Speaker 1: So the big question is this, how do investors like
Speaker 1: us get access to the ideas, information, and most importantly,
Speaker 1: the right people that give us the tools and information
Speaker 1: we need to make informed and educated decisions to have success.
Speaker 1: That is the question, and this podcast will give us
Speaker 1: the answers. This is Mark Moss, your host. Let's get
Speaker 1: this started. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the
Speaker 1: Market Disruptors podcast. Today I am joined by v Jennie.
Speaker 1: He is the CEO and co founder of zeri on,
Speaker 1: which is making big moves in the defive space. We
Speaker 1: get into a really good conversation talking about his background
Speaker 1: in the cryptocurrency space, building tokens, building token platforms, how
Speaker 1: he found out about the DeFi space, and why he
Speaker 1: thinks it's probably the biggest thing happening right now in
Speaker 1: the crypto space, and what they're doing about it. Um,
Speaker 1: it's a great conversation. I really enjoyed. Let's go ahead
Speaker 1: just jump right into it. Great. So, um, why don't
Speaker 1: we go ahead and just set this up a little
Speaker 1: bit and just tell us a little bit about you know,
Speaker 1: who you are, how you got into this blockchain, croup
Speaker 1: currency space, and kind of what you're working on right
Speaker 1: now yeah, sure, So we have been in the space
Speaker 1: for quite a while. Actually it all started as as
Speaker 1: many good things are from the hackathon. So I went
Speaker 1: to one of the first blockchain hackathons in Moscow and
Speaker 1: it was actually Round two SEUSAN fifteen and it was
Speaker 1: hosted partially by by like our university and other other
Speaker 1: companies like n XD for instance. So we I got
Speaker 1: my now co founder Alex to join me on this hacothon.
Speaker 1: So we went there and we got a price from
Speaker 1: um now the co founder of Waves platform. So this
Speaker 1: is how they all started for us. We've been developing
Speaker 1: smart contracts since then, and then its rated on different products.
Speaker 1: So one of the big products we started with as
Speaker 1: the area and was the organization platform during Guys Crazy,
Speaker 1: so we were helping companies to do the technical side
Speaker 1: of every I s. So we did in total like
Speaker 1: ten I cues uh And then as the market was evolving,
Speaker 1: we saw that the opportunities actually moving more into the
Speaker 1: de centralized finance space. We like the much better than
Speaker 1: what we saw happening with the I C market because
Speaker 1: we were getting over the pretty bad i would say
Speaker 1: applications and we didn't want to do all over them,
Speaker 1: I would say, so there were only a few that
Speaker 1: we add to an extent like So that's that's how
Speaker 1: we got into the defile space and then started working
Speaker 1: on the current vision and version of SERA. Interesting. So, um,
Speaker 1: you said the waves platform, correct, yep, And and yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember the Waves platform really had set up a
Speaker 1: platform for people to come and launch their I c
Speaker 1: O tokens on there. So that's interesting. So you were
Speaker 1: kind of working behind the scenes on that. Um, so
Speaker 1: this is not something that we were involved with, but
Speaker 1: waves plat from the original idea that they didn't have
Speaker 1: any small contracts and they wanted to prevent the basic
Speaker 1: functionality on the protocol level, like the centralized exchanges not
Speaker 1: being as an application on top of the theory for instance,
Speaker 1: but in veg they included that as part of the protocol.
Speaker 1: So that's that's the direction that they were moving in
Speaker 1: back in the days. I believe that now they have
Speaker 1: shifted more into smartphone checks like food implementation of smartphone
Speaker 1: checks on the platform. But we weren't involved in helping
Speaker 1: them to um fundraise for their platform and back and
Speaker 1: into thousands sixteen okay, yeah, and then by two thousand seventeen.
Speaker 1: They were going pretty hard and heavy, I guess, launching
Speaker 1: a bunch of I c o s and tokens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe they did quite a few. I haven't heard
Speaker 1: of many major ones, but but yeah, definitely they did. Yeah. Interesting,
Speaker 1: So you saw kind of a problem that was going
Speaker 1: on in that space where you just didn't feel like
Speaker 1: a lot of these projects were um necessary, right or whatever.
