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In this special episode of Edge of NFT, hosts Richard Carthon and Josh Kriger dive into the cutting-edge world of Bitcoin staking, trustless security, and decentralized blockchain ecosystems. Featuring Fisher Yu, co-founder and CTO of Babylon Chain, David Tse, co-founder of Babylon Chain,Eowyn Chen, CEO of Trust Wallet, and Matt Ye, co-founder of Lorenzo Protocol, the conversation delves into how Babylon is revolutionizing the use of Bitcoin for securing Proof of Stake (PoS) systems. The episode also includes insights from YQ, founder of Alt Layer, as the team discusses rollups, shared security, and the future of blockchain development.
This episode is powered by Babylon Chain, a platform focused on unlocking Bitcoin’s security for decentralized applications. Learn more and start earning yield at BabylonChain.io
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Key Topics Covered:
- Trustless Bitcoin Staking: Fisher Yu explains how Babylon Chain enables trustless Bitcoin staking, allowing holders to secure PoS systems without giving up custody of their assets.
- The Role of Babylon in Bitcoin Security: David Tse discusses the development of Babylon and the future of leveraging Bitcoin for decentralized security in the blockchain space.
- Decentralized Wallet Evolution: Eowyn Chen discusses how Trust Wallet is adapting to the growing DeFi ecosystem, helping users move from holding assets to participating in staking, NFTs, and other decentralized applications.
- Liquid Staking and the Future of Yield: Matt Ye breaks down how Lorenzo Protocol provides Bitcoin holders with a safe, decentralized way to earn yield through staking on Babylon.
- Alt Layer Rollups: YQ from Alt Layer shares how application-specific rollups are evolving, creating new opportunities for developers in gaming, DeFi, and more.
What was your favorite quote or lesson from this episode? Please let us know in the comments on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/@edgeofnft/
Episode Highlights:
- Fisher Yu: “Bitcoin staking turns Bitcoin into a stakable asset for any PoS system, creating a truly trustless and self-custodial way to secure decentralized systems.”
- David Tse: “We wanted to create a protocol that uses Bitcoin’s asset security for PoS systems without introducing new trust assumptions. Bitcoin staking allows this in a decentralized manner.”
- Eowyn Chen (Trust Wallet): "At Trust Wallet, we are focused on shifting users from simply holding crypto to utilizing it within DeFi, staking, and NFTs. The future is about usability and empowering users to be more active in the crypto space."
- Matt Ye: “With Lorenzo, we're giving retail Bitcoin holders a chance to safely stake their assets into Babylon, earn yield, and contribute to the security of the blockchain ecosystem.”
- YQ (Alt Layer): “We’re providing rollups as a service that allows developers to create their own customized rollups within minutes, offering faster finality and low fees, perfect for gaming and DeFi.”
For the full transcript, see further below.
People and Resources Mentioned:
- Babylon Chain – Babylon Chain
- Lorenzo Protocol – Lorenzo Protocol
- Trust Wallet – Trust Wallet
- Alt Layer – Alt Layer
- Cosmos Network – Cosmos Network
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About Our Guest
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- Fisher Yu
Fisher Yu is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Babylon Chain. With a background in blockchain security and decentralization, he has pioneered innovations in trustless Bitcoin staking and unlocking the potential of Bitcoin to secure Proof-of-Stake (PoS) systems. Fisher is a thought leader in the blockchain space, focused on advancing decentralized security protocols.some text- Linkedin: Mingchao (Fisher) Yu
- Twitter: @baby_fisherman
- Website: fisheryu.io
- David Tse
David Tse is a co-founder of Babylon Chain and a professor at Stanford University, specializing in blockchain technology, security, and distributed systems. With an academic background in research, David has contributed to several breakthrough papers on blockchain and decentralized security, driving the development of Bitcoin staking and its integration with PoS ecosystems.some text- Linkedin: David Tse
- Teitter: @dntse
- Website: davidtse.io
- Eowyn Chen
- Eowyn Chen is the CEO of Trust Wallet, one of the world’s leading decentralized wallets with over 140 million downloads. She has a strong background in the blockchain space, having previously worked at Binance. Eowyn is focused on enhancing user adoption of decentralized technologies, ensuring secure self-custody for crypto users, and expanding Trust Wallet’s role in empowering users to explore DeFi, NFTs, and beyond.some text
- Linkedin: Eowyn C.
- Twitter: @EowynChen
- Matt Ye
Matt Ye is the co-founder of Lorenzo Protocol, a platform focused on providing liquid Bitcoin staking solutions for retail users on Babylon Chain. With a background in finance and blockchain technology, Matt has been instrumental in bringing decentralized staking and yield-earning opportunities to Bitcoin holders, advancing the ecosystem's accessibility for retail participants.some text- Linkedin: Matt Ye
- Teitter: @MattYe_MEP
- YQ (Yuqing Zhang)
YQ is the founder of Alt Layer, a rollup-as-a-service platform that provides customizable blockchain rollups for applications in gaming, DeFi, and more. With extensive experience in consensus protocols and blockchain infrastructure, YQ has been a key innovator in building scalable, secure solutions for decentralized applications and enabling the next wave of blockchain adoption.
- Fisher Yu
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Full Episode Transcript:
Richard Carthon: What's up, everyone? Richard from Edge of NFT here. And I'm super excited. We are at the Bitcoin Renaissance here at Korea Blockchain Week. And I have a very special guest with us today. We have Fisher Yu, who is a prominent figure in the blockchain and technology sectors, currently serving as the co-founder and chief technology officer of Babylon Chain. His work is centered on enhancing blockchain security and promoting decentralization. Fisher, it's a pleasure to be here with you today. Yeah, thank you so much. Of course. So So Babylon is one of the main sponsors here at this event today. And you guys have... We are the host. You are the host. And I mean, you're speaking and you have a lot of things to discuss today. So I want to just kick off with first explaining Babylon itself. So it's focused mostly on Bitcoin staking protocol. So can you kind of explain that a little bit more?
Fisher Yu: Yeah, sure. So the vision of Babylon is to build a Bitcoin-secured decentralized world where we extract the security and value of Bitcoin and use it to empower the entire decentralized world. And Bitcoin staking is a major protocol we have developed for this purpose. Bitcoin staking turns Bitcoin, the asset, into a stakable asset for any proof-of-stake systems so that Bitcoin can be staked, secure other systems and Bitcoin holders can earn reward. And most importantly, Bitcoin staking, Boblon Bitcoin staking, is trustless and self-custodial, which means you don't have to give your Bitcoin to any third party.
Richard Carthon: Right. It's very important, especially to the Bitcoin maxis that are out there and the holders like they want the integrity of making sure they hold on to their Bitcoin. Exactly. Not your keys. Not your keys, not your Bitcoin. And if you want to hold on to your Bitcoin, one of the other really cool parts about this is setting this up is very challenging, especially from a developmental standpoint. So how were you able to overcome these challenges while building this out?
