Deciphering DeFi with Generation Software

This is the PoolTogether Community Podcast. PoolTogether is the world's number one no-loss prize savings account. You can visit pooltogether.com to deposit. You're listening to the PoolTogether Community Podcast. I'm your host, Millie Yearley, AKA Tim, AKA Hot Mike, AKA Super happy right now because I am hanging out with my 2 besties, my 2 work besties. I've got Trevor and Ncookie from the PoolTogether community, from G9 Software, from PoolieCon, my, my PFers, my best, my PFR BBs. How are you guys doing? Thanks for being on the podcast.

GM Tim, that intro never gets old. I'm glad to be here.

Yeah, happy to be here.

So yeah, I try to bring it every time and, uh, the intro, and I try to improv a little bit and always spice it up. But I'm, I'm, I feel like I'm a little nervous right now just because this is, this is really great. I always talk to strangers, basically people I've never met. The first time that I'm really talking to them is on the podcast. And, but I know you both, we, we meet daily at 1:00 PM Eastern for standup for G9 Software. And so I, It just blows my mind though, that the first time, well, I've not met you Cookie IRL, but I met Trevor at PolyCon at ETH Denver less than a year ago. Less than a year ago. Can't even believe it. It seems like a decade, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. That, that went by very fast. I can't believe that V5 was still in development then. And then now, now we're there.

The conversations about V5 then to like, it's out in the wild now. I mean, that's some turnaround time right there. That was, that was, that's really great.

Definitely.

So, all right, go ahead, Cookie.

Yeah, no, you can pretend like you don't know us if that makes it easier.

Yeah, no. Yeah, I can't do that. I can't do that. I have to, I know so much about you and I'm going to bring up every little bit and piece in this podcast, but, uh, I want to hear as I do. every time we do the podcast, because I think it's so helpful. It kind of helps everyone place themselves in the crypto journey. How did you guys get into crypto? And then, and then also, how did you get into software devving? Trevor, go first.

Yeah, well, I don't know if everybody knows this, but Cookie and I went to university together and we were in the same, the same software program, computer science program. So we spent a lot of time together. in the years prior to being a part of crypto or PoolTogether in general. And yeah, I mean, for myself, I got into crypto because of Cookie. Just one day he started messaging me about all the amazing things you could do with money on the internet, and I had to check it out for myself. So, that was in 2020, 2021, something like that. Is when I first started to actually get into crypto, just started off doing trades. I think everybody starts doing some sort of just buying or selling some sort of token, and then eventually got into DeFi. And once I was in DeFi, there was no going back because there's this thing called smart contracts, and they are just fascinating to me. And I had to just start learning how to make them. And then fast forward a few years and Here I am in PoolTogether and, and G9 Software helping develop PoolTogether V5. That's just a dream come true for me.

What about you, Cookie? What's your side of the story?

Yeah, I mean, it's a pretty similar starting story. I mean, from that comp sci degree, I, you know, started doing normal Web2 development, but yeah, nothing really engaged me, at least not in the way that crypto has. Had a few jobs at a few companies, wasn't really passionate about anything that I was really working on. And then, you know, I find this crypto thing and it's like everything is so focused on being open and decentralized and open source and pseudonymity is just so big in the space and there's just like this awesome community being formed. And yeah, I just, I wanted to jump into it and see what I could build. And, you know, the first few like little projects that I built actually garnered a little bit of attention, and I liked the people that I was communicating with. I liked basically just how smart everyone in this industry is compared to others, and it's just a really good place to be. And yeah, I've been here ever since. Don't see any other way for me to proceed.

So tell me about some of those projects, Cookie, and then also Trevor, I know that you've done some stuff as well, but I would love to kind of have like an overview of your your projects that you did? Because I feel like, I guess what I'm getting at is how does somebody go from zero to smart contract developer or frontend developer in crypto? Obviously you do it by building, right? You do it by experimenting and trying new things and learning. So I would love to hear what are those like learnings that kind of were the stepping stones for you to now be devs at G9?