Speaker 1: So you kind of wanted to leave that and they'll
Speaker 1: find a place where maybe there was a better product
Speaker 1: market fit. Yeah, that's that's right. So we originally when
Speaker 1: we started with the Tokensation platform, we were excited about
Speaker 1: io as a can sept ourselves, like very excited because
Speaker 1: we saw how the Theorium came up as a nice
Speaker 1: year and it was a very successful one. There were
Speaker 1: a few others, and that's how we jumped into the space,
Speaker 1: and we saw that not many people want to do
Speaker 1: that themselves, all the tag beflient lunching a nice ear.
Speaker 1: But then later on it turned into a craze, I
Speaker 1: would say, so a ton of people just jumped into it,
Speaker 1: and not all the good ones. They wanted to scan
Speaker 1: people from time to time, and that that's what distracted
Speaker 1: us from the space, and we we decided that we
Speaker 1: need to move on from the from the I c
Speaker 1: O space and UM. But still we believe in the
Speaker 1: centralized finance and open finance and access and access to
Speaker 1: a lot of people to investment opportunities and other things.
Speaker 1: So that's uh. We discovered defied as a concept UM
Speaker 1: and we saw an opportunity there like what what's the
Speaker 1: problem within the DeFi spaces and how we can tackle it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great, So what what do you see being the
Speaker 1: problems in the in the DeFi space that that you're
Speaker 1: trying to solve and tackle there? There are a lot
Speaker 1: of prestil So we what we did and we just
Speaker 1: sat down, uh and tried to use all these essentialized
Speaker 1: finance protocols ourselves. And it was a pain starting from
Speaker 1: like the first moment. And even though we were experienced
Speaker 1: already with developing on the theorem and the theorem itself,
Speaker 1: it was still complicated to just like opening for instance,
Speaker 1: the CDP was a huge pain back in the days
Speaker 1: UM and then other protocols they were also suffering from
Speaker 1: similar issues. You know, you need to know about all
Speaker 1: the concepts that UM people are referring to when talking
Speaker 1: about essential of finance, they are actually not known by
Speaker 1: a lot of people. And that's that's I think the
Speaker 1: largest issue because it's so much it's like the knowledge
Speaker 1: gap between what people should know to start using it
Speaker 1: and what is the current state of the spaces. So
Speaker 1: when we talk about the DeFi space overall, and you
Speaker 1: mentioned CDP, so CDP for those that aren't aware, is
Speaker 1: the collateralized debt position, right, so it's, uh, you can
Speaker 1: pen up a CDP on Maker Dow right, which would
Speaker 1: be like a loan. Is that is that correct? Is
Speaker 1: that you? And uh? And and so really the DeFi
Speaker 1: space is is it predominantly just the borrowing and lending
Speaker 1: that's happening on cryptocurrency. I would also include the centralized
Speaker 1: exchanges into that space. They were created before the lending
Speaker 1: and boring even appeared, but I kind of defy that
Speaker 1: defined that as um the essential of that changes table
Speaker 1: coins and learning and boring. So these are the primary ones,
Speaker 1: I would say. But then the I think the last
Speaker 1: one that is that hasn't yet happened to an extent
Speaker 1: is synthetic assets that it's emergency yeah, um so so yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess the exchanges would be the first piece, right,
Speaker 1: So that's where people are needing to exchange their tokens
Speaker 1: um and most of those decentralized exchanges or I guess
Speaker 1: all of them have really been built in the ethereum ecosystem.
