ETHDenver and the Future of Virtual Worlds with Uphold, Improbable and Humanity Protocol

In a world riddled with AI-generated deepfakes and digital fraud, Web3 leaders are rallying around one mission—trust. In this episode of The Edge of Show live at ETH Denver 2025, hosts Richard Carthon and Josh Kriger engage with three visionaries: Terrence Kwok of Humanity Protocol, Herman Narula of Improbable and Somnia, and Robin O’Connell of Uphold Enterprise. Each is reimagining how we validate humanity, experience virtual worlds, and bridge TradFi with DeFi.

From biometric palm verification to metaverse-based social immersion and regulatory-ready crypto rails, this episode unpacks solutions built to restore digital trust, scale real-world credentials on-chain, and onboard billions to the Web3 ecosystem. If you're navigating the crosswinds of AI, blockchain, and virtual identity—this conversation is your lighthouse.

Stay tuned for exclusive insights on new funding rounds, testnets, hardware devices, and massive performance breakthroughs in blockchain infrastructure.

_{🔑 Key Topics Covered:}

• Humanity Protocol’s Biometric Identity Verification:
  Terrence Kwok introduces a palm-vein scanning system and blockchain-based credentials to counter deepfakes and impersonation in the AI era.
  
  
• Somnia’s Hyper-Scalable Metaverse Blockchain:
  Herman Narula reveals the tech stack powering real-time social metaverse experiences with 1M+ TPS and EVM compatibility.
  
  
• Uphold Enterprise’s API-Powered Compliance Infrastructure:
  Robin O’Connell explains how Uphold enables companies to go on-chain quickly by offering plug-and-play financial and compliance tools.
  
  
• Real-World Use Cases in DeFi and Credentials:
  From proof of employment to university-issued transcripts, Humanity Protocol envisions a Web3 world where identity and qualifications are trustlessly verifiable.
  
  
• Global Web3 Adoption and Strategic Partnerships:
  Guests share how Asia, Latin America, and regulated U.S. markets are approaching blockchain scalability, compliance, and user onboarding.
  
  

^{✨ Episode Highlights:}

“With AI, you can fake everything—your resume, your voice, even your face. We’re building proof of humanity to bring back trust.” – Terrence Kwok

“We built Somnia not because we wanted to create another chain, but because nothing out there could support the scale of the metaverse we’re building.” – Herman Narula

“Instead of years of compliance work, you can plug into Uphold Enterprise’s API and go to market in weeks.” – Robin O’Connell

“Palm biometrics are already being used for ATMs in Japan and payments at Whole Foods. We're leveraging this proven tech for decentralized identity.” – Terrence Kwok

“People cry in the metaverse. We’ve seen thousands come together, singing at home plate during a live baseball event.” – Herman Narula

👥 People and Resources Mentioned:

• Terrence Kwok – Humanity Protocol
  
  
• Herman Narula – Improbable / Somnia
  
  
• Robin O’Connell – Uphold Enterprise
  
  
• Uphold
  
  
• Humanity Protocol
  
  
• Somnia Network
  
  
• ETH Denver
  
  

👤 About Our Guests:

Terrence Kwok – Founder of Humanity Protocol

Terrence Kwok is redefining digital identity in a world plagued by AI fraud. As the founder of Humanity Protocol, he’s pioneering a palm-biometric, blockchain-based system to authenticate unique human presence online. Backed by Pantera and Jump, Terrence’s project seeks to bridge proof of humanity with verifiable credentials like education and employment records.

Herman Narula – Co-founder & CEO of Improbable / Somnia

A visionary in the metaverse space, Herman Narula leads Improbable and its new blockchain venture Somnia. With over a decade building high-scale virtual worlds, Herman’s latest chain supports over 1 million TPS, enabling large-scale social and gaming experiences. He’s worked with partners like Yuga Labs, MLB, and Real Madrid to pioneer immersive digital events.

Robin O’Connell – CEO of Uphold Enterprise

As the CEO of Uphold Enterprise, Robin O’Connell is empowering companies with API-first compliance, payments, and liquidity solutions. With a user base in the millions and 30+ blockchain integrations, Uphold helps Web3 and TradFi teams alike build with confidence in a regulated landscape.

