Unlocking Liquidity in DeFi:The Power of Multi-Chain Web3 Solution

Unlocking Liquidity in DeFi:The Power of Multi-Chain Web3 Solution

Speakers:

Jason Fernandes (Co-founder of AdLunam Inc)

Mateo Austin ( APAC SubDAO Lead, Meta Pool)

Fantastic. Okay. So welcome everybody to a brand new episode of Diving Into Crypto, sponsored by AdLunam. I'm your host, Jason Fernandes, co-founder at AdLunam. And today, we're excited to explore, unlocking liquidity in DeFi, the power of multichain web3 solutions with Mateo Austin, APAC subDAO lead at Meta Pool. Mateo, do you wanna unmute and maybe say a few words about yourself and maybe, talk about your company a bit?

Yeah. Sure. Hi. Nice to meet you. Thank you for, having me. Yeah. Mateo, I'm responsible for the Southeast Asia area of Meta pool. And, yeah, I'm originally from Spain.

I'm off British as well. I came here to Southeast Asia last year with the company, mainly because we were explore exploring a lot of our, like, what our user base were doing because a lot of people came from this region, and we haven't been out here before. So, I came last year, and I was in South Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore. And, yeah, after that, we decided we we're gonna put a lot of focus in, in Southeast Asia. So that's why I am the responsible the sub dial for Meta Pool here. And Meta Pool is a liquid staking protocol. We're multichain. We were born on NEAR, and we expanded to different ecosystems.

So we have we offer today Ethereum staking, ICT staking, and, some new things are coming in the pipeline as well. So, the idea is to be fully multi chain. We're chain diagnostic ourselves, and we run as a DAO.

Sweet. No. Sweet. That's a great introduction. I mean, I think, I totally second what you were saying. I'm Portuguese and I've spent a lot of time here in Asia myself. We're based out of, Thailand. And there's quite a few I mean, recently, we had Devcon and NEAR Protocol had an event, and, you know, Edward Snowden was speaking there.

That was pretty exciting to see him to see him live. And then also, you know, ICP, we have partnered with ICP's event at the Hacker House, and I'm really, really impressed at how they, they got things done. So I think those I think the chains that you guys have chosen to sort of roll out on, are really developer centric and quite exciting for a lot of people. You mentioned, I mean, I see that you were part of, you know, that you try to drive the growth of Bean Buddies, which is sort of a network of real life meetups. Could you talk a bit about that and sort of your experience, you know, doing that in Asia?

Yeah. Sure.

And how that's been?

Sure. So, we started BuildBuddies in Ho Chi Minh City. That was around October. So, what we're doing with this activity is that, we got a network of meetups, and they're in different cities. So we have we the meetup is on a weekly basis. We have it in Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Jakarta, and Indonesia, and also, Surabaya, which also started recently. And it'll be like, also, like, a once a month, we'll be doing it in Malang, which is also in Indonesia. And we also do it in Bangkok, and soon we'll be introducing the meetup to, also to Manila.

What we do Yeah. So what we do with this is actually it's so it's a meetup that is fueled by Meta pool. It's Meta pool facilitates the space and space for Web3 enthusiasts. To me, to have coffee, mingle, and also people may be traveling. You might have some digital nomads who are in the Web three space and wanna connect with people in different cities. We're facilitating this kind of space for connection. Or maybe people also might be looking to meet someone to find their project with. And, hopefully, they can meet someone in our space that we facilitate.

So, that's what we're up to there. Of course it is hosted by our ambassadors. Mhmm. Anyone who is interested in medical, what we do, of course, our ambassadors will be there to explain to them more.

Facilitate, basically.

Yeah. The thing is it's the space, although the space is not about Red Bull. So it's about anyone who's interested in the ecosystem, and who, of course, because we're multi chain as well, we're we're inviting projects and, and, communities from different, from different environments. So, we know that Web3 is a thing that we all have to grow together. It's not a question. It's not a competition against, you know, different environments. I think it needs it needs to be something where we will, you know, get together, basically.

