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which is making big moves in the defive space. We get into a really good conversation talking about his background in the cryptocurrency space, building tokens, building token platforms, how he found out about the DeFi space, and why he thinks it's probably the biggest thing happening right now in the crypto space, and what they're doing about it. Um, it's a great conversation. I really enjoyed. Let's go ahead

just jump right into it. Great. So, um, why don't we go ahead and just set this up a little bit and just tell us a little bit about you know, who you are, how you got into this blockchain, croup currency space, and kind of what you're working on right now yeah, sure, So we have been in the space for quite a while. Actually it all started as as

many good things are from the hackathon. So I went to one of the first blockchain hackathons in Moscow and it was actually Round two SEUSAN fifteen and it was hosted partially by by like our university and other other companies like n XD for instance. So we I got my now co founder Alex to join me on this hacothon. So we went there and we got a price from um now the co founder of Waves platform. So this

is how they all started for us. We've been developing smart contracts since then, and then its rated on different products. So one of the big products we started with as the area and was the organization platform during Guys Crazy, so we were helping companies to do the technical side of every I s. So we did in total like ten I cues uh And then as the market was evolving, we saw that the opportunities actually moving more into the

de centralized finance space. We like the much better than what we saw happening with the I C market because we were getting over the pretty bad i would say applications and we didn't want to do all over them, I would say, so there were only a few that we add to an extent like So that's that's how we got into the defile space and then started working

on the current vision and version of SERA. Interesting. So, um, you said the waves platform, correct, yep, And and yeah, I remember the Waves platform really had set up a platform for people to come and launch their I c O tokens on there. So that's interesting. So you were

kind of working behind the scenes on that. Um, so this is not something that we were involved with, but waves plat from the original idea that they didn't have any small contracts and they wanted to prevent the basic functionality on the protocol level, like the centralized exchanges not being as an application on top of the theory for instance, but in veg they included that as part of the protocol. So that's that's the direction that they were moving in

back in the days. I believe that now they have shifted more into smartphone checks like food implementation of smartphone checks on the platform. But we weren't involved in helping them to um fundraise for their platform and back and into thousands sixteen okay, yeah, and then by two thousand seventeen. They were going pretty hard and heavy, I guess, launching a bunch of I c o s and tokens. Yeah, I believe they did quite a few. I haven't heard

of many major ones, but but yeah, definitely they did. Yeah. Interesting, So you saw kind of a problem that was going on in that space where you just didn't feel like a lot of these projects were um necessary, right or whatever. So you kind of wanted to leave that and they'll find a place where maybe there was a better product

market fit. Yeah, that's that's right. So we originally when we started with the Tokensation platform, we were excited about io as a can sept ourselves, like very excited because we saw how the Theorium came up as a nice year and it was a very successful one. There were a few others, and that's how we jumped into the space, and we saw that not many people want to do that themselves, all the tag beflient lunching a nice ear.

But then later on it turned into a craze, I would say, so a ton of people just jumped into it, and not all the good ones. They wanted to scan people from time to time, and that that's what distracted us from the space, and we we decided that we need to move on from the from the I c O space and UM. But still we believe in the centralized finance and open finance and access and access to a lot of people to investment opportunities and other things.

So that's uh. We discovered defied as a concept UM and we saw an opportunity there like what what's the problem within the DeFi spaces and how we can tackle it? Yeah, that's great, So what what do you see being the problems in the in the DeFi space that that you're trying to solve and tackle there? There are a lot of prestil So we what we did and we just sat down, uh and tried to use all these essentialized finance protocols ourselves. And it was a pain starting from

like the first moment. And even though we were experienced already with developing on the theorem and the theorem itself, it was still complicated to just like opening for instance, the CDP was a huge pain back in the days UM and then other protocols they were also suffering from similar issues. You know, you need to know about all the concepts that UM people are referring to when talking about essential of finance, they are actually not known by