Terence Kwok – Founder & CEO, Humanity Protocol

• LinkedIn: https://hk.linkedin.com/in/terence-kwok-9b260b53
  
  
• Website: https://humanity.org
  
  
• Twitter (X): @TK_Humanity​
  
  

Herman Narula – Co-Founder & CEO, Improbable

• LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/herman-narula-2b1a8267
  
  
• Website: https://www.improbable.io
  
  
• Twitter (X): @HermanNarula​
  
  

Robin O’Connell – CEO of Enterprise, Uphold

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robinoconnell
  
  
• Website: https://uphold.com
  
  
• Twitter (X): @RobinOConnell14​

Transcript:

Richard Carthon: Hey everyone, Richard Carthon here with the Edge of Company, and we are live at ETH Denver. We have another special guest with us coming right now. We have Terrence Kwok with Humanity Protocol. Pleasure to have you on the show today.

Terrence Kwok : Thank you for having me.

Richard Carthon: Man, y'all have a lot going on, from big announcements to what we have in front of us. We're going to touch on all of that, but I want to just start for people who need to know what Humanity Protocol is.

Terrence Kwok : What is Humanity Protocol? Humanity Protocol is an identity blockchain, and what we're focused on is bringing trust back to not just the Web3 world, but pretty much this whole AI crazy world of deepfakes, frauds, and things that are very hard to verify. We're starting with what we call proof of humanity. So in terms of credentials on the blockchain, we want to start with proof of humanity because I think that's probably one of the most fundamental things about somebody, whether you're a human being or not. I think two years ago it would be absurd to ask that question. But now, I think, given another six months, it's pretty much impossible to tell. Online, whether it's your voice, it could be completely AI-generated. You can't tell it apart. Videos, deepfake, you can't really tell at this point. And then obviously with content, it's already impossible. Something's written by human versus chat GPT. In fact, you probably would say, given that it's written so well, that's why it's probably AI. So for us, the idea is not really just proof of personhood. So it's not really just about proving that you're a human being. That's the very first attribute that we want to focus on. But from our perspective, it's also creating a blockchain that allows us to bring other attributes on chain. So working with universities and education institutions for proof of education. Working with different sort of companies to bring proof of employment. Now, anybody can just create a fake LinkedIn profile and start emailing people. Fraud, scams happen. How do I prove that when you say you went to this university or you actually work at Google, you actually do work at Google? You look at that big Bitcoin scam, theft. by that Singaporean kid, right? He was pretending to be Google customer support, and then pretending to be Gemini customer support, and then somehow access somebody's private keys, right? So, the whole idea for us is how do we use blockchain for verification.

Richard Carthon: I think that's really awesome and almost so spot on from a timing standpoint because I literally just had a fake LinkedIn person reach out to me and I could tell after a couple of interactions that they weren't fake, but just looking at them at face value from interactions and everything else, you can't tell.

Terrence Kwok : You can't tell.

Richard Carthon: You can't tell. It's nuts. So this is very necessary and the reason why you have a lot of big announcements that just happened. So one in particular that you can share with us.

Terrence Kwok : Yeah, so we recently announced a fundraise from Pantera and Jump. Very happy to have them on board, adding to a roster of around 20, 30 venture capital funds and investors who have participated. I think for a lot of people, the theme over the last year or two has been a lot of AI. Everybody's talking about AI and crypto, AI and crypto. I think what we're trying to do is, it's also sort of in that AI space, but it's figuring out ways to leverage blockchain's immutability and trust factor to solve problems.

Richard Carthon: Yeah, and there's so many use cases of where this is necessary, especially at the intersection of what you're saying with AI coming into the fold. The fact with these AI agents, if you can start adding deepfake pictures and all these other things, you can spin up and have a whole bunch of profiles of people that don't exist.

Terrence Kwok : And there are already, right? You look at Twitter, you look at Facebook, I think I don't know what the latest statistics are on bot accounts, but it's probably growing very rapidly.

Richard Carthon: It is, and it's great that y'all are going about this, but one of the things that I want to talk about is what we have here in front of us. So for everyone who's listening to this podcast, over on YouTube, if you want to go watch this and see this incredible device we have in front of us, can you explain it?

Terrence Kwok : Yeah, so the way we think about the proof of personhood piece is that ultimately, because, you know, there are historical systems trying to solve this stuff online, right? Looking at your social media accounts, looking at, you know, your on-chain activity, all that sort of stuff to say, okay, you know what, are you a person or not? With AI, and just, you know, decent programming, you can probably fake all of that stuff at this point, right? So I think there needs to be something that really ties to a human being in order to prove that you're human. And so we decided to go with biometrics. Biometrics, obviously, many parts of a person's body are unique. Your face, largely unique. Your iris, definitely unique for everybody. Your fingerprints, unique. And then one thing that we also realized as we were researching and thinking about building this over the last couple years, is that your palm print and your palm veins are also unique. So that's why we see Amazon using this for payments. In Whole Foods, Tencent is using this for payment from China. The Japanese have been using your palm prints and veins for ATM verification for probably the last decade or so. And so what we're doing is essentially we're using palm based biometrics to verify that you're a unique person. And there are two parts to it. To start, we're actually going to be rolling out an app in the next probably month or so, where people can actually scan their palm print just with their own device. And that actually gives a pretty decent accuracy in terms of checking who you are and whether you're unique. And then we are also rolling out these hardware devices. This is sort of a beta version of it, but the production versions are coming out in the coming weeks. We actually already started doing a bunch of pop-ups with these. Here in our booth in Denver, we've been scanning people to onboard them into our test net. So with the devices, we can actually scan people's palm prints and veins. And this essentially allows us to scale up to billions of people and ensure that every single person who is onboarding is a unique person.

Richard Carthon: That's really cool. And the fact that, you know, we're here at ETHNUMBER, there's several people from all kinds of backgrounds from all over the world that can come and interact with this and see how it's working. And, you know, just to address, obviously there's competitors that are out there, but you have your own unique way that you're going about this. What do you think separates how your protocol is going after this versus some of the other options that are potentially out there?

Terrence Kwok : So I think, you know, when I look at what we're focusing on that's different, without like sort of naming some of the other players in the space, I think number one, we want to create utility for people, right? You know, I think it's not really so much, hey, you know what, AI is going to take over the world, everybody's going to lose their jobs, and so let's focus on scanning as many people around the world as possible and giving them UBI. That's not sort of our angle, nor are we saying, okay, you know what, let's focus on all the on-chain activities and give you different credentials based on some of the things that you do, like you hold an NFT or you do this or that, right? I think ultimately, with time and with AI, you can't really tell. For us, I think it's focusing on the proof of humanity piece to start, to onboard as many people as possible on sort of a direct-to-user, direct-to-consumer sort of way, and then also working with different businesses, different entities to onboard people en masse, right? So it might even be to get, you know, we're... We're working with companies and projects that have Fortune 500 companies as clients, where they're handling potentially employment records. Why don't we actually put those into Humanity protocol, issue them credentials based on that, and onboard all these people? So suddenly, it's not even just a proof of personhood credential, but that person might also have a proof of employment credential. doing partnerships with universities, to issue transcripts, your graduation certificates directly onto Humanity Protocols so that when you come out, at least next time that person who sends you a message on LinkedIn, you can say, okay, you know what, did this person really go to Harvard? Does this person actually work at Harvard? Facebook, you know, so some of these things I think are going to become more and more important. And I think for us it's focusing on, as I said, you know, there are going to be incentives for people to sign up as an individual user. We don't really call it UBI, but like there are going to be incentives, but I think also, you know, concurrently focusing on working with companies, entities, different sort of organizations with scale to onboard people into humanity protocol and as a byproduct, getting them into Web3.

Richard Carthon: Yeah, I think that's a really good approach. That's a really good example of even just like a university certificates being able to like really prove that and like have it just be part of the process that happens anyway. Because I mean, there are several people that I know that, you know, graduated and something happened to their certificate and now they either have to go to school to like... It's a pain in the ass.

Terrence Kwok : You have to call up the university. If say I need to hire somebody, let's say a little bit more junior, like not senior enough where like there are other Parts of them, I don't even need to ask or think about where they went to school, but let's say it's somebody who's just starting out in associate level, and I want to say, what was your GPA? Did you actually have that grade? Did you actually go to the university? Generally, you would have to call up the university, pay $100, $150, and then have them send over an official transcript in two, three weeks, right? So, you know, I think doing stuff like this with Humanity Protocol really solves some of these challenges.

Richard Carthon: It does. It makes it super fast, cost-effective, and again, it's on the blockchain, so it's verified.