Yeah. I mean, it's pretty nascent, I think, in a lot of places. And so I think the meetups are really useful to build community and to get people interested in, you know, the product, but also, like, Blockchain in general. So moving on to the product, Meta Pool, can you tell me a bit about that, specifically, like, sort of what area of the market you guys are targeting when it comes to DeFi? And I know it's sort of liquidity staking with. What is it that sort of sets it apart from, you know, its competition, and what does it do uniquely?

Yeah. Of course, the thing is that with liquid staking well, we definitely firstly, you know, we are permissionless, decentralized, and, we run as a DAO, which is very important as well. So, of course, the liquids the staking that we offer, each chain, of course, this each chain has its singularities there. But, as we're built on that on a medical sorry. We're built on NEAR. And NEAR, if you see, actually, you know, proof of stake, of course, was happening on Nia and all that changed way before that on, Ethereum. Right? And, especially liquid staking itself that you could actually, you know, stake your native token and take your liquid token afterwards to DeFi. Right? So you've got access to that to that, staked asset, and you could be using it, to gain more yield or well, actually, you have it as well in your wallet.

Right? So, of course, we offer to also feature with the knee with NEAR. We offer fast on stake as well so you could actually unstake much quicker your, your token. And then, what I definitely think that's very unique about what we're doing is that, again, as we're growing as a as a DAO, the token holders of our native, token, which is, MP DAO, actually, governed. And they can participate in voting and vote and so it's vote to earn. And, so we have voting rounds every few months, for different issues. It can be like, at the moment, we just we just closed, a grant round, and we have these grant rounds, every few months. But the interesting part about that is that, from our near staking, the, the protocol fees that we generate, 65% of those go to, go to our token holders, the so the what the what we generate from there. And, and then the rest is divided in between operations, And, also, there's a 10% of that that goes towards, to grants grant programs towards other projects within the ecosystem.

So, I think that's very unique about us that all of our fees go back into, be it the medical community, so that is the token holders, operations, of course, and, and, yeah, on the grants that we hand out as well.

Okay. And so who are your, potential clients? I know that, you know so projects have different reasons why they might introduce staking. So for example, Launchpad might introduce staking to sort of enable people to, let's say, have additional, you know, ability to invest basically additional, amounts, of allocation and projects, on one hand, and then, of course, they'll also need staking. Maybe they'll use it, you know, to sort of develop a liquidity pool, for exchanges. Like, who, how what are the kind of companies that you work with mostly, and what do they sort of use, you know, what you guys are doing for?

Yeah. So I would say there's mostly two types of scenarios. One, of course, is retailer. So anyone that has some, tokens that they wanna stake, of course, they just bring them with their wallet and, you know, need stake them, and, you know, you've got the API that you will get depending on each token. Of course, it's different. And, but, of course, then there's a lot of, like, there's a lot of, investors. Also may many, I would say that. Right? It's digital as well.

So they will have whoever's got a large amount of services, maybe in their interest to have them, state somewhere, right, to generate that. Sure.

Mhmm. Sure. Understood. So now let’s shift gears a bit and, like, sort of talk about you. I'm just curious sort of how you got into the crypto and blockchain industry. Like, what were you doing before this, and how did you sort of get interested in it in the first place? Like, what was the turning point?

Right? Yeah. And, so when I started with Acrobat, actually, back in back in the day, we were building stuff in in Second Life. I don't know if you remember that. But Right. Of course. Yeah. So we're so I went way back. We actually were a few companies in in Spain that was well, sorry.

No. I would say worldwide that was creating content, building stuff in second life. And back in then, we were already buying, selling, trading in there using, the currency that they had, which was the corp lending. And, so we built things for different companies. Big companies like, which is, Spanish car manufacturing, two by two of Inditex as well. So that I was very, very interested in the whole virtual, side of things. Right? And then I also was interested a lot in AR. And then, the crypto part itself already involved with, of course, a lot of, you know, programmers.

Then I had this friend who was a programmer who was a very much like a libertarian kind of figure who was talking to me about this new thing called Bitcoin and how it was gonna change the world. And I Right. Obviously, I bought I bought into it totally in that that time. Right? So I was fascinated about it. Then, you know, I kind of stepped, I kind of stepped away for a bit for a few years until, you know, until the whole because, actually, back then, Ethereum, of course, had started with our concept, the smart, contract, but really not much had been done with that yet. And, and then afterwards, you know, basically, I saw that the web, was going in a new direction, and I really wanted to embrace it and see what was going on. Right? So I leaped into the Web3 space.