Speaker 1: So is all this happening in the ethereum ecosystem. There's
Speaker 1: some development on other changes all and especially in the
Speaker 1: de centralized exchanges space on EOS. I believe that there
Speaker 1: are a few decentralized exchanges that will operate life and
Speaker 1: on a few others. So like, for instance, Waves that
Speaker 1: we've talked about, they have the centralized exchanged upper running
Speaker 1: and it has pretty good going um. But most of
Speaker 1: the lending and boring stuff and all the complicated new
Speaker 1: things they actually just appear on the theorem for a
Speaker 1: few reasons, I guess the major ones. It is just
Speaker 1: first of all, there are a ton of different tokens
Speaker 1: on the theorem, so it's there's a lot of different
Speaker 1: tokens to trade and then use as a collateral, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So these are the building pieces that are required to
Speaker 1: have the centralzed fendance. We need to have different kinds
Speaker 1: of assets. And then the next one is I think
Speaker 1: according to a few researchers, there's like four x developers
Speaker 1: on the theorem then on any other chain and git
Speaker 1: point of the second one. So it just in terms
Speaker 1: of the network effect of people working on specific products. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw that. I saw that chart. So back to
Speaker 1: the problem that you're seeing. So, UM, you you look
Speaker 1: at the DeFi space, you looked at the different products
Speaker 1: and that are available, UM, and I guess the problem
Speaker 1: that you saw is that they're very difficult to use. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's largely right. So we just believe that the
Speaker 1: the centrazed fendance should be accessible to people, but right
Speaker 1: now it isn't. So what we wanted to do is
Speaker 1: actually bring that to to the larger audience of people,
Speaker 1: not just adopters of DeFi only. And and is that
Speaker 1: through giving them an easier like ui u X, like
Speaker 1: an easier interface that makes it more accessible to them,
Speaker 1: or is it through like marketing or how do you
Speaker 1: want to do that? Yeah, so we there are a
Speaker 1: few different approaches how to address that. So we have
Speaker 1: focused on the user experience as our first aspect. And
Speaker 1: simply because UM user experience is something it's very important
Speaker 1: from our view and we believe in that, UM and
Speaker 1: we already they see the results of that. So it's
Speaker 1: much easier to use, for instance, are and than if
Speaker 1: you other other applications, and a lot of protocols are
Speaker 1: sending US users because they're the new bees and they
Speaker 1: don't know how to upgrade in the in this whole space. UM.
Speaker 1: But in terms of other approaches like US UX does
Speaker 1: not come just as the DUI tweeks and to make
Speaker 1: the UX better you need to work on multiple different levels.
Speaker 1: So that includes both the back end and the smart contract.
Speaker 1: So we're not targeting. We're not doing yet UM as
Speaker 1: you said, some marketing or promotion of debt, but it's
Speaker 1: more on the level of UX. The UX involves other
Speaker 1: aspects that are behind the scenes that you don't really
Speaker 1: see when when you just like see the n c
Speaker 1: u X. But in terms of like making this work,
Speaker 1: you would need to have a sophisticated backend system and
Speaker 1: the smart contract. Yeah, yeah, I've seen. You know. It's
Speaker 1: interesting because we have these building blocks as you've laid
Speaker 1: them out right, basically four three or four exchange stable coins, lending, borrowing,
Speaker 1: and then maybe synthetic assets UM and so you kind
Speaker 1: of have those four building blocks that can be then
Speaker 1: like added together, but we're starting to see people are
Speaker 1: putting them together in different ways and coming up with
Speaker 1: like new creative use cases. Um. So that's what I
Speaker 1: was curious. Is it like maybe just making all these
Speaker 1: easier to use or are you guys trying to kind
Speaker 1: of develop your own financial products based off of these
Speaker 1: building blocks for some of each. Yes, So we we're
Speaker 1: debating that internally about building our own financial products. And
Speaker 1: the thing is that is that we just don't want
Speaker 1: to rush with that. We see that a lot of
Speaker 1: people are actually working on something similar or we're working
Speaker 1: on um products that would aggregate different out of financial
Speaker 1: building blocks, and there's not much reason for us to
Speaker 1: jump into that right away. We just see that it
Speaker 1: is it will be possible to integrate these as well,
Speaker 1: and I think I think that's the mutual benefits for
Speaker 1: both asked the company that develops the protocol and UH
Speaker 1: in the ecosystem in general. So right now, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: rush into that. And we see that like, yeah, all
Speaker 1: the new things that are popping up, I would say,
Speaker 1: like five different teams are working on the same thing.
Speaker 1: So um, We don't think that we should compete with
Speaker 1: them on on that realm. We just better think how
Speaker 1: that can be presented to the users. And that's how
Speaker 1: how do we increase the adoption of that specific new
Speaker 1: building blocks that people come up with. Do you want
Speaker 1: to talk about what what you're doing specifically, what Zerion
Speaker 1: is doing specifically? Can you get into that? Do you
Speaker 1: mean in terms of like roadmap for the next few
Speaker 1: months currently and and the near roadmap. Yeah, so we
Speaker 1: we just recently rolled out a few features for completely
Speaker 1: new users to enter the space. So over the summer
Speaker 1: we created like we allow people to create an account
Speaker 1: using their phone numbers. Now we have integrated deposits with
Speaker 1: how haven't announced that yet, but now you can buy
Speaker 1: from Zeri and you can buy cryptocurrencies right away. So
Speaker 1: these are the things that will make the experience much better.
