PoolTogether Community Podcast #38 with Sid and Pratik from Juno

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. It's your boy, Hot Mike, AKA Tim, AKA it's cold out and it's after Labor Day and I don't think that's right. New York City anyway. But the real thing here is that we're we're on with Sid, co-founder of Juno, which is your and my favorite neobank, favorite fiat on and off ramp if you're living in the United States. So Sid, thanks for making time for the Pool Together community today.

Tim, Tim, really glad to have to be here, and thanks thanks for having me over here. Really excited to share whatever you want to ask me. And, you know, really excited about sharing our story with the OG users and community of—

That's right. I think PoolTogether has that OG DeFi status, which is quite nice. I like to toss that around when I talk to people about PoolTogether. It's like, oh wait, you're OG, you're tried and true. Love that. But Juno's been around for— well, Sid, can you just start with just telling me how you got into crypto? And then the story of how Juno started.

Of course, of course. So, you know, the way we got into crypto was pretty insane, actually. We wanted to build a neobank in India. And what we realized was that banks are just not ready to part with their APIs and enable other people to actually come up with their own banking stack. We were kind of pushed into thinking, how do banks really work? They have lending and borrowing. I mean, that's the basis of every bank, lending and borrowing functions. And how do we really emulate that without the need of bank? How do we get rid of the dependency on banks? And this was back in 2017 when the term DeFi did not exist. And DeFi is exactly that, right? DeFi did not exist. We were kind of pushed into thinking, how do we get rid of banks, the dependency on banks, I mean, and still do what we want to do and what we really intend to do, which is creating a banking experience. And that's how we got pushed into— and we started building a product called Nuo, nuo.network. And that's when all hell broke loose. We realized that, oh my God, there is a whole new industry out there which has a global appeal from day one. Because our product, when we launched it, within the first 2 weeks, we had users from more than 18 countries. who were using our product. We had close to around $3 to $4 million in AUM sitting in our, in TVL, in the Web3 world, TVL sitting in our smart contracts. And we were just completely flabbergasted. And honestly, that was our first exposure to crypto, to Web3. And in fact, later we realized that what we were building was something in a space called DeFi.

So how did that spread so fast? Was it just word of mouth?

It was actually a lot to do with Twitter. We just released the product out there, put it out there, and we got the word out to certain— I mean, and sorry, some people actually heard about us because we were a little active on Discord, on some— sorry, on Telegram back then, and some communities on Telegram. And some of the really interesting whales who really tried, who wanted to do something in, who wanted to actually margin trade in DeFi, which was just not possible before Nuor. And we had a concept. I mean, we were the first ones to actually integrate meta transactions at the scale at which we did. So some of these folks really found our product super interesting and the way we approached them super interesting. And then these guys just came on board and then the word just spread like A virus. It was crazy. It was addictive, honestly.

Well, continue then. So you got 3 to 4 million locked in smart contracts. You got users in 18 countries thanks to Twitter and some Telegram communities.

Then what happened was that, you know, we kept on building, we kept on growing. And at one point, just before the DeFi summer, we did something that was super unthinkable and something that everyone in the audience over here will just tell me, Hey, what a stupid and crazy decision. But in hindsight, I don't regret it at all. All right. So what we did was we shut down. I'll just let that sink in. All right. So

that's ridiculous. Total success. You're growing and then you shut it down.

Absolutely.

All right.

Yeah. And the reason for that, right. So the way we had implemented the whole architecture was considering the fact that, hey, a whole bunch of new DeFi users are going to come into A whole bunch of new users are going to come into crypto, into DeFi, and we wanted to onboard them in the most seamless way possible. And due to that, we went in with the approach of meta transactions, and we also chose the approach of auto liquidation at the time of loan getting decollateralized. So we wanted to go ahead with an auto liquidation approach, which was powered by Uniswap and Kyber and a few other DEXs. And due to these 2 major architectural decisions, so there were 2 reasons. One was a technical reason and the other was a regulatory reason. And I'm just talking about the technical reason right now. So due to these 2 reasons, we realized that, hey, if we are to— we realized that Ethereum itself is not ready for that kind of scale and that kind of the way we had architected it. Ethereum was definitely not ready to onboard tons of users with that particular architecture. And especially at the time of liquidation of loans, the approach that Compound and other people had taken, other DeFi players had taken, which was creating a market for liquidation of loans. I think that was the best approach back then. But if we were to do it right now, I think what we were doing, if you would have continued to do right now, Ethereum is probably ready for something of this sort right now. If not now, just after the merge for sure. So that was the technical reason. And most importantly, the regulatory reason. We saw post this decision of regulatory, we saw DeFi— sorry, dYdX just shut down in US as well. Right. And the reason for that was regulators were right down their throat. And we knew, we kind of predicted this kind of move from the regulatory bodies, from SEC, from various different bodies. And we realized that, hey, if we are to build a business in which we don't know after getting up, are we going to still be alive or we're going to be asked to shut down? We don't want to do that. Instead, what we want to do is we want to be in a space which is accepting of where we are and then go back to our goal of achieving, of making crypto mainstream. So that's when we actually started Juno as a neobanking product. And when we started, there was almost nothing related to crypto. We started a neobanking product. We got our banking partners to trust in us and we built out the fraud systems, we built out the KYC AML systems, we built out the support system, customer support system. We built out like crazy number of boring things that no one really wants to do. But we had to do this in order to make sure that, hey, crypto is actually becoming mainstream. And now we are at a position in the last 7 to 8 months since we have actually launched crypto inside Juno as well. Now we are right at the intersection of banking and crypto. And because we have the crazy experience of going through that whole Nuvo DeFi journey and we have the crazy experience of building a boring fintech traditional product, which is Juno minus crypto, some time back. I think we are at the best position to define the next set of products to kind of make a crypto-native user's lifestyle as seamless as possible. And that's our journey. And here we are right now.

So, I mean, I was, when I first— so my journey was in 2019, I dabbled in crypto. I dabbled in PoolTogether. I dabbled in a little bit, but I just got pissed off because of transaction fees. And I was like, I put $200 in and I had $30 by the end of it. I'm like, you know what? Forget it. I'm going to come back next year. So, I dabbled in 2019. I dabbled in 2020. And then I was full-time in 2021 in November. And what I needed to really get full-time into crypto or really get into it was an on-ramp, a fiat on-ramp. And at that point, it was Dharma. And so I started using Dharma and I really liked it. I had a good experience, but then what, OpenSea acquired them, I think? I think it was acquired by OpenSea and shut it down. And so I'm just floating out there like, what do I do? I don't have a feeless off-ramp. And that's how I got connected with On Juno at the time, which is now Juno. So it's been really cool even just to see how much you've shipped between— I think I probably started using Juno in like January of 2022. So now it's a completely different product. As far— not even completely different, sorry. Just, I love how you said Juno minus crypto equals boring, but there's so much crypto in it now. You've got Optimism, you've got Matic, you've gotten so many different chains in there. And so it's been really cool. And I'm talking with Pratik, who does product, and just sent me over this. I'm going to drop this in the chat. It's Juno Pay. Which is really cool because now I don't even have to deal with Juno, the boring financial part. I've just got Juno Pay, right? So is this a new product? Has it been around? Am I just now finding out about this and it's been around and I've been like, where have you been all my life?