Yeah. You know, it's interesting you mentioned, libertarianism because a lot of people a lot of people ended crypto mostly because of this belief of, you know, this, this sort of, industry that was outside the norm, and it provided sort of freedom and democratization, of, you know, funds and fund allocation, mostly from the perspective of wanting to sort of, extend their existing political beliefs of, you know, each person having serenity around, their funds and things like that, or even around their body, which is obviously a very libertarian concept. And then those people have sort of gotten into got into crypto. So it's quite interesting connection. I think a lot of people have that connection. So, really fascinating. So now what, drew you to the, possibilities of Web3 when it comes to, this product? How did you how did you sort of get involved, in liquidity staking? I know you talked about a bit about your previous background, but specifically with liquidity staking at Meta Pool, how did that come about?

Yeah. Sure. So at the time, again, I was mentioning I really wanted to dive into Web3. I come already from marketing in web2 space. And, Claudia, one of the co-founders of Meta pool is actually a good friend of mine. And

just at the just at the time, actually, we met, he was in Barcelona visiting, and I, you know, we met every now and again. And I just said, no. Actually, at the moment, you know, I'm, I'm quite interested in leading into Web3. He said, well, you know, actually, we're doing this at the moment. So, you know, why not come and join us? And I said, okay. Let's do it. And that's super excited about that. And I've gotta say, you know, I did find difficulties, going into web3, going from web2 back into yeah.

Everything is quite different. And,

Yeah. It's a very different industry.

Yeah. But I think there's two the I think, definitely, two parts of it that I find quite different is, one, of course, the channel the tools that that you use are quite different. Right? You know, because it's very community driven. And, and, of course, I've gotta say, back then, I wasn't the since I was only a few years ago, I mean, back then, I'm using Telegram, but just not much really and or much Discord and that, you know, and so the diving into how, you know, communication works in Web3 was quite interesting. And then the other part, which I was a challenge as well. Of course, there's a lot of hurdles in terms of using. Right? The UX/UI experience of Web3 up to now has been quite hard, especially for people who have not come to space, die hard Web3 users. It's a bit challenging.

Right?

Yeah. No. I agree. I agree. Now you mentioned okay. Going back to sort of medical, you mentioned sort of the IP multichain. And so I'm curious, how do you see connecting different blockchains as making DeFi more efficient, and what are the, sort of benefits would you see for the end user? Yeah. Do they see a lot of benefits, or is it more, you know, project to project?

No. I think, actually, this ties in with what I was mentioning before as well, right, with the user experience itself. Yeah. I think the way is multichain. Right? I mean, so for instance, what you see with NEAR, I mean, they, you know, part of what they do is or pushing forward is chain, you know, chain abstraction. And Right. I love chain abstraction with AI, which the idea I mean, this is the reason in theory how it's gonna go is that you're gonna have an AI agent, that will be able to trade for you. And, you might order it to open wallets for you on different networks and, you know, and move funds and do whatever for you without you having to deal with that.

Right? And so at TF tracking itself with AI is gonna should be making things a lot more easier. And, yeah, it needs to be cross chain.

Yeah. And do you think that works even for users, or is it making it more efficient more so for the projects? But what about the end users? Because, you know, a lot of users find multi chain solutions sometimes difficult to navigate.

Yeah. And I see that. So let's see where we go with that. But I, you know, I you hear a lot of promising things. I particularly don't see anything amazing yet out there. Mhmm. But, it has to go in that direction. And I say, for instance I wanna say, of course, even now with, Meta pool.

Right? Of course of course, we do multichain, but you have to connect the wallet for each service, right, when you connect to Meta pool. So each time you connect, it's a different wallet, and you're practically a different user. Right? So that, of course, is Right. Is what would what would be more helpful as a user, I think, right, for the future, for anyone who's doing this, is that you arrive, when you log in with whatever account you have, and you could operate different, different, on different networks at the same time. You have your, one ID. Right? I think that that would make it much easier. But that's it's

Yeah. Like, you're talking like Web3 digital identity. Correct?

