Maia DAO: Liquidity Rental and Omnichain Bridging

0:00 Welcome back to the Permissionless podcast. And of course, as always, this episode is brought to you by the team at Guardian. And we're upholding our promise to go deep with DeFi Builders, folks building on the edge of what's possible and exploring new types of tech and unlocking new strategies, new UX, new ways for the existing DeFi users landscape to interact with the blockchains that we all know and love.

0:29 And today we have a wonderful conversation with Light and Bugsy, co-founders of Maia DAO. We got to talk really because they've been in the space for a while about everything that they've experienced and been through up to this point over the last handful of years building in the DeFi ecosystem. We talked about why did they transition to Arbitrum and we got to speak about one new product that they've been working on for a little while which is bringing a new UX to bridging with a combination of OFTs and intense based solver network.

1:02 So we got to talk all about that and about a few different D5 protocols that they're bringing to market stuff they've been working on for a little while and we will get into this in just a few seconds. But first of course my name is Owen. I'm a co-founder here at Guardian. We've been doing security reviews in the web 3 space for almost 4 years at this point.

1:25 And really we set out with the vision that DeFi would encapsulate the entire global financial system. And we realized that the level of security and assurance available to protocol teams and institutions wanting to build in the blockchain ecosystem was just not anywhere close to where it needed to be to give the level of security and peace of mind and assurance to be able to house billions and billions and trillions of dollars of assets for the global financial system.

1:55 And today I'm happy to say that we have achieved the standard necessary to bring the highest tier of assurance to institutions and teams building in the web3 space. At Guardian Today, we use a multi-phased audit approach where we have a review phase where multiple teams have a look at the codebase and do a complete audit and then a follow-up entirely separate phase where we do a public bounty contest to have the public take a look at the work we've done, cross-check our work, and catch any glaring vulnerabilities that could have been missed in the prior phases of the review.

2:32 And with this combination, we're happy to say that we have reached the standard necessary to be able to ship in an environment with billions at risk. And today, with over $10 billion in TVL secured, really now it's time for DeFi to catch up. And of course, without further ado, let us dive into this episode with Light and Bugsy from Maia DAO.

3:00 Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, first of all, dude, Bugsy and and 0xLight, thank you guys so much for for taking the time to to hop on. I think we've got a ton to to get to in terms of everything you guys have been built and I also I'm just interested in hearing what your journey has been to to come into DeFi.

3:17 But, maybe we could start there. So, I guess you know, maybe Bugsy and and then 0xLight like how did you guys first hear about DeFi? How did you first get interested and come into the Ethereum ecosystem? and and when did you really enter this space?

3:33 Yeah, of course. first things first, thank you so much for the for the invite. Couldn't be well more happy to be here and talk a bit with you guys. So, long story short, I was studying software engineering at the time and people around me got involved with crypto with DeFi specifically at the time in the first DeFi summer well frenzy.

3:57 I actually didn't personally get involved at the time, but I did start easing into it and about a couple years forward from that I did actually start getting involved and actually look into the coding aspect of it. because yeah, that really captivated me.

4:16 Yeah, I just want to say a very similar path here. I guess yeah, seen those finatic videos. I don't know sure if remember those but yeah it was definitely awesome to learn about this stuff and then yeah eventually yeah just started working on this actually started as a freelancer doing a couple of stuff and as soon as Bugsy and Marshall our other co-founder asked if we wanted to or if I wanted to to join them in creating something.

4:43 It was wonderful. Really glad they did and really glad I accepted it and yeah, that was essentially the beginning. But yeah, I think since early 20 2018, so really after the major Yeah. my was a a sad bare market to to enter. But

5:00 Yeah.

5:01 Yeah. So I mean you guys came especially since 2018 before DeFi was even really in existence. So I guess you guys have seen the full sort of evolution of of DeFi. What do you think? Because obviously you know originally there was originally it was dark. There was not much. but today DeFi has evolved into a few distinct verticals that have you know great product market fit.

5:30 But how have you guys seen DeFi change it? I know you guys have shipped a lot of stuff over at Maia which we'll get to, but how is DeFi different today than it was originally? You know, maybe not as early as 2018, but 2020 2021. What do you think has changed the most since you guys have initially gotten into DeFi?

5:53 Yeah, there are a lot less waste. So like we don't really have any like we have concentrated liquidity. we have like a lot better me solutions and interoperability solutions. It's definitely one of the biggest ones. L tools are finally reaching or almost reaching stage two. It's definitely been a great pro progress in both UX efficiency and centralization but still a long to go.

6:22 We still have haven't reached stage two and we still have all those training wheels on that should well shouldn't exist in in the future but well they still do.

6:33 Yeah, the infrastructure is slowly improving.

6:35 Sorry, didn't mean to cut you up. Was just going to double down on what light said that yeah true the the first basically generation of D5 protocols really were I mean waste was really a big highlight there. The second the so-called DeFi 2.0 2.0 the the branding that they gave it at the time supposedly already started tackling this but with all these technology well technological improvements that we've seen this last couple of years for example yeah it's really been supercharged in that sense a lot less waste and a lot more thorough thorough use of resources

7:12 Yeah and I think Maia DAO came about in that sort of era of of DeFi 2.0 know. So maybe we could touch on like what was the initial sort of vision of Maia? How did it sort of come about initially way back? I think what was was it three four years ago at this point?

7:29 Three years ago if I'm not mistaken.

7:31 Yeah.

