Bankless - The Return of Aave | Stani Kulechov

Episode Date: March 30, 2022

Coming off the heels of Aave's huge v3 release a couple weeks ago, we wanted to bring on Founder and CEO, Stani Kulechov to unpack it for us. Stani is also the Founder of Lens Protocol, a permissionle...ss, composable, & decentralized social graph that might just be the future of Web3 social platforms.  How are Aave and Lens Protocol bringing this inevitable future to reality sooner than expected?  What is the current state of the DeFi landscape? Buckle up because Stani will unpack these questions and so much more.  ------ 📣 ZERION | Trade Across 7 Networks and 500+ protocols https://bankless.cc/Zerion  ------ 🚀 SUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER:          https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/   🎙️ SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST:                 http://podcast.banklesshq.com/   ------ BANKLESS SPONSOR TOOLS:  👀 POLYGON | LAYER  2 DEFI https://bankless.cc/Polygon   ❎ ACROSS | BRIDGE TO LAYER 2 https://bankless.cc/Across   🦊 METAMASK | THE CRYPTO WALLET https://bankless.cc/metamask   💳 LEDGER | THE CRYPTO LIFE CARD https://bankless.cc/Ledger   🧙‍♂️ ALCHEMIX | SELF REPAYING LOANS https://bankless.cc/Alchemix   🦄 UNISWAP | DECENTRALIZED FUNDING https://bankless.cc/UniGrants  ------ Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 7:00 What's New With Stani 10:15 DeFi in 2021 14:13 Aave Portals 23:00 Maintaining Market Share 27:25 Forecasting the Future of Chains 32:57 Bridging & Security 37:38 Efficiency Mode 40:23 Isolation Mode 44:20 Stani's Thoughts on Rari 48:18 Future Aave Versions 54:30 Stani's PFP 57:15 Lens Protocol & Web3 Social 1:10:00 Lens Protocol All-Star Team & Roadmap 1:14:09 Rapid Fire Questions ------ Resources: Stani Kulechov: https://twitter.com/StaniKulechov  Aave: https://aave.com/  Lens Protocol:  https://lens.dev/   ----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research. Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures 

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:06 Hey, Bankless Nation, welcome to another episode of State of the Nation where we do a deep dive on a hot topic. The hot topic this week is Ave V3, the return of Ave. Super excited about this. New Ave version just launched. We have the founder of Ave on the episode today. We're going to talk with Stani all about the launch of Ave. We're going to talk about some other things, too, David. What's on the agenda for today?
Starting point is 00:00:33 Yeah, Ave has expanded its scope just beyond borrowing and lending. So in addition to AVE, we're going to talk a little bit about lens protocol. We had Christina from Avey on our panel all about the Web3 social world, which is something that is boiling under the scenes, I think, behind the front page of Web3. Social Web3 is a thing. And AVE, the team at Avey is kind of leading the charge. So there's so much to unpack with Avey V3, but there's also so much to unpack with Lens protocol. And of course, Donnie has been around since before you and I, Ryan. And so I just want to pick the brain
Starting point is 00:01:09 of an OG Defi builder that's kind of seen at all. What's he think about the world of crypto in 2022? We're going to get into all of these subjects. Yeah, I've got a lot of questions for him, particularly on that last piece, right? Be able to pick his brain and talk about
Starting point is 00:01:22 will Defi ever recover relative to Eith? What does he think about this new crop of Defi 2.0 builders, this new class, these young hooligans and are they shaking things up? So a lot more to talk. about guys before we get into the episode want to tell you a bit more about Zirion our friends of Zirion they've got an announcement a special announcement I think we've
Starting point is 00:01:45 been talking about this for the last couple of weeks they are releasing a multi-chain world here a lot more to explore on Zirion Zirion of course is a place where you could take your non-custodial wallet whether that's Metamask whether that's your ledger you keep your private keys you plug it into this fantastic interface and then you could do things do things with your crypto money. Imagine that. That's what D5 provides. And you could do things cross-chain. So if you look at this, David, I've got optimism here. I've got Avalanche. I've got Ethereum across multiple layer twos and also across alternative layer ones. You can also bridge. Be a bridge
Starting point is 00:02:23 or you can move from Ethereum to Polygon in just one click with Zerion as well. If you click this more button, you can see save, borrow, other things you can do within the Zerion interface. man, this is a way a bank should be, right? Because this is a bankless user interface. I think everything we were hoping would come true when Stani started the AVE protocol, now coming true in DFI with interfaces and aggregators like Xerion. What else you want to say about this awesome tool, David? Well, this is going to be particularly relevant because this is a brand new feature in AVE3 we're going to talk about. It's called portals because AVE3 is not on the Ethereum L1 exclusively. It is all across so many different layer 2s and other layer 1 chains.
Starting point is 00:03:08 And so not only is Xerion bridging between all the chains, but so is AVE itself. So I think Xerion is probably going to ultimately be an interface for the many, many different versions of Avey V3 that are deployed all across the crypto universe. So this is a very timely topic to be talking about a multi-chain, multi-layer 2 world. Yeah, absolutely. So all you got to do is grab your wallet, your non-custodians, wallet. Plug it into Zirion. You'll see a link in the invite to do that and get started, track your assets. David, got to ask you the question I ask at the outset of these conversations, which is what is the state of the nation today? Ryan, the state of the nation is upgrading. This one was
Starting point is 00:03:47 easy this week. We are certainly upgrading in Ave V3. This is the state of the nation, of course. Not only is Ave V3 upgrading from V2 to V3, but we are upgrading from a monolithic L1 world to a world of many, many chains. Whether you believe the future is multi-layer two or multi-chain, we are upgrading nonetheless. And so, Ryan, we are going to explore what does it mean to upgrade in the world of 2022 in crypto? So, Ryan, we are upgrading this week. That's a great topic. Guys, I can't wait to talk to Stani. It's been over a year, maybe more since we've had him on the podcast, so can't wait to pick his brain a bit more. We will be right back with Stani. But before we get to the conversation, we want to thank the sponsors that made this episode possible.
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Starting point is 00:06:23 And that's why so many in the bankless nation already have their ledger hardware wallet. And brand new to the ledger lineup of hardware wallets is the Ledger NanoS Plus, a huge upgrade to the world's most popular hardware wallet. With more memory and a larger screen, the NanoSplus makes it easy to navigate and verify your transactions. And the paired Ledger Live desktop app gets you increased transparency as to what is about to happen with your NFT. What you see is what you sign. The NanoS Plus gives you the smoothest possible user experience while you're doing all of your crypto things. So go to the Ledger website to check out the features of the new Ledger NanoS Plus and join the wait list to get yours. And don't forget about the Crypto Life card, also powered by
Starting point is 00:06:59 ledger. The CL card is a crypto debit card that hooks right into the Ledger Live app, right next to all the Defy apps and services that you're already used to doing, like swapping tokens and staking. So if you don't have a ledger hardware wallet, go to ledger.com, grab a ledger and take control over your crypto. Hey, guys, we are back talking about the return of AVE with none other than the founder of Avey, Stani, Klucho. He is the founder and CEO of Avey. He's a builder in DFI before we called it DFI. I'm pretty sure. You remember the Eath-Lend days, David? Remember those days?
