all heard it first here, man. Didn't hear it first. to tokenize everything. I'm pretty sure years ago years years ago.

So, uh, so Black Rockck has is on their like tokenize everything kick. Um, they've got Securitize and they're putting billions of dollars on chain and a lot of that is collateral that we're able to use in in ASOS. No, that's awesome. I mean, that's where we're headed, right? RWA, that's the new trend.

And I mean thankfully some of us have been in it for a while but people are going to just start jumping in it and yeah look out for those ICOs and the people that are putting things on chain because it's a future. It's where we're headed and ton of you know potential out here for it. Yeah absolutely. Um, and one one of the great things about the partners that we're working with is the strategy of using onchain mechanics and DeFi to build further impact in the real world. So, uh, we're working with the Brazilian uh, carbon credit cooperative uh, and carbon credits out of Acra, which is, uh, one of the southwestern states of Brazil.

AI. A yeah, I'm Brazilian. [Music] Side note here. Whenever I try to tell people about this and I spell it, they're like, "You mean acre?" And I'm like, "No, no, no.

It's it's a good You got it right. Did I say it wrong the first time?" No, you're good. A Yeah, I just didn't roll the the R. I didn't roll the R.

Um so yeah, so we're working um with these carbon credits and what we want to do is create a system by which these carbon credits come into our system. This helps the local governments because they're able to to to sell these these credits on chain. They come into the Azos ecosystem. The the broader market is able to access them and we can use the profit the revenue that is generated in Azos to then go generate our own green bonds and carbon credits. So we can go back into Opera and we can buy up more land for conservation, generate more carbon credits to put back into the system.

And so we basically can run major conservation efforts while building a treasury of conservatory but revenue generating land that is building uh protocol. So when we when we launch uh with the assets we've secured will be the fifth largest on base. Wow. Uh like as things are now. Yeah.

And so uh that's a great starting place. All right. I got to ask the big question that everybody's going to want to know. When when? So, we've got an incentivized test net that is launching this week.

Uh you can come by our booth uh at the East Denver the main chiligages. Uh we we actually our artist I'll give Bon a little shout out here. Um he has I don't think I have it on me. He's created these really cool like pendants uh uh and other merch that is like Azos and Ethmber themed that you'll be able to buy with um like our fake test net bucks. So for using our system uh just the test net so you need some test net ETH you'll be able to participate in the the real world thing uh when um mainet should be within a few months uh and then our our TG should be after that that's a good answer yeah I don't I don't want to the timeline is not set but that is the order of things soon guys it's soon yeah we want to like uh we want to get the protocol running and get uh like show that it is a system that works and that TVL can grow and then get people real hyped about it so that they're excited and want to participate in this ecosystem rather than just like be one of those I'm going to airdrop farm and then dump it.

We want like people to see the real value so that they want to continue participating. So real real builders build first and then put it out there and not like let's raise let's get a bunch of money then figure this out. Like you're actually doing it the right way and it's counterintuitive these days I feel like. Yeah, it yes, big problem. We actually started as a hackathon project in 2023.

We won the hack refi uh at COP 28 uh in Dubai and then uh came to ETH Denver, decided we were going to turn it into a product and raised for it and then we basically bootstrapped with uh with some help from some really good friends who've uh helped us get to where we are. Shout out friends. I mean that's what this space is all about. It's that community, right? That people that can support one another.

I mean, when I walk around ETH Denver, like, it's just wild hearing people like, "Well, so and so invited me here. So and so wanted me to be here. They told me it was a great space." Most of the people here are referrals. It's people that just heard about it through other people, which is incredible.

It is incredible. Um, at least 50% of attendees are new every year. Um, and actually, fun fact, we're still signing up. Uh, I don't know if I want to give the real numbers. At least a few hundred like per hour yesterday were signing up.

It's just crazy. I'm obviously uh relative looking good. You're relatively looking great. Noticeable was the word I but I I also usually wear the Buffcorn onesie. Yeah.

Uh and I like riding the scooters because I don't take Ubers. So So I take I I ride the scooter everywhere in the city. And I will very often see people who are like, "Yo, nice onesie." Or like, "What is that?" And so I'll stop and say, "It's the Buffacorn.

It's the, you know, the official mascot of ETH Denver. What's Eth? Oh, we're right over at the National Western. The tickets are free. you should come through.

And then I help them go to app.edenver.com. They sign up for a free ticket real quick. I mean, we're literally signing up just Denverites who are just around like, come come to the show.

It's It's free. It's great.