7:31 Yeah. Early it we we launched it was fourth or 5th of January 2022. We actually started the Twitter. No Discord for a couple of days. Telegram only came I think a few months later. people were asking for discord because well it is understandable we were trying we don't want that we just wanted to ship the code but yeah the community was definitely an important aspect but yeah we we actually started as a reserve currency and yeah we we essentially deployed Maia that way and then Andre Cronje put out the the stable AMM and we deployed that in Metis there wasn't basically any other solution for stable swap AM said they were curve but it wasn't deployed there and even in other chains it wasn't as well appealing there was they weren't as decentralized you had

8:28 To to set like amplification factors and stuff like that that this this new curve didn't. So it was well really fun to to really look at that. it was a lot simpler than what we did later on was building stuff from scratch. Definitely forking it and just tweaking it a little bit was definitely easier but it was yeah just building the UI from scratch and everything was was fun.

8:52 Yeah. So were you guys originally an M fork or was it sort of a spin-off? Was it a custom or did you just straight up fork M 2.0 or something like this? So we actually were I believe one of the few that forked time. We didn't fork the the original and we well we did that and then we did well a few months later actually well paused the emissions completely and then shifted well Maia completely.

9:25 It doesn't have any more essentially rebate emissions at the moment. but well Hermes well they still have it's essentially the the coronia well the solidly original model is widely adopted right now. it still kind of goes into that. You do have the the the rebases, weekly rebases that well do come from. obviously the vote scroll model is from curve and well the voting was kind of improved but yeah it's yeah it was nice to to see that obviously well it was a huge news at the time there was a lot of noise about the the new protocol and well I think today we can understand why because it's definitely something that even the how the yield is distributed if you vote for something you get the yield or the revenue from the from what you're

10:17 Voting for and not just from the whole pro protocol. So it's there's more incentives to vote for the right thing and stuff like that. It's well we see it I think in almost every DeFi protocol today.

10:30 Yeah. And obviously this model has had a lot more staying power than the Olympus sort of like original rebase and and stake model. think there's there's not many protocols that are left from that sort of era of just ohm forks everywhere. I think I mean I would say of course you guys are are one of the the last couple but obviously you've you've iterated and added a lot more products and you took the the stable swap AMM from from Andre Cronje and and that that's worked out quite well with with a handful of projects but so how have you guys decided like what to what to build what not to build over the years because at this point you you guys have built quite a lot.

11:12 Yeah. So essentially after deploying the the incentive system we we wanted to essentially not be only in Metis it was extremely clear that certain protocols wanted to run liquidity on a random chain and we weren't deployed there and there were essentially yeah I don't think we even for some time really agree on a path that essentially to go forward with this there was essentially a lot of solutions but or a lot of ways to do it, but they were not really great.

11:45 So, we essentially well took some time to to do some research and essentially yeah like a common solution at the time would be to essentially launch a fork on each chain and see and essentially let that go. But that was we did all agree that it was unethical to do so just as one can expect. So yeah so we essentially well looked on interpability solutions layer we actually started working with any call then any call cease to exist unfortunately and we switched our code base to layer zero but yeah that was essentially well why really we wanted to we always kind of loved the DMM space and it goes hand inhand with the interoperability space.

12:38 Yeah, and the interrop over I mean it has become a huge trend and I think you guys were early to it. I think you were one of the first protocols that we saw going interchain and using layer 0 v1. and now are are you guys using layer 0 v2? Are you still on v1 rails in some product areas?

12:58 What does that look like for you guys?

12:59 Yeah, so Ulysses basically our omni chain liquidity and execution solution. It's built on top of L zero v1. Yeah.

13:09 So that's static there. But in the overall product particularly with our latest update the the MetaBridge we are in fact interacting with all the versions of layer zero. But in this well but it's through the the different OFTs that exist. It's not well a custom integration that we've made on chain. It's simply well indexing all of the OFTs that exist on the supported chains and obviously interacting with the different versions of them.

13:39 Yeah. And so how how do you guys decide like Metabridge was something like the next thing that you guys needed to build? Is there like just problems that you're running into yourselves or is it something that you guys hear from the community? What's the what's the impetus for this? Yeah, I I really think it's a mix of both because the community obviously has an appetite for new chains, new specific niche tokens they are involved with and we really needed to find well a solution that really was well should I say holistic that really covers all the the possible variations and this was the best route that we we found which brings us kind of closer to an aggregator type user experience in terms of moving assets around.

14:27 But overall we believe that integrating other solutions and if this leverage enables us to be faster, support more use cases and have more user retention in our user interface. For example, they don't need to go to another website just to interact with that specific token. No, they can do all of that inside inhouse. No need to exit the page.

14:52 And since one of our core well selling points as well is this aspect of easily managing all your assets regardless from where they are what they're doing. So we obviously are this was logical for us. It was really was the the most logical route instead of just implementing our own bespoke solutions for every problem.

15:15 Yeah. Yeah. And so what what is like the ultimate version like let's say you know played out like 5 years into the future. What is like the ultimate evolution of what you guys have built at Maia DAO? Is it you know aggregated liquidity no matter what the chain is underlying? What is like the final experience you guys are building towards?

15:34 Yeah, and light do feel free to chime in if you if you'd like, but I'd say that definitely the ability of using any asset that you have on any chain easily spending them in one go. and also the the possibility of basically earning yield or rent. We already have the the liquidity rental platform. So since if there's a party renting the liquidity on the other hand there's someone earning from providing it.

16:02 We currently are locked to UNISB3 concentrated liquidity. It was the our choice to bootstrap the system. but we really want to be open any source of yield, any source of revenue to be able to participate in this system.