Yeah. Yeah. Mhmm. A digital I the other thing about the or that you have at least, like, that from the idea what they're doing with NEAR, I did is, like, yeah, you could you could connect with an NEAR ID, and then you could connect you can connect directly with other, you know, other networks without having to connect to those other networks yourself, let's say, with different wallets, then that that can be very handy. Of course, they have to both they have to be using that one. Right? You have to be using, correct, me.

Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, about security, you know, this is, like, a critical challenge when it comes to DeFi. What are steps that the industry should do you think the industry should surely take to build more trust, with users when it comes to security, particularly after so many sort of high profile hacks and scams?

Yeah. I people what you do is to follow this test that if anyone has to do with which is, of course, the so what's the right word that we that we should choose? When you when you when you get satisfied, when you get reviewed for a and your code to make sure that it's correct, let's say. Right? I just I've just lost the word in my mind now. But basically, it's, yeah, you need to be, verified, checked that that you comply with the standards of security. Right?

that's Right.

Yeah. Of course. I if you if you so when you each time you deploy a contract with a different, with a different network, you're gonna see, like, with, with Meta Pool. Right? You'll see, like, you'll see that we'll like, be shipped by the Halborn, for instance, or BlockChat. Blockchain has a block of it for each different network we're doing. Right? Then so we audited that. That's the word I couldn't find before a second. So you have to be audited.

Yeah.

So what about auditing? Like, do you guys, you know, what do you think the role of audits and transparency, community involvement, play when it comes to establishing foundation, you know, a foundation of trust when it comes to DeFi? Is this something you guys have considered? And, like, I mean, I'm presumably, you guys are auditing your having your smart contracts audited or have already done so. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. In fact, if you if you log on to Metapool.app, you're gonna see on the landing page, first page, if you scroll there, you'll see all of our, audits are there. There's actually links, to them.

Oh, that's nice.

It's all transparent. Yeah. And you just exactly.

So you mentioned you mentioned, you know, liquidity is taking as sort of a means to, for people to sort of make some money, you know, on the funds that they have. And as Web three evolves, you know, do you think it could be a viable alternative to a traditional finance system? And what do you think are some of the gaps that one would need to address in order to make that transition possible?

Yeah. So, of course, it's definitely interesting if you've got tokens and you want to get a bit of, you know, better return in there. Of course, to take the tokens is a good option because you're gonna get that, the a the API. Right? At the same time Mhmm. What you're doing, I think what's beautiful about staking is that at the same time, you are helping secure the network. Right? So what Meta Pool is doing, you know, it is helping secure all of the all of the all of the network, be it be it, in this case, NEAR or be it, you know, ICT or SOL. So, that that's, of course, that's very good there. And then were you saying in terms of could you repeat the last part of the question? You asked me, like, in terms of the more benefits for finance.

Yeah.

So, I mean, you know, what do you yeah. I was just gonna say, you know, do you think it could be a really good a good alternative, let's say, to more traditional finance systems, and what are some of the gaps you think that might need to be addressed in order to make that transition possible?

Yeah. Well, I think, definitely, a gap that we have is the usability of tokens in in the real world. Right? But now what we see is a huge adopt huge adoption of, stablecoins, which, you know, I think that's where we think it's going at the moment. You know, most of the chains have stablecoins and having stablecoins is and this the today, there's a lot of you know, we're seeing a lot of, companies that are issue issuing also debit cards. So this this this this option of being able to actually cross between crypto and fiat, the more the more the easier the on off on off ramping is gonna be, the more usability it is gonna be. And then, of course, then, of course, it's it plays a key role in in some countries. I mean, we're seeing adoption in in in many countries. But where we've seen most adoption or quick adoption, of course, it's been countries that have difficulties, with their own via currency in terms of maybe there's this very high inflation, or maybe the state also controls the entry and exit of currency through the banking system.

So, you know, being able to transfer funds, you know, borderslessly, let's say, is a key advantage. That you've got countries like for instance, like Argentina, which is, you know, has a huge use of, of crypto. And the reason behind that, of course, is because the government has a very tight control of, and rules of, you know, the fiat currency and not being able to send money out The forefront and Yeah.

