Latest / The Paul Barron Crypto Show / Polygon Stablecoins Reaching Record Highs!💲Katana INTERVIEW

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Polygon Stablecoins Reaching Record Highs!💲Katana INTERVIEW · The Paul Barron Crypto Show

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Let's dive into Polygon today and some of the ecosystem
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: that is surrounding that. Part of that will be some
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: interesting stuff on a project called Katana. My name is
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Paul Barren. Welcome back into the show. Let's get started.
• 0:11
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• 0:13
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• 0:35
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• 0:38
  Speaker 1: custody journey. One thing we have been watching on Polygon,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: and as you guys know, one of our picks right
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: now for our all coin portfolio is the fact that
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: we are starting to see a new potential challenge to
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: its market cap all time high for stable coins, and
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: I think this is something that is showcasing on some
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: of the projects around it, including a project called Katana.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: Now Katana you've seen and.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: We've talked a little bit about this in previous shows,
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: but up into the right there, guys in terms of TVL,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: so it's continuing to grow, getting.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: A little bit more popular.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: So we thought, hey, let's reach out to the project,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: get them in on the show to talk a little
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: bit more about it and really kind of learn what
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: is going on.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: One of the things though, that you.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Guys will notice is the yields over on Katana, and
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: this is something that we are starting to see on
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: these yield vaults that are starting to open up, and
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: if you look at some of these, you're going to
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: see some pretty big projects here obviously eth right there,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: but of course right there USDC. And one thing to
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: be aware of just when you are doing this is
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: not forty one percent on USCC. That's actually a variety
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: of different yields that play into that. Part of that
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: is the eight yield, the Katana yield, and then also
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: some of the unlock rewards on the kat token. This
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: kat token, which we wanted to learn a little bit
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: more about. So I wanted to bring in the business
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: development lead over at Katana. Welcome into the show, justin
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: how are you hello?
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: Hello? GM glad to be here.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So we're gonna learn a little bit more about
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: Katana in general. First of all, explain Katana in general
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: and why Polygon needs.
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: It when you're looking at Polygon there there's been this
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: initiative over at at Polygon Labs called the AG layer,
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: which is an infrastructure type product that connects various different
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: layer twos, and Katana has been incubated by two parties,
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: that being Polygon Labs and GSR and is connected to
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: the AG layer. So that's kind of the connection there, okay.
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: And what Katana aims to be is, you know, a
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: DeFi first, a DeFi focused layer two that's connected to
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: the AG layer. So there's benefits there for all other
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: types of like AG layer connected chains. But the way
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: it really came about was there's there's quite a few
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: people over at Polygon and some some partners on DeFi
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: projects that we are working with, where we were starting
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: to see this trend of this almost like verticalization or
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: sector specific type of layer two blockchain that was being
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: being built. Right, You've got gaming chains, payments, change r
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: w A chains, and you started to see some DeFi
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: focused change spin up, and so you know that that
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: group of individuals I talked about, we all kind of
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: got together as like heavy DeFi users and we said,
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: what what do we really want in a DeFi chain
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: as users and developers of DeFi And it really came
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: down to two main things, and that is a real
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: sustainable yield and deep liquidity. Those are those are the
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: main two things, and what we wanted to do was
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: try to reverse engineer the architecture of this blockchain to
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: really maximize for those two things. And throughout that we
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: notice some sort of inefficiencies that we are seeing in
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: the layer two space in general and DeFi in general,
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: and we started to develop some mechanisms within the architecture
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: of Katana to really focus on, you know, how do
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: we minimize the value extraction that we're seeing from these
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: DeFi ecosystems and redirect that value extraction to benefit the
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: users and developers who are building and using Katana. And
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: then that's where we developed the Katana DeFi flywheel. There's
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: some really interesting mechanisms to go into that, which we
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: can talk about a little bit more, but when it
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: really comes down to it. I think we're we're starting
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: to see a trend where projects are looking for ways
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: to give value back to their users, and we feel
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: like we've developed a very unique way in doing so.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, part of it is in the reward
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: architecture that you guys have built. Additionally, the Katana ecosystem,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: there are some companies in here you guys will recognize.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: One of course is Morpho. They've been in the lending
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: borrowing space. You've got Sushi Swap in there. You're in
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: Finance also tied into this, even Kensey, and then of
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: course you've got a lot more coming into the ecosystem.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: Explain first of all the benefits that that kind of
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: brings to Katana in general. And do you think that
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: this is going to get to the point where we
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: just see hundreds or multi hundreds of project partnerships. What
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: are the benefits here versus just having a few.