16:16 Oh yeah, go ahead. Sorry, I just want really want to point just well restate the last thing Bugsy said is that yeah, there's a lot AMM yield is definitely a a huge one and it's it's definitely a something that's well lucrative or sorry maybe not the best word but it's definitely

16:38 It won't cease to exist other yield type as well but we're essentially where we are inserted in the essentially liquidity rental place for us. I think it's right now we're essentially you st liquid your LP tokens. It's UNB3 NFTs in our staker and you get yield and you give us the fees. But if we could essentially be on top of another liquidity rental system, maybe protocols that are using us and essentially another liquidity rental system combined will get even more liquidity for them.

17:10 So it's essentially we want to essentially be more free in terms of where we can insert ourselves in renting essentially or exchanging our emissions for fees and allowing other protocols to leverage it.

17:26 Yeah. And then I mean ultimately it becomes like you're leveraging the distribution the the users that that you have and bringing you know any kind of modular underlying liquidity source to the aggregator and abstracting away all the complexities because there is a lot of complexity in especially the concentrated liquidity space. How have you guys approached like the UX of of liquidity rental and just minimizing all the I mean because there there are a lot of technical details underlying.

17:59 How have you guys approached that from a UX perspective?

18:02 Yeah, we we actually have Talos. It's automated liquidity management management and solution. And that's definitely one of our ways that we did is it's even if you're just creating an NFT in the same range in the same position as another person, people do prefer to add liquidity instead of creating NFTs. It's essentially slightly easier to manage. Also, you don't get that permanent NFD forever.

18:28 You kind of if you remove liquidity, you kind of forget about it. I think it's a lot easier to for people to to think about it and it won't they won't get attached to that position. for example, if they liquidity remove it they obviously in this LPS they are more attached to the LP but if you have a we have users that have hundreds of NFT positions for example and that's definely something that also doesn't make sense.

18:54 So yeah aggregating users whenever possible is just more efficient.

18:59 Yeah. And what would you say is like the bottleneck to getting, you know, like a billion dollars of liquidity under management? Like what's what's keeping you guys back from reaching higher higher TVLs and being able to aggregate more liquidity today?

19:14 Yeah, a big one was we actually well, we had a we had a bug bounty recently late last year and we're still trying to get that trust back a little bit. we there were no fans lost but we did have to do a white hat rescue and people were essentially well the protocol were paused for a couple of weeks and that was unfortunate.

19:35 But well other than that obviously that's not the the only thing. a lot of a lot of stuff goes into this. but yeah we also yeah bridge people are a lot well suspicious of pro of new protocols especially bridges and well that doesn't really played a lot into our hand that's also why we for example integrated the cross for intent so you can actually swap really really fast UI buy tokens in a couple of seconds or even less depending on what chain you're from.

20:07 So trying to tap into really well established protocols and have as little as possible that well adds other risks to users is a big one. not just because of a general security standpoint but also for us as well is is beneficial.

20:26 Yeah, that's interesting. So over time, have you guys moved for from like the let's let's build it ourselves and have custom to just like let's let's fork existing stuff or integrate with existing solutions.

20:38 Yeah, we did suffer a little bit of the not invented here syndrome. Sure if it's but unfortunately I think it quickly went away. we with the we do try to avoid as much as possible that so if we can use something from someone else we'll do it instead of trying to build it in house. Yeah. And I'm interesting because you guys have been on a number of chains at this point.

21:01 What What are the biggest chains for you guys? Do you even think about it that way anymore? or are there like some chains that you guys are really focused on or heavily involved in?

21:11 We do still essentially think and believe really believe that especially if you're trying to well rent liquidity or have your liquidity having it in one place it's generally better. it doesn't make sense for people to try and

21:25 Fragment liquidity for example especially today with intents you can essentially bridge really fast from different chains at least majors and so why should you have liquidity on different chains when you can just have on one we are focusing on arbitrum first it is a great chain but there are other great chains as well with our essentially well future expansions our goal to being able to essentially well what we talked about of being able to rent liquidity of more yield sources other chains is definitely included there as well.

22:02 So not just yield yield sources from other chains as well. So expanding from UNV3 to on average them to whatever yield on whatever chain.

22:12 Yeah. And have you guys I mean obviously already integrating with the underlying UNIV3 infrastructure. Have you guys looked into these products at all where it's like the leveraged concentrated liquidity yield farming or anything like that?

22:24 Yeah, we do. We we are always afraid of adding stuff that our users can really get wrecked. it's we do try to kind of avoid that but it is useful especially you do have a lot of stable pools and that's at least a lot safer than than volatile. So depending on since we are really on UNIV v3 we try to use native tokens whenever possible people usually can just use the other solutions on top of our pools.

22:55 There's nothing well stopping them from that. That was one of the major benefits from UN V3. all the analytics we can just use them for example and stuff like that. but yeah, we I'm not sure if you want to add anything, Bugsy. but yeah, it's just yeah, we don't really have them integrated into our staker because we we rely on users having to stake the NFT.

23:22 So it's unfortunately well incompatible with most most other solutions. Yeah, I mean those those products are notoriously hard to get right and then even when you do get them right to be able to communicate to users how they're how their positions are actually performing. I've heard that is like that's one of the most common things you hear is like people don't even know if they're actually like making a good yield on their on their assets.

23:50 Because I mean it's hard to really communicate the effects of a permanent loss especially when you add leverage to the to the situation. yeah, and it is also just very technically hard to to actually do something that is not going to be manipulatable and exploitable. anything anytime anytime you add any logic on top of concentrated liquidity, I mean, as I'm as I'm sure you guys are are well familiar with, the edge cases just get really really hard to analyze and and reason about, especially like all this rounding and and tick math and stuff like this.

24:24 But I mean speaking of which what is like your development process? Do you guys go and and work backwards from hey we want to have you know this instate or are you going from first principles and just building up towards you know something that you want to implement from scratch? are you it sounds like now you're mostly trying to integrate and maybe fork existing stuff.