What a crazy summarization, Tim. Appreciate all the kind words. And yes, to answer your question, this product is a new product. were in the works of building all the infrastructure out there to just get the funds into the system and quickly to convert that into crypto. Now that we've mastered that and the whole conversion between USD and crypto and back from crypto to USD, that entire journey and that entire infrastructure is mastered. And now is the right time to actually go and create a new thing like JunoPay and go ahead and just offer these product offerings to various different DeFi players and to various different dApps and even L2 protocols and so on. So just given the fact that we've created that infrastructure, given the fact that we've created the trust with our banking partner, are kind of the best system out there for you to on-ramp your users or new users and even existing users, honestly, to go directly from USD into whatever protocol you want. Currently, we're supporting Optimism, Arbitrum, Polygon, and a bunch of other L2s as well. We are integrated with a bunch of different wallets as well. So having— and I'm sure you're in talks with Prateek for just bringing that onto PoolTogether as well. So I think the kind of response that we are getting after just launching this new category of product called Juno Pay is just tremendous. And this is something that we did not really expect would blow up so soon, but it is happening. And it is, I think you know exactly why this is happening as well.

For sure. Yeah. When I first got into Juno, I was thinking it was more for like sending money abroad, particularly because that was some of the messaging on the site. Which is beautiful. I mean, that's a perfect use case for it. And it's only available in the United States still, right? But now I'm seeing, like, I mean, as I'm using it, I'm kind of rolling my own how to work in Web3, be a freelancer, contractor, multiple positions thing. So Juno is now like my business checking basically. And then I'm using Opulus as a payroll provider and healthcare provider for me. And then, I'm looking at Rain for corporate card stuff, but then also, I was talking to Prateek about how Juno can be a corporate card too. So, I'm rolling my own stack. And there's this, I feel like this whole market out there of just the crypto workers, especially in the United States of just the new freelancing career that people are having in Web3 and how Juno can be— Key to that. So I wonder, I wonder, you know, you have all these bonuses and like user acquisition stuff. Where is Juno headed now? I feel like at some point these have to wind down. And, you know, right now Juno absorbs fees. Right now there's like, you know, you get, you get some juicy yield on the stuff if you keep it with Juno. What's, what's next for Juno with that?

Yep, yep. Tim, interesting, interesting points out there. And I'll just try to answer them one by one. So when we started building this from the crypto side, as I mentioned, we really appreciate and acknowledge and understand how crypto natives work. And that's how we started thinking about how would crypto natives rethink banking products, banking products as they exist in the traditional rails. But just add a twist to them. How would crypto natives really think about them? And that's when we started identifying certain things. So for example, when you're getting your paycheck in your checking account, you have to go ahead and convert it into crypto because you want it in crypto. But how do we make that better? Hey, why don't we just add the feature of auto-convert your paycheck into crypto and start earning your paycheck in crypto? And that's one of the features that have been live in the product since a while. And people are, crypto natives are loving to use that. So that's one of the products. Then another product that, again, as an example of how would crypto natives rethink banking is the fact that you have crypto in your wallets, but you have to convert it into USD before spending it via your debit or credit card. And again, why do you have to go through that hassle when you can really just spend your crypto using your debit card? And that's another feature that we've added. Similarly, we're going to add bill pay. We're going to add a bunch of other such features, just rethinking as to how would crypto natives think about traditional banking products. As far as the user acquisition incentives and a bunch of yield and other things go, With respect to yield, we have actually stopped all crypto yield in the platform, natively in the platform. Obviously, users can feel free to just take away that crypto after buying from their US dollar, take away their crypto, their ETH and USDC, and put it in various different platforms like PoolTogether to earn crypto, to earn yield. But natively, we have stopped any giving away of any yield. And the reason for that was, again, the crazy amount of things that happened after the whole fall of 3AC and Terra and all those things, due to which everyone realized that, hey, if there is a yield in any product, at the end of the day, you're lending to a risky business or to a semi-risky business, whatever it is. But at the end of the day, you're lending and there is risk involved and you got to take it back or at least give it in the right form to the users. So that was the reason why we actually took back yield. We will introduce yield back into the product after some time and we will be extremely happy and we'll actually be exploring various different products like PoolTogether. I'm sure PoolTogether is one of them, is the prime of them as to how we can actually get more users into PoolTogether and such other protocols where they can start earning yield or they can start earning in some way or the other as you guys offer. With respect to yield, I just wanted to clarify that. With respect to where we are headed in terms of user acquisition bonus and other such bonuses and cashbacks and various other things, what we're really doing is we are— and this is some alpha, just keep it to yourselves right now and we will be doing announcements properly in the coming weeks. But we are going to be launching a loyalty program token. Right. So what this means is it's a token which is a reward program of Juno. So as long as you're using Juno, as long as you're using a bunch of different things inside Juno in ways which crypto natives would typically use Juno, you would be able to earn Juno coins. And that's how we plan to essentially just convert those existing bonuses into these Juno tokens. So that's like, you know, I don't want to reveal much about it.