Yeah. I mean, I didn't go into the smart contract side, so I think Trevor can speak to that a little bit more, but from my, from my end, for like a frontend slash backend slash full stack, I didn't really know anything about crypto when I started. And so a way that I chose to kind of get myself into it was with a little portfolio tracker, which honestly was quite ahead of its time. I, I don't think we had a lot of good options back in the day. I think now it's a lot more of a competitive market and there's a lot of apps that can, can offer that experience. But yeah, I built a little portfolio tracker that basically forced me to start looking into protocols, DeFi protocols, in order to integrate them into, into the tracker. So it just, it was such a good choice for me personally because it just Forced me to learn first how to read Solidity, how to use a block explorer, looking for methods, joining all these protocol Discords and and other distribution channels to ask questions and and basically learn how to integrate the parts of these protocols that matter to people. And yeah, honestly, it was a great experience, and it taught me so much that yeah, it it led to me having a pretty fulfilling career so far, just contributing to. DAOs and obviously PullTogether is one of them. So

what about you, Trevor?

Yeah, after graduating, I just went straight into contract work. And I always tell people the reason for that is just because I like to, I like to make fun things. I like to, you know, have, I like to have a variety of experiences in development work. And I don't like being stuck in a, in a position where I'm doing just one thing for my career. I don't know if that makes sense, but it was just really a freedom thing, I think. But through that work, I just had a lot of autonomy to explore new technologies. And after learning a bit about DeFi and, you know, learning how to send transactions and how to read a block explorer, I just wanted to learn how to create smart contracts. So I just went straight into Solidity development there and what really got me into it, I'm sure a lot of people have this same story, but I went through the Crypto Zombies tutorial, I think it was, Solidity tutorial. It's just like a, I think it's still out there. I think it's still kicking. It's a very in-depth tutorial from start to finish on how to begin smart contract development with Solidity. And it teaches you how to make this, this NFT almost game experience where you're making these crypto zombies that you can trade and upgrade or maybe fight. I forget exactly what it is, but yeah, really, I was amazed that there's this free resource to use that just taught you the basics of Solidity. And I went through that and it was a huge help. So that's the 0 to probably 10% experience for me and the rest of it. Is just experimenting and making projects that fail and never see the light of day, but having fun with it.

Yeah. I think for both of you, neither of you said the 2 things that I thought you would say is for you, Trevor, I thought that you were going to talk about Poolagotchi, or I just remember you did ETH Denver, you did the hackathon and, and that was a great experience. And then post that, or maybe even pre that you did like Poolagotchi, no, pre that, cause you did a presentation at Poolicon about Poolagotchi. Which is just a really cool way to gamify the PoolTogether protocol. And then for you, Cookie, I bothered you about this so much, which is your prize calc site, which is basically people, it gives people the information they want to know. It's like, hey, if I have X amount in PoolTogether, what can I maybe expect to win? And then if I wanted to delegate it to 100 people, if I had $100,000 and I wanted to delegate it to 100 people, how much would they win? And so like those, those 2 projects, that's what I think of when I think of you, but that's just maybe my, my limited exposure. What could you talk, if you want, I would love to hear more about like those projects in general, but then also maybe your favorite project, like hack that you've done.

Yeah. You know, we didn't talk about this, but yeah, Cookie and I have done at least a few hackathons together and that was also a big learning experience. If there's any developers who are looking for a way to really get their foot in the door and learn some more things, hackathons are a very nice way to do that. You are surrounded by people who are passionate about building things and teaching things about crypto, and you get to make something cool over a short period of time. I think our first hackathon Was ETH Toronto in 2022. I think it was just last— yeah, it's like a little over a year ago. And we made a project that monetized— it was a way to monetize developer APIs on-chain. So, an API is this web service where you make some requests to, and it gives you some results back. That's kind of the basic of it. But yeah, we made an on-chain subscription standard to help monetize an API. And it was like a 24-hour hackathon and we pushed out this development kit and had a lot of fun doing it. And we ended up making it to the finals on that, that hackathon and got to present in front of like 500 people. It was a great time.

Was that just you two or did you have other people on the team?

We had a few people on the team as well who were all very beginner and we, we all had a, had a fun time, you know, teaching each other about what blockchain tech is and how we're going to build this thing.

Okay. Well then here's our first sidebar. I wasn't planning on talking about this, but what are your tips to get to the finals slash win a hackathon?