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: Well, that's a good question, and it kind of touches
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: on one of our philosophies, which is our core app
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: philosophy or a core app thesis. So you mentioned Morpho
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: and Sushi there. Those are a part of a group
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: of apps and canse a group of apps that we
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: call our core apps, and you know, we are up
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: the opinion on Katana that DeFi has matured to a
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: point where it can be considered as core architecture in
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: the designing of a blockchain. And so when it comes
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: to lending and borrowing protocols, for us, it's it's just morpho, right,
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: and for decentralized exchanges it's just sushi. Now, Katana is
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: still open source and permissionless, and anyone can deploy anything
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: that they want on the chain and we encourage that.
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: But when it comes to business development, engineering, marketing, and
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: even like Flywheel incentive support, those are going to be
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: channeled into Morpho in sushi. And what that does the
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: benefits there is it takes away a lot of the
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: guesswork for users on where can I get the best
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: trade for my assets? Well, Katana, it's sushi, That's what
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: it is. Where can I find the deepest liquidity for
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: a loan that I want to take out on Morpho? Well,
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: there's no question, it's it's Morpho or a lining bar protocols,
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: it's Morpho. So it eliminates a guesswork and it also
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: concentrates that liquidity into those apps, which provides a better
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: user experience from an execution environment, and you know, like
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: I said, they don't have to guess on where those
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: those rewards are coming to. We also have this concept
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: called chain owned liquidity where Katana, through like sequencer fees
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: that are generated in other revenue generating mechanisms, we actually
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: manage some liquidity that is put into Morpho and Sushi directly.
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: And the reason we do that is to provide some
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: sort of like bear market resilience within the ecosystem in
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: those protocols where you just you know that if there's
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: chain on liquidity in these pools, it's not going to
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: go away when the bear market hits, So it gives
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: some reassurances there as well.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: Well.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: I think the thing we're starting to see is the
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: explosion that we've seen in just a lot of these
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: vault kind of oriented projects that are out there, and
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: most of them, to your point is there are very
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: chains is specific to a certain extent. Speaking about that,
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: a USD on Katana, why are you guys boosting this
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: right now? Explain a little bit more about a us D,
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: what what it means to the AG layer, et cetera.
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a that's a really good, really good question there.
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: And you know I was talking about bear market resilience
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: that we have with chain owned liquidity. We also have
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: this with AGRA in a us D as well. There's
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: other benefits as well, but I'll talk about that first.
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: So a U s D is similar to circles USDC
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: in Tether's us D T. It's backed by off chain
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: US treasuries and those US treasuries earned yield. The question
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: is the difference there is where does that yield go
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: once it's generated. So with with Tether and Circle, that
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: goes to teather In circle, right with in a U
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: s D in coin base, Yeah, they're very very close
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: relationship with circle. With a goredon a USD, that yield
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: gets routed to the Katana Foundation, and the Katana Foundation
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: then uses that yield that's generated from the T bills
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: to boost the yield in a USD pools. So whether
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: that's sushi pools or morpho lining and borrowing markets morpho vaults,
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: you will get a greater yield than you would have
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: otherwise just because that that yield generated from T bills
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: is being redirected to those markets. And for the bear
• 9:44
  Speaker 3: market resilience point of view. Historically, when when recession where
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: bear markets hit, the rate on T bills typically tends
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: to increase.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: And so.
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: That that, paired with the chain on liquidity that we have,
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: really helps to provide that level of bear market resistance
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: that we're looking for. It gives us more levers to
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: pull on to make sure that the ecosystem is still
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: spinning and churning like a healthy DeFi ecosystem during it.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that is something I think you're right.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: In the bear market, we are going to see people
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: exercising dropping into projects like this because this is where
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: some of the better yield factors are going to play out.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: And I think this will maybe be a huge onboarding
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: from money markets if you think about because money markets
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: right now are winning in traditional finance, maybe this gets
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: opened up into others. Of course, part of that my
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: argument will be is you got to make it easier.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: I'll talk about that in a second. I was looking
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: at a tweet you put out here is did you
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: get some VB tokens some FIBE tokens sent to your wallet?
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: And this is explaining or kind of talking about this
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: flywheel that you're mentioning explain to me how this works
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: and what is the benefit to a user.
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, this is a great question. I'm glad you pulled
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: up this tweet. Actually, so I talked about channel liquidity
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: and how ausd you know, shares that that TPO revenue.
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: That's all part of the flywheel. But one of the
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: biggest parts of the flywheel that we have is this
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: concept called the vault bridge, which is a product that
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: was created by the agg Layer team, and Katana just
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: happens to be the first chain that's integrated with this.
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: And essentially how it works is, you know, when a
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: user bridge is from Ethereum to a layer two, those
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: assets just stay in a smart contract on ethereum doing
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: nothing right every then you're like minted a receipt token
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: on the layer two that is your claim on the
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: assets on ethereum when you want to bridge back. We
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: saw that as a little inefficient right there. There are bridges,
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: there are layer twos that have bridge smart contracts that
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: have a billion dollars just sitting there on ethereum. So
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: we thought, you know what if we could use that
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: in morpho lending markets on Actherium, Yeah, to generate yield
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: and similar to how the aus D flow works. The
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: yield that's generated on vault Bridge on ethereum is periodically
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: harvested goes to the Katana Foundation, and the Katana Foundation
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: will then boost the yield on core app pools like
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: Morpho and Sushi to further encourage activity and to encourage
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: this concept called productive TVL, which we can talk about
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: in a little bit and that. So in what we
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: did there in the tweet that you mentioned was, you know,
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: first we wanted to to basically shore up some some
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: of the yield that people were getting in the vaults,
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: and we decided, you know, let's let's send it to
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: the wallets directly, you know, retroactively of people that were
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: in these vaults, because some people have withdrawn from the
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: vaults and we want to make sure that we didn't
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: miss them. So we just sent it to the wallets directly,
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: and you know, that's yield that was generated from the
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: assets that they put in the bridge, and gotcha should
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: be the beneficiaries of that. But in the future, instead
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: of just putting it directly in wallets or directly into
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: the vaults that you see on the Katana app that
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: you showed, we'll be using that yield to boost the
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: incentives for those defive pools, and you can think of
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: it as like a perpetually funded liquidity mining campaign that
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: uses real yield like in kind assets as opposed to
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: just the CAT token.
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: Right right, Well, and speaking of the cat token, because
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: that's something as we start to see yield generation, I think,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: what is it ninety days if you hold on an asset,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: you're rewarded the cat tokens. Which is interesting because right
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: now you have the tracking of those yield rewards in
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: a separate or I guess it's in a separate website
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: under Turtle, is that right?
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Turtle is a really close partner with us while you.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: Were that there, versus just on Katana itself, So.
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: It is on both. Uh, it's so basically the Turtle
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: The vaults that you see on Turtle Club and the
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: vaults that you see on Katana are actually the same
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: vaults Underling, and the incentive structure is also the same.