Yeah.

But yeah, that's the plan. Yeah.

Well, we're going to release this like next week. So if you need me to edit something out, I'll talk to Prateek and just make sure that's cool to keep it, leave it, leave in or whatever. But that sounds awesome. And that's different than yield, right? It's not. So there'd be yield plus token or the token is the new yield?

It is completely different from yield. This is so just think of it more from first principles than what we would have seen anywhere else. So just think of an Amex card with the Amex loyalty points, right? Exactly. And that's exactly how we should think about these tokens. So they have got nothing to do with yield. In fact, for all our purposes, we don't want to value these coins as well. And whatever values the community— sorry, whatever price the community decides for these tokens, that will be it. And we will not even be part of the whole price discovery process. So it's definitely not part of any yield. It is not a yield at all. It is just a loyalty token that is going to be given to users, which can be redeemed in our platform in various interesting ways. And that's something that we will definitely reveal going forward. But yes, this is how we are thinking about Juno tokens. Definitely not yield, definitely something that is rewarding loyal users of Juno.

That's so great. I have a couple more questions, but I want to ask this one first because it'll affect my, my, the series of questions coming is, who is your target audience? Who you, you've said crypto native a bunch now, and, and maybe that's your audience, or maybe there's somebody else that you're like, is it onboarding crypto curious Or are you going after the hardcore— like, who's primary audience for Juno?

That's an amazing question. So there are 3 types of users that exist in the market. One is crypto natives. Sorry, one is hardcore DeFi users who've gone crazy into crypto and either DeFi or Bitcoin or whatever, right? And they've gone like crazy into crypto. They are probably whales or probably not. They've used most of the product. The other is people who are passively just invested into some of the cryptos. They know how things work. They know that there's a concept of L2, ETH merge, and a bunch of these things. And then the third one is crypto curious, right? And these guys are the ones who are probably just about to invest in crypto or who are yet to be educated enough to invest into crypto. So the way we are doing things right now and the way we are targeting things, We are targeting the second audience right now, which is people who are deeply embedded into the ecosystem, but probably are not whales, probably are not like the most hardcore DeFi users. But these guys are crypto native enough. They are probably passive investors into crypto. They're probably into some different protocols. They've probably gotten some, earned some, or lost some money in the whole NFT saga that happened. And this is the kind of cohort that we're going after right now. And we want to make make sure that we are solving for these users. The third cohort, which is the crypto curious cohort, that is something that we want to leave for the bigger players out there who have the capacity to educate these users to come into crypto. And once these guys get converted into crypto is when we want to target them and we want to make sure that they get the best crypto native banking experience ever possible. Over time, of course, over a few months, we might transition into more crypto-curious users. But as of now, it is just those crypto-native folks.

And then within that crypto-native sector, are we— it seems more like a personal checking kind of experience rather than like a business checking. But I feel like there's— I mean, in some of the things that you said, Sid, is like, There seems like some more business-type features coming. And so, yeah, just thinking about that, who are you talking— it's more of like an everyday life, I want to pay for your coffees and stuff, not necessarily pay for all your business expenses kind of checking experience.