Well, I can't say we've ever won a hackathon, but to get to the finals at a hackathon, I don't know if you've ever been to a hackathon or participated in one. There are a lot of incentives for developers. There's a lot of bounties. There are a lot of projects that want you to use their thing. They, they, They're throwing money at you to build with their technology. That's kind of what crypto hackathons are. And it's a very distracting environment because here you are sitting in a room and there's people coming around to you saying, hey, do you know what this is? Do you want to build with it? Do you know about our bounty? We'll give you money to build with this. But a lot of times you have to ignore that. You really do. Because a lot of— I'm not saying all of the bounties are useless, but A lot of those projects and bounties are just noise. It's just something that is not going to be useful at all for your particular vision for your product. And if you try to cram in too much into your vision, your product that you're thinking of building, it's not— it's going to end up like a big pile of garbage and you're not going to get anywhere. So if you're actually looking to win a hackathon, it's about sticking to your ideals and, you know, building out a core product that only includes exactly what it needs to include.

I think it's very clear in at least the hackathons we've been to, there is a very distinct separation between teams that are building for bounties and teams that are building because they want to build cool stuff. And if you can overlap these 2, then it's amazing, right? You have an idea for your project. There is a bounty giver or sponsor that aligns with that idea, and then you build on top of that. which makes it either easier or better, and then you go with that. But yeah, what happens a lot of times is people build for those bounties, and that's not necessarily the best way to go. I feel like if a bounty doesn't make sense to build with your project, then you probably shouldn't do it. But that is the way you do well in a hackathon, at least if it's promoting the right builder, builder mindset.

Awesome. Yeah, I, my, my hackathon, I've only done one. I did ETH Tokyo and I got to do like the pitch and I got to do like some of the product and ideation stuff. And then also connecting with all the bounties and the different partners and such. And there is definitely a way to like win the hackathon, but not really win the hackathon, meaning like get as many bounties as possible. But, but yeah, it just depends on what you're trying to do. And I think, I think ideally, like an ideal state for a hackathon is not get all the bounties, but it's create the something that moves the industry forward in a way. So that's the goal, obviously, but you might not win. Also, I think, I think the lore is really key, you know, like you got to have a good pitch. I think, I think that's like a big, at least it matters to me, but okay. So now you guys are at, so, so you, you devved for PoolTogether Community, you were making cool stuff. And now you're on G9 and you built You had a hand in building V5. What was that like? What was it like, you know, with the legacy, walking into the legacy of V4 and then building this new any token, any yield source version of the protocol, a hyperstructure, if you will?

I mean, it's been amazing. To summarize it, I joined the G9 team probably halfway through the development of V5. So we already had the whole idea behind it formulated and a lot of it coded up, but just working through the problems of how to make this protocol as autonomous, decentralized as possible, and how to make sure that it's going to be the last version of PoolTogether was just an amazing challenge. And I'm just, I feel privileged that I got a chance to contribute to that.

I would just add that the experience of deploying a protocol, especially one as permissionless as this, just deploying it, putting it out there in the wild, even after, you know, huge amount of audits and, and checks and tests and everything is quite stressful. I, you know, I joined the, the team a little while back, but I wasn't part of the, the V4 deployment, unfortunately. So, this was my first, you know, big permissionless project deployment and Yeah, I mean, all things considered, went super smoothly and I'm super happy about that. But yeah, definitely, definitely a stressful experience.

Cookie, what is prize power? What, what even is prize power?

Oh boy. So this is something we've iterated a lot on and I actually think we'll be changing it pretty soon in the Kaban app. But basically the idea is we want to give users an idea of the chances that Vault has to win prizes because pulled together as a protocol is a lot more abstracted in terms of pure yield when compared to other protocols, right? A lot of other, at least dApps or, or borrowing protocols or stuff like that, you see an APR on the page. If the APR is bigger than this other APR, then That means you gain more and you have more yield. And obviously you have to consider risk assumptions, you know, what are you risking by depositing there? But generally you can compare the 2 APRs in different protocols. And, uh, on PoolTogether, that APR is random basically, right? You can win the grand prize and basically your APR would be a ridiculously high number, or you can, you know, be very unlucky and just win a few tiny prizes to the point where your APR would be much lower. So it's a difficult measure to, to inform the user about. And so we've tried a lot of things right now on the Kadena app. We're showing basically a stat that contributes to a vault's chances of winning, which is— we have more specifics on how exactly this is calculated on the docs, but it's basically how much pool tokens this vault has contributed to the prize pool in the last Let's say 7 days averaged out. So it's a number that doesn't make too much sense on its own, but you can compare between different vaults. So if, if a vault has a higher number, it means it has higher chances of, of winning linearly as well. So double number, double the chances. And the idea was to emulate something kind of like, like Aave's health factor, for example. It's a number you don't necessarily need to know how it's calculated, but You know, bigger, better. If it reaches a certain number, you know, you should do something about it, that sort of thing. So, but yeah, we're investigating different ways of showing this, translating that to an APR value with some extra information to maybe guide users that are new to the protocol. But yeah, definitely keep an eye out for that. We're always looking to improve.

