Unchained - The Competition Is On. Who’ll Win the USDH Ticker on Hyperliquid? - Ep. 899

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

The battle for Hyperliquid’s USDH ticker is a referendum on what crypto wants to be: a community-first public good, or a globally scaled, institution-ready product.  With the clock ticking toward the proposal and voting deadlines, Agora’s Nick van Eck and Paxos Labs’ Bhau Kotecha lay out their cases—100% revenue back to users vs. 95% with enterprise distribution, “Hyperliquid alignment” versus “bring it to the masses,” and what each would build on day one if they win.  We also dig into liquidity, slippage claims, validator dynamics, and how a single ticker could shape the future of onchain markets. Thank you to our sponsors ⁠⁠Mantle⁠⁠! Guests: Nick van Eck, CEO and Co-founder of Agora Bhau Kotecha, Co-founder of Paxos Labs Links: Unchained:  Stablecoin Issuers Enter Bidding War to Launch Hyperliquid’s USDH Sky Joins Bidding War to Launch Hyperliquid’s USDH  Timestamps: 🎬 0:00 Intro ⏱️ 0:45 How Laura breaks down the background of the proposals 💵 2:12 Why the USDH ticker matters so much for Hyperliquid 🌊 4:04 Why Hyperliquid is an ecosystem “you need to be in” 📜 5:38 How Agora explains its proposal to return all revenue 🏦 10:08 How Paxos makes its case for enterprise distribution 🤝 14:03 Why “Hyperliquid alignment” is central to this debate 🎁 17:05 Why Agora says it’s willing to give back 100% of revenue—what’s in it for them 💸 19:26 Why Paxos is pushing for 95% revenue back instead of 100% 🚀 24:03 What each side would build on day one if they win ⚖️ 31:49 How to characterize the differences between the two proposals ❓ 34:11 What it would mean if neither Agora nor Paxos wins 📉 39:23 Whether Paxos’s PYUSD suffers from slippage and liquidity issues 🗳️ 42:08 What voters should really consider when choosing a proposal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This has been like the first time that like governance has been like fun. You know, it feels like years. And I think, you know, frankly, like the competitiveness of the proposals is going to deliver like a really awesome outcome from the hyperliquid community regardless of what happens. Hey, everyone. Welcome to Unchained. You're no hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin. Mantua is pioneering blockchain for banking, a revolutionary new category at the intersection of,

of TradFi and Web3. Follow Mantle underscore official to learn more. So I'm here with Nick Vanek, CEO and co-founder of Agora, and Bo Kotecha, co-founder of Paxos Labs. Welcome, Nick and Bo. Thank you. Thanks for having us. So in case you were busy touching grass this weekend

or you're living under a rock, there was a frenzy. When the Hyperliquid Foundation announced that I was going to have voting for the SDH ticker in Hyperliquid, for a stable coin. So that prompted a slew of proposals over the weekend, including by both of your companies, Agora and Paxos. And, you know, quick glance, they seem to be the ones that are getting the most engagement. There's some others that also have high engagement. You know, but just for listeners who, like I said, if you happen to actually enjoy your weekend, you may not know that basically there's deadlines coming up. So there's the reason why there's a lot of activity about this right now.

So the first deadline is the proposal deadline, which is September 10th at 10 UTC. Validators then have one day to declare which proposal they're going to be backing. And so then users will have until September 14th to move their stake to a validator that supports the proposal that they would like to vote for. So, you know, Nick and Bo, why don't we just start with this one basic question before we dive into your proposals, why is the USDAH ticker so important here? Because that's literally the only thing this competition is about is that particular ticker. So Nick, why don't you, why don't you start? Yeah, I think the reason why it's so important is one of the few, it was,

you know, the only ticket that was actually like reserved by the team. And I think this is really going to be the community aligned stable coin. And so there is a huge opportunity for, for an issuer or one of the proposers to really take part in offering a public good to the hyper liquid community, which is one of the most active and engaged communities in the entire space. Right. And I think one that everyone, certainly at least on this call believe, is going to continue to grow and be a large part of, you know, transforming financial markets. And so, you know, it's just a ticker, but I think there's an opportunity to do something really unique that is, you know, aligned with the hyperliquid, you know, ethos and community.

And that's certainly why we're interested in it. You know, I imagine both feel similarly, but we'll let him, you know, opine. Yeah. I mean, I think Nick's spot on, right, like, I think the community alignment is there. I think having launched stable coins previously at Baxos, having launched products previously, especially for something like a crypto native ecosystem, being able to build with your users, I think is so powerful. Like, we were going to go work in hyperliquine, no matter.