24:54 Like what what's the development process from like mechanism design to getting this stuff out the door?

25:00 Yeah, we actually we do try at least to to avoid forking as much as possible. So

25:06 Like if we if we will if we're going to fork something we try we will at least try to use it first directly. So well that's yeah that's what we will try to do. for example, yeah, we were actually planning on rolling out intents and we quickly essentially found out that we could just use an existing solution and already battle tested already audited.

25:34 It's cheaper as a whole. so but yeah right we usually we actually our three messy and Marshall. So Marshall is more focused on the UI. He generally well well architects and well leads that and kind of in charge of it. me and Bugsy we we also essentially help out in the UI but we we tried to also well work on other stuff as well whenever possible.

26:05 We've lately worked on a smart contract for essentially being able to manage your behositions if you're if you're a DAO for example. Maia has a lot of B Hermes or Hermes locked locked Hermes and a way for the DAO itself be able to manage th those tokens without anyone having custody of them. So that's our is what we've been working on the smart contract.

26:33 It's a a relatively small smart contract. our most of our focus has been on EI and we built a relayer for across recently. So yeah we we haven't been as focused recently on on the smart contract side just because well there are a lot of solutions so we try to use them since well we can change the at any point and it's a lot well easier to manage than we are ext not against but we do try to have we don't have any proxies other than governance contracts just because they are proxies by themselves and we don't want to build a new one.

27:14 But it is yeah we do try to everything that we deploy is either immutable or can be set immutable. Yeah. And I think with I mean of course you guys have been building in this space for three years, a little over three years maybe at this point. how has your approach evolved since you started especially around like security for a team like yours that's been building and iterating?

27:42 And of course, you know, anybody who's been in the space for 3 years has ran into some issues on the on the security side or on the, you know, just things that happen in in production or or gotten a bug bounty. so I guess how how has your approach on that sort of like that area of, you know, getting things finalized to production and having it ship and and be successful and and secure and everything smooth.

28:07 How has your approach changed? I mean obviously since I think a year ago when you you had the bug bounty any learnings from that? like what has that process been like for you guys?

28:18 I do believe the bug bounty did kind of give us a little bit more I would say healthy paranoia. I think it's always nice to have more paranoia in this kind of stuff. it's always yeah I guess there's too definitely too much paranoia but just because it's the definition of the of the phrase but it is it does come in handy.

28:41 I don't think we weren't paranoid before but I guess if we had maybe if we had been a little bit more we we would have had to to pay that bug bounty. fortunately everything came out fine but it was extremely stressful. I think we ever want to to go to to for it to repeat again for

29:00 So many reasons and yeah I guess the smart contract side I just add more tests even if it's something that we manually reviewed a bunch of times we just adding more tests if we think of something that can be tested we'll test it so even if even after that there's stuff that happens there's yeah, testing doesn't find everything obviously otherwise there won't be any any bugs.

29:30 But yeah, just something that I do find that at least a little bit interesting. We actually take different approaches in the UI. For example, in our back end, we do have a pretty good coverage. but in our UI, we we mainly rely on peer reviews. So we have a lot more peer reviews than than tests in in our UI just so we can also move faster but yeah testing some stuff in the UI will just be incredibly painful and we'll need to change it all the time.

30:02 Yeah. Yeah. And have you guys looked into or explored at all any like invariant testing or anything like that for the the smart contract side? yeah, we actually yeah the the the codebase in question that that was under the bug bounty was I think the the one that was most tested but it was also the more complex that involved a lot of moving parts and there were a lot of contracts.

30:25 So

30:26 But yeah we do we did have invariant testing fuzzing and fork testing and all that kind of stuff. We actually all Bugsy did a layer zero fork test environment and unfortunately as soon as we were going to publish it they or share it with everyone they released the v2 but

30:46 Yeah we we did find it it was extremely handy and even for internal testing if we wanted to see like a lot a lot of one thing that's we have incredibly handy is fork test environment we just put the RPC chain and we just have calls in foundry and we use it to test for example UI interactions everything if a call fails we want to see the traces that's what we do and well seeing the onchain traces for a UI call is wonderful and yeah that's the fastest way we have to do it and yeah using the LZ fork test for example is something we've done in the past so we know well before we had all the live deployments that we could just test with we we did that so We well we knew

31:32 What to expect.

31:34 Yeah. No, I will say the cross train stuff is is the hardest to test. You just have to test it in some like I mean we even tested stuff in like production environment just to see like what would the DVNs do in this case. and that's the only way you could find some of these issues. Yeah.

31:48 Yeah. 100%.

31:49 Yeah. I do want to say the the the environment that Bugsy set up was actually really really nice. You change chains and you could essentially execute all pending messages when you change chains. So it was it was something that well came extremely handling and we wouldn't be a haven't been able to have half the tests we did if we didn't have that.

32:09 Nice. Yeah. I guess switching switching to more of like the the growth and go to market side. One thing I like stood out to me you guys said you're expanding to more chains in the future. but you do have like a solid base on Arbitrum. So I guess what's been the process of like you know choosing Arbitrum and kind of building a community there and that roll out?

32:31 Yeah, I guess the the two main well factors that well kind of pushed our decision to to pick Arbitrum is definitely liquidity. We we are in a liquidity heavy field. We need to be in a place where liquidity is abundant and cheap and arbitr made total sense for that and also we didn't want to impose any unnecessary barriers to our users.

32:52 So having cheap transactions and the fast finality was also very important to obviously be attractive for this more common and day-to-day users. We wouldn't be if we had picked for example mainet obviously it would be a different crowd that would be daily interacting with the the contracts as we as we are aware really just wanted to be as accessible as possible.