Fisher Yu: So many people feel it's almost impossible to do trustless staking because they believe staking needs some smartness on the chain where the token is hosted. So what does staking mean? Staking means the token is locked somehow to provide security. Where does the security come from? It comes from the fact that if you, as a staker, you attack the system you are protecting, then the token you locked there can actually get slashed. Okay, so slashing is the definitive feature of a staking asset. Okay, so now, if we want to turn Bitcoin into a stakable asset, what do we need to do? We will need to do something very scary, that is making Bitcoin slashable. Slashable, okay? Now, before the Boblin project, everyone believes that slashing can only be done in an evidence-based way. That means you, as a malicious staker, attack the POS system, you will leave some evidence, and then on-chain evidence, and evidence is submitted to the chain, so the chain will have some smartness to process the evidence. They say, yes, you just did some, committed some crime, so I will slash.
Richard Carthon: Wow. Yeah. Like you said, this is something that It's a new concept and not just bringing the new concept to explain to somebody like how does this work, but to keep the security and the integrity of like what you're doing. To be able to overcome that and introduce this and now have other people using it, how has it been received by the community?
Fisher Yu: Yeah, so at first there are a lot of doubts. Many people thought we are just wrapping Bitcoin into something else and do staking. And some people thought, oh, Babylon team will be the custody of my Bitcoin, so I cannot trust them. So it actually took a lot of education. So one key aspect is that Bitcoin is not as dumb as most people think it is. Bitcoin doesn't have a smart contract, but it actually has a scripting language allowing you to define some basic behaviors with the Bitcoin UTXOs on-chain. So we just use this Bitcoin script to compose a staking contract that is not smart, not very smart, but it's dumb contract that is smart enough to understand a POS attack so that Bitcoin can be slashed if and only if the staker wishes.
Richard Carthon: And you're making sure that that doesn't happen, which is great. And by having this be trustless, decentralized, you're giving the community the confidence to be able to come and take this new approach. So as you kind of look at the future of what you're building, since it is like a new approach to how you could be bringing this to the market, what does that future vision look like of how you can further develop this and how it's going to be adopted and used by the world?
Fisher Yu: Yeah, great question. If you think about Bitcoin staking, it is actually a two-sided market. A market always have a supply and demand, right? So in Bitcoin staking case, the supply are the Bitcoins from Bitcoin holders. They stake their Bitcoin to provide security, liquidity, and uses to the demand side. What is the demand side? Demand side are all the other decentralized systems in the world like QS chains, Cosmos chains, Ethereum rollups, Bitcoin rollups, data availability layer, you name it. So currently we are bootstrapping this two-sided market by first addressing one side of the market. So supply or demand? we should first address the supply, right? Otherwise, there's really nothing on the market. Right, you need the liquidity, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's why we launched Boblum Mainnet in phases. Phase one, we will invite Bitcoin holders to lock their Bitcoin on the Bitcoin chain so that we can accumulate enough supply in the market. In the second phase, we will launch the Boblum POS chain to be the first consumer of Bitcoin staking. Wow. Yeah. And then in phase three, we will launch Bitcoin multi-staking that allow other POS systems and roll-ups to enjoy Bitcoin staking. So then by that time, the Boblone POS chain itself will evolve into the marketplace like Amazon. You can think of it that way.
Richard Carthon: Yeah, you're building out a full ecosystem. And as you're getting these, it's called the foundation of the building blocks to realize the vision of what you're building. How's the process been with as you, you know, we're now here in Korea, Bitcoin Renaissance, of course, you're going to be telling the world more about what you guys are building and what's going on. How has it been received so far by, you know, your community and for people that are coming in and starting to build on top of Babylon chain? Like, how has that process been so far?
Fisher Yu: Yeah, sure. So at first, as usual, people are very skeptical. But we, after they read our papers, after we open source our code and we build our system, testnet, then more and more people become understand and believe in Boblins. Yes, Boblins is indeed trustless and self-custodial Bitcoin staking. Then we receive a lot of pulls from both community side and ecosystem project side. So people are more than willing to build on top of Bobla because we enable the third native use case of Bitcoin. First native use case, payment. but no one actually use it, right? Second is just to hold it, waiting for its value to appreciate. Then Boblon actually enabled a third major use case of Bitcoin, which is stake, secure, and earn. So that's a huge primitive. So a lot of people and projects come to us and want to build the Bitcoin staking ecosystem together. And we, the Bobrun project, as the core contributor to this technology, we will focus on the infrastructure building side, and we have a very open mind, invite everyone to work on this together. So I think open mind is very important.
Richard Carthon: I think so too. And, you know, one of the other challenges within the ecosystem is, you know, putting your idle Bitcoin to use and make sure that it's safe and secure. And you address that challenge of leveraging idle Bitcoin to enhance security of the POS system. So how is it that you're able to help make that happen?
Fisher Yu: Yeah, sure. So the reason why most of the Bitcoins are idle is that there's no other native use cases besides holding it and doing payment, right? And if you want to make your Bitcoin work and earn some yield, you always have to give your Bitcoin to a third party, like a custody or bridge it, or you lend it. Yeah, you're always at a, there's a counterparty risk where your Bitcoin may get lost. Yeah. So, but Baobeng Bitcoin staking is trustless and self-custodial, which changed the game entirely. So then it will be much easier for us to convince the Bitcoin holders, the more conservative ones, to mobilize their idle Bitcoin. Yeah. And because our technology does not involve any counterparty, it's also much easier for people from the regulatory kind of perspective especially for the institutes.
Richard Carthon: Yeah, and I like this approach. For a long time, the Bitcoin ecosystem has been looking for the cool applications that like Ethereum have from DeFi to be able to create things like NFTs and all of that. Now you're seeing all of these different types of elements come over to the Bitcoin ecosystem. Finding a first way to use your idle Bitcoin. It's like that first step to get people comfortable But then you have these other applications like Bitcoin layer twos and all of these other types of integration So, how do you see Babylon fitting into all these other like things like Bitcoin layer twos and yeah and other integrations? Yeah, sure.
Fisher Yu: So many people think Bob no, it's a Bitcoin layer two. That's not true Bob No, it's not a Bitcoin layer two. It is some marketplace that allow people Bitcoin layer 2 or any layer 2s to enjoy Bitcoin security and become a Bitcoin layer 2. So security is the baseline, the benefit the Bitcoin staking protocol can provide to those layer 2s. And on top of that, we have liquid staking protocols built on top of Boblum to provide liquidity to those projects. And also, because Bitcoin stakers stake to those systems, then Bitcoin holders naturally become users of those systems. So those systems will get security, liquidity, and Bitcoin users as their users. Yeah, so they don't have to bootstrap their liquidity and user base from zero.