Terrence Kwok : And then I also just want to add one thing, right? When it comes to credentials, if we manage to really build out this ecosystem, I think it really unlocks a lot of opportunities, not necessarily just in sort of verification for verification's sake, but also even if we look at sort of the DeFi world for the what3natives, right? You look at, say, RWA, I think with regulation coming, there's going to be a need for even some DeFi protocols to say, okay, you know what, at the very least, I don't really care about KYC-ing you. Actually, I don't even care if you're a bot or not. I kind of just care that you're not mixing money from Lazarus. Or that if it's a product that I kind of want to sell, let's say, T-bills or sort of a specialized fund, I want to know that you're an accredited investor. So some of these things, we can do it in a privacy-preserving way, knowing that you're an accredited investor without necessarily seeing your whole passport, KYC, all that sort of stuff. And then, I think down the road as we develop, if we do manage to bring in even more credentials and more trust into the space, then I think we actually unlock one very key thing in DeFi that separates DeFi from TradFi, which is under-collateralized lending, right? You look at sort of, right now, all of DeFi is lending, but it's over-collateralized. But much of the lending market in this world is under-collateralized, where there's no collateralization, because it's based on credit score, based on who you are, etc, etc. Right now, there's no online reputation, there's no reputation on chain, so I can't really do that. But I think, you know, if there are going to be credentials, we, you know, then we know where you worked, where you work, where you went to school, or at least we can find that out if shit goes wrong, then I think it unlocks a lot of these possibilities.

Richard Carthon: It opens up the doors to so many possibilities of things that need to be happening, especially as we move into a more technical, online world. And, you know, I think this has been really insightful for me, but for people who are hearing this, like, they're not hearing this, like, yes, this sounds great. I can't wait to, like, participate in this. Like, what are the next steps that they can take to learn more and be part of it?

Terrence Kwok : So yeah, our Twitter account, our X account, is just HumanityProt. And then for those of you who actually are interested in at least signing up and trying out, the website for the testnet is testnet.humanity.org. And you get to reserve your own human ID. Unfortunately, the mobile app hasn't been launched yet, so that'll be coming soon, and then you can actually scan your palm and verify to be sort of a human being. And then down the road, in many different countries, we're setting up stations for humanity scanners where people can actually go on board, become fully verified as a unique human being. And then also, even in our dashboard right now, you can already connect your social media accounts so that you can get the social credentials. And we're going to be launching a couple other sort of credentials over the coming weeks and months.

Richard Carthon: Awesome. Well, you heard it here first. Everyone that's listening, make sure you go check it out. And yeah, appreciate you coming on the show today. Thanks a lot.

Josh Kriger: Welcome to the Edge of Show live at ETH Denver 2025. I'm here with a special guest right now, Herman Narula, the co-founder and CEO of Improbable. Great to have you on the show. Thanks for having me. And, you know, I've heard your name for many years. I know you guys have been doing a lot in this space and recently announced a new blockchain initiative. But let's just like dial back a little ways. What got you into sort of the idea of using blockchain originally and what were you doing in the space before you came up with a new chain?

Herman Narula: You know, we've been on a 10-year journey methodically solving every problem required to build the virtual worlds that, you know, we always dreamed of wanting to be in as kids, right? That's been the vision from the beginning. I wrote a book about it. So were you a Second Life guy? In fact, funnily enough, Phil Rosedale's on the board of M Squared, which is our Metaverse business. And Rob, my co-founder, he paid his way through college by earning money in Second Life. So yeah, it's kind of one of the inspirations for us.

Josh Kriger: So, I mean, the metaverse has been through some highs and some lows. It was the narrative of the last cycle. And some people thought it was going to come back again this cycle. It hasn't been sort of a main focus of conversation. And, you know, we all know this industry is a little bit frenetic. But the technology has improved. Augmented reality. all these different technologies, extended reality. What is your take on the metaverse at this moment?

Herman Narula: So look, I'm biased. Over the last year, we've done over 100 public events in which we've taken our metaverse technology and put in thousands of people into virtual worlds. Just on Monday night, we had the Real Madrid football captain hanging out with, I think, 20,000 of his fans at different times in the space. On Saturday, we broke the world record for the most number of people in an FPS game with Youga Labs. So if you say Metaverse and you mean VR headsets, no, I don't think that's coming back anytime soon. But if you mean big social experiences in virtual worlds and the space beyond games, I think that is happening in a really big way.

Josh Kriger: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I know Yuga is doing a lot in that space and I have seen the sports industry gravitate more towards the Metaverse.