What? We were going to launch products in hyperliquic. We already have products live and hyperliquid. But the ability to actually build with community feedback is such a powerful mechanism. And really, like, this proposal is enabled that. If we've gotten more feedback in the last, whatever, 48 hours, which I know have been fun for Nick and I, then we can possibly get on any other product cycle. Right. And so being able to get that close to the community, build with them and get that feedback has been amazing. And we want to build a product that really resonates with the community is hyperlipal. liquid aligned and this is an amazing way to do it. It's not that you can't do it with another

ticker, but this is a way that you can kind of really get close to the community and build what resonates with them. And so for both of you, if your team does not win, you will still build a stable coin in the hyperliquid ecosystem or what would be your plans then? Of course. Yeah, I was asked this question earlier today, like, of course. I don't think there's an option not to, right? This is one of the most active ecosystems in the space and you need to be here, right? It's the number one trading ecosystem. So, you know, obviously, if we don't win USDA, we'd have to figure out what we want to do, whether it's like something with a USDA or other white-labeled partners that are either active in the ecosystem today or would want to come

to the ecosystem. So it would be a little bit of a TBD, but I think we would 100% be there. Yeah, we're going to be there. Funny enough, I believe it was Thursday night or Wednesday night. We did buy a USD ticker in an Iper liquid auction. And so, It just those lucky coincidence at the very next day that they dropped this. Maybe it could have saved me some money there, but it's all good. That's how it goes. Yeah, that's how it goes, right? It's like you, anyway, I believe it was Wednesday night or Thursday night.

We bought a USD ticker on I believe it auction, and we've been planning this. We've been working towards this. And then, you know, Friday night, we had a fun evening and weekend for the entire team. But yes, to answer your question, we're going to build. And I feel like they're going to keep building. we already have a team that's been building there and it plans to continue to do so. Okay, so you've got something in your back pocket. Can I ask which ticker it was that you bought?

I won't share it yet. Okay. My guest would be USDP, but anyway, okay. So let's now talk about the proposals. Why don't we, we'll start with Nick. So go ahead and, you know, for those of you who missed this on Twitter or Discord, go ahead and explain what you guys are proposing. Yeah, so maybe I can, I'll even start with like, sort of our whole process, right? I was like on my way to work on Friday morning, got a DM that the

ticker was going to be opened up. I stacked Friday, so I actually started working on the proposal Friday night. And at the time, you know, the one proposal there was the sort of pre-baked native markets one. And I think Bo will appreciate this as well. But, you know, there's about five to six billion of USC on hyperliquid today, right? This is like one of the largest exchanges, like, on planet Earth, certainly when it comes to crypto. And you need infrastructure that can scale. And so one of the first value as we thought that we could provide is having institutional infrastructure built for scale on day one.

And what I mean by that is having GSA banking partners, right? So State Street, which is 49 trillion in assets under custody, is our cash custodian. And then Vanac, which is a multi-decade 100 billion plus asset. manager manages the reserves, right? And so you have blue chip institutions that makes this an infinitely scalable stable coin, but also is safe and secure. Something that we also have believed that Agora since day one is that digital dollars should be public goods.

That's actually what our original slogan was. And so we proposed 100% revenue, go back to the community. And then, you know, lastly, I would say is like, we wanted to build this coalition first. right. You know, obviously we power, you know, I think fairly robust institutional grade issuance, but there's plenty of other partners that you can bring to really expand USDA's reach. And it's why we reach out to Ray and Layer Zero and a number of others. We keep getting in balance on people that want to be supportive of this. You know, I think they reached that to us and said yes, because they trust us and respect us. But, you know, they should they should work with whoever,

I think ultimately, ultimately wins this, right? And so we were sort of coalition first, and that's really the proposal that we put forward. Yeah, happy to dig into any of those points. But I think, right, it's being institutional first and safe, you know, driving maximum value back to the community and then, you know, being coalition first. Yeah, one comment I'll make is just, you know, I heard this, honestly, I'm pretty sure I heard this on the chopping block. And it was like Tarun just saying something like he traveled to Argentina or Turkey. I forget where. But he said something like, oh, I found out that USC lost significant market share after the SVB incident.

And so, you know, I understand that point. You made about just like you want big players. You don't want anything to go wrong. You want people to have utmost trust in this particular asset. And then the last thing I'll say is like, kudos to State Street. You know, you would imagine that a really old company like that would be super slow moving, but I'm guessing you reached out on Friday. You're like, hey, this thing just dropped.

I will say, to be fair, when your family runs $130 billion asset manager that parks all their money at State Street, like, you know, they say yes to some things, right? So we were using them for a long time. But your point about the USDA DPEG is real, right? I mean, like you can see, you saw how that impacted Circle for years, right? And I actually, you know, my prior career before starting Encore, I was on the venture side. And it was very close to many founders, whether they were building Lemon in Argentina or other FinTechs. And they had actually pushed their users to use USDA because they had perceived it to be safer and got a lot of, got a lot of blowback.

And so there is like real damage. I think these are some of like the things that people don't, you know, in the weed things that people don't think about. What's stablequin issuers? they're like, oh, it's like money in a bank. Like, how hard could it be? And there's actually a lot of things that are, you know, especially challenging, you know, that I think Bo knows as well from his experience at Paxos. And, you know, that's why I think we wanted to really like make some of those points in our proposal. Because look, even if we don't get chosen, we care about the community. We want this to be a successful launch. And like, those things matter. Okay. So, Bo, go ahead and

describe the Paxos Labs proposal. Sure. Yeah. And so I think, you know, when we first looked at, proposal, the three things that stood out to us were hyperliquid first, hyperliquid aligned, and compliant. Those are the three things that stood out to us. And, you know, I'll kind to take them one by one on where we thought we were a perfect fit. And I'll start with the last one. From a compliance standpoint, right, Axlis has been doing this for over a decade. We are a regulated state trust in New York. We're obtaining an OCC federal trust. We are one of the only MECA compliant issuers out of the EU. We're issuing out of Singapore. We're sharing out of the UAE, we have been doing regulated, safe, stablecoin issuance for longer than

anyone in the industry. And to Nick's point, like, I think this stuff gets glossed over, right? Like, this is the most important part of building a stable coin. Are the funds safe? Are the customers funds safe? And doing that with partners and people that have done it at scale before, I think is really important. And we've done that across a bunch of different customers. We work with the best banking partners, the best custodians globally. We have relationships with every single regulator across the world, really. Many of whom use our standard as their template for what new companies wanting to issue out of the jurisdiction should do.