33:16 Sorry go ahead. Totally totally makes sense. And I think we asked as well like how have you guys seen the you know from a builder's perspective the space evolve over the past like three years. but I think arbitrum's grown a lot over that time and also what DeFi users in general kind of want. What's your guys perspective on you know how DeFi users look at things over the past few years?

33:38 What they're most interested in what they look for you know in this current age of DeFi? He actually after I said what I said in the when you asked the pre that pre or similar previously I did at the end sorry at the end I I did think well I didn't say anything about meme coins for example and that's definely been a huge thing and I'll really say a lot of stuff about it but well I guess well at least it has definitely taken eyes from DeFi and maybe maybe not more important but definitely more useful stuff in a sense that well doesn't rely on for example well just fun and it's definitely okay to have fun and great to have fun but there's also there's always well a lot of utility that defi well

34:28 Should bring and aims to bring that wasn't really in the spotlight for a long time now

34:33 Yeah definitely and I think you can do both like I I saw your tweet today from Hermes that you can support over like 160 O of so like That includes, you know, the memes as well.

34:44 Yeah, exactly. It's I think if DeFi wouldn't be accepting memes, it won't be DeFi, right? It needs to be open. It needs to be centralized. If we're gatekeeping anything, then we're gatekeeping stuff that we don't want as well. So for good or bad we need to have this stuff open and it needs to be well it doesn't need it can't have the barriers of entry that other stuff has or else it will stop being decentralized.

35:14 Yeah to totally agree and I guess maybe I'd be interested in like personal takes. I think you know memes have been hot but I think maybe as of late they've slowed down a little bit or at least the sheer number of new ones coming out. Do you think we're hitting a point where we're going to start to see some new narratives or it's just a lull in the market and memes are still, you know, maybe focused for a lot of traders?

35:36 Where do you kind of see where things are at in that regard?

35:39 Yeah, I mean, it does feel like well, in this basically tension cycles, they've been getting a bit tighter and users have been hopping from trend to trend in well closer periods of time. But we do hope that obviously there will be eventually some kind of well return to value. Obviously just like light said I'm not well saying that the funner more meme kind or community oriented well meme coins for example are inherently bad by any means.

36:10 That's not what I'm saying. but DeFi getting more traction getting more traction getting more common users it's definitely plus EV for everyone in the ecosystem. So we do hope that there will be a switch in trends where people will kind of go back to basics in a way. Yeah, 100%. And I think another thing that there's kind of like two two ongoing narratives like this past cycles of memes and then institutional DeFi side and I think what we've seen with that too is some protocols, you know, even some that we've talked to that have made specific trade-offs when it comes to decentralization like moving things offchain.

36:49 But I guess is more, you know, OG like, you know, really leaning on the decentralized side team. What are you guys perspective on things kind of heading that way when it comes to institutions getting on chain?

36:59 Yeah, it's tough. There are it's not only that that's a a big one definitely a big driver. there are a couple of well things happening changes occurring in the space that do hint towards a certain well complacency or acceptance that some decentraliz well some centralization may be necessary to help get us where we want to be. I do feel like we are well losing some ground on that field.

37:29 But then again it's not well black and whitey situations. For example, we can see in the case of feelings and solvings and the the all the intent novelty that's been going on which is great. We have implemented it. We it's undeniable that faster fields high versatility of interactions is net positive for the ecosystem but it's also being raised that basically how do we say outsourcing this well liquidity for swaps to offchain markets which is what intents end up being at the end of the day can lead to sort of a more igopoly struct market structure.

38:13 This is was actually put forward by Tarun Chitra in in one of his recent papers. I I actually did enjoy that one. But it's it's it is really a nice point that I don't believe is talked as often as it could because I think people just accept it as a stepping stone just like we had with L2s, but we're just now getting to the point where we're well they're entering stage two.

38:35 Yeah, 100%. And I think I mean I'd be curious to think how you think if users should care more about this kind of stuff because I think if you were building in the space in 2020 it was so important that things were decentralized because at least in the US the regulatory market was it was so unclear. and I I think we've seen even in like less than a year that when the regulation opens up it's like things have moved offchain and everyone's okay with that.

39:00 But things fluctuate and if things ever were to tighten up again then it would be you know I think there might be another big push towards the importance of decentralization.

39:10 I think it's just want to say it was actually Den Robinson that tweeted it recently that if you really want yeah touching on the solver things. So you basically if you want you just need two or three really good solvers and have competition between them you don't need a 100. it might even be worse if you have 100 over two or three.

39:31 So maybe there's there will always be essentially well this centralized well points at if anyone can use the contract if anyone can essentially request a fill then if you have 10 feelers you only need one of them to not be for example ACC compliant and they will feel you even if you're not if they're not if the other ones are not okay with that.

39:56 So I do believe that unfortunately or for maybe fortunately but for good or bad we'll have definitely some really really centralized points in DeFi and they will essentially fueled the all the other ones but most likely if you're requesting a fuel you're going to get filled by someone that is filling like 30% of the market. So, if they stop feeling, most likely everybody will get worse quotes, but they won't stop feeling because they they'll they're making money.

40:29 That's true. Yeah. No, I definitely agree. I think so. We talked a bit too about, you know, how you're leveraging layer zero and then you also mentioned this design philosophy of, you know, if you don't need to completely rebuild something and you can leverage other architecture that that's kind of the preference. So are there any other like design partners or you know people you're working with or collabing with right now?

40:54 Yeah, we are we actually we we wanted to add more AM and we actually did essentially a stable swap sorry it was a balancer stable swap raer that we also added to to our routing and we use a fork the smart order router from unis swap and everything like that. But eventually we we right now for essentially the to allow any chain and any at least that ParaSwap.

41:24 Yeah, we're using parasop now it's velour actually. so yeah is is awesome. They essentially get better quotes than just univ3 unless you only have liquidity on v3 on Arbitrum but most tokens have liquidity in a bunch of places today. So yeah, we essentially using ParaSwap for rout for routing. We definitely want to add more sources, but well, one thing at a time and we're using also a cross for intents.

41:53 So it's actually really nice to be able to trade tokens in a split second. you like if you're bridging from optimism to arbitrum, you need to wait two seconds so that at least two seconds so that your transaction is included in the next block. And then arbitrum has what 250 millisecond block time. So essentially you can you can get a swap in basically a block and a little bit more.

42:21 So it's it's really really cool to see that happening.

42:26 Yeah. So I mean you mentioned a lot of different stuff in terms of underlying liquidity protocols and then swaps and and kind of like aggregators like like ParaSwap. what is like the number one sort of feature set that you guys are working on right now? Is it is it bringing in more underlying AMM protocols? Is that what is going to move the needle for users?

42:48 What is going to make the the big difference for folks who are using Maia today and maybe even bring a lot more people into the Maia ecosystem in the future? Yeah, we we do have some protocols that are essentially interested in rent and liquidity but they really for example have OFT so they don't really want to rely on for example you lease is that it's actually pretty similar but completely understandable that they have their in-house solution so we recently adopted OFTs and that's the reason that's the main reason behind it and right now we're working on having sessionally swapping before and after the the OFT bridgings So we want essentially bundle more actions together.

43:30 So if you want to well not just bridge and but bridge and swap it. You can do that in you can definitely already do that through our UI but you will need to bridge the f first and then swap it for example and that's not really acceptable for for really good UX. So yeah that's what we're essentially working at working on for example this week.

43:54 But I guess more major improvements it's definitely we're looking into a couple of stuff but for example account abstraction is is a huge one if we don't want to have a bunch of actions signing a permit and switching chain and then approving and it's a lot of stuff happens and yeah the the other essentially big one is the liquidity rental system that we're trying to improve.

44:22 That's not really on the swap on the the swap part of things more on the island liquidity or the the protocol liquidity rental part that is Hermes but yeah that's the well the top things that we're working on if I missed anything Bugsy

44:39 No I think you covered it nicely this last point basically leveling up the liquidity rental system and opening it up to any source of yield yeah I don't think there's any other well high level objective that we have right now. Yeah, basically more interoperability with other kinds of protocols and and tokens obviously and then as you start to add more and more support your users that are already in the Maia ecosystem, they get access to more and more different types of tokens, different types of projects and it kind of just compounds upon itself when you I mean when you add more to to your network then basically the network just gets more and more powerful and then it becomes I guess more of a a better offer to to integrate with you guys.

45:23 So today, is it are folks coming to you and and wanting to integrate with with your liquidity rental system? What does that look like?

45:32 Yeah, we do have well, a couple of long-term drivers that's been that have been with us even since our original media times. but our key strategy that we like to adopt in order to well reach new new circles and establish relations with other well protocols is basically trying to work besides them particularly larger projects by for example creating something very simple as listing their token, creating a gauge pitching a bribing strategy which eases into starts small and grows progressively.

46:10 All of those interactions really give us a chance to introduce what we're building, introduce where we'll be well later on in the in the future. And that's even how we've gauged interest for future updates. For example, before even before obviously the MetaBridge update, we did some research, gauged what protocols are actually large protocols are using OFTs and would be interested in obviously experimenting with our solution and that's that's really key for us is trying to get closer to these larger more established brands to so we end up cross-pollinating with their community members, growing our own brand awareness, increasing the the brand confidence.

46:54 So, it's really all of these actions together that really introduce the the network effect and enables to us to break into new circles really.

47:04 Yeah, it's a powerful flywheel especially I mean liquidity is so sticky once you can get the right actors and the right incentivization models in there then it really will just start to compound amongst itself. But you mentioned yeah I mean going back to the the meta days recent I mean you guys have obviously moved to arbitra mainly at this point but what was the original decision to build on on Metis and then maybe we can discuss like why was it the the better move to move to Arbitrum ultimately.

47:38 Yeah at the time it was basically an emerging ecosystem. a lot of the things that we were interesting in building and also at the time we've already talked about it earlier in the in this call it was obviously the the reserve currency on fork trend it was really a very effective way of fundraising publicly from the public

48:00 So that's something that we really wanted to execute on and Metis since it was also in its own hype cycle at the time made made total sense to merge and couple the two together. Obviously, this was also a bit influenced by some grants program that they had going on at the time like any developer team should take into account when picking an ecosystem.

48:25 But yeah, I'd say that these were the the key drivers. I I really highlight this. What do you think? Like any other thing you'd like to highlight here? Yeah, actually for a long time I was more an more a fan of optimism and average actually but maybe they didn't still have it but they for a long time they had that deployment plan B so you needed to be whitelisted to deploy stuff and

48:50 I'm not sure if they still had it at the time or they recently lifted but we were essentially looking all over these chains and meat is recently launched Iritum had a bunch of reserve currencies I think umami is one of that only exist. But other than that, I think it was

49:09 Yeah, we we were essentially thinking should we go to Arbitrum or should we try to go to another emerging chain and yeah, we we ended up landing in Metis for yeah for more reasons like Bugsy discussed, but yeah, they're definitely an L2. We were we were and are still L2 aligned and believe in that road map. So yeah, it made sense to to do that.

49:34 Yeah. And then obviously moving to arbitrum because of the deep liquidity I assume.