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: I think like from time to time there can be
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: some like sort of miscommunication from the APIs on on Yeah,
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: but in general, the same program, same vaults. You know,
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: it's just a it's just a way for us to
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: tap into a different user base and kind of uh,
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: you know, use different distribution channels to make people more
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: aware of our of our apps. And they've got a
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: great b d arm on the Turtle club side as well,
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: and they've they've been helpful in driving more liquidity and
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: assets onto the chain as well. Great team, love working.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm looking at the ag layer right now. You
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: can kind of see main that you guys there, but
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of other integrations. I mean there's okay
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: X's there's quite a bit of growth here. What other
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: change should we be excited about.
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: Let's see, you got tornoah on there, and there's there's
• 15:08
  Speaker 3: another place. Uh. Ag layer dot dev is a website
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: where you can kind of see all of the other
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: projects that are like in test net or will be
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: live on ag layer soon. And you know, the way
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: that we use the ag layer or the way that
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: aglayer works is actually a big part of our fly
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: will as well. And you know, we feel like it,
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: you know, if you're if you're calling the ag layer
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: ecosystem the polygon ecosystem, we feel like it benefits that
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: ecosystem at large, because, like I said previously, we're seeing
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: this trend of you know, not so much general purpose
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: chains being being launched, but more like vertical or sector
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: specific chains. If you if you have a gaming chain
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: and you launched just by yourself, uh, you still need
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: a decentralized exchange on your gaming chain so users can
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: swap assets, and so that that takes time away from
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: that that blockchain that should be focused on gaming, where
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: they're having to go out and like source the centralized
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: exchanges to launch. They might have to provide a grant there,
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: They've got to help them with bootstrapping liquidity, and it
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: really takes them away from like their core mission yea.
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: But if they are connected to the AG layer, what
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: they can do is they can tap into the dex
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: liquidity on Katana. Their users can and it's not even
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: going to look or feel like that they are bridging.
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: You know, a user on this gaming chain just wants
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: to swap an asset and it just happens, and in
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: the background, it's actually going through the AGG layer swapping
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: on sushi and coming back to the gaming chain. So
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: we see a lot of opportunities in DeFi composability there
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: where these these ag chains as we call them, can
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: tap into the yield and liquidity of the Katana ecosystem
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: that we're building.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: I'm looking at this was a tweet put out by
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: Oka x X Layer. They're talking about the issue of
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: gas feed right now, high gas fees still ranking number one,
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: low returns also and then of course security of terms.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: All that played into this, I mean, because this is
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: the complexity that we are dealing with.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: When you look at that, I mean in terms of
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: bridging gas.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: Fees, are they do you feel like they're too high
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: right now for this to be able to really create
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: mass adoption.
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: No, I don't think so. And I think the way
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: that a lot of Layer two's work is, you know,
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: the more activity, right, I mean, you're essentially batching transactions
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: down to maynet ethereum, and so like, the more activity
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: you have on the chain and the more transactions you
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: have to go in a specific batch, that gas cost
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: is spread out throughout all the users. And you know,
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: just looking back to DeFi summer in twenty twenty one,
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: where I remember paying hundreds of dollars for gas fees
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: sometimes on ethereum maynet and we had all this adoption
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: coming in, but we didn't quite have the infrastructure in
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: place to handle all of that adoption that we were
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: hoping for, and now we're in this place where there
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: are so many layer twos. It's really exciting because you
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: can you can onboard users into the ethereum ecosystem where
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: they are going to pay much lower fees on on
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: the L two side and even on the ethereum side,
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: because it kind of takes away some of the gas
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: fees that that would happen on ethereum and putting them
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: on the L two. So I think, in general, I
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: think I don't think gas fees are too high right
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: now on layer twos necessarily. I think as activity grows
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: over time, we'll start to see an increase on ethereum.
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: But I think we've never been as an industry better
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: positioned for for the masses than we are right now.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I think my my complaint, it's not
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: really a complaint. My suggestion to a lot of these
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: type of platforms is, you know, one making them very easy.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: You know, for instance, the you know, just the bridge
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: capacity right now where you have express and native this
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: something that can be Oh it's not complicated to most
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: people who are in this industry. But I'm looking at
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: if you're going to start to get others involved in
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: this new people in crypto in general, they're gonna want
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: to start doing things like this. I think DeFi and
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: just in general, yield farming is going to be a
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: big factor of growth and making it just easy, you know,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: to do that so interesting that your rewards are tracked
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: in there.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: I did not know that.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: So that's you taught me something today on Katana that
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: I think.
