The Wolf Of All Streets - This New Crypto Protocol Could Unlock Billions - Here’s How Token Baskets Work | Dominic Ryder

Starting point is 00:00:00 You can build something that is extremely good and nobody gives a shit because you haven't had the right marketing. Let's say that, for example, you talk about token. And if the token goes up, no one ever says anything, but as soon as it goes down, it's all your fault. When's the last time you heard about a new standard for ERC 20 tokens? Today, I spoke with Dominic Ryder from Alvara about the ERC-7621 token protocol for creating a tokenized basket of assets. This is not like anything else I've heard before in crypto. There's actually something new and innovative happening on the blockchain. To hear all about it, listen to this interview.

Starting point is 00:00:57 So I don't want to take for granted that everybody knows who you. are and what Alvara is. So you have quite the background. Maybe you can give us the quick brief on how you got here. Yeah, sure. So I started out on my supposed to be gap year. I was supposed to study sociology at the University of Bristol and started junior stockbrokers, 250 cold calls a day, commission only, absolutely loved it, just hyper-stimulated with my ADHD and did extremely well. So I decided to take my chartered institutes securities and investments exams instead to become trader at the firm rather than just, you know, a phone monkey. And yeah, by the time I left there, I was senior trader and head of desk. I then moved to St. James's Place wealth management, which is a 40100 wealth manager here in the UK, as a associate partner.

Starting point is 00:01:50 And then after that, worked in traditional BC and then got into crypto, full-time employed, 2020. and I think I first got interested. Well, I heard about it way too early because of my trading circles, offensively early, that I didn't actually take it seriously until about 2020, well, 2018, I think I first bought XRP for my sins. And then, yeah, since then I've been full-time crypto 21 onwards. Well, it's interesting.

Starting point is 00:02:24 You can come in as a trader, obviously, which a lot of people have, but it's a whole other commitment to come in as a builder. And you've decided to do so, co-founding Alvara here, obviously. So maybe give us a TLDR on what it is, and then we can talk about why you did that. Yeah, absolutely. So Alvara is sort of a, it was built out of some of my frustrations with traditional finance

Starting point is 00:02:49 in that I didn't go the normal path, being that I didn't go to university because I thought, well, I'm already doing very well here. I'll just take my professional exams and start trading and start working hard. What I found when I went into sort of VC and private equity in particular is as soon as you go into like an investment committee and, you know, people were asking questions and contributing. I would give my opinion, it was always of interest because I had the experience behind me. But particularly in the UK, there's a lot of nepotism. and sort of blood is thicker than water. And so one of the first questions you get asked

Starting point is 00:03:30 is where did you study and what university did you go to? And as soon as I would say that I was, you know, shocker, stay educated and didn't go on to university, they would never take my ideas seriously. And so this really annoyed me, considering that, you know, all the investment banks, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, their internal applications,

Starting point is 00:03:52 you get filtered out if you tick the box that you don't have a degree, and, you know, even though they'd hire like 21-year-old, you know, spotty just out of university or college with zero experience, 10 years at the, you know, top positions in finance, because I didn't have that piece of paper that said I've been drinking beer for four years, I was just sort of filtered out. And so what Alvara and the ERC-7621, which is the token standard that we have built the infrastructure for and designed, it aims to create a, complete meritocracy within fund and asset management, where no matter who you are, no matter what background you have, as long as the 761 conforms to that standard, it will pull that through onto the platform, rank it on the leaderboard, and therefore you have your CFAs against your retail. You have all geographies. There's no barrier to entry. It's meritocracy, where the talent should rise to the top, and people will see.

Starting point is 00:04:55 your performance speak for itself. So yeah, it's trying to put a bit of a quality back into the financial system. With that in mind, what is the BSKT lab? Because that's obviously sort of a standard you're using alongside obviously ERC 7621, which you've created. Well, so there's a, the original name for the 7621 before we got the official number from Ethereum was the BTS, which stood for basket token standard. And so once we got the 7621, we sort of still had this basket connotation. And so we decided for sure we'll have BSKT basket. So they are one and of the same. It's just the name has developed as we've had the numbers issued and everything like this. So the 7621 as a token standard is essentially you can think of it like an NFT which can store infinite amounts of

Starting point is 00:05:58 other ERC20 tokens and allows for external users to contribute Ethereum and it will issue LP tokens back to those who contribute. So like how UniV2 issues the V2 LP tokens to liquidity providers, every 7621 has a unique ERC20 LP representation. And so what this allows for is infinite scalability. We are the very bottom layer of a potential ecosystem that can have hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of individual sub-dowson sub-proticles built on top of it because every basket has its unique LP token. So you, as a basket, manager and you're earning fees based on the assets under management, you can add liquidity, you can build staking, you can launch a governance token on top, you can build lending strategies,

Starting point is 00:06:56 derivatives, anything that you can innovate on top of a normal ERC20, you can innovate and add to your ERC20 LP token. So not only do you have the 7-621, but you have the ability for a whole sub-DOW or sub-proticle built on top and around it. And so Alvara is the infrastructure, provides the factory contract to allow anybody to mint one of these without needing to hire a developer. We have just a factory option, people click through, and then the more people get contributors, then hopefully they can actually run it like a full business.