a lot of people. And that's that's I think the largest issue because it's so much it's like the knowledge gap between what people should know to start using it and what is the current state of the spaces. So when we talk about the DeFi space overall, and you mentioned CDP, so CDP for those that aren't aware, is the collateralized debt position, right, so it's, uh, you can pen up a CDP on Maker Dow right, which would be like a loan. Is that is that correct? Is

that you? And uh? And and so really the DeFi space is is it predominantly just the borrowing and lending that's happening on cryptocurrency. I would also include the centralized exchanges into that space. They were created before the lending and boring even appeared, but I kind of defy that defined that as um the essential of that changes table coins and learning and boring. So these are the primary ones,

I would say. But then the I think the last one that is that hasn't yet happened to an extent is synthetic assets that it's emergency yeah, um so so yeah, I guess the exchanges would be the first piece, right, So that's where people are needing to exchange their tokens um and most of those decentralized exchanges or I guess all of them have really been built in the ethereum ecosystem.

So is all this happening in the ethereum ecosystem. There's some development on other changes all and especially in the de centralized exchanges space on EOS. I believe that there are a few decentralized exchanges that will operate life and on a few others. So like, for instance, Waves that we've talked about, they have the centralized exchanged upper running

and it has pretty good going um. But most of the lending and boring stuff and all the complicated new things they actually just appear on the theorem for a few reasons, I guess the major ones. It is just first of all, there are a ton of different tokens on the theorem, so it's there's a lot of different tokens to trade and then use as a collateral, etcetera. So these are the building pieces that are required to have the centralzed fendance. We need to have different kinds

of assets. And then the next one is I think according to a few researchers, there's like four x developers on the theorem then on any other chain and git point of the second one. So it just in terms of the network effect of people working on specific products. Yeah, I saw that. I saw that chart. So back to the problem that you're seeing. So, UM, you you look at the DeFi space, you looked at the different products and that are available, UM, and I guess the problem

that you saw is that they're very difficult to use. Yeah, that's that's largely right. So we just believe that the the centrazed fendance should be accessible to people, but right now it isn't. So what we wanted to do is actually bring that to to the larger audience of people, not just adopters of DeFi only. And and is that through giving them an easier like ui u X, like an easier interface that makes it more accessible to them, or is it through like marketing or how do you

want to do that? Yeah, so we there are a few different approaches how to address that. So we have focused on the user experience as our first aspect. And simply because UM user experience is something it's very important from our view and we believe in that, UM and we already they see the results of that. So it's much easier to use, for instance, are and than if you other other applications, and a lot of protocols are sending US users because they're the new bees and they

don't know how to upgrade in the in this whole space. UM. But in terms of other approaches like US UX does not come just as the DUI tweeks and to make the UX better you need to work on multiple different levels. So that includes both the back end and the smart contract. So we're not targeting. We're not doing yet UM as you said, some marketing or promotion of debt, but it's

more on the level of UX. The UX involves other aspects that are behind the scenes that you don't really see when when you just like see the n c u X. But in terms of like making this work, you would need to have a sophisticated backend system and

the smart contract. Yeah, yeah, I've seen. You know. It's interesting because we have these building blocks as you've laid them out right, basically four three or four exchange stable coins, lending, borrowing, and then maybe synthetic assets UM and so you kind of have those four building blocks that can be then like added together, but we're starting to see people are putting them together in different ways and coming up with like new creative use cases. Um. So that's what I

was curious. Is it like maybe just making all these easier to use or are you guys trying to kind of develop your own financial products based off of these building blocks for some of each. Yes, So we we're debating that internally about building our own financial products. And the thing is that is that we just don't want

to rush with that. We see that a lot of people are actually working on something similar or we're working on um products that would aggregate different out of financial building blocks, and there's not much reason for us to jump into that right away. We just see that it is it will be possible to integrate these as well, and I think I think that's the mutual benefits for both asked the company that develops the protocol and UH in the ecosystem in general. So right now, I wouldn't

rush into that. And we see that like, yeah, all the new things that are popping up, I would say, like five different teams are working on the same thing. So um, We don't think that we should compete with them on on that realm. We just better think how that can be presented to the users. And that's how how do we increase the adoption of that specific new building blocks that people come up with. Do you want to talk about what what you're doing specifically, what Zerion

is doing specifically? Can you get into that? Do you mean in terms of like roadmap for the next few months currently and and the near roadmap. Yeah, so we we just recently rolled out a few features for completely new users to enter the space. So over the summer we created like we allow people to create an account using their phone numbers. Now we have integrated deposits with how haven't announced that yet, but now you can buy

from Zeri and you can buy cryptocurrencies right away. So these are the things that will make the experience much better. So you can just start off with the area and without leaving um to get either for instance. But then now we want to focus on more sophisticated financial products,

products that are already available on the market. So we we want to have different things like set protocols, beauty swap pools and use swap pools is coming next to be viewed within zerin so you don't need to jump into like five different applications to understand how your patrol you is looking like. So that would be all include UM so apart from said UM, we want to have d I, d X lending integration and other protocols. And that's what you said, set protocol And then did you

say swap protocol used swap pools, so SWA pools. Yeah, yeah, so used weapcols. I can go into detalum so use allows people to deposit the quality to use swap pools and pools amant for trading on union swab. So whenever you make a trade for instance, a theorem to die or theorem to use the see, you would need to UM. You're using someone else's liquity for that to make a trade. And UM liquidity providers they are rewarded UM with zero point three percent of the token of the trade size.

And that liquidity can be provided from anywhere, so anyone can provide the sequity and that's called um unic swab pools. And we want to have that integrated as a financial product within there, and so you can UM manager returns on unit swap pools you can departed or withdraw liquidity from there, um, et cetera. So that's uh so if I was a user UM and I was using the zero on UM app, I would then be able to take my UM tokens and then provide them as liquidity

for this exchange. And by providing those tokens as liquidity, I can make a percentage back. Yes, that's correct, we used You're you're still betting on that's a bit more complicated financial product because it's not necessarily profitable if the price of one of the assets goes one way or another, so there is a risk associated with that, but you still earn on the productal feeds. So that Yeah, So I mean I'm gonna earn the point three or whatever

that is UM. If the underlying asset goes up or down, then I could lose on the asset, but I am going to earn on the asset, right, Yeah, that's correct. Yeah, okay, um okay. So that's that's an interesting way to do that. So we can earn liquidity. So it's it's basically another way to earn against our tokens, may be similar to

staking or through through lending. Yeah, but as I said, it's a bit more risky because you need to understand that if the price of the asset is fluctuating a lot, Like the best case scenario is when the price of finances goes up and then goes down, and then goes up and then goes down again to the same where you entered. You would just get the fees if if the now the price is the same as you entered

the pool. But if the price was fluctuating, like for instance, Easter going out a lot, then you would lose on the school because it would be better just to hold either. Oh gotcha, gotcha? So when when when, when you feel that it's in a good range, it might be time to take advantage of that, But in a in a strong bowl trend, maybe it's not the best time to

take advantage of that. Yeah, that's right, okay. And then so that's interesting the swap protocols, and do you think over time, like lots of different application developers will will integrate that in so that unit swap ends up with a lot of liquidity. Is that the goal? Um? Yeah, so they originally the the idea of the protocol was to open this up for a lot of people, so

everyone can deposit cuility. Right now, there's only unit swap that allows people to deposit that, so only through union swap, UM units or interface you can put theequility in or through the smart contract itself UM. But we as we will be integrating that so there will be more places

to depositive critity. Okay, and then you before the unitsap protocol, you talked about the set protocol, and the set protocol is a protocol that allows you to build certain sets or like um different assets in certain like almost like an index. Is that correct? Yeah, that's that's right. So that was I believe that was their original idea to just build similar to like E T s UM indexes.