Yeah, it's kind of difficult to build for really who's here and then who you want to be here. Right? Because in DeFi, in DeFi, we have like the DeFi-ers, the people that are already here, which I would say is compared to the general population of the planet, a low number. And these people are okay with complexity. They're, they know how to use smart contract wallets. They probably have hardware wallets, you know, like their complexity is the name of the game. And right. And also security is too, and how to stay safe. in DeFi. And yet we know that PoolTogether, the product, the protocol is really great for normies. It's like a really cool way to onboard somebody to crypto and you can actually just delegate to somebody and not even have, they don't even have to fiat on-ramp. You can just delegate them some of your chances of winning prizes and they'll win crypto and then they're off to the races with the crypto. So it's like prize power really works, I think, for the normies, but everyone else who is using DeFi right now is like, what? What is that? Give me the APR or you're dead to me kind of thing. So it's just interesting building for those 2 populations. Do you think that we're going to onboard a billion people or however we say, like in the next 10 years, what needs to happen?

I think a lot of things need to happen. Can we do it alone? Definitely not. You know, that's, it's, I think it's a long, a long way before the world starts to use crypto in, in a sense, in an everyday sense, or even at all. The— I mean, people have been saying this for a long time, but the, the challenges that face people who are getting into crypto for the first time are immense. And it takes a lot of passion right now to get past those challenges and to learn how to use a wallet, to learn what a blockchain is, to learn what gas is and how to swap and how to— And just how to get access to DeFi services. All of that is such a massive hurdle for the majority of the population. I think what PoolTogether does to help that is like what you said, it makes it, it brings an inviting experience and it says like, hey, we're making this as easy as we can. You can, if you know how to swap, you can now participate in PoolTogether and win prizes. just by holding tokens. You don't need to interact with any contracts outside of that. You can swap from whatever token you have right now, whatever token you managed to get in your wallet, into a prize token, and you can just hold it and magically earn prizes. That's obviously very powerful because the more hurdles you can get rid of, the more people are going to try out crypto.

I also want to add that like it's debatable whether this is the hardest part, but at the very least, the first step we've done, right? We've deployed the protocol. It is out there, it works. And so everything that goes on top of that is progress towards onboarding more people, enabling different experiences with the protocol. And I think we've, you know, barely scratched the surface with that. You know, we have 2 interfaces for the protocol at the moment, but Both are very DeFi user-friendly, right? If you know what a blockchain is and you know how to do some basic swaps, both interfaces are going to be super easy to use, but there can be, you know, a lot more abstracted interfaces for people that, you know, don't know what a blockchain is. And basically everything would be functioning through the protocol, you know, through Ethereum and L2s. And a lot of work can be done there to build on top of the protocol. And yeah, I think we're just starting.

Yeah, the best crypto is the crypto you don't even know you're using. That's what I would say. If we can get to that point where people can use PoolTogether without even knowing that they're using PoolTogether, that's, that's the end goal in my opinion.