That's absolutely correct, Tim. Just the everyday experiences is what we are targeting for. But we are constantly and actively getting this feedback from our users. from the community that, hey, why don't you guys do something for my— I mean, I have a business and I want to use Juno for that. And we are now kind of going back and forth in strategizing whether we want to go that route right now or do we want to go that route later, probably a few months later. That's the only question. We're definitely going to go there sometime in the future, but just don't know whether it's going to happen in the near or the

Yeah, totally. And so one of the reasons, just backtracking a little bit as far as the juicy yields go, and I know that you've turned that off just because of the current market conditions for sure, is I noticed that actually. I noticed that my app didn't have what I'm earning. Checking still earns. I have metal checking, and so I'm getting a bonus there, or I could if I don't have it in crypto. So I got to figure all that out. But I do have this on track to earn a certain amount for September. But I guess that's— Yeah. What I, what I guess what I've had so far or something. Anyway, that's really, I just love that.

I love— Just to clarify that, it is, it is what we've done is while we've just removed the crypto yield, we have actually upped our fiat yield. So we were giving 1.2% earlier on the USD, on USD per annum. Now we are bumped that up to 2.15%. And that is what you're probably— 2.15%. And that is what you're probably— that's what you're seeing on the app, that you're on track to earn certain dollars because of the USD that is existing in your bank account.

Okay. Yeah, I'll figure it out. We don't need to solve all my problems right now, but this is great. And yeah, I do think that there's always this temptation to scope creep in crypto because the world is your oyster. Everything is possible. You're just limited by your The ability to develop or the ability to acquire users or the ability to generate yield. So what's the future for Juno? What other, you know, you've told, you give us a little bit of alpha or even like maybe not what's going to happen, but what you would like to see happen, Sid? Like what's your vision?

Yeah, I mean, that's an interesting question. So of course I've given you guys some alpha about Juno coins. What is really more interesting and what is really more enticing to me is what happens post that, right? And how does the product evolve? How does the whole company evolve? And the way I'm thinking about it right now is that we need— we are just— Juno is just a gateway into crypto. We are not a killer crypto. We are not a killer app in crypto. We are just a gateway to all the killer apps in crypto. Right. And when we are treating ourselves as that, what that means is that we want to enable our users to be seamlessly entering into all the killer apps in crypto. And how do we really enable that? I think, you know, As anyone would just say, if you want to use any yield product or if you want to use PoolTogether, you want to use anything, what you really need is you need a self-custody wallet and not a centralized wallet. You need a self-custody wallet which will go and interact with various different smart contracts. Right. And that is where we want to head eventually. Hey, we are at the gateway of crypto and banking, so we will enable you to convert your US dollar into crypto. But once you get into crypto, we don't want to restrict you by our centralized wallet that we support. What we want to do is we'll probably enable a self-custody wallet inside Juno maybe, or make it extremely easy for you to go in and take it out into any of your self-custody wallet. And then you can do whatever you want with it. So it's your money, so it's your keys and it's your property and it's under your custody, but it's so closely attached to the banking product that if you want to buy and sell at any point, if you want to spend it, buy it, sell it, earn in crypto and put it directly in your self-custody wallet, it should be super duper simple for you to do it. And then you can go and interact with any Web3 wallets or, sorry, any smart contracts or protocols. That's a part of the vision that we have for us.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think the way that crypto or Web3 even is just the abstracting away of all of these different steps so that the user doesn't even have to think about even yield or where to, like, how to be crafty or whatever. It's just like, You just want to do something and let the code do it for you or predict what you want to do and do it. I've used Coinbase now as this— and what I think you're talking about is this built-in dApp wallet browser thing. And even using that, it's just very clunky. And I set up to be more secure, I set up an allow list. So then I had to wait 5 days for a move that I made to actually happen. And I'm trying to do this tutorial to show how easy it is to use Coinbase. But in my quest to be more secure, I've made it more difficult for myself. So it's really nice to use stuff that's really easy to use, but once you start getting to the bleeding edge of what's possible, it becomes difficult again or it breaks or stuff. Yeah. But I mean, I love Juno and the fact that it makes it— it's that you're doing all the hard work for us to make things easier so that when I talk to my mom or my, you know, people who aren't so tech savvy, I can show them a product like Juno and it makes it easier for them.