Richard Carthon: Which is awesome, and I think that is a really good distinction to put like that is a marketplace versus it being an actual layer two. And being able to plug in all of these different aspects of the ecosystem from people who just want to hold on and like Sid, not just keys, not just Bitcoin, be able to have that integrity, but then also provide a technology that allows for integrations with these layer twos and everyone else. Babylon can integrate with all of these different types of companies building an ecosystem right now. That's super helpful. One of the things that sets you apart in your marketplace is being able to link up a lot of these different partners. So I know that you have a couple of the different partners here at Bitcoin Renaissance. Can you kind of talk to some of those different types of ecosystems that Babylon is currently working with?
Fisher Yu: So Babylon is an ecosystem that touches many parties. So currently, the supply side, we have LSTs. wallets, custodies, institutions, on the main side we have Cosmos chains, ETH rollup and Bitcoin rollup and some ETH forks. So it's a very quite, I would say quite a complicated Very delicate. To navigate and to make everyone happy. So it's a grand project.
Richard Carthon: It is. And you're all doing an amazing job to be able to bring all of those various ecosystems together because it means you're fully cross-chain and it allows for more ecosystems to come in and be a part of what Babylon is building. One of the things I also want to break down is like use cases. Everyone loves a really good use case. What are some of the specific use cases that Babylon's been able to use so far with your marketplace that you're seeing a great response to?
Fisher Yu: Okay, so just to clarify, so by use cases, there are two different ways of thinking of it. One is the use case of the Babylon chain itself. One is the use case of the Bitcoin staking. Yeah, so for Babylon chain, we we enable smart contract so you can virtually build any application on top of it Okay And then for the use case of Bitcoin staking, then we have various proof-of-stake systems, like Cosmos chains, especially Cosmos chains. Cosmos chains, they are called app chains, application-specific chains, like gaming, social, cloud computing, you name it. So a lot of different verticals of use cases enabled through the Cosmos ecosystem. And then we have ETH rollups and Bitcoin rollups that mainly provide liquidity and DeFi use cases for the end users. So yeah, Bitcoin staking is for everyone.
Richard Carthon: It is for everyone, and y'all are making it very accessible, which is very exciting. And, you know, kind of to wrap up here, like, you chose Korea Blockchain Weekend to be a part of this amazing ecosystem here that's in Seoul, Korea, and to come and put on Bitcoin Renaissance to show the Bitcoin ecosystem continue to rise up and be a thought leader in this space. Why did you decide to come here to start this and to put on and be a host of this amazing event?
Fisher Yu: Yeah, so our first Bitcoin Renaissance event happened in March in Denver. It was a huge success. It's on the western side. So we decided to do the second edition in Asia. And we all love Korea and Korea Blockchain Week is an awesome event with a lot of people coming. So we decided to do our Bitcoin Renaissance in Korea so that we can maximize the exposure and allow everyone to come together and share ideas and networking.
Richard Carthon: Absolutely. Well, Fisher, we appreciate y'all being an amazing host. Thanks for spending some time with us to tell us more about Babylon and Babylon Chain. And just as a final thought, is there anything that you're looking forward to this week while being out here?
Fisher Yu: Korean barbecue.
Richard Carthon: That makes two of us. Yeah. Well, Fisher, thank you so much. Thank you so much.
Josh Kriger: Thank you. Hi, everyone. Josh Krieger, co-host of Edge of NFT, live at Bitcoin Renaissance in Seoul, Korea. I'm very excited to be here with David Say, the co-founder of Babylon and our host for this amazing event. It's great to catch up with you again. I think last time we saw each other in an elevator, leaving some event or another in some other country. I'm not sure where. It's all been Dubai, I believe. Dubai.
David Tse: Good memory. It was your round table.
Josh Kriger: That's the first time we met. Yeah, yeah, that was great. And, you know, it was my first, actually, my first exposure to Babylon was actually Stanford Blockchain Week, I believe. And, you know, you guys have been building this for quite some time. We'll dive into sort of that. But I'd love to sort of understand how you and Fisher originally got together and sort of conceived of this concept.
David Tse: Yeah, so Fisher and I knew each other for many years. In fact, about six years ago, there was a bunch of academic researchers that got together from all over the country to do research on blockchains, because we realized that this is a new and exciting area for research, and so we got together, and then through that circle, We wrote a bunch of papers together, and then we kept in touch. And then about two and a half years ago, we came up with this idea of basically security sharing. how to leverage off the security of Bitcoin to share it with the rest of the blockchain ecosystem. Because as we know, Bitcoin is arguably the most secure blockchain.
Josh Kriger: Right. Many people have tried to hack it and it failed. Right. Which we can't say for most other chains.
David Tse: That's right. And it just keeps on running. 100% uptime, as someone says.
Josh Kriger: Yeah. So you wrote a paper together about this concept of utilizing Bitcoin's security for a broader use case.
David Tse: Yeah. In fact, we wrote a sequence of papers. Babylon has been a journey. It is not like we had a single product. Yeah, Babylon lasted for a few hundreds of years. Hopefully our project will last as long as well. But it's a journey. The high level concept is security sharing, but how do we share security? If you look at Bitcoin, there are many aspects to Bitcoin. One is the proof of work, right? nature that blocks are generated through this proof-of-work mechanism. But another aspect is the asset. The asset is one trillion value. How do we utilize that asset to provide security? So you can look at different aspects. And we've built a bunch of different protocols in this journey. And the final, not the final, but the current protocol that we're really excited about is Bitcoin staking. So I really love this name, Bitcoin Staking. I would like to share with the audience. And the reason is because Bitcoin, everyone knows is proof of work. Staking, everyone knows is about proof of stake. It's like two opposing concepts. It's an oxymoron. It's an oxymoron. And we throw the two words together into one concept. And that concept actually makes a lot of sense.
Josh Kriger: So it's a little bit spicy though. And, you know, some of the maxis have, have been contrarian about, about this. And I guess like, you know, Bitcoin Renaissance, it's an open dialogue here. You have all sorts of different perspectives in the room and, and it's, you know, based on your research sort of background, Stanford, whatnot, it sounds like you're open to that conflict in, you know, really looking for the best ideas to rise to the top.
David Tse: Yeah, so, correct. And the key idea here is that staking requires a crypto asset. Staking is the idea of using a crypto asset to secure a blockchain. And most proof-of-stake blockchains use a native asset. But native assets have a drawback because native assets are very volatile. And obviously, you want a strong security base. You don't want to use a very volatile asset. And so our protocol allows Bitcoin as the asset. So although Bitcoin is proof-of-work, The output is still an asset, and then we're using this asset to feed it into a proof-of-stake system to provide security.
