Tuyo: Building an Internet Native Bank

0:00 Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the permissionless podcast brought to you by the team at Guardian. And of course, as always, we're going deep with DeFi founders, with DeFi builders to see what initially got them into the landscape of DeFi. How did they find their way in? What initially got them building, what challenges they're facing, and of course, what they see the vision for for their protocol and DeFi in general.

0:24 And today we have a really insightful conversation with Jorge who was originally a co-founder of Aragon and now has been building Tuyo which is building the really the UX rails to bring DeFi to the consumer and outside of the bubble of the market at which we've already saturated of folks who are willing to come in and log on open their laptop and download MetaMask and interact with DeFi.

0:50 In that sense, they're building a completely new UX for DeFi and trying to onboard a segment of the population that really has not had access to DeFi before. So, of course, we dive deep into some of the UX concerns, what their bottlenecks are with regulations and how they're sort of navigating these waters and building today. Of course, before we get into this conversation, my name is Owen and over three years ago, I founded Guardian and we started out on the premise that DeFi would encapsulate trillions and trillions of dollars and be a major player in the global financial system.

1:24 So, we set out to build the security audit solution that would allow teams to ship consistently and confidently in that environment. And so, of course, we have taken the security audit process to the next level, to the guardian level. We use two competing audit teams, a world-renowned lead researcher, a dedicated fuzzing engineer to perform advanced fuzzing analysis.

1:47 And our experience has shown that the traditional audit approach does not work. Many projects get a normal audit and then months or sometimes even years afterwards their contracts are hacked. And with the Guardian model, we're here to put an end to this. And today, we've achieved the standard necessary to onboard trillions of dollars into DeFi. With already over $10 billion sitting in smart contracts secured by Guardian, really, it's just a matter of time for DeFi to catch up.

2:17 And now, of course, let's dive into this conversation with Jorge from Tuyo. Once again, appreciate you joining us, dude. I think to be honest it'd be great to start off and just hear a little bit about like how did you find even find your way into DeFi and then of course we can we can get to everything after that but how did you first find your way into this market?

2:42 Yeah. So it was 2016 and my previous co-founder and I were were actually in Silicon Valley building a completely different startup actually had a lot to do with AI and everyone called it crazy and we wanted to tackle the problem of patent trolls which are like these horrible people that will go we'll get like a crazy patent that should never have been granted at an auction or whatever and then because your business does some printing or some mailing like they will go after you by some weird turn of events we ended figuring out like our customers what they really want is like insurance and like we were like just two 19 year olds from Spain in Silicon Valley couldn't build an insurance thing and we ended up build saying finding out about Ethereum and we're

3:25 Like we could build like an insurance vehicle on Ethereum. So this is like 2016 like very very early days of building dapps and everything that really captivated us to a crazy extent and we got more excited and discovered about DAOs. this was like very very shortly after the DAO disaster but like we really wanted to build like any type of organization.

3:45 So we started this project called Aragon and and yeah built and ran Aragon for for for like four or five years. Yeah. And like the work that that our team did today powers like the governance from some pretty big D5 projects like Lido every everything Lido runs on top of Aragon OS which we built. also had like this crazy story about like how an anon suddenly deployed a DA back in 2020 and like a lot of other big names.

4:12 Yeah, Aragon is doing great now. It's run by a by a different team like they they just shipped like a a whole new version very recently and they're they're powering the governance for like huge things like Polygon or

4:25 Other chains. so yeah, this is what what brings me to the the space and and DeFi. and a year ago we started it started to we saw the opportunity of not just building like infrastructure like we saw how like different pieces of Ethereum infrastructure were about to be ready or like barely became ready for us to be like a great consumer experience for us to build and like take to like our mom and like our friends and having them use it.

4:52 But that still upheld a lot of the values that brought us into the space and we really care about self custody, decentralization and like all all this all this great stuff. So yeah, this is this like the journey to to go.

5:04 Yeah. Well, I mean first of all, yeah, Aragon's pretty pervasive. I think even just a little while ago, we had a podcast with YieldNest. They're using Aragon for for all their DAO structure. and I mean countless other teams like you mentioned some of the biggest DAOs in the world are using Aragon OS which is so I mean pretty successful previous project there and then and and you also mentioned I think it was it insurance that you said was like the first thing that got you in what what kind of insurance what were you insuring there

5:32 We didn't have any a clue of what we were doing we we just we needed to build like this like patent troll we wanted to build this patent insurance thing and we just like learn a little bit about insurance and build like an insurance fund on Ethereum. So, it was like investors that could invest into the thing and then like a process to process claims and so on.

5:50 But it was like it was never more than prototype. I think we entered in like some hackathon some project called like Ether Camp which is like very very old Ethereum stuff. But then like very very quickly after like we we just got excited about like hey every single company and every single organization could be built on chain like we should stop focusing on like this particular type of like insurance thing and just build like like software to run companies and organizations on chain.

6:16 So that that's what kind started Aragon.

6:19 Yeah. Of course. And so that's an interesting pivot as well because you go from kind of a with Aragon like it's almost like a B2B

6:29 Offering to what was the thing that clicked and made you think like okay it's time for consumer crypto to to access and and we're going to go and bring that to market with Tuyo. What was the few key things that you saw there?

6:42 Yeah. So I I think it's like I mean personally I I started building building and shipping iOS apps at 14. I think it's when I I I published my first app on the app store. So, I I've always loved like building things and like having my loved ones using them. Then when we got into crypto, like it was at a point that it was like all the consumerish ideas that we had and and during the 2017 ICO craze, like you could see like every single permutation of an idea of like Uber onchain and like all these things and like this all failed because like the tech just wasn't ready and like Ethereum had barely launched in the summer of 20 2015 was like the the Genesis and it was it was just not not ready

7:27 Like just like in winter of 2017 like the chain would like sold when when cryptokitties got like some some sort of like traction within like the crypton nerds and then like scaling took longer than anyone I think would have liked to to to figure out and then like very very important pieces of infrastructure like that we now take for granted such as stable coins but like I remember doing decks for Aragon and we were like we need like some like stable thing to work because otherwise like all these companies just just are running on on ether tokens.

8:03 So a lot of these things are like also like defi and like dexes like these are all things that have been coming online for like the past years. but even before like 2020 like DEXes just weren't weren't a thing that was that was really working. So like a lot of infrared like pieces had to come together. In the case of Tuyo, it was like a combination of three things that that we saw and we're like, "Okay, we can now build like this like experience.

8:28 It was like on the one hand, Ethereum was scaling. The L2 road map finally looked like there were a few L2s and it was like okay, this is this is going to be the the future at least. This is the strategy and and this is what what's going to happen." And the fees were about to get low with EIP-4844.

8:46 So, we're like, "Okay, this is going to be transactions are going to be cheap. people are going to be able to transact on chain even if they have a small account value which just wasn't the case in like 2020 like you had a very big account you couldn't be doing things on Ethereum so that that was one the other one was all of the account abstraction stuff so that people could like interact at a higher level than just like sending transactions with MetaMask and having like these popups which like it's just we're also like finally after seeing like many many attempts and like ideas and EIPs like finally ERC-4337 like was gaining some traction and we could bet on it.

9:24 And then like the other one was like all of DeFi, all of the pieces that had been coming together like stable coins were there was infrastructure for them and they were they had decent volumes like Dexes were working, lending markets were working. So like at that point it was like hey we can just put all these pieces together and build an an experience that people won't even perceive that they're using something that is self-custodial that is interacting with the centralized protocols directly because like that that's the thing and very very quickly we building in Tuyo we realized that it wasn't about people making the the choice of using Tuyo versus like effects or some other people that have like similar features but are self custodial like

10:03 People weren't picking because of value. So like having the same or better experience was stable stakes and then from that point we could we could build stuff and yeah and I think we pretty much achieved it like a lot of our users like just couldn't tell the difference between like using the features that we have and the same features on a on a Coinbase or or or a centralized counterparty.

10:23 So that's that's very good. And now it's like doing better things better than them or even like taking advantage of the things that we actually get as an advantage by virtue of like not having to hold user balances, not having to do a lot of different compliance things because it's the user, it's their money and we're just there like helping orchestrate the whole thing and making sure everyone has a great experience.

10:44 Nice. Yeah. You mentioned you know like blockchain needing to be mature enough to build something like Tuyo, right? like the L2 road map being able to sustain an application like this. But on the other side, on the centralized side, did you run into like any problems or challenges, you know, building something like this for the app store or like these, you know, centralized marketplaces?

11:02 Yes, the app store is very tricky actually. I think it's probably the most and and now things are getting a little bit better and I think the the change in US in the US government is going to help with this. the stuff that they were pulling with crypto just because like they didn't like it. It was it was tough.

11:23 It took us a while to properly explain to them what we were doing, why some of the things that they were asking from us, didn't make sense, how the things were done. But it was it was tough especially since like I mean it had been a a while since I had interacted with with the app store like all of my crypto career.

11:40 It was like going from like being like an iOS app developer where you're like confined between like within like Apple's playground to going into like the Ethereum world which is like holy this is permission you can do whatever you want to going back to having to deal with this and like asking for permission and having to convince someone in order for you to sip your software which is like good one it's good one it follows all all of their rules

12:04 And just like having to do this it's it was a crazy crazy experience I I really hope Apple improves this because I think it's one of the most evil things in tech and it's it's really really bad.

12:16 Yeah. I mean it would make sense for them to be able to put together some kind of an integration that could be standard like an Ethereum integration that will go and do all this work cuz you have to imagine all the work that you guys had to go through. I'm sure the unis swap team and you know all of these other mobile applications they're going through the exact same thing discussing going back and forth with Apple.

12:38 I think I mean assuming that Apple becomes more amendable to crypto then

12:43 Yes

12:44 Opportunity there to just like streamline that whole process for everybody but

12:49 Once again we we we'll see what the I mean the regulatory environment is looking more amendable to crypto every day but see what happens are you bullish in general on like the adoption of crypto at at the Apple level and regulatory level in general

13:02 So at at Apple level not really I think some of the stuff that they're doing they just shouldn't be allowed to. It's just like bad. It's like bad for the for the world. And and like even if crypto didn't exist, like that level of control over like the software that billions of people can use, it's like it just doesn't doesn't sit right.

13:22 And I I don't think it makes sense. like I mean they they feel like the the iPhone and the iOS platform is incredible, but like that that level of control I just don't think it's warranted. What I would love for Apple to do is like they have the opportunity to build like the best and like most well distributed hardware wallet ever

13:42 Because it's it's not just about like the secure enclave that that he has and everyone that that talks about like the pass keys and secure enclave which is like good that the signing can happen there. the user just doesn't see what they are they are signing because it's like complete black box and like the app can the app can tell like just currently hey I'm I'm signing this payload and the user just has like no no no no control but like if there was like an operating system signer where like it would pop up and it would like tell you about the payload that the user is going to sign that would be incredible I don't have my hopes very high for this

14:18 I don't think we're ever going to see this but I I think they they set crazy. it would that that would be so incredible for for crypto.

14:26 Yeah, it's it's hard because they kind of have in some sense a competing product with like Apple Pay to like they have a negative incentive to open up Ethereum and base and all these L2s and allow people to transact on that layer. They would much rather have it all happen on on Apple Pay.

14:42 Yeah. And and an an example of this is because we've looked into ASU has part of our focus is hugely on payments. Like an example of an API which is crazy restricted is if you want your iOS app to emit anything over NFC.

14:56 So you could potentially create like a competing Apple Pay experience. It's crazy. I mean you can only do it for like seven different things. And if if it's anything to do financially, like do you need like licenses and everything? And like they recently opened that up a little bit more, but it's close to a point that I only think like a Coinbase could probably pull it off for like an entity of of this level of regulation.

15:18 And it's like completely not an open API for something as stupid as like have my app be able to emit an arbitrary payload over NFC.

15:28 So these types of things in order to protect, as you were saying, Apple Pay, which is great. I love it. I use it every day. it's yeah I I have like weird like a hard feeling. It's like it's it's not okay and they they they shouldn't be able to do that.

15:42 So as a team that's not at the size and scale and like what you're able to invest as like a Coinbase or something like this at least yet. how do you guys sort of like pick your battles with your road map? because certainly there's a lot that you guys could go after, but how how are you choosing what is it exactly that that we're going to really put our resources into?

16:04 Yeah. So, right now our biggest priority is getting to you to be widely widely used. We now think of to is like the first internet native bank which is completely self-custodial. So like working backwards from there is like where is this the most useful today with what we have? Yeah. And that's that's like most of our most of our time.

16:27 Right now the product is fairly fairly complete like at a v1 very very simple v1 stage. But we're at a point of like okay what are there's nothing like it's like to a level of user experience and like the things that you can actually do and you can have normal people do that also happens to be self custodial.

16:44 So we're like the first of the of our kind there. So this is like what what we're seeing like hey what what is like our biggest advantage of having like this like the ability to have like a kind of like a borderless bank account that people carry on their on their phone and they can hold dollars they can invest in whatever they can get like deals on DeFi.

17:02 So yeah it's like the advantage of like we're able to get into different places or be used like worldwide from from day one without having to have like a local presence or local licenses. So it's the ability to like one be life everywhere from from day one by virtue of being self which is kind of kind of crazy.

17:21 So yeah this is like where where we're mostly interested today is like the crossber use of crypto and these days what we're seeing the most is like the prevalence of stable coins and stable coin use which like still for consumers it's like not very very big. so this is where we're focusing a lot of our on energy on right now and for the for the coming months.

17:41 So, so far I mean really just to to outline to you in general as a product it's consumer consumer grade having your own custody of your own assets and then also being able to

17:53 Obviously pay cross borders permissionlessly and then I think you guys are also coming out with a Tuyo card or it's already

18:01 Yes

18:01 Live and and this is really exciting and I think we'll we'll have a lot to get into there but adding more use cases where you can actually go and use your crypto balance at point of sale And I'm interested to hear like how this is implemented technically, but I think you guys are using Apple Pay under the hood.

18:16 How does that

18:16 Yeah.

18:17 Sort of come to life.

18:18 Yeah. So the Tuyo card I mean depending on when this goes live will already be live. I mean like it's it's already live.

18:24 Yeah.

18:25 Yeah, the Tuyo card is a is a Visa card which feels like a it's like the first I call it like the first crypto card which feels like a debit card like and really feels like a debit card and we can get into what that means that is completely selfcustodial. So yeah, for right now we we're not huge fans of the card duopoly, but in order to get crypto used for payments today and not feeling like an outcast, you just need to to do that.

18:50 And we want to get people used to having stables having crypto and like using that to pay and like be that their bank daily. And like the only way to do this today, it's either card or cash. the cash part and having to use like crypto ATMs or P2P deals. It's it's it's it's very cumbersome. so we we had to build a we had to build a card.

19:13 It's available everywhere that the Tuyo app is it's available. and yeah, we do the most most we can to keep everything all the funds self custodial until the very moment that they're that they're spent. we do our best given that the privacy constraints of public blockchains to keep everything as private as possible even though there's a lot of more work to do there and yeah just having something that it just works and getting people used to like hey this is my bank and like for me personally I've been using this I mean now for two months and like I I don't use my bank all in two I'm like co-founder Alex and I were like the AP and I it's it just works and it's fantastic.

19:53 Yeah. And so technically speaking, what happens is, so this is my understanding is it's not a prepaid card. You don't have to like fill it up with USDC or anything. Is it so you swipe it, it does it take out of Apple Pay and then it buys USDC and transfers? What's the like technical underlying of of how the card functions?

20:11 So there's the the part of like how the So when you when you use the card, I mean, you just get like a normal regular Visa card on your on your on your Apple Pay. and the premise is if you have stables in your Tuyo account and you pass the card, it will it will work. If you don't have stable coins, it just not it will it will not work.

20:34 Your like your USDC until the very moment it's spent, you can see it in your balance in the in the app. So, you can see if you can spend it or not. And the reason it doesn't feel prepaid is that you don't need to like constantly manage like hey what's my card balance and like transfer deposit money withdraw money or have money somewhere else.

20:53 Whatever USDC you happen to have on the on the app you can use it in the in the card the similar way that if you have a debit card tied to your bank account if there's cash you pass the card it works and you you don't need to think about like

21:06 Managing your your card.

21:08 Yeah. And then with whatever funds you have there like if you want to trade your entire USDC balance for ETH then after that moment card you will pass the card and it will be declined because don't have USDC to work but J is using the the Tuyo app and if if there's USC will it will work and yeah and we we decided we and this was an active decision not to to treat stable coins as cash and your investments in like other tokens ETH or whatever as investments and not I mean technically we could build it so that it would sell your ETH but one That's that's a bad idea.

21:39 Don't sell ETH. And also like the ability like just having people think about like every time you're buying a coffee, thinking about the price of ETH, the tax liability that you're creating at this moment, like oh my god, what was my entry price? So like we want to make like the if you need to sell some crypto to cover your daily expenses like we want that to be an explicit thing of like today I'm selling this token and I'm cash.

22:03 So yeah, it's very simple. If you have stable coins, you can you can use a card.

22:07 Yeah. Well, first of all, I think that design decision makes a lot of sense. that would be a tremendous headache.

22:13 Yeah.

22:14 Go back and like figure out, oh, I bought this coffee with ETH and then you've got to look at the exchange rate.

22:19 Yeah.

22:19 Yep.

22:21 And you guys could create like a huge need for crypto accountants there and then you could sell them like upsell that at the end of the year. Hey, you want to pay somebody to figure out this mess? But but that definitely makes sense. So the big unlock there is having a Tuyo account and then the account holds USDC and then of course you guys have implemented all the infrastructure to go and get that USDC able to be automatically supported by everything that supports Apple Pay.

22:46 Is that right?

22:46 Yes. so we work with app rider actually and this is like one of the parts that is crazy and we try to take this approach with everything we build is that we are like Tuyo itself it's just like the pretty app but like and we're like orchestrating everything but like we don't touch the user's we just make sure the pipes are set up so that after like one we're able to determine like whether a user making a purchase is going to pay for it and then we make sure that the settlement whenever it needs to happen ends up happening and it's directly like a userowned account to which we have like some very very little permission and it's a pain or the card provider and transferring them USDC.

23:26 So like we don't even touch the the funds. We never receive the funds and it it just it just goes directly. So, so yeah, that's that that's what we do and this is part of what's uniquely enabled by by smart accounts and account abstraction and the fact that every user account is a smart contract which is programmable and we can have this sort of like more complex permissions which like could be complex at a technical level, more complex than just a private key, but that result in a user experience that the user is just like they don't even see what it's happening and like everything that they expect would happen when they pay for a coffee and they get like

24:04 They have to pay $5 that happens but they they don't need to think about it or they don't need to manage it.

24:09 Excellent. And so in that sense it's really the Tuyo app is is really just a front end to interact with your smart account that's on base or whatever chain I think it's Base. so so really I mean that's the core of bringing permissionless custodial non-custodial tech to consumers and in terms of like adoption of this and the core pain points that you you guys are solving what is the number one pain point that you see that drives people to to download the app like what what is the number one thing that Tuyo users are downloading the app for?

24:45 Yeah. So I mean we're we're barely now launching the the card at this point and really started the the marketing efforts which we haven't really started. So right now the user base is is kind of small and like we have a lot of people using the app for different different reasons. But where we see the most amount of need in the in the coming months is like basically bringing USD to people who crave USD and they might be receiving it for a variety of different reasons like be that they work remotely in deal and that they they get money from their family who lives in the US.

25:20 And then being able to just like get that like wherever they live in the in the world, but probably in economies that are more used to dealing with USD like LATAM. and then they get like a US account number, a European account number, soon we're going to have like a Mexican peso account number. They get that. So like they have like the front end to not not just like a crypto wallet, but like the the front end is also like a bank and they they get a card and they're they're able to use it in that way.

25:47 But they also get like all of the crypto and DeFi stuff. And if they want to invest and and get some ETH, they can do it in like one tab. If they want to get some deal on their on their USD until they spend it, they can do it. And with like one tap, they they get their USDC on on a

26:03 So that's kind of the the idea is like we have like it's both the front end to a an international magical bank account, but like you also have like the front end and the features to to the best crypto features. And we we package all of that into a thing that kind of resembles like the first internet bank account.

26:22 Excellent. And also sort of tangential to that, I know Brian Armstrong, he recently put out an article on X talking about onchain yields and how do we bring onchain yields to USDC? Obviously, you know, this is this is down the pipeline. It's not coming probably even this year, but is that something that you guys would also be looking to expose your consumers?

26:44 Let's say USDC has an onchain yield of, you know, whatever the the treasury rate is. Maybe it's like a 3.5%. Is that something you guys would be able to pass on to users of Tuyo?

26:54 Yeah, I mean we we have like an early an early version of this with like or bolts which right now they're just like a front end to to have it. So and and actually this is one of the one of the features where she also didn't do any marketing and like people loved it. people actually I mean when we shipped this USDC yield on a was 12% so people really loved it at 12%.

27:21 Now it's at like three and people don't like it as so much at three. but yeah I think this is this great regarding the the sources of deal like

27:30 We'll probably not not get there but I'm I'm not sure. I mean like or users just want like hey we have some USDC and they they don't want to be on like the craziest pool to sit defy situation which is very risky. So it's like basically like having something which is like reasonably risky that gets created for them and then providing like a very very simple way to use it and be able to like distribute that to the to to the masses basically.

27:57 Yeah. And do you guys also have like an on-ramp to be able to get USDC from fiat into USDC into?

28:04 Yeah, we and but we actually don't don't think of it as an on-ramp. It's like your Tuyo your account once and this requires KYC whenever it touches fiat. We we need to KYC. But yeah, basically you get like your on ramp. It's like an account number. so like you just wire money or like transfer you can transfer like USD or euro to like your Tuyo account number and then it shows up magically as USDC on your on the app one to one.

28:31 It's like cash on Tuyo it's USDC and if you wire $100 at 100 USDC like the on-ramp is like yeah just have that

28:41 And under the hood this becomes USDC on base. Is that right? I mean we're using and we're seeing like usage of base more than other chains because of how we build Tuyo like your Tuyo account lives at the same time on many blockchains. We're live on five right now. so like the account and and actually you can swap between like whatever chains and we abstract that very well from users but like the main activity that we're seeing it's on base and right these days we're defaulting to base for all all activity that happens on Tuyo.

29:09 Like if the user doesn't have a strong preference that they actually really want to use polygon for this, they will use base and the card for now only only runs against users USDC base.

29:22 Yeah and that's actually you bring up a good point there is like abstracting away the different chains that are supported from the user. Do you guys have like under the hood bridging logic for let's say if somebody wants to go use a on ETH but they have other funds on base or something like this. Are you guys using like a layer zero under the hood or is there any logic?

29:41 So when we when we started like there are like now a lot of braid braid APIs for this. When we started there there wasn't really

29:48 Anything that that did this. So we had to build a a lot of stuff. It was like we we wanted the trading to be very good. But now we for like all our crosschain stuff we use relay.

29:58 It's it's very good. It's very good. Yeah. And it's something that we that we could improve. but like relay it's like for like 99% of traits it's just great.

30:08 Okay. And then from there so you guys are supporting multiple chains fully interoperable under the hood abstract away for the users. I mean this is really what it is that DeFi needs to reach the next like level of users. I think we've really tapped out like the amount of people that are willing to open up and and download MetaMask.

30:26 So I think you guys are attacking the core of the problem of like how do we actually grow the marketplace? and that's, yeah, it's going to be with the UX revolution. We need to get access to just a a different order of magnitude of people. And I do think mobile is that wave. I mean, it's got so much more total addressable market than like people who have got like a laptop to pull up and like do

30:51 Yeah. That's

30:52 And unfortunately and I I didn't if you had asked me in 2017 like I I would have expected that the UX of using we call them V1 wallets like MetaMask and all the useful suspects would have improved a lot to the point that normal people could could use them. But I I completely agree. I think we're we're tapped out and like the amount of threats like that people can be I mean like basically with this you're you're carrying your entire network or bank account on a crappy Chrome extension that like any website on the internet you're visiting can like send stuff no one knows how to read transactions the ones that we know I I know I mean I could read a transaction like people are just like confirm confirm confirm hundreds of or

31:38 Billions of dollars have lost to like this and like it's just I mean it's unfortunate but like it's just not going to work like it's it's and and like the and we had like a big push of like new people coming online and like downloading wallets to basically go to the casino with like memecoins and pump and whatever.

31:54 I I don't think this is how people are going to be interacting with their financial life account with them over the internet and anything that they visit kind like prompt them to like basically ruin them. It's like

32:06 Very adverial.

32:08 Yeah. No, I 100% agree. And I think once more, I mean, it's too bad that Apple kind of controls they have captive like the the user base that we exactly need to get to and in the exact mode that DeFi really needs to be able to grasp them in, which is mobile environment. I mean, I think with like apps like Robinhood and all the other litany of like fintech apps like that, that is that is going to be the future of consumers interact with their own finances and manage their own finances.

32:35 And that's where DeFi needs to go. And really the bottleneck there like you said is how do you actually get stuff to to work in in the Apple marketplace? How do we be able to surface DeFi? And I think so you say you've already got like a and stuff like this, but you mentioned like maybe a little bit of troubles listing like arbitrary integrations and being able to send like arbitrary call data like let's say I want to use some random DeFi app that's not whitelisted by you guys.

33:02 Is that do you guys have any regulatory issues with being able to support that? What does that process look like?

33:08 Not really. Typically, these are not the the issues that wallet have been having. We I mean our our stance right now is like yeah, we just don't want to we don't want our users to be exposed to that. So we're we're taking a like kind of like standard approach in the same way that like with tokens you don't need to support integrate like I don't know like I layer in order to support like the layer token.

33:36 I think like for for defaults like it should be in a similar way which like unfortunately hasn't really landed in the same way for like the extra complexities of of of this. For now, it's like we're taking for now like we just really want to nail like the very very core features and like make sure that people that really need Tuyo get to know Tuyo and get to use Tuyo and get to love it before we think about extensibility be on there.

34:03 Yeah. I mean like for me it's like very very important that eventually like permissionless innovators like it was myself a few years back h can ship something to like the millions of users that Tuyo will have like that's very important but like we we don't have a clear path I think what others are doing like world with their mini apps like Coinbase is also bringing them on or Farcaster I think that's interesting I'm not sure if that's too similar to dapps to not end up having the same the same problems.