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: That's something we pushed out. That's something we pushed out
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: last week making that a little bit okay, sod and transparent.
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: So yeah, you probably didn't miss it. It was just a
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: new update that we that we got out. And we're
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: constantly pushing out new updates on the Katana web app, right,
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: I mean we're we're blotching with our own app, right,
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: and we do surface like like those vaults that you
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: see there, those are just yield opportunities. Is it that
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: we have surfaced to the top to make things a
• 19:52
  Speaker 3: little bit easier for users? But yeah, you know, that's
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: that's what it's all about. Like, if we want to
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: hit you know, this mass adoption that everyone's looking for
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: the DeFi space, we've got to make it easy for users.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: No doubt.
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's what we're trying to do there, and
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: so we try to tack, you know, with the vaults
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: that have surfaced. We try to make that a little
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: bit easier for like maybe non DeFi or non crypto
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: natives to kind of navigate towards that, but then also
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: people who are really deep into the space, the DeFi
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: dijons as you call it. We also have our Ecosystem
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: Explore page which you showed earlier, that lines out a
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: bunch of the apps that are lives so people can
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: use and kind of explore new yield opportunities, maybe a
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: little bit more complex than what we're going to show
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: within the app.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, speaking of yield, when would the cat token launch,
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: because that's obviously going to be a big part of
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: the yield generation that you're doing to be able to
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: get those kinds of yields over on the platform.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: When will that happen?
• 20:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a good question. So no later than February
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: twenty twenty six. Okay, but why that we're hoping that's
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: just a date that we put out there just to
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: you know, we didn't want to keep it open ended
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: necessarily so we wanted to put a hard date on
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: that it's very likely to go live sooner, and then
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: what we'll have there is we'll have the cat staking Hub,
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: which I don't think we're calling it the cat staking Hub.
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: We might be calling it the cat Armory. But what
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: we did, you know, we're so focused on DeFi that
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: we wanted our chains token to be a DeFi token essentially.
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: So what you can do is you can steak cat
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: for what we call vcat, and then you can vote
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: on where future cat incentives and emissions will go to,
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: whether that's Sushi or mor Fo or another protocol in
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: the ecosystem. And we've seen similar things like this in
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: Curve and Aerodrome and Solidly, but we're doing it chain
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: wide instead of just for a specific app. And so
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: you vote on where those emissions go, and then after
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: you vote, you actually receive a portion of the fees
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: that were generated from that pool as well. So you know,
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: it gives vcat holders and voters an opportunity to get
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: a piece of the revenue that's generated by the chain,
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: and we're seeing a trend in that in the crypto
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: space as well, trying to reward users as well as
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: token holders with real tangible incentives. And I think we're
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: just we're just in the perfect spot where we wanted
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: to push this out at a time where we're just
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: a little bit ahead of other players in the industry
• 22:22
  Speaker 3: from a chain level standpoint.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would agree with that for sure. Last couple
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: of questions I want to hit on you. This is
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: why wou blockchain people saying, hey, they're familiar with coindsk
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: talking about Polymarket considering issuing its own stable coin to
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: capture yield from reserves backing like USDC, which is held
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: on its platform right now, do you think they'll come,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: you know, into the idea of its own, you know,
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: its own stable coin, or do you think they'll maybe
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: end up in a partnership or something with Circle.
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: That's it. That's you know, only speculating here. And it's
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: really hard to say because stable coins are so hot
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: right now. I think, you know. And I worked at
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: Polygon for three years prior to coming over to the
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: Katana side, and prior to that, I was in traditional
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: banking for like thirteen years. But I think that you know,
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: some sort of setup for poly market that's similar to
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: the Agora AUSD setup that we have could be really
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: really interesting to do a lot of very novel concepts
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: with that. If Circle is willing to share some revenue
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: with polymarket from the yield that's generated off of us.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: Get it with coinbase why not.