49:39 Yeah, definitely. The liquidity in me is unfortunately isn't isn't really deep. We were

49:46 We actually well we were like 90% of the the volume on the chain for until we left or until a few months before we left and we didn't make that much volume. So even now a fraction a tiny tiny fraction of Arbitrum's volume is a lot larger than me has.

50:07 Yeah and I mean just the room to grow inside of that that ecosystem is is huge and I think picking obviously being in that market gives you guys a lot of benefits. Did you guys see like was there an immediate change in the amount of volume you guys were able to do when you did make the switch?

50:23 Yeah, actually for better or worse, we we didn't see really a huge uptick in volume. So we had a lot of I guess it was mostly arbitrage. We had a lot of major tokens like ETH USC me or it were kind of the only source of liquidity for a couple of years and we had less fees than any other AMM.

50:46 So we we just had a lot of volume there and there yeah coming to arbitrum we didn't have the lowest fees possible. So we had we had more we had more well natural volume and not just arbitrage volume. So it was what we did see was really uptick in users. We we did retain a lot of users for me.

51:09 Even until recently when we see our classical elicit deployment, we see a lot mis is still one of those top chains that users do users still use. but it is yeah we do still essentially have user base from that chain. but yeah we do have essentially a lot more proto our major essentially noticeable was protocols reaching out to someone hey can you do are you interested what chain are you on that's great and they didn't really feel the same way when we said we were still in Metis

51:46 Yeah well I mean yeah even just the number of protocols that have reached a certain amount of volume a certain amount of liquidity for their token on arbitrum is you know way higher than than on meta so I can imagine from from that side of the business makes things a whole lot easier. even even though you were originally crosschain, just having that liquidity hub on arbitrum probably helps a lot.

52:09 But, and and I think you guys mentioned has it just been a team of three? What's what's the team looking like currently?

52:17 Yeah, so we're three and we we essentially we're three founders, but we do have we we have Crown Flux. Amazing. Yeah, he has so many roles. He he manages our socials, all our our Discord, our Telegram. He's extremely cracked and maybe not the best word to describe. I'm sorry, Crown, if you're insulted, but it is yeah, he's extremely talented, works really, really hard and always looking always to improve.

52:49 He was actually a community member and one of those community members that say hey why aren't you doing this? Why aren't you doing that? And eventually came on board and yeah well and he did that do that. So it was really nice. We also have Ber RBD he extremely he's a well he's a natural English person. So he's the one in the team that speaks well.

53:17 Maybe he he was here. He will definitely at least he was explaining everything a lot better and have a soothing voice. but yeah he we have for example u some arbitr founders club and Sonic as well. We have some essentially a public amo reaching out to other protocols as well is really nice. He gets our image. He worked previously on BD as on other in crosschain protocols.

53:47 So he was already familiar with the weeds and yeah we have a couple of devs right now. We only have more tool one of them is working on the UI another on the back end. So that's they're actually friends we had and we we knew them. We knew they were extremely talented and capable. So we asked them if they wanted to join us and they did.

54:10 So we're fortunate to to well to have that possibility. We had one more dev actually crown fluke's friend. we didn't really until now at least we never really essentially hired anyone for any technical role that wasn't really known from one of the team members. so that's really how everyone got in on the technical side. but yeah at least right now we it well that's what it is definitely there is a certain trust that needs to go into someone at least in our opinion and it's harder if we never heard someone never had any input from them and we don't know them personally.

54:56 Yeah, I love that man. very grassroots and and you get a lot of people who are more missionoriented and they're really bought into the product and and like you said people that know they just know what the brand is. They know from day one already what my is about because you know they've either been with the community for a while or they've been really close with you guys.

55:15 And I mean an ancillary benefit of that is that you don't have to worry about them being from North Korea and just insider attacking you. I think that's been really on the upswing as of as of late, which is getting really hard for for larger organizations. yeah, and I think that's we we'll see how how that how that plays out, but definitely the grassroots approach and and using people through your network is is superior in in that sort of in that sense.

55:47 But are you guys on that note, are you guys looking to bring on any more developers? Are there any roles that you guys are hiring for currently?

55:56 Not at this exact moment. we also at least sometimes actually not really for example crowns and badger we weren't really actively looking for anyone. honestly we we we probably should have but we weren't really and they they approached us and we did hire them. So it was and similar stuff also happened with a couple of the technical roles as well.

56:23 But it is something that yeah we're not really actively looking for someone because it does takes time and effort to really have an open job position and there's a we really understand the fear of hiring someone for example from North Korea and

56:42 It is very

56:44 Yeah and it actually not hiring people obviously avoids it. It's not a a solution in any kind of way but well trying to be as careful as possible with that and being cautious is something that we we would try to do. Yeah. I guess paranoid isn't only for security. It also

57:05 Organization

57:06 Goes to other stuff as well. But yeah.

57:08 Yeah. And then later on allocate an appropriate amount of time and resources to make sure that that is well properly done.

57:17 Yeah. I mean especially in any system. I mean, I think I think your your guys' contracts are are for the most part immutable and you know, not totally a lot of smart contract systems are just basically controlled by a multisig hopefully a multisig but that especially if you're going to have anybody a protocol engineering that part is just extremely scary as well.

57:42 Just even, you know, if there you got to start worrying about their own ops and if if they get compromised, not even if they're actually from North Korea, but if North Korea is able to compromise them. So, there's just so much attack surface for for DeFi protocols, especially those that try to remain decentralized. I I mean, I'll say the vast majority of D5 protocols aren't totally decentralized.

58:09 The vast majority of them are, you know, essentially just a multisync owns some ability to be able to shut something down. so yeah, there's just a lot of attack surface and it is very hard to to fully vet out and and have really strong OPSSEAC as as we've been seeing in the in the past couple of months and quarters and probably sadly as we'll as we'll see in the years to come.