Yeah, I was talking to a buddy this past week and it's so funny how siloed crypto is. So NFT people are still just like NFT maxis. Ordinals people are really just into Ordinals. DeFi people into DeFi and there's, there's barely any crossover or not a lot. And I think actually the Pull Together community, what I love about it is, is it kind of is a, is a meeting place of maybe niches that don't, that don't cross over as much where you can have, oh, this person knows about this area of crypto and this person knows about this other area of crypto. But I was talking to somebody who is, is not into DeFi because they're scared of it. And also because they, you know, they're, they're at the size, their size is size enough that they are really worried about like taxable events on things. And like, I mean, yeah, I mean, they, they just really are meticulous about their crypto taxes. And that's another thing is like just regulation and how it needs to be like, if you want to be above board in crypto, it needs to be easy peasy to do your taxes. And we are definitely not there yet. Any effort that you make on your crypto taxes, at least in the US, is, is like admirable to the, to the IRS. It's like, wow, you've, you've, you've itemized. This is great. Most people don't itemize. They should itemize. So yeah, I just, I just, in talking with my friend about this stuff, it was just like, oh man, there's just so much. And it also seems a little bit overwhelming sometimes, but, but, but then again, we talk about ETH Denver was only a couple months ago. Like just how much has been accomplished in just this short amount of time, even by us, Generation Software, PoolTogether community. So I think, you know, in the next 3 years, we'll be— PoolTogether will be integrated with Starbucks rewards points, you know? And so you're going to get a free latte, but you also get like crypto with that. You'll get some pool tokens. It's going to happen.

Well, I'm very excited for that, Tim. Can't wait to see you make it happen.

I'm doing their NFT program now and it's actually really cool, you know, but again, There's no one that's gonna, there's no one using the Starbucks app that's gonna go through the hoops of this NFT program. It's all NFT people doing it, 'cause it's just, it's crypto. It's just not easy. So, but it's very fun to do.

Right.

Okay. We've come to the moment in our podcast where I want to talk about what can we do with V5? What are the cool new things? What do you want to see done with V5 that has not been done yet? That, that's still in, that's still like, you know, in our reserves, like it's a trick up our sleeve that we haven't pulled out yet. What are, what are those things, those tricks, those, those flourishes that we're, we're pumped about that we haven't even seen with V5 yet?

I think the first thing is, or the thing I, I'm most excited for are just other kinds of, of yield sources. That's like the baseline. That's, that's the, the thing I'm most excited for because it's, it's what V5 first and foremost enables compared to other— compared to V4. V4 was just USDC on Aave, and we've launched V5 with USDC, DAI, and ETH on Aave, but the potential is just so much higher. I'm excited for ETH staking yield sources, definitely, because that, that is the biggest crypto-native yield source out there right now. So that is definitely my first answer. And my second answer is just fun things with vaults and prizes. There are just so many ways to build on top of V5 that people don't quite know what the possibilities are yet. And we need to help them realize it so we can start seeing some fun things on V5. But yeah, there's vault hooks. There are completely custom vaults you can make. You don't even have to use the standard vault that exists in V5 right now. If you want to make some wild way for people to participate in the prize pool, you can do that because it's permissionless.

Like, give me an example of that. What's a wild way that somebody could participate in the prize pool?

Well, one that we've been talking about already for a while is NFT participation. Like, if an NFT project wanted to kick off their project, say, hey, anybody who mints an NFT, gets a chance at this prize pool, something like that, or gets permanent chances to this locked-up yield of the yield that this generates, and you get chances to win prizes that that yield contributes to. So just, yeah, like distributing prizes to NFT holders. That's the basic thing that will definitely happen. And I can't wait to see that happen.

And they could do that through the mint. So you're saying if you mint this NFT, then maybe a portion of the mint goes into a vault that then you win prizes for holding the NFT. That's what you're describing?

Yeah, a project could do that any way they wish to. There's no constraints there really. They could also take that mint value and they could lock it up into a yield source that generates yield. Maybe it's ETH staking, you know, and then that yield just keeps generating and contributes to the prize pool. And those NFT holders get a perpetual chance to win the prizes that that yield generates. Like there's so many creative ways to create vaults that V5 enables.

What are you excited about, Cookie?

I, I think I'm on a similar boat of, I, I wanna see more vault diversity. I think it makes sense. It's possible now, and it's overall ideal for the protocol to be as diverse as possible. It just contributes to the decentralization of the protocol itself, if that makes any sense. But yeah, just all, all these things that you can build on the protocol. I, I, I think one thing that might not be super clear is that these things don't really have to start from the bottom up. Like you don't need to build a protocol on top of PoolTogether itself. You can have any existing protocol out there. I mean, DeFi is just extremely composable in that sense. An existing NFT community could just attach prize-winning capabilities to their NFTs through a variety of ways. Or, you know, any sort of dApp can just plug into, pull together through, again, a variety of ways. So I'm just excited, just kind of seeing like more partnerships build out, just different protocols or, or NFT communities, just seeing the possibilities with, you know, using this thing that, that we built. So yeah, I'm, I'm excited to see what people come up with really.

I have a habit of like getting on things that I'm excited about and then I feel like people don't want to like discourage me. And so they won't challenge my ideas. But then I find out later that I was like horribly misinformed on something being non-technical and all that. But I'm not allowed to say I'm non-technical in 2024. That's my goal. I have to— I can't, I can't use that as an excuse anymore. I am technical in 2024. Technical Tim. But I am just so, I am just so pumped about cross-chain Zaps, like the ability to swap. And this is kind of abstracting crypto, right? You don't have to think about chains anymore. You can just operate from the swap feature in your wallet because it's just so convenient to be able to swap into crypto that is prize crypto where you can win prizes. It just, it just makes so much sense to me. And I see the promised land and I think people will use it. I think the users will use it, but I could be horribly mistaken. Am I horribly mistaken on that with my cross-chain zapping? dream of a promised land? Just shoot me straight here.

I don't think you're mistaken at all in that. I think it makes a lot of sense for companies to start working towards products that do that because it's something that makes it easier to use crypto. It abstracts away the most difficult parts about crypto, and bridging is definitely one of the most difficult parts of crypto. So, I mean, I am also excited to see more so than just a cross-chain future, but just an abstracted future of crypto. People shouldn't have to worry about what chain their asset is on. They should, they should be able to use it whichever way they please in a very friendly way.

I think when I go to partners, when I talk to wallets or DEX aggregators or AMMs, when I'm talking to people, I I do feel when I talk about that specific idea, I have to specifically even like wallets, the dApp browser is so rooted in the user experience. Like it just still in the end of 20— we're almost in 2024 and we're still talking about dApp browsers for mobile wallets. And I'm like, hey, what if we just kept it in the swap interface? And And it, I, I have to, they're, they're like, wait, say that again. Wait, show us a slide. What's a visual that could help us? I'm like, it's really simple. Why, why, why am I, why do I have to re-explain this to you? But I feel like there is this like OG-ness of like, we've been doing this for so long. There, you know, cross-chain is kind of scary. Bridging is very scary, that sort of thing. That there's this kind of demystification. And then, and then finally we get to the, oh yeah, that could actually happen. But the tech doesn't exist yet, but it exists. It's all the pieces are there. And I think like in the next 3 months, I think it's within this next quarter, I think Q1 2024, we're going to see DEX aggregators start to pick up cross-chain routing, zapping type interfaces like portals.fi. So it's been, it's really cool. I believe, I believe. But also when I'm in these meetings, I'm like, am I tripping? Am I tripping, Cookie? Am I tripping? I

don't think you're tripping, at least not here. But yeah, I, I, I feel like the, the whole like wallet abstraction, maybe not in the technical sense, but just like abstraction of concepts within a wallet experience is, I mean, maybe a separate conversation, but such an endless route for improvement. I think we still have a long way to go. I feel like, you know, recently I switched to, to Rainbow Wallet, which has network abstraction. Like you don't have to worry about switching networks anymore. And it's like, oh, that's a thing. Good. I never need to worry about that anymore. And, and I feel like so many more things can be abstracted like that. I, I, I think, for example, if a wallet would willingly be more opinionated in the sense that it doesn't have to allow for absolutely everything in DeFi, 'cause I think that's what most wallets are geared towards. And maybe it's because they don't know where the industry's headed really. I don't think anyone does. But I think there is room now for slightly more opinionated interfaces where, you know, if you have a good enough wallet experience that possibly abstracts gas and you have USDC just sitting in your wallet doing nothing, there's basically zero downside to not ha— or basically there's only downside to not having that USDC input together. So, you know, if, if an opinionated wallet would have a savings feature. That would just automatically have that deposited and users don't need to know about it. It, it's just, you know, abstracting away an experience from users that they don't need to worry about anymore, and they're just getting the most outta DeFi.

Yeah, it's that convenience versus custody, right? So if, if a wallet can do that for you, which I would love to do it, you can give them permission to do it for you. Why not have a prize asset rather than, you know, and then when you need to go spend it, when you want to go buy it, purchase something, That doesn't take the prize asset, you have to use a different one, then yes, you spend it. But while it sits, while you have that, that, uh, that, that dormant, dormant money, it, it's earning prizes. So, uh, I also love Taliskai's game in the chat with the, with the alliteration and stuff. This is so good. Yeah. It, uh, Taliskai says opinionated wallets. Does that tread too closely to an advise modal? Explain that. I don't understand that. Do you guys know what Taliskan means?