Speaker 1: So you can just start off with the area and
Speaker 1: without leaving um to get either for instance. But then
Speaker 1: now we want to focus on more sophisticated financial products,
Speaker 1: products that are already available on the market. So we
Speaker 1: we want to have different things like set protocols, beauty
Speaker 1: swap pools and use swap pools is coming next to
Speaker 1: be viewed within zerin so you don't need to jump
Speaker 1: into like five different applications to understand how your patrol
Speaker 1: you is looking like. So that would be all include
Speaker 1: UM so apart from said UM, we want to have
Speaker 1: d I, d X lending integration and other protocols. And
Speaker 1: that's what you said, set protocol And then did you
Speaker 1: say swap protocol used swap pools, so SWA pools. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so used weapcols. I can go into detalum so use
Speaker 1: allows people to deposit the quality to use swap pools
Speaker 1: and pools amant for trading on union swab. So whenever
Speaker 1: you make a trade for instance, a theorem to die
Speaker 1: or theorem to use the see, you would need to UM.
Speaker 1: You're using someone else's liquity for that to make a trade.
Speaker 1: And UM liquidity providers they are rewarded UM with zero
Speaker 1: point three percent of the token of the trade size.
Speaker 1: And that liquidity can be provided from anywhere, so anyone
Speaker 1: can provide the sequity and that's called um unic swab pools.
Speaker 1: And we want to have that integrated as a financial
Speaker 1: product within there, and so you can UM manager returns
Speaker 1: on unit swap pools you can departed or withdraw liquidity
Speaker 1: from there, um, et cetera. So that's uh so if
Speaker 1: I was a user UM and I was using the
Speaker 1: zero on UM app, I would then be able to
Speaker 1: take my UM tokens and then provide them as liquidity
Speaker 1: for this exchange. And by providing those tokens as liquidity,
Speaker 1: I can make a percentage back. Yes, that's correct, we
Speaker 1: used You're you're still betting on that's a bit more
Speaker 1: complicated financial product because it's not necessarily profitable if the
Speaker 1: price of one of the assets goes one way or another,
Speaker 1: so there is a risk associated with that, but you
Speaker 1: still earn on the productal feeds. So that Yeah, So
Speaker 1: I mean I'm gonna earn the point three or whatever
Speaker 1: that is UM. If the underlying asset goes up or down,
Speaker 1: then I could lose on the asset, but I am
Speaker 1: going to earn on the asset, right, Yeah, that's correct. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: um okay. So that's that's an interesting way to do that.
Speaker 1: So we can earn liquidity. So it's it's basically another
Speaker 1: way to earn against our tokens, may be similar to
Speaker 1: staking or through through lending. Yeah, but as I said,
Speaker 1: it's a bit more risky because you need to understand
Speaker 1: that if the price of the asset is fluctuating a lot,
Speaker 1: Like the best case scenario is when the price of
Speaker 1: finances goes up and then goes down, and then goes
Speaker 1: up and then goes down again to the same where
Speaker 1: you entered. You would just get the fees if if
Speaker 1: the now the price is the same as you entered
Speaker 1: the pool. But if the price was fluctuating, like for instance,
Speaker 1: Easter going out a lot, then you would lose on
Speaker 1: the school because it would be better just to hold either.
Speaker 1: Oh gotcha, gotcha? So when when when, when you feel
Speaker 1: that it's in a good range, it might be time
Speaker 1: to take advantage of that, But in a in a
Speaker 1: strong bowl trend, maybe it's not the best time to
Speaker 1: take advantage of that. Yeah, that's right, okay. And then
Speaker 1: so that's interesting the swap protocols, and do you think
Speaker 1: over time, like lots of different application developers will will
Speaker 1: integrate that in so that unit swap ends up with
Speaker 1: a lot of liquidity. Is that the goal? Um? Yeah,
Speaker 1: so they originally the the idea of the protocol was
Speaker 1: to open this up for a lot of people, so
Speaker 1: everyone can deposit cuility. Right now, there's only unit swap
Speaker 1: that allows people to deposit that, so only through union swap,
Speaker 1: UM units or interface you can put theequility in or
Speaker 1: through the smart contract itself UM. But we as we
Speaker 1: will be integrating that so there will be more places
Speaker 1: to depositive critity. Okay, and then you before the unitsap protocol,
Speaker 1: you talked about the set protocol, and the set protocol
Speaker 1: is a protocol that allows you to build certain sets
Speaker 1: or like um different assets in certain like almost like
Speaker 1: an index. Is that correct? Yeah, that's that's right. So
Speaker 1: that was I believe that was their original idea to
Speaker 1: just build similar to like E T s UM indexes.