Starting point is 00:07:33 Now he's expanding his horizons to the world of Web3 and Social. We're going to talk about Ave V3, which was just released. We're going to talk about Web3 Social, what that means. We're also going to get his take on the state of Defi today because Stani is an OG DeFi builder and he's going to lend us a lot of perspective. Stani, been a long time since we've seen you on Bankless, man. Welcome back. Thank you so much.
Starting point is 00:07:58 It's good to do a combat. here. Thanks, thanks, Ryan. Thanks, David. And nice to meet all the Degians here, too. That's right. You know what? So we call this episode the return of AVE, but the truth is, Avey never left. You guys have been doing stuff for a very long time and shipping every step of the way. That's, you know, why I think Avey rose to prominence is because you have one of the, the shippiest teams in all of crypto and all of DFI. But before we get into kind of, of the meat of what you've shipped recently with Ave v3. I'm just curious, man. So what have you been up to lately? What's Stani been doing lately? How are you dividing your time these days?
Starting point is 00:08:40 Yeah, I guess, well, I would say that most of my time goes into definitely into the building. So I try to spend as much as time as possible in the product side and of course a bit on this strategy. But recently all the time that I have more less. I'm trying to envision a bit more where and which direction the VEP3 is going towards. And of course, in terms of the talent creation, because the ABE team is growing. I think last time when I was in Bankless, we had 17, 18 team members at AVE, and now we have almost reaching 100. So we're scaling in that sense. And I think the reason actually why we are shipping quite a lot of things is that we have an amazing team that is just dedicated on pushing these protocols and interesting innovation out.
Starting point is 00:09:40 So it pretty much is a kind of like a team effort. And I think that's what I realized recently that if you want to go very far, you really need to do it in a team effort way. So that has been my kind of a focus at the moment. And finding new things to build, of course. Stani, the AVE team has always, in my mind, kind of stood out from the rest. Ryan said the shippiest, which is definitely an interesting and appropriate adjective, I would say,
Starting point is 00:10:12 to describe the AVE team. And DFI has certainly progressed as well since we've last talked. And in order to kind of set the context for this conversation about the details of AVEV3, I first want to get your take on what DeFi, what crypto, what Web3 has really done in 2021 that might have informed some of the decision making on the AVE team to build certain features into AVE3. So again, kind of just like zooming out and getting your take, we haven't talked since 2021 crypto happened.
Starting point is 00:10:44 So how would you zoom out and reflect on 2021 crypto and what it means for DeFi? And how would you say that's impacted some of the decisions, both behind the leadership and decision-making at AVE and also how that's gone into some of the prioritizations of AVEV-V-3? Yeah, definitely a lot. I mean, when we first built the AVE version 1, so we were building a protocol that we imagined holding maybe 20, 30 million board of value lock in smart contracts, very early days in 2019. ended up holding a few hundred million worth of assets. And then with the version two, we were planning that maybe we'll hold a few hundred million, maybe up to billion.
Starting point is 00:11:33 And in the current state across all the networks, is pretty much securing roughly 14 billion worth of value in the smart contract. So essentially, when we approach the version three upgrade of the protocol and the code base, we took two big initiative. One, what was very important to us is the risk factor. So we started to realize that the ecosystem has started to grow, and not only in the sense that we have very interesting money legos, we have very good base line protocols from lending,
Starting point is 00:12:16 from trading, but also that the space has grown and spilled over into multiple networks. And there's a lot of user adoption here. So we realize that these protocols are starting to scale and they have protocol market fit. And what's fascinating here is that we understood that maybe actually these protocols will be used, especially Aube, in a way that we use HTTPPS or IP protocol when we browse the internet so they might be utilized by everyone who has access to finance directly or indirectly. So we started to think like how we can actually put the risk factor in front of how we're building things. We always built in a way that we want to build resilient, safe and secure
Starting point is 00:13:05 protocols. But you know, it's people and talent who are building. So there's always risk that we need to mitigate. And also there's governance that adds risk or reduces risk. depending on what kind of assets or risk parameters are said. So we try to build in a risk-averse way. And second thing, what was important for us is the capital efficiency. So many of these protocols are layered in a way that you might be using one D-5 protocol, but under the hood there is another protocol that the funds are going, and a third one, and there's a lot of layering and different kinds of governance levels as well.
Starting point is 00:13:44 So the capital efficiency played quite a lot of role because we wanted to ensure that it's a competitive protocol that we're building. And at the same time, it's scalable in terms of risk-wise. And also something that's brand new in the world of 2022 crypto and also later into the second half of 2021 is the explosion of many, many chains, including many layer two chains, alternative layer one chains. I know you were just at the Avalanche Summit, I believe, in Barcelona, Spain, I think. Yes. Yeah. And there's just growing ecosystems spanning, like crypto is spreading its tentacles all across everywhere, including alternative layer ones, and AVEV3 is actually being deployed on, I believe,
Starting point is 00:14:30 six different EVM compatible chains. Polygon. Exactly. Yeah, Polygon, Phantom, Avalanche, a few others, which ones am I missing? Arbitrum, optimism, harmony, and, of course, the Ethereum L1. And I think that is a great place to start when it comes to Avev3, because one of the cool new features in Avev3 is something that you guys are calling Portals. Can you walk us through Portals and what is brand new with AvevV3 when it comes to portals? Yeah, definitely.
Starting point is 00:14:59 So Portals is essentially a feature where we realize that there's a lot of transactions between one particular chain to another. There's this bridging element. So bridge essentially is a kind of like a community service that is provided by a project, a community, which is usually a multi-signiture wallet, where it holds the transactioning and messaging between one network to another. So, for example, when you want to access the Polyconne network, but you have your funds in layer one, you have to get them some way into that other network. So essentially what happens is that you lock your funds in the main network, and then on the another network, equal amount of funds, maybe subs up, can't speak anymore,
Starting point is 00:15:47 but like reduced by the fee, basically, that's the amount you get on the another network. And essentially, the challenge with the bridges is that, you know, moving this liquidity is, is very clunky at the moment. It takes a bit, well, actually quite a lot of time. And also, it's not very capital efficient. Most of the assets are sleeping actually in those deposit contracts. So with this portal feature, we realized that, you know, actually lending protocols like AVE are a very good place to store assets across different networks, wherever those protocols are deployed.
Starting point is 00:16:27 So essentially, if we store assets in protocols like AVE, it means that will be actually interesting if you can move the assets, the accounting between one network to another, in a way that you have some sort of trust component there. And what we created is this portal. So portal is a way to actually get whitelisted by the OVIC governance, and you're able to actually mint and burn A tokens in a way where you have credit line. And this credit line is just for the time that you actually settled in transaction.