I think he's just— I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think he's just saying the more opinions that a wallet is putting in their experience, the more they are technically advising their clients on what to do with their assets. And yeah, I mean, I would totally agree with that. Once you get into that opinionated zone, it does very much become a form of advice or even financial advice.

That's interesting though, because you're also selling products, right? So finance, that's what, I mean, banks do that all the time and they also sell you stuff and that you didn't even know you bought or sign you up for accounts that you didn't even know you signed up for. But yeah, there's the, that's interesting. The TradFi is very regulated and you have to have, you know, it's not financial advice. Okay. That's interesting. Got it.

What we're talking about in this sense is the unique intersection of decentralized, autonomous, immutable protocols being used by an opinionated service. And that's the keyword there is service. PoolTogether protocol is not a service. It's just a tool. It's something you can use in any way that you see fit, but it doesn't, it doesn't try to be opinionated, especially V5, where you can plug any sort of yield source. In there. But yeah, when you get into the world of services, they are inherently opinionated and for good reason, because they're trying to offer something of value to a consumer. So really, yeah, I mean, as we keep building out DeFi and DeFi protocols, I think it's really just enabling services to come out and use those protocols in more user-friendly ways. Because there's always going to be the OG use DeFi through your normal wallet, your EOA, and, you know, read a blockchain and do these and like have your own gas and all these things. There's always going to be ways to do that. That's the beauty of blockchains. But I think we're reaching a point where the people who aren't in that world Uh, are never going to come into that world unless there's an easier way.

All right. So I want to, I want to end this with this question, which is a very important question and it relates to a meme. I like to, I like to meme in my pitch decks. And one pitch deck that I'm using, or one meme that I'm using is the Spider-Man meme. And it's a bunch of different Spider-Men pointing at each other. And it says, build, you build it, you build it, you build it, you build it, you build it. And I feel like that's what, especially in partnership conversations, That's generally the tone is just like, hey, we've got cool stuff that you could build with. Can you build with it? And then I'm doing the same thing as like, hey, Pull Together is a really great protocol for you to add to your thing and to like build with. And if everybody's asking everyone else to build with, no one's going to build with anything because they're too busy building their own thing and not incorporating other things. So my question is, how do we get past that Spider-Man meme? And actually like build with things? How can we encourage builders to build with PoolTogether? How can we as a PoolTogether community build with other things? What's, what's, what's a way to woo the devs? And maybe, maybe, and this is for me being non-technical in 2023, but I won't be in 2024. I'll totally be technical. Maybe this part of the answer is more no-code options, like ability to Maybe like the Squarespace of DeFi, at least for front ends or something. So yeah, what are your thoughts about building more, building better, building as a team across crypto and DeFi?

Yeah, I think that conversation that you're having with partners is very telling because, you know, everybody at the core of DeFi is building a service they want other people to build on top of. Uniswap wants to be the universal layer of swaps. PoolTogether wants to be the global price infrastructure. And it's very difficult for one protocol to integrate another protocol when it doesn't further its core values and goal. So, I think it goes back to the same thing we were talking about before, where it's not about bloating these protocols with other features that it doesn't need. It's about streamlining all of these underlying protocols or handpicking a select few of them per se, and putting them into an opinionated experience. So really, yeah, it's like we're providing a foundation and it's about making it as easy as possible for other people to build on that foundation and also to plug in other protocols and use those in their foundation as well.

I, I kind of see it from a slightly different perspective, um, of, I don't, I don't know if any of you have seen the, like the XKCD, uh, meme about like, uh, different standards and then, you know, someone's outraged that there are so many, so many standards and then they, they think that they can make one better and now there's, you know, X plus 1 standards. So I, I think that's the same thing kind of happens here in terms of of protocols or, or even services or dApps in the sense that there's a lot already here and people should probably use the things that are there, but they see it as, you know, being able to do something better. So they build their own and maybe it is better. But I, I think one thing that's especially in crypto happens very often is people don't really know what is already out there, or they just think that they can dump more money into it and it'll be better. But yeah, I don't, I don't think this is like a very solvable problem, at least in the immediate future. I think people always want to kind of do their own thing and it's, it's hard to build on top of other things, or at least there's less incentives to. But I'm, I, I, I'm confident that in the long run, the, the good protocols or the good underlying, you know, feature sets that create value will win in the end. I, I guess I'm an optimist in, in, in that sense. But yeah, I'm, I'm, I remain hopeful that protocols that create value will be successful in the end.