But right now I think it has a much larger use case, use cases and scenarios how it can be applied because you can track different things, not just the prices of assets, but you can track other things about the assets that can be used to rebalance the portfolio. So yeah, right now they have a few different ones UM. So the sets are currently limited to what set protocol allows and allows people to create on on their website.

I think the few first ones for um ether bitcoin or our right versa, and the ones that are trying to capture the the heights of the market and the lows of the market. So if it's like it's a balancing set, so is this something where like you'll tap into their sets and bring those onto your platform, or

you'll build your own sets. So we're not planning to build our own sets full time being, so we will be just helping people to manage their sets, get in the area in itself, and it's all our our features actually based only your feedback. So we're just collecting what people are just requesting um from time to time to implement within the area. So we are using that to prioritize our features. Okay, all right, so what what what other things are you putting in there? What about the

lending and borrowing? Yes, so right now we do support make your do boring, but we don't support compound boring and that's something that a few people ask and we're looking to that. How how do we make it nice and how do we make it where it could make your dial as well, So this is definitely coming at some point. Okay. Yeah, And on the compound finance side, we have only landing right now, so you can put your assets to earn interest, but you cannot borrow through there. Okay,

so we can put our assets on the platform. We could maybe potentially use the set protocols to rebalance them or take advantage of different ethere and bitcoin splits um provide liquidity to the protocol, do some lending eventually maybe doing some lending and borrowing. So it's kind of like a all in one place to take advantage of all these DeFi applications. Yeah, that's mainly right. Yeah, we just wanted to make it simple so you can compare different rates.

So for instance, right now, like there's only one boring protocol Maker Dial, but then once we have compounds, you'll be able to choose which one do you want to go with to like Make or Dial. Rate is I believe are around twenty and compound is I would say sixteen. Haven't checked just yet, but around that. So you can go ahead with compounds instead of Maker if you want so. Um, when you look at the industry overall, so you you kind of have this, you have a little bit of history.

I mean, you've been doing this for several years. You were you saw a lot of different I c O s UM. You know, back in the back in that stage, So you kind of have this perspective of the whole market and ecosystem and at how this technology is advancing. So I'm curious, um, what you think about defy specifically. I mean, obviously you're building in it, but um, do you feel like this is maybe like the first kind of application that we're going to see to really start

getting traction? Um? I think so yes. UM. So I was, to be honest, like a round um mayor last year, I was pretty disappointed by the overall state of the market. So it was just I see it was only nothing else was happening, No teams were delivering any products mainly, and it was just very depressing. But then I went to dot com and that was kind of like a bit of fresh air because people I just saw the emergence of defied space, that a lot of things are

actually happening behind the scenes. So that was very refreshing, and we saw that Defy something that is very much aligned with what we live in and how the space de evolving. Remember, like all these ideas around the centralized finance, they were kind of already in the air for a long time. So since the origination of there, I would say, but it was more I think, um kind of like the space was trying to shift towards Web three and

that the that shift I think would take much longer time. UM, and defies is something that we can already see the benefits of right away. So that's why I think DeFi space right now is very interesting for everyone to join. Do you think right now? I mean, who is the user? What's the use case for DeFi? Is this like a retail trader investor? Or are this more like institutional grade like products? Um, that's more I would say, it's it's

the first individual. So mainly people are U using defied space for its simplicity if you know what what you're doing. So in simplicity I mean, but not the RX of it right now, but in terms of the speed and UM, for instance, like getting a CDP is much is very easy for a lot of people, and then than just going to bank and trying to get the same loan using your crypto as a collateral, so that that seems impossible to to a lot of people. And UM, that's

that's actually pretty much true for many usictions. And that's why fight it's like easy in that sense, and it's much faster than traditional banking system as well. So that's for instance, like earning time percent on your dollars. Is it's a way to go, I would say for people who know what they're doing. Yeah, so it's uh, it's it's more for retail like individual traders and investors, but probably that are more sophisticated that can really understand how

to leverage these types of learning applications. Yeah, that's that's exactly right. And do you see that growing pretty fast? I mean right now I think it's about what five hundred billions or five million dollars or so is locked up kind of like can die And that's is that? Is that about the size of the ecosystem right now? So I think it's about hundreds of die issued in total, maybe in less than that's around seventy million of die issued.