34:34 But I'm super I'm following that that closely and I think that's super super interesting. But we're we're taking a more like first party approach to things a little bit more walled garden. It's like anything that you can do and like I feel I mean I don't even teach my friends or I I can give to you to whomever like I know they're going to be fine.

34:53 Like the worst thing that they can do to themselves is buy a shitty token and like that's on them. But it's not it's not you don't need to explain like be careful with phishing like all all these things and this protocol and blah blah blah. So yeah this is for now in order to keep focused how we approach it.

35:09 Nice safety rails that DeFi has has needed for a long time.

35:13 Definitely. Yeah. Like and speaking of users and like you know the approach you mentioned too what what KPIs are you tracking like as you grow and you start marketing like you mentioned like what's what's the northstar?

35:23 That's a good question. number number of users and assets on the number of assets on the on the platform. I guess I I wish I had a more interesting but I think it's about

35:33 Totally makes sense. how many how many people are we reaching and like how much suy is getting getting used as like a very very financial I mean I I don't yeah I that's that's what kind of mark success

35:45 And I mean I think that's telling of like what you guys are building towards which is so you said number of users like that's you guys definitely want to go mass market you guys want to bring that mass adoption you know everybody's been talking about since I mean since really I mean really like 2011 Like that's what you guys are going after is how do we bring the world on chain and

36:08 Get them access to first of all self- custody but also DeFi, the best of DeFi, not the worst of DeFi ideally.

36:16 Yes. And and I I think we need we need to start where where there's more more need because like even self custody and and I find myself and this this happened to me many many times that I I think that people will will care about some values that I think are very important but like I mean like people only care about self- custody the day after FTX collaps collapses that day everyone was they were self custody in their funds but it's something that I mean it's it's just the way it is.

36:40 So I mean I I think self custody it's tremendously important. I would get very very mad if like someone tried to take away my right to self custody and I think like everyone solves su self custody a percentage of their net worth in whatever asset and I think it's very important but I don't think the world is there and I don't think we need to lead with values and trying to convince people by reaching this so it's about like who can we reach and who is like in in most need and and these are people that are in economies where the US dollar is not their not their lo local currency their currency it's not great because otherwise they wouldn't I mean I'm from Spain and if you go around in Madrid like people are

37:21 Okay with the euro no one no one thinks about like the even like the euro to USD rate even though it has fluctuated a lot of people are just okay and have a certain level of trust but this is this is not the same case in the rest of the world and I I think we're going to see

37:38 Like with like stable coins like an export of the dollar for to a lot of places where they've been suffering like tremendous control in the form of like currency control that they're they're going to be lifted by bringing them on to like this this global global economy. this is where we're starting and this is places where decentralized counterparties like they probably care too little or like the market's too small for them to care but like since it's self-custodial like we're able to serve them at very very little cost and I think that's where it's going to be very very interesting.

38:13 Yeah, I think you're you're right. It's like with the beliefs and the values of everybody, you know, thinking like, okay, everybody's got to be self-custodial. I think we've got 90% of the people who really deeply care about self-custody already on pain and and using crypto. like those are the people who are willing to deal with the MetaMask and deal with the wallet experience today are the people who really have a core like understanding of self self-custody and a belief that you know of course it should be decentralized and stuff like this.

38:46 So I think you're absolutely right that attacking the the pain point of the need and being able to bring like how do we get those people who need more access to to USD access and it's an interesting point because okay so so let's say we've got full permeation of all these areas where we need what about like the first first world like US what do you think is the need like let's say you know 5 years down the line how do you think crypto starts to permeate the the US economy to me it's almost like the B2B will be the first big use case because of transaction fees and then that will probably permeate to the end user just by way of businesses switching off of normal payment rails.

39:27 But is there is there any other

39:29 Sort of pain point that you see arising in the US? yeah. I mean, I think the B2B is obvious, but I I would personally hate it if it if everything that we do here is like we upgrade the bad old infra for banks. And I think that would be a very very depressing future. So, we we're going to fight that we don't get there.

39:49 But like with the US, like for like retail, it like happens a little bit as in Europe. Like people are sort of fine with their with their bank. Like they don't really the weekend at Silicon Valley Bank looks like it's going to collapse. like people probably think like I hope I didn't have money here but like then like people forget very very very quickly.

40:06 I think about like consumers it's it's all about incentive. it's how how the card networks like all of that business has ended up being so so big and so so entrenched and it's all about incentives. And I think when when people are thinking of like oh let's take down Visa or Mastercard. Visa or Mastercard like the thing that they are is like their genius is at incentive designer like they they're not taking all that money of every transaction though they do a lot of transactions and a lot of volume but it's about like how the card system is so that the issuing bank like then the rewards that get passed on to the consumer and all of that.

40:44 And I think in order for us to move like real like consumer payments into crypto like we're going to need to come up with like a better incentive mechanism. I don't think it's just about telling merchants like hey with this you pay half the fees. And this like part of why why with Tuyo we are we're leading with the with the card.

41:04 Because like every other like pay with crypto initiative has has tried to focus on like acceptance and merchants first. but those experiments have been like very very limited like coming back to like when this started happening with Bitcoin in like 2012 or so because like people don't carry crypto with them and people aren't used to like hey this is like part of the money that I used to that I used to spend and like my myself included until I had to like I I don't need to carry crypto with me on my phone.

41:33 So this is like what we're starting from the other from the other end which is like getting a lot of people to have crypto on their phone to like be used to like hey this is like part of my daily expense. I use like this thing and then it just happens that it's like self and then at that point we can try to start thinking of like okay let's replace like part of the other infrastructure but going from like another point in which like a lot of people are having like have crypto and they're using crypto day today instead of the other way around.

41:59 Yeah. Yeah. And of course with this approach and also the way that it's sort of architected on the back end to be totally trustless and non-custodial, do you guys even see yourself as having any real distinct competitors or from your viewpoint are you guys attacking the problem from a completely unique way? Yeah, the thing is like because of what we were talking before the values of self-custody and a lot of these different things that that people do not have very very high on their list of priorities or like on their purchasing decision points they're like I mean we're we're competing with other things that are completely self-custodial or like that even banks right because like if people if people don't don't perceive the difference like they're as worried as having like a $100 on

42:42 Tuyo which actually we have like the disadvantage that we're like a new brand for some people like crypto is a little bit eeky. So we we need to fight that. But provided that we're like a complete equal footing if people don't care about the self custody. It's like okay what are the unique things that we can that we can bring them that this new system gives them and like there are a few things.

43:02 I think it's very obvious that deals are probably going to be higher with what you can get on DeFi that what you can get on the with the risk-free rate. I think that that will that will happen. and then other things of like hey people want to access crypto markets. but I think it will be about like hey this this just needs to be better period and like bringing some of the unique things that we can do with crypto and incentive design to make this something better.

43:27 I actually I actually like saying that Tuyo is actually a conspiracy to get people to self to do self custody even if they

43:35 They didn't have any preference before and actually the the company I don't know if you know but Tuyo it's it's Jors in Spanish. So like we we literally call the company like George.com and also to have like some of our roots. So yeah. but I think it's just it needs to come down to hey the thing that we built is like has better value for c for customers and then we can do some of the unique things that we can do on crypto that you just cannot do on the boomer banking in front.

44:02 Yeah. Having DeFi on your side is a pretty powerful partner to bring value that is just impossible in the traditional financial world and that will only compound and compound with time. So, I think that will become increasingly bullish for you guys. But also coming from Aragon, which was, you know, more of a B2B offering type product. Obviously, there's a lot of new challenges with going consumer and and going more like B to what what has that been like for you?

44:30 Are you sort of in charge of like the the marketing efforts there? What has that look like for you guys? And how's that transition been?

44:36 Yeah, it's been been interesting. The thing that I love is like being able to show people things like

44:43 I was on like a high school reunion this this weekend and like being able to tell them like hey I'm I mean like not not sounding like a crazy man but you're telling people like we're building like an internet borderless bank and they're like oh cool but then you you show them the app and you have them touch the app and then you invite them for drinks and they're like hey pay I'm paying for this drink and like the thing just just works.

45:05 So like that that part of like That feels that feels amazing and I I mean it's like a personal thing. I I love building things. I love building useful things. I also love building things that I myself use. Yeah. The interior like the the go to market part is going to be absolutely absolutely key. we have a a very small team.

45:27 I mean and this is like priority for the entire team. It's actually my my co-founder who's been leading the the charge the charge on this. We're barely getting started right now. I mean, it's actually been two and I mean two of us the two of us building this and with one designer. So like we've barely got the thing to like a V1 and now it's it's getting to like this this next stage of actually taking taking it to market.

45:53 So we're barely getting started. We know there are going to be a lot of challenges but it's we're b at square zero. Yeah.

46:00 That's awesome. And so obviously yeah I mean the road is just beginning on on the marketing front. Is there is there any kind of like iteration that you've done on the messaging like obviously there's a few things. There's the like you said there's the custodial aspect which maybe trying to lean away from that and dive more into the utility.

46:21 What what's like the messaging? What is the main like tagline? Like let's say we've got a room full of people and we want to get them onboarded to Tuyo. What is the offer? What is the the messaging?

46:32 Yeah, right now how we're thinking of it is like it's a the first internet native borderless bank or bank account. Banking has been like because of like having such tight regulation and for good reason because like banks are like a very interesting business in which like they hold your money but like they don't have all your money.

46:55 So like for good reason it's something that is like very very regulated and it's been like inherently local. so I think it's like the first time that because of the properties that we have we're we're able to create like the first one which is like really internet native which means it's port borderless by by default and it's like converting and we've been hearing this in crypto forever but like the thing I mean the thing works I mean this is this is my I don't use a bank and this is this is a bank and it it it actually it actually works.

47:26 So yeah,

47:27 I think with a product like this, it's almost like your marketing could be more of like education because I I and obviously you as well, we're of the belief that if you fully understand how everything works, then this is kind of like the obvious choice, which is you're going to get access to all of these onchain yields in a safe manner.

47:46 Once again, you don't have to you've got like some guardrails in place and you don't have all of this sort of shady stuff that's that's going on in in the trady. And I mean, of course, there's regulation there, but you've got custody and all of this stuff, and you've got access to yields that will not be able to be competed with if you've got all these counterparties and stuff like this.

48:06 So, it's almost like education is the key to bringing on the masses. And of course, if you've already got a problem where you don't have access to USD, it's very straightforward to say, okay, this is your problem. This is the solution. this is exactly how it's set up and and this is why it's it's resilient against you know some of these other solutions like a centralized services and stuff that they don't even have access to in their country.