Herman Narula: Major League Baseball is actually one of our biggest partners. We did a couple of the first baseball games to ever be broadcast into the Metaverse last year.

Josh Kriger: Cool, so what has been the feedback from fans from that type of experience and how it relates to say watching the game on a really cool high-definition TV?

Herman Narula: I think it's really been about the emotional connection with other fans. The big thing we found is once you can handle all that traffic, What's interesting isn't just watching the game, it's hearing those hundred other people singing at home plate, or meeting people you've never met before, or having fans who've come from around the world who'd never come to a real game. You know, once you start to have thousands of people in a single virtual space who can all speak and all see each other, spontaneous and magical things happen. You know, the overwhelming reaction we've gotten has been emotion. You know, people like actually getting teared up, you know, hanging out with fans who they've never met before.

Josh Kriger: Very cool. So the new blockchain that you've built, Somnia, first of all, what inspired the name? And then second, what is the utility of Somnia that was needed in the industry? Because the question I got to ask is, why do we need another?

Herman Narula: And I'll be honest, the last thing we wanted to do was build a blockchain. We're a very pragmatic company. We've been around for a while, building businesses and exiting them, so we've been very careful to make decisions that are sustainable and long-term. We looked at every single piece of tech out there. We looked at the Mega Eats stuff. We looked at Monad. We wanted to be EVM compatible.

Josh Kriger: You looked at Sandbox, too, because people are building games on Sandbox. Completely.

Herman Narula: The trouble is the performance we require. From our perspective, you really want to bring the entire economy, the entire world, over metaverse on chain. Now to do that, you need hundreds of thousands of transactions a second, and you need them to work even in situations where they would normally break down. So very non-parallel workloads. Took us a long time. We raised a bunch of capital from SoftBank and Andreessen Horowitz, and I think we're pleased to say now we're a test net with a chain that can handle a million TPS, is EVM compatible, can do sub-second finality, and frankly has our entire business behind it. You know, we just announced the $270 million cumulative ecosystem fund. So, you know, we're serious about making this work. We're trying to focus on folks who aren't really within the blockchain bubble, you know, companies and groups that are outside it. And we think this is necessary. Otherwise, you know, we're never going to get them out of us.

Josh Kriger: Well, congrats. And what does Somnia mean?

Herman Narula: And how did you come up with that name? So the technology that handles billions of messages for our metaverse stack is called Morpheus, the god of dreams. And so somebody thought it would be funny to go from Morpheus to Somnia. And the foundation that set it up was set up by a few X improbable people, they picked the name.

Josh Kriger: Cool. Yeah, I mean, look, short name, it's punchy. I get it. I was just kind of curious there.

Herman Narula: So let's talk partnerships and roadmap. So I mean, we have managed to secure a whole bunch of partnerships, mostly out of ventures, not only that we've collaborated with them with a metaverse technology, but actually that we're building ourselves as well. So we'll be announcing things in sports, we'll be announcing things in music, we'll be announcing some familiar names in the NFT space as well. And of course, we're bringing the entirety of M2, our Metaverse platform, which is powering other side onto Somnia as well.

Josh Kriger: Are you thinking about any specific geographies? I was just in Hong Kong and obviously a lot opening up there, still sort of up and coming. You mentioned you're from India and Europe, as well as here. Do you see certain geographies as more ripe for demand for this type of technology?

Herman Narula: Yes, I think in Southeast Asia, in South America, in places where people are much more au fait because of remittance reasons with this tech, I think it's more popular. But also, play to earn, which I think is still one of the biggest, most interesting things you can do with gaming and crypto, it's more popular in those geographies. So it's certainly an area where we've been thinking about in terms of partnerships.

Josh Kriger: And are you bullish on the U.S. these days?

Herman Narula: I mean, the regulatory environment has gotten better for sure. I'm definitely bullish. Look, I think the memecoin stuff... I mean, no capital gains would be a huge change. But I do think the memecoin stuff is going to bite us all in the ass. I think that stuff is more poisonous than we realize. And I do think some regulation would be good.

Josh Kriger: You know, I try to constrain my point of views on things and be open-minded. But the more and more I reflect on our industry in the last year, it's really challenging. The main stuff has been challenging. I look at it as a game of checkers without all the pieces when we want to play chess.

Herman Narula: Exactly. That's a really good way to put it. I mean, it's a depressing way to put it, but a good way to put it, right?