So we've been doing this for a long time at a really high standard. And so our compliance, you know, the compliance checkbox, I will say, is ticked. From a hyperliquid first, hyperliquid aligned perspective, some of the origins of Paxos labs, Right. Over the last couple years, we've launched several stable coins out of Paxos, including PayPal's P-Y-USD, including SDL, which is a yield variant staple coin in USDG, which was a consortium stable coin with Robin Hood, Cracken, Anchorage, OKX, several others. We learned a lot. And just what we learned was getting to like day one of issuance is really hard. Getting the regulation right, all this stuff they talked about. All that stuff is really hard

to get to day one. But there's a whole journey you need to go on after that. It's like, how do you actually grow in crypto-native ecosystems? How do you actually build compelling products and utility around stablecoins? And so this is something we were thinking about really deeply last year as we kind of went through the stretch of stablecoin launches. And this is where Chad, to see who's the CEO, Paxos and I kind of like put our heads together and said, we really need a team and a business unit that's focused on this growing in crypto-native ecosystems. And that's where we kind of started to build the origins of Paxos Labs, at which point we got to meet a team, based on New York here called Molecular Labs that has been building in hyperliquids since day one.

They launched two structured products. One is L-HIP, other is WHLP, which are two primitives that power the hyperliquid ecosystem since the very first day of hyper-evam launch. Yeah, and one is loop type and the other's wrapped type. Yep, exactly. And it's not just the fact that there's two things that really appeal to us about this team. One, we clearly saw hyperliquid as like kind of an up-and-coming ecosystem that was going to be a cornerstone of kind of this, like, merging of traditional finance and decentralized finance. If there was a chance of any platform actually kind of coming into the world that

we're used to playing in on the Paxosite, it was hyperliquid. So it was that. But two, they were really building out a lot of our thesis. Our thesis was, yes, you can have a stable coin. Yes, you can have native assets. But you actually need to build compelling experiences and products around them. And so that's when we decided to bring that team in. And a lot of that DNA is now in Paxos labs.

Obviously, we've got now $100 million of TBL across these to hyper liquid products today, right? And so we have been building, we have DNA of this team, from this team in the hyperliquid ecosystem, and bringing them in combining that expertise, that experience in hyperliquid with Paxosis history of compliant issuance. You know, I think we really kind of like,

tick all the boxes, if you will, for what hyperliquid and the foundation's looking for. Yeah, I mean, honestly, that's the commentary I see on Twitter a lot, as people talk about this hyper liquid alignment. I'd be interested to hear a little bit more on why you think that is so important or why it is that you see people kind of noting that this is something that they would, like a criteria that they would use to evaluate these proposals. Yeah, I mean, look, I think they've built an incredible community and ecosystem, right?

And when you have something amazing, you want to maintain it. And I totally understand it. And that's something that I appreciate about how they operate. They have a certain set of values and ethos in hyperliquid, and they want to maintain them. And I think that's really important. And like anything that gets off the ground and is it successful, it has a secret sauce, right? And for them, some of that secret sauce is how it deeply involved their community is. And they want to keep that going and I respect it.

And Nick, you didn't really talk about that in your proposal, like alignment with hyperliquid. So can you describe, you know, how you think the Agora proposal shows alignment? Yeah, so I think for us, right, it's like having native deployment on day one, but it's also like maximum revenue back to the community and also having active governance, right? You know, something, you know, one of the results of this being sort of sprung on us so quickly is like actually a lot of like the fine print wasn't decided. And so like a lot of our proposal has like even evolved within the last 24 hours where like I've actually thought quite a bit of like how do you actually really, you know, so many crypto communities try to

solve like for like effective governance. And I actually think this is like a perfect opportunity to have like a, you know, a reoccurring governance vote on like a quarterly basis. Like, okay, what do we actually do with 100% of the revenue from this ecosystem token? And so that I think, you know, is is, is, you know, we've spoken with a hyperliquid team in the past, right? Even before hyper EVM about what brand. bringing like a white label and native stable coin to the ecosystem could look like because you are giving up hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. And then I'd say like beyond that, you know, a lot of people like to attach, I guess my family

business activities, whether or not I work there or not, but like the trading team and the BC team there has been very active in the ecosystem. I'm trying to get them to open their mouths, you know, and, you know, hopefully getting on the phone with the boss later today so that they can actually talk. more about what they've been doing because they are very involved. They talk to teams every single day. And so hopefully more info can be coming out after this because he was just calling me as we were getting going. But I think ultimately, you know, the alignment will be expressed in how successful USDA is in delivering revenue and value back to the ecosystem. I think one of the

innovative ways that we can do that is through actually growing it beyond hyperavium. So that's why I mentioned Rain and some of these other providers. MoonPay is working closely with us and we're figuring out how we can implement builder codes and like sort of like that up across all of the wallets that they support, right? Because it's like, you know, we know that USDA will be successful within the hyperliquid eco. How can we go outside of that ecosystem and expose new users, whether it's retail, traders, institutions to this asset and into these markets? Okay.