Starting point is 00:07:34 So we're the home for minting a fund, managing a fund, and then even selling the rights to it in the future. So the whole business and entrepreneurial lifecycle can take place for us. So is the whole fund a single minted BSKT? I don't know why I can't say those four letters in row or is it like somebody effectively utilizes those to create a larger fund with a number of those tokens? So it's in terms of the pricing and the so the 7-6-21, the BSK-T that stores within it 100% collateralized tokens. So let's say that you have Ethereum,

Starting point is 00:08:19 RAPD, B&B, RAPs, Raps, Rapsal, and your waiting is... That's an index fund. I totally understand. Yeah, exactly. But it does actually purchase those assets. So rather than just tracking the price, you actually have the ownership,

Starting point is 00:08:34 which is great for smaller protocols because essentially Alvara rewards everybody. If you are a small protocol, and the more your community add your token to their baskets, then, you know, effectively it's like a spot bitcoin ETF, but for every single sort of token that has their community building these. So it's real flows going through decks liquidity. So the buys are actually rooted through rather than just being off-chain or representations. That is really, really, really interesting.

Starting point is 00:09:11 What's the great vision then for it? You know, as you obviously see, you're going to have so many different kinds of people minting these. Yeah. Like you said, now that I think about it, you have the communities. They're going to want to do it, obviously, to, you know, create that vehicle for exposure, also to lock up a whole lot of tokens, right?

Starting point is 00:09:30 Because now you've got demand somewhat locked up. But you're also going to have people who are like just literally like hedge fund type guys who are going to see an opportunity to quickly structure these. and market them and move them around. Yeah, there's a huge amount of sort of, you know, stakeholders. Let's say that, for example, you talk about token. And if the token goes up, you know, no one ever says anything. But as soon as it goes down, it's all your fault.

Starting point is 00:10:00 And what the 7621 allows people to do. And, you know, it won't be so much with yourself. But let's say that you have, you know, let's say someone has like a telegram called channel, right? Right. One poor user is the guy who sees that after an hour and is the top of the chaos. And that person has a, you know, they see when the tweet or telegram call went out and they

Starting point is 00:10:30 make a conscious decision that even though it's been live for an hour or two hours and there's been X movement on the chart, they make the conscious decision to buy. However, if it doesn't go well, it's not their fault for some reason. what the 761 allows for is to basically get rid of that problem entirely, because if you are a cool channel owner and you simply swap to, you know, 10% allocation into, I don't know, sand from sandbox, that's probably a bit too big for Telegram Cool Channel to have a price impact. But for this example, you know, everybody gets in at the same price. You put the tweet out off. you have allocated 10% in your basket. And for anyone who complains afterwards, you simply say, well, if you were in the basket, which you can join here,

Starting point is 00:11:24 you would have got the exact same price as every single other person in my community did. There's no longer any complaints, as in the solution is everybody gets in at one price. Because if everyone has contributed Ethereum to the Cool Channel Owner's basket, then when they do that swap, Everyone is in at the exact same price and therefore the instant objection to, well, I bought the top and now I'm angry is, okay, well, next time, contribute to this basket, you'll get into the exact same price as everybody else.

Starting point is 00:11:57 So it solves that problem. Another low-hanging fruit is with sort of VCs and private investors in the VC and private equity game, you know, 90 to 95% of the tokens and investors. fail. Whether it's in crypto, whether it's in a normal startup, that is true. However, crypto has this very unique and unfortunate dynamic for entrepreneurs where you can build something that is extremely good and nobody gives a shit because you haven't had the right marketing. And therefore, you know, these VCs who invest in these projects, they believed in the idea, they believed in the concept. And, you know, there's always the odd like, you know, one or two in the portfolio that have been bad actors.

Starting point is 00:12:42 But for those who are still pushing, for those who still have the liquidity, for those who still have the activity on their socials, but for those who have, of no fault of their own, being destroyed by vesting or haven't had that price discovery. Or just bad timing in the market when everything goes down and you timed your launch at the wrong time. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:13:04 And you as the VC, let's say your Anamoka brand, you can have your All-Stars basket, where you've got your sandbox, your mockiverse, and then you can have your value basket. And your value basket can be the investments that you and a lot of other people are underwater on. However, you still believe in the team. You still have confidence in the tech. You just know that because crypto's idea of what makes a good valuation is completely separated from reality, you can give individuals the opportunity to buy what you still have conviction in.

Starting point is 00:13:42 And it helps all of the tokens because they finally have that buy pressure. It allows for price discovery because everyone wants to buy low and sell high until it's time to buy low. And then everybody buys high and they complain about it. And so I see that as a very, I don't see why any VC in the world would not want to do that. as in, you know, they've written off a lot of these that are down 90% through no fault of the team and the tech. Therefore, they can breathe new life into them just by launching a value basket. So, yeah, there's tons and tons of different ways to use.