Josh Kriger: And I think we were destined to lose the game. I mean, most of the time. You may win a couple times, but you're going to lose in the long run. And ultimately, our industry is losing focus on use cases like you just described. And they're prolific. Like, someone outside wanted me to spit in a tube for my DNA sample encrypted on-chain without encroaching my privacy. I was like, that's really cool. Why don't we do that instead of shitcoins? Exactly.

Herman Narula: I think the issue is as long as there are people willing to exploit other people and no real way for the industry to self-police, we're going to see more of this. And so we're hoping with the things that we're doing, by focusing on real applications, by being in it for the long term, and by funding for the long term, maybe we can avoid getting stuck in those types of messes.

Josh Kriger: Cool, cool. And one more thing I want to touch on before we adjourn this conversation. We'll have to have more chats in the future. You have a new ecosystem fund. What are the details there? What types of folks are you looking for? And how can people get involved?

Herman Narula: So we're really interested in anything which is going to be taking advantage of the super high-fidelity blockchain that we've built. The Virtual Society Foundation are the people running it. You can find them here at East Denver and elsewhere. And we're over $270 million of cumulative investment. And we're really looking at everything from completely new businesses to folks that are looking to add a crypto component to what is already a meaningful Web2 community.

Josh Kriger: And is it strictly development related or is it also focused on content and media?

Herman Narula: It's very wide ranging. So we're really open to pretty much everything.

Josh Kriger: Cool, cool. Well, great catching up with you, learning a little bit more about what you guys are building. If folks want to go down the rabbit hole, where do they go? Twitter.

Herman Narula: Follow us on Twitter, Somnia Network, and myself at Herman Nerula.

Josh Kriger: Yeah. How do we spell your accent?

Herman Narula: At Herman Nerula. H-E-R-M-A-N-N-A-R-U-L-A. All right.

x: Thanks, Herman. Great for letting me know. Thank you. Pleasure.

Josh Kriger: Hi everyone, welcome back to the Edge of Show live at ETH Denver 2025. It's bustling here and not too chilly. My guest right now is Robin O'Connell, the CEO of Uphold Enterprise. Great to have you on the show, Robin. Nice to meet you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, we're California guys. North and south. Yeah, so but yeah, so the cold weather, you're a little bit more used to the cold weather up there than I am.

Robin O'Connell: Yeah, yeah, it gets a little cold there, but yeah, I'm sorry about the fires.

Josh Kriger: Thank you, my friend. We'll battle back, we'll rise like the phoenix. And I think that's a good analogy for this industry, which continues to rise in spite of all the challenges. I think what's interesting, as I was getting more about what you guys do, is you've battled through sort of a very ambiguous regulatory climate. and figure out a way to play by the rules. Totally. So maybe, you know, give us a little context on what you guys are up to, both on the consumer enterprise side, and we'll delve into the product a little bit more.

Robin O'Connell: Fantastic. So, first of all, Uphold, we are sort of an OG, if you will, and it is amazing that, you know, we've sort of navigated, you know, through all the different regulations and, you know, issues through the years and have come out the other side. It's super exciting. I think we started in 2013. Many folks know us as a consumer wallet, which we are. So you go to uphold.com and you can interact with a wallet. We serve 180 different countries. We've probably got 15 million users that we've acquired over the years. And really, it's an easy way to go from your traditional financial, your bank money to your crypto money, and then buy, sell, hold, and then send. We're connected to, I think, 30 different blockchains. So we have a ton of activity on that wallet. So what's important to understand about Uphold is what I just described on the consumer side really just feeds off a platform. And so over the 10 plus years we've been in business, we've built out all these rails into Visa MasterCard, into banks, into alternative payment methods. We've got a big one coming online very soon. We've got a layer of where we're connected to 30 different blockchains. We can spin up wallets, both custodial and self-custodial. We have a really robust liquidity platform. We're not an exchange ourselves, but we're connected into all the exchanges. So if somebody wants to go from one digital asset to another, we can instantly price that, and that may involve two or three trades across different exchanges, but we've got all that automated and it's pretty phenomenal. And then importantly, we have this regulatory layer, which gets back to the survival part. We sort of decided and spent the money and the resources to build out the proper compliance and get the right licenses and have all the right systems in place. to effectively support our connectivity to banks, which in the United States, as an example, requires money transfer licenses. You're dealing with individual states. So we're licensed in the US and Europe, et cetera, et cetera. Now, all of that stuff feeds into the wallet. We then, I guess about a year and a half ago, created Topper. Topper is a fiat-to-crypto on-ramp that serves self-custodial wallets. If you want to load money instantly into a ledger, phantom, you can do that through that.