I mean, you're right. You're right. You touched on a really good point because it's like there's a lot of countries that that, you know, prevent people from being able to easily transfer funds. And then that's one of the main use cases of crypto. I mean, I remember I transferred, back when I was in the electronics business. I was buying some LCDs from China, and I had to fill up just so many forms in order to be able to send funds, to try to just outside, outside the country. And it was just really, really ridiculous because when it comes to crypto, you can do that, like, in three minutes, and you don't have to answer to anybody. So that's sort of one of the big benefits of and use case of the crypto in the first place.

For sure. For sure. And you'll see that, for instance, like, in in Vietnam as well. You can very easily send money into Vietnam, but sending out, for instance, is not very is not easy at all, actually. You know? If you wanna send money to your account out from a bank account in Vietnam to another country, you actually have to explain why you're doing that and to see if they want to authorize it or not. And then, of course, then you've got other countries that you people that directly don't even have bank accounts. Right? We got people who are directly you know, that they're I think for us, our evolution in terms of the digital age has been quite, quite sort of step by step. Right? I think yeah.

I had a landline in my house first, then there was a, you know, a computer that, took a, you know, an hour for a picture to load, and, then we move on the phone and things like this. Right? And we have nations now where people, hopping straight onto a mobile phone, which is the most, powerful, you know, device. And the leak over them, maybe they didn't even have any banking before. Right? And they already have access to wallets and being able to, pay for services or earn money right through the system. So that is it's huge, you know, what we can do.

So let's talk about challenges maybe. Like, what are some of the biggest challenges that are preventing people from joining, you know, Web three, and how is it possible to address those challenges, do you think?

Oh, I mean, it can be there there's no there's no there's a lot of points about that. Right? Firstly, I mean, I would say where I see more problems with originally from the marketing perspective is that, communication wise, it's always it's always been, for me, very wordy, very technical. It almost sound like we're, you know, we obviously, it's changing because it's we're maturing. But up to now, everything has been great. A lot of technical jargon. Right? You know, it's like onboard Web three in your decentralized experience with and it's so that that's complex there. I think it's also a lot of and a lot of, you know yeah. Honestly, definitely a lot of wording, they seem like, for experts, let's say.

That's one thing. And then, and also the way it's presented. Right? And then so we're gonna see we're seeing more and more the communication is more towards what really people need and want, right, rather than

Right.

That. And then another part is definitely the onboarding itself being very difficult. You know? I think that's of course, you tend to be when you create a product, if you're in the web three space, what normally happens is that it's gonna happen is that you you're probably gonna work for projects built on a specific chain initially, unless you're, like, completely multi chain. But you're gonna be in a specific chain, which means you pretty much bound to people who already invested in into that. Right? And it's very difficult for you to onboard new people that are not from that ecosystem. So that's the holy grail for everybody, of course, is to get the newcomer. Right? You we all want the new person who suddenly discovers this and wants to come to you. For us, the journey from the beginning was, yeah.

Okay. You have to make a wallet. Now you have to go to an exchange, buy some token. Finally, when you understand how this thing is working, you know, you're gonna come to us. Right? You're doing this evangelizing that where you actually have to which actually I think that's important thing that we do at medical, though. I mean, we do a lot of education for people. It's not for them to come to us, but, but at the same time, it's for anyone to be educated in in Web three, right, and and, you know, and use it to advantages the best they can. But, yeah, of course, bringing people the the onboarding experience, I think, it's quite complex

Yeah. No. For sure. For sure. Now for someone new to blockchain and staking, like, what are the sort of first steps that they need, to take in order for them to get involved safely?

Yeah. So, for instance, I think what's a key point there is that, a lot of people who are new right? I think this is kind of like this that's let's say people that are new in web space. People are new mostly will start with the experience, opening an account in the centralized exchange. Right? And a lot of times, what they'll do is to hold all of that assets there. And I think that's maybe one of the first barriers. And what's gonna happen is that, also, with staking itself, you can, you can, stake, directly from a centralized exchange. However, you have two things. One is, first well, of course, you're not holding your wallet, so, you know, that that's important.