Speaker 1: But right now I think it has a much larger
Speaker 1: use case, use cases and scenarios how it can be
Speaker 1: applied because you can track different things, not just the
Speaker 1: prices of assets, but you can track other things about
Speaker 1: the assets that can be used to rebalance the portfolio.
Speaker 1: So yeah, right now they have a few different ones UM.
Speaker 1: So the sets are currently limited to what set protocol
Speaker 1: allows and allows people to create on on their website.
Speaker 1: I think the few first ones for um ether bitcoin
Speaker 1: or our right versa, and the ones that are trying
Speaker 1: to capture the the heights of the market and the
Speaker 1: lows of the market. So if it's like it's a
Speaker 1: balancing set, so is this something where like you'll tap
Speaker 1: into their sets and bring those onto your platform, or
Speaker 1: you'll build your own sets. So we're not planning to
Speaker 1: build our own sets full time being, so we will
Speaker 1: be just helping people to manage their sets, get in
Speaker 1: the area in itself, and it's all our our features
Speaker 1: actually based only your feedback. So we're just collecting what
Speaker 1: people are just requesting um from time to time to
Speaker 1: implement within the area. So we are using that to
Speaker 1: prioritize our features. Okay, all right, so what what what
Speaker 1: other things are you putting in there? What about the
Speaker 1: lending and borrowing? Yes, so right now we do support
Speaker 1: make your do boring, but we don't support compound boring
Speaker 1: and that's something that a few people ask and we're
Speaker 1: looking to that. How how do we make it nice
Speaker 1: and how do we make it where it could make
Speaker 1: your dial as well, So this is definitely coming at
Speaker 1: some point. Okay. Yeah, And on the compound finance side,
Speaker 1: we have only landing right now, so you can put
Speaker 1: your assets to earn interest, but you cannot borrow through there. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we can put our assets on the platform. We
Speaker 1: could maybe potentially use the set protocols to rebalance them
Speaker 1: or take advantage of different ethere and bitcoin splits um
Speaker 1: provide liquidity to the protocol, do some lending eventually maybe
Speaker 1: doing some lending and borrowing. So it's kind of like
Speaker 1: a all in one place to take advantage of all
Speaker 1: these DeFi applications. Yeah, that's mainly right. Yeah, we just
Speaker 1: wanted to make it simple so you can compare different rates.
Speaker 1: So for instance, right now, like there's only one boring
Speaker 1: protocol Maker Dial, but then once we have compounds, you'll
Speaker 1: be able to choose which one do you want to
Speaker 1: go with to like Make or Dial. Rate is I
Speaker 1: believe are around twenty and compound is I would say sixteen.
Speaker 1: Haven't checked just yet, but around that. So you can
Speaker 1: go ahead with compounds instead of Maker if you want so. Um,
Speaker 1: when you look at the industry overall, so you you
Speaker 1: kind of have this, you have a little bit of history.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've been doing this for several years. You
Speaker 1: were you saw a lot of different I c O
Speaker 1: s UM. You know, back in the back in that stage,
Speaker 1: So you kind of have this perspective of the whole
Speaker 1: market and ecosystem and at how this technology is advancing.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious, um, what you think about defy specifically.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously you're building in it, but um, do
Speaker 1: you feel like this is maybe like the first kind
Speaker 1: of application that we're going to see to really start
Speaker 1: getting traction? Um? I think so yes. UM. So I was,
Speaker 1: to be honest, like a round um mayor last year,
Speaker 1: I was pretty disappointed by the overall state of the market.