Starting point is 00:17:03 So what happens in an example is that you, is that you basically burn A tokens in one network, let's say the main AVE market, and mint them in polygon market or avalanche market. And essentially, this feature by itself, when you do this transaction under the hood as a bridge or some other entity, you're able to create services where you could actually
Starting point is 00:17:33 deposit into the main Ethereum network, and actually then borrow on Polygon Network and repay on, let's say, later 2 like arbitrium or optimistic optimism. So it's a way to move funds a very seamless way. And also the risk is reduced to the caps of what those ports can do. So even in the portal, there's risk mitigation and also there's a lot of space for the community to build additional mitigation tools, such as staking, and so forth. So just to clarify, when you use a portal, you're not actually moving the assets cross-chain.
Starting point is 00:18:15 You are, like, for example, you're putting Ether into the AVE version on Ethereum, but then the portal allows you to mint new value on a different chain using that collateral in the main Ethereum version of AVE, or does AVE actually do move the capital, the actual assets from chain to chain? So the capital doesn't need to be moved from one chain to another. So what happens is that basically you burn the balance in one network and then you basically mint the balance in another network. And basically, so you are using so-called A token.
Starting point is 00:18:52 So when you deposit into the A-V protocol, what happens is that you get A tokens in return. And what these ports are doing, they just are accounting between different net. And this is how we move funds faster between the networks itself. Okay, so you deposit ether into like the Ethereum version of AVE. You are received an Aether or an AVE ether, but then using a portal, you can burn that AVE ether and then have that AVE ether be minted on like Avalanche or Phantom or Polygon. Is that how it works? Exactly.
Starting point is 00:19:28 Exactly. And then once to get your capital back, if you, so you're, you always, do you always, do You always have a deposit of your ether in the AVEA version of the Ethereum L1, or does that become kind of owned by the protocol at the layer one? And then you just have a claim on it later. How does that work? So it's pretty much built in a way where it's more about the accounting. So for example, if you burn from one place, you mean another place. So there's basically kind of like the accounting balance changes between those different markets.
Starting point is 00:20:03 And then can you use that A token outside of the AVE protocol? So like once you kind of do the burn on Ethereum, your Aeth on Ethereum, it's over to, say, Polygon, can I then use it in other places within the Polygon network? Or is this sort of, does it stay contained inside of AVE somehow? It's inside of the bridging component. So essentially, but what you could do actually for the users in terms of, for example, functionality. You can build, for example, on the user experience. Of course, the binting and burning happens in the under the hood, but basically you can, for example, you can deposit in one protocol and then you can withdraw from, sorry, in one network and then we draw in another
Starting point is 00:20:54 network. But what just happens in between is that there's just balanced mint and burn, which happens in the portal itself. So it's kind of like a more of a accounting measure and basically creating unbacked tokens and then backing them later. That is fascinating. I guess this is not quite like a bridge. But what would you classify this as?
Starting point is 00:21:20 Do you think other protocols will develop this sort of kind of accounting mechanism to allow the quick transfer of value from one chain to another? I think so because what you create here is basically the speed. So you can transfer value from one network to another one very quickly and efficiently, but also you can create cross-chain applications. So just to give some example, many of the features that we created, let's say, in our version,
Starting point is 00:21:51 one and two, we received use cases that we didn't actually kind of like anticipated before. So for example, with flash loans, which was one of the last implementations that we had into the protocol. What we saw is that flash loans started to be used in terms of arbitrage and a bunch of other interesting features. So I think like this feature particularly, the bridging is one of the use cases. But I think the more interesting stuff will happen once we have new interesting application coming in and developers building things. So I could imagine you could do a lot of cross-chain activity. They deposit in one network, draw capital in another one and repay in some other network. It could be one example, but there's plenty of use cases probably in the future for this.
Starting point is 00:22:48 What's fascinating to me is because there's sort of a question, like a investment thesis. this question that's popped up on our radar and I think the bankless communities radar, which is, okay, we've got the birth of all of these different chains, some alternative layer ones and also layer twos, right? And so the question of will the existing DFI protocols and networks, will they spread and kind of invade those chains and maintain market share in those chains or will there be a new set of players and a new set of winners that are, I guess, geographic specific, chain-specific winners. So not necessarily AVE in a network like optimism, but some optimism type of lending and borrowing protocol pops up and starts to win market share
Starting point is 00:23:35 against AVE. But with this portal feature, it feels like what you're doing with what AVE is doing is it's building sort of a network effect that crosses chains. So like Avey had a massive liquidity lending and borrowing network effect on the Ethereum main chain. Now with this portal functionality, it seems to be building a network across all of these other chains. And I'm wondering if you think that is one way that DeFi protocols like AVE will maintain their network effect as they spread from chain to chain. I really think so. I think it's a one way to say that it's kind of like a competitive advantage in the sense kind of like that it creates a lot of, brings a lot of efficiency in how capital floats.
Starting point is 00:24:22 But for example, in the version tree, there is other features that are actually, I would say, brings interesting network effect, especially in high transactioning networks and with lower costs. So for example, we have the high efficiency mode and we call it also as e-mode. which means that you could borrow one particular asset at very high collateral requirement, borrowing power. So for example, you can borrow 98% of your collateral. And it applies to the same category of assets. So let's say that you have die as a collateral, you can borrow 98% of that value in USDC, and then you can create different kinds of interesting
Starting point is 00:25:12 transaction between stable coins, if you want to go long and short, but also like it brings ability to do even a fax trading on chain with high leverage, for example, if you have a euro stable coin or, let's say, pound stable coin, and you can go with a very high leverage, which is quite fascinating. But there's other use cases, for example, where you might have, for example, staked eat as a collateral and then you borrow, let's say, up to 95% eat and you restake it into the eat you borrow staking, get the steak date again and loop a bit. So there's sort of kind of like features and network effects that are actually designed on networks where you have low transaction cost and you need speed. And just the eat example is fascinating
Starting point is 00:26:07 because in the other protocol, there is 1.3 or so billion worth of staked eat as a collateral at the moment, with relatively mediocre borrowing power. So it just showcases how much you could actually use. And there is even like a longer kind of like an idea here is that, you know, if you can, if you're able to leverage and have this like liquid staking of eat, and it might apply towards to, let's say, liquid Avax and so forth. What happens is that lending markets like the ABAO protocol might actually have the staking yield reduced by, let's say, the cost of the liquid staking. So you don't need to necessarily go and stake to eat 2.0.
Starting point is 00:27:00 You could come to the ABE protocol and you can deposit and withdraw and, you know, the cost, difference will not be that high. So that might happen over like a longer period of time. Okay, okay. So we just talked about portals and we just talked about e-mode a little bit. And I asked you that specific, you know, the specific question of these are ways for AVE to build a network effect across chains. And you're indicating, yes, yes, they are. I guess I want to ask the zoom out question then, too, while we're here, while we're talking about this, because this is one of my burning questions for you going into this conversation, Stani. So we are now in a multi-l-1 world, multi-L layer two world. There's going to be lots of different chains, right? So it's no longer the Ethereum main chain since we talked to you in 2020.