So, yeah. I mean, you guys started to go into one of the. differences that at least people are talking about quite a bit, which is the difference in the rev share that you're proposing. So Nick, as you mentioned, you guys are proposing that you would offer 100% of the revenues back to the hyperliquid ecosystem. So, you know, when I was just thinking about this, I was like, okay, so this business is going to spend a lot of time on building out this USDH, but then they're not, they're going to literally make zero money from it. So what's in it for Agora? Like, why would you do that? Yeah. So I think what's in it for like me,

personally is like I got into crypto and digital assets because I think this is a once in a generation transformation of market infrastructure and in money, right? I think hyperliquid and the hyper liquid ecosystem is like the place for that. And so if like we can spend like our time like building a public good for this ecosystem, like that is time well spent. Right. I think beyond that, obviously like this is like the Super Bowl. A lot of eyes are going to be on this. Like if we do a really great job like that'll translate into success and other aspects of our business. And we have other products and other lines of business that can subsidize this, right? Like we already in the issue where we have the entire stack built, right?

And so spinning up an additional asset, you know, on this infrastructure is a marginal cost to us that we're willing to eat. And, you know, again, like I said, like a lot of people that we know, whether they're on our team or friends or, you know, peer firms are involved in the ecosystem already. And so it's something that they want to do because they're part of the community and and feel like this is like a public good, right? So that's why. And would you propose that like just in perpetuity 100% of the revenues go back? Because absolutely. Then you just have quarterly governance votes on okay, do we buy back hype? Do we give us it to the assistant fund? Do we give it a staker?

We don't want to make anybody on this. Interesting. Okay. So, Bo, your proposal differs. You know, you are proposing that or Paxos really is Paxos Labs is proposing that you'll share 95 percent of the revenue. So explain why you chose that figure. Yeah, totally. And I think a lot of it is, like, I believe incentives are really powerful. And, you know, I think no matter how much you care about an ecosystem or how much you're aligned, it really is hard to keep investing in something that has as no impact to your business whatsoever. And again, what we learned launching all the stable coins we launched over the years at Paxos is, yeah, we can launch a new stable coin with like minimal costs. We can do it, no problem.

It's everything that comes after, right? It takes time to go actually integrate with everyone. There's BD spend, there's marketing spend. We want to hire people. We want to put all of our weight behind this asset, right? And so can we do it for nothing? Totally, right? But I think, like, the goal isn't just issuing it.

We think this is going to be the biggest stable coin in the world. And how do we do that? Well, it's like, hey, circle has 1,000 people, right? And I'm not saying I want to go higher 1,000 people. I'd really know. I hope to God I never get to that world. But it's like, hey, like, we need to staff the team. We need to go put people out there.

We need to actually invest in this business. And so, you know, it's not so much like I'm going to take that dollar and put it in my pocket. It's, I want to reinvest. I want to make this great. I want to make this big. Like, I don't want to just issue it once and then be like, yeah, we did it. Like, I want to make this a massive asset. I want to make it the biggest asset in the world.

And that takes investment, time and incentives. Another thing I'll add to this is like there's been a lot of debater on like to next point. Like, where does it go? Does it go to Stakers? Does it go to assistant funds? We are, you know, ears wide open for like listening to the community in terms of like where those funds go. But I will say one other learning from our history of launching stable coins and trying to scale them is that people don't just like switch their stable coin provider overnight. You need to provide incentives to all the ecosystem players that are going to make USDA big. Right. And, you know, there are some ways to do it. You can do the assistance fund and, you know, presumably everyone's a hype holder and that's great. But I think we need to. a balance there. And in my, in my ideal world, right, it's like, hey, maybe we start with, you know, a 95% and then, you know, some of that is going to the assistant fund and some of it's going to actually system integrators, right? Like the integrators and the platforms that are actually adopting us, DHS. And then let's say over some time period, we get that to 99% is going

to the assistant fund. Amazing. Like, we have achieved our goal of making this, you know, a $500 billion asset, a trillion dollar asset. Awesome. Like, let's send it all to the assistant fund. And that's kind of the thing I would encourage the community to think about is like, what does it take to make it really big, not just what does it take to issue it? Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's kind of interesting. So, Nick, the way that you described yours, it's almost like the Uber model of we're just going to kind of throw whatever money we have into just like getting market share. That's sort of like, you know, it's basically a pretty common tactic. I think that's like a fair, a fair way to articulate it, Right, because we already have other lines of business and are profitable in other ways.

So it's like we can reinvest profits from other activities of the business into the ecosystem. Right. And like something that we committed to is like we can seed this with $10 million from our balance sheet from the get-go. The partners have called us over the last 24 hours and said, hey, we can set up a vault. You know, and we'll put nine figures in like from day one to seed this. So, you know, I think that's like one of the benefits of having a broader business too is like, we can run some things on a public good basis. And it was our original slogan, right? As digital dollars are public goods. And we have a lot of like, OGD5 DNA. One of my co-founder is Drake was, you know, the lead debit for acts before he started to go on with me. And, you know, they fell similarly. So kind of want to bring that to bear here. Well, you know, on the flip side, I also see Bow's point where, you know, just at companies, they kind of like will do, you know, their financial analyses and be like, oh, well, this unit's not really performing. So I can see it both ways. I don't know if I, I, I don't know if I,

necessarily like C1 as being like this is more hyper. I think they're about they're just about the same. 95% they're just about the same 5% isn't that much right. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, I think we both at least Bo and I are aligned and we want to get it as close to 100% as you know as we possibly can. Right. And so I think that's why it's like if you look at any other proposal, right?

If they're not do 95 to 100, you know, they almost shouldn't even be in the conversation. Yeah. Okay. So let's say your team wins. you know, for both of you. Describe what it is that you would try to do within the first six months. You know, what would be your game plan for ensuring that USDAH becomes the top stable coin in the hyperliquid ecosystem that it can take on USDC, which as we mentioned, it's got, you know, like a five, I think it's like $5.4 billion in hyperliquid right now. You know, Tether is a distant second at

189 million. So yeah, I'd be curious to hear what you are thinking. And I know you guys just spun these proposals said for the last weekend. So I'm interested to hear what you have to say about this. Yeah. So I think the first part of my answer will be boring but pragmatic, which is in the first six months, we got to make USDA as liquid and cost efficient as USDC is today in hyperliquid. Make sure that the current users of hyperliquid can have the same or better experience with USDA as they do with USC today. And what does that mean? That means on an offer. That means liquidity pools. That means all the things that we need to do to make access to USDA as simple as possible,

as seen less as possible. That, I think, is the entire focus in the beginning of this project, making sure the users can get into USDA in the most cost-efficient way possible, least friction way possible. From there, I think it's continuing to go through the entire ecosystem and working with all the platforms, all the different protocols, to ensure that they are kind of moving to USDA and building network effects within, hyperliquid. And from there, I think we really lean into one of Paxos of strengths, right?

We have a global enterprise distribution network, not just from a stable coin perspective. There's over 100 partners that are integrated with Paxos Stablecoins today, but our crypto brokers is a service product, right? Again, this is not an exchange that people come to like people are like fighting for end users. This is a infrastructure product, right? So PayPal, Venmo, interactive brokers, New Bank, Mercado Libre, many other large FIs, use our broker's product. And a big part of our pitch here is like, we're going to bring hyperliquid to everyone that doesn't have access to hyperliquid today. Right. We're going to go integrate the hype token to our brokerage offering.

We're going to open up access to billions of users. We're going to bring USDA to all these users. And we're going to help build utility around that. Right. And so I think really like the core of our proposal is like, yes, let's keep what makes hyperliquid great. Let's keep it great. But how do we like 10x this? How do we 100x this ecosystem by connecting it to this kind of massive network that packs of it.

has, and that's not just from our crypto brokers product, but, hey, since we're going to be the issuer of both USDA and PY, USDA, and USD, that's being used by all these massive enterprises, well, guess what? We can make those one-to-one interoperable with no slippage, right? And now, hyperliquid and USDA token get day one network effects of building with access, right? And so I think that's like the phase three. That's like the really exciting stuff where we bring hyperliquid to the masses. But the honest answer is the first six months. We'll be like, how do we get liquidity and swaps to be as tight as possible as efficient as possible and make sure everyone can get access to high quality stable coin and hyperliquid.

And just for me to understand the network, so, you know, you guys have your existing stable coins. So are you just saying that like, you know, I'm going to make it up like a, because I actually don't know the specifics, but like are you saying that the different partners that you have used for those stable coins? Like you're going to, like would it be, I don't know, like a Venmo type thing or like just kind of give a little bit more specific examples. So you know you maybe haven't like you don't have the specifics, but as hypotheticals. I'll give you an example, right? Like two of our stable coins today, USDG, which is global dollar, which is this

consortium product that is issued on the behalf of Global Dollar Network, which includes Robin Hood, Cracken, sell for others. And then one of other stable coins, BYUC, which is the PayPal stable coin. Because we're the underlying infrastructure provider for both, we can truly treat those as one-to-one interoperable. Right? Because we actually can move the money between the banks ourselves, right? Versus if you have different issuers, you can't actually, I can't actually give you one of, you know, stable coin A in exchange for stablecoin B until I liquidate stable coin and like move the dollars and like actually move the funds. And so it's kind of like this like network of networks, right? If you consume each stable coins in its own network.

And as we start to spin up, you know, we are the issuer multiple stable coins. These can all connect to each other. And they themselves start to get network effects. And then on the on the brokerage side, obviously, it's like, you know, we have a reach of hundreds of millions of users today already through platforms that are using our crypto brokerage as a service product. And, you know, the goal is like how do we bring hyperliquid the token, but also it's products to those customers that we power. Okay, got it. And Nick, what about you? Six months plan out of the gate if you win.

Yeah, so this is maybe getting a little too into the boring detail. But like the first eight to 12 weeks, I think is actually getting this set up, right? So deploying the stable, getting the liquidity pool set up, working with third party providers, whether it's Rain, Moon Pay, or someone else, you know, the dozens of people that have reached out to us to get this ready on day one. Because what we would want to do is light this up across MoonPay's wallet network, you know, Rain's card network and Visa network, day one. and then see liquidity pools, you know, on on hyperliquid so that this is, to Bo's point, right, just as good as USDC. Like that is going to be the major hurdle.