Speaker 1: So it was just I see it was only nothing
Speaker 1: else was happening, No teams were delivering any products mainly,
Speaker 1: and it was just very depressing. But then I went
Speaker 1: to dot com and that was kind of like a
Speaker 1: bit of fresh air because people I just saw the
Speaker 1: emergence of defied space, that a lot of things are
Speaker 1: actually happening behind the scenes. So that was very refreshing,
Speaker 1: and we saw that Defy something that is very much
Speaker 1: aligned with what we live in and how the space
Speaker 1: de evolving. Remember, like all these ideas around the centralized finance,
Speaker 1: they were kind of already in the air for a
Speaker 1: long time. So since the origination of there, I would say,
Speaker 1: but it was more I think, um kind of like
Speaker 1: the space was trying to shift towards Web three and
Speaker 1: that the that shift I think would take much longer time. UM,
Speaker 1: and defies is something that we can already see the
Speaker 1: benefits of right away. So that's why I think DeFi
Speaker 1: space right now is very interesting for everyone to join.
Speaker 1: Do you think right now? I mean, who is the user?
Speaker 1: What's the use case for DeFi? Is this like a
Speaker 1: retail trader investor? Or are this more like institutional grade
Speaker 1: like products? Um, that's more I would say, it's it's
Speaker 1: the first individual. So mainly people are U using defied
Speaker 1: space for its simplicity if you know what what you're doing.
Speaker 1: So in simplicity I mean, but not the RX of
Speaker 1: it right now, but in terms of the speed and UM,
Speaker 1: for instance, like getting a CDP is much is very
Speaker 1: easy for a lot of people, and then than just
Speaker 1: going to bank and trying to get the same loan
Speaker 1: using your crypto as a collateral, so that that seems
Speaker 1: impossible to to a lot of people. And UM, that's
Speaker 1: that's actually pretty much true for many usictions. And that's
Speaker 1: why fight it's like easy in that sense, and it's
Speaker 1: much faster than traditional banking system as well. So that's
Speaker 1: for instance, like earning time percent on your dollars. Is
Speaker 1: it's a way to go, I would say for people
Speaker 1: who know what they're doing. Yeah, so it's uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's more for retail like individual traders and investors, but
Speaker 1: probably that are more sophisticated that can really understand how
Speaker 1: to leverage these types of learning applications. Yeah, that's that's
Speaker 1: exactly right. And do you see that growing pretty fast?
Speaker 1: I mean right now I think it's about what five
Speaker 1: hundred billions or five million dollars or so is locked
Speaker 1: up kind of like can die And that's is that?
Speaker 1: Is that about the size of the ecosystem right now?
Speaker 1: So I think it's about hundreds of die issued in total,
Speaker 1: maybe in less than that's around seventy million of die issued.
Speaker 1: The rest is like spread across different protocols. And yes,
Speaker 1: this is mainly the sides of the system, but we
Speaker 1: can and that's on lead the total value locked So
Speaker 1: that's amount of fasts that are just sitting within the ecosystem.
Speaker 1: We can also look at the trading wiliumes as well
Speaker 1: and just in general, how how much people are transacting
Speaker 1: and die for instance, so that would I think count
Speaker 1: forwards dephy ecosystem too. Do you have any projections as
Speaker 1: far as like growth in this space, like what are
Speaker 1: you thinking there or what what are what are the
Speaker 1: experts saying, uh that that's the complicated one. U we' well,
Speaker 1: I think that's Um. What what I plan say is
Speaker 1: that I believe the growth will be compounding. So I
Speaker 1: mean not alluding to the complem partical, but looking at
Speaker 1: the space, all these tools are coming coming together. So
Speaker 1: these building blocks, as you sir, as you, as you
Speaker 1: name them, the more of them are available, the more
Speaker 1: use cases we will have. So we'll start with just
Speaker 1: a few ones. It looks like compound has uh is
Speaker 1: one of the most successful ones so far. Um and yeah,
Speaker 1: except the maker, but the Yeah, the proliferation of these
Speaker 1: different building blocks will drive the adoption faster and faster.
Speaker 1: Now I'm curious, um, to find out a little bit
Speaker 1: more about about the company. I think in the past
Speaker 1: you told me you guys kind of have like a
Speaker 1: remote team, right, yeah, so, um, you have a remote team? Uh,
Speaker 1: how does that work? Being a builder? So for I know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different people that are working on
Speaker 1: building different things. I mean, what are some of the
Speaker 1: challenge that you have being a remote team, do you
Speaker 1: think or or is that beneficial for you having a
Speaker 1: remote team, It's has its own advantages and disavengages. Um.
