Bitcoin-based Loan Markets, Among Other Dreams With Shehzan

Welcome back to The Gwart Show! Today we are joined by Shehzan, a Bitcoin builder focusing on borrowing and lending protocols on top of Bitcoin. While most people think of Bitcoin as a dumb rock, the Lava team led by Shehzan is working on a novel solution to natively lend and borrow (while maintaining self-custody but we’ll let him explain that) on Bitcoin. Lava uses Discreet Log Contracts (DCLs) to thread the needle of both permissionless capital via DeFi markets and Bitcoin self-sovereignty via self-custody. Timestamps: 00:00 Start 00:56 Who is Shehzan? 01:29 Why no BTC lending yet? 02:29 What are DLCs? 04:19 Lava vs other lending protocols 05:30 P2P loans complications 06:59 Deposit & loan process 09:20 Privacy implications 11:32 Wrapped BTC 12:44 User risk profile 14:57 Fixed rate loans 17:53 Who are the lenders? 18:19 Oracles 19:42 Choosing oracles 20:49 Rates 22:11 Loan durations 23:13 Target user 25:33 Other chains? 27:21 Solana outages 28:41 Other DLC uses 30:13 Building in Bitcoin experience 32:19 Lightning 33:06 Lack of BTC spending 35:07 Bitcoin's monetary properties 37:48 Wrapped BTC and custodians 41:45 Bitcoin scaling 43:45 OP Codes 46:42 Not enough core devs 47:58 Stablecoins 51:50 Tokenized assets 53:08 Solana vibes Follow our host: @gwartygwart Follow our guest on Twitter: @marediashehzan 👋The Gwart Show is proudly presented by Ellipsis Labs! Ellipsis Labs is building foundational products in DeFi. Their first product @PhoenixTrade is the leading orderbook DEX on Solana. The team is growing—visit ellipsislabs.xyz for engineering opportunities. Enjoy the show? Check out our website and newsletter by clicking here. Questions or want to sponsor? hello@blockspace.media Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices