Glider: Automating Onchain Portfolios for Everyone

0:00 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of the Permissionless podcast. Of course, as always, brought to you by the team at Guardian. And as always, we're going deep with DeFi builders and founders building in the web 3 space, building products that are pushing the limits of what we're able to accomplish with the technical stack, with the UX, and really breaking down the barriers of what is holding DeFi back at this moment.

0:29 And today we have a wonderful conversation with Brian and John from Glider. Glider is building really, in my opinion, a complete 10x improvement in UX for DeFi users who want to actually have programmable smart money instead of what really seems like today for a lot of instances manual money in the fact that there's a lot of active management today.

0:55 And Glider, I think, addresses this in a really sharp way in that everything from their UX to I mean, just the fundamental idea of having an API that is able to automate all of these interactions and create these strategies that automatically execute like programmable money should. I think it's in general a good product idea and I think the execution is being made very thoughtfully.

1:20 So, of course, we got to pick Brian and John's brain about how they're approaching this problem and how they're developing and and really an interesting point that I wanted to ask them on is how do they get the feedback for the UX and how do they approach it from that side, but even more interestingly outside of everything at Glider, we got to get into how they got into DeFi initially and and really from all their experience, where they see DeFi going and what they see being as some of the hardest bottlenecks for builders to overcome in the space and the biggest opportunities that lie around the corner.

1:57 So today we have really an exceptional conversation with both of these two from Glider. It was a pleasure and I can't wait for you to listen to it. But of course, before we dive in, my name is Owen and over three and a half years ago, I founded Guardian on the premise that we would need to house trillions of dollars on chain securely.

2:18 And in order to ship in that environment, that we would need a 10x increase in the level of confidence that we're able to have when we ship in that environment. And I'm happy to say that today we have achieved that level of standard for security necessary with Guardian. At Guardian, we use not one but two competing audit teams accompanied by a world-renowned lead security researcher and a full-time fuzzing engineer to fuzz every edge case, even the most nuanced one that really cannot be found manually.

2:51 And with all of these things packaged together in our audit methodology, we're able to gain so much confidence that we actually put up our own funds as a bounty in a public contest for the scope after our review. And we do this really to first of all obviously show the confidence that we have in our model, but also the effectiveness of our audit methodology.

3:12 And so really at this point, it's just up to DeFi to catch up. And so now, of course, without further ado, let us get into this wonderful conversation with Brian and John from Glider. Well, I mean, first of all, guys, appreciate you so much for for taking the time to hop on. I think I mean, there's so much that we could get into today, but to be honest, I think the best place to start is just like Brian and John.

3:42 How did you guys find your way into DeFi in the first place? what was that? What was your user onboarding experience? and what were the reasons that you guys came into the space and then we can we can discuss from there. Yeah, I'll I'll kick it off here. So, back in 2015 actually was the first time I touched Bitcoin.

3:59 I was at MIT at the time studying and they gave in kind of a semi-famous experiment at this point. They gave everybody a third of a bitcoin. At the time it was a hundred bucks. So, like even you know they have got like 5,000 students. I guess they gave out, you know, what 5,000 students times 100 number of dollars.

4:20 Let me do that math in my head. But and this was such a weird time. So, first of all, they told us to create accounts on Circle and like this is when Circle was your wallet and it was like what what are we doing here? And the purpose of the experiment was to really see like how are people going to spend or use digital currency and it was so ahead of its time, right?

4:41 Like what were you going to do with $100 of Bitcoin in 2015? Like you can't even go to the grocery store today and spend your Bitcoin, right? Like it it it was never going to and in fact, I'm really curious what they learned from that experiment. But so that was the first time I touched crypto 10 years ago, which is crazy to think about.

4:59 A lot has changed after that. You know, I was I was an early user of Coinbase and they had an exchange called GDAX, which was their predecessor to Coinbase Pro. It was free to trade. Like imagine if Coinbase was free to trade these days. Like it would just be a totally different game. And yeah, no, I was I was, you know, participating in DeFi summer.

5:19 I got a lot into NFTTS. I helped some art collectors in New York do things with NFTTS and we spent way too much money on NFTs. And then I worked at a firm called called Anchorage as well. And so we we can touch on all of that, but John has his own interesting story to tell here as well.

5:34 Very based of MIT. I think some of it probably made it onto the dark web if I had to guess with college students. Oh, for sure. Without a doubt. Without a doubt. Fake IDs. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. On my end, I had always been messing around with Bitcoin and just some early, you know, cryptocurrencies, you know, early on.

5:53 I think I think where it really kicked off for me in a in a real way though was one of my colleagues during college were was involved in the Ethereum ICO and just like the Ethereum core development and he kind of pulled me along and he's like, "Hey, you should check this stuff out. It's actually programmable now.

6:12 It's not just like sending tokens back and forth." I always thought that was interesting though, like I could permissionly send you money and vice versa. but for me I was working in fintech moving money around databases nachra files like a clearings you name it and so like I saw the messiness of how money currently moves and then you know I I think my first onboarding was actually the mist browser that was probably like a good while ago.

6:39 I I feel like a lot of people wouldn't wouldn't even know what that is but like a long time ago Ethereum built in like they tried to build a browser with a built-in wallet and all that good stuff. So, I guess from there I just got enamored with programmable money. I couldn't stop thinking about it and I looked for like early Ethereum protocols.

6:59 Back then, there were like five or six, right, of just like what you could do in DeFi before D5 was even a term. And 0x had just ICOed it was just like really early times. It was like Maker, 0x, Augur, handful of others. And I built one of the first 0x relayers on top of 0x protocol because I was just like, "Wow, the transfer and settlement of value is is going to explode just like that.

7:27 It's equitable. If you have a laptop and an internet connection, you can participate in this this economy, this this new thing." And so, as an engineer, I was engaged really early on just building stuff on top of whatever I could find that I found interesting. and so built on top of 0x, a relayer at the time. and then I got basically invited to join the team.

7:47 And and so joined 0x early on and and focused on like DeFi, swap, settlement. later on we built one of the first DEX aggregators like 0x API. then I and a few other colleagues went and built Matcha out which is a consumerf facing DEX aggregator kind of product. And so there I learned a lot about just users like we did some of the first like real DeFi user studies for example and and we just would go to Wales retail you name it and just like study how they interacted with things and yeah just like early on I just I love DeFi.

8:23 So like the settlement of value the exchange of value to me is so interesting. And so yeah I just spent most of my career doing that. So I worked at 0x built a few products there. I started a product studio after that with a colleague at 0x working on really whatever VCs would call us up and say hey we have projects for you founders you name it and just like from there we built a lot of consumerf facing products in DeFi then I joined Anagram later on Anagram's kind of like this VC kind of investment company and and we also like they also build a good bit of products as well and So kind of helped kind of steer that and then mo more lately I kind of teamed up with Brian to build out

9:09 Matcha or Glider rather. Sorry, that was a while. Okay. but yeah, that's that's like the the broad overview. But yeah, just I every day I wake up and I just like still love DeFi. It hasn't gotten old for me. So yeah, and I mean this this was too like John, you know, this was an era where 0x had to explain what a DEX is, right?

9:29 Their words. Oh, people we would have to write what is Wealth explainers like DYDX all of these companies way back when Dydx was built on 0x once upon a time Dharma awesome wallet at the time like we would have to go and explain what a swap is why you have to wrap your ETH because at that time even like Uniswap had like just one pairing of token type right and so like it was very primitive and nowadays it you know we built up a lot of that but even like EIP 712, like like basic signatures weren't available, until like you built these standards and and just like, yeah, very early days.

10:09 So, it's it's been fun to see that whole arc of kind of DeFi. Yeah. And I think John, you're in in an interesting place because you've been on a lot of the consumer side of crypto, like how do we bring this to people who they once again, they don't even know what we is. And like I I think something you'll notice which is like common in I mean both Brian and and John why you guys said you initially got on the same reason I got interested in DeFi and and Brendan as well was I mean really just curiosity and like thinking like oh I mean this is really cool and being excited about I think probably the opportunity that you I mean it takes like folks who can think like okay this can be really

10:50 Big and like really want to believe in it and have that positive disposition But that was the initial like I don't know maybe the mass of users that that Ethereum and EVM chain sort of got to but in this space of consumerf facing and userf facing trying to get new users what is like what's the offer what's the impetus that gets them to come on if it's not just like curiosity people tinkering around like how do we get people who are outside of that persona to come and actually use DeFi yeah John and I definitely have thought a long time about how do we get how do we think about expanding the pie of crypto, right?

11:28 Rather than everybody here competing over the same couple million people who use crypto every day, like we need to get more people into the system. I I do want to touch back on your curiosity point though, like John and I have not lost the curiosity and we think that other people should continue to experiment with things like we play with at least, you know, a new consumer app probably every week at least, right?

11:49 And some of these are early access because we know people who are building cool things. Some of these are just apps we've been waiting to play around with and you know or or maybe we're looking at a new chain and we're trying to like you know build Glider into a new chain. What are some of the apps that are already there and how can we interact with them?

12:08 But to your question like how do we get more people into crypto? I think the gateway these days is centralized exchanges. We know that right? It's also the Robin Hoods of the world. We're hoping that that evolves over time where you know we spend a lot of time trying to make our app and you know other people do this as well try to make it feel like web two so that it doesn't feel like this you know scary oh my god what am I doing with my money type of situation and so I guess two things like blending the world of web 3 and web 2 making it feel like web two although there's web 3 rails and everything behind it poly market does a really good job of this like they don't even mention

12:46 Cryto crypto on their front page. Yeah. And then these exchanges are really helping push this, right? So like Coinbase has their own wallet. There are now connectors to be able to move your money very quickly from the centralized exchange to their wallets. and then we're seeing a lot of improvements around just stable coins and onboarding. Like stable coins are going to be a huge gateway for people to very quickly send money to their friends in a Venmo like fashion.

13:12 But then once they have these stable coins, they realize, "Oh my god, I can use all these apps, dexes, you know, whatever else that there is actually already built on crypto." And that's where I think curiosity is then more easily routed to these applications, right? You don't have this friction of like, okay, like I've got to make a MetaMask wallet.

13:32 I've got to then have a Coinbase account, deposit money into Coinbase, move that money to my wallet. What is the seed phrase on all this also? and then oops I forgot that you know I need ETH and so you know I transferred USDC to my wallet now I need to get some ETH like we've all been there right and so we're seeing a lot of these friction points get a lot better on the wallet side and then on the app side as well it's just like we're ready and we're here for it can expand on this for sure though yeah I I have some theories on where the kind of the next marginal user comes from and and and like what what takes that and you know I think there's the kind of the western

14:12 US- ccentric views and then more of like everybody else. And so like just think about in terms of like the US let's say where is the next marginal user come from let's say okay the the user pool of crypto Twitter is saturated and we need to expand right and like that's why I don't try like biting other defy protocols or products to me like everything's going to expand such an order of magnitudes more that like to me we should be focusing on just expanding this entire space.

14:40 Yeah. to me I think one you have to do better than existing web two things like you just have to and that may sound hand wavy but you can't like George just had a great tweet the other day like in 2025 you can't be asking people to pay for gas in a basic consumer product like you have to bring certain affordances that web two gives you because that's the bar like to me my friends are on DraftKings and Robinhood and that's the level of consumer affordances they expect right and so the way I think about it is you have to do like web 2 plus it's like you have to offer things that aren't available on web 2 you know 247 trading for example like to me that's one of the big unlocks and

15:26 This is the US kind of centric kind of take is like you have to offer financial primitives that aren't available elsewhere and just things that users would want to get to that they can't so like prediction markets is awesome because to me there's still not a great venue there. Maybe web two ends up competing there. I'm curious.

15:44 Stable coins to me that's an awesome pers are a wonderful invention. I think that's like in terms of crypto innovations like per is like definitely top three in my mind. so those are all really cool I think. And then and then the non US- ccentric view is how are we enabling this financial system for everybody else? Because you like I can go on Robinhood right now and and trade a stock.

16:07 That's cool. But you know you see Lesnar's kind of bringing equities on chain like tokenizing all the things like that was 0x's original model and it still is to this day is just tokenize the world right like to me anyone in the world when internet connection can participate in this financial system it just like that's the really big unlock I think we get kind of blinders sometimes and we're like in the US like how are we going to compete against Robinhood but majority of the world just doesn't have access to these capital markets in general and so like to I think we'll see more influx of people not the kind of US and then we'll see us kind of come in in different ways like there's a different carrot for different kind of user

16:48 Demographics here. 100%. And I really like what Brian said about how we need to obviously we need to abstract away a lot of the underlying of like okay you have to go get your wallet and all this stuff but I think that expands out even further into how DeFi protocols kind of position themselves in general which is it's almost like a copyrightiting approach which is like they're talking about the how not the what they're talking about like okay you can use like we use these underlying protocol, we use layer zero.

17:21 It's like the user doesn't they don't they don't know about a layer zero. They don't know about this like and they don't want to they just want to know what and that's why they use DraftKings is because what DraftKings offers them. they don't use draft kings because they have you know xyz backend that's on a certain AWS instance like that's I I feel like since it is almost like such a we have this niche sort of market that's almost like an echo chamber on on on crypto Twitter we think that it's like you can market your protocol by saying like oh we did this integration where you you can reduce me by this amount because of xyz protocol that we're integrating with but it's like the end user, they don't know what any of that

18:06 Is and they really don't want to. like they don't have 100 hours to put into it. This is actually really tricky for all consumer apps in crypto. And and the reason being is that the value proposition for a crypto consumer app or somebody who's in crypto is you don't have to think about gas bridging networks fully non-custodial.

18:27 But for somebody who's not in crypto and has never done this before, that is not a value ad to them, right? They don't know the pain of not having the need of gas token on some random chain. And so you you're one you're trying to and I think there's an arc here that every crypto app should really follow.

18:43 It's like one you you start with the core audience that you have and you say these are the problems we can solve for you. But over time, you know, those core problems, the types of users you're trying to attract are going to change. And so we're spending more and more time trying to think about how do we not talk about all these things that people really shouldn't care about.

19:02 And like think about like Robinhood. Like Robinhood doesn't talk to you about clearing houses and custodians and stock certificates. Like nobody cares. And I think that's the era of DeFi that's existed for quite a while. And we're suddenly now, at least we're trying to move past that and into the future here. Have you seen Stripe's new stable coin feature?

19:21 Like it doesn't even tell you what chain the stables are on. they'll just figure it out for you. You want to send them to ETH, Solana, whatever, you just see I have 10K of USDC like it there's not even a chain identifier there right now. And so I think that's really interesting to me. It's just they they abstract out all the complexities and that that's kind of where we something the the biggest recurring lesson in my crypto career has been meet users where they're at and and like anytime you try to fight that it's really challenging.

19:50 You're probably going to be wrong. You're probably going to be early. like I remember looking at a lot of these Telegram bots and I'm like, why would anyone use these things and I had to re re-evaluate a lot of first principles of just okay this is where they're driving value right now like same could be pumped up on right like I was like why but I realized just you have to realize where users are at and where they're getting value from certain products and so yeah just like Brian said start with the like Instagram approaches like they started with dieh hard photographers which I think is Right?

20:22 You experiment, you get really good feedback, and then you have to cross this chasm. Every single consumer product will have to cross this chasm of crypto Twitter to a real retail. I don't like that word, but like just like user, like a a normal user. so we think a lot about that. I spend a lot of time thinking about that.

20:41 Not that crypto people in crypto aren't normal, but yes, absolutely. We would we wouldn't make any claim like that. Yeah. But no, I love that. that idea of like yes, there's a veritable chasm that has yet to be crossed and I think we can all feel it like it's almost like we're right up against it where I feel like if you look at like DeFi TVL it's like it's been mostly the same for like the past three years.

21:05 Like it it went down a little bit and now it's back up a little bit but it's like back up to the same level we were at three years ago. It's like mostly flat. the the one constant stables. Like to me, like stables go up because they fit where the the the the where the the value is.

21:22 Like 2025's meta is you have to derive value to your customer. Like we we've kicked the can long enough at this point. I've been in this industry a while now and it's just at this point you have to show that you create value on behalf of your user that you can't fake it anymore. Yeah. Where do you guys think we're at?

21:40 Like I think I I forget what the name of it is, but there's like a technology adoption framework where it says there's like the S-curve. Yeah. Well, there's the first adopters and then there's like the second wave and then there's like a huge chasm and then there's like the lagards. Do you think we're I mean obviously we're we've reached the first adopters.

22:00 Do you think I think there's some debate are we have we hit the second wave? Is the second wave yet to come or are we working on the lagards? Like where do you guys think we are? Yeah. Like I I mean I have I have theories and a lot of crypto people will probably be disappointed because it's going to be less like zero to oney like to me not not less bullish just more like I think a lot of these back backend rails get cryptofied first.

22:27 I think that's how it starts and and you're kind of already seeing that like Fidelity will settle things on the blockchain and and the user won't even know. They'll still log in the same Fidelity. I'll log in as my bank owner like and you're already seeing this with Stripe. They've managed to they had like a hundred countries they're able to basically not bypass but they're they're able to service because of stable coins now.

22:49 And so yeah, that's an interesting interesting question for sure. I think I think institutions are going to to drive it for what it's worth. like Visas and the Mastercards, the Robin Hoods. I mean, Coinbase is probably the biggest driver of all this ultimately, right? Like, you know, they just acquired Deribit, which means, you know, options are coming soon and many other things.

23:09 So, huge. And and even, you know, co Coinbase drives the decentralized side too with Base. And so, I think Yeah. Have you seen the DeFi mullet? You know, like you can take a BTC loan out. Yeah. Like Morpho, right? And yeah, with Morpho and you would never know you're using Morpho. Like to me that's the future is like these protocols just become the equivalent of TCP IP SSL like the the the user doesn't care.

23:32 They type this into the URL bar and we just take care of it. We handle the security. We handle how to route how to how to get there. Like don't worry about any of that. It's to me the user has this beautiful user interface and it's just way more efficient and like just more forgiving to the user than like the bank.

23:48 Like to me it just like kind of evens the odds like because it's open protocols and then then we get the the consumer push after that but we still need to tokenize a lot of equities I think to really drive people over like at some point you got to metriculate to a higher level of like capital value I think like we have a lot of native capital like ETH soul like awesome like rap bitcoin for sure like but now I think we need to bring things from the real world on chain and to to that you need buyin from the whole kind of ecosystem like the whole financial ecosystem.

24:22 Yeah, definitely. One thing I was going to ask you guys about when it comes to bringing consumers on chain is like what are the right narratives and I think you guys answered that like things like 247 trading like less fees. But now that we know the right narratives or things that can attract people and really bring value, what's the next step?

24:39 Like is that a distribution problem at that point? Like how do you get that in front of people to onboard them in the first place? Yeah, I mean we think about distribution a lot. but I think it's like what's the value ad, right? We're always thinking about what are we providing the user that is important to them and valuable for them.

24:56 I mean, I I don't want to spend like too much time thinking about Glider as just like a solo example, but like within Glider, right, we try to not say things like trading or like and we we very or we prefer words like investing, right? Like this is now about managing your assets, everything on chain in one place as opposed to trading meme coins or you know flipping meme coins like you yes you can do that on glider don't get me wrong but the what will bring people into this world is things that they are familiar with and this is important right if you are too far off in terms of familiarity people will be like that is too fringe oh my god crypto is scary I don't want to touch that and so how

25:40 Can we bring in concepts that they're familiar with like for example ETFs ETFs is a thing that we talk about a lot for glider. Oh, now you can create any ETF on your own, right? And that's something that's very familiar and then we make it like a web two experience and it's it's quite easy. Yeah, there's like two two like that's really great springboard like to me there's two things there I want to talk about.

26:04 One like making parallels to what exists that's really important in just like human interaction design in general. Like there's this concept of isometric design and the really early iPhones had things that look like the real world things because no one knew how to use a touchcreen for example. It was like your notes was literally like look like a a note pad thing and it was had leather and it looked like an actual note and now we were able to move away from that and abstract that to just like 2D flat icons at some point like at some point we taught the user similar like how do we to teach web and even like how to open a meta mask, right?

26:39 And so like hold like giving the user some rope to hold on to similar examples they understand, but you also need to bring stuff that adds value that they wouldn't get in in in web two, right? And so to me, you have to look around at all these either financial primitives or other primitives like to me financial has the best use case right now in front of us.

26:59 I think there's tons of social this and that like that will come also. But to me, like like glider for example, like from a first principle is like what if you could just create your own ETF on the fly and that's really interesting and like that's not allowed in the traditional finance system because of the the overhead that comes along with all of that, right?

27:20 Like there's just so many like things that you have to take into account, but like imagine just clicking a bunch of assets and these are the ratios I want and then just hit go. And like that to me is programmable money that you can't replicate. It's it's similar to like flash loans. I fell in love with flash loans really early on.

27:37 I was like, "This is awesome. This can't exist in the real world because it just is not designed that way." And so I think you have to actually look for things that are like Trad 5 plus, right? It's just like things that complement the existing system well because users understand them, but you you build it where it's more transparent, it's more open, it's more permissionless, right?

27:58 Like that's that's really where I see a lot of the value in consumer products. So if you're a good product scout or you have good product eyes, you're looking for these things where it's like how can I elevate what exists already in a way, right? Yeah, absolutely makes sense. And I I guess you know since we're on the topic of Glider can you break down like like bulletoint list what are you know custom ETFs obviously huge but what are like those key benefits that you're building and you know bringing yeah I mean it's all about automation right in terms of people having to think about gas having to bridge between chains having to manage all of their positions in a spreadsheet and five different wallets.

28:39 It's it's a very very cumbersome complicated experience for anybody, right? So the important part about glider is we fix all of those things and we also are non-custodial. So we don't have any like we don't have any ownership of these assets. You maintain full ownership of those assets. And that's the really really important part that John just touched on, right?

28:59 Like when you own your assets, you can lend them or stake them or participate in governance or you know lend them out as collateral and take out something against them. These are things that you can't do in traditional finance and you can't do in a sort of compartmentalized way that we offer. There's levels to this as well though, so I'm sure can John can add some more to this too.

29:21 So like for me just thinking about what I like to do in DeFi because I'm a D5 power user and I think about how can I bring this what I do either via scripting automation whatever to an a regular user like how like how do you program something to say sell on a 2x it's really hard right now like I I don't think there's a really good way to do that and especially on a portfolio level like where you have a lot of things moving around you have to track cost basis and things like that and so the way I think about it is like protocols to me are like Unix modules.

29:55 Yeah, you have Uniswap, you know, you have morpho and and these like are awesome Unix modules. And the beautiful thing about Unix is you can compose all these up and build some really cool experiences. And so to me, Glider takes more of the Apple approach of we're going to build up these these modules these Unix modules in an opinionated way.

30:13 And so we have Lenbar this that, but our vertical is very opinionated. And I think that's where you build great products is it's it you'll see this the counter factor here is like the the products that go really wide lose all their users because they go so wide that it loses all value. It's just like you can do everything and and anything.

30:33 It's like okay but what does that mean? And then like I see a lot of that like com like not competitors but like people doing like you can automate anything in the onchain. It's like okay that's way too broad of a of a subject in my personal opinion. And so we said, okay, we're going to start with traders and people that want to use DeFi and we're going to study how they use DeFi.

30:54 We're going to improve their workflow and we're going to take the Apple approach rather than the Unix like approach. Well, Apple's built on Unix, but so we take all these modules, these open source modules, and we build this really great user experience that's opinionated at the end of the day. And so that's what we did with Matcha early on.

31:09 It went really It's just like you have to bring taste and curation to the user because there's just too much out there right now. Sorry if that's longwinded. I just like but yeah, that's how I think about building Glider honestly. Yeah. And let me give you some like key use cases here too because sometimes I feel like John and I talk very very big picture and we forget like oh there's like a couple things that you can do really really easily on Glider these days that make it just like huge value ad for users.

31:34 So one we've talked about the custom ETFs any token any chain easy. things like that are one-off triggers. So I'll give you a few examples. A token reaches 2% mind share in Kaito, buy that token. Elon Musk tweets about Doge, buy Doge. A top 10 holder of a token sells, always dump after they sell. Like any type of trigger rebalancing, these are key things that people want.

31:58 When we do Hyperliquid or any other per exchanges in the future, you can put on a basis trade all within Glider. We no longer have to have this world of like tokenized per spots positions. we can actually do it all in one place. And then then again, you get all the benefits of actually owning both the spot and the per side of the trade as opposed to just the tokenized version where you know those token issuers are extracting value from you guys.

32:21 So yeah, just to like nail down some like key use cases here. These are all things that you can do on Glider. Absolutely. And I love the example that you gave with Apple how they first you have to parallelize and then you can start to iterate and introduce new things. I think I mean it almost comes down to the human the human mind how we approach things like you have to give humans the time to build the primitives in their head and then they can approach new things like a basis trade that's not going to work for like a leading like you're going to put Facebook ads up and you're not going to get users to come on and like start doing basis trades on Hyperliquid but that that wouldn't work on you that well

33:01 I mean it it would probably though I feel like are close enough where you could you could teach kind of perks in my opinion like that that is a close enough analog and there's a high enough ROI to learning that where I think people learn to slide that leverage slider and they'll really enjoy it like if they can if they can grog zero DTE options like not that they do but I mean like if they're willing to trade them well I mean also if you slap a 100x on anything and then well they're willing to come on pain for that but yeah so I love that I I really love that example and I think also a lot of the conversation has been around institutions are ultimately going to be the intermediary for a lot

33:44 Of it and I think that will probably be the fastest adoption that's just like a stepwise jump in onchain liquidity and onchain actions even though the users have no clue like even what they're doing. we'll be able to see it in our charts and we'll be able to see it on the on the block explorer, but they won't they'll have absolutely no idea.

34:04 And I think that's really that's kind of like a dream spot for like a morpho to be literally having Coinbase do their go-to market for them. Like could you could you ask for literally a better opportunity? Like imagine having JP Morgan literally selling your loans through your protocol. Like I mean what an insane opportunity. Do you think there's an opportunity?

34:28 I mean obviously you guys do, but I'm interested like what do you think the size of the opportunity is for these offshoots? Like you're going to have the institutions that go and they have I mean really like an insane advantage in terms of go to market for these financial products. And then there's going to be the companies that you know maybe even like a glider that they take a different route and they try to get users on board with their own sort of like onboarding mechanism.

34:55 What what do you think the size of the opportunity is there? Do you think it goes 100% to in institutions? What what is the split there? So I think we're in M&A season. That's what this is right now. Yeah. There you go. And to be honest with you, this happens at all levels of the stack, right? We have people who are integrating with Glider because they know that we can promote them and give them distribution.

35:16 Whereas we're working with a Coinbase or a base because we know that they will give us distribution and then a Coinbase is working with a JP Morgan because they know JP Morgan will get them distribution. So it it works itself up the stack that way. I think there's an interesting note that you touched on though like how how does like if you're reading between the lines how does one compete with these larger organizations almost and to me like I think honestly like being cryptonative and being able to execute great products is going to be such an advantage going forward especially in M&A season that a lot of these companies are going to wake up after a long winter and be like oh we're really behind we need to buy verse build because it it takes

35:58 A a long time to build out a real, you know, like product, protocol, you name it. And so I think we're going to see a lot of these, you know, the Fidelity Black Rocks of the world just start acquiring different crypto companies based on what they want to either service their users, service their back offices, what, you know, whatever.

36:15 And you can see that with Deribit. It's just like it's easier to pay billions of dollars just to acquire Deribit than is to build it out yourself. And so like whether it's big or small scale, I think we're going to see a lot of that. But I I actually think if you're a great cryptobuilder, you can compete with these large companies.

36:30 It's, you know, like, you know, Phantom doing a great job. A lot of 0x alumni, right? And so like to me, if you have taste and you understand where it's going because there's so much context required and it's still very early. And so like I still think if you if you're a tasteful craftsman in in crypto, you have such an edge.

36:48 And and so now's to me I I tell everyone that I interview and and on board, this is the golden time to be a product engineer in crypto. The primitives are there. The protocols are there. We have the the apps and the session keys are starting to get built. Like the real like useful primitives to the user are are are nent, but they're starting to be here.

37:08 And so it's so much fun than I I'm I'm having more fun now than I did in the last like five years of building, you know, on the EVM and crypto in general. I was actually having like an interesting conversation about M&A not both in the centralized way but in a decentralized way as well. And so like yes a coinbase can go and purchase a Deribit and stripe can buy bridge but what we're really going to see is that a lot of these fidelities and JP Morgans of the world are actually going to start to buy parts of networks and they'll do this through the token.

37:40 And why is that meaningful to them? because that will give them both governance of the system that's obvious but that will provide them ways to both earn from the monetization of future rails that are replacing them over time and so examples would be like yeah buy a bunch of Uniswap token or buy a bunch of DYDX token because you are getting the upside of how those protocols will expand and then ultimately you're getting some part of control into them as well and so that's that's really where that's where the mantra is going.

38:15 Coinbase is already doing that, right? They they do a lot of token deals. I saw Paradigm did a token deal. It was across I want to say I I forgot but you know you think about it what a if I check it it's 23 billion TVL today right across all their chains. to me I want to own part of that network if I was a banker because one I want to hedge that risk anyways and two like I actually think a has a wonderful model and like why not just become a part of that and so that's a lot of like the Mzer and you see a lot of like the they're trying to bring everyone together and kind of reach consensus and I'm I'm curious if it's going to be more organized or it's

38:51 Just going to they're going to buy in and then like it's a bit like a Bitcoin reserve game theory where everyone starts buying in so I don't know but that's a good question but Yeah, like I think networks are the ones that are valuable will actually be valuable and then a lot of M&A in terms of products and and builders I think.

39:08 Yeah. And I think that's that's a particularly interesting decision tree that we're at right now is which which directions do the big players head because one trend that's really taking off right now and has been probably for the last year or so is this like roll up as a service model where there's like I don't know maybe about like 20 or so VC back companies that are all going after this and they actually seeing like product market fit like there's a lot of key players that are interested and and they're they're building with these like their own rollup networks.

39:41 Do you think that institutions ultimately I mean perhaps it'll be a split and perhaps it'll be based on use case but do you think they end up coming and joining us on some of these networks or do you think they end up just spinning up their own and having like a KYC network or something like this? I mean this is the big problem in all of institutional crypto.

40:01 So like I I sat at Anchorage for two and a half years, right? And the vast majority of institutions don't participate in DeFi because of KYC, right? You know, Chainlink is doing a huge push with this to be the like middle layer between private chains that each of these institutions will spin up and then ETH as a settlement layer or whatever other settlement layer they want to use.

40:24 Aave has KYC pools too, you know. Yeah. Unis swap. I think a lot of the the smartest people in the room are this and they're they're almost like like V4 for Uniswap was in part like specifically engineered for for this capability. Same with the token the Solana token standard has hooks for KYC as well. Like if you if you squint, you can see where to me the distinction is is going to be will they KYC entrance into a chain or will they KYC entrance on Ethereum into assets.

40:58 So like Coinbase I'm watching Coinbase's add astation kind of arc really closely because what they've done is they basically stamped they stamp you on chain. They they said if you're willing to we'll say you're American, you're a certain age and a certain even like net worth tier or and like they do that in a private way and then your address just becomes Coinbase vouchers for you and is that going to be enough to let you take out a loan with BlackRock or or whomever, right?

41:27 And like or will you have to stop the world and join their L2 and then settle out and end? Like I'm curious where that mix ends up. Like my my hope is we're we're on open permissionable blockchains and you just layer in KYC. Yeah. But there's also like payroll for example. I used to work in fintech payroll stuff.

41:47 And you need an undo button and like I'm curious how like there's no there's no question like there's you cannot do a mutable payroll. I'm sorry. Like anyone that even proposed that is just wrong. And so like they they've never had a payroll administrator crying to them Thursday night saying, "My payroll for tomorrow is messed up and if I don't get this right, like people lose their homes and their mortgages."

42:08 Like that that like there's so many mistakes in the real world of finance. And so like I I I try to map that together with real world experiences. I'm like, "Okay, we need an undo button. Does that have to be a layer three? Is that a layer two that's permissioned? Not that you can roll back, but apply like like I'm curious how that all ends up."

42:26 Sorry, that's like a bit ranty, but I'm just like all these things matter to getting this to the user. At the end of the day, it it's it's not just the KYC part, too, right? It's the privacy. And I think that's where retail doesn't necessarily care too much about the privacy side. Like people could care less. but the institutions seem to really really want I mean, think about it, right?

42:47 If all of your trades were public, like that just that just wouldn't that wouldn't that wouldn't do. And so there's a lot of people working on in this this space like you know we're Aztec Networks had a cool if you haven't seen that lately a whole bunch of people working on this right like we're part of CSX right now which is like a crypto accelerator with a16z and there's a company called Inko in there that's doing the privacy layer for crypto and so there's a lot of cool stuff coming out in this and then whole bunch of stuff with ZK that's a whole conversation on its own to solve some of these problems.

43:19 Vitalik's you know risk proposal like like to me like all of this is kind of like there's this organic convergence I think that's going to happen at some point with regard to privacy but even Solana had some kind of privacy forward token initiatives and it like covers like part of it but not fully like it's being worked on.

43:41 Absolutely. Yeah. And I think the funny part is that it's this transition is is happening very gradually and it's very nonobvious to like the DeFi user today that this stuff is is happening. But like you said like if you can squint you can see that like layer zero has this DVN approach where you can like add KYC on the on the hop level between chains and all this stuff.

44:04 Like it's stuff that like initially when I was like auditing some of the the layer zero v2 stuff I was like why it's so complic why did they why did they do this but it starts to make sense when you start to think about oh KYC is going to be useful and other AML checks and stuff like that arbitrarily programming in what you need.

44:24 Yeah. and and like if you're a protocol and you've you did the liquidity mining, you you your user base is saturated, like to me the next thing you turn to is institutions and then they'll tell you exactly what they need. And I'm sure the list involves KYC and AML, like that's the top things of any kind of bank, charter, regulated like entity in general.

44:46 And so it makes sense to me like, you know, like the the crypto, you know, hacker kind of thing. Like it's it's interesting to see the KYC kind of get built in, but like I think we can do it in such a way where you still preserve that, you know, that agency on chain, you know, like I don't think it has to be one or the other.

45:04 Yeah. I love the way in which things are seeming to be built up because there's almost like these economic zones which are like this is a zone in which you can use you know like a JP Morgan or like a Vanguard but then if I'm on chain and I I have self custody of all this stuff still I can go in and out of that zone as long as you know I've been KYC but if I want to go outside of that zone and use some like dark magic DeFi protocol that was just launched by some anons I can still do that and I could take my funds and and do that.

45:34 So I think net net for DeFi users it will not take away anything. It will just add the optionality if you want to go into that institutional zone and you want to interact with the capital they have there and the opportunities then it's it's right there. So I think it's overall a good thing. There's always going to be people that opt out of that as well.

45:53 So like to me like there's always going to be like the permission stables and then like you know the dyes of the world like single collateral die was like a beautiful innovation to me like super super decentralized. and so like to me it's like Runescape you can go out in the forest and really PvP if you want you turn on PVP mode and like play but like and then you're you have your home base where you're safe like to me like that you know who knows that might be something like that.

46:18 I was just about to bring up gaming because this is where this is where gaming also comes into things, right? Where you've got these siloed ecosystems like a Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto, right? Where maybe they don't necessarily want like crypto functionality into it, but you will have these indie game developers and other developers who want to be part of this ecosystem where people can like trade permissionlessly between all these systems.

46:42 So, yeah, gaming is a good parallel here as well. The interop question for sure. What do you think is holding us back at this point? Do you think it's just all this stuff is going to get solved eventually and all come together? Like what what's the main bottleneck at this point? People don't realize that's the power of this.

46:57 That's the thing, right? Like you're not thinking like let's take the gaming example again. You're not thinking like oh actually I can sell my Fortnite skin for X in crypto and then go buy something on Grand Theft Auto. Like that's a huge huge huge unlock. so I think it's going to come with some education, but like what's also blocking us is well, I mean that's just the way people think.

47:22 And then we've got some like infrastructure that's also specifically built around that, right? So you go to an app and your wallet is only for that app, right? Like I think that's great now. It's a very web two like experience, but there are wallet providers out there and all like the Chrome extensions like the MetaMask and the Phantoms, right?

47:37 Where you can move seamlessly and permissionlessly between the apps. So, it's going to take some user mindset changing and understanding of like why this is so cool. And I think we're just starting to see the the bits and pieces of that. I think it'll actually very much look like an app store. Yeah. so, Coinbase will push this, the institutional custodians like the Anchorages and the Fireblocks will push this.

48:00 And then then you realize that like okay like my wallet is the iPhone but I have all these apps that I can use on my iPhone and there are permissions for them and there are things like that that you sort of get the the big picture of like this is more than just like this oneoff thing that I'm using.

48:18 It's a yeah it's an experience an integrated experience. I think that's what Apple has done so well is the integrated experience. And I love the point that you just made where it's like you can go from Grand Theft Auto to you know XYZ other game and have a continuity of experience and even I mean in like you talk about an app store you don't really have an integrated experience between individual apps but if you all now you have a DeFi app store where you get this app and then you can see oh I can literally affect a balance here that affects something in this app and now it's an integrated experience across the entire entire software stack and not just the hardware.

48:59 And I think we'll we'll see how Apple sees that as an opportunity, but I think in general that's an opportunity for DeFi builders. So, it also won't even matter. I I think this is where ZK actually comes in. And this is where things get cool. It's that like I'll give you a pretty concrete example here. So, let's say you're a Coinbase user and you've traded a million dollars in volume.

49:23 Great. I might value that information for Glider because I think you're a high valuable customer. Yeah. Right. And I don't need to go to Coinbase and say, "Hey, like give me all of this like like give me a partnership. Let's integrate." No, it's we get into this world now where it's like no, just zk approve a test that you actually have done it right.

49:43 And then suddenly you have that on glider and now we get into this world of one side partnerships everywhere which is really cool. that there there's gonna be this wave if I could I get a couple predictions but like one prediction is vampire attacks of web two companies I think it's zk is gonna enable so much there like Strava imagine login with Strava like via zk so it's not you don't have to ask Strava for permission and suddenly you build a better running app import all your data so everything comes with you you don't have to reset right same with Robinhood just like login we get all of your preferences this that your your how good of a trader you are like and then we build a better Robinhood on top of that

50:26 And so like and and then you you do an airdrop to reward your us like to me that's how we steal users not steal but like grow the pie right from web two is like you give them free money like ownership in this thing and then they participate and they see wow that's really cool I wish I could have owned a piece of Uber back in San Francisco 10 years ago like I I use I I would have loved to be a part of that you know like and so you Like it'd be great to be an equity holder in some of these things.

50:53 I mean that's it's the ownership of everything, right? Like I mean this is not to bring up May 16Z again, but here like you know A16Z's mantra here that Chris Dixon wrote is read, write, own. And now we're in the era of like you being able to actually own parts of these networks over time. There's one thing you said earlier was just like what's the impetus to this like and one meta comment I have is I actually think this is somewhat like inevitable.

51:19 Not like Thanos, but like I think money wants to be freed. Like just like information wanted to be freed on the internet, the printing press, you name it. Like there's this certain like energy that money has that's like let me loose. I I'm more useful. just open, right? And so like I think it just takes a long time because finance comes with a ton of baggage.

51:42 It affects every facet of your life, your your community's life, your government's life, like the world's life. And so I think it's just a little it's messier, right? Like once you financialize anything, it becomes way different. Like like playing World of Warcraft, but you you had to like if it if it became like super financialized, it just wouldn't be fun.

52:03 Like I saw dollar signs everywhere be like, "Okay, what are we doing?" like to me like you got to be very careful when you financialize things and you have to think about who are the stakeholders, how you affect like but I think money generally just fundamentally wants to be freed just the way information was during the whole you know information shift right absolutely and when you unlock interoperability like this and it's so frictionless the velocity of money within these applications just goes through the roof.

52:32 You're seeing that with Stripe. Stripe has so much data on their stable coin and they're like we've never seen adoption this fast. Exactly. And like that should that should tell you a lot, right? Like the the demand for money is real and and and it wants to be higher velocity. It like it just wants to be programmable.

52:50 It wants more feature set in it. And like to me like that's what like that's why I joined crypto is just the magic of programming money like like fundamentally 100%. And I think it's a lot of it is the friction of onboarding like you say like if you have all this information already out there and it's permissionless to access first of all I mean it's awesome that you can go and target people and literally give them in app like oh you've you're this amount of volume on on Coinbase so you have access to you know whatever tier XYZ whatever you want to do whatever any application wants to do and like the even like the friction of partnerships and business relationships gets sort of entirely thrown away and and is no longer a thing.

53:34 Like all of these applications can build these use cases that go much deeper with the user experience in terms of like customizability and what you could even like hope to be able to accomplish before. I mean there are entire multi-billion dollar applications that solve the customizability problem like I don't know you think of like a like a Mailchimp or like a HubSpot or a Klaviyo they store all of this user information and they have like their own event logs of like oh they did this action or you know this is their LTV and then what those applications do is they go and they they have like predictive models and say like oh well this user is likely to purchase this thing again this this time but that's not open and it's not permissionless.

54:22 When you take all that data and you put it on chain all of a sudden everybody has access to that and I mean we can only imagine what what will happen how how fast new solutions will be able to be made and like we can only imagine what will come from that. But with that being said how do we take that power and how do we create an experience?

54:45 I want to I want to be able to touch on like what is the process of designing the UX around the all this power this immense power that we have in DeFi. There's so much you could do and you guys are offering you know kind of like this Lego like build strategies and stuff like this. How do you present that to the user?

55:05 Because I think that's really the root of what makes a good application in DeFi is like how do we present it in a digestible way that's approachable. So like what's the process for that? A lot of beta testing. I mean that's that's up front. It's a lot of beta testing and you know it's it's making it easier and easier and easier to one create these portfolios and and really do anything in Glider.

55:29 It's it's and then part of this as well is thinking about and anticipating what the user is going to be thinking about when something occurs. And so World actually does a really good job of this. So like when you go and scan your eyeballs after that process is done they like do this little animation and they say now your your data is being magically erased right because the question that you think about when you're using this is like oh my god where is my eyeball retina data going and so they've anticipated that and they've made it this magical experience where you're actually like you're you're entertained by it right and so we try to do similar things on glider Uniswap does this as well now where you can say like why do you I

56:10 Have to sign this. This is why I'm signing this. Why what is happening now when I swap it? Doing a small animations to show like like give a sense of actually what's happening behind the scenes. I think that's what people like. So yeah, I mean two things that we we really focus on just make DeFi as simple as possible and then anticipate what what users are are going to either fear or have questions about.

56:31 I I' I'd probably add on like solve real problems. like like and that's like assumed because we we talk about all the time, Brian and I, but like what are they trying to do on chain? Why is it hard for them right now? What would make it easier? And like to me, quick aside, but like to me I feel like the local maximum of crypto UX hasn't really elevated in a long time.

56:57 Like I remember building the some of the initial swap UIs out is like input output swap button. And I feel like we haven't emerged from that local maximum in a while, right? And so to me, like the next kind of local max or not, like there's, you know, the next kind of tier is automating things that people do regularly because we already have the swaps.

57:18 We got that down. We're good there. Like we're super good there. We even got the some crosschain stuff. We don't need more swapping. So to me, like now it's about convenience. It's about solving the things that they do, the the minutia. Like I don't want to wake up at 3:00 a.m. to sell on my 2X. It should be automatic.

57:36 Like that that that's table stakes for programmable money. Like like if we can't do that, what are we doing here? And so to me, it's it's it's thinking in bigger terms of just a token. It's a single token. Now we you think in terms of baskets. You think in terms of portfolios because that's how like users do think.

57:51 They they think like, all right, I'm holding these things. How do I care for them? You know, and so that's I think where the meta is headed. automation, convenience and deriving value. Like find something that a user is doing on chain every single day and automate it and and you could probably build a product around it and like take that and study study your users just relentlessly.

58:14 We have so many user tests like we get everyone from like extremely sophisticated whales to people that didn't know the difference between mainet ETH and base ETH and like that's like and we're trying to figure out okay where is that demographic overlap? what problems are worth solving, which ones are valuable to solve because a lot of some some problems aren't valuable to solve.

58:34 You can get nerves like really easily. So yeah, just like being methodical. but that that goes into any like kind of product. I I feel like just like good product builders are extremely like relentlessly methodical on how they build and and and iterate. It should be so intuitive, right? The user should be able to sit there. They should be able to and we watch them, right?

58:55 When we do these beta tests, we we just say, "Here, go." We don't give them any context and then we watch and see what do they do, where do they get stuck? Like being able again to predict what they're going to be doing next and sort of guide them in a non like here's the next button you need to click, then do this, then do this.

59:12 And don't you do that in app? Like Yeah. We've all been through tutorials that are like that, right? where it's like then you click this next and then you and then you have to watch a 30 second video about why you have to do this and like it's you know Apple would never do that right so slowly nudging the user naturally through a product and also removing gas removing gas another thing we think about too is like I know we have so many things to say on this it's like how do you pace a product for somebody in games some do this really well right you don't go into a game you're Oh my god, I've got to deal with gems and coins and XP and mana and like lives, right?

59:54 Like that's just too complicated to start out. And so, you know, we think about like what are the first couple things that user should think about or like know how to do, use, and then open up the world bigger and bigger and bigger to them as they master that over time. and these are things that we're still trying to build and improve at Glider.

1:00:11 I think every app should be doing this because that's how you get the real games are the reference now. Yeah, truly. Like I we we I look up UIs in games regularly as references because that's actually where it's head. We were just having a talk about inventory slots and and what that mean like how to think like to me games do this like a lot of games you join they're like look up and down.

1:00:35 Okay, I got I know what like which axis is which and like and then move forward and strafe and crouch and like you go past the beginner section, they give you more they give you, you know, a tool to that use like to me that that that onboarding is so key because that's where the churn happens. They once once you make a user feel stupid, they leave.

1:00:55 It's just like that was cool, but I guess DeFi is not here yet. And so then they come back maybe a year or two later, if ever. And so like you get one shot with consumer products generally. like you ever download an app and you're like I guess like I'm too dumb for this and I just delete it from my phone and like some of these apps are horrible and I just never use them again but I'm sure there's value in there and the developers are smarter and all that and so like yeah just it's like to me like we're at the point where we can really really get the UX streamlined now and like I I I wouldn't have said that three years ago but like now now is an actual point where it's

1:01:26 Like I think we can actually get this into a really really slick experience. Yeah. No, I think to go back to what you're saying about how there's so many actions that users are just making in DeFi that just don't even need to exist right now. I think like you said like DeFi is basically it's not programmable money for the vast majority of people who use it today.

1:01:49 It's more like manual money and we need the applications to actually make it feel like programmable money. And I think the experience, like you said, it's about how do we start off stripping away all the things that you could do, but really we don't need to because it's not that valuable and only having like this is the only thing that we need to do.

1:02:10 And then and then you actually have a hope of making a UI that's so simple, so easy to pick up that somebody who's like drunk and just had like three Big Macs can like swap or whatever they need to do. It's true. Just like you can shoot off a parlay. Yeah. Exactly. Right. Like on DraftKings like you should be able to do that at three.

1:02:32 Like it's it's it's just very true. Like honestly like it to me and this is a good example is I think the cutting edge mobile apps now for crypto are just making it so you auto yield. Like to me that was table like that should be table stakes and like that's like the new feature everyone's advertising and I think that's now table stakes.

1:02:53 And so my my dollar should be yielding something if I don't and blast made that really popular initially and then now BlackRock has like an auto compounding stable. Like you can see how this starts growing and the mobile apps are like we just put you in compound or a anytime you have idle asset. Like to me that's that's something that should have been done before but that's where we're getting this programmable money like things that work for you rather than the other way around.

1:03:17 And so to me like you're going to see more of that. And then Glider to me like we realized that early on and we're like okay these mobile apps can play around with yield. We'll meet you over here where everything's truly like it's a opinionated sophisticated way to think about your assets instead and like but you can see how it's it's curving upwards like to me that that trading and then yield and then like you'll start to see it and then I think there'll be a natural convergence on automation products that work for the user.

1:03:46 And by the way, we're actually talking to a number of these mobile applications who want to provide the glider functionality behind the scenes. So I know we spent a lot of time talking about like our B TOC application which is incredible and so sleek, but there are a lot of integrators who are like, wait, I can just use what you've built embedded into my front end.

1:04:07 It could be a mobile app, it could be Telegram, it could be X, it could be your own, you know, website and just monetize. and we're like, "Yeah, like go for it." And and so that's that's actually where we see a lot of growth here potential as well. And so a number of those will be publicly announced soon.

1:04:26 And hoping we can have more of those in the future. What does that look like technically? Do you guys just have an API that you exposed to them? Yes. So we dog food. This is something I learned really well at 0x. So they built 0x API which was like a public API to do dex aggregation right and eventually everyone integrated it now now you have to use a dex aggregate to get a good price right like in my opinion and so we built out 0x API and matcha consumed it and we dog fooded this thing and we wouldn't have been able to build a good 0x API without a consumer and we wouldn't been able to build a consumer product without a good platform API and so we're taking the same approach here of we

1:05:05 Built out a platform API for Glider. We use it we we offer it to everybody else and one day like the the user experience in these mobile apps will you you integrate Glider like a like a decker and now the app gets to offer you up they can build their own ETFs they can build their own things baskets or or even like programmable money in general just like buy trending tokens and sell it at 2x like you could literally do that if you want.

1:05:30 So this this just allows wallets to level up from oh we we have swapping and yield like to me that that's cool but like to me I want my money to work for me and so we offer this like to me I'm I'm so excited when people integrate because to me it's a it's a cool like to me this is where everything's headed and then on top of that it's it's a great experience for a user and so we're happy to share this with everybody and we make it really easy too right like what would have taken you months to do and maybe isn't your core focus either can now take you like a week.

1:06:02 You literally just like if you're if you're using a like a privy or a turn key, it's like it's so straightforward to do. U yeah, if you if you go to docs.glider.fi, there's a quick start and it's only like four or five steps and you're good to go. And like that's where we want to make it is it's both easy for the integrator and the DevX and then the user benefits as well.

1:06:21 Like everyone, it's all about incentive alignment in crypto. And so like to me when everyone's winning, it's just like that's what it's all about. And then bring in your own signals too, right? like you know weather app weather app says like if it's sunny today I'm buying Bitcoin and that's the trigger all the time and then like we got a full moon coming you know so you got to watch out sell salon on the full moon yeah no I I love this play in general not that this is entirely like an infrastructure play but I love the infrastructure play because BTOC especially is just so hard to it it almost feels like it's just a small percentage chance that you hit the right messaging hit the right distribution channel for a really outsized outcome.

1:07:01 But if you have more of that infrastructural like, hey, we're offering the rails for people to do this and now you've got, you know, dozens of applications trying for that B TOC and for you guys that could be, you know, arbitrary different applications. It doesn't have to be like very simple things like swaps or anything like that.

1:07:19 It could be arbitrary automations. So, I mean I I I love that it just increases the surface area that you guys have to hit a piece of that like adoption that will happen. Like once once somebody does get the right acquisition channel and they've they've got the right messaging and they have the right and the numbers make sense for the acquisition model and it doesn't cost like $4,000 to acquire a new user and they're actually retaining them, that's when things get really exciting.

1:07:46 And yeah, I think it's it's generally I mean I I I love what you guys have done at with Matcha and and 0x and taking that model here. I I think it's I mean it's a it's a no-brainer play. So very excited to see what kind of applications start using it. Is are there any you can share that are maybe like interesting use cases or is it all very closed door right now?

1:08:08 I'll I'll tell you it's just there's some mobile apps, there's some Telegram bots, and you know, we're quite connected to any number of wallets out there as well. And it's exciting because they're using in ways I didn't expect. And like to me, when you find developers doing things that you're like, "Oh, I didn't I didn't like to me that's cool."

1:08:27 Like emerging behaviors are always indicative of like, "Oh, there's something here potentially." And very cross ecosystem as well. So we're talking to people in Bitcoin, we're talking to people in Solana, any number of L2s. So it's really all over the place. Yeah. I mean the product feedback that you've got to get from exposing the API like first of all by exposing your own UI, but then multiply that by a factor of like 10 or 20 by having all these other partner protocols and they're like, "Oh, can you do this with the API?"

1:08:56 And they're like, "Yeah, I never even thought why. Why do you want to do that?" oh, because we're doing this on the front end. and then you know light bulb goes off. So, yeah, that's very exciting. And I think a lot of really big companies, the big play is always to have some kind of like an app store, right?

1:09:14 So, I mean, obviously starting with Apple, but you know, even like marketing automation tools, Shopify, the app store and Shopify, Klaviyo as I don't know if they've gone totally live with their app store, but like that's a that's a huge play. Have you guys thought at all about some kind of an offering where it's like somebody's built this app on top of the API that does this?

1:09:37 Is is that anything you guys have have thought of? I mean, I can speak for on the engineering side. Like to me, we're building in a way where you can build your own blocks in inside the app. And so like to me, that's how I want to kind of express an app store. I'm not in a hurry to build an app store out.

1:09:57 That can it can be a bit of a boondoggle in my experience. and then like you have to you have to think about like app stores work really well for like super top of funnel right next to the user and so like I think world app store is more apt than like a glider app store not going to count out but just like you have to think about what the surface areas are there.

1:10:18 I would think of it more as like a not so much an app store but just like a list of people who use us, right? Like because like think about like we're kind of getting into like the infra space a bit, right? yes, we sit on top of a bunch of other infra, but like like a zero dev, for example, wouldn't have an app store that's necessarily I mean, I guess they're more fundamental infra.

1:10:39 So maybe they would be like these are all the apps using us. But for us, I don't think there's enough differentiation yet in how they'd be using the API that it would make sense to be like, here's a flashlight app and then here's a weather app and here's a notes app, right? Like they'd all be kind of similar.

1:10:56 And now that'll change over time, but and different use cases, but yeah, not something we've spent a lot of time thinking about yet, but not something we're counting out. And what do you guys see as like the long term? Like what's the ultimate end product? What is the ultimate experience you guys are building towards? Yeah, I mean there's a there's a whole and this is a whole conversation on itself, but there's a whole decentralized path for Glider and how does this become something that is quite centralized in what we've built to something that anybody can build into something that anybody can own, something that anybody can be a part of and operate and be a you know be a liquidity provider, be a person who is trading like there's a lot of cool networks here

1:11:44 That are emerging and for starting study and we're finding who are the actors in this thing this this whole like because the app is just one it's like to me it's like a big iceberg and like the app is just a piece of this and so the underlying glider infrastructure is like there's a lot going on and so to me that's it looks like a network and we're assessing out where the values and where it makes sense to allow people to be not relayers but like operators of this network super excited to decentralize them more in general but that's exciting guys.

1:12:15 Well, I mean, regardless of the direction you guys end up taking and I mean, of course, there'll be a lot of iteration along the way. I think you guys are starting from like extremely solid fundamentals. I mean, clearly you guys see exactly where DeFi is at today and and I think exactly where it's going and and what DeFi users need.

1:12:33 So, you're in an exciting spot and I'm looking forward to to seeing first of all what kind of features you guys are exposing in your UI, but also I mean pretty exciting to see who's who's leveraging this and and like what kind of use cases come out of it. Sounds like there's a handful of them. But, I mean, first of all, I just want to say thank you guys so much for for hopping on and and taking the time.

1:12:55 I think we we covered everything from like the the beginnings of DeFi, how you guys got in to I mean what it looks like in an institutional future. So I mean really just want to thank you guys for hopping on and discussing. Yeah, thanks guys. Thank you guys so much. Yeah, thanks for having us. Yeah, if you want to check out Glider too, you can follow us on xg glider_fi and our website is glider.fi and we've got all the usual channels, Discord, Telegram, and we're hiring as well.

1:13:24 So, if you're an engineer who is looking for a backend, or staff level founding engineer role, we have those listed on our website as well. Absolutely. And we'll have all those links listed down below for anybody listening. And, yeah, go down below, check out glider.fi.