Starting point is 00:27:48 So how do you think this works, right? Will we have geographic winners, do you think? Right? It's like, you know, rather than you to swap, you have a pancake swap or something. Or like a Trader Joe in Avalanche. Or do you think some of the big category winners that started on Ethereum and main chain will migrate to these other chains and just gobble up market share. I want you to put on your forecasting hat and tell me what you think will happen.
Starting point is 00:28:14 Will we have local chain winners or will we have some major category winners that span many different chains? And another way to ask this is there was a time where I think we thought that defy would have a whole bunch of blue chip types of assets and blue chip protocols. I think this is probably a symptom of price, right, with the DeFi Pulse Index and some of these other blue chip categories, where defy assets have not risen as fast as alternative layer one assets and other assets. So people are questioning, well, maybe every chain will have its own category winner of defy. And so we can't, there's no such thing as defy blue chips anymore.
Starting point is 00:28:56 What do you think about all of this? Do you think we'll have category winners or geographic winners? Yeah, I mean, definitely the landscape changed completely over the past year or year and a half. I mean, I still remember when, you know, David Ryan, me including we were a bit more like Ethereum maxis. Well, I mean, to certain extent, and I mean, being born and raised kind of like in Ethereum as well, like it's very funny looking backwards and being so naive and thinking like you can transaction in a scale where we're. we are today with Ethereum at this current state, of course.
Starting point is 00:29:36 But I definitely believe that what you can do with the new change is that new networks, you can build new communities, right? So you can take something that already exists somewhere. You can fork that code base and create a new protocol in a new network. and maybe create a community around that. But end of the day, I've seen a few other forks and they haven't been super efficient, mainly because what counts is the community,
Starting point is 00:30:14 so how much you can actually build a community around the protocol. That's the starting point. The second is that how much you can actually innovate and what is your rate of innovation. So rate of innovation is something very important to all communities because especially when we're innovating in an environment where all code is public, you know, everyone shares their ideas relatively publicly in governance forums like what to build next,
Starting point is 00:30:44 what kind of topics to work and so forth. So I would say that if the community can keep up with the rate of innovation and who is able to constantly bring new things into the, environment, that's where like kind of like we see a lot of advancements. And it's the job then of the community to actually embrace the technology, support good decision making, government the protocol and ensure that risk is managed and also kind of like a bunch of other stuff that happens in governance. So I think like if we have a new network, let's say today and there is a bunch of new communities there, it might be that some of those native communities will spill over to
Starting point is 00:31:30 Ethereum, other networks, and they might be very expansive. But end of the day, what happens and will be important is like how much you're building things and how much you're able to make smart decisions as a community, you know, what kind of risk parameters you're applying? What are you doing with your treasury? So let's say AVE Protocol, for example, generates roughly 50 million worth of treasury on current annual rate, and that treasury is used to further develop a lot of parts of the protocol improvements, technical debt, you know, and there's a bunch of protocols sitting on big treasuries,
Starting point is 00:32:12 but they're not doing anything necessarily. And this is where you can actually compete a lot. And I think it's very naive even to think about a protocol that, let's say, as a lending protocol, to think in a way that we are only bound to, let's say, lending or like we will not do trading in the future. End of the day, it's all about how big community and big Tao you can build and the network effect. So I think it's all about innovation at the end of the day. That's fascinating. The cross-chain portals, Donnie is like such a huge conversation. And it's really just one of three big innovations out of Avey.
Starting point is 00:32:52 yet we have spent so much time talking about it, and I'm not done yet because I still have a few more questions about the whole portals thing. And the question is, it doesn't sound like you guys are using any bridges. You're not using Connected to get to Arbitrum or optimism, and you're not using Wormhole or any other sort of bridge to get cross layer one. It seems to me you've built your own messaging system between all the implementations of Ave on all the various chains. And so I'm wondering, how does the accounting work? Is there like a central source of truth of the accounting for all AVEs across all the various chains? Or is it kind of just between the, if like I deposit ether on the Ethereum chain, and then I want to mint Aether on Avalanche, the Ethereum version of AVE pinged the Avalanche to mint that Aether there,
Starting point is 00:33:46 because through the portal, how does that communication platform work? Is there one central ledger or is it just a matter of communication between Aves? And can you kind of just talk about the security tradeoffs between using an actual bridge versus a messaging platform between the different versions of ABE? Yes. So there's one thing I need to correct is that there is basically the portal is a place where you can get dipped as a port. So a port can be a bridge, for example.
Starting point is 00:34:16 So what we are planning to do and how we envision the portal feature to work is that there's different kind of bridges at the moment. There is a bunch of selection that you can have. You can have Hope Protocol, you have Connects and all these bridges. And what the bridges can actually do is that they can get the credit line to mint and burn A tokens, basically, up to a certain cap, for example. And this cap is voted by the other governance, meaning that, let's say, we have a new bridge that is requesting to become one of the ports and to mint and burn A tokens. And then the other governance needs to decide, okay, so what will be the amount that that particular bridge, based on their technology, you know, their community, reputation, they should basically be able to mint and burn up to that particular cap? So one thing, so that's just the starting point. The second thing, the phase two will be to think,
Starting point is 00:35:23 so if there is the cap to mint them into a certain depth level, essentially, how we can actually backstop that minting. Should there be some sort of like a staking, separate staking module or the current safety module applying to those minting caps, or how we should do. And that's pretty much something that we haven't built yet. And it's more about the AVEC governance to kind of like decide whether to apply token economics there or just rely on the reputation that, okay, we trust that Hope
Starting point is 00:36:01 Bridge, you know, they basically clear the accounting and kind of like the, there won't be any differences between different networks in their balances. So it actually empowers the current bridging ecosystem. Okay, so yeah, so it does tap into the various bridges that are cross-chain, cross-layer-2. Are there bridges that AVE has already supported, or is that up to AVE governance? It's completely up to AVE governance, essentially. And there is a recently proposal, well, it's more of a governance discussion made by Mark Zeller from the Avey Genesis team. of a framework of actually how do you apply to become a port in the portal.
Starting point is 00:36:48 And essentially, it's just a whitelisting of a particular address. Of course, the bulk case for bridges is that so many users will be porting money across them and making a lot of volume go across the bridges. But I think people are always forgetting that. It's probably actually going to be the defy apps themselves that use bridges way more than the actual users. And I think AVE is a fantastic example of this. And of course, just to reiterate, the significance of a multi-chain, multi-layer-1,
Starting point is 00:37:19 multi-layer-two world is definitely illustrated in how important this portal topic is and why we've given that is so much time. But I think, Ryan, I think we're ready to move on to some of the other two big features out of Avey V3. The next one, Stani, is efficiency mode, which you alluded to earlier. But can we just back up and start from scratch with efficiency mode? What is E mode? Yeah, so E mode is really fascinating. So essentially, whatever, if you have a same category asset,
Starting point is 00:37:48 so it's same category could be like one stable coin collateral against another stable coin borrow. And that could be like a USD stable coin collateral euro borrow. So typical scenario is that you could, for example, deposit 100,000 worth of USDC, USC into the protocol borrow up to 98,000, let's say, Euro stable coin, and then you can sell the Euro if you are going for short or vice versa. So it actually allows you to do this kind of like a very efficient FX trading even, but also that apply and between two different same stable coin, if there's some sort of arbitrage difference between, let's say, USDAC and USDAT, for example. But also it applies to same asset categories, for example, between EIT and LiquidEat, for example, steak aid.