It's going to take a lot of dollars and a lot of money to get that going. But I think, frankly, just based on what we've seen from the community, you know, whether it's us or Paxos, like it should happen relatively, relatively seamlessly. And then it's like, okay, how do we actually go beyond, right? Is it getting it set up on other blockchains? Is it other exchanges? Right. I think that's going to be a big focus. But really, like, being able to pay with height, like having a USDA card, like,

there's many things that we've contemplated over the last 24 hours with some of our partners. But I think it's all about making it a first class citizen in the same way that USC makes, you know, USC a first class citizen everywhere that they operate, right? And working with partners to do so because, like, you can't do this alone. and I think there's a lot of people that are eager to be very supportive of USDA, you know, wherever, wherever it goes. All right. So in a moment, we're going to talk a little bit more about the various proposals and, you know, criticisms and commentary. But first, a quick word from the sponsors to make the show possible. Mantle leads the establishment of blockchain for banking as the next frontier.

YouR is the access layer that transforms Mantle Network into a purpose-built vertical platform, the blockchain for banking, that enables financial services on-chain. UR unifies and vertically aligns Mantles focus on payments, trading, and assets. MI4, MEath Protocol, Functions of BTC, supported by developer grants, ecosystem incentives, and the industry-leading distribution platform through the UR app, reward station, and by-bit launch pool. All economic activity within UR will be captured by Mantle Network to further drive value to token holders and establish its significance in blockchain for banking. Follow Mantle underscore official to learn more. Back to my conversation with Nick and Bo. So, you know, listening to you guys talk,

here's how I would characterize the Agora proposal. It's sort of like Defy Mullet style, maybe, where there's sort of these like, you know, on-chain partners that are going to be more like fun ends. And then, you know, there's Tradfine in the back. It's like, you know, State Street, Van N, Vanek. It's like the inverse Dief.

My millet. Yeah. I think that's right. Oh, right. We're right. Sorry. It's the inverse. Oh,

you're right. You're so right. And then Bo, you know, I think about like how you have kind of these more mainstream names. That would be like how people would connect to users. But then you also have, you know, the molecular labs acquisition with the ties to the L-Hype and WHLP, which sort of is like more squarely.

you know, in the hyperliquid ecosystem. So would you guys agree that those are kind of like the two different ways that you're approaching this? I think that it's relatively close, right? I would say, you know, both of us have like pretty good institutional bones as well. You know, for us, I think it's thinking about all the partners that we can light up, right? Because we're not as vertically integrated as Paxos, right? We're a much younger company.

And so it's thinking through like, okay, you know, who else can actually, you know, maybe to Bose point earlier, like some folks do want to be incentivized, right? And so even if we operated as, you know, a public good, right? There's on and off, you know, on and off ramps or other partners that might see this as a way to get users to their platform for the first time, right? And maybe offer, you know, feeless transfers and those things as a way to capture users, right? And that's why I think, you know, Moon Pay and some of these folks are so you're going to work and reach out to us is because we don't really compete with them. And we're just a neutral issue that has the stack that can support. something like this. Yeah, and I actually, I just remembered one other bit that I want to ask Bo about,

which is, you know, Agora has this cross-chain component. They have layer zero as a partner. But I don't, unless I missed it, I don't feel like I noticed anything like that. Like, you know, you talked about how it would tie to this network of these other stable coins. But, you know, is that, like something that- We've been working with layer zero since the launch of PYUSD, which was almost two, three years, three years ago now. So we're deeply integrated with layer zero, So, you know, we've worked with a lot of these players, we integrate with RAID. And so, look, I think all those teams are great. And I would be surprised if there's anyone in the ecosystems that's not working with some of these guys.

But, you know, we've been working with Layer Zero. We work with Chain Link as well for certain products. So, you know, we definitely have cross-chain capabilities. You know, something we chose not to highlight in our proposal as, you know, we felt what was most important to the community was kind of sharing kind of our alignment to hyperliquid as a community. And that's kind of where we focused our proposal on. Okay. All right. So imagine that your proposal didn't win. If you were to guess why it is that the community, you know, opted for any other proposal. It doesn't have to be, you know, one of the two that's being featured here. You know, but just like, why do you think yours didn't win? What would, what would be the weakness that you think would have been one of the reasons? Either one of you can go first. Yeah, it depends on how spicy we want to get.

You know, I think maybe I'll put it this way. If neither of our proposals win, I think it's probably because, you know, there was maybe more of a focus on some of the early, you know, one of the early proposals or one that was more community oriented that didn't come from a reputable issuer. And so, you know, I think, and maybe that translates to, you know, if we were to not win, it's probably because someone went with a more community-oriented. oriented post or group that used, you know, a third party issuer, right?

And it wasn't an issuer because something actually, you know, a question I got asked. Another your life last year earlier today, you know, how have you been, you know, how have you been involved in the hyperaliquid ecosystem in a gore? And it's like actually like it's kind of funny, right? Like all like the the institutional great issuers have actually other than circle been blocked out like up until six months ago because there was really no way to get involved. And so I think, you know, I'm curious.