Absolutely. And in fact, you know, we believe that we are really first principle thinkers and we tend to reimagine user experiences in ways that other people have not been able to. And So you can really totally expect a different kind of an experience than what you're talking about with other players in the market.

So one of the things that I try to do, so I'm doing business development for PoolTogether right now, and I also do like silly songs for Wasis, but those are my 2 roles in crypto. And as I've been trying to think about ways to partner with different key platforms, protocols, chains, communities, all of that. I've been going the route of integrations thus far. I always want to think like, how can we get Juno into PoolTogether and PoolTogether into Juno? And that's generally very difficult to do. I would love to see PoolTogether as the savings account option for Juno, where you can win prizes instead of a guaranteed yield. You can actually have the variance. You could play the variance and potentially win way big for your smaller deposit, but you also not win very big. And then the other thing about PoolTogether is you can delegate it out. You can give your prizes to other people if you want at no loss. So there's all these cool things, but what I'm finding with integrations, because they're so hard, is like sometimes it's just about like telling users of one who really like one product about another product that they might like and vice versa. So I wonder, just Sid, what are your thoughts on BD as you're navigating crypto and creating partnerships with Juno, but not wanting to feature scope creep?

Right. Such a— I believe this is kind of a loaded question, but I'll try to answer it as much as I can.

I'm not like, yes, tell us how you're going to partner with PoolTogether or like that kind of thing.

Right. So, you know, one thing that we've observed while trying to get some partnerships with JunoPay since you just very recently launched. One thing that we observed is that it is very different from any other business development process where most of these companies, they expect people, business development executives to come in suits and boots and come and pitch and try to just influence the key execs' decisions to integrate with their products and tools. And suites, right? So it's definitely extremely different what we have seen right now with respect to the various different integrations that have actually happened because it has literally happened with our head of products and our product leads just randomly pinging people on Twitter. on Discord that, hey, we have this interesting thing. Are you going to be interested in checking us out? And more or less, it just turns out that these guys are also— the other people are also hungry to really learn anything that's happening in this space because it is so early and because it is not those traditional old school people who are on the other side of the table. So BD in this space is super interesting. And someone who's just aggressive enough, someone who's just young and passionate, he or she will just be— I think Pratik can vouch for this much more because we didn't even realize when he actually went ahead and spoke to like 4 partners who were ready to integrate as soon as possible. Right. So that's the kind of power that any space which is so early in its lifecycle provides and gives. Having said that, what we are looking at when we look at any partnerships is regulation and the fact that we have a banking partner to go answer things to is super duper important from our perspective as well. So in order to bring any experience native and in-house in Judo, that is one basic check that we need to have passed. If it's, if, you know, the integration requires users to go onto other platforms and do a bunch of things, then that's a whole different ballgame. But if it requires users to come onto a, sorry, to be in our platform and do those things natively, then, you know, that is where we are. That's where we have a set of rules, basically. But when it comes to other people asking for partnerships to And this is what we are seeing right now. We are literally seeing people in the DeFi community, they're just coming up to us telling us that, hey, your Juno Pay product looks interesting. We've seen it in a bunch of other places. Can we get started with some conversations? And then that leads to integrations very quickly.

That's great. I'm actually messaging with Prateek right now about that.

Awesome.

I love the hustle. And then with Juno Pay, I mean, it's just as simple as dropping a link on a site, right? Is that— is that— I'm not technical, but I like to fancy myself somewhat technical, but that's what it seems like. It just seems like, hey, it's a super simple integration. Dropping links on sites are great. You just have to make it secure or feel secure for the—

You just need to put a button out there, go and buy whatever coin you want with Juno supports. And then we take it from there. That's it. That button will be created by a UX designer, or we can do that for you. And then it's just a one-line integration on the front end.