Starting point is 00:14:19 7621 doesn't have to be just like liquid tokens, either. You could use it almost like a multi-spac. Let's say you're a VC again, and you want to raise funding in order to invest into four companies. As long as you can tokenize it, anything can go into a 7621. So, you know, whether that's property, weak commodities, gold, silver, anything that can be tokenized and has a source of liquidity to be bought, whether that's white-labeled and private or through decks, then it can go into a 7621. So the opportunities are huge.

Starting point is 00:14:58 You know, the liquid token side is just the immediate. But in the future, as traditional finance comes on chain and as it develops and anyone who believes in, you know, crypto and the fact share certificates exist is testament to that they should do, you know, eventually you should be able to add anything into a 7621. So our job as Alvara is to allow for the mass adoption of the 7621 via our factory contract because just like when Pepsi and Disney came on and did NFT collections, they didn't think twice about the fact that they used the ELC 721 because the 721 is the NFT, the NFT is a 721. And so if we can corner that market and get the token standard as the go-to for on-chain decentralized asset management, then eventually if we have,

Starting point is 00:15:49 have the user base, then we become like a Fidelity Funds Network of decentralized fund and asset management. Because if we have the platform where customers go to get exposure to these, then that is a reason for legitimate institutions to launch with a 7-621 because it gets aggregated by Alvara. And so there's an ALVA token as well, correct? Alva, yes. Yeah, so how does that fit into the ecosystem? So there's two core dynamics. Number one is for the factory contract, people who use that 5% as a minimum is always in the ALBA token.

Starting point is 00:16:35 So important distinction that any coded 7621, whether it's developed independently or minted through the factory contract, we will still recognize and pull it through because obviously we do want traditional institutions to end up using this and therefore, you know, they have mandates. They are not going to use something where they're forced to have 5% of the token. You know, if their property fund, they're not just going to have 5% ALVA for fun. And so we have the 5% mechanic for those who don't want to pay to hire a developer and for those who want to easily mint it through us as the platform. So every contribution to a basket that's minted via us, every minting of a basket buyer's, 5% is held in the ALBA token.

Starting point is 00:17:21 The second mechanic, which is more attractive for institutions and those with large capital to allocate, is that we've taken the same gauge weight governance voting that you see in curve finance, so the VE curve, and we've applied that to ALVA, so we have VE ALVA, so vote escrow Alva, where the more Alvara you lock, the longer that you lock it for, the more voting power you get. With your voting power, you vote to send Alvara rewards to your chosen basket, which means that as a fund or asset manager, if I have the capital, then I can buy Alva, stake Alva, incentivise contributors via yield, as well as any. increase or decrease in price.

Starting point is 00:18:15 The more depositors I get, the more fees I earn, the more fees I earn, the more alba I can buy, the more alba I can stake, the longer I can stake it for, the more voting power you get. And so just like you had the curve wars where you had staked Dow, pickle finance, Yearned Finance, beefy finance, all fighting for as much VE curve as possible for their liquidity aggregators, we've applied that exact same mechanic so that institutions can incentivize. incentivize their basket with Alvara yield. So we're trying to create the same mechanic that created the curve wars,

Starting point is 00:18:51 but rather than having sort of tens or 20s of liquidity aggregators, we want to apply it to thousands and tens of thousands of baskets. That makes perfect sense. So anything else I missed, where can people participate, how can they gain access to this, start to actually use it? So depending on the date that people are watching this, If it is from the 14th of August onwards, then we are live on Mainnet. If it is beforehand, you can still try out the full platform onto Polia TestNet right now.

Starting point is 00:19:23 So if you go on to Alvara.x, Y, Z, and then click through, you can fully run through. You can see all of the mechanics. You can have a play around, see how it works, and get yourself prepared for Mainnet. but if it's past the 14th, then you can jump on right now. Fair enough. Perfect. So anything else I missed? No, I don't think so.

Starting point is 00:19:46 That's sort of the high level. Yeah, it's actually one of the few things I've heard that's actually unique. Yeah, tell me about it. Usually we have 7,000 versions of the same thing. So this is definitely one that I've never heard. There's the first time I've seen a new ERC standard. Well, we invented that. Why 7601 didn't exist until we created it.

Starting point is 00:20:12 But yeah, it's not another hyperliquid or not another, you know, L2, et cetera, et cetera, it actually is something that's trying to solve a problem. And the good thing about it is the market is unlimited. You know, it's as big as the sort of asset management market, you know, in the world, which is constantly growing and by definition only goes up. I can imagine that once you get tokenized everything, that's also going to become very, very interesting because you'll be able to put them in here with the baskets. Yeah, exactly. So if we can, you know, we have a phrase in the UK, which is look after the pennies and the pounds look after themselves.

Starting point is 00:20:50 And so the factory contract allows for that retail adoption and that fast population of the platform, whilst us as a foundation, our job is to work on the B2B side and work with the institutions to get out. actual adoption from traditional finance. Really interesting, man. Really interesting. I definitely was not familiar with it and very compelling. So congratulations. Hope it goes exceptionally well. Thank you.

The Wolf Of All Streets - This New Crypto Protocol Could Unlock Billions - Here’s How Token Baskets Work | Dominic Ryder

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