It sounds like Bo has, and they had a similar perspective, they're sort of waiting for the right time to get involved. And then we figured that this would be a good one. Obviously, they have molecular labs. You know, we haven't acquired any teams. And that definitely makes them, you know, closer, I think, to the medal from a team perspective. But if either of us lost or if we lost,

I think it's probably because they went more for someone that was, you know, homegrown. But I think there's some drawbacks from that as well. Yeah, I have. seen, I can't remember who tweeted this, so somebody literally was like, oh, maybe it was Ryan Watkins. He was like, actually, does it make more sense to go with, yeah, kind of like a hyperliquid native group? But anyway, Bo, what about you? I mean, that's my take too, right? Like, I think, as I'll reiterate, like, Paxos has been the de facto white label, a stable coin issuer for a decade,

right? The biggest brands go with Paxos. And I think hyperliquid is, one, is already and going to become one of the biggest brands in finance. And, you know, if they are operating that way, you know, I think it would make sense for them to go with someone like us. But if they didn't and if neither of our proposals won, you know, I kind of agree with Nick. It's like, you know, maybe they're really optimizing towards kind of this like, you know, homegrown team potentially that really isn't doing anything else outside of hyperliquid. And, you know, that's their call and that's the validator's call.

But what I would really push the community for is like, you know, if we're trying to 100x the hyperliquid ecosystem, we have to sing really big. And we have to think about kind of like global distribution and with players that have done it before at scale. And what I will say is like, and if neither of us win, hey, we'll both be involved in the hyper liquid ecosystem anyway. Maybe we'll do with a USD, USDP or, you know, some other stable coin right that we white label. So I think, you know, both of our teams are here for the long term. You know, obviously I think both of our teams are excited about being community aligned with the USDA ticker and in giving back. But, you know, if another team has chosen, both of us supposed to be here, I imagine. Yeah.

You may not lose, sorry, you may not win the ticker, but you might still win top stable coin on USDA. Yeah. And it's funny. I was actually think, I think, you know, this has become bigger right than, you know, just the ticker. But it's like in traditional finance, like tickers go for like nine figures. for sure, you know, having a little bit of insight into that as well. So, like, you know, there's a lot of brand value to this. And I think we're both teams are going to be here for the long term and I think are excited about growing this ecosystem. And I think also like the weekend,

like the support of the weekend from a bunch of different people show like a lot of non-issuers that have been outside looking in clearly are as well. And so I think like this whole proposal process has been nothing but a success for hyperliquid, which is kind of fun to see. And I was kind of joking. I was like, hey, like, look, even if we lose, at least we got, you know, someone else to commit 100%, you know, back to the community. So, I will add there, like, you know, the, the winner might be decided on Thursday or Saturday or Sunday or wherever it is. But again, like, what we have learned time and time again, launching stable points is this is a multi-year journey and execution really matters.

And, you know, so like, we'll be happy for whoever wins. I hope it's us. like, look, you get the ticket, congrats. But like, there's a multi-year journey ahead to win this ecosystem and to be the winning stable coin. And, you know, all I can say is, like, we're committed to doing that regardless if we have the ticker or not. And so, you know, we're excited to compete and have the winning stable coin in the ecosystem, whether it's called USDA or not.

All right. So I did want to ask you guys about one other criticism that I saw, which I thought was interesting. But, you know, I'm not a traitor. So maybe I, maybe there's some stuff I don't know about this situation. But Diokasar has tweeted that he found it quite concerning that most of the team, most of the teams that have proposed, you know, staple coins, he called have terrible liquidity. He noted that Paxos's P-Y-U-SD has non-zero slippage on relatively small size. I have to remember what that screenshot was. It was like maybe. So I saw this tweet. This is on, so I would say, you know, maybe in defensive.

both of us. This is on a theory of Maynet where very few applications are today. Oh, so you feel like his, okay. Well, it certainly has, it maynest certainly hasn't been a focus for us because, you know, it's, it's not really the place to where applications have been built since we started this company. Okay. So you feel like that's the reason. Yeah. Yeah. The screenshots were like terrible. Oh, terrible. And you could ease in like the thing is, right, it's like you can pay for liquidity. Right. And I think specifically in this case as well, like the liquidity will come, come regardless. Yeah.

And yeah, thanks, Nick. And I think that's exactly right. Like, I would love to see that screenshot for Salana, right? Because, you know, between Salana and then Paxos and other partners, there's over, you know, $100 million of liquidity that have been seated for PYUSD and USDG over the years there. And I'm pretty sure that it's quite tight there. What I also say is you can go find any pool that has terrible slippage, right? To Nick's point, it's like, where are you investing the liquidity in?

Right. I might have one kind of range on curve, but it might be something else on Unosophants because I haven't invested in building up liquidity in one of them. Right. And so it's one of those gotchas where it's like, you know, I could probably go find any pair of any stable coin and like, you like, ha, look, you have 10% slippage and it's like, well, like, you know, like you picked, you know, a random pole or you put this or picked that. And so with that said, though, like, I understand the desire for the community to have, like,

really tight pairs there. And it's something we invest in, and both from our own down sheet, but also, you know, we have deep relationships with market makers. And again, we'd work with the community and be like, hey,

what are the most important liquidity venues for you guys, right? What do you care about? Where do you care about the- What are the pairs? Yeah. What are the pairs and where do you want it? Right? And we'll go work with them on it.

And we'll go work with all our market maker relationships. We'll work with our own balance sheet. Every stable coin we've launched, we've ceded at least $100 million dollars liquidity. Right. And so, you know, this is no different. And we'll do that. and it just comes down to where the community wants it and where's the most utility for it.