Starting point is 00:38:49 And in that use case, for example, you can deposit your EIT into a liquid staking provider, such as LIDO finance, and then you get in return, steak, eat, you can deposit it back to the protocol and borrow and eat and redeposite and make it more capital efficient of your eat staking. So you can leverage on your staked eat essentially. And this is the reason it's more high efficiency is because the eat and steak eat, they correlate in the same way in terms of the volatility, the same way as, for example, USDC and die, they correlate quite closely in volatility because they're pegged into the same currency.
Starting point is 00:39:36 There's minor differences, of course. And in terms of, let's say, USDC collateral and your borrow, what happens there is that there is just minor amount of volatility because fiat currencies are less volatile than we anticipate kind of like the crypto assets to be. Same applies to Bitcoin and wrap Bitcoin as an example. Really, the theme I'm seeing here with all these innovations on L of AV3 is just empowering users. to be able to do more, just unlocking the full power of Defi with more and more optionality for the users. The last big feature that I think comes out of Avev3 is what's called isolation mode. And I think this kind of really taps into Avey's strengths.
Starting point is 00:40:20 And it's really its differentiator from what has perceived to be its historical competitor compound, where compound has been kind of the ultra-conservative, very few collateral types, where Avey's lends itself a little bit more to opening up more collateral types, allowing for more and more use cases to come about. But of course, you can't onboard every single collateral type because every single collateral type has its own risks. So I think this isolation mode, which I'm going to ask you about in a second, is really trying to get the best of both worlds,
Starting point is 00:40:49 where AVE really lets itself be useful to the long tail of assets, while compartmentalizing that risk of those assets to make sure that it doesn't have any contagion to the rest of Avey. Soni, could you explain isolation mode and what it is and how it's helpful for users? Yeah, and isolation mode is something that actually derives of how the AVE community works and the spirit of the community because the AVE community and David, you gave an example, for example, about compound.
Starting point is 00:41:19 Like in AVE, I think the community has always been excited about listing new assets. And every new asset or going to a new network is always a new opportunity to tap into new user base, into new culture. And in case of all, there's been a lot of asset listings, but very, very conservative risk parameters. So basically, the listing has been very more kind of like a flexible, but then we kind of like compensate in a way where we have just more conservative risk parameters compared to other lending protocols.
Starting point is 00:41:59 So essentially, we were thinking, like, if you believe in the future where all of these assets will be tokenized, three old assets, you know, and we have just bunch a bunch of assets depending on like governed, used to govern different DFI protocols or just getting community members together in greater economy, NFTs and whatnot. So we just believe that there's going to be, you know, hundreds of different assets that are like relatively suitable for using as a collateral or getting listed into the AVE protocol. What's important, is that we have a way of scaling where new assets could be listed into the protocol in a way where it can happen very early, but the risk is mitigated. So the mitigation here is that an asset can be
Starting point is 00:42:48 listed by decision of ABE governance in so-called isolation mode, meaning that normally when you deposit into an asset into the ABE protocol, let's say you have EAD and then you deposit ABE, you can use those both borrowing powers and just borrow anything you want and that's your whole kind of like a collateral that is used to uphold and keep your position. In isolation mode, what happens is that you can use that particular asset as a collateral, but in a way that you can't use your other assets as a collateral. And this means that that particular asset is siloed away from the other collateral exposures. And on top of that, there's minor addition, like, across all the asset is the fact that
Starting point is 00:43:39 we have supply caps everywhere. So each single pool has a supply cap and also the exposure, the borough cap as well. So essentially, this means that we could list a new asset relatively quickly with a very low depth caps, supply caps, and also isolated. And this brings new community users to use the protocol. That's really fascinating. And I'm glad Avey is doing that. It will help Avae conquer kind of the long tail of tokens
Starting point is 00:44:09 and get new collateral sources onboarded more quickly. I'm curious while we're on this subject, since the last time we talked, there's been a lot of protocol development. One protocol, which is interesting, and maybe not the specific one, but the philosophy undergrading it is Rari and the Rari Capital token.
Starting point is 00:44:26 And they have sort of like an unguarded, governance sort of a process, right? There's not an actually on-chain vote for creating a new collateral pool. Instead, they sort of let the market create whatever pool they want in a permissionless way and sort of price the risk accordingly. What do you think of approaches like Rari? Is that interesting for AVE or is that kind of counter to the premise of what the AVE protocol is trying to do? No, I think it's quite fascinating what they're doing. And I really, I really appreciate it because essentially governance minimization is an important topic and it's something where many protocols can actually, they can function without governance, for example. Protocol like
Starting point is 00:45:12 Uniswap could function without governance, but the governance can actually manage the treasury and there's a bunch of things that actually get all those community members together. So it makes sense there as well. In terms of the permissionless listing, for example, in ABE protocol, we added a feature into the reserves called Risk Admins. It's a access control to create additional smart contract logic where you could basically create logic based on permissionless listing, but for example, you could bind it with, let's say, token economics, different kinds of staking ideas where, you know, by staking, let's say, are they into a particular asset, you can increase the loan to value ratios,
Starting point is 00:46:05 which is the borrowing powers and even affect the interest rate curves. So that is something that can be built further with this risk admin features. my kind of like a challenge with the permission listing is that how do we ensure that kind of like a right people are using that, but that's also kind of like a UX question. But I think governance minimization is very important, and I love what they're also doing in terms of the idea of delegation of governance. And for example, in our case, like delegation of governance can be delegating the listing to risk admins. delegating interest rate strategies to service providers such as, for example, Gauntlet. For example, and the current state, Gauntlet is providing dynamic risk parameters. So they are actively monitoring the markets and proposing new parameters to the OVE governance.
Starting point is 00:47:03 Now, the challenge here is that every single vote actually requires to reach the Avedal, the short time log quorum. Everyone needs to come together, and you need to have quite a big amount of capital on votes to pass that kind of proposal. But if you have brackets where actually service providers like content could actually submit those parameters, you could actually delegate to that entity. And this decision can be made by the other governance, you know, and it can be like pre-delegated in the future again, depending on, you know, if there's more competition and different kinds of scenarios. So the protocol is ready for that kind of feature,
Starting point is 00:47:49 but it depends on the governance, like how much they want to introduce risk. And if there's more risk or delegation, to what extent as well? But essentially, it's there for the governance. ready for the version three. One thing I love about the AVE communities approach to all of this is AVE is like always moving forward. Like it's always pushing the ball for it. And I think in in a lot of crypto circles, and sometimes, you know, maybe bankless to,
Starting point is 00:48:17 David and I, we glorify or we overemphasize the value of ossification, right? ossification because now no one can change it and you know what you get. And it's a beautiful thing. Only the code is in charge, right? No longer humans. And like many things about AVE are ossified, but also you guys are continuing to push the envelope and build new features and expand into new horizons. And as I said, you're always moving forward. I'm curious, is there anything else you want to mention about the V3 features?