Speaker 1: In terms of the drawbacks of having a remote team,
Speaker 1: the first one is actually, I would I would call
Speaker 1: it having everyone in sing It's just because when you
Speaker 1: are like a team of founders, for instance, sitting in
Speaker 1: one place, you it's rate on different ideas and priorities
Speaker 1: much faster than the rest of the team, and you
Speaker 1: would need to you constantly need to explain that to everyone, um,
Speaker 1: so you can keep them motivated to continue working. So
Speaker 1: that's one of the challenges. And of course associated one
Speaker 1: with that is you need to like team members should
Speaker 1: be very transparent and very that's like they should be
Speaker 1: self managers in a way, so they should be able
Speaker 1: to work without anyone looking at them. So that's that's
Speaker 1: a certain type of people, I would say, And it's
Speaker 1: it's been sometime since we're like, we we spent some
Speaker 1: time trying to find these people, and I think we
Speaker 1: have them on the team right now. But there are
Speaker 1: definitely a lot of advantages. Yeah, so you can be
Speaker 1: anywhere you can work. If you know how to work
Speaker 1: in a remote way, you can work from anywhere and
Speaker 1: that's that's great. That helps with your how do you
Speaker 1: how do you manage a remote team though? Like how
Speaker 1: do you make sure they're working and doing their work
Speaker 1: and doing the doing the work correctly or there's some
Speaker 1: tools that you use or is it just weekly check
Speaker 1: ups or how do you do that? Um, it's been
Speaker 1: it's been through through a lot of iterations. But um,
Speaker 1: what we in terms of the tools that we use,
Speaker 1: it's of course Slack. We have three times a week
Speaker 1: we have a fool team sync in the morning so
Speaker 1: people can understand what kind of tasks they should be
Speaker 1: working on. Of course we use some project issue at trackers,
Speaker 1: so like from Zenhab for instance, it's an extension to
Speaker 1: be hob or trailer as well. Um, yeah, we use
Speaker 1: actually a lot of tools. I calculated that for the
Speaker 1: last year I think in total it was like forty
Speaker 1: one different services in the company. Wow, that's incredible. And
Speaker 1: So for someone who wanted to build a product um
Speaker 1: and was thinking about doing a remote team, how would
Speaker 1: you recommend they would start? Like is it a matter
Speaker 1: of like getting out, traveling to events to meet people. Um,
Speaker 1: are there like job boards that people can use do
Speaker 1: you mean for um? For like speaking off the startup
Speaker 1: within the space, Like someone who wanted to build a
Speaker 1: remote team to build up product in in the crypto space,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't recommend them starting with a remote team, so
Speaker 1: like whenever you can, I would just suggest that you
Speaker 1: can go with the team that you can think daily.
Speaker 1: But it was a necessity for us for a few
Speaker 1: different reasons. But if if that's something that you definitely
Speaker 1: have to do, I believe you just need to spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time, like first evaluating people when you're
Speaker 1: um when they're joining your company, so you need to
Speaker 1: give them some time to adjust and like see and
Speaker 1: constantly track their performance. Of course, of course everyone will
Speaker 1: have some you know, um complications with starting off, but
Speaker 1: if they are able to manage themselves, they they'll deliver
Speaker 1: results quite consistently, so you you should be looking after that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and then you have a co founder as well,
Speaker 1: do you guys split the rolls up like one is
Speaker 1: like a technical co founder and one is more of
Speaker 1: like the business co founder or how does that work?
Speaker 1: It's actually three of us. UM. So it's yeah, Alex
Speaker 1: and a Demon and we caught my co founders UM.
Speaker 1: And yes, Alex is doing he's a CTO. He's doing
Speaker 1: mainly all the technical stuff UM, including back in his
Speaker 1: mort contracts. But Demon is doing more business developments UM.