The rest is like spread across different protocols. And yes, this is mainly the sides of the system, but we can and that's on lead the total value locked So that's amount of fasts that are just sitting within the ecosystem. We can also look at the trading wiliumes as well and just in general, how how much people are transacting and die for instance, so that would I think count

forwards dephy ecosystem too. Do you have any projections as far as like growth in this space, like what are you thinking there or what what are what are the experts saying, uh that that's the complicated one. U we' well, I think that's Um. What what I plan say is that I believe the growth will be compounding. So I mean not alluding to the complem partical, but looking at

the space, all these tools are coming coming together. So these building blocks, as you sir, as you, as you name them, the more of them are available, the more use cases we will have. So we'll start with just a few ones. It looks like compound has uh is one of the most successful ones so far. Um and yeah, except the maker, but the Yeah, the proliferation of these different building blocks will drive the adoption faster and faster. Now I'm curious, um, to find out a little bit

more about about the company. I think in the past you told me you guys kind of have like a remote team, right, yeah, so, um, you have a remote team? Uh, how does that work? Being a builder? So for I know, there's a lot of different people that are working on building different things. I mean, what are some of the challenge that you have being a remote team, do you think or or is that beneficial for you having a

remote team, It's has its own advantages and disavengages. Um. In terms of the drawbacks of having a remote team, the first one is actually, I would I would call it having everyone in sing It's just because when you are like a team of founders, for instance, sitting in one place, you it's rate on different ideas and priorities much faster than the rest of the team, and you would need to you constantly need to explain that to everyone, um, so you can keep them motivated to continue working. So

that's one of the challenges. And of course associated one with that is you need to like team members should be very transparent and very that's like they should be self managers in a way, so they should be able to work without anyone looking at them. So that's that's a certain type of people, I would say, And it's it's been sometime since we're like, we we spent some time trying to find these people, and I think we have them on the team right now. But there are

definitely a lot of advantages. Yeah, so you can be anywhere you can work. If you know how to work in a remote way, you can work from anywhere and that's that's great. That helps with your how do you how do you manage a remote team though? Like how do you make sure they're working and doing their work and doing the doing the work correctly or there's some tools that you use or is it just weekly check ups or how do you do that? Um, it's been

it's been through through a lot of iterations. But um, what we in terms of the tools that we use, it's of course Slack. We have three times a week we have a fool team sync in the morning so people can understand what kind of tasks they should be working on. Of course we use some project issue at trackers, so like from Zenhab for instance, it's an extension to be hob or trailer as well. Um, yeah, we use

actually a lot of tools. I calculated that for the last year I think in total it was like forty one different services in the company. Wow, that's incredible. And So for someone who wanted to build a product um and was thinking about doing a remote team, how would you recommend they would start? Like is it a matter of like getting out, traveling to events to meet people. Um, are there like job boards that people can use do

you mean for um? For like speaking off the startup within the space, Like someone who wanted to build a remote team to build up product in in the crypto space, I wouldn't recommend them starting with a remote team, so like whenever you can, I would just suggest that you can go with the team that you can think daily. But it was a necessity for us for a few

different reasons. But if if that's something that you definitely have to do, I believe you just need to spend a lot of time, like first evaluating people when you're um when they're joining your company, so you need to give them some time to adjust and like see and constantly track their performance. Of course, of course everyone will have some you know, um complications with starting off, but if they are able to manage themselves, they they'll deliver