Josh Kriger: So, I have a question. Bitcoin theoretically, by most sort of predictors in this space, enthusiasts, is set to increase over the next few years. It could be as high as a million dollars at some point based on some predictions. Does the scarcity and sort of potential for the increase in value impact sort of your project, and does it open up new possibilities, or does it close any doors as the value of Bitcoin increases, or is it sort of just a non sequitur?
David Tse: Yeah, so the higher the value of Bitcoin, okay, in some sense, the stronger is the case for a protocol. And the reason is because the security of a proof-of-stake system is a function of the value of the asset. Because the higher the value, the more secure the blockchain is because it is a collateral. The higher the collateral, the least you're likely to do anything naughty. And so the larger the asset, the more source of security it is, the better for a protocol.
Josh Kriger: That's really interesting. Makes sense. So as you're looking ahead at sort of the future of the Bitcoin ecosystem, what goes through your mind at this moment? And what do you think are the challenges that lie ahead?
David Tse: Yeah. So if you think about our protocol, Bitcoin staking, in the context of the development of Bitcoin, I think it's an interesting development because it is one of the very few trustless use case of Bitcoin. So here I want to emphasize this concept of trustlessness, which is in some sense at the heart of crypto. But sometimes people forget the importance of this. Let me remind us. What does trustlessness mean, right? It means that all you need to do is to trust the Bitcoin network. but you don't need to trust any third party, any centralized third party, for example. And Bitcoin staking is one such protocol. And so we're always interested in pushing this frontier of trustlessness more and more to create more and more use case of Bitcoin. To give you an example, actually right now on top of Babylon, which is Bitcoin staking, many people are building so-called liquid staking protocols on top of Babylon. This is like, you can think of the Bitcoin analog of LIDO, okay? Now, unfortunately, because Bitcoin has only very limited capability, most of these, all these liquid staking protocol, or I should say, are based on additional trust assumption. So no longer trustless. And I think a very interesting research problem that we are studying is how to push this trustlessness to even liquid staking. So in other words, in addition to staking, you can also provide liquidity in a trustless fashion. I think that is a very interesting problem and we're working hard on that.
Josh Kriger: So fast forwarding into the future, Is it possible to also look at derivatives and sort of trading theoretically like public stocks using this type of same technology in a trustless manner?
David Tse: The answer is no. OK. The reason is because trading and derivative, etc. These are all these all have market risk. OK. And the protocols we're talking about has no market risk. Staking has no market risk. So that is a difference in sort of the protocols that we focus on. I think as a project, you have to have a theme, right, on what you focus on. Otherwise, you can do it. Of course, we can do everything.
Josh Kriger: But when you do everything, then you... But there's enough risk without having that additional layer of market risk to compound things. That's right. So what are the future use cases that you see five years down the road? Is it something to do with gaming? Are there other things that you're thinking about?
David Tse: Yeah, so what we hope as an infrastructure project is that with a strong infrastructure layer, staking, liquidity, then people can build exciting new applications on top of this very decentralized asset. And so we don't know what people will build. If you look at out there, on our board out there, this is a Bitcoin renaissance, you said in the beginning. There are many, many partners, and all of these are building interesting product. gaming, DeFi, more infrastructure, other infrastructure projects, et cetera. So it's quite exciting.
Josh Kriger: What's that experience like, you know, having created a company that is creating this renaissance and having folks approach you with all these different ideas? Like, what does that feel like as the co-founder?
David Tse: Yeah, I think that's one thing exciting about Web3, right? Because Web3 is about open permissionless protocols. And one aspect of open permissionless protocol is that it's very easy for people to build in collaboration on top of your protocol. So even though we're just launching a mainnet, we just launched a mainnet 10 days ago, there are already many projects working in conjunction with us in building further protocols on top of us. This is not possible in the Web2 world. In the Web2 world, you have to establish yourself many, many years before people will build on you. Like Apple, how long does it take them to create an app store that people can build applications on many, many years? But in blockchain, It can happen instantaneously. Someone told us, actually, an advisor of us said, hey, this ecosystem around Babylon kind of came up from nowhere. Where did it come from? Because maybe a few months he was busy with other things, and he came back to look at our project. Suddenly, there are all these ecosystem projects building on the Babylon ecosystem. So that's really exciting.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, you've sort of created the right environment to fertilize unlimited innovation. So now I guess the fun is just beginning. What else is coming up on your roadmap that gets you excited?
David Tse: Yeah, so we just launched our main net. And the launch was quite successful, I think. Congrats. Yeah, we had a, we start with a small cap of 1000 Bitcoin, and the cap was filled within six Bitcoin block, which is about one hour. So about one out of 1000 Bitcoin cap was filled. And the roadmap is to increase the cap. And then we'll launch partner projects, partner chains that get the security. So first, we spend some time accumulating the security, and then we will have integration with many projects, hopefully many projects, to get the security. So that's the shorter term intermediate term roadmap. On the longer term roadmap, as I mentioned, we are really interested in pushing this idea of trustlessness. beyond staking to the liquidity layer. And I think that's a huge challenge and more research has to be done. But I think it's really one of our significant focus in the next one or two years.
Josh Kriger: Cool. Well, we'll have to stay connected and keep our audience up to date on what's happening for Babylon and the ecosystem. Congrats again on the mainnet launch. And, you know, this is just the beginning of the renaissance. So lots of fun conversations to go. Thank you. Thank you so much.
Josh Kriger: Hi, everyone. Josh Krueger, Edge of NFT, live at Bitcoin Renaissance in Seoul, Korea. It's an action packed day of conversations around where the Bitcoin ecosystem is heading. And it's my honor to have Eowyn Chen here with the CEO of Trust Wallet. Great to have you on the show. Thank you. Great to meet you guys. So you inherited this role at TrustWallet. Maybe you can talk to us a little bit about your history in the crypto space and sort of how it's been sort of holding down the fort at TrustWallet.
Eowyn Chen: Yeah. So I was more familiar with the crypto space. Of course, in the 2017 ICO craze, I was in San Francisco and half of the guys in the city are talking about shitcoins. Absolutely. And I was more of a contrarian. So when the market was hot, I was like, oh, there were too much emotions and bubbles, cannot really tell. So when 2018, when the market crashed, I was like, this is now a more interesting time to see it. the technology and the industry is sticking around. And I was fortunate enough, and funny enough, I was deciding between AI or blockchain to go under. And I think fate just makes me mad, the co-founder of Binance at that time. So my first introduction to the crypto industry, was my roles at Binance. But then in 2021, the last height of the bull market, I find that I'm further away from the development, the innovations of the industry on the decentralized side. That was the purpose why I joined. So I move on with TrustWallet and try to help grow the decentralized user base and the gateways to the industry. Cool.
Josh Kriger: And what have you sort of learned around sort of the adoption of decentralized wallet technology and users over the last few years? Like what have been some of your big insights?
Eowyn Chen: Yeah, I think the user's behavior definitely shifted with the technological movement. So in the beginning, just an example of Trust Wallet, we were Ethereum Maxi Wallet only, like a fully decentralized believing smart contract. So that was most of a lot of the wallets origin. And we were just wanting to create a sinkhole. software that people can hold all the coins in one app. So that was a very much strong holding thesis. And that holding thesis expanded from just Ethereum. Later on, users told us the multi-chain world comes, right? So people wanted to hold more tokens and coins from all the different ecosystem because that's what the development of the industry happens. Yes, we're still in the multi-chain world. It's still a lot of the chains. So that was like holding, we actually support users to hold 10 million tokens for 105 chains right now. And 65 of them are non-EVM. So it was like a lot of hard work for the past five years. But then things change, right? DeFi comes in to be, it's more than just holding tokens, waiting for appreciation. It's about also using it. Finding other ways to play around with it, including NFT is coming up too. So it's about how to diversify assets, both for holding and usage. And also for us, it's like we're already quite a trusted product and brand in the market.
Josh Kriger: You got to be. It's in your name, right?
Eowyn Chen: Yes, so we actually have, we just passed 140 million downloads globally, and we saw a lot of the people come in because of holding, but now our mission and the goals that we want to do is how to educate and upgrade the users from just holding users to users users, because that's how you grow the industry with activities all together.
Josh Kriger: So you're early on thinking about AI and of course sort of giving some thought, I'm sure, to the future of the Bitcoin ecosystem. We were talking earlier about how the conversation around the utility side of Bitcoin is not new. It was around, you know, did you anticipate sort of the rapid growth of the Bitcoin ecosystem over the last year? And, you know, what do you think as sort of the potential moving forward and the challenges?
Eowyn Chen: Yeah, yeah. Before we have turned this on, we're talking about inscriptions, right? I think I was a little bit skeptical with the inscriptions, what the goal of it.
Josh Kriger: Well, you're kind of a skeptic by nature, it sounds like.
Eowyn Chen: Yes, I am mostly a contrarian. I don't like to write things when it's like top on the on the ways.
Josh Kriger: I'm going to I'm going to call you before I think about, should I buy this coin?
Eowyn Chen: Just get an alternative perspective. Well, it depends on if your strategy is chasing before things get even harder or, you know, long-term value investment. So I feel that, you know, no matter what's the technology behind, I think the inscription was the open something imagination for Bitcoin is more than just the, just the holding and just for payment. And I know the Babylon teams have been working on staking for two, three years, and it was not that easy to build a test. So it's also like, a long-term process and realizing it to see that, oh, this now is achievable and do it. So I do find the staking, which rhymes very well with the holding thesis for Bitcoin, that's why users come in with Bitcoin, store values or potentially hedging against inflation, will actually have the next step, logical next steps in staking. And that might be the best introduction to DeFi as well, because you have to understand why staking gives you the yield, right? Like, where does that come from? So there's a much bigger smart contract proof of staking world behind the scene. And I think then you can open up a lot of the opportunities later on. We were talking with Pedro from WaterConnect, the founders there, and he did say that to truly move on to a more blossom Bitcoin ecosystem world, I think the Bitcoin development community still has a lot to build up the foundational infrastructures, including standards. How to even have the standard water connection point? How to have some sort of interoperability even within the same ecosystem? How can the different L2s, potential L2s of Bitcoin talking to each other? Some of them are tech, some of them are non-tech, but it's more of a combinations of how the community decides to move forward together that helps the trajectories growth and the speed of the growth for the ecosystem.
Josh Kriger: Do you intensify a higher percentage of your future users? Will the gateway will be Bitcoin versus, you know, EVM? And what does that look like right now for TrustWallet?
Eowyn Chen: I think it goes with what is the value proposition crypto altogether presents to different types of user groups. We do have a lot of users coming for the major coins like Ethereum and Bitcoin, even BNB, because we do get a huge BNB community. But we also see many users coming just for USD stablecoin. Why? Remittance. Just because it's a much better remittance scenario. Or people just want to hold USD assets to hedge their local inflation or fiat. But then we hold $8 billion of stablecoin not moving for the past 12 months. Right. And thinking about what not us holding, but the users actually go through us with on-chain. Right. But then the thing is, how can we introduce the users to the much more exciting world beyond just a stable coin or even use it and exploring that makes themselves thrive and also help the ecosystem to grow because of the volume and the liquidity. That's why staking is quite interesting, because I think that's a natural low risk starting point for people to understand what could be your crypto do for you more. Bitcoin, I think, will continue to present its value proposition against inflation, against store of values, self-custody, all those. So no matter whether the entry point comes from Stablecoin or Bitcoin, for us, the job is how to continue to up-level the users into the world of defining the crypto more.
Josh Kriger: makes sense and anything exciting on your map that you can speak to.
Eowyn Chen: Yeah, so we are definitely working on the Bitcoin staking. That's why we're here. And we're trying to figure out what's the best user experiences. At the same time, the secure, reliable partnerships underneath there to present to the users. So that will come later this year or depending on how this whole staking schemes involve from the testing phase. Besides that, we're also, as I mentioned, we wanted the water to transform from holding to using. Then we definitely want to work with more projects in the ecosystem on how to present them to the users, how to get the users' assets moving that benefits some of the project growth. So we will be having a launch pool models to help the projects to debut to the users.
Josh Kriger: Very exciting. Well, really appreciate your perspective and your insights from your time in the industry. And sort of you have this unique vantage point, I think, as as one of the larger wallet providers in the space in terms of sort of seeing things happen in real time and sort of having some foresight into the trends. So obviously, folks can can check out Trust Wallet on their iPhone or their Android or also web extension. Web extension. But if they want to learn more about the company, where should they go?
Eowyn Chen: You can just go to our website, TrustWallet.com, or our Twitter account, just TrustWallet. We'll keep things updated.
Josh Kriger: Cool. And are you active on Twitter as well?
Eowyn Chen: I was until my Twitter got locked down, and I'm in the process of getting it back.
Josh Kriger: All right, so stay tuned. We'll give you some follows when you get your account back.
Eowyn Chen: Yeah, hope so. Or Fodcasters. I'm trying to change another platform, so we'll see.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, we'll see. Well, thanks for hanging out today. I appreciate your time.
Richard Carthon: Thank you. What's up, everybody? Richard from Edge of NFT here. And we are at Bitcoin Renaissance. And we have had an amazing lineup of amazing speakers and guests today. But now I get to speak with Matt from Lorenzo. Pleasure to speak with you today.
Matt Ye: Yeah. Nice meeting you, sir. I'm Matt from Lorenzo Protocol. And nice meeting everyone.
Richard Carthon: Absolutely. Well, it's great to be here. And, you know, as we get kicked off first, let's learn a little bit about Lorenzo. So can you tell everyone about what Lorenzo is and how they potentially can be involved?