58:34 This is an area that probably needs a lot of development to be able to have those those systems to to keep that unlock. But I mean, okay, so it sounds like you guys have brought in a handful of other developers and and folks who are who are helping out. What does the day-to-day look like for you guys as as founders of Maia DAO?

58:55 What's what's your day-to-day look like at this point?

58:59 Yeah, we're basically S3 are always on a call. So all is on discord and well we just then mute ourselves whenever we want to say something and ask something or most of the time we well ask for input maybe work on something together but we're literally always on Discord if we're online. So yeah that's essentially what we do all day just be on discord and work obviously not just be on discord but we do essentially have meetings depending on which day it is and that's it.

59:34 We try not to have essentially for example day-to-day meetings on relevant stuff like especially with devs we try to give some some kind of liberty that's the correct word. So yeah, things need to get done. We don't need to be on top of people. If we do need to be on top of people every day, it's a bad sign.

59:55 So yeah, that's what we we try to do. So avoid the daily standup. while yeah, maybe weekly meetings are more useful than having a 10-minute meeting every day.

1:00:08 100%. Yeah, if you hire the right people, then stuff gets done without you checking to make sure that it gets done. And that just makes your life way easier and and eventually allows you to actually scale past a past a certain degree if you have those those individuals who can just take full ownership. So I definitely agree with that.

1:00:27 And I can relate to just being on call all day. For me it's Slack, but for you it's Discord obviously. So yeah, definitely un understood on on that side of things. and yeah, I mean, so in terms of things coming up, we've got MetaBridge, which I think just released recently. Was that this week that MetaBridge was made publicly available?

1:00:52 Yeah, we actually I think I have it live for two weeks, but aligning all the announcements and everything, it's finally fully announced. So I I think it was yesterday or today that was yeah really published the the full announcement with all the layer zero support and everything but yeah it's been live for I think a couple of weeks now.

1:01:14 That's awesome man. Yeah I saw that on Twitter.

1:01:16 Yeah it will be two weeks in a couple days. Exactly.

1:01:19 Awesome. And then so obviously Metabridge is is out now. Folks can can go and and use that for for OFTs with the Maia ecosystem today. And is is there anything we should make folks aware of? Anything we should push them towards for any releases coming up? I know you said you're working on some VE Hermes stuff on the contract side.

1:01:40 What else is is coming down the pipeline?

1:01:42 Yeah, just want to say something first. Obviously, we want to add more stuff, please do Bugsy, but yeah, more routes. if you don't have a route in our UI, that should exist. That's what we want. We right now, for example, we don't have the OFTM swap combo. you need to do that separately. Yeah. one click actions that's or one click route.

1:02:01 So even if you do have to do multiple stuff to get that token, you should just need to put one token on top, another token on the bottom and hopefully not soon enough. You don't need to need to specify the chain. Well, that's a tough one to crack. It's that's definitely the goal. So yeah, not just yeah, the chain abstraction way and that's the the end goal definitely.

1:02:24 It's it's hard to say. It's hard to say exactly when we'll ever get this to get get this as a ecosystem because if we don't specify the destination chain someone does and if they want to get the token somewhere the the other protocol needs to say it but yeah it's the goal is to just be similar to Binance in a way.

1:02:52 You don't specify whatever what chain you get want to get your Ethereum, you say it when you leave and stuff like that. That's that's what we should be able to to thrive as an ecosystem.

1:03:03 Yeah, exactly. that's one of the points super important 100% and also would like to to highlight quickly that we'll thanks to the contract that you've mentioned Owen that the my vault contract we'll also be having boosted strategies appearing in our UI currently the like we've mentioned the contract is already deployed we're simply going through the governance process of activating it and adding it to the to the system but this in short will mean that we'll have even more competitive yields for anyone looking to interact with the system.

1:03:36 Absolutely. So, I mean, you more utility, more roots, more support. I mean, just better UX overall.

1:03:42 And also shipping, you know, more incentives and and more utility for the token. so I mean, a lot for folks to to look forward to on top of the the MetaBridge announcement just this week. So, I mean, you guys are shipping a lot at this at this point in time, but where should we push folks towards? I mean, obviously, we'll we'll have the Twitter down below.

1:04:03 I think Discord as well. Is there anything else that we should make sure to call out for folks?

1:04:08 So I'd say Twitter and Discord follow along just like you said. we also have like anyone we have GitHub for contributions if anyone is interested to well getting more into the weeds and looking seeing what's up. but I say that those are the the key routes to well find out what we're up to and what we're doing.

1:04:30 Absolutely. Yeah,

1:04:31 Just want to add if people will like more reading more long stuff, we do have a medium with a couple of articles recently more road map kind of stuff or we made like an article on our relay recently. So if people are interested on reading that kind of stuff, we do have a medium with with that. But yeah, Twitter and Discord definitely the the top GitHub as well if you want to look at code.

1:04:55 Excellent. Yeah. So we can we'll link the the medium as well so folks can check out some of those articles you guys have get some longer form details on the stuff you guys are building and and your thesis on the liquidity rental space. but yeah I mean last of all I just want to say like thank you guys for for taking the time to hop on and and run through all this everything you guys have built in the past and and what's coming up in the future.

1:05:21 It sounds like you guys are shipping even more than ever now. so I'm excited to see what you guys come out with in the coming months.

1:05:28 Yeah, thank you too. We are a huge fan of you guys. So, yeah, it's a huge pleasure to be here.

1:05:34 Yeah, thank you so much for having us. Well,

1:05:36 Likewise, guys.