And secondly, normally, you're gonna see different, different API. Right? Of course, you know, centralized stages, you know, they need to make a profit as well. So, they tend to be the offering that you get might might not be as attractive as if you decide to go and stake for yourself. That's kind of the thing there. Right? So the key there, of course, is for people to have their own wallet, have their tokens, and, there and, of course, and then then stake them and use a, you know, liquid staking provider. Of course, for Meta pool, but it can be from anyone else. I think before, there's been a lot of people that would do that would stake directly with a specific node operator that they would do to do that. What we do and what other solutions do as well, of course, is, you know, we brought a pool of many node operators altogether.

You know? And, the delegation is, you know, shared among all the all the node operators there. And we also have the Edge Wire web, and I'm going off the rails here a bit, but we also have this, professional node operator program. I'm not the most, knowledgeable person to talk about that, but, what I can tell you is, for instance, we've onboarded the Deutsche, Deutsche Telekom, which we announced during the during.com at, at the near event that you went to, actually. We had a booth there. And, so now we're also big telco companies are taking part as well in in participating in their node operating operator program. Hello?

Yeah. I was I'm sorry. I was I was I was muted, but I was just saying thank you for that. No. I was just saying that a lot of people a lot of the bigger companies are looking very, very strongly at staking. A lot of tokens, you know, even some of the tokens are doing really well, have a lot of sell pressure in this market. So I think a lot of projects are increasingly looking at staking as a way to sort of, like, lock up some of the that liquidity and prevent other people from, you know, just massively, you know, dumping the token. So I think, like, this is it's only gonna grow as more and more and more people get into it.

So what would you say, you know, looking ahead, what are some of the major trends or innovations that you see, you know, on the horizon for DeFi over the next five years?

Yeah. Five years. I don't know.

I know. It's a long time. Especially with crypto, it's, you know, it's really difficult.

No. And especially now, not just crypto itself. Like, I mean, this this whole AI thing is in the game now. I mean, every week, this is going crazy. Right? So Yeah. So, definitely, I would say, like, today issue is

DeFi with AI agents.

Yeah. So today, for sure, is, you know, it's DeFi with AI agent. What is next?

Yeah.

Five years? I honestly don't know because, you know especially, we're seeing the leaps, the changes that I mean, it's just the speed of transformation that has tremendous things, what we're seeing at the moment. So that definitely is gonna be more, AI agents driven. Hopefully, as we were talking before as well, that's gonna make things a lot easier in terms of interconnecting as well through different chains rather than you yourself having to operate all these, all these, networks. You well, let's say you want us in different networks. You may have your own agents who will be handling all of that for you, which hopefully is what will you will bring that simplicity to where we spend. Of course, then it's the whole, you know, the trading and everything is it it's very interesting times, definitely.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, one of the things that, you know, that's been I I, you know, I I know that this isn't quite in your area, but I'm curious because one of the sort of trends that we've seen a lot over the last several months is this sort of rise of meme projects and meme tokens. And I'm just curious what your perspective of that is, and, what do you think of that? Do you think that's the space that's gonna evolve or grow, or do you think that's gonna die soon?

Yeah. I don't know. I don't know who will die soon. We'll add to that. Actually, we we've introduced in in our, voting, systems that we've been doing the grants, the different projects that pump Right. They're asking for grants, right, before, and they proposed to what they're doing, and we've been giving them that. Recently, we introduced, actually, voting for meeting points. For now, the testing so the testing has been on earlier.

And, yeah. So we just finalized the round of, voting now. So what happens is that our, our community can vote for different, MEAN projects. And whichever MEAN project wins, they can they can have some of those tokens bought, by, being a minimal. And, also, we're having, the the winning tokens, we're doing a distribution with distribution of some of those tokens, among our community as well. So that's for now.

So you have basically I'm sorry. Go ahead.

No. Sorry. I was just gonna say, so it it's something that people get excited about. Right? And I guess one of the things that maybe you would aim at is, for instance, we've been doing a lot of voting for initiatives. Very interesting projects, you know, and and to be back. And you've got involvement. So at the same time, first time, we're doing we're we're doing we're we're doing this the meme voting there, and, there's more interaction, let's say, more dynamic, you know, than

Yeah. So you're saying that it's very so you're saying that it really helps build the community to sort of, yeah, include voting for memes and things like that.