Josh Kriger: With your bank.

Robin O'Connell: But ultimately, the user experiences a widget called Topper.

Josh Kriger: Cool. Yeah. But I enter my debit card information.

Robin O'Connell: You enter your debit card information, Google Pay, Apple Pay. We're adding more and more payment methods, et cetera. And that just makes easy onboarding between TradFi.

Josh Kriger: Yeah, yeah. I wasn't familiar with Topper.

Robin O'Connell: So it's cool to know another onboarding mechanism for folks. And then the last part, which is the important part, is, OK, so those are their own little lines of businesses. But now what we're doing is we've API'd that platform. And so what that means is we can work with a variety of companies sort of filling their gaps where they haven't gotten the licenses. They don't have the compliance teams. They don't have all of the systems in place to do all the things that we can do. And we're finding that self-custodial wallets need a certain part of it. even traditional finance companies that you would expect would be like, oh, OK, I can figure it out, get the right license. It's like, no, that would take them years to do.

Josh Kriger: Is there like a use case for decentralized wallets that want to have both a centralized or a KYC friendly and a decentralized component?

Robin O'Connell: Totally. We're seeing that. Yeah. Some are remaining like, you know, oh, we're just decentralized, we're just the technology. And then others are starting to say like, hey, well, you know, the user experience is critical. And so we don't want to, you know, just like have a jolt experience where we're shooting somebody off into another experience. We want to have more of a consumer-friendly experience. And so even the self-custodial wallets are moving in a direction, it's a trend we're seeing, moving in a direction where they're starting to look more like custodial wallets, but you get the benefit of self-custody.

Josh Kriger: That's cool. That's cool. So as you look at sort of the regulatory shifts, both in places like Hong Kong and in the U.S., what do you sort of foresee as your priorities as a company and as both the opportunities and challenges for the industry?

Robin O'Connell: So it's been great, right? Like with what we're seeing in the U.S. as an example, I think that a lot of companies are just getting more comfortable embracing crypto. Is that one reason you're at Eat Denver? Yeah, totally. I mean, that's one reason that we're out there with this message of, hey, we have this amazing platform, and we can help you accelerate. So we go in and we figure out kind of, there's certain set use cases that I can talk about, but then there's a lot of times it's just like, okay, tell me what you're trying to do, and what are the parts that are missing? I had a breakfast meeting this morning, and I was blown away by what this company was doing, and I was like, well, what do you need me for? And they're like, well, but there's this one part where we don't have that regulatory piece. We need to convert the stablecoin, you know, into fiat and blah, blah, blah.

Josh Kriger: And they're essentially, by working with someone that does, they're saving how much time? Years.

Robin O'Connell: Like multiple years. Multiple years. No one has time for multiple years in our space. And then even when you get it, it's not like, oh, check, I've got the MTL license. Great, I'm going to put it up on my wall. They come into your office every single year and, you know, look at what you did and then make sure that you're doing everything.

Josh Kriger: Was there a big celebration when you guys got that license?

Robin O'Connell: Well, it's like 50 licenses. Did you celebrate each one or did you? No, no, no.

Josh Kriger: I mean, it feels like it's worthy.

Robin O'Connell: We should. We should. You got to celebrate the small wins.

Josh Kriger: Yeah, you have to have a process there. Well, congrats on all your success and thanks for giving us some context on a part of the industry not everyone's familiar with. If people want to learn more about you guys, where should they start?

Robin O'Connell: Well, you can come to uphold.com and then go to the enterprise API section. I think it's even like uphold.com slash onchain. We're actually doing some outdoor boards in the Bay Area, which is really cool. Oh, cool. Yeah. So, it's like move on chain, build on, uphold. And so we're really going for it because we think this is the time. Makes sense. And there's so much creativity that's going on here, but we could just help facilitate.

Josh Kriger: Makes sense. And are you on X by chance? Do people follow you on X?

Robin O'Connell: Yeah, Robin, at Robin O'Connell one, R-O-B-I-N-O-C-O-N-N-E-L-L one. All right. Well, Robin, thanks for hanging out. Cheers. Enjoy Denver. Stay warm. Awesome. Great to meet you. You too.

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