Matt Ye: Yes. So Lorenzo, we call it Bitcoin Equity Finance Layer. But on the first principle, we are the Babylon BTC Liquid Staking Protocols. So through us, you can like actually stake into Babylon through us. And we're going to give you like receipt tokens for that. We call it STPTC. So STBDC is the token where you can kind of claim your BTC when you want to stake. And also we're going to give you yield tokens based on what POS are actually staked into. So these like yield tokens representing your staking yield, which you can claim in the future. And also we are creating a marketplace. for all of these future yields for staking to Babylon as well, just to create a pre-market for all of the Babylon staking, not just to Babylon, but also the other Babylon ecosystem POS as well. So there are a lot of things coming together, but on the first principle, for most of the users for now, we are just liquid staking protocols. We are giving you STBDC, basically the liquid staking token based on all of the BDC that you're staking to Babylon. And also one more thing is like we help retail users to actually stake into Boblon. Because you know, like Boblon has a very limited cap, especially in like the first several phases. So it's getting like super competitive. Yeah. Staking into Boblon is actually like a real battle and a real work icon going there. So for any retail users, for example, like our smallest stakers is only like staking 500 sets. I mean, 500 sets is not even enough for you to like already unbond from Babylon at all. So we receive like small capitals from retails and help them to actually stick into Babylon successfully through us. So that's also our mission here. Liquid staking protocols, liquid staking protocols for retail users.
Richard Carthon: That's awesome and I appreciate that breakdown. Earlier today I got to speak with Fisher from Babylon and he was kind of talking about the phase one that you're talking about and how it is becoming competitive and I guess the follow-up question that I have is, you know, you could be trying to build this in a plethora of places. Why Babylon?
Matt Ye: So actually, there are not so many other options out there. So Boblum is innovative, like being the first project adopting fully decentralized BTC staking and also fully decentralized BTC slashing as well. So this is like first ever innovative projects. So we are considering working with a lot of these like other BTC staking sources as well. But there are a lot of like considerations behind it. Are you like really fully decentralized? Is there any like counterparty risks? So we can like print, receive tokens for staking into the other projects as well. So but we need to understand what the underlying risks are there. So if the underlying BTC capitals got either lost or got rocked or whatever. So our receipt token is just like turns into dirt. It's like turns into a valueless kind of nothing. So we need to make sure the underlying assets are safe and secured and also operated in a fully decentralized way. So Babylon is the first ever project is providing secured decentralized BTC staking. and also providing fully decentralized native yield for BTC staking as well. So that's why we feel safe to receiving capitals from our retail users and also deposit them into Babylon as well. So that's actually really the first project. But there are more and more Bitcoin L2s are adopting the Babylon staking and using Babylon services, which also means through Babylon, we can get access to more different yield sources through Babylon staking into the other Bitcoin L2s. And also our mission there is, so we're trying to help these like L2s or different POS utilizing Babylon to get in more TBLs. And also when you're staking through us to Babylon then through them, like our stakers are opting to two things. One, they still got to keep liquidities and also they got like Yield tokens. for like the staking yields from these POS as well. Even if they're like the yield was just like some centralized points at the time, but the yield tokens in the ERC20 that you can like trade them, or if you're really bullish on these, like the staking yield, you can actually purchase more from the market as well. Just like to, just trying to like the bootstrap the whole Babylon ecosystem, also the equities for the whole Babylon ecosystem further.
Richard Carthon: Getting the liquidity is a very important piece. And earlier you mentioned that what you're building is for the in retail person. So if someone's listening to this and they're like, okay, I have this Bitcoin that I have never done anything with. I haven't touched. And I am, you know, a lot of your Maxis out there, like you're not touching my Bitcoin, but now you're providing for some of that idle Bitcoin to have access to earn yield and do things with that. So walk me through the process of what does that look like? If I want to come and use Lorenzo to start making my Bitcoin earn.
Matt Ye: Yeah. So like for now, it's like still relatively simple. But in the future, things could get like more and more complicated when there are more POS coming in. So for now, it's like just sticking to Babylon. So it's very simple. So. you stake through us, you deposit BTC through us, and we're going to be safekeeping it with MPC wallets through custodial providers and also third-party key recovery service providers, and your assets are safely stored there. Um, and also we can only like, you know, operate these, uh, assets based on some predefined scripts for that. So we are not like, we cannot like freely withdraw your capitals to anywhere. We can only use it to stake at a stake or deposit only when it's requested and it's reported on an EVM. So there is like a cross validation thing. So that's the only thing that we can do with our assets. Your assets like fully secured and locked up, uh, in a, in a custodial provider services. This is one. And we're using both Kobo and Sifu. So at the same time, they're supporting BDC native staking as well. So through the whole process, your assets will never leave the surveillance and the monitoring of the third party custodial providers. So this is one. So you deposit your assets into the MPC wallet. And also two, we're going to do the actual staking. The actual staking is very complicated. If you go through the whole process, you have to break up your UTXOs according to the rules, the staking rules of Babylon, prepare for the transaction fees, and then you're going to do the staking transactions and pre-sign them, and also then broadcast them when the whole staking happens. So we're going to do all of these things for you, so you don't have to worry about any of that. But also at the same time, we're going to give you two assets. We're going to give you STBDC. It's like your bearing assets will give you like your tokens from like, keep generating your tokens from staking into Babylon. So this is STBTC, right? And also in every faith. So for example, in cap one, we have already issued like two assets is YBBN1 and YBBN2. What are these assets means is that so YBBN is like representing your staking yield from staking the Babylon phase one cap. And YBBN2 is going to be like the yield tokens you're going to have for staking into Babylon cap two. So that's pretty much like what we do. So if you're holding STBDC, you're going to keep getting these like different yield tokens and also these yield tokens having underlying values of the Babylon points. And we're going to be launching a marketplace for you to trade these assets as well. So you can sort of think about it as a Babylon kind of point like market and things like that. Future on, when there are more POS coming in, so we allow our users to actually customize, like, where do you want to contribute your, like, BDC2. And so, for example, like, you can say, like, I want to contribute, like, 70% to this one chain and 20% to the other chain, 10% to, like, the third chain, basically. And also the yield structure is going to be, like, 70% of the yield tokens from chain one, 20% from chain two, or 10% from chain three. So you're going to have, like, having different yield tokens. Then different users can actually like trade these tokens, right? Eventually, if they say like, okay, this like chain one tokens becomes like super popular. So I can like purchase more from the market. If I'm like I changed my mind, I don't want this like, you know, chain three, I can just like sell it on the market. So we're trying to just giving our users options and giving them liquidities and giving them a chance to keep changing their minds on what they do and also for these downstream POS chains so we want them to have a marketplace where they can like advocate for their services and they can like uh, competing for more TVLs through our platforms. There are many different ways to do that. So one is that, so we have our tokenomics is sort of like a VE model. So you can vote on, uh, your own chain. So have you have higher emissions, so that more TVLs go through you. And also if your yield token is performing well on the secondary market, which also gives the market confidence that you are a legit project. So more TVL also go through you as well. But these things were happening in the next phase. So for now, it's just like deposit your capitals. We're going to do it like the staking for you. And periodically, we're going to like pay you like EO tokens, share these revenues, and you can trade these like EO tokens on our, we call it Lorenzo X. It's going to be launched in the next few days so that you can trade these like received tokens.
Richard Carthon: Super exciting, so for your real-to-deal person, you get on Lorenzo and you can start earning yield, then you can use those tokens, you can allocate it to different chains as well, and then from the other side of it, if you potentially are a side chain and you want to link up to Lorenzo, you can work that way too, so you can get total value locked and get some more liquidity into your portfolio. So you're, like you said, a marketplace, you're finding, also your buyers and your sellers, but your people who are locking up trying to get the yield and the people who are trying to get the liquidity. So that's really cool, I think that's broken down very well and I think you did that a really good job of breaking that down for us. But one of the things I want you to break down is Bitcoin Renaissance. We're here in Korea. You're a part of this. Why did Lorenzo decide to be here and be part of this experience?
Matt Ye: Yeah, it's more like, so for me, for myself, I always think I want to devote myself into something really great, something really innovative. And if there's a chance, I want my name to be on a history event, right? For good purpose, for good cause, of course. So I've been thinking, searching for a long time, what is the right cause for me to do to contribute more of my time and efforts and expertise and everything into it to make every minute, every second count. So when I first heard about like the whole like Bitcoin staking idea, I just like, it totally blew my mind. So what, like, because I previously worked in like the trading industries. So what I always feel like, because if you look at the US dollar market, right, the US M1 money is like about 5.7 trillion. But the US kind of bond market, the money market is actually like about 52 trillion. So it's about 10 times the size. Right. So we have Bitcoin. But Bitcoin is like about like 1.4, it's like going down a bit now. So it's like 1.1, 1.2 trillion now. But also the derivative markets for like Bitcoin money market, it's mostly zero now. There's like nothing has been done for BTC yield receipts. There's not really enough, uh, you know, market and explorations into like Bitcoin yield generating kind of market, the future yield trading market for Bitcoin and things like that. But for Baobab on every, like all these kinds of things is possible. So if you like comparing like the Bitcoin market to the whole like U.S. dollar market, U.S. money market is about 10 times the size of the U.S. M1 money and the Bitcoin money market that BTC like a yield receipts market could be 10 times the size of the Bitcoin size as well. So we have a chance to create this like 14 trillion market size for BTC money market. And also, you know what? So Bitcoin is going to be last forever in human history. It's not going to be go away. It's going to be lasting for centuries. I mean, it's going to be definitely going to be like longer lives than you and me and our grandsons. So this is kind of can go on and on and forever, which also means the Bitcoin derivative market is going to be on and on and on. And it's going to be like 10 times, 100 times bigger than Bitcoin itself. And it's going to be a market lasting forever. And I got a chance to be the first one to create it. That's like how exciting this thing is.
Richard Carthon: It is exciting. And like you said, you're being a part of history, right? And like you said, the concept of it going from a trillion dollar market even to what you explained with $14 trillion, it's just the beginning, right? Exactly. And it's just going to keep expanding. So to be here with other thought leaders, to be here in this moment and to speak with a lot of other people who are just very bullish on what's being done here in the Bitcoin ecosystem, It's electric and it's cool to be a part of this. So I'm glad you're a part of this. And for people who are listening to this right now and they're like, dude, you got me fired up. I want to learn more about Renzo. Where can they go to learn more? How can they connect with you? And how can they get more information?
Matt Ye: Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, you can learn everything from our website. Uh, it's lorenzo-protocol.xyz, a website. We have all the docs and also like user portals. And we have a few, uh, good friends, KOLs and also community ambassadors doing amazing tutorial, uh, videos for using our platform as well. Super appreciate it. So we've been like, we were like still a relatively small team. So previously we were very packed with all of the dev works and also early stage plannings, and also like getting prepared for Babylon phase one mainnet launching. And we just launched our phase one mainnet ourselves as well. So a lot of like these works been done before, but later on in the next, like the coming month, me personally, and also our team are trying to allocate more time for the communities and having like a more smooth communication channels. with all the communities. So on Discord, on Telegram, and also on WeChat, we're going to have more messaging channels and group chats being set up. So everyone, if you have any questions, any comments, feel free to talk to our teams, and someone is going to give you a timely response for whatever demands, even just for casual chatting, chit-chat, whatever. Everything is welcome.
Richard Carthon: Awesome. Well, Matt, thank you so much for being a part of this and sharing everything about Lorenzo today. And I look forward to enjoying the rest of Bitcoin Renaissance with you.
Matt Ye: Appreciate it. Thank you, sir.
Josh Kriger: Hi, everyone. Josh Krueger here, co-host of Edge of NFT, live at Bitcoin Renaissance in Seoul, Korea. It's been a really special day. And this is an event co-hosted by Babylon and AltLair. And I'm here with the founder of AltLair, YQ, who's going to spend a little time with us and talk about his perspective on Bitcoin ecosystem. It's great to have you on the show.
YQ: Yeah, good to see you, Josh. And yeah, hello, everyone. YQ here.
Josh Kriger: So first, let's let's just sort of get to know you a little bit better. What should the world know about YQ? Yeah.
YQ: So, yeah, I I came to crypto industry. like back in 2016 and before that I was doing a lot of research on consensus protocols and also privacy technologies and then later I basically started a sort of company doing this public sharding. After that like I was doing a lot of this AppChain development and also research. But in 2021, we started earlier to basically providing these apps rollouts for different sectors in the crypto industry, like gaming, social, DeFi, and also this AI. Cool.
Josh Kriger: So, yeah, and we were talking a little bit about this off-camera, but essentially the rollout possibilities have really expanded since 2021. You all are now offering sort of this roll up as a service feature for games and whatnot. Maybe talk about sort of the genesis of that idea and what are the sort of opportunities there that you see?
YQ: Yeah, so since 2021, right, we were quite early into this sort of rollout space. We feel like there will be a big paradigm shift from this sort of infrastructure-centric roadmap to this application-centric roadmap in the crypto industry. That's why we started to provide these rollouts for applications. And as Josh mentioned, right, we already support both OPStack, Avito Mobile, and a bunch of these ZK rollup stacks. And the thing is, we figured out there are a lot of benefits for these projects to set up their own rollups. For example, you can have your own token as a gas token. You can control the block time. For example, make it sub-second. And beyond that, you can also have the gas fee for yourself. And in that case, basically you have the entire block space for your own applications. That's super important for games, social, and also DeFi.