Well, that's great. I mean, what are your thoughts on the conference scene? Like, how do you see growing Juno's user base with those crypto, with the crypto natives? How do you go out and continue to build and grab people? Is it features? Is it more product development? Or is it like in-person stuff?

I'm sorry, can you repeat that? I'm

just saying, how is Juno going to like get those next million users or 1,000 users or whatever your next target is? I assume that that's the next step for you. I mean, you're building so much with product. It's all the features and stuff. But I mean, you even said you've— I forgot how exactly you phrased it, but you basically have perfected— you really have this neobank experience is really nice. So now I just feel like it's putting people in the top of the funnel. And what's the plan for doing that? How do you get that next 1,000 users or the next 10,000

Got it. So the way we're looking at it is in order to go from— I mean, we've kind of gone from 0 to 1, and now we want to take it from 1 to a crazy number. And the most important thing for that is just identifying who your core users are and who we want to target. And I'm just talking about in any business, and this applies to us more so than anywhere else. So what is our target market? Who is our core user? Identifying that and then figuring out where do these guys hang usually? Where do they spend most of their time? Is it Facebook? Is it Instagram? Is it Discord? Is it Reddit? Is it some NFT events? Where exactly do they spend their bunch of time? And once you figure that out, then the next step is, hey, what really motivates them? What can we do to really win them over? And what can we do to just make sure that our proposition, our value proposition is presented to them in the most awesome way or in the most honest way possible? And this is the process that we are going to follow and we are following already. And just having JunoPay go and sit in various different places where these guys already hang solves the second part of the puzzle. And then adding JunoCoin actually solves the third part of the— we believe might solve the third part of the puzzle much quicker than what is happening right now. And the value proposition becomes much more, you know, the pull becomes much stronger as compared to what is happening right now. So I think that's where we are headed and that's how we think about the next million users.

That's great. I've added Prateek here just from his request. He had something to say.

I did not know you were known as Hot Mike here. Well, what is it on him?

Because when the mic's hot, you know, I left my mic on. It was a hot mic. Then I became Hot Mike. Yes, it's very confusing for people.

Love it. Love it. Love the name. Hey, hey, hey, everyone. Just wanted to add one point. You know, I think Tim mentioned about, you know, hey, can we see Pool Together in Juneau? Like, where is that even possible? So I just want to add one, like my 2 cents to that. So we are big fans of PoolTogether. I mean, that's why even Sid is here, I'm here. And I think Tim and I have been talking for a long period of time here on how could we actually integrate PoolTogether directly to Juno. But the biggest blocker has been like the regulatory issue, right? The compliance issue. How do we make it compliant, right? That has been the biggest challenge. And I think Sid has also mentioned about how are we going to introduce like a Web3 wallet but abstract it all away. So the kind of future which we look at, and I think pretty much the industry is also heading towards, is that you'll be able to earn the yield from PoolTogether just one step directly from your Juno checking account. It has to be that easy. That's exactly when Tim's mom can, or any cryptonomy, like my mom or my dad can just go and just use an app like PoolTogether. I think that's where the future's headed right now. We all folks, it's really early. We are doing around like 30 steps or maybe 30 to 50 steps to just earn and yield and put together, let's say maybe on Optimism or on Ethereum mainnet. But it has to be very simple, right? It has to be one click and that's where it'll actually be accessible to the next 100 million users. So that's where we see the future at. And yeah, like Sid mentioned, in terms of first principles, I'm pretty sure that UI will not be there till now, which you have not noticed, but it's going to be like, hey, your money goes from your checking account in USD to directly, you know, it's earning yield on PoolTogether, like in the next step itself. So yeah, pretty excited about this.

That's awesome. 2 things I realized. One is I talk about my mom a lot on this show, so it feels like therapy to me. So I thank you both for that. And second of all, I feel like Prateek and I are like besties now. Pretty soon we're going to invite each other to each other's birthday parties and stuff. It's going to be great. We talk so much in the DMs. So I've got 2 more questions left for you, and I'm going to ask them both right now. And I would love to hear both your thoughts, but how can PoolTogether help Juno? What are your needs? I see you're hiring a lot. We have a pool of talent here. Do we need to put out more content about Juno? How can this community help your community? And then the second thing is Mumbai or Bangalore?