results quite consistently, so you you should be looking after that. Yeah, And and then you have a co founder as well, do you guys split the rolls up like one is like a technical co founder and one is more of like the business co founder or how does that work? It's actually three of us. UM. So it's yeah, Alex and a Demon and we caught my co founders UM. And yes, Alex is doing he's a CTO. He's doing mainly all the technical stuff UM, including back in his

mort contracts. But Demon is doing more business developments UM. And like speaking with our potential partners and I do I do the rest I got of things. Everything else falls on you. Yeah, I've been reading some articles lately they talked about like, you know, people should find a technical co founder UM if they're not if they don't have that technical role. So I was just curious how that overlaps. Are these guys that you've worked with since back in the waves days, like you've been with him

for a while, developed a relationships with them. Yeah, but that's exactly right. So Alex is the one actually that we worked with on this hackatone in the future and other on helping waves UM. And but Deem was actually employing us a very long time ago, both of us as just developers for his for the first previous company. Oh cool, and yeah we're old technical. That helps a lot actually to just understand each other better. And like, no,

they're knowing the constraints about implementing a certain feature. We don't need to, like, you know, explain that this cannot be built in three days. We all know that. Yeah. Well having that patient um it's also good. I mean, I guess you guys can get on the same page to talk about like technical issues that you're having and whatnot. Okay, um, good. Well, what what can we expect from Zerion coming down the future? What? What? What do we where are you going to be? What's

coming out? I know you have a big announcement you can't talk about now, but maybe they will be coming out soon. Yeah, we have a plan to talk about our fundraising pretty soon, so that stay tuned for that. Okay, okay um, all great? Where where can people find out more about Zeroon? I would first suggest our website of course, go and explore to our product page and try landing some die on compound or getting a loan and cdp um. Then I would say you can go to our blog.

So that's blog that therein that Ayo, And I think the major source of news for us it's Twitter right now, It's like everyone is on Twitter, defied spaces on Twitter, so fellows arein Ayo could underscore. Yeah, we'll make sure to link to all that in the show notes. I'm curious you said go to the website and go ahead and just start trying to do it alone or whatever. Um is it? Is it free to use the service and then you take a you take a fee out or do we pay like a monthly membership for that.

It's currently completely free, so you only pay for their network fees, so that would be gas, so you would need to have some ether on your account to start using that the arian, but the rest is free. And then you guys, you guys have a revenue model where you take a percentage of the transaction fees or something. Yeah, we were, I mean right now, we don't, and we actually don't plan to have that in the near term

for sure. We to be honest, I'm not a huge fan of doing that way of revenue generation simply because it feels like grend costraction and people can do elsewhere were cheaper and I don't really like that approach. Um. Yeah, I believe will be the better revenue model for us will be actually providing more premium features that people can access within the are in. So that's that's something that we are still considering and working. So I have like a free model where you get some base features and

then people can pay to subscribe to like more advanced features. Yeah, I believe that's the right approach. So for instance, more sophisticated accounting for your DeFi portfolio, for the tools for instance that only people who are very sophisticated use UM. I don't know, maybe some financial products that are not

for everyone for sure. So that's that's the things that I think we you should be charging for UM because these are actually premium features and up just for basic transaction, trying to make people use us simply because our their face is better, right, yeah, I mean especially if they can just go go directly to those platforms. It makes sense. All right, great, well, thank you. Sounds good. I'm gonna go ahead and make sure we linked to all that

stuff in the show notes. Everybody can go follow up and and learn more about ZERI on and it's definitely something I'm gonna be going to play around with and experimenting with and uh keeping an eye on. Well, thanks for taking the time. Hey, if you like this episode of the Market Disruptors podcast, please help us take this to the top of the podcast charts. Just please do

me a favor and rate, review and subscribe. Taking fifteen seconds to just leave a quick review goes a long way and helping us reach more people and disrupt more markets. I really appreciate you listening and I'll see you next time on the Market Instructors podcast