All right. So let's now talk about some of these other proposals because there's so many. There's one, you know, from Frax or something. I'm definitely not caught up. So please don't. Yeah, I mean, like there was just no way for me even to try to do that. But I did see, you know, I saw some spicy comments about some of the other ones. Just I'm probably just in like discussion forums and stuff like that. But I was curious like, you know, out of the other competitors, are there any that? that you think are strong contenders?

Are there any that you feel like wouldn't be in the best interest of the community for some reason or another? Or are there any particular things that you think that voters should keep in mind for when they go to make their vote of like what they should be looking for in a proposal or what should be like a red flag or yellow flag? So yeah, you can either name names or not. Yeah, I'll clock myself to last night since, you know,

I've been doing other acts, Yeah, I've been working today, so I haven't not fully caught up on what's been going on in the Discord. You know, I would say obviously, like, you know, community-aligned or oriented proposals are interesting, right? Where it's like the native teams where all they've built is in hyperliquid. Like, I think those are interesting and they're compelling and they deserve attention. You know, obviously, I think the community needs to factor in, you know, the risks of maybe not using someone with their own infrastructure. But I think those are interesting. But other than those, I don't really see anyone else other than the Paxos guys that I think is worthy of attention.

But I could be behind and missing people. So I'll caveat that. A general comment I'll make is, you know, as people are evaluating these proposals, to really think deeply about who is like a neutral infrastructure provider in this scenario. I'll use a completely different example as to like, why do people use Paxos as crypto-workers as a service product? Coinbase is the same offering. Coinbase has it. Why don't people use Coinbase?

Coinbase is Coinbase is Coinbase, right? Well, the reason is because the people that integrate this product see Coinbase as a competitor. They're fighting for end users, right? And so there's a conflict of interest there. And Paxos's this position has always been to be a neutral infrastructure provider. And so what I would encourage, you know, folks that are looking at these proposals and thinking about them, for the other providers, are they neutral?

Are they neutral in terms of how they position? themselves against hyperliquid and are they really going to have the hyperliquid ecosystem's best interest in mind in perpetuity, right? For example, Paxos doesn't have a blockchain, doesn't intend to issue a blockchain, right? We are neutral in that sense. And so that is the thing that gives me the most pause for anyone else, right? It's, again, if the goal, this is to have a very community-aligned proposal, how do we make sure the provider of arguably the most important asset in an ecosystem, which is a stable coin, is neutral and aligned in perpetuity? Yeah, I think that's right. Like, no issue.

should be using a provider that is a competing blockchain. Okay. All right. Well, is there anything that I didn't ask either of you that you feel like should be said on this topic? No, but I think like I would add like this has been, I think, you know, obviously, Beau and I were very busy this weekend. We were joking earlier that our fiancés weren't too happy with us yesterday. But, you know, I think, you know, this has been like the first time that like governance has been

like fun and what feels like years. And I think, frankly, like, the competitiveness of the proposals is going to deliver, like, a really awesome outcome from the hyperliquid community regardless of what happens. And so, like, it's been, it's been fun. Like, like, and I feel like it's kind of like captured a little bit of the magic of crypto again, which is like, you know, it's been fun. And so, like, we're excited to see where this goes. We're going to keep working and, you know, trying to improve our proposal. I'm sure Bo will as well. But it's been fun.

And I think a little bit of the magic of crypto is coming back. So it's good. Yeah, you know, it's really funny, actually, because I can't remember when this was, like a few months ago. We were actually going to run a story, like, our Dow's dead because it was like, you know, the other side. Not hyper liquids. Yeah, like the board ape Dow disbanded and then Mia or sorry, Jupiter's Dow went on pause. And I can't remember there were others where we were like, we should do a story. And then we actually never or whoever was bringing that didn't get to finish it.

But the point is like, I actually was thinking the same thing. I was like, this is a vote where like people actually care. Like, it's not just going to be like a quiet little sleepy thing that happens over in the corner that the whales dominate or whatever. I mean, the whales might still dominate. But yeah, and I would add to that, right, where it's like, I hope this reinvigorates the desire to like have public debate and discussion over what's the best solution. Right. You know, I think Sam from Prax was seeing this earlier today. It was like, hey, like the mega thing just came out today.

And they're doing something with Athena. That's awesome. I'm happy for those guys. But like the same time, like, I would have loved to hear about that. Right. I would have loved to talk about how we could help them, right? And it'd be amazing to get into a world where you can do like less backroom deals and like be out in the open and talk about the merits.

And like I think it gets the best product for the ecosystem, best product for the end users. But also as a company, getting the feedback in the open is amazing, right? I've gotten so much quick product feedback over the last couple days, which is, you know, may take us weeks or months to get that quick iterative feedback on what we're doing. And so I think it's a win-win-win, and I hope more ecosystems do this in the future. Yeah, that's a good idea. Well, hopefully we'll have some people who are, you know, managing those types of things, some beady people who are like, you know, maybe we should make this open.

Yeah, it's PVP all the competitors together. Then, you know, then I can do more live streams called such and such throwdown. We had fun with anyone this one. Are you guys? Well, this has been super great chatting with you both. Thank you so much for coming on Unchained. Thanks, Laura. Thanks, Laura.

Unchained is produced by Laura Shin with help from Matt Pilchard, Juan Oranovich, Margaret Curia, and Pam Majumdar. Thanks for listening.