Josh Kriger: So I'm starting a game. It feels a little daunting to create my own blockchain. If I work with Altair, how long does that process take? How much configuration is required?
YQ: Yeah, so we have two roles. One role is that you generally fill in a Google form, and then within a few minutes, we can set up the rollout for you. Wow, that fast. Yeah, the second role is even more amazing. You generally click a bunch of buttons, and you can launch a rollout yourself. Wow.
Josh Kriger: So, it's pretty quick. Yes, super quick. And there you have it. Wow, times have really changed in terms of doing this type of service. And you guys are integrating with Babylon in an interesting way around some of the services you provide. Can you talk about that a little bit?
YQ: Yeah, so we've been working with the Debian and Babylon team since 2022, and we were super amazed by their vision, like basically bringing this kind of BTC staking and to provide a shared security for different services. So on our side, beyond providing this rollout service, we also leverage a lot of research into this kind of shared security. For example, we collaborate with Babylon to leverage this Babylon BTC shared security to enforce the security of different rollouts. For example, right now Rollup is a single sequencer, right? Beyond that, we can basically leverage a bunch of these finality providers of Babylon to really do the extra verification of these Rollups. So in that case, you can enable this sort of decentralized verification and also faster finality.
Josh Kriger: And this isn't just for projects that are focused on building on Bitcoin, right? This security node structure can apply across chains?
YQ: Yeah, the cool thing for this approach, soon after announcing the event, is basically it's quite agnostic to the rollup stack. So in that case, as you mentioned, right, not just for Bitcoin, like sort of L2s, also even for some Ethereum L2s, and we can leverage the same set of stacks we work with Babylon to enable this extra security. Basically, it's BTC level security. for these rollups. So in that case, you can see, right, even it's an Ethereum rollup, but you can get extra security from BTC. That's the very cool part. You enjoy the expressiveness of the EVM, but at the same time, you can also get a security guarantee from BTC.
Josh Kriger: Very cool. So obviously there's some Bitcoin maxis out there that, that, you know, one are all about protecting their keys. Um, you know, if, if they don't hold their Bitcoin and hold their keys, then it's not theirs. Right. Yeah. I mean, um, what's your perspective on what Babylon is doing and, and you know, how the level of security it offers these traditional maxis.
YQ: Yeah, so it's a super good question. Because a lot of my friends, originally they were doing a lot of Bitcoin mining a few years ago before I even entered into this crypto industry. So the thing, as you mentioned, a lot of these OGs in Bitcoin industry, they prefer just holding, holding the Bitcoin, their hardware wallets. So that's also the cool part when I talked to David and the Babylon team. So for them, they are basically the highest priority to make everything permissionless. If you look at the design of Babylon, it's quite different from the other Bitcoin projects. They have this super long white paper just to prove that BTC native staking is doable. Yeah, they're quite conservative on this Bitcoin permissionless setup. So that's a part I feel like Babylon's BTC native staking is a huge thing for Bitcoin ecosystem. It's not just for enabling actual use for the Bitcoin holders, but at the same time they are really trying to explore the permissionless setup for staking and probably later also for different services on top of Babylon and further on top of this BTC staking.
Josh Kriger: Yeah. Appreciate your perspective on that. And, you know, I really appreciate also how Babylon and you all are creating this open forum for discussions of the future of Bitcoin, right? You know, everyone's invited to the table to be part of the conversation. It's about how do we sort of build this ecosystem. We've traveled all around the world this year and seen more and more Bitcoin-centered events and side events and events on top of events. And there's a lot of energy right now. BTC Nashville looked completely different this year. What's your perspective on where all of this Bitcoin ecosystem development is going?
YQ: Yeah, as you mentioned, right, for the past sort of one year, we really witnessed there are more and more developers in Bitcoin ecosystem, probably more developers than what I've seen for the past sort of 10 years. So this year, I mean the new developers. That's definitely super good, I mean, for this Bitcoin ecosystem. Because the thing is, like, with Babylon, probably some new projects, who's pushing the OPCAT and all these sort of new opcodes for Bitcoin, right? So these new developers really want to build sort of new products on top of Bitcoin. And when we have, as you mentioned, this venue to really gather all developers together, to have them to build this open and permissionless sort of ecosystem, that's super great. And not just for Bitcoin ecosystem, also globally. I mean, it's very good for crypto industry in general. We can show people like, OK, Bitcoin originally is for peer-to-peer payment. But right now, probably we can also use Bitcoin to secure some extra services like Rolabs we provide and probably in the future also for games and DeFi and even AI. So that's something like we can really make is the Bitcoin industry and ecosystem much bigger because we can definitely have more players in the space, right? Yeah, no longer just Bitcoin miners and holders. So we can probably have more application builders and users. That's something I just feel like really make the space much stronger. Yeah.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, I appreciate your perspective. And it sounds like you feel like the work being done on the ground by Babylon and by Altair has broader sort of implications for mass adoption of crypto based on sort of this improved security landscape that's being created. Is that fair to say?
YQ: Yes, so for a lot of my friends, typically, I told them, so with this new setup, for example, the BTC staking and further with these extra services, we can leverage this shared security. Basically, we are providing more opportunities for building applications in a much bigger scope. Yeah, as you just mentioned, previously we were probably really focusing on DeFi and trading, but with this new shared security and a much easier way to launch RoleLabs, we can definitely build a much bigger landscape for applications. Previously, as you mentioned, a lot of applications stuck with the deployings for our contracts and probably the fee too high. And right now if we can launch a different sort of rollups or block space for them, it's sort of like you control your own chain. You control your own server. You don't really have the limits anymore. Yes. And basically, you can really build whatever you want with the sub-second latency, with all the fees collected by you. By itself, it becomes like an ecosystem for yourself. That's something, I mean, for the past few years, we don't really have the chance to do that. But right now, I believe the infrastructure is quite ready. And for the next few years, a lot of the application developers, they can start to just focus on their business logic. They don't need to worry about, OK, how to launch.
Josh Kriger: It's like the next update of Windows or Mac. You just hit Update, and you're good to go. Yeah, yeah.
YQ: You just click and done. I mean, you don't need to worry about your underlying infrastructure anymore.
Josh Kriger: Well, this has been really enlightening. I learned a lot from you. I appreciate your time here. If someone's ready to click a few buttons and create their next roll up or learn more about Alt Layer, where do they go?
YQ: Yeah, they can just go to our website, altlayer.io. Yeah, it's amazing.
Josh Kriger: Oh, and are you on X? Can people find Alt Layer in you on X as well?
YQ: Oh, yes. Alt Layer is an alt and a scope layer. And for my Twitter sort of handle is YQ and Scope and ACC. All right. Thanks for hanging out, YQ.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, yeah. Appreciate it.
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