Speaker 1: And like speaking with our potential partners and I do
Speaker 1: I do the rest I got of things. Everything else
Speaker 1: falls on you. Yeah, I've been reading some articles lately
Speaker 1: they talked about like, you know, people should find a
Speaker 1: technical co founder UM if they're not if they don't
Speaker 1: have that technical role. So I was just curious how
Speaker 1: that overlaps. Are these guys that you've worked with since
Speaker 1: back in the waves days, like you've been with him
Speaker 1: for a while, developed a relationships with them. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. So Alex is the one actually that
Speaker 1: we worked with on this hackatone in the future and
Speaker 1: other on helping waves UM. And but Deem was actually
Speaker 1: employing us a very long time ago, both of us
Speaker 1: as just developers for his for the first previous company.
Speaker 1: Oh cool, and yeah we're old technical. That helps a
Speaker 1: lot actually to just understand each other better. And like, no,
Speaker 1: they're knowing the constraints about implementing a certain feature. We
Speaker 1: don't need to, like, you know, explain that this cannot
Speaker 1: be built in three days. We all know that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well having that patient um it's also good. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess you guys can get on the same page
Speaker 1: to talk about like technical issues that you're having and whatnot. Okay, um, good. Well,
Speaker 1: what what can we expect from Zerion coming down the future? What? What?
Speaker 1: What do we where are you going to be? What's
Speaker 1: coming out? I know you have a big announcement you
Speaker 1: can't talk about now, but maybe they will be coming
Speaker 1: out soon. Yeah, we have a plan to talk about
Speaker 1: our fundraising pretty soon, so that stay tuned for that. Okay,
Speaker 1: okay um, all great? Where where can people find out
Speaker 1: more about Zeroon? I would first suggest our website of course,
Speaker 1: go and explore to our product page and try landing
Speaker 1: some die on compound or getting a loan and cdp um.
Speaker 1: Then I would say you can go to our blog.
Speaker 1: So that's blog that therein that Ayo, And I think
Speaker 1: the major source of news for us it's Twitter right now,
Speaker 1: It's like everyone is on Twitter, defied spaces on Twitter,
Speaker 1: so fellows arein Ayo could underscore. Yeah, we'll make sure
Speaker 1: to link to all that in the show notes. I'm
Speaker 1: curious you said go to the website and go ahead
Speaker 1: and just start trying to do it alone or whatever.
Speaker 1: Um is it? Is it free to use the service
Speaker 1: and then you take a you take a fee out
Speaker 1: or do we pay like a monthly membership for that.
Speaker 1: It's currently completely free, so you only pay for their
Speaker 1: network fees, so that would be gas, so you would
Speaker 1: need to have some ether on your account to start
Speaker 1: using that the arian, but the rest is free. And
Speaker 1: then you guys, you guys have a revenue model where
Speaker 1: you take a percentage of the transaction fees or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were, I mean right now, we don't, and we
Speaker 1: actually don't plan to have that in the near term
Speaker 1: for sure. We to be honest, I'm not a huge
Speaker 1: fan of doing that way of revenue generation simply because
Speaker 1: it feels like grend costraction and people can do elsewhere
Speaker 1: were cheaper and I don't really like that approach. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe will be the better revenue model for us
Speaker 1: will be actually providing more premium features that people can
Speaker 1: access within the are in. So that's that's something that
Speaker 1: we are still considering and working. So I have like
Speaker 1: a free model where you get some base features and
Speaker 1: then people can pay to subscribe to like more advanced features. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe that's the right approach. So for instance, more
Speaker 1: sophisticated accounting for your DeFi portfolio, for the tools for
Speaker 1: instance that only people who are very sophisticated use UM.
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe some financial products that are not
Speaker 1: for everyone for sure. So that's that's the things that
Speaker 1: I think we you should be charging for UM because
Speaker 1: these are actually premium features and up just for basic transaction,
Speaker 1: trying to make people use us simply because our their
Speaker 1: face is better, right, yeah, I mean especially if they
Speaker 1: can just go go directly to those platforms. It makes sense.
Speaker 1: All right, great, well, thank you. Sounds good. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go ahead and make sure we linked to all that
Speaker 1: stuff in the show notes. Everybody can go follow up
Speaker 1: and and learn more about ZERI on and it's definitely
Speaker 1: something I'm gonna be going to play around with and
Speaker 1: experimenting with and uh keeping an eye on. Well, thanks
Speaker 1: for taking the time. Hey, if you like this episode
Speaker 1: of the Market Disruptors podcast, please help us take this
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Speaker 1: time on the Market Instructors podcast