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, that's true, that's true. So yeah, I think
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of unique opportunities out there. People love
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: stable coins. Right now, I think we're going to see
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: a lot of really cool innovative stuff happening on that side,
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: not just on the institutional side, but a little bit
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: more like on the the developer composability side of things
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: as well. But I think right I think we're seeing
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: a big trend in the space in general of just
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: revenue share, whether you're sharing revenue with users or other
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: projects or other block chains. So I wouldn't be surprised
• 24:02
  Speaker 3: to see something like that in the future. I don't
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: know if it's going to work with Circle, but I
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: think it would be. It would be very cool to
• 24:06
  Speaker 3: see that.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: Uh, ethereum x stocks are coming now to the main net.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: This is a big deal because this has been kind
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: of Solana's edge for a while. This of course, will
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: change things up pretty quickly. If that occurs. Would we
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: see maybe ag lair supported stocks in the future, do
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: you think.
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: You know, I think if the if the right partner
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: comes along and the ag Layer team finds the right
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: people to work with on that, for sure. We've we've
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: talked to some people on the Katana side about potentially
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: bringing this this new type of asset class over to Katana.
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: I think it's a unique opportunity for people in you know,
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: in jurisdictions who can't get access to this type of exposure,
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: the ability for them to get that access. However, I'm
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: not really sure on my side where like certain shareholder
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: rights come into play there.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that might be interesting.
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: Well, dividends though.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: So it'd be it'd be quite a bit. Yeah, it'd
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: be quite a bit different. But I'm just kind of curious.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: Do you think you could ever see that as an
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: asset that you could earn yield on, you know inside,
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: Oh for sure.
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I think that's a I think that's
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: a great opportunity. Yeah, like if you could if you
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: could supply your X stock in a morpho market and
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: let users borrow against it and kind of exactly yield
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: on that, I think that's an incredible opportunity, and I
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: bet we see that the next in the next twelve months.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah for sure.
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: I'm not saying next twelve months on Aton or Aggler, Yes, okay,
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: I get.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, industry, the trends are leading into that for sure. Well,
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: which we'll see a lot, a lot more of that.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: Last question is do you think Polygon right now the
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: Paul token is undervalue because it's setting it what is
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: it number thirty seven right now, even though it's up
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: almost twenty percent on the week and on the seven.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: Day, just crossing three bills. So what do you thoughts undervalued?
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: I can't really I can't really speak to or give
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: financial advice on anything related to tokens necessarily, so I can't.
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: I can't really help you too much there. And if
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: it's overvalued or undervalued, I did. I did receive a
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: lot of I can only say what I have been
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: doing personally, So you know, I did receive poll in
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: matic compensation during my time at Polygon, and I just
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: staked it. So there. I haven't sold. I haven't sold
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: any poll I don't really plan to ever, but I'm
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: you know, it's kind of based on my own risk tolerances. Yeah,
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: time references and things like that.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Well, it's one of our picks to really be it's
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: an under I think it's an underperformer right now. We've
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: we've picked it to be one of the potential superstars
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: out of this market.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: Again.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Well, we'll see how that plays out for sure. Listen,
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: it's been great having you on the show.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: Show. Thank you, Thank you so much for coming in today.
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: We appreciate it.
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, thanks for having me great.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: You bet, you bet.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: Thanks listen, all right, let's get into it today. Of course,
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: if you guys are not in the Diamond Circle and
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: want you to take some time right now and join
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: on the link down below. It's an absolutely free program
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: where you guys can be part of our ecosystem. We
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: do a lot of additional research that we share with
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: our Diamond Circle members and it's super easy to set up.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: It's just an email address boom you're in and of
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: course follow me out there on X at Paul Baron.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: We'll catch you next time right here on the Paul
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: Baron Show.
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: Thank you.