48:32 Yeah, we're we're probably leaning more towards ladder of like like hey these are the tall dollars like having not not explaining I not hiding stuff but not not confusing people people too much. and we're basically making a lot of reasonable decisions in terms of like risk of like, hey, we like cash into it's USDC. It's not some like wonky algorithmic stable that came out yesterday with like a 300% AP.

49:02 So yeah, I I think that's probably more of the more of the approach and I think a lot of the industry has been trying to lead with the with the format. Like I I had a lot of friends that like felt that they shouldn't be investing in crypto because like they didn't know enough or they didn't understand it enough.

49:17 And I think that kind of like elites or like be like oh my god this is very complicated. Let me let me explain you all of this. And I I mean and I love explaining this stuff like can get on a whiteboard and write stuff for hours but I think it's more about like hey this is a way for you to like have these dollars.

49:36 This is great. The experience is fantastic and if you need to spend you get your card and then if you want to learn more like we're we're happy to provide all all of the materials and all of the learning but like we we're not we don't think we have to evangelize with like values and and technical explainers as much as I love both of those but more of like this like this amazing unique thing that you can do that can do now that you couldn't do before or like you weren't sure because you weren't interested enough.

50:04 Yeah that's that's idea.

50:06 Yeah. utility based approach and I think it becomes a no-brainer offer when you have the the right utility and I think D5 being on your side is a big unlock for that. And then finally, I was also interested like what kind of have you reached any bottlenecks in terms of like hiring and building out a team? You said you've just recently gone from like two people in designer to having more people brought on and and starting to build out more stuff.

50:28 What's that like? Yeah, it's something that we I mean while we were building the product, we we were doing kind of passively and and we haven't been very successful because we're still two. So now we we've converted this into like one of the one of our biggest priority headto-head with like taking this to market to users. so yeah, we're super interested.

50:51 We we want to build at least in the beginning like a very very small very very small team of u very very talented talented people. so we're hiring for a role that we're currently founding engineer for more senior to principal level and someone that would probably end up being like executive or whatever when it makes sense for us to have even have executives but like very very senior and then hiring for both generalist software engineers for for the API and and all of that and also mobile engineers for for the app.

51:24 Yeah. I know you guys also have like a bounty up for anybody who can like refer to

51:28 Yes. Yeah, we have a 5,000 USDC bounty app now.

51:32 Okay. Where where should we send them if anybody's watching this and they're interested in working on such a cool mission with you guys?

51:39 Yeah. So at Tuyo.com we have a careers careers link there or just like ping me on on Twitter or over email which is my email is j2yo.com. So very very simple and yeah would love to to talk to anyone and we really want to build a a championship team here and I think the the base is is tremendously great but still so much so so much to to build.

52:06 Yeah the opportunity is really endless and I mean you get you guys being a mobile app would it be you're looking for that intersection of like mobile experience and blockchain experience or like what's the the requirements there? Not necessarily though being very interested or actually being very convinced of the of crypto. One being good for the world and two being convinced that we're we're going to extend it to all over the world.

52:30 That's that's a requirement. But actually the the mobile app because of how the app is architected. Yeah, it it it's not a lot of crypto stuff for like the more generalist software engineer position. Yeah, there's more there's more crypto and Ethereum stuff there. But yeah, also it's possible to learn a lot of this.

52:49 Yeah. And that makes it a lot easier not being like such a hardcore DeFi based project to you're open to like a much larger market of of software engineers that can come on. As long as like you said, it's really important that they believe in the vision and they're really excited about it. And if you've got that and of course you can you can pick up the the blockchain details.

53:09 But yeah, so so hopefully we've got a lot of folks technical that that listen to the channel. So hopefully if anybody's excited about the vision, excited about what you guys are building, they can they can reach out or if anybody knows somebody, they can maybe be able to collect the bounty and and help you guys out there.

53:22 But yeah, dude, anything anything else? Any other like bottlenecks that you guys are dealing with or is it mostly just

53:28 It's mostly this. Yeah. Yeah, this is the the current state. The app is live, the card is live, everything like it works works great. Yeah, it really really works. And those are the the two things that we're focusing the most for the next next few months.

53:48 It's very very exciting.

53:50 It's exciting, man.

53:51 Exciting times. Yeah.

53:52 Yeah. I mean, how long have you guys been like sort of in the works working on the app and the card and all that?

53:59 A little over a year. Well, a year and a half now.

54:01 Yeah.

54:03 Yeah. originally was a little bit more focused on trading, but very quickly we we shifted gears because we we didn't want to focus on meme coins and I'm I'm very happy that we decided that. but yeah, it's it's been like like a year a year and a half. yeah,

54:18 Well that's exciting, man. Well, we we'll definitely put first of all like your your Twitter in the bio below and then

54:23 Amazing.

54:24 Also, Tuyo.com if anybody wants to go and and check out the card, check out the app, be able to get some some USDC in there and and start using it in places with Tuyo. I think it's exciting that you guys are are building for the future. You guys are tapping into really the next wave of what DeFi needs.

54:40 So, we're all sort of rooting for you. If you can bring that liquidity in and bring it on board, I I think that'll be much better for everybody in the crypto space. So yes,

54:49 Just want to say thank you guys for for everything that you guys are working on. Really bullish on on bringing it to the next wave of people and yeah appreciate you hopping on. Oh,

54:57 And thank you thank you so much for for having me. This was great.