Yes. Yes. Of course. You know? I think the let's say the irony there would be that, okay, you have voting for the things which are new that you're pushing forward. These, you know, great mission initiatives that are, you they're hoping to transform the world, right, with. You know? And then, they might have a lot that much traction with voting, and then you're doing voting from means points, which are means. And you've got a lot of people involved with that. Right? And, you know Yeah.

Of course, you your community gets excite you know, excited about that. But memes are memes. Right? So Yeah. And how long I don't know.

There's probably not

Yeah.

That's probably not a really good case for sort of, staking memes. Right? Because those tokens, like, they generally last very, very short amount of time.

Correct. They last they're like, you know, you know, Dojo or a token a meme has been around for a long time, but mostly that, of course. The lifestyle is, is quite short, right, in most cases, let's say. But, with means the wrongs.

Yeah. With means I mean, it's kind of like it's it previous cycle was NFTs. Right? And now it's memes. Right? I think that's the thing at the moment. What I mean, seriously, I am no expert of memes, but, one thing I think

I'll tell you. Listen. I'll tell you one thing. I don't think even the people that buy memes or the people that start memes are experts on anything.

That's true. The thing is

It's very much gambling, I think.

Yeah. Yeah. For me, it's just like it yeah. It just blows my mind, let's say. And you know, there is something that I do see a bit interesting that can be there with and I mean, I totally agree with you with the gambling aspect of it. There is something that may be interesting with means that is actually means by AI agents. Right? And I don't know. We’re starting to see that already.

And what I can kinda see there that can have maybe some form of value is that, for instance, we had before the NFT projects. With NFTs, NFTs really themselves, I I honestly haven't been seeing much about them. But there was a whole narrative always, though. There's other big narratives constructed around NFTs. Right? Like, hey. This is whatever

Yeah.

The blah blah blah goblins, and but you'll see their website, and it's all about the goblin village and how the goblins talk and how they have this personality. But I think they just buy, yeah, JPEG. Right? That's it. That that was, like, this narrative, the NFT. Then we go to the meme coin, and the meme coin is just purely like, I'm just gonna give a silly name to coin and see, you know, and have a community behind it. I know it's community driven. And there is, you know, there is that very interesting side to it. But it kind of stayed there.

And I feel like with the AI, you could kind you can kind of, like you're bridging between this concept of the NFT and the meme itself. So your agent is kind of like, and, like, an NFT project, in this sense, like, you know, your agent is your coin, and it's it has its own personality. Right? You can create a personality. Yeah. You can be creative about it. He can interact socially for you on different platforms. It could can create more value. Still, it's still within the realm of gambling.

Right? But Right. It's

Yeah. No. It's definitely impacted. Right? It's definitely, before and after moments from with the with the integration of the Jump Coin. Right? You know, I think what's happened there is that meme coins has been still well, what's happened is it's overflowed into the mainstream media. Right? And people see, okay. They can actually, you know, think again, yes, gamble with memes, but it's of course, it's become, mainstream in that respect. Right? And then it is an expected year for a bull run as well.

Right? So part of the cycle as well. So, yeah, I think this year looks very, very interesting. Definitely. Yeah. I know.

Yeah. I mean, I think that it's just go ahead.

No. I say and with the intersection with AI at the same time now, Yeah. Let's see the behavior. Yeah.

And how do you think AI do you think AI has an aspect of place in with what you guys are doing over at medical? Is that something you guys are looking at integrating somewhere?

Yeah. Definitely. Definitely. Yeah. There's something surely that I'm aware that Well, we I mean, to I mean, to be honest, I don't know the exact plan at the moment. I mean, we had discussions. I've been talking with our cofounders, and for sure is that we have to step into the AI game. I mean, it's a question of evolve or die, really.

You know? So, I know we've been we we're introducing, we have an AI bot in the works. Right? And, and the direction is gonna be to have AI embedded into the platform. That

Right. And then how would you how would you even, you know, integrate those two? Would it be sort of, like, try to use AI to figure out the best option for people to earn the greatest rewards based off of their risk profile perhaps?

Yeah. So, I mean, again, now I'm really I'm just talking from my own perspective. Yeah. Because I Right. But, yeah, I I think what's key there is, for instance, before you could see is that, you know, to participate in our government, we have our token on NEAR protocol. Right? And we launched it also on Ethereum. And most of most of the our holders are still in on NEAR, right, for instance. And where I'm going with this is that we I think the approach that one would think before is that, okay.