Do you think also maybe it's like more hackathons? Like, are hackathons the answer? Because I, I mean, we, we started off this conversation talking about hackathons and, and, you know, people game the system and then people make really great products as well. But then the, probably the better products are the ones that really honed in on the product that they're creating and not try and didn't try to get as many bounties as possible. So I'm just, maybe my question is how do we get— so no, I appreciate those answers on like how we can work together and build together, but maybe, you know, you both started building with PoolTogether. What inspired you to build with PoolTogether? And maybe we just take that and keep doing that and make that better.

Yeah. I mean, When I started building with PoolTogether, what really got me interested in it was simply just being in this PoolTogether Discord and hearing what people had to say about the protocol and the dreams they had for it. And I wanted to help build that out. It's not an easy thing to do. It basically— I mean, getting into any contributing to any sort of DeFi protocol or experience takes a lot of time and effort. You have to have a deep understanding about what the protocol is and what the community wants. And a lot of people don't have time for that. So, I think, you know, the best path forward is probably memeing things into existence. It's what you do best, Tim, to be honest. You are always manifesting ideas. You're manifesting the future of PoolTogether in everything you say. I don't know if— I'm sure some part of you does it on purpose, or maybe it's just your nature, but you manifest the future of PoolTogether. Your Discord name is Milli Yearly. This is the— and it's become a goal for many people in this community to create a prize that is $1 million yearly. You are memeing into existence the idea of swaps being the primary way to participate and pool together. And, you know, all these ideas, they really do take hold, they take root, and it's the easiest thing to communicate because it exists in so many forms and mediums. So I think it's really just more of that. It's taking the best things that everybody here wants to see in the future of PoolTogether, and it's making them easy to understand, and it's, it's just proliferating them through, uh, social mediums.

Seizing the memes. And Cookie, what are your thoughts? And please compliment me as well in your response.

Let's start with that. You're very articulate in your, uh, proliferation of memes, um, through songs particularly. But, um, yeah, I think to kind of bring it back to the to the hackathon and like building new things or on top of other things common. I think it's, I don't, I wouldn't call it like willful ignorance. I would call it more maybe requiring a slightly higher level of humility when building new things. I think people should ask themselves if, you know, if their idea or, or they themselves are, do they think that their idea is better than everything else that has come before it? And imbued into that statement is the need to know what came before it, which I think if people answer those 2 questions, I think they can build something better. I think I haven't, I feel like every hackathon I've seen for the past 2 years or so has always had a, oh, it's like pull together comment at some point, which is pretty funny. So yeah, I'd like to see people that want to build cool stuff just have that mindset of, uh, really looking back at what is already there. Can they build it better? If so, then by all means do it. But yeah, there's a lot of very smart people in this space, and a lot of them have built some amazing things. So seeing how you can contribute value and noticing that sometimes building your own thing from scratch isn't the way you can give the most value. So keep that in mind.

Well, this has been great. I told myself I was going to try to make it tighter and shorter, But I feel like this was just chock full of goodness, great information. We did, we did the full hour. Uh, you guys are great. It's such a pleasure to work with both of you and, uh, and then also to do a podcast together. I'm pumped about what V5 has in store for us all in the next quarter. And, uh, and yeah, we'll, we'll, I, I, what I'm really excited about after talking, after having this conversation is, and maybe we need to meme this into existence, manifest it. But just getting more dev, getting more builders. And I, and I do like the idea of also like no-code and incorporating people because I did my first hackathon and I'm not technical. And I really felt like I contributed to the hackathon team. Like we need non-technical people to help build as well. So, you know, I'm excited to see what this community, how it grows. And with you 2 builders at the helm, thank you so much.

Thank you for having us, Tim.

Yep. Thanks for hosting.

Thanks, everybody.

Bye. Thanks for listening to the PoolTogether Community Podcast. You can visit pooltogether.com to deposit, and we'd love to hear what you thought about today's episode. So visit the PoolTogether Discord and let us know.