Second one is a tough one. I think it's going to be like a battle between Sid and me over here. Second question right over here. Sid, you want to take the

first one? You go ahead, take the first one, Prateek. I think you're besties with Tim.

Yeah. So I think like a couple of ways in which the community can get involved is, I mean, hey, if you can go to a careers page, you can see the kind of jobs which are relevant for you. If you feel there's a match, We are at the intersection of Web2 and Web3, the so-called CeDeFi, which the goal of the mission for us is to have like a fintech in the front end and DeFi in the back end. Yeah, it's like the basic bankless mullet. So if you are interested in that, if you want to make crypto more accessible to the next 100 million users, and if that's something which resonates with you, please go to the careers page and just do apply over there. That's one way to get involved. Another way to get involved is directly as a user, right? Since Sid has mentioned about Juno coins too, if you open a Juno checking account, you can not only experience the product, but you can also earn some free money, which is like Juno coins. So yeah, couple of ways to get involved. And I think, Sid, if you have any other ways, or I think that these are like the 2 ways in which you can definitely get involved.

Yeah. And if you really love the product, just go and try to use Juno if you haven't already. And if you love the product, then And you would like to just spread the word, just go and do referrals on the platform. We have a crazy referral incentivization program and just go and tweet about it.

$100 for each referral.

Yeah, $100.

Yep. And then for customer support, what's the ideal flow for that? As people are checking it out and they wanted to suggest features to you, we have a lot of that, right? We love to be like, oh, you should totally add this and this and this and this and this. And apparently some startups love hearing that. I'm not sure if Juno wants to hear all of that, but I'm sure you'd be receptive to it. Where do we put that sort of feedback for you?

Multiple places, right? You can either— I mean, the most best place would be in Discord itself. We, the product team is chilling in our Discord, so you can always just directly talk to the product team and be like, hey, you know what, can we add this? You know, and just put out your reasons on why you want this. And it might like, you know, and I think a lot of features has been added, right? A lot of cashback brands has been added also that way. Like, you know, Someone's like, hey, there's a local shop here, can you add it as a brand? And he was like a core user, a Discord user. So we just added it as a cashback brand. So yeah, feel free to hit us on Discord. I think that's the best way to go about it. But then there are other more formal ways to go about

it. So we fancy ourselves as a cool bank, cool neobank, right? That in any of your other banks, you would definitely not be able to chat with the product folks in that particular company. But you can just hit us up on Discord, man.

Yeah, I know. That's so cool. Like, what bank is telling you to get on Discord? I love that. Also, product idea for you. I would love to get some Juno merch, but like, can you— I'm waiting for some crypto company to do this protocol, to do this is like mimic all of the fintech merch but make it crypto, but like in ironic ways. So can we get some like fintech vests? Or something like puffer vests, but like make it Juno and make it funny. I don't know. I think that'd be hilarious.

That's super interesting. I think we should totally do that. Yeah.

Or like Juno mullets. Like, let's get some Juno mullets, right? That's what we're doing. Like, TradFi in the front, DeFi in the back. Okay. All right.

Wow. Wow. We've digressed.

Juno mullets. Well, Sid, Prateek, thanks so much. I know you got a hard stop and it's been so good to have you on the pod. I've been waiting for this for so long and it exceeded all of my expectations and looking forward to continuing to partner with Juno. Going to put out some content about this Juno Pay, which is super sweet, and I'll keep using it, keep giving you feedback in the Discord. So thanks so much.

Thanks for having us here and thanks everyone for patiently listening to the call. Excited to have this call and looking forward to hopefully you use Juno and experience the product.

And, uh, Tim, you've been an exceptional host.

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.