You've got a governance token, and you can be in multichain, and therefore, you need to take your tokens to different chains. While now with AI chain abstraction, I think the idea there would be that you can participate on in governance, from different from Right. From different chains without having our government, even if it's not near, not you having to be a native near token holder yourself. Right? I think

Yeah.

So that that's definitely very interesting, right, for a whole landscape, I mean, in terms of not you having to be on a particular chain yourself to be able to interact and receive rewards or that's very interesting.

Yeah. That's true. I mean, I think that's the it's gonna be really interesting to see how a lot of companies, you know, address AI and integrate AI as to sort of see how that works in terms of, like, how it how that benefits, you know, what they're doing. Because I think everything when it intersects with AI is gonna, you know, completely change, completely change how things are done. So just wanna talk a bit about, you know, you guys are running a scholarship program. So guys, you know, Meta pool was running a scholarship program to attend the blockchain summer course, organized by the Blockchain Center from the University of Zurich.

Yeah.

So make sure you check that out. And, you know, maybe you wanna talk a bit about that. Tell us a bit.

Yeah. Sure. So, both of our cofounders, Carlo Cossio and Lucia Tato, they have been, lecturing at the Blockchain Center in Zurich, the this summer course. And, with the head of the course, they talk back in the day. They were saying like, okay. You know, we wanna promote this course among people who come from, countries they call frontier markets. Right? So, what happens, to now, at least, like, a lot of the blockchain research that's done in in this prestigious, European university is, a lot of people, come from of course, come from Europe or The US, and there's not a lot of presence of from people from Latin America and, Southeast Asia, of course, in Africa. And, it was Meta pool's idea released to say, okay.

Very June and six weeks of July. What's so what medical does, we we're covering the tuition fees, which is roughly around 3,500, US dollars or actually Europe or less. It's in Swiss francs. Mhmm. So I can't remember the exact amount. But more like right. Because it's since Zurich.

Yeah.

Yeah. We do not talk about the, traffic spaces or anything, but we have, we open or 888. I suppose some people in presence there, on campus or online. We cover the tuition fee for online as well, which is much lower, of course, with the we need to go to Zurich, like, around the top of Europe. And, it's, independent research. We do ask them to focus their research on blockchain and AI. That's and, they what they do I mean, all of the basis of the of the scholarship is on our Right? So if you please go check our website to see the all the information there. And what happens there is that the application is with the university.

What they do is do an application that is saying that they are applying for our scholarship, but we do not part Mhmm. You know? Or we have a or, let's say, right, this is truly to

Okay. Okay. Awesome. So, I mean, we're coming up toward the end of the program right now. So, why do you sort of give us, some last minute thoughts to close this out, and then I'll, and then I'll sum up, and we'll go from there.

You'd like me to get some last, what?

Yeah. Just the last whatever last thoughts that you have.

Oh, well, I mean, what I can say is that one thing is that we are growing a lot in Southeast Asia at the moment. We you know, because this project is originally from Latin America, we've been around for three years already, so it's been you know, it's quite a while within the Web three space. And, you had a great day now. Claudio, founder, came to also Southeast Asia, spent here almost three months. We've got a great team of ambassadors, in several countries. And, yeah, we would be bullish about Southeast. You know? So we're here. And, we've got the network of, meetups as well.

On other Italian channel also, we've got, different, groups for different countries. So the problem is in, you know, with us, you know, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia. And, you know, our local ambassadors will be delighted to talk with them or help with anything. So if you reach out to us for our local tech, that would be awesome.

Okay. Awesome. Well, I mean, listen. This has been super engaging and super interesting. Really wanna thank you for making time to, you know, to come chat with us. And also, you know, it really, really insightful. So, let's, sort of, close that out. So this we're excited to, yeah.

So definitely, you know, huge thanks, to Mateo, for joining us today. Huge shout out to everyone who tuned in. And we're definitely excited to keep bringing you more insights into the Web3 world. Stay tuned, and we'll see you next Thursday for another episode of diving into crypto. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Mateo. Y'all have a great day, and goodbye.

Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure.

Thank you. Have a good day.

Take a good day.