Starting point is 00:48:50 That's kind of one question. And the second question tied to that is also like, is there ever a time at which AVE is done? Like is V3 the fully ossified version of Avey? or is there going to be a V4, a V5, a V6, a V, you know, 10, are we going to have as many AVEs as we have iPhone versions? Yeah, how many shows are we going to do with you, Stani? What's a year maybe? So those two questions.
Starting point is 00:49:16 What else in V3 should we know about? And when is AVE done? I mean, there's a long list of different kinds of improvements that we have made. There is gas optimization as well. and kind of like we have also the ability to ensure that, for example, in layer two, if sequences are down, so there's a kind of like a remorse period before liquidation can occur. So there's a lot of smaller features that are specifically related to L2 and a lot of technical improvements. But I think also like something that we haven't shilled enough is the fact that we also rebamp the whole user experience.
Starting point is 00:50:04 So what we took is that we rebuild the whole of application from scratch, which was amazing. And I'm super excited that we did that decision in our development team because essentially we have an application that just functions well way better at the moment. And the user experience is way more smoother. And the thing is that it's a community UI. So it's accessible through IPFAS, you know, and anyone can actually contribute it to that codebase as well. One of the challenges in DFI is that you usually build monolithic products. So you want to build, you know, the safe, secure thing.
Starting point is 00:50:45 And then, you know, there's just very difficult to contribute as a developer when you come into the space because you necessarily don't know how to to build smart contract infrastructure and the frontend might be your way to VETRI in terms of contributions. So we did that as well. And in terms of versions, I think we're trying to actually be centralized more and more the development of the ecosystem. And we would love to see more people contributing directly and to, of course, our team as well. but essentially I don't think there is going to be an ending of innovation.
Starting point is 00:51:25 I think our community loves that. There is enough funding in a treasury. It's self-sustainable Dow. The ecosystem is just thriving. I just don't see a way where we could stop doing what we're doing at the moment. And so that was all of Ave V3. But what's interesting to me about Ave, Ave the team, Ave the organization, is that just building on Ave seems to not be enough for Stani, the builder, and the AVE team,
Starting point is 00:51:52 because there's a whole entire other world going on with AVE in regards to Lenz Protocol. And, Sonny, we've had you on for almost an hour now, and it was just about AVEV3, but there's so much more to talk about. So we're going to have to cut to sponsors here in a second. But there's been some Twitter activity between you and Elon Musk. There's also a growing social media mafia that I think you are growing over on the Avey team. There's a lot of things to talk about with Lens protocol. So right after we get back from the break,
Starting point is 00:52:19 I want to pick your brain all about that. But first, before we get there, we have to take a moment to talk about some of these fantastic sponsors that make the show possible. If you're going bankless, you need Metamask. This is your tool to unlock the world of Defi without giving up custody over your private keys. Metamask is both a secure in-browser wallet
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Starting point is 00:54:44 in the direction that you think it should go. Thank you, Uniswap, for sponsoring bankless. All right, guys, and we are back with Stani from Avey. And Stani, something's interesting is going on with your Twitter header on both mobile and desktop. But if you go to Stani's Twitter, his header says, this PFP real estate is for rent. And you have your Twitter picture just as a blank, white circle.
Starting point is 00:55:10 What's going on with that, Stani? What are you up to on your Twitter profile? Yeah, I think I've been kind of like a recently like quite a lot of like being very curious about social media and, you know, how to build more innovation on that side. But especially like this experimentation is pretty much kind of like an, I would say like an event to raise a bit of funds for the Shifi. But also it's kind of like an interesting experiment in the sense that what if you could actually, you know, rent. your profile picture of real estate to someone else or maybe your header. And to be honest, like the web to social media, it doesn't have the kind of like a feature to do that.
Starting point is 00:55:57 But at the same time, it's something that's, you know, it's not part of the web to social media and how it's structured today. And I think like it boils down towards like a bigger discussion of what we have been talking about Adave, so we, obviously, we built a social graph called Lens Protocol. And one of the main things there is that, you know, you have the ownership of your profile on chain and also the relationship with your followers. And there's a lot of things regarding towards like what we're building Lens Protocol, but also there's so much innovation missing currently in the Web2 social, which is just kind of like
Starting point is 00:56:43 I don't know. I feel what I've seen now recently, especially like what we're building with social graph, is that we could actually take the experience way more further and bring the value back to the users. And I think that's just part of what we're doing at the moment. This kind of unlocks my curiosity, right? So like, are you envisioning a world with Web3 where it's much more of, like, Twitter, you can't do this, but somebody could create like a composable, some sort of primitive
Starting point is 00:57:13 of like D5 plus Web3 kind of mashup where I could just like bid on your profile picture for a week and like maybe that's in stable coins or something but just like I suddenly can bid and own rent out your profile picture for a week and it's all very seamless and automated and you know I guess you know taps into the power of your community are these types of features what excite you about Web 3 or give us some like sci-fi type features? Yeah, because in the current form, the way we build up to social, how it works essentially is that, you know, you have different kind of interactions. You as a user, you create your audience in one platform.
Starting point is 00:58:01 And you can't move that audience from one place to another. So you're kind of like bound towards that, let's say, database and the platform and so forth. And essentially, you're also bound the way that they. the algorithms they use and the way they monetize and collect data. So essentially, Web 2 Social is about capturing the data interactions that you do on the platform and then selling services and products to you that you might buy. That's pretty much how it works. And all the algorithms is adjusted to finding you what you could buy and increasing the revenue.
Starting point is 00:58:39 So at the moment, there isn't a way actually to. to have a system where all the developers can come together and build competing algorithms, competing user experiences, and actually allow the users to vote with their feet very easily and go towards applications that are providing them better, algos, more algorithms that maybe have more of the exploring side instead of this echo chamber that you have in Twitter, So what we did is that we created a protocol that is essentially a social graph, meaning that you create your profile once, and anyone that builds an application on top of the Lens protocol can leverage of the whole social graph user base.
Starting point is 00:59:31 So you, as a developer, you don't need to focus on actually growth hacking the platform and the network effect. And building social media is very hard these days. Just to give an example, I mean, creating something like clubhouse takes sort of effort and you have to create a big platform. But here, let's say if you have 10 to 15 applications built on top of the lens protocols, protocol, they're all road hacking the same social graph. Essentially, everyone is helping to each other, feeding the graph, providing users and sharing resources. Essentially, it's a public good for the whole community. And does this give me self-sovereignty over my social graph? Yes. And for me, the coolest thing is, of course, I can go and create the profile for myself. And that profile is also, that's very heavy use of tokenization. So the profile is tokenized and also the follow graph is tokenized. So for example, when I follow, for example, David, I'm his first follower. So I will get David follow NFD number one.
Starting point is 01:00:41 And if Ryan is the second one, for some reason, Brian gets the follow token ID number two and so forth. And those follow token tokens NFTs, they always reflect the content that you post. So they're dynamic NFDs. So for example, when David has a picture of a dog, the follow NFTs will, as a content posted, those follow NFTs will reflect the picture of the dog. So if David decides to post a picture of the cat, the follow NFTs will update dynamically
Starting point is 01:01:16 and showcase the picture of the cat. And that's a dynamic NFD. So it essentially makes all the front ends, whether it's an application, build on top of the lens protocol, or it's open C or some other wallet, they become by default distribution channels and front ends for the common social graph, which is quite insane if you think about it. And then you can of course collect the content. So from those dynamic NFTs, you can actually collect immutable NFTs as well. So if I really, really like the picture of the cat, what can I actually do?
Starting point is 01:01:54 I can collect it. But also the collection logic is set by the application and David. So they basically say that only my followers can collect this or followers, token ID, let's say one, sorry, Ryan. then alternatively like maybe token ID2, but you have to have board aid in your wallet as well. So a bunch of logic or you can option or have limited addition.
Starting point is 01:02:20 So the reason why there's a lot of optionality is that the whole protocol is built with smart contracts and everything is modularized. So one thing we learned with the Arbor protocol is that to get a lot of contribution, you need to create pieces of your smart contract infrastructure where everyone can can come and create a new module, a new piece, a new kind of a logic.
Starting point is 01:02:43 Just to give an example, there's community members that have built bonding curve collection logics, also a very fascinating follow module where you pay to follow to the profile owner, and then the profile owner can actually share the revenue of the collects. So you can actually create creator funding as well. and share the proceeds of your net you're kind of like a broadcasting channel i know david has a follow-up question but i just i just wanted to make one one comment here which is like this this early um i guess analogy we've had about crypto which is like you know a tech tree tech tree in a video
Starting point is 01:03:27 game that you slowly unlock and so many of the things that you just said the reason why web three wasn't possible in 2016 or um like web three social wasn't possible in 2016 or 2018 or even 2020, because we didn't have, we didn't unlock the, the previous branches on the tech tree. And now we have, right? It's like things that, words that use like tokens, right? Well, that came from smart contracts. That came from defy. Now they're maturing. So we have that primitive that we're working with in NFTs. And now we have that primitive that we're working with as well. And now we have like the raw ingredients to start to create an on-chain social. graph and scalability, right?
Starting point is 01:04:11 What you said to you, Sonny is going to require a lot of block space, it strikes me. So the reason we didn't see Web 3 social, I think, in the earlier manifestations, is because we hadn't unlocked the tech tree, and now we've got these branches of the tech tree, and now maybe we're ready for Web 3 social. But if we are, it feels very much like today, 2020, 2 in Web 3 is kind of like NFTs were in like 2019. We're just like scratching the surface, and they haven't had their main source. stream moment. That was my comment. David, I know you got a question, though. Yeah, we're a little bit
Starting point is 01:04:43 beyond this, but for the public record, David will not be posting cat photos on lens protocol. Strong team dog over here. Oh, well done, Stani. I'll have to get that lens protocol in the stream in a second. But just for the listeners, here's my understanding of this. And Stani, correct me if I'm wrong. But this is, imagine if we had, like, Twitter has its specific algorithms. Instagram has its specific algorithm. Facebook has its specific algorithm. But the way that I'm understanding Lens Protocol is that we can more or less recreate a lot of these very basic algorithms, but it's the algorithms that become interchangeable, as in like now there's surface area for developers to compete on the best algorithm for the users.
Starting point is 01:05:25 And so Lens Protocol, it's not a social media platform. It's not a Twitter. It's not a Facebook. It's a social media meta platform. It's like a meta platform for hosting many types of social medias that allows, whereas Facebook is very, very closed and well-gardened, and so is Twitter, and so is basically every other Web2 social media or, like, platform. Lens Protocol is the inverse of that. It's, you know, opening it up to developers to compete to build their own algorithms and their own profiles and
Starting point is 01:05:52 their own platforms for users to have fun in in the ways that, you know, we always kind of hoped Web2 platforms would have blossomed into. Is that a good mental model, and what would you add to that? Yeah, it definitely is because something we realized with decent trust finance and definitely one of the building blocks that had to happen before that and, you know, NFTs, is greater economy is that when you have an open ecosystem where everyone can contribute and there is no kind of like a barrier or the battery is very low, you will see a lot of fun and lot of innovation happening. And in terms of, and of course, open system means that you could to build things that maybe you couldn't do in a closed system before.
Starting point is 01:06:35 So essentially, let's say if you have an open social graph where anyone can pretty much create their profile and their follow graph. And by the way, this is amazing tool also for DAOs because first time ever a DAO can actually own a permissionless profile and also have a broadcasting channel to their audience. For example, the Avedow can create and own a lens handle. And what it means that if you have a big smart contract change or any kind of governance update, part of that smart contract payload, you could also have, you know, post this change log
Starting point is 01:07:22 or the output of this governance decision also into the lens protocol to all the followers. So it's a way to also create permissionless handles for DAOs. And I think that's going to be an interesting and fascinating use case. But just to give an example, you know, when you have this open social graph, you know, then the builders, they don't need to focus of actually, you know, getting a lot of users. They can just innovate on the front end level. Maybe there's something that you could do better on Twitter. Maybe you can create completely new experience.
Starting point is 01:07:57 And social media has always been about how you, you know, interact with the content and finding new ways, which, for example, we saw with TikTok and also algorithms. And TikTok, for example, rewards things that go viral very quickly and people like the content they like. And maybe it allows also to build those new algorithms. So let's say, for example, that algorithm that rewards something to become viral might not be very healthy or, you know, you could actually build an algorithm that is more humane or algorithm that is just somehow finds you content that you really, really like more and you're not bound to the platform. So you have the battle of like front ends competing on the user experiences and also finding
Starting point is 01:08:48 new application, niche, social media, and also you have the kind of like a competition between algorithms. And then I could imagine one particular front end where you come and you can actually choose different user experiences, but you could also choose which algorithm you want to use. So you could actually drop down and select or swipe different algos. And it just brings sort of opportunities to the developers. And recently we had the Alapro hackathon, which is the Perseq Web 3 social media hackathon. that we did with a global team. We had over 530 hackers and 116 different project being hacked. And it's just insane how many young developers are out there and what they can actually build
Starting point is 01:09:41 in a short period of time. And we saw multiple front ends being built in a period of a week and a half. Well, Stani, I think I missed you at East Denver, but it's very much aligns with the talk that I gave there, which talks about how, where Web 2 protocols, when Web 2 algorithms are competing to produce rage, Web 3 protocols are competing for our love and affection. So I would imagine that something with Lens protocol would finally enable people to opt out of the rage algorithm and perhaps opt into the love and affection algorithm. It definitely sounds like a positive future for us.
Starting point is 01:10:18 And very much in line with the very shippy nature of Avey, you've poached some pretty interesting talent from around the Web 2 sphere. The lead data scientist for Twitter stories is now on the team Avey. We already talked to Christina, who was lead TikTok business development. You've also poached some pretty high-quality talent from Apple as well. Stani, what's going on over there? You're building like a social media mafia? Tell us about the team that's being built over behind Lens Protocol.
Starting point is 01:10:50 Yeah, I mean, we had definitely. the amazing hires in the past year. And I'm super proud how much of our team actually is, there is a lot of combination of community members from the VEP3 and who has been in the space and are very experienced in smart contracts and talent coming from VAT3 and also more from Fintech as well. So it's kind of like a very diverse set of talent that is coming into ABE. And definitely I think, I think it's an amazing opportunity at the moment that we are able to attract a lot of people from different kinds of industries and especially from big tech. I think there's also some sort of realization with people that I talk and talent from big tech in terms of like what WebTree as an opportunity means and how we build things and how the community aspect is important here. And I think many folks that are working in big tech and these big social media companies,
Starting point is 01:11:55 they're pretty much like tired in the models of having kind of like to build applications where you basically extract data from users and kind of like provide the same behavior of selling services. And the proposition of user on network is just a big value proposition. and networks that are actually kind of like bound by the, governed by the DAOs. And I think we will see more and more talent coming into the space. So I'm super excited to hire more. So if anyone is out there, so just reach me out and, you know, let's talk more. Is there a roadmap for Lent's protocol?
Starting point is 01:12:41 When do I get to go play with it as a non-developer, as a user, that needs the developers to build some stuff. What should I be paying attention to with the future of Lens protocol? Yeah, I think if you go to doxatlens.com, that dev, so dox.lens.d.dev, you have an amazing documentation that is done by our engineering team and our content team tried to make it as beautiful as possible. You can actually interact directly with the smart contracts, but also would build a very powerful API.
Starting point is 01:13:14 And the API means that actually you can extract data from the protocol without in an index fashion. So for example, if you want to get all the data about different kinds of follow modules or even NFTs that a particular wallet address has in a mainnet or polygon, you can do that with the API. So it's a way of actually helping people to build faster, social media applications.
Starting point is 01:13:43 And what I want to see more, maybe in the future from developers building actually community front ends that can be forked by anyone and we can just in a way as fast as possible in the space. Stani, we've talked about AVE V3, which has been awesome. The return of AVE,
Starting point is 01:14:01 even though AVE never left. And we also talked about just now Lens Protocol, what you're doing, the Web 3 space. I want to just round this out and close this out. getting kind of your OG veteran hat a little bit and your perspective on the space right now. So a number of things going on that we could talk about. And one question I think I have for you right now is it seems like a lot of the value and some of the attention, at least in the Ethereum space, has been sucked out of
Starting point is 01:14:34 DFI recently, at least if you look at kind of token market caps and gone into Ether. right so the the the dPI to eth ratio has been has been bleeding um and people are wondering if defy will will recover against the value of eth what's your take on this are you are you bullish on defy and i'm i'm sure your answer is going to be yes but like how about relative to ether yeah as an asset as denominated in ether what do you think to ABE, so I'm putting my DFI cat on. I have a cap on. I think, no, I think these protocols are meant to stay, and maybe not the technology itself,
Starting point is 01:15:22 let's say, but what is the surplus is the Dow's and the treasuries they're collecting and the ability to innovate further. So I think what happens is that over the period of time, those communities that can constantly continue innovating securely, and bringing new things into the space, we'll definitely try. But I think in terms of user adoption, especially with the layer 2s and other networks, we will see more and more users coming. And I really, really believe that Web3 protocols are meant to be scaled something like IP or HDPS,
Starting point is 01:15:58 where they're in a very quite mainstream adoption. It will take time to get there. But the important thing is to realize that Web3 networks, they don't need to grow fast. as in Web 2 platforms, for example, and especially in social media, if you don't have a successful platform in the couple of years, you kind of are in the graveyard zone. But in Web 3, you know, networks can propagate very slowly, whether it's social media. Good example is ENS. It has been around three years, and it's slowly growing all the time. Pop as well, for example, started one person giving proof of attestation in different events, and it's growing into a protocol, and so,
Starting point is 01:16:39 So over years, so everything doesn't need to actually be very much like fast tech here in WebTree. And that's, I think that keeps me calm and excited to build new things. Another rapid fire question for you then. So what's your take on alternative layer ones versus the LTEU ecosystem on Ethereum? Do you think one is going to outcompete the other? Do you think that there's room for both? Just general thoughts on this? Yeah, I think there is room for everyone, but the market share depends on how much there is innovation in all of these communities and kind of like in the community support there.
Starting point is 01:17:21 So I think all of them will exist, but then market share will depend on how much we see those communities building. How about this new crop of defy builders that we've seen lately under a moniker of defy 2.0, it feels like there's, There's some defy zoomer blood out there, some Gen Z blood that are building some new things. Yeah, cultural differences from the defy class of 2018, 2019, and the defy class of 2021 and 2022. What do you think of these new defy builders? Are you right saying I'm old or one? I'm saying all of us are old, Stani. We've all aged two decades in the last two years.
Starting point is 01:18:03 True. One year in defy is 10 years. in 10-year normal life and 100 years in Tradify. Yes. No, I think it's amazing that there's a lot of young people out there building these into finance. And I think one observation is that the more younger people we have, they're more smarter.
Starting point is 01:18:26 So I don't know where this kind of like a business comes from. But for me, like it even takes a lot of time to understand some of these protocols. and I need to put a lot of effort in investigating and understanding them. So I think it's good for the space. And I would rather see more and more innovation. And if there's someone out there who actually wants to work together even, you know, to message me, I'm happy to help as well. There you go, guys.
Starting point is 01:18:57 One of the OG builders in the space just invited you to message him if you're building something interesting. Sonny, thanks so much. This has been a lot of fun, and we always appreciate your vision, everything you're doing in crypto and in DFi. So thanks for taking us through all of this. Really exciting to see AVE V3 launch, really exciting to see what you do with Lens in the future.
Starting point is 01:19:19 And all of the other things that you're probably going to build in crypto as well. So we appreciate your time. Thank you so much, friend. Thank you, David. This was amazing, amazing reunion. Absolutely. Let's do it again in less than a year, Yeah, let's definitely do that.
Starting point is 01:19:35 Yeah. Bankless community, some takeaways for you. I hope you were listening very intently and carefully. It seemed to me in the first part we talked a little bit about investing in the community. That's what you are doing when you're buying a protocol. You're not just buying one static idea. You're investing in community. The best coordinated Dowson protocols will win.
Starting point is 01:19:54 And they are not limited to what they do when they start. They can evolve in many different directions. We've certainly seen that with Avey. Guys, if you are on YouTube, make sure you like and subscribe to this. If you are listening to this on the podcast, give us a review. Give us five-star review, preferably. That's how we get bankless to the top of the charts. Risks and disclaimers, got of course end with these.
Starting point is 01:20:17 None of this has been financial advice. Bitcoin is risky, even though we didn't talk about it. So is ETH. So is D-Fi. You could definitely lose what you put in, but we are headed west. This is the frontier. It isn't for everyone, but we're glad you're with us on the